the bearings of the thing. But Hugo interrupted her and said:

"Peace! Ye wit not what ye ask. Shall I starve whom I love,
to win a gentle death? I wend thou knewest me better."

"Well," I said, "I can't quite make this out. It is a puzzle. Now--"

"Ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! Consider how
these his tortures wound me! Oh, and he will not speak!--whereas,
the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death--"

"What _are_ you maundering about? He's going out from here a free
man and whole--he's not going to die."

The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me
in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out:

"He is saved!--for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's
servant--Arthur, the king whose word is gold!"

"Well, then you do believe I can be trusted, after all. Why
didn't you before?"

"Who doubted? Not I, indeed; and not she."

"Well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?"

"Ye had made no promise; else had it been otherwise."

"I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite see, after all.
You stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plain
enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing
to confess--"

"I, my lord? How so? It was I that killed the deer!"

"You _did_? Oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up business that ever--"

"Dear lord, I begged him on my knees to confess, but--"

"You _did_! It gets thicker and thicker. What did you want him
to do that for?"

"Sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all this
cruel pain."

"Well--yes, there is reason in that. But _he_ didn't want the
quick death."

"He? Why, of a surety he _did_."

"Well, then, why in the world _didn't_ he confess?"

"Ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter?"

"Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law takes the convicted
man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. They could
torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they
could not rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a man;
and _you_--true wife and the woman that you are--you would have
bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow
starvation and death--well, it humbles a body to think what your
sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you both
for my colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm going
to turn groping and grubbing automata in