The butler, thus challenged, made as if he would take up the talisman. But at the last moment, when his hand was near it, his heart failed him. He doubted, he was a coward, and he drew back. "He was always as other children," he muttered again, hopelessly, helplessly. "I have known him from his birth."
"Very well," Simon answered, with pitiless logic. "We shall see presently if he is as other children now. The water will show."
He stepped towards the boy as he spoke, but Jack saw him coming, and reading his fate in the grim, unrelenting looks which everywhere met his eyes, screamed loudly. The child was fast bound, and could not fly, but bound as he was he managed to fling himself on the floor, and lay there screaming. Simon plucked him up roughly, and looked round for something to muffle his cries. "The cloak!" he said hurriedly--the noise discomposed him. "The cloak!"
Luke went to fetch it from the dresser on which it had been laid, but before he could bring it, the boy on a sudden stopped screaming, and stiffened himself in Simon's arms. "I will tell," he cried wildly. "Let me go! Let me go, and I will tell."
The man was astonished, as were they all. But he set the boy back in the chair, and took his hands off him, and stood waiting, with a stern light in his eyes, to hear this devil's tale.
For a moment the boy lay huddled up and panting, with his lips apart, and the sweat on his flushed brow. He had said--with the man's hands, on him and the black water before his eyes--that he would tell. But as he crouched there, getting his breath, and looking from one to another like a frightened animal, thoughts of his brother whom he must betray, thoughts of devotion and love, all childish but all living, surged through his brain. The men and the woman waited, some sternly curious, and some in fear; but the boy remained dumb. He had conquered his terror. He was learning that what men suffer for others is no suffering.
Simon lost patience at last. "Speak!" he cried, "or to the water!"
The boy eyed him trembling, but remained silent. "Give him a little more time," said one of the other men.
"Ay, hurry him not," said Luke.
"He has had time enough," Simon retorted. "He is but playing with us."