The prisoner bit his lips, and ground his teeth. "If I come not precisely from the holy sepulchre," he muttered, "I come, however, from the graves of kinsmen and friends, and from the corpses of murdered comrades. The fool whose mouth I have stopped, was a soulless lump of flesh, on whom I did but whet my dagger. What I purposed besides, is no concern of any one; but what I had promised, it was my fixed resolve to perform. Against tyrants no weapon is dishonourable, King Eric! and if an outlawed man hath neither rights nor safety, how then can you suppose he will let himself be bound by your pitiful laws?" "Have ye considered the matter, my knights!" said the king; "then pronounce doom upon this audacious criminal, according to the laws of God and man!" "He hath forfeited honour and life, according to the laws of the land," was the unanimous verdict. "According to strict justice, he hath even forfeited hand and eye." The herald pronounced the doom in a loud voice. When Kaggé heard his death doom, his knees shook, and he looked around him with a rapid and searching glance, as if expecting to find defenders or protectors against the sentence, among the spectators, but there was a death-like stillness; no one moved tongue or hand in his defence. He seemed humbled, and now bent on one knee before the tribunal. "Bethink you, King Eric!" he said, in a supplicating tone, "I served in your royal father's castle, and he himself gave me the praise of being the best squire he had. His death was never my wish, I would have saved him had it been in my power; although he had broken his contract and had himself loosened the tie which bound Denmark's crown to his head." "I remember well thou didst serve in my father's castle, for hire and for garments," answered the king; "but I know, and every man in Denmark knows, also, that thou wert in Finnerup barn, on that bloody St. Cecilia's eve, and thy sword was not the _last which_ was plunged into the breast of thy unhappy master and king. As a faithless traitor and regicide thou wert however but outlawed while I was a minor, but now thou shalt suffer just punishment, as surely as I wear Denmark's crown!"