All this while the infuriated man had been partly dragging, partly carrying his son to a dreary empty room in the rear of the dilapidated old house inhabited by Nicholas and his children.  It was a vault-like apartment, and the roof was upheld in the centre by a stout pillar such as one sees in the crypts of churches, and suspended round this pillar were a pair of manacles and a leather belt.  Cuthbert had many times been tied up to this pillar before, his hands secured above his head in the manacles, and his body firmly fastened to the pillar by the leather thong.  Sometimes he had been left many hours thus secured, till he had been ready to drop with exhaustion.  Sometimes he had been cruelly beaten by his stern sire in punishment for some boyish prank or act of disobedience.  Even the gentle and timid Petronella had more than once been fastened to the pillar for a time of penance, though the manacles and the whip had been spared to her.  The place was even now full of terrors for her—­a gruesome spot, always dim and dark, always full of lurking horrors.  Her eyes dilated with agony and fear as she beheld her brother fastened up—­not before his stout doublet had been removed—­and her knees almost gave way beneath her as her father turned sharply upon her and said:  “Where is the whip, girl?”

It was seldom that the maiden had the courage to resist her, stern father; but today, love for her brother overcoming every other feeling, she suddenly sank on her knees before him, clasping her hands in piteous supplication, as she cried, with tears streaming down her face:  “O father, sweet father, spare him this time! for the love of heaven visit not his misdoings upon him!  Let me but talk to him; let me but persuade him!  Oh, do not treat him so harshly!  Indeed he may better be won by love than driven by blows!”

But Nicholas roughly repulsed the girl, so that she almost fell as he brushed past her.

“Tush, girl! thou knowest not what thou sayest.  Disobedience must be flogged out of the heretic spawn.  I will have no son of mine sell himself to the devil unchecked.  A truce to such tears and vain words!  I will none of them.  And take heed that thine own turn comes not next.  I will spare neither son nor daughter that I find tampering with the pestilent doctrines of heretics!”

So saying, the angry man strode away himself in search of the weapon of chastisement, and whilst Petronella sobbed aloud in her agony of pity, Cuthbert looked round with a strange smile to say:  “Do not weep so bitterly, my sister; it will soon be over, and it is the last beating I will ever receive at his hands.  This settles it—­this decides me.  I leave this house this very night, and I return no more until I have won my right to be treated no longer as a slave and a dog.”

“Alas, my brother! wilt thou really go?”

“Ay, that will I, and this very night to boot.”

“This night!  But I fear me he will lock thee in this chamber here.”