"Robert Bruce!" cried he, the moment his eyes fell on him; but the sight of his mourning habit made a stroke upon his heart that sent out evidence of remorse in large globules on his forehead; he paused, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and resumed: "Are you not afraid, presumptuous young man, thus to provoke your sovereign? Are you not afraid that I shall make that audacious head answer for the man whom you thus dare to screen from my just revenge?"
Bruce felt all the injuries he had suffered from this proud king rush at once upon his memory; and, without changing his position or lowering the lofty expression of his looks, he firmly answered: "The judgment of a just king I cannot fear; the sentence of an unjust one I despise."
"This to his majesty's face!" exclaimed Soulis.
"Insolence—rebellion—chastisement—even death!" were the words which murmured round the room at the honest reply.
Edward had too much good sense to echo any one of them; but turning to Bruce, with a sensation of shame he would gladly have repressed, he said that, in consideration of his youth, he would pardon him what had passed, and reinstate him in all the late Earl of Carrick's honors, if he would immediately declare where he had hidden the offending minstrel.
"I have not hidden him," cried Bruce; "nor do I know where he is; but had that been confided to me, as I know him to be an innocent man, no power on earth should have wrenched him from me!"
"Self-sufficient boy!" exclaimed Earl Buchan, with a laugh of contempt; "do you flatter yourself that he would trust such a novice as you are with secrets of this nature?"
Bruce turned on him an eye of fire.
"Buchan," replied he, "I will answer you on other ground. Meanwhile, remember that the secrets of good men are open to every virtuous heart; those of the wicked they would be glad to conceal from themselves."
"Robert Bruce," cried the king, "before I came this northern journey I ever found you one of the most devoted of my servants, the gentlest youth in my court; and how do I see you at this moment? Braving my nobles to my face! How is it that until now this spirit never broke forth?"