"Your worship hath the gift of saying well," returned Grasp, who found himself gaining ground, he thought, in Sir Thomas's good graces. "But I grieve to say that Sir Hugh lieth under the imputation of being deeply implicated in this plot."
"How!" said Sir Thomas, losing something of austerity in his surprise. "Sir Hugh Clopton implicated in such a hellish conspiracy as this you have named? Had any man holding rank equal or superior to mine own, said so much, Master Pouncet Grasp, he had lied under the imputation of a liar and a caitiff at my hands."
"Nay," said Grasp, "I ask your worship's pardon, I had it from him who gave me the clue to the whole matter,—the honourable gentleman I told you of,—the right honourable Master Walter Neville."
"Say, rather, the arch traitor—the doubly dishonourable villain Neville, who goeth about to purchase benefit for himself by the blood of his party. An such a man be your informant? Credit me, the information is incorrect. I listen not therefore to it, it is naught."
Meantime, whilst Sir Thomas held converse thus with Grasp, he had at the same time, in the most quiet and business-like way, been encasing himself in one or two pieces of defensive armour which had hung at hand, behind the great chair on which he usually sat. Taking down a richly inlaid breast-plate, and which he had worn in his youth in the wars of the Low Countries, he fitted it on with care and precision, as one to whom the business of arming was a habit of easiness. He then indued a cumbrous back-piece to match, buckled the shoulder-straps without assistance, and girded the whole tightly together with an embroidered belt round his waist. After which (laying aside the light rapier he usually wore), he adopted a stout, heavy-hilted, and somewhat ponderous blade, and thrusting a pair of enormous petronels and his dagger into his girdle, stept forth into the centre of the apartment completely equipped for the business on hand, and looking, what our readers of the present day would have termed, as perfect a specimen of Don Quixote de la Mancha as they could have wished to behold.
Those who looked upon his tall gaunt form and sinewy limbs, however, might see that, eccentric as was his appearance, he would be rather an awkward customer to engage with or offer an affront to; and so thought Grasp, when he beheld the knight's military toilette completed.
Nay, a sort of unpleasant feeling began to creep over him; a presentiment of hard knocks, bullets, and grievous wounds suddenly pervaded his mind, as he looked upon this military figure clattering about in his cuirass, and coolly selecting his ponderous weapons for the nonce. For Grasp, it must be remembered, (albeit he lived in stirring times,) was a man of peace, and whose whole life nearly had been passed in a small dark back office in the town of Warwick, where he had been brought up and initiated in all the tricks of his craft.
However, as he had been the exciting cause of Sir Thomas's taking the affair upon his hands, and as he knew the knight would be likely to make a clean business of it, he felt that now to hold back would be to lose all the advantage he had previously promised himself.
Could he but manage to be exceedingly prominent and useful in this capture, he felt certain that it would lead on to fortune.
"I have never yet fought," he said to himself, "except with my pen. Now I am going to wield a weapon which, if it be only half as deadly and destructive in my hands, I shall make unpleasant work withal. But, in good sooth, I feel as though I had rather prepare the writ than serve it in the present case."