“The torturers.”

“Oh! what have they done to his hair—­to all his long, pretty locks?  How strange he looks with his head shaven thus!  And see! what is the torturer to do with that glowing iron in his hand?  Ugh!” and she fell back, near swooning.

There was a sudden sizzle of burnt flesh and stenching smoke.

“Look,” commanded the jester.  “Look again.”

“I dare not—­nay, I cannot,” and she flung herself away from the trap, and lay at full length on the floor, with the moon and the furnace light reflecting a mad swirl of color over her upturned, staring face.  For some moments she lay there, and above her stood the jester.  Neither spoke nor moved; they could only listen and listen to the noises below them:  the soft purring of the furnace-fire; the scuffle of the workers’ feet; the deadened clank of instruments; the faint groans of the insensible youth; the binding, searing, ripping of flesh; the crack and crunch of bones.

“Quick,” cried the jester, “before they bandage him; quick! look again,” and when she shrank further back, he pushed her forward to the very edge of the trap, until she could not help but see.  “And couldst thou love him now?” he asked, and keenly searched her face.

She said no word, but slightly swayed from side to side.  She threw her hands before her eyes, and dug her fists deep into them, as if to blot the sight from her memory.  She crouched, stunned and sickened.  Her hands dropped back to her breast; and the jester saw the expression of her features.

There was no sign of love in her face; there was no tenderness or pity.  Only black horror and disgust; only a sullen, disappointed rage, and a scowling disgust.

“They have made him as ugly as the king’s gorillas,” she sobbed.  “Ugh! he is ugly!”

The jester nodded his head mockingly.  “Thou art right.  They have made him too foul for thee ever to love, have they not?”

“Love?  God!  I could not love a beast like that.”

“Nor couldst thou even pity him—­is he not too foul even for pity?”

“Nay, I’d never dare to pity such a thing.  He is too horrible, too loathsome.  I would swoon if he touched me.”

“What, lady, neither love nor pity?  Yet this may merely be a passing sickness of the humours.  To-morrow thou mayest love him better than before.”

“Love?” She was fast growing hysterical.  “I could never bear the sight of such a mangled dwarf.”  Thrusting her hand inside her dress, she drew out a gleaming bodkin, and flung it at the fool’s feet.  “Kill him,” she screamed, “kill him!” Then she rose unsteadily and staggered out the iron door.

“Kill him!” the jester echoed.  “Merciful Mary, I thank thee!” and, concealing the bodkin in his blouse, he descended the ladder, to help the captain and the torturers in their work.

An hour later, the squire’s corpse was thrown over the castle walls.  “’Tis a shame,” growled the captain; “he would have made so fine a mute.  One of the torturers’ knives must ha’ slipped, whilst they were cutting out his tongue.  For I noticed that the spinal cord was severed at the base of the mouth—­and that is a sure death, you know.”