"Bring him out," said Sir John Shelton, in a loud, harsh voice. "Keep silence, Master Taylor, or I will find a way to silence thee."
John Commendone shivered with disgust as the leader of the party spoke.
Even as he did so he felt a hand upon his arm, and the tall, muffled figure of the King stood close behind him.
"Tell the knight, señor," the King said rapidly in Spanish, "to use the gentleman with more civility. He is to die, as is well fitting a heretic should die, for God's glory and the safety of the realm. But he is of gentle birth. Tell Sir John Shelton."
Commendone stepped up to Sir John. "Sir," he said, in a voice which, try as he would, he could not keep from being very disdainful and cold—"Sir, His Highness bids me to tell you to use Dr. Taylor with civility, as becomes a man of his birth."
The half-drunken captain glared at the cool young courtier for a moment, but he said nothing, and, turning on his heel, clanked out of the room with a rattle of his sword and an aggressive, ruffling manner.
Dr. Taylor, with guards on each side, the Sheriff immediately preceding him, walked down the room and out into the hall.
Commendone and the King came last.
Johnnie was seized with a sudden revulsion of feeling towards his master. This man, cruel and bigoted as he was, the man whom he had seen with fanaticism and the blood lust blazing in his eye, the man whom he had seen calmly leaving a vile house, was nevertheless a king and a gentleman. The young man could hardly understand or realise the extraordinary combination of qualities in the austere figure by his side of the man who ruled half the known world. Again, he felt that sense of awe, almost of fear, in the presence of one so far removed from ordinary men, so swift in his alterations from coarseness to kingliness, from relentless cruelty to cold, sombre decorum.
Dr. Taylor was mounted upon a stout cob, closely surrounded by guards, and with a harsh word of command from Sir John, the party set out.