"Come in!" cried a voice within; and the moment after, Sir Osborne found himself confronted with the man whose name we have often had occasion to mention with but little praise in the course of the preceding pages, Sir Payan Wileton. He was seated in an arm-chair, at the farther end of the small book-room, which, all petty as it was, when compared with the vast libraries of the present day, offered a prodigy in point of literary treasure, in those times when the invention of the press had made but little progress towards superseding the painful and expensive method of manual transcription. About a hundred volumes, in gay bindings of vellum and of velvet, ornamented the shelves, and two or three others lay on a table before him, at which also was seated a clerk, busily engaged in writing. Sir Payan himself was a man of about fifty, of a deep ashy complexion, and thin, strongly-marked features. His eyes were dark, shrewd, and bright, and sunk deep below his brows, in the midst of which was to be observed a profound wrinkle, which gave his face a continual frown. His cheek-bones were high, his hair was short and grizzled, and his whole appearance had, perhaps, more of sternness than of cunning. On the entrance of Sir Osborne Maurice, for a moment no one spoke, and the two knights regarded each other in silence, with an austere bitterness that might have spoken them old enemies. But while he gazed on the young knight, Sir Payan's hand, which lay on some papers before him, gradually contracted, clenched harder and harder, till at length the red blood in his thin knuckles vanished away, and they became white as a woman's by the force of the compression. But it was in vain! Sir Osborne's glance mastered his, and dashing his hand across his brow, he broke forth:-- "So, this is he who excited my tenants and labourers to revolt against the king in that unfortunate Cornish insurrection, and who led them on to plunder my bailiff's dwelling, and to murder my bailiff! Clerk, make out instantly the warrant for his removal to Cornwall, with copies of the depositions taken here, that he may be tried and punished for his crimes on the spot where they were committed." "Sir Payan Wileton," said the knight, still regarding him with the same steady, determined gaze, "we meet for the first time to-day; but I think you know me." "I do, sir; I do!" replied Sir Payan, without varying from the hurried and impatient manner in which he had spoken at first. "I know you for a rebellious instigator to all kinds of mischief, and for a homicide. Speak, Richard Heartley; did the prisoner offer any resistance? Has he added any fresh crimes to those he has already perpetrated?"