The magister threw the knife on to the table and rose, frostily rustling in his gown.
'I shall bring thee down, ignoble man,' he said.
'If thou hast the power to do that,' the old man asked suddenly, 'wherefore canst not get me redress in the matter of my wall?'
The magister answered angrily:
'Privy Seal hath swallowed thy land: he shall not disgorge. But this man he shall swallow. Know you not that you may make a jack swallow, but no man shall make him give back; I, nor thou, nor the devil's self?'
'Oh, a God's name bring not Flail Crummock into this household,' the young man cut in. 'Would you undo us all?'
'Ignoble, ignoble, to twit a man with that Eton villainy,' the magister answered.
'A God's name bring not Privy Seal into the quarrel,' the young man repeated. 'None of us of the Old Faith believe that lie.'
'Keep thy tongue off Cromwell's name, young fool,' his grandfather said. 'We know not what walls have ears.'
The young man went pale: the printer himself went pale, remembering suddenly that the magister was a spy of Cromwell's; all three of them had their eyes upon Udal; only the old man, with his carelessness of his great age, grinned with curiosity as if the matter were a play that did not concern him. The magister was making for the door with the books beneath his arm and a torturing smile round his lips. The boy, with a deep oath, ran out after him, a scarlet flash in the darkening room.