I met the cold anger in the womanish eyes as a condemned man might.

“I have, my Lord—­since the day nine years agone when I learned that your king’s minions had hanged my father in the Regulation.”

“Then it was a farrago of lies you told me about your adventures in the western mountains?”

“Not wholly.  It was your Lordship’s good pleasure to send succors of powder and lead to your allies, the western savages.  I and three others followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo.”

“And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?”

“I do so hope and trust, my Lord.”

He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell upon the room.  Then he took the Ferara from the table and sought to break it over his knee; but the good blade, like the cause it stood for, bent like a withe and would not snap.

“Put this spy in irons and clear the room,” he ordered sharply.  And this is how the little drama ended:  with the supper guests crowding to the door; with my Lord pacing back and forth at the table-head; with two sergeants bearing me away to await, where and how I knew not, the word which should efface me.

XLIII

IN WHICH I DRINK A DISH OF TEA

Being without specific orders what to do with me, my two sergeant bailiffs thrust me into that little den of a strong-room below stairs where I had once found the master of the house, and one of them mounted guard whilst the other fetched the camp armorer to iron me.

The shackles securely on, I was left to content me as I could, with the door ajar and my two jailers hobnobbing before it.  Having done all I had hoped to do, there was nothing for it now but to wait upon the consequences.  So, hitching my chair up to the oaken table, I made a pillow of my fettered wrists and presently fell adoze.

I know not what hour of the night it was when the half-blood Scipio, who was Mr. Gilbert Stair’s body-servant, came in and roused me.  I started up suddenly at his touch, making no doubt it was my summons.  But the mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them down.

I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering that my lady’s charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my latest sins against the king’s cause.  None the less, I ate and drank gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs—­which, by the by, were strangely bitter.

I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make no head against it.  And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.