resence will give the man I love courage."

"It is a great gamble, and you, fair lady, are the stake," said Don
Carlos. "The stage is set and our fate will be decided within a few
minutes."

He nodded his cowled head, shouted some orders in Spanish to his men,
and took up a position beside the whipping-post, which somewhat
resembled an ancient pillory. Four men hurried to the cell in which
Standish was confined, to reappear after the lapse of a few minutes
with the prisoner between them.

They had stripped Standish to the waist, and he walked forward with
firm step and head erect, but at the sight of the whipping-post and the
furnace, and the sinister figure beside them with a cat-o'-nine-tails
in his hand, he halted suddenly with an involuntary gasp, and his face
went ashen.

"Cojuelo, you--you can't mean that you are going to be such a fiend as
to torture me!" he burst out breathlessly. "I haven't done you any
harm. Look here, I'll--I'll double the ransom if you'll let me off.
I'll make it twenty thousand pounds."

"Not for fifty thousand pounds would I forego my vengeance," rasped the
hooded figure. "Yet you have but to confess that you did agree to go
away and leave the Senorita Rostrevor here, well knowing what would
happen to her, you have only to tell her now that you renounce her to
me, and I will let you go unharmed."

"Don't, Tony, don't!" cried Myra. "Be brave, dear!"

Standish, who had not previously noticed her, jerked round his head at
the sound of her voice.

"Myra, for God's sake intercede for me," he screamed, and began to
struggle violently as his guards seized him and began to drag him
towards the pillory. "Beg him to spare me!"

"Oh, Tony, don't fail me!" cried Myra, shamed by his display of terror.
"Don't be a coward! Be brave! Be British!"

Struggling, shouting, protesting and appealing frantically, his face
livid and the sweat of fear pouring down it, Standish was dragged
towards the stake.

"The burning irons first, I think," snarled Cojuelo. "The burns will
make the lash more effective afterwards."

The man beside the furnace drew from the fire a branding iron, the end
of which was red-hot, and made a threatening movement. Standish
squealed like a rabbit caught in a trap.

"Don't! Don't!" he shrieked in a frenzy of terror. "Oh, spare me,
spare me! I'll give her up. I--I can't face it. You can have her!"

"Do you still accuse Don Carlos of having lied?" demanded