“He is not sane enough to keep his neck from the halter,” rejoined Archee.  “Your Majesty should spare him, since you are indirectly the cause of his malady.”

“Intercede not for me,” cried Hugh Calveley.  “I would not accept any grace at the tyrant’s hands.  Let him hew me in pieces, and my blood shall cry out for vengeance upon his head.”

“By our halidame! a dangerous traitor!” exclaimed James.

“Hear me, O King!” thundered the Puritan.  “For the third and last time I lift up my voice to warn thee.  Visions have appeared to me in the night, and mysterious voices have whispered in mine ear.  They have revealed to me strange and terrible things—­but not more strange and terrible than true.  They have told me how thy posterity shall suffer for the injustice thou doest to thy people.  They have shown me a scaffold which a King shall mount—­and a block whereon a royal head shall be laid.  But it shall be better for that unfortunate monarch, though he be brought to judgment by his people, than for him who shall be brought to judgment by his God.  Yet more.  I have seen in my visions two Kings in exile:  one of whom shall be recalled, but the other shall die in a foreign land.  As to thee, thou mayst live on yet awhile in fancied security.  But destruction shall suddenly overtake thee.  Thou shalt be stung to death by the serpent thou nourishest in thy bosom.”

Whatever credit might be attached to them, the Puritan’s prophetic forebodings produced, from the manner in which they were delivered, a strong impression upon all his auditors.  Unquestionably the man was in earnest, and spoke like one who believed that a mission had been entrusted to him.  No interruption was offered to his speech, even by the King, though the latter turned pale as these terrible coming events were shadowed forth before him.

“His words are awsome,” he muttered, “and gar the flesh creep on our banes.  Will nane o’ ye stap his tongue?”

“Better hae stapt it afore this,” said Archee; “he has said ower meikle, or not aneuch, The Deil’s malison on thee, fellow, for a prophet of ill!  Hast thou aught to allege why his Majesty should not tuck thee up with a halter?”

“I have spoken,” responded the Puritan; “let the King do with me what he lists.”

“Seize him! arrest him! ye are nearest to him, Sir,” shouted the king to Jocelyn.

The command could not be disobeyed.  As Jocelyn drew near, and laid his hand upon Hugh Calveley, the latter looked reproachfully at him, saying, “Thou doest well, son of my old friend.”

Jocelyn was unable to reply, for a crowd now pressed forward on all sides, completely surrounding the prisoner.  Some of the nobles threatened him with their swords, and the warders, who had come up from the gateway, thrust at him with their partizans.  Jocelyn had great difficulty in shielding him from the infuriated throng.

“Touch him not!” he cried, clearing a space around them with the point of his sword.  “His Majesty has committed him to my custody, and I am responsible for him.  Pardon me if I disarm you, Sir,” he added in an undertone to the prisoner.