aid. "If I rescue
you now, I shall be compelled to hang you in the morning as breakers of
law, so I may as well leave you where you are, and allow the Red
Margrave to save me the trouble. The loss of his castle will not make
him more compassionate, especially if he learns you were the cause of
it. You will then experience some refined tortures, I imagine; for, like
myself, he may think hanging too good for you. I should never have fired
his castle had it not been for your rebellion."

The men on the ground groaned but made no further appeal. Some of them
were far-seeing enough to realize that an important change had come over
the young man they thought so well known to them, who stood there with
an air of indifference, throwing out a suggestion now and then for the
more effective handling of the bales; suggestions carrying an impalpable
force of authority that caused them to be very promptly obeyed. They did
not know that this person whom they had regarded as one of themselves,
the youngest at that, treating him accordingly, had but a day or two
before received a tremendous assurance, which would have turned the head
of almost any individual in the realm, old or young; the assurance that
he was to be supreme ruler over millions of creatures like themselves; a
ruler whose lightest word might carry their extinction with it.

Yet such is the strange littleness of human nature that, although this
potent knowledge had been gradually exercising its effect on Roland's
character, it was not the rebellion of the eighteen or their mutinous
words that now made him hard as granite towards them. It was the trivial
fact that four of them had dared to manhandle him; had made a personal
assault upon him; had pinioned his helpless arms, and flung his sword,
that insignia of honor, to the feet of Kurzbold, leader of the revolt.

The Lord's Anointed, he was coming to consider himself, although not yet
had the sacred ointment been placed upon his head. A temporal Emperor
and a vice-regent of Heaven upon earth, his hand was destined to hold
the invisible hilt of the Almighty's sword of vengeance. The words "I
will repay" were to reach their fulfillment through his action.
Notwithstanding his youth, or perhaps because of it, he was animated by
deep religious feeling, and this, rather than ambition, explained the
celerity with which he agreed to the proposals of the Archbishops.

The personage the prisoners saw standing on the rock-ledge of