“It is your sovereign’s will, madam, that you witness the fate of the traitor so daring in your cause,” he said, as with a stern grasp he forced her to the grating and retained his hold upon her arm; “that you may behold in his deserved fate the type of that which will at length befall the yet blacker traitor of his name.  It is fitting so loyal a patriot as thyself should look on a patriot’s fate, and profit thereby.”

“Aye, learn how a patriot can die—­how, when his life may no more benefit his country and his kin, he may serve them in his death,” calmly and proudly she answered.  “It is well; perchance, when my turn cometh, I may thank thy master for the lesson now rudely forced upon me.  The hour will come when the blood that he now so unjustly sheds shall shriek aloud for vengeance.  On me let him work his will—­I fear him not.”

“Be silent, minion!  I listen not to thy foul treason,” said the earl, hoarse with suppressed passion at the little effect his sovereign’s mandate produced, when he had hoped to have enforced it midst sobs and tears; and she was silent, for her eye had caught one face amidst the crowd that fascinated its gaze, and sent back the blood, which had seemed to stagnate when the idea that it was indeed Nigel now about to suffer had been thus rudely thrust upon her—­sent it with such sudden revulsion through its varied channels, that it was only with a desperate struggle she retained her outward calmness, and then she stood, to the eye of Berwick, proud, dignified, collected, seemingly so cold, that he doubted whether aught of feeling could remain, or marvelled if the mandate of Edward had indeed power to inflict aught of pain.  But within—­oh, the veriest tyrant must have shuddered, could he have known the torture there; she saw, she recognized her child; she read naught but madness in that chiselled gaze; she saw at a glance there was no escaping from beholding, to the dreadful end, the fate of her beloved; before, behind, on every side, the crowds pressed round, yet from the slightly elevated position of the scaffold, failing to conceal it from her gaze.  The Earl of Gloucester she perceived close at her side, as if protecting her; but if indeed she was under his care, how came she on such a spot, at such a time?—­did he know her sex, or only looked on her as a favored page of Nigel’s, and as such protected?  Yet would not the anguish of that hour betray her not alone to him, but to that dark and cruel man whom she also marked beside her, and who, did he once know her, would demand the right of a father, to give her to his care? and oh, how would that right be exercised! would the murderer of his son, his heir, have pity on a daughter?  But it would be a vain effort to picture the deep anguish of that mother’s heart, as in that dread moment she looked upon her child, knowing, feeling her might of grief, as if it had been her own; well-nigh suffocated with the wild yearning to fold her to her maternal bosom, to