“Yes, Tom, or Captain Vytal, as you will, being now a fighting man from the Low Countries.”
“Oh, sir, your presence brings me pleasure and consolation, I may say. How the times have changed in these few years—within, sir, and without! Have you heard about Queen Mary, how we have been delivered from her plots these two months past in a very, I may say, forcible way? Have you heard—?”
“Ay, Tom, all that, and more, too, on the road from the coast. But one thing I have not heard—how long will it take you to make me a pair of breeches?”
“But a short time, Captain Vytal. I was ever handy and quick with work for you.”
“And so, Tom, I have come back to you.”
“Ay, sir, but, alack!—the old days cannot come back. There are many, many changes since the good old times. The world, it seems to me, grows petty.”
“What! call you it petty when a queen comes to the block?”
“Nay, but look you, Captain Vytal.” He pointed to the top of the Southwark Gate. “See those heads spiked above us. They be thirty in number, yet all are but the pates of seminary priests who have entered England against the statute. Now this old bridge has had much nobler heads upon it, crowning the traitor’s gate. The head of Sir William Wallace looked down on the river long ago, and later the Earl of Northumberland’s. Some I have seen—Sir Thomas More’s, the Bishop of Rochester’s—”
“By Heaven!” broke in Vytal, “you are in no pleasant mood, Tom, on seeing me.”