The king's unlooked-for ignorance of his errand, Herbert's honest hasty zeal, the temper of Boris the hound, had forced on him an act unmeditated and utterly against his interest.

His whole guilt lay in preferring the king's death to his own--a crime perhaps in most men, but hardly deserving a place in Rupert's catalogue.

All this I can admit now, but on that night, with the dead body lying there before us, with the story piteously told by Herbert's faltering voice fresh in our ears, it was hard to allow any such extenuation.

Our hearts cried out for vengeance, although we ourselves served the king no more.

Nay, it may well be that we hoped to stifle some reproach of our own consciences by a louder clamor against another's sin, or longed to offer some belated empty atonement to our dead master by executing swift justice on the man who had killed him.