“It is long past midnight; it is not best that he should cry out, lest by accident someone be passing.”

He glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling he managed to tie the King’s ankles together without waking him.  Next he essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were bound.  Now a bandage was passed under the sleeper’s chin and brought up over his head and tied fast—­and so softly, so gradually, and so deftly were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept peacefully through it all without stirring.

Chapter XXI.  Hendon to the rescue.

The old man glided away, stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the low bench.  He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there, heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay bound and helpless in his web.

After a long while, the old man, who was still gazing,—­yet not seeing, his mind having settled into a dreamy abstraction,—­observed, on a sudden, that the boy’s eyes were open! wide open and staring!—­staring up in frozen horror at the knife.  The smile of a gratified devil crept over the old man’s face, and he said, without changing his attitude or his occupation—­

“Son of Henry the Eighth, hast thou prayed?”

The boy struggled helplessly in his bonds, and at the same time forced a smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to interpret as an affirmative answer to his question.

“Then pray again.  Pray the prayer for the dying!”

A shudder shook the boy’s frame, and his face blenched.  Then he struggled again to free himself—­turning and twisting himself this way and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperately—­but uselessly—­to burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him, and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife; mumbling, from time to time, “The moments are precious, they are few and precious—­pray the prayer for the dying!”

The boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles, panting.  The tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the savage old man.

The dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply, with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice—­