, as if to protect him from all ill, in the tone and
look of maternal tenderness with which she addressed him. "Why, why must
it be my ill fate to hurl down increase of misery and danger on all whom
I love?"

"Speak not so, noble lady, in mercy do not!" he whispered in reply;
"keep that undaunted spirit shown but now, I can better bear it than
this voice of anguish. And thou," he added, laying his hand on the
shoulder of the boy, who still clung to his knees, as if fascinated
there by speechless terror, and gazed alternately on him and the
countess with eyes glazed almost in madness, "up, up; this is no place
for thee. What can they do with me but slay--let them come on--better,
far better than a scaffold!" but the boy moved not, Nigel spoke in vain.

The fate he dared seemed indeed threatening. Wrought well-nigh to
phrensy at this daring insult to his sovereign, in whose acts of cruelty
and oppression he could far better sympathize than in his more knightly
qualities, the Earl of Berwick loudly and fiercely called on his
soldiers to advance and cut down the traitor, to bring the heaviest
fetters and bear him to the lowest dungeon. The men, roused from their
stupor of amaze, rushed on impetuously to obey him; their naked swords
already gleamed round Nigel; the Countess of Buchan was torn from his
side, her own especial guards closing darkly around her; but vainly did
they seek to unclasp the convulsive grasp of the boy from Nigel, he
neither shrieked nor spake, but he remained in that one posture, rigid
as stone.

"Fiends! monsters! would ye, dare ye touch a boy, a child as this!"
shouted Nigel, struggling with herculean strength to free himself from
the rude grasp of the soldiers, as he beheld the sharp steel pointed at
the breast of the boy, to compel him to unloose his hold. "Villains,
cowards! bear back and let me speak with him," and nerved to madness by
the violence of his emotions, he suddenly wrenched himself away, the
rapidity of the movement throwing one of the men to the earth, and bent
over the boy; again they rushed forward, they closed upon him, they tore
away the lad by force of numbers, and flung him senseless on the earth;
they sought to bear away their prisoner, but at that moment Hereford,
who had been parleying loudly and wrathfully with Berwick, spurred his
charger in the very midst of them, and compelled them to bear back.

"Back, back!" he exclaimed, making a path for himself with his drawn
sw