k of the minister's chains. "The arm is torn
and inflamed from shoulder to wrist, as I make no doubt you have been
told!" he cried. "For very shame, man!"

"Draw them tighter," said my lord, between his teeth.

The men knotted the cords, and rose to their feet, to be dismissed by my
lord with a curt "You may go." They drew back to the foot of the ladder,
while the master of the ship went and perched himself upon one of the
rungs. "The air is fresher here beneath the hatch," he remarked.

As for me, though I lay at my enemy's feet, I could yet set my teeth and
look him in the eyes. The cup was bitter, but I could drink it with an
unmoved face.

"Art paid?" he demanded. "Art paid for the tree in the red forest
without the haunted wood? Art paid, thou bridegroom?"

"No," I answered. "Bring her here to laugh at me as she laughed in the
twilight beneath the guesthouse window."

I thought he would murder me with the poniard he drew, but presently he
put it up.

"She is come to her senses," he said. "Up in the state cabin are bright
lights, and wine and laughter. There are gentlewomen aboard, and I have
been singing to the lute, to them--and to her. She is saved from the
peril into which you plunged her; she knows that the King's Court of
High Commission, to say nothing of the hangman, will soon snap the
fetters which she now shudders to think of; that the King and one
besides will condone her past short madness. Her cheeks are roses, her
eyes are stars. But now, when I pressed her hand between the verses of
my song, she smiled and sighed and blushed. She is again the dutiful
ward of the King, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh--she hath asked to be so
called"--

"You lie," I said. "She is my true and noble wife. She may sit in the
state cabin, in the air and warmth and light, she may even laugh with
her lips, but her heart is here with me in the hold."

As I spoke, I knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I had
said was true. With that knowledge came a happiness so deep and strong
that it swept aside like straw the torment of those cords, and the
deeper hurt that I lay at his feet. I suppose my face altered, and
mirrored that blessed glow about my heart, for into his own came a white
fury, changing its beauty into something inhuman and terrifying. He
looked a devil baffled. For a minute he stood there rigid, with hands
clenched. "Embrace her heart, if thou canst," he said, in a voice so low
that it came like a whi