He paused.
"Tempted to what?" asked De Warenne.
"To a Brutus mode of ridding the state of an enemy."
"That might be noble in a Roman citizen," returned De Warenne, "which
would be villainous in an English lord, treated as you have been by a
generous victor, not the usurper of any country's liberties, but rather
a Brutus in defense of his own. Which man of us all, from the general
to the meanest follower in our camps, has he injured?"
Lord Aymer frowned. "Did he not expose me, threaten me with an
ignominious death, on the walls of Stirling?"
"But was it before he saw the Earl of Mar, with his hapless family,
brought, with halters on their necks, to be suspended from this very
tower? Ah! what a tale has the lovely countess told me of that direful
scene! What he then did was to check the sanguinary Cressingham from
imbruiting his hands in the blood of female and infant innocence."
"I care not," cried De Valence, "what are or are not the offenses of
this domineering Wallace, but I hate him; and my respect for his
advocates cannot but correspond with that feeling." As he spoke, that
he might not be further molested by the arguments of De Warenne, he
abruptly turned away, and left the battlements.
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