Great Seal in commission: choose thou the lords that shall compose it,
and get ye to your work. Speed ye, man! Before the sun shall rise and
set again, bring me his head that I may see it."

"According to the King's command, so shall it be. Will't please your
majesty to order that the Seal be now restored to me, so that I may forth
upon the business?"

"The Seal? Who keepeth the Seal but thou?"

"Please your majesty, you did take it from me two days since, saying it
should no more do its office till your own royal hand should use it upon
the Duke of Norfolk's warrant."

"Why, so in sooth I did: I do remember. . . . What did I with it? . . . I
am very feeble. . . . So oft these days doth my memory play the traitor
with me. . . . 'Tis strange, strange--"

The King dropped into inarticulate mumblings, shaking his grey head
weakly from time to time, and gropingly trying to recollect what he had
done with the Seal. At last my Lord Hertford ventured to kneel and offer
information--

"Sire, if that I may be so bold, here be several that do remember with me
how that you gave the Great Seal into the hands of his highness the
Prince of Wales to keep against the day that--"

"True, most true!" interrupted the King. "Fetch it! Go: time flieth!"

Lord Hertford flew to Tom, but returned to the King before very long,