"Well, what do you think?" Matthias went on, laughing. "Am I very angry, and am I going to pass a severe sentence?" "Mr. King," answered Tornay, who saw at once that Matthias was in high good-humour, "I think Your Highness has got hold of your anger by the small end this time, and perhaps you won't go quite so far as to have my head cut off." "Your head may possibly be allowed to remain in its accustomed place," said the king jestingly. "However, it is not necessary that you should know which part of your person I have sentenced to punishment; it is enough, gossip, that you are to expiate your offence, and that to begin with I am going to send you to prison." "Perhaps Your Highness is going to entrust me with the command of some abandoned wooden castle?"[11] said Michael. [Footnote 11: Many small castles of wood and stone had been built in the north by the Bohemian freebooters already mentioned.] "No," said the king; "you have not found it out this time. I have got other quarters for you." "Very well, as Your Highness wills; but you won't get much good out of me if I am in prison." "Listen. You can see the two bastions yonder on the Mount St. Gellert side of the castle. I have had them put in order, and you are to live in one of them." Tornay listened, but he could not make it out at all. He saw the two bastions sure enough, and as they did not now look at all gloomy or prison-like, he was not alarmed at the idea of living in one of them; but he could not by any means conceive what the king's object could be. "You are surprised," said the king, "aren't you? But the prison is tolerable enough. You will have four small rooms; and as for the look-out, well, I think you will be content with it; and then you will be your own jailer, so you need have no fear as to the strictness of the discipline. In a word, you are to move into your new quarters this very day." Tornay retired; but on his way he racked his brains to discover why the king could want him to move into the bastion. What reason could he have? If he was his own jailer, and could go in and out as he pleased, it was not a prison, simply different quarters, and better, at all events, than those he had had before; for he had been living in a very poor apartment of the castle, looking into a by-street. "Well," thought he, "what do I know as to the king's motives? Who can ever tell what he has in his head? He wishes me to live there--good! then that's enough, and there I will live." So Tornay took possession of one of the bastions facing Pesth, and was very well satisfied indeed with his new quarters, which the king had had plainly but comfortably enough furnished. Perhaps the king had placed him there only as an excuse for making him more presents. CHAPTER VIII. THE BEGGAR BOY'S SONG.