My offer was satisfactory, for what more can a man do than pledge his life for his friend?  We have scripture for that, or something like it.

The lord mayor did not require my proffered pledge, but readily consented that the king should write an order for Brandon’s pardon and release.  This was done at once, and we, that is, I, together with a sheriff’s sergeant and his four yeomen, hastened to Newgate, while Henry went over to Wolsey’s to settle Mary’s fate.

Brandon was brought up with chains and manacles at his ankles and wrists.  When he entered the room and saw me, he exclaimed:  “Ah!  Caskoden, is that you?  I thought they had brought me up to hang me, and was glad for the change; but I suppose you would not come to help at that, even if you have left me here to rot; God only knows how long; I have forgotten.”

I could not restrain the tears at sight of him.

“Your words are more than just,” I said; and, being anxious that he should know at once that my fault had not been so great as it looked, continued hurriedly:  “The king sent me to France upon an hour’s notice, the day after your arrest.  I know only too well I should not have gone without seeing you out of this, but you had enjoined silence upon me, and—­and I trusted to the promises of another.”

“I thought as much.  You are in no way to blame, my friend; all I ask is that you never mention the subject again.”

“My friend!” Ah! the words were dear to me as words of love from a sweetheart’s lips.

I hardly recognized him, he was so frightfully covered with filth and dirt and creeping things.  His hair and beard were unkempt and matted, and his eyes and cheeks were lusterless and sunken; but I will describe him no further.  Suffering had well-nigh done its work, and nothing but the hardihood gathered in his years of camp life and war could have saved him from death.  I bathed and reclothed him as well as I could at Newgate, and then took him home to Greenwich in a horse litter, where my man and I thoroughly washed, dressed and sheared the poor fellow and put him to bed.

“Ah! this bed is a foretaste of paradise,” he said, as he lay upon the mattress.

It was a pitiful sight, and I could hardly refrain from tears.  I sent my man to fetch a certain Moor, a learned scholar, though a hated foreigner, who lived just off Cheap and sold small arms, and very soon he was with us.  Brandon and I both knew him well, and admired his learning and gentleness, and loved him for his sweet philosophy of life, the leaven of which was charity—­a modest little plant too often overshadowed by the rank growth of pompous dogmatism.