“Where is Henry Sedley?”

“He died in my arms, Mortimer, thrust through by a pike in that bitter fight upon the plain!” Arden made reply.  “I was to tell you that he waited for you in Christ His court.”

“Then will he wait for aye,” said the man who leaned so heavily against the door.  “Or till Christ beckons in Iscariot.”

They looked at him, thinking his mind distraught, not wondering that it should be so.  He read their thought and smiled, but his eyes that smiled not met Arden’s.  “Great God!” cried the latter, shrank back against the table and put out a shaking hand.

Slowly Ferne left the support of the wood and straightened his racked frame until he stood erect, a figure yet graceful, yet stately, but pathetic and terrible, bearing as it did deep marks of Spanish hatred.  The face was ghastly in its gleaming pallor, in its effect of a beautiful mask fitted to tragedy too utter for aught but stillness.  He wore no doublet, and his shirt was torn and stained with blood, but in last and subtlest mockery De Guardiola had restored to him his sword.  He drew it now, held the blade across his knee, and with one effort of all his strength broke the steel in twain, then threw the pieces from him, and turned his sunken eyes upon the Admiral.  “I beg the shortest shrift that you may give,” he said.  “It was I who, when they tormented me, told them all.  Hang me now, John Nevil, in the starlight.”

The Admiral’s lips moved, but there came from them no sound, nor was there sound in the cabin of the Mere Honour.  Not the Cygnet or the Phoenix were more quiet far away, far below, on the gray levels of the sea.  At last a voice—­Ambrose Wynch’s—­broke the silence that had grown too great to bear.  “It was Francis Sark,” he said, and again monotonously, “It was Francis Sark—­it was Francis Sark.”  Another swore with a great oath, “’Tis as the boy says—­they’ve crazed him with their torments!” Humphrey Carewe, a silent and a dogged man, who wore not his heart upon his sleeve, broke into a passionate cry:  “Sir Mortimer Ferne!  Sir Mortimer Ferne!”

To them all it seemed that the name broke the spell that was upon them.  The name stood for very much.  Carewe’s outcry called up a cloud of witnesses—­the deeds of a man’s lifetime—­and marshalled them against this monstrous accusation of a sick and whirling hour.  “You know not what you say!” spoke Nevil, harshly.  “Good and evil are blent in you as in all men, but God used no traitorous or craven stuff in your making!  Rest now,—­speak to us to-morrow!”

[Illustration:  “‘I BEG THE SHORTEST SHRIFT THAT YOU MAY GIVE’”]