“Hadst thou ever a child, Sir Geoffrey,” interrupted Aldarin, advancing to the side of the knight: “a fair-haired and soft-voiced boy, whose smile was thy joy, whose presence was thy sunshine?”
“Speak, speak—what knowest thou of my boy?” gasped the dying knight, as a look of agony passed over his face. “’Tis sixteen years since I beheld his face in the land of his birth, the city of Jerusalem. He was torn from my embrace by an unknown hand.”
Aldarin looked around over the sea of faces, and smiled as he beheld a peasant whetting his knife on the very stone on which he stood.
That smile of incarnate scorn seemed to break the spell of horror that bound the multitude.
“To the gibbet, to the gibbet with the fratricide!” again rose the fierce yell of vengeance, and the men-at-arms came crowding up the steps, while a score of upraised daggers were about to drink the blood of the doomed murderer, when Robin the Rough threw himself before the object of their vengeance.
“Stain not your steel,” he shouted; “stain not your steel with traitor’s blood; away to the castle gate with him! Let the dog die a dog’s death!”
And at the word, the Esquires Halbert and his gallant brother Damian advanced from the crowd, and seizing Aldarin by the arms, they dragged him down the steps of stone, while the multitude gave way on either side, shrinking from the touch of a murderer, as one would shrink from the garments of the plague-smitten.
“There is fire in my heart, there is hell in my brain!” arose a tremulous voice, that was heard far along the castle yard, thrilling the bystanders to the very soul. “God of mercy, it is, it is not true! The parchment is a lie—a falsehood written by the very fiend of hell! I did not—no, no, I did not—wing the blow to his heart! God of heaven witness me, I raised not the steel for his blood!”
And as the multitude, bearing Aldarin to his doom, heard that shrieking voice, they looked back, and beheld the Lord Guiseppo standing over the prostrate form of his victim, his face pale and colorless, his lip livid as with the touch of death, while his eyes rolled their ghastly glance over the faces of the crowd, and his arms hung palsied by his side, with the fatal parchment quivering in the grasp of his trembling hand.
“Father, father!” his shriek again arose on the air, as he knelt by the side of his victim; “FATHER, THE MURDERER IS THY SON.”