'What is that? Out with it.'
'As I went back to my chamber, at the top of the stair leading down from my lord's dining parlour to the hall, commonly called my lord's stair,' said Tom, who delighted in the pseudo-circumstantial, 'I stopped to recover my breath, of the which I was sorely bereft, and kneeling on the seat of the little window that commands the archway to the keep, I saw the prisoner—'
'How knewest thou the prisoner ere it was yet daybreak, and that in the darkest corner of all the court?'
'I knew him by the way my bones shook at the white sleeves of his shirt, my lord,' said Tom, who was too far gone in fear to make the joke of pretending courage.
'Hardly evidence, Tom. But go on.'
'And with him I saw mistress Dorothy—'
'Hold there, Tom!' cried lord Herbert. 'Wherefore didst not impart this last night to my lady?'
'Because my lady loveth mistress Dorothy, and I dreaded she would therefore refuse to believe me.'
'What a heap of cunning goes to the making of a downright fool!' said lord Herbert to himself, but so as Tom could not fail to hear him. 'And what saw'st thou pass between them?' he asked.
'Only a whispering with their heads together,' answered Tom.