The miserable lad looked helplessly around him, his weak frame trembling as with palsy, and his uncertain fingers plucking at each other with that involuntary movement of the muscles which indicates a disordered brain. “Will you, or will you not?” reiterated Del Fortis in a whisper that hissed through the close precincts of the cell like the warning of a snake about to sting--“Answer me!” “Suppose I say I will not!”--stammered the poor wretch, with trembling lips and appealing eyes--“Suppose I say I will not falsely accuse the innocent, even for the sake of the Church----?” “Then,” said Del Fortis slowly, rising and moving towards him;--“You had best accept the only alternative--this!” And he took from his breast pocket a small phial, full of clear, colourless fluid, and showed it to him--“Take it!--and so make a quick and quiet end! For, if you betray you connection with Us by so much as a look,--a sign, or a syllable,--your mode of exit from this world may be slower, less decent, and more painful!” The miserable boy wrung his hands in agony, and such a cry of despair broke from his lips as might have moved anyone less cruelly made of spiritual adamant than the determined servant of the cruellest ‘religious’ Order known. The dull harsh clang of the prison bell struck ten. The ‘priest’ had been an hour at the work of ‘confessing’ his penitent,--and his patience was well-nigh exhausted. “Swear you will attribute your intended assassination of the King, to the influence of the Socialists!” he said with fierce imperativeness--“Or with this--end all your difficulties to-night! It is a gentle quietus!--and you ought to thank me for it! It is better than solitary imprisonment for life! I will give you absolution for taking it--provided I see you swallow it before I go!--and I will declare to the Church that I left you shrived of your sins, and clean! Half an hour after I leave you, you will sleep!--and wake--in Heaven! Make your choice!” The last words had scarcely left his lips when the cell door was suddenly thrown open, and a blaze of light poured in. Dazzled by the strong and sudden glare, Del Fortis recoiled, and still holding the phial of poison in his hand, stumbled back against the half-fainting form of the poor crazed creature he had been terrorising, as a dozen armed men silently entered the dungeon and ranged themselves in order, six on one side and six on the other, while, in their midst one man advanced, throwing back his dark military cloak as he came, and displaying a mass of jewelled orders and insignia on his brilliant uniform. Del Fortis uttered a fierce oath. “The King!” he muttered, under his breath--“The King!”