He was taken up several flights of stairs and thrust into a small room lighted only by a narrow window, with a vertical iron bar.

The whole furniture was a huge oak chest.
Imprisonment in that age was one of the highroads to death.

It is horrible in its mildest form; but in those days it implied cold, unbroken solitude, torture, starvation, and often poison.

Gerard felt he was in the hands of an enemy.
"Oh, the look that man gave me on the road to Rotterdam.

There is more here than my father's wrath.