'Well! we are commended,' and his voice was bitter and ironical.
'How is it, then,' Lascelles read on, 'that ye say all is not over well
in the land?'
The printer's gloomy and black features glared with a sudden rage.
'How should all be well with a land,' he cried, 'where in high places
reigns harlotry?' He raised his clenched fist on high and glared round
upon his audience. 'Corruption that reacheth round and about and down
till it hath found a seedbed even in this poor house of my father's? Or
if it is well with this land now, how shall it continue well when
witchcraft rules near the King himself, and the Devil of Rome hath there
his emissaries.'
A chitter of sound came from his audience, so that it appeared that they
were all of a strain. They moved in their seats; the shipman cried out--
'Ay! witchcraft! witchcraft!'
The huge bulk of the stranger, black and like a bull's, half rose from
its chair.
'Body of God!' he cried out. 'This I will not bear.'
Again the older man leaned solicitously above him and whispered,
pleading with his hands, and Lascelles said hastily--
'Speak of your own knowledge. How should you know of what passes in high
places?'
'Why!' the printer cried out, 'is it not the common report? Do not all
men know it? Do not the butchers sing of it in the shambles, and the
bot-flies buzz of it one to the other? I tell you it is spread from here
into Almain, where the very horse-sellers are a-buzz with it.'