"Have you the heart?" cried Arthur. "Do you remember when your head ached how I tied it up with my own handkerchief, and sat up with you the whole night holding your hand and doing everything I could for you! Many a poor man's son would have lain still and never have spoke a loving word to you; but you, at your sick service, had a prince. Will you put out my eyes—those eyes that never did, nor never shall, so much as frown on you?"
"I have sworn to do it," said Hubert. He called two men, who brought in the fire and the hot irons, and the cord to bind the little Prince.
"Give me the irons," said Hubert, "and bind him here."
"For heaven's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound," cried Arthur. "I will not struggle—I will stand stone still. Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away and I will sit as quiet as a lamb, and I will forgive you whatever torment you may put me to."
And Hubert was moved by his pleading, and told the men to go; and as they went they said—"We are glad to have no part in such a wicked deed as this."
Then Arthur flung his arms round Hubert and implored him to spare his eyes, and at last Hubert consented, for all the time his heart had been sick at the cruel deed he had promised to do. Then he took Prince Arthur away and hid him, and told the King he was dead.
But King John's lords were so angry when they heard that Arthur was dead, and John seemed so sorry for having given the order to Hubert, that Hubert thought it best to tell him that Arthur had not been killed at all, but was still alive and safe. John was now so terrified at the anger of his lords on Arthur's account that Arthur might from that time have been safe from him. But the poor boy was so frightened by what he had gone through that he made up his mind to risk his life in trying to escape. So he decided to leap down from the top of the tower as his only means of escape.
Then he thought he could get away in disguise without being recognised.
"The wall is high, and yet will I leap down," he said. "Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not."