A Royal Banquet

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The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out:

"He is saved! -- for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's servant -- Arthur, the king whose word is gold!"

"Well, then you do believe I can be trusted, after all. Why didn't you before?"

"Who doubted? Not I, indeed; and not she."

"Well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?"

"Ye had made no promise; else had it been otherwise." "I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite see, after all. You stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plain enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing to confess --"

"I, my lord? How so? It was I that killed the deer!"

"You DID? Oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up business that ever --"

"Dear lord, I begged him on my knees to confess, but --"

"You DID! It gets thicker and thicker. What did you want him to do that for?"

"Sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all this cruel pain."

"Well -- yes, there is reason in that. But HE didn't want the quick death."

"He? Why, of a surety he DID."

"Well, then, why in the world DIDN'T he confess?"

"Ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter?"

"Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law takes the convicted man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. They could torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they could not rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a man; and YOU -- true wife and the woman that you are -- you would have bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow starvation and death -- well, it humbles a body to think what your sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you both for my colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm going to turn groping and grubbing automata into MEN."