he can do aught to help you, that you be not as lambs among wolves.
Mayhap ye deem ye can walk into London town, and that the first man
you meet can point you to your uncle--Randall call ye him?--as
readily as I could show you my brother, Thomas Shoveller of
Granbury. But you are just as like to meet with some knave who
might cozen you of all you have, or mayhap a beadle might take you
up for vagabonds, and thrust you in the stocks, or ever you get to
London town; so I would fain give you some commendation, an I knew
to whom to make it, and ye be not too proud to take it."

"You are but too good to us, sir," said Ambrose, quite conquered,
though Stephen only half believed in the difficulties. The Father
took them within the west door of the Minster, and looking up and
down the long arcade of the southern aisle to see that no one was
watching, he inspected the tokens, and cross-examined them on their
knowledge of their uncle.

His latest gift, the rosary, had come by the hand of Friar Hurst, a
begging Minorite of Southampton, who had it from another of his
order at Winchester, who had received it from one of the king's
archers at the Castle, with a message to Mistress Birkenholt that it
came from her brother, Master Randall, who had good preferment in
London, in the house of my Lord Archbishop of York, without whose
counsel King Henry never stirred. As to the coming of the agate and
the pouncet box, the minds of the boys were very hazy. They knew
that the pouncet box had been conveyed through the attendants of the
Abbot of Beaulieu, but they were only sure that from that time the
belief had prevailed with their mother that her brother was
prospering in the house of the all-powerful Wolsey. The good
Augustinian, examining the tokens, thought they gave colour to that