'Not so, my lord. I will tell you all. I could not sleep for thinking of my wounded playmate. And as to what he had done, after it became clear that he sought but his own, and meant no hair's-breadth of harm to your lordship, I confess the matter looked not the same.' 'Therefore you would make him amends and undo what you had done? You had caught the bird, and had therefore a right to free the bird when you would? All well, mistress Dorothy, had he been indeed a bird! But being a man, and in thy friend's house, I doubt thy logic. The thing had passed from thy hands into mine, young mistress,' said the marquis, into the ball of whose foot the gout that moment ran its unicorn-horn. 'I did not set him free, my lord. When I entered the prison-chamber, he was already gone.' 'Thou hadst the will and didst it not! Is there yet another in my house who had the will and did it?' cried the marquis, who, although more than annoyed that she should have so committed herself, yet was willing to give such scope to a lover, that if she had but confessed she had liberated him, he would have pardoned her heartily. He did not yet know how incapable Dorothy was of a lie. 'But, my lord, I had not the will to set him free,' she said. 'Wherefore then didst go to him?' 'My lord, he was sorely wounded, and I had seen him fall fainting,' said Dorothy, repressing her tears with much ado. 'And thou didst go to comfort him?' Dorothy was silent. 'How camest thou locked into his room? Tell me that, mistress.' 'Your lordship knows as much of that as I do. Indeed, I have been sorely punished for a little fault.' 'Thou dost confess the fault then?' 'If it WAS a fault to visit him who was sick and in prison, my lord.' The marquis was silent for a whole minute. 'And thou canst not tell how he gat him forth of the walls? Must I believe him to be forth of them, my lord?' he said, turning to his son. 'I cannot imagine him within them, my lord, after such search as we have made.' 'Still,' returned the marquis, the acuteness of whose wits had not been swallowed up by that of the gout, 'so long as thou canst not tell how he gat forth, I may doubt whether he be forth. If the manner of his exit be acknowledged hidden, wherefore not the place of his refuge? Mistress Dorothy,' he continued, altogether averse to the supposition of treachery amongst his people, 'thou art bound by all obligations of loyalty and shelter and truth, to tell what thou knowest. An' thou do not, thou art a traitor to the house, yea to thy king, for when the worst comes, and this his castle is besieged, much harm may be wrought by that secret passage, yea, it may be taken thereby.' 'You say true, my lord: I should indeed be so bound, an' I knew what my lord would have me disclose.'