wall as I opened the door. Those words 'love that can flow' came
swelling through the opening; and--and--the next thing I am aware of,
I was riding chained upon a camel into slavery."

Tessin and Major Shackleton looked suddenly towards Wyley in
recognition of the accuracy of his guess. Scrope simply wiped the
perspiration from his forehead and waited.

"But how does that--forgetfulness, shall we say?--persuade you to the
fear that you played the coward?" asked Wyley.

"Well," replied Knightley, and his voice sank to a whisper, "I played
the coward afterwards at Mequinez. At the first it used to amuse me to
wonder what happened after I opened the door and before I was captured
outside Tangier; later it only puzzled me, and in the end it began to
frighten me. You see, I could not tell; it was all a blank to me, as
it is now; and a man overdriven--well, he nurses sickly fancies.
No need to say what mine were until the day I played the coward in
Mequinez. They set me to build the walls of the Emperor's new Palace.
We used the stones of the old Roman town and built them up in
Mequinez, and in the walls we were bidden to build Christian slaves
alive to the glory of Allah. I refused. They stripped the flesh off my
feet with their bastinadoes, starved me of food and drink, and brought
me back again to the walls. Again I refused." Knightley looked up at
his audience, and whether or no he mistook their breathless silence
for disbelief,--"I did," he implored. "Twice I refused, and twice they
tortured me. The third time--I was so broken, the whistle of a cane
in the air made me cry out with pain--I was sunk to that pitch of
cowardice--" He stopped, unable to complete the sentence. He clasped
and unclasped his hands convulsively, he moistened his dry lips with