enter. My father had ordered Billy to wait below. We two passed in
together.

Now, my father, as I have said, was tall; yet it seemed to me that
the man who greeted us was taller, as he rose from the bed and stood
between us and the barred dirty window. By little and little I made
out that he wore an orange-coloured dressing-gown, and on his head a
Turk's fez; that he had pushed back a table at which, seated on the
bed, he had been writing; and that on the sill of the closed window
behind him stood a geranium-plant, dry with dust and withering in the
stagnant air of the room. But as yet, since he rose with his back to
the little light, I could not make out his features. I marked,
however, that he shook from head to foot.

My father bowed--a very reverent and stately bow it was too--regarded
him for a moment, and, taking a pace backward to the door, called
after the retreating turnkey, to whom he addressed some order in a
tone to me inaudible.

"You are welcome, Sir John," said the prisoner, as my father faced
him again; "though to my shame I cannot offer you hospitality."
He said it in English, with a thick and almost guttural foreign
accent, and his voice shook over the words.

"I have made bold, sire, to order the remedy."

"'Sire!'" the prisoner took him up with a flash of spirit.
"You have many rights over me, Sir John, but none to mock me, I
think."