"I have no friend!" cried he. "Wallace! my dauntless, my only Wallace, thou art rifled from me! And shall I have fellowship with these? No, all mankind are my enemies, and soon will I leave their detested sojourn!"
Gloucester attempted to interrupt him; but he broke out afresh and with redoubled violence:
"And you, earl," cried he, "lived in this realm, and suffered such a sacrilege on God's most perfect work! Ungrateful, worthless man! fill up the measure of your baseness; deliver me to Edward, and let me brave him to his face. Oh! let me die, covered with the blood of thy enemies, my murdered Wallace! my more than brother, that shall be the royal robe thy Bruce will bring to thee!"
Gloucester stood in dignified forbearance under the invectives and stormy grief of the Scottish prince; but when exhausted nature seemed to take rest in momentary silence, he approached him. Bruce cast on him a lurid glance of suspicion.
"Leave me!" cried he; "I hate the whole world, and you the worst in it; for you might have saved him, and you did not—you might have preserved his sacred limbs from being made the gazing-stock of traitors, and you did not. Away from me, apt son of a tyrant, lest I tear you in piecemeal!"
"By the heroic spirit of him whom this outrage on me dishonors, hear my answer, Bruce! And, if not on this spot, let me then exculpate myself by the side of his body, yet uninvaded by a sacrilegious touch."
"How?" interrupted Bruce. Gloucester continued:
"All that was mortal in our friend now lies in a distant chamber of this quadrangle. When I could not prevail on Edward, either by entreaty or reproaches, to remit the last gloomy vengeance of tyrants, I determined to wrest its object from his hands. A notorious murderer died yesterday under the torture. After the inanimate corpse of our friend was brought into this house, to be conveyed to the scene of its last horrors, by the assistance of the warden the malefactor's body was conveyed here also, and placed on the traitor's sledge, in the stead of his who was no traitor, and on that murderer most justly fell the rigor of so dreadful a sentence."
The whole aspect of Bruce changed during this explanation, which was followed by a brief account from Gloucester of their friend's heroic suffering and death.
"Can you pardon my reproaches to you?" cried the prince, stretching out his hand. "Forgive, generous Gloucester, the distraction of a severely wounded spirit!"