avery."

Tessin and Major Shackleton looked suddenly towards Wyley in
recognition of the accuracy of his guess. Scrope simply wiped the
perspiration from his forehead and waited.

"But how does that--forgetfulness, shall we say?--persuade you to the
fear that you played the coward?" asked Wyley.

"Well," replied Knightley, and his voice sank to a whisper, "I played
the coward afterwards at Mequinez. At the first it used to amuse me to
wonder what happened after I opened the door and before I was captured
outside Tangier; later it only puzzled me, and in the end it began to
frighten me. You see, I could not tell; it was all a blank to me, as
it is now; and a man overdriven--well, he nurses sickly fancies.
No need to say what mine were until the day I played the coward in
Mequinez. They set me to build the walls of the Emperor's new Palace.
We used the stones of the old Roman town and built them up in
Mequinez, and in the walls we were bidden to build Christian slaves
alive to the glory of Allah. I refused. They stripped the flesh off my
feet with their bastinadoes, starved me of food and drink, and brought
me back again to the walls. Again I refused." Knightley looked up at
his audience, and whether or no he mistook their breathless silence
for disbelief,--"I did," he implored. "Twice I refused, and twice they
tortured me. The third time--I was so broken, the whistle of a cane
in the air made me cry out with pain--I was sunk to that pitch of
cowardice--" He stopped, unable to complete the sentence. He clasped
and unclasped his hands convulsively, he moistened his dry lips with
his tongue, and looked about him with a weak, almost despairing laugh.
Then he began in another way. "The Christian was a Portuguee from
Marmora. He was set in the wall with his arms outstretched on either
side--the attitude of a man crucified. I built in his arms--his right
arm first--and mortised the stones, then his left arm in the same way.
I was careful not to look in his face. No, no! I didn't look in his
face." Knightley repeated the words with a horrible leer of cunning,
and hugged himself with his arms. To Wyley's thinking he was strung
almost to madness. "After his arms I built in his feet, and upwards
from his feet I built in his legs and his body until I came to his
neck. All this while he had been crying out for pity, babbling
prayers, and the rest of it. When I reached his neck he ceased his
clamour. I suppose he was dumb with horr