"Well spoken, Hugh! The true knight never falters. Let it be so. We will proclaim ourselves unconquered, and hope to the end. To say truth, 'tis only this feeling which hath kept me alive. I have said to myself that I would not yield, that I would keep my body strong and my heart clean and my head clear, so that if God in His infinite wisdom saw fit to recall me to the world, I might take my place without men saying: 'He was James de Chesby.'"
"But how have you kept your body strong?" asked Hugh.
"By labour. This dungeon is sufficiently large. For their own reasons, my captors have sought to protect my health. Therefore I have had sufficient food and covering. I have devised for myself numerous exercises and bodily contortions, which make pliable the muscles and preserve strength. I walk, run, leap and dance for hours in the day, until weariness assails me. For the result do but feel of my limbs."
Indeed, Hugh was amazed at the hardness of the knotted muscles on his father's gaunt body.
"You are a lesson to me," he acknowledged humbly. "An I had been in your place, the desolation would have driven me mad in a year."
"Ay, for you are but a youth, with all life before you," returned Sir James. "My life is behind me. I have memories to dwell upon, and the future holds few worries. Nay, for me the future is only death, and there are times when I would welcome it, an it would but come to me on a hard-fought field, with brave knights at my side. But enough of myself. Tell me more of this venture of yours."
Hugh took up his story, and sketched in detail how the comrades had followed Mocenigo to the Isle of Rabbits and what they had heard there. Sir James could not contain himself.
"The foul hound! So he would do. Not content with playing for two sides, he must try a third. Certes, he is in the pay of the Saracens and the Greeks, as well as the Venetians; and when the time comes he will sell out those two of the three who promise him least profit. I know him—and if I have one prayer I press beyond all others, 'tis that I may be permitted to send him to his doom in hell. But I prick you from your path, Hugh. What of this Comnenus and his daughter whom you met again?"
Hugh told of the Parliament held at Zara, and the introduction of the Young Alexius; the gradual growth of the Comnenian interest with the Prince and the Cæsar's eventual rise to be Chancellor of the Empire.
"Ha, there is another evil plotter!" Sir James interrupted again. "I place him now. He is a cousin of the Emperor Andronicus. I dare swear that he nurseth a hope of obtaining the vermillion buskins. 'Tis a pretty cross-work of villainy."