"By cock and pie!" said Ormiston under his helmet, as he pushed through the crowd at this juncture, "I would swear to it as I would to my own nose, or to the king's toledo sword, which I now see by the side of this double thief and traitor! We all know him, sirs! The unco'—the foreigner—who with John of Park attempted to assassinate my Lord of Bothwell in Hermitage glen. Last night he escaped from the tower of Holyrood."
"Close up, my merry men all!" said Morton; "forward, pikemen—bend your hackbuts; for we have meshed one of the knaves at last."
There was a terrible frown gathering on the brow of Lindesay. This ferocious peer, and uncompromising foe of the ancient church, was distinguished by the sternness and inflexibility of his character, even in that iron age; and the fire of his keen grey eye increased the expression of his hard Scottish, yet noble features, and thick grizzled beard, which consorted so well with the antique fashion of his plain steel armour, with its grotesque and gigantic knee and elbow joints projecting like iron fans, with pauldrons on the shoulders. His salade was of the preceding century, and was surmounted by his crest, a silver ostrich bearing in its beak a key—on his colours, a roll azure and argent. Unsheathing his long shoulder-sword, he said with stern solemnity—
"Now, blessed be God! that hath given us this great and good fortune to-day. These ruins, where that mother of blasphemy and abomination—who hath made whole nations drunk with the cup of her iniquities—once practised her idolatries, seem to have rare tenants this morning. First, amid the walls of Leonard's chapel, we found that worshipper of graven images—Tarbet, the mass-priest, with all his missals and mummery in right order for the pillory at the Tron; and here, in the oratory of the Baptist, we have started our other game—one of the regicides, whose body shall be torn piecemeal, even as Graeme and Athol were torn of old; yea, villain! embowelled and dismembered shalt thou be, while the life yet flickers in thy bleeding heart; but, first, thou shalt be half-hanged from yonder tree. Quick! a knotted cord, some of ye!"
"Nay, my good Lord of Lindesay," interposed Morton, "I would reserve him for the queen's council, whose examination may bring to light much of whilk we are still in ignorance."
"Now, by my father's bones!" began fierce Lindesay, clenching his gauntleted hand with sudden passion, "must I remind thee, who wert High Chancellor of Scotland, and, as such, chief in all matters of justice—the king's most intimate councillor, and holder of that seal, without the touch of which not a statute of the estates can pass forth to the people—must I remind thee of that ancient Scottish law, by which our forefathers decreed, if a murderer be taken REDHAND, he should incontinently be executed within three days after commission of the deed; and here, within a mile of the Kirk-of-Field, we find a known comrade of Park, the border outlaw, with the sword and mantle of our murdered king"—
"Yea," interrupted a voice from the band, "a cloak which I saw in the king's chamber but yesternight."
"What other proof lack we?" said Lindesay.
"Away with him!" cried several voices, and Ormiston's among them; "for he hath assuredly murdered the king!"
To all these fiercely-uttered accusations, Konrad had not a word to reply in extenuation or defence; and his astonishment and confusion were easily mistaken for guilt and fear.