"Well?" he said. "What have you got from him?" Chiffinch advanced a step nearer, glancing at the faces that all looked on him. "Sir," he said, "I am convinced there has been nothing more than an indiscretion--" Then the King shewed how angry he was. He threw himself back in his chair. "Bah!" he cried--"an indiscretion indeed! With his guilt staring him in the face!" There was a murmur from the others: and Colonel Hoskyns gave me a look of very high disdain, as if I had been a toad or a serpent. For myself I said nothing: I remained with my eyes down. Once or twice before I had seen His Majesty in this very mood. For the most part he was the least suspicious man I had ever encountered; but once his suspicion was awake there was none harder to persuade. So he had been with His Grace of Monmouth on two or three occasions; so, it appeared, he was to be with me now. "Sir," said Mr. Chiffinch again, "I have examined Mr. Mallock very closely: but I have told him very little. Will Your Majesty allow him to hear what the case is against him?" The King, who was frowning and pursing his lips, raised his eyes; and immediately I dropped my own. He was in a black mood indeed, and all the blacker for his past kindness to me. "Tell him, Hoskyns," he said; and then, before the Colonel could speak he addressed me directly. "Mr. Mallock," he said sharply, "I will tell you plainly why I have you here, and why you are not in ward. You have been of service to me; I do not deny that. And I have never known you yet to betray your trust. Well, then, I do not wish to disgrace you publicly without allowing you an opportunity of speaking and clearing yourself if that is possible. I tell you frankly, I do not think you will. I see no loophole anywhere. But--well there it is. Tell him, Hoskyns." I will not deny that I was terrified. This was so wholly unlike all I had ever known of His Majesty. What in the world could be the case against me? (For I now saw that Mr. Chiffinch had not told me the whole, but only a part of the charge.) I fixed my eyes upon Mr. Hoskyns for whom I had conceived, so soon as I had set eyes on him, an extreme repulsion. He made a kind of apologetic cringing movement towards the papers. The King made no movement, but rested heavily in his chair, with his hat forward, his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingers knit beneath his chin. The Colonel took the papers up, shuffled them for a minute, and then began. There was an extraordinary malice in his manner which I could not understand. "The charge against the--the gentleman--whose name, I understand, is Roger Mallock, consists of two distinct points: