But, on listening, I perceived that the strange horse was ahead of us, not behind.

I therefore moved slowly forward in the direction of the sound.

What was my surprise when I saw my own poor nag tethered to a tree, with my cloak--the cause of all this trouble--laid carelessly over his back.
Master Penry's wild pupil was nowhere near, yet I scarce gave him a thought at the time, so overjoyed was I to recover my long-lost prize.
I sprang from my borrowed horse, letting him stray where he would, and fell upon the garment like a mother on her lost child, except that I, having taken it to my arms, whipped out my knife and proceeded to rip it up from top to bottom.
Master Penry had been right! The cloak was stoutly padded with printed sheets, of which I took out fully three score.

They were all the same, a short tractate of twelve pages duodecimo, set in my master's type (for I recognised the letter and the flowered initials), and printed, there was no doubt now, at his secret press.
The title of the tractate was "A Whip for the Bishops," and to my wrath and confusion as I read, I found it contained wicked and scandalous abuse of their Graces of Canterbury and London, whom it called wolves in sheep's clothing, antichrists, and I know not what horrid names besides! And it was to carry this wicked libel I had been sped on this journey, decked with my brave cloak, and commended to that Welsh varlet, who, no doubt, was the author, and counted on me as the tool to help him to disseminate his blasphemous treason! He little knew Humphrey Dexter.
Although I had put a queen's officer in the duck-pond; although I had assaulted a mayor; although I had defied a bishop's warrant, and made off on a bishop's horse, I yet was a loyal subject of Her Majesty, and hated schismatics as I hated the Pope himself.

They had played me a trick among them; I would play them one back.
So I gathered up the libels, and dropped them one and all, together with the false lining of the coat, into the hollow of a rotten tree; where, for all I know, they may be to this day.