Because of his open aversion to war, his appreciation of the advantages of negotiation and arbitration, he was stigmatized by his secret enemies as being greedy and avaricious. Yet, on the other hand, had he amassed great armies and plunged them headlong into foreign conflict, thereby burdening his subjects with increased taxation, he would doubtless have been regarded by these same malcontents as being extravagant and needlessly cruel. During the space of the greater part of an hour the King remained seated in the precise attitude in which the opening of the present chapter discovered him. His chin lowered upon his breast; his gaze fixed straight before him; his fingers tapping ceaselessly upon the arms of his chair. Then, after the manner of a draped lay-figure imbued with sudden life, he sprang to his feet, threw aside the purple robes enveloping him and paced with nervous footfalls across the floor. Occasionally he would pause, incline his head, and pass his hand fretfully across his brow. Once he stopped, leaning heavily against a marble image of Kenelph, Saxon king of Mercia, from whom the castle had its name. The sun of a September afternoon shining brilliantly through one of the western windows bathed them, the marble effigy and the man, in squares of vari-colored light; affording thus a sharp contrast between the old and the new. In the chiseled head of stone the stamp of an iron will was predominant in every feature. Those of the living bespoke no less the possession of a will; but a will that would seek ever to achieve its purposes through the exercise of crafty cunning. The one had been grimly determined, brave, and openly cruel and tyrannical. The other was a secret coward, masking his cruelties beneath the guise of virtue. Suddenly, looking up into the stone face of the dead king, the living king smiled. "Yea," said he. "We will--rather we must--yea, we must command it to be done. And by doing it in that way, 'twill be transfixing two bullocks with a single dart." Thereupon, mounting the steps of the dais and reseating himself in his chair, he carefully donned his robes of state, composed his features, and gently pulled a golden tassel depending from a silken cord at his elbow. "Command my lord of Stanley instantly to attend me," was Henry's stern behest to the court attendant, who bowed himself within one of the curtained entrances. Very soon thereafter Stanley came in. Approaching the dais, he knelt upon the lower step, touching with his lips the indifferent and cold hand extended to him.