them to the decision that he was afflicted
with the plague in a singularly virulent form.

Presently one of them plucked up courage so far as to feel the pulse
of the apparently delirious patient. Its feebleness confirmed his
diagnosis; moreover the hand he held was cold and turgid. He was not to
know that Sir Walter had tightly wrapped about his upper arm the ribbon
from his poniard, and so he was entirely deceived.

The physicians withdrew, and delivered their verdict, whereupon Sir
Lewis at once sent word of it to the Privy Council.

That afternoon the faithful Captain King, sorely afflicted by the news,
came to visit his master, and was introduced to Sir Walter's chamber by
Manourie, who was in attendance upon him. To the seaman's amazement he
found Sir Walter sitting up in bed, surveying in a hand-mirror a face
that was horrible beyond description with the complacent smile of one
who takes satisfaction in his appearance. Yet there was no fevered
madness in the smiling eyes. They were alive with intelligence,
amounting, indeed, to craft.

"Ah, King!" was the glad welcome "The prophet David did make himself a
fool, and suffered spittle to fall upon his beard, to escape from the
hands of his enemies And there was Brutus, ay, and others as memorable
who have descended to such artifice."

Though he laughed, it is clear that he was seeking to excuse an
unworthiness of which he was conscious.

"Artifice?" quoth King, aghast. "Is this artifice?"

"Ay--a hedge against my enemies, who will be afraid to approach me."

King sat himself down by his master's bed. "A better hedge against your
enemies, Sir Walter, would have been the strip of sea 'twixt here and
France. Would to Heaven you had done as I advised ere you set foot in
this ungrateful land."

"The omission may be repaired," said Sir Walter.

Before the imminence of his peril, as now disclosed to him, Sir Walter
had been reconsidering De Chesne's assurance touching my Lords of
Arundel and Pembroke, and he had come to conclude--the more readily,
perhaps because it was as he would have it--that De Chesne was right;
that to break faith with them were no such great matter after all, nor
one for which they would be called upon to suffer. And so, now, when it
was all but too late, he yielded to the insistence of Captain King, and
consented to save himself by flight to France. King was to go about the
business of procuring a ship without loss of time. Yet there was