While Edwin spoke, Lady Stathearn's countenance underwent a thousand changes. 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."
Loch-awe proceeded: "Was this scroll, containing the names of certain Scottish chiefs noted down for assassination, written by you, or under your connivance?"
"I never saw the scroll, nor heard of the scroll, until this hour. And harder than death is the pang at my heart when a Scottish chief finds it necessary to ask me such a question regarding a people, to save even the least of whom he has often seen me risk my life!"
"Another question," replied Loch-awe, "and then, bravest of men, if your country acquits you not in thought and deed, Campbell of Loch-awe sits no more amongst its judges! What is your knowledge of the Knight of the Green Plume, that, in preference to any Scottish friend, you should intrust him with your wishes respecting the Countess of Strathearn?"
Wallace's answer was brief: "I never had any wishes respecting the wife or the widow of my friend the Earl of Mar that I did not impart to every chief in the camp, and those wishes went no further than for her safety. As to love, that is a passion I shall know no more; and Lady Strathearn alone can say what is the end she aims at, by attributing feelings to me with regard to her which I never conceived, and words which I never uttered. Like this passion, with which she says she inspired me," added he, turning his eyes steadfastly on her face, "was the Knight of the Green Plume! You are all acquainted with the manner of his introduction to me at Linlithgow. By the account that he then gave of himself, you all know as much of him as I did, till on the night that he left me at Berwick and then I found him, like this story of Lady Strathearn, all a fable."
"What is his proper title? Name him, on your knighthood!" exclaimed Buchan; "for he shall yet be dragged forth to support the veracity of my illustrious kinswoman, and to fully unmask his insidious accomplice!"
"Your kinswoman, Earl Buchan," replied Wallace, "can best answer your question."
Lord Athol approached the regent, and whispered something in his ear. This unworthy representative of the generous Bruce, immediate rose from his seat. "Sir William Wallace," said he, "you have replied to the questions of Lord Loch-awe, but where are your witnesses to prove that what you have spoken is the truth?"