‘Then give me leave to ask where you spent the night, not in the snow, I presume? You do not suppose that will pass, or be taken, credited, and received?’
‘I beg leave,’ said Bertram, his recollection turning to the gipsy female and to the promise he had given her--’I beg leave to decline answering that question.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Sir Robert. ‘Were you not during that night in the ruins of Derncleugh?--in the ruins of Derncleugh, sir?’
‘I have told you that I do not intend answering that question,’ replied Bertram.
‘Well, sir, then you will stand committed, sir,’ said Sir Robert, ‘and be sent to prison, sir, that’s all, sir. Have the goodness to look at these papers; are you the Vanbeest Brown who is there mentioned?’
It must be remarked that Glossin had shuffled among the papers some writings which really did belong to Bertram, and which had been found by the officers in the old vault where his portmanteau was ransacked.
‘Some of these papers,’ said Bertram, looking over them, ‘are mine, and were in my portfolio when it was stolen from the post-chaise. They are memoranda of little value, and, I see, have been carefully selected as affording no evidence of my rank or character, which many of the other papers would have established fully. They are mingled with ship-accounts and other papers, belonging apparently to a person of the same name.’
‘And wilt thou attempt to persuade me, friend,’ demanded Sir Robert, ‘that there are TWO persons in this country at the same time of thy very uncommon and awkwardly sounding name?’
‘I really do not see, sir, as there is an old Hazlewood and a young Hazlewood, why there should not be an old and a young Vanbeest Brown. And, to speak seriously, I was educated in Holland, and I know that this name, however uncouth it may sound in British ears---’
Glossin, conscious that the prisoner was now about to enter upon dangerous ground, interfered, though the interruption was unnecessary, for the purpose of diverting the attention of Sir Robert Hazlewood, who was speechless and motionless with indignation at the presumptuous comparison implied in Bertram’s last speech. In fact, the veins of his throat and of his temples swelled almost to bursting, and he sat with the indignant and disconcerted air of one who has received a mortal insult from a quarter to which he holds it unmeet and indecorous to make any reply. While, with a bent brow and an angry eye, he was drawing in his breath slowly and majestically, and puffing it forth again with deep and solemn exertion, Glossin stepped in to his assistance. ‘I should think now, Sir Robert, with great submission, that this matter may be closed. One of the constables, besides the pregnant proof already produced, offers to make oath that the sword of which the prisoner was this morning deprived (while using it, by the way, in resistance to a legal warrant) was a cutlass taken from him in a fray between the officers and smugglers just previous to their attack upon Woodbourne. And yet,’ he added, ‘I would not have you form any rash construction upon that subject; perhaps the young man can explain how he came by that weapon.’