“Is he not worthy, Alan of Buchan, who thus flings down the gauntlet, who thus dares the fury of a mighty sovereign, and with a handful of brave men prepares to follow in the steps of Wallace, to the throne or to the scaffold?”

“Heed not my reckless boy, Sir Robert,” said the countess, earnestly, as the eyes of her son fell beneath the knight’s glance of fiery reproach; “no heart is truer to his country, no arm more eager to rise in her defence.”

“The king! the king!” gasped Nigel, some strange over-mastering emotion checking his utterance.  “Who is it that has thus dared, thus—­”

“And canst thou too ask, young sir?” returned the knight, with a smile of peculiar meaning.  “Is thy sovereign’s name unknown to thee?  Is Robert Bruce a name unknown, unheard, unloved, that thou, too, breathest it not?”

“My brother, my brave, my noble brother!—­I saw it, I knew it!  Thou wert no changeling, no slavish neutral; but even as I felt, thou art, thou wilt be!  My brother, my brother, I may live and die for thee!” and the young enthusiast raised his clasped hands above his head, as in speechless thanksgiving for these strange, exciting news; his flushed cheek, his quivering lip, his moistened eye betraying an emotion which seemed for the space of a moment to sink on the hearts of all who witnessed it, and hush each feeling into silence.  A shout from the court below broke that momentary pause.

“God save King Robert! then, say I,” vociferated Alan, eagerly grasping the knight’s hand.  “Sit, sit, Sir Knight; and for the love of heaven, speak more of this most wondrous tale.  Erewhile, we hear of this goodly Earl of Carrick at Edward’s court, doing him homage, serving him as his own English knight, and now in Scotland—­aye, and Scotland’s king.  How may we reconcile these contradictions?”

“Rather how did he vanish from the tyrant’s hundred eyes, and leave the court of England?” inquired Nigel, at the same instant as the Countess of Buchan demanded, somewhat anxiously—­

“And Sir John Comyn, recognizes he our sovereign’s claim?  Is he amongst the Bruce’s slender train?”

A dark cloud gathered on the noble brow of the knight, replacing the chivalric courtesy with which he had hitherto responded to his interrogators.  He paused ere he answered, in a stern, deep voice—­

“Sir John Comyn lived and died a traitor, lady.  He hath received the meed of his base treachery; his traitorous design for the renewed slavery of his country—­the imprisonment and death of the only one that stood forth in her need.”

“And by whom did the traitor die?” fiercely demanded the young heir of Buchan.  “Mother, thy cheek is blanched; yet wherefore?  Comyn as I am, shall we claim kindred with a traitor, and turn away from the good cause, because, forsooth, a traitorous Comyn dies?  No; were the Bruce’s own right hand red with the recreant’s blood—­he only is the Comyn’s king.”