"
"No," cried Loch-awe; "if the Knight of the Green Plume be above
ground, he shall be brought before this tribunal. He alone can be the
traitor; and to destroy us by exciting suspicions against our best
defender, he has wrought with his own false pen this device to deceive
the patriotic widow of the Earl of Mar."
"No, no," interrupted she; "I read the whole in his own--to me too well
known--handwriting; and this list of the chiefs, condemned by yon,
indeed, traitor! to die, shall fully evince his guilt. Even your name,
too generous earl, is in the horrid catalogue." While she spoke, she
rose eagerly, to hand to him the scroll.
"Let me now speak, or stab me to the heart!" hastily whispered Edwin to
his friend. Wallace did not withhold him, for he guessed what would be
the remark of his ardent soul. "Hear that woman!" cried the vehement
youth to the regent, "and say whether she now speaks the language of
one who had ever loved the virtues of Sir William Wallace? Were she
innocent of malice toward the deliverer of Scotland, would she not have
rejoiced in Loch-awe's suggestion, that the Green Knight is the
traitor? Or, if that scroll she has now given into the regent's hand
be too nicely forged for her to detect its not being indeed the
handwriting of the noblest of men, would she not have shown some sorrow
at the guilt of one she professes once to have loved?--of one who saved
herself, her husband, and her child from perishing! But here her
malice has overstepped her art; and after having promoted the success
of her tale by so mingling insignificant truths with falsehoods of
capital import--tbat in acknowledging the one we seem to grant the
other--she falls into her own snare! Even a beardless boy can now
discern that, however vile the Green Knight may be, she shares his
wickedness!"
While Edwin spoke, Lady Stathearn's countenance underwent a thousand
changes.
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