An hour or two later Harry was removed under a guard to the city prison, and in the evening the doors were opened and a guard appeared and briefly ordered him to follow.  Under the escort of four men he was led through the streets to a large building, and then conducted to a room in which a number of persons, some of them evidently of high rank, were sitting.  At the head of the table was a man of sinister aspect.  He had red hair and eyebrows, and a foxy, cunning face, and Harry guessed at once that he was in the presence of the Earl of Argyll—­a man who, even more than the rest of his treacherous race, was hated and despised by loyal Scotchmen.  In all their history, a great portion of the Scottish nobles were ever found ready to take English gold, and to plot against their country.  But the Argylls had borne a bad pre-eminence even among these.  They had hunted Wallace, had hounded down Bruce, and had ever been prominent in fomenting dissensions in their country; the present earl was probably the coldest and most treacherous of his race.

“We are told,” he said sternly to the prisoner, “that you are a follower of the man Charles; that you have been already engaged in plottings among the good citizens of London, and we shrewdly suspect that your presence here bodes no good to the state.  What hast thou to say in thy defense?”

“I do not know that I am charged with any offence,” Harry said quietly.  “I am an English gentleman, who, wishing to avoid the disorders in his own country, has traveled north for peace and quietness.  If you have aught to urge against me or any evidence to give, I shall be prepared to confute it.  As for the preacher, whose evidence has caused my arrest, he hath simply a grudge against me for a boyish freak, from which he suffered at the time when I made my escape from a guardroom in London, and his accusation against me is solely the result of prejudice.”

Harry had already, upon his arrival at the jail, been searched thoroughly, having been stripped, and even the folds and linings of his garments ripped open, to see that they contained no correspondence.  Knowing that nothing whatever could have been found against him, unless, indeed, his followers had also fallen into the hands of the Roundheads, Harry was able to assume a position of injured innocence.

“Your tone comports not with your condition,” the Earl of Argyll said harshly.  “We have found means here to make men of sterner mold than thine speak the truth, and in the interests of the state we shall not hesitate to use them against you also.  The torturer here hath instruments which would tear you limb from limb, and, young sir, these will not be spared unless that malapert tongue of thine gives us the information we desire to learn.”

“I decline to answer any questions beyond what I have already said,” Harry replied firmly.  “I tell you that I am an English gentleman traveling here on my own private business, and it were foul wrong for me to be seized and punished upon the suspicion of such a one as that man there;” and he pointed contemptuously to the preacher.