“I know well,” he said, striving to speak with a courtesy which it was not easy to feel, “that things are done at such times as these such as are not meant, orders being applied in a wrong way, and so I came to yourself.”
Sir Oliver, listening in his own way, which was quiet and cool, thought that there might be another explanation than that. He might have come himself because his pride would not risk a rebuff which his squire would know. It was trouble of a kind with which he must often deal. La Cerda had a great power in his own land. He was used to command, as were half the knights who had now come from the ends of Europe to serve as little more than privates in this defence. And in spite of, or perhaps because of that, the Grand Master was resolved that the obedience he exacted, the d
