He hissed: 'Hush! hush!' with an appearance of terror, and whispered, forming the words with his lips rather than uttering them: 'How fared you and your house in the nonce?'
'I have read in many texts,' she answered, 'to pass the heavy hours.'
He spoke then, aloud and with an admonitory air:
'Never say the heavy hours—for what hours are heavy that can be spent with the ancient writers for companions?'
She avoided his reproachful eyes with:
'My father's house was burnt last month; my cousin Culpepper is in the courts below. Dear Nick Ardham, with his lute, is dead an outlaw beyond sea, and Sir Ferris was hanged at Doncaster—both after last year's rising, pray all good men that God assail them!'
Udal muttered:
'Hush, for God's dear sake. That is treason here. There is a listener behind the hangings.'
He began to scrawl hastily with a dry pen that he had not time to dip in the well of ink. The shadow of the Lord Cromwell's silent return was cast upon them both, and Katharine shivered.
He said harshly to the magister: