it
strange that one so young should be in so much trouble, and looking out of
the small window in the deep dark wall, at the summer sky and the birds,
the door was softly opened, and he saw his uncle the King standing in the
shadow of the archway, looking very grim.

"Arthur," said the King, with his wicked eyes more on the stone floor than
on his nephew, "will you not trust to the gentleness, the friendship, and
the truthfulness, of your loving uncle?"

"I will tell my loving uncle that," replied the boy, "when he does me
right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of England, and then come to me
and ask the question."

The King looked at him and went out. "Keep that boy close prisoner," said
he to the warden of the castle.

Then the King took secret counsel with the worst of his nobles how the
Prince was to be got rid of. Some said, "Put out his eyes, and keep him in
prison, as Robert of Normandy was kept." Others said, "Have him stabbed."
Others, "Have him hanged." Others, "Have him poisoned."

King John, feeling that, in any case, whatever was done afterward, it
would be a satisfaction to his mind to have those handsome eyes burnt out
that had looked at him so proudly while his own royal eyes were blinking
at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy with
red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically entreated them, and shed such
piteous tears, and so appealed to Hubert de Bourg, the warden of the
castle, who had a love for him, and was an honorable, tender man, that
Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honor he prevented the torture
from being performed, and, at his own risk, sent the savages away.

The chafed and disappointed King bethought himself of the stabbing
suggestion next, and with his shuffling manner and his cruel face,
proposed it to one William de Bray. "I am a gentleman, and not an
executioner," said William de Bray, and left the presence with disdain.

But it was not difficult for a king to hire a murderer in those days. King
John found one for his money, and sent him down to the castle of Falaise.
"On what errand dost thou come?" said Hubert to this fellow. "To dispatch
young Arthur," he returned. "Go back to him who sent thee," answered
Hubert, "and say that I will do it!"

King John very well knowing that Hubert would never do it, but that he
courageously sent this reply to save the Prince, or gain time, dispatched
messengers to convey the young prisoner to the castle