s, that would have proved that again and again I had shielded
Escovedo from the death his king designed for him.

I looked into the face of my enemy, and there was a twisted smile on my
lips.

"What fresh trap is this?" I asked him. "King Philip never wrote that
note."

"You should know his hand. Look closer," he bade me harshly.

"I know his hand--none better. But I claim, too, to know something of
his heart. And I know that it is not the heart of a perjured liar such
as penned those lines."

That was as near as a man dared to go in expressing his true opinion of
a prince.

"For the rest," I said, "I do not understand it. I know nothing of the
death of Escovedo. I have nothing to add to what already I have said in
open court unless it be to protest against you, who are a passionate,
hostile judge."

Six times in the month that followed did Vasquez come to me, accompanied
now by a notary, to press me to confess. At last, seeing that no
persuasions could bend my obstinacy, they resorted to other measures.

"You will drive us to use the torture upon you so that we may loosen
your tongue!" snarled Vasquez fiercely, enraged by my obduracy.

I laughed at the threat. I was a noble of Spain, by birth immune from
torture. They dared not violate the law. But they did dare. There was
no law, human or divine, the King was not prepared to violate so that
he might slake his vengeance upon the man who had dared to love where he
had loved.

They delivered me naked into the hands of the executioner, and I
underwent the question at the rope. They warned me that if I lost my
life or the use of any of my limbs, it would be solely by my own fault.
I advanced my nobility and the state of my health as all-sufficient
reasons why the torture should not be applied to me, reminding them that
for eleven years already I had suffered persecution and detention, so
that my vigour was all gone.

For the last time they summoned me to answer as the King desired. And
then, since I still refused, the executioner was recalled, he crossed my
arms upon my breast, bound them securely, thrust a long rod beneath the
cord, and, seizing one end of this in either hand, gave the first turn.

I screamed. I could not help it, enfeebled as I was. But my spirit being
stouter than my flesh, I still refused to answer. Not indeed, until
they had given the rope eight turns, not until it had sliced through my
muscles and crushed the bone of one of my arms, so