“He has all that he needs, I thank you, sire,” answered Griffeth.  “He lies sorely sick at this present time, but I trust he will amend ere long.”

And then the king turned to his son, and spoke with him on some message of the state, and departed without heeding the excited glances of Joanna or the restless way in which she kept looking first at Alphonso and then at Gertrude.

But scarcely had the door closed behind the retiring form of the king before the excitable girl had bounded to her brother’s side.

“O Alphonso,” she cried, “did you do it on purpose?  Tell me what you have in your head.”

Alphonso sat up and pushed the hair out of his eyes.  Griffeth was simply looking on in surprise and bewilderment.  The prince laid a hand upon his arm and spoke very earnestly.

“Griffeth,” he said, “it seems to me that through this error of my father’s we may yet find means to compass the deliverance of Wendot.  There are none of those save ourselves who know which of you twain is the first-born and which the youngest.  In your faces there is little to mark you one from the other.  Griffeth, if thou wilt be willing to be called Wendot—­ if Wendot will consent to be Griffeth —­ then we may perchance make his way plain to depart and live in liberty once more; for it is Wendot, and not Griffeth, who has so roused my father’s anger.  Griffeth he might easily consent to pardon; but Wendot he will keep as a hostage in his own hands possibly for life itself.”

Griffeth listened, and a strange look crept into his face.  His cheek flushed, and his breath came thick and fast.  He knew Alphonso’s motive in suggesting this change of identity.  The lads, so closely drawn together in bonds of more than brotherly love, had not opened to each other their innermost souls for nought.  Alphonso knew that no freedom, no liberty, would give to the true Griffeth any extension of his brief span of life.  His days were as assuredly numbered as those of the royal lad himself, and life had ceased to have attractions for the pair, whose spirits were almost on the wing, who had set their hopes and aspirations higher than anything which earth could give, and whose chiefest wish now was to remain together until death should call them home.

Griffeth’s only trouble had been the thought of leaving his brother, and it was when he had realized from Alphonso’s words that the king was deeply offended with Wendot, and that it was almost hopeless to think of his obtaining his liberty again, that the heart of the lad sank in despondency and sorrow.

For one of the young eagles of Dynevor thus to be caged —­ to be left to pine away in hopeless captivity, his brother gone from him as well as the prince who would stand his friend; possibly incarcerated at last in some dreary fortress, there to linger out his days in hopeless misery and inaction —­ the thought had been so terrible to Griffeth that there had been moments when he had almost longed to hear that the leeches gave up hope of saving his brother’s life.