“Thou liest, false villain!” furiously retorted Buchan.  “The church shall undo these bonds, shall give her back to the father she has thus insulted.  She shall repent, repent with tears of blood, her desertion of her race.  Canst thou protect her in death, thou fool—­canst thou still cherish and save her, thinkest thou, when the hangman hath done his work?”

“Aye, even then she will be cherished, loved for Nigel’s sake, and for her own; there will be faithful friends around her to protect her from thee still, tyrant!  Thou canst not break the bonds that bind us; thou hast done no father’s part.  Forsaken and forgotten, thy children owe thee no duty, no obedience; thou canst bring forward no plea to persecute thy child.  In life and in death she is mine, mine alone; the power and authority thou hast spurned so long can no longer be assumed; the love, the obedience thou didst never heed, nay, trampled on, hath been transferred to one who glories in them both.  She is in safety—­slay, torture as thou wilt, I tell thee no more.”  Fettered, unarmed, firm, undauntedly erect, stood Nigel Bruce, gazing with curling lip and flashing eyes upon his foe.  The foam had gathered on the earl’s lip, his hand, clenching his sword, had trembled with passion as Nigel spoke, He sought to suppress that rage, to remember a public execution would revenge him infinitely more than a blow of his sword, but he had been too long unused to control; lashed into ungovernable fury by the demeanor of Nigel, even more than by his words, the sword flashed from its scabbard, was raised, and fell—­but not upon his foe, for the Earl of Gloucester suddenly stood between them.

“Art thou mad, or tired of life, my Lord of Buchan?” he said.  “Knowest thou not thou art amenable to the law, an thou thus deprivest justice of her victim?  Shame, shame, my lord; I deemed thee not a midnight murderer.”

“Darest thou so speak to me?” replied Buchan, fiercely; “by every fiend in hell, thou shalt answer this!  Begone, and meddle not with that which concerneth thee nothing.”

“It doth concern me, proud earl,” replied Gloucester, standing immediately before Nigel, whose emotion at observing the page by whom he was accompanied, though momentary, must otherwise have been observed.  “The person of the prisoner is sacred to the laws of his country, the mandate of his sovereign; on thy life thou darest not injure him—­thou knowest that thou darest not.  Do thou begone, ere I summon those who, at the mere mention of assault on one condemned, will keep thee in ward till thou canst wreak thy vengeance on naught but clay; begone, I say!”

“I will not,” sullenly answered the earl, unwillingly conscious of the truth of his words; “I will not, till he hath answered me.  Once more,” he added, turning to Nigel with a demoniac scowl, “where is she whom thou hast dared to call thy wife? answer me, or as there is a hell beneath us, the torture shall wring it from thee!”