"Why refuse so great an opening to fame?"
"I would sooner far follow him to his grave! Thou wouldst destroy the soul."
"Fool! has he a soul? Have I or you got one? What is it? I do not know." Then he repressed these dangerous words—dangerous to himself, even in his stronghold.
"Malebouche!"
Malebouche appeared.
"Take the grandsire away. Bring hither the boy."
He waited in a state of intense but subdued feeling.
The boy appeared at last—pale, not quite so free from apprehension as his grandsire: how could any one expect a real boy, unless he were a phenomenon, to enter a torture chamber as a prisoner without emotion? What are all the switchings, birchings, and canings modern boys have borne, compared with rack, pincer, and thumbscrew—to the hideous sachentage, the scorching iron? The very enumeration makes the hair rise in these days; only they are but a memory from the grim bad past now.
"Osric, whose son art thou?"
"The son of Wulfnoth."