Almost rudely he tossed the paper on the counter, among the printed sheets and other things that lay there.
"See to that without fail," he added curtly.
Without another word he stamped his way to the door, and, with a rattle of steel as his armour moved on his body, strode into the street, and left the shop door to slam after him. The noise of the slamming sounded very much like a death-knell to Margaret.
"What is it, father?" she cried, hurrying to the printer's side behind the counter when a customer was served, and was gone, and they were alone together.
She glanced into his face, and, although he had appeared unperturbed while the soldier and the customer were in the shop, it was white now, and when her father's fingers were put forward to take up the paper they trembled so that he could scarcely close them on it.
"Something from the Burgomaster, my dear," Byrckmann answered, trying to appear at ease, but completely failing.
He broke the city seal, smoothing out the paper on the counter. They read it with their heads close together, their cheeks almost touching. It was written in the ill-formed characters which were so noticeable in everything which came from the Chief Magistrate's hand.
It told its own story. Word had reached him that a notable and troublesome heretic had come from England, whose name was William Tyndale. How it had happened no one knew, but this fellow, so it was said, had contrived to get into the city. Possibly he had come in disguise, a man with a godless heart, and a mind bent on spreading his scandalous heresy. He was hiding somewhere, but no one knew where, and was supposed to be translating the Scriptures into English. It was suspected, as well, that, if he had not already done so, he would be trying to induce one of the printers to run his wicked sheets through the printing-press.
"I charge you, Master Byrckmann, as I am charging all the printers within my jurisdiction," the paper ran, "to abstain from having anything to do with this scandalous fellow who, like Doctor Martin Luther, is working out the devil's wicked will, and seeking to wean away the people from His Holiness the Pope and Mother Church.
"For bethink you, Master Byrckmann, what can happen more calamitous to the credit of our famous city than that this man, Tyndale, should be sheltering in a house inside our walls, and daring, in his insolence, to interpret Divine Law, the statutes of our Fathers, and those decrees which have received the consent of so many ages, in a manner totally at variance with the opinion of the learned priests of the Church! Yet this fellow has dared to do this thing! He has done what Luther dared! and now, like him, he is tampering so wickedly with the Word of God.