that awful hour
Sir Nigel stood alone. Yet he was undaunted, for he feared not death
even at the hangman's hand; his spirit was at peace, for he was innocent
of sin; unbowed, for he was no traitor--he was a patriot warrior still.
Pale he was, indeed, ashy pale, but it told a tale of intense bodily
anguish. They had put him to the torture, to force from his lips the
place of his brother's retreat, that being the only pretence on which
the rage of Edward and the malice of Berwick could rest for the
infliction of their cruelty. They could drag naught from his lips; they
could not crush that exalted soul, or compel it to utter more than a
faint, scarcely articulate groan, as proof that he suffered, that the
beautiful frame was well-nigh shattered unto death. And now he stood
upright, unshrinking; and there were hearts amid those peers inwardly
grieving at their fell task, gazing on him with unfeigned admiration;
while others gloried that another obstacle to their sovereign's schemes
of ambition would be removed, finding, perchance, in his youth, beauty,
and noble bearing, from their contrast with themselves, but fresh
incentives to the doom of death, and determining, even as they sate and
scowled on him, to aggravate the bitterness of that doom with all the
ignominy that cruelty could devise.

He had listened in stern silence to the indictment, and evinced no sign
of emotion even when, in the virulence of some witnesses against him,
the most degrading epithets were lavished on himself, his family, and
friends. Only once had his eye flashed fire and his cheek burned, and
his right hand unconsciously sought where his weapon should have hung,
when his noble brother was termed a ribald assassin, an excommunicated
murderer; but quickly he checked that natural emotion, and remained
collected as before. He was silent till the usual question was asked,
"If he had any thing to say why sentence of death should not be
pronounced upon him?" and then he made a step forward, looked boldly and
sternly around him, and spoke, in a rich, musical voice, the following
brief, though emphatic words:

"Ye ask me if I could say aught why sentence of death should not be
pronounced. Nobles of England, in denying the charge of treason with
which ye have indicted me, I have said enough. Before ye, aye, before
your sovereign, I have done nothing to merit death, save that death
which a conqueror bestows on his captive, when he deems him too powerful
t