The foam had gathered on the earl's lip, his hand, clenching his sword, had trembled with passion as Nigel spoke, He sought to suppress that rage, to remember a public execution would revenge him infinitely more than a blow of his sword, but he had been too long unused to control; lashed into ungovernable fury by the demeanor of Nigel, even more than by his words, the sword flashed from its scabbard, was raised, and fell--but not upon his foe, for the Earl of Gloucester suddenly stood between them.
"Art thou mad, or tired of life, my Lord of Buchan ?" he said.

"Knowest thou not thou art amenable to the law, an thou thus deprivest justice of her victim?
Shame, shame, my lord; I deemed thee not a midnight murderer." "Darest thou so speak to me ?" replied Buchan, fiercely; "by every fiend in hell, thou shalt answer this! Begone, and meddle not with that which concerneth thee nothing." "It doth concern me, proud earl," replied Gloucester, standing immediately before Nigel, whose emotion at observing the page by whom he was accompanied, though momentary, must otherwise have been observed.
"The person of the prisoner is sacred to the laws of his country, the mandate of his sovereign; on thy life thou darest not injure him--thou knowest that thou darest not.

Do thou begone, ere I summon those who, at the mere mention of assault on one condemned, will keep thee in ward till thou canst wreak thy vengeance on naught but clay; begone, I say!" "I will not," sullenly answered the earl, unwillingly conscious of the truth of his words; "I will not, till he hath answered me.

Once more," he added, turning to Nigel with a demoniac scowl, "where is she whom thou hast dared to call thy wife?
answer me, or as there is a hell beneath us, the torture shall wring it from thee!" "In safety, where thine arm shall never reach her," haughtily answered the young nobleman.

"Torture! what wilt thou torture--the senseless clay?
Hence--I defy thee! Death will protect me from thy lawless power; death will set his seal upon me ere we meet again." The earl muttered a deep and terrible oath, and then he strode away, coming in such violent contact against the slight and almost paralyzed form of Gloucester's page as he stood in the doorway, as nearly to throw him to the ground.