Twice she attempted to rise and interrupt him, but Sir Roger
Kirkpatrick having fixed his eyes on her with a menacing determination
to prevent her, she found herself obliged to remain quiescent. Full of
a newly-excited fear that Wallace had confided to her nephew the last
scene in his tent, she started up as he seemed to pause, and with
assumed mildness, again addressing the regent, said--that before this
apparently ingenuous defense could mislead impartial minds, she thought
it just to inform the council of the infatuated attachment of Edwin
Ruthven to the accused; for she had ample cause to assert that the boy
was so bewitched by his commander--who had flattered his youthful
vanity by loading him with distinctions only due to approved valor in
manhood--that he was ready at any time to sacrifice every consideration
of truth, reason, and duty, to please Sir William Wallace.
"Such may be in a boy," observed Lord Loch-awe, interrupting her "but
as I know no occasion in which it is possible for Sir William Wallace
to falsify the truth, I call upon him, in justice to himself and to his
country, to reply to three questions!" Wallace bowed to the venerable
earl, and he proceeded: "Sir William Wallace, are you guilty of the
charge brought against you, of a design to mount the throne of Scotland
by means of the King of France?"
Wallace replied, "I never designed to mount the throne of Scotland,
either by my own means or by any other man's.
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