He had seen a man tortured once, and remembered his face.

He was sure that the King must have seen the letter, and that meant torment and death, and the King was angry also because the court had cheered Don John.

It was treason, and he knew it--yet it would have been certain death, too, to refuse to obey Dona Ana.

There was destruction on either side, and he could not escape.

Don John had not read the writing yet, and if the King asked for it, he would probably give it to him without a thought, unopened, for he was far too simple to imagine that any one could accuse him of a treasonable thought, and too boyishly frank to fancy that his brother could be jealous of him--above all, he was too modest to suppose that there were thousands who would have risked their lives to set him on the throne of Spain.