"Write down Sir Valentine Fleetwood," ordered the constable. "Is not this the examination of Sir Valentine Fleetwood, and whose name else—?"
"If it be the examination of Sir Valentine Fleetwood," interrupted Hal, "then 'tis not my examination, and I demand of you my liberty forthwith; for I do not acknowledge that name! I warn you, constable!"
Taken aback by Hal's threatening tone, the constable looked irresolute, and glanced from Hal to Anne and back again.
Mistress Hazlehurst opened her eyes in a mixture of amazement and alarm, as if it might indeed be possible that her enemy's device should have effect upon this ignorant rustic. She took the supposed Sir Valentine's denial of that name to be a pitiful lie, employed on the spur of the moment. It was not less important to Hal that she should so take it, than it was that the constable should receive it as truth; and he now had to wear toward the officer a manner of veracity, and toward Anne the mien of a ready and brazen liar. This could not but make her loathe him the more, and it went against him to assume it. But in his mind he could hear the steady hoof-beats of Roger Barnet's horses coming up from the south, and so he must stick firmly to the truth which made him in her eyes a liar.
Her momentary look of alarm died away as the constable continued to gaze in stupid indecision. She waited for others to speak; she had no interest in hastening matters; her hopes were served by every minute of delay. But Hal's case was the reverse.
"Well, man," he said, to the slow-thinking constable. "I am here to answer to any charge made against me in mine own name. If you have aught to say concerning Mr. Harry Marryott, of the lord chamberlain's players, set it forth, for I am in haste. I swear to you, by God's name, and on the cross of my sword if yon fellow hand it back to me, that I am not Sir Valentine Fleetwood, and that there is no warrant for my apprehension!"
"Perjurer!" cried Anne, with scorn and indignation.
"Nay, madam," quoth the constable, somewhat impressed by Hal's declaration, "an oath is an oath. There be the laws of evidence—"
"Then hear my oath!" she broke in. "I swear, before God, this gentleman is he that the royal officers are in pursuit of, with proper warrant,—as you shall soon know, when they come hither!"