ou may have heard of the rack and the wheel and the thumbscrew at
home. They are instruments of voluptuous delight compared with the
contrivances of Barbary to loosen stubborn tongues."

White and tense, her hands clenched, Rosamund seemed to stiffen before
him.

"You coward! You cur! You craven renegade dog!" she branded him.

Oliver released his brother's wrist and beat his hands together. Without
heeding Rosamund he looked down upon Lionel, who cowered shuddering at
his feet.

"What do you say to a match between your fingers? Or do you think a pair
of bracelets of living fire would answer better, to begin with?"

A squat, sandy-bearded, turbaned fellow, rolling slightly in his gait,
came--as had been prearranged--to answer the corsair's summons.

With the toe of his slipper Sakr-el-Bahr stirred his brother.

"Look up, dog," he bade him. "Consider me that man, and see if you know
him again. Look at him, I say!" And Lionel looked, yet since clearly
he did so without recognition his brother explained: "His name among
Christians was Jasper Leigh. He was the skipper you bribed to carry me
into Barbary. He was taken in his own toils when his ship was sunk by
Spaniards. Later he fell into my power, and because I forebore from
hanging him he is to-day my faithful follower. I should bid him tell
you what he knows," he continued, turning to Rosamund, "if I thought
you would believe his tale. But since I am assured you would not, I will
take other means." He swung round to Jasper again. "Bid Ali heat me a
pair of steel manacles in a brazier and hold them in readiness against
my need of them." And he waved his hand.

Jasper bowed and vanished.

"The bracelets shall coax confession from your own lips, my brother."

"I have naught to confess," protested Lionel. "You may force lies from
me with your ruffianly tortures."

Oliver smiled. "Not a doubt but that lies will flow from you more
readily than truth. But we shall have truth, too, in the end, never
doubt it." He was mocking, and there was a subtle purpose underlying his
mockery. "And you shall tell a full story," he continued, "in all its
details, so that Mistress Rosamund's last doubt shall vanish. You shall
tell her how you lay in wait for him that evening in Godolphin Park; how
you took him unawares, and...."

"That is false!" cried Lionel in a passion of sincerity that brought him
to his feet.

It was false, indeed, and Oliver knew it, and deliberately had re