‘My lord,’ said the king when the messenger had gone, ’there are some men so unreasonable as to make me believe that your lordship hath good store of gold yet left within the tower; but I, knowing how I have exhausted you, could never have believed it, until now I see you will not trust the keys with any but yourself.’

‘Sir,’ answered the marquis, ’I was so far from giving your majesty any such occasion of thought by this tender of my duty, that I protest unto you that I was once resolved that your majesty should have lain there, but that I was loath to commit your majesty to the Tower.’

’You are more considerate, my lord, than some of my subjects would be if they had me as much in their keeping,’ answered the king sadly.  ‘But what are those pipes let into the wall up there?’ he asked, stopping in the middle of the bridge and looking up at the keep.

’Nay, sire, my son Edward must tell you that.  He taketh strange liberties with the mighty old hulk.  But I will not injure his good grace with your majesty by talking of that I understand not.  I trust that one day, when you shall no more require his absence, you will yet again condescend to be my guest, when my son, by your majesty’s favour now my lord Glamorgan, will have things to show you that will delight your eyes to behold.’

‘I have ere now seen something of his performance,’ answered the king; ’but these naughty times give room for nothing in that kind but guns and swords.’

Leaving the workshop unvisited, his lordship took the king up the stair, and unlocking the entrance to the first floor, ushered him into a lofty vaulted chamber, old in the midst of antiquity, dark, vast, and stately.

‘This is where I did think to lodge your majesty,’ he said, ’but—­but—­your majesty sees it is gloomy, for the windows are narrow, and the walls are ten feet through.’

‘It maketh me very cold,’ said the king, shuddering.  ’Good sooth, but I were loath to be a prisoner!’

He turned and left the room hastily.  The marquis rejoined him on the stair, and led him, two stories higher, to the armoury, now empty compared to its former condition, but still capable of affording some supply.  The next space above was filled with stores, and the highest was now kept clear for defence, for the reservoir so fully occupied the top that there was no room for engines of any sort; and indeed it took up so much of the storey below with its depth that it left only such room as between the decks of a man of war, rendering it hardly fit for any other use.

Reaching the summit at length, the king gazed with silent wonder at the little tarn which lay there as on the crest of a mountain.  But the marquis conducted him to the western side, and, pointing with his finger, said—­

’Sir, you see that line of trees, stretching across a neck of arable field, where to the right the brook catches the sun?’

‘I see it, my lord,’ answered the king.