"Explain, or, by the Host! be you ignorant or not, I'll have you hanged." I accounted it high time to take another tone with him.

Hanging was a discomfort I was never less minded to suffer.
"Draw nearer, fool," said I contemptuously, and at the epithet, so greatly did my audacity amaze him, he mildly did my bidding.
"I know not what doubts are battling in your thick head, sir captain," I pursued.

"But this I know--that if you persist in hindering me, or commit the egregious folly of offering me violence, you will answer for it, hereafter, to the Lord Cardinal of Valencia.
"I am going upon a secret mission"-- and here I sank my voice to a whisper for his ears alone--"in the service of the house that hires you, as for yourself you might easily have inferred.

Behold." And I revealed my ring.

"Detain me longer at your peril." He must have had some notion of the fact that I was journeying in Cesare Borgia's service, and this coupled with the sight of that talisman effected in his manner a swift and wholesome change.