"I would willingly believe you," answered the Earl, "most willingly, for yours is a countenance from which I have been accustomed to expect nothing but truth and honour. Yet why do these men accuse you? Why, if there be not proof as strong as truth itself why do they dare to bring an accusation against one of your high house? Oh, young man! young man! if you have slain him by fraud or villany, I will take vengeance of you by making you the public spectacle, and giving you up to the rope and scaffold: chains shall hang about you even in your death, and your bones shall whiten in the wind. But, if you have slain him foot to foot and hand to hand, you shall meet a father's vengeance in another way. Ay! old as I am, I will take your heart's blood, and you shall find that this arm has lost nothing of its skill and but little of its strength. You shall learn what a father's arm can do when heavy with the sword of the avenger!" "Once more, my lord," replied Langford, calmly, "I assure you that I am perfectly innocent. I assure you that, neither fairly and openly, nor covertly and treacherously, have I had aught to do with your son's death. The sole ground for suspicion against me has been what I will not conceal from you, my lord, that, upon a slight quarrel between us, he drew his sword upon me, in the park of Sir Walter Herbert." "Ay, Sir Walter Herbert!" exclaimed the peer, with a bitter sneer; "the pitiful old fool! He and his fair dainty daughter, Mistress Alice, they would none of my son, would they not? He shall pay for it in prison, and she shall see him rot before her eyes. Ay, now I guess how it all is. She has found a lover in fair Master Henry Langford, has she? and he has murdered a rival who might have proved troublesome. They shall answer for it, they shall answer for it! Ho! below there!" he continued, approaching the door. "Bring me up the papers which those two knights left!" Langford suffered him to proceed with the wild and rapid starts to which the vehemence of his passions led him; but when he paused, the prisoner took up the conversation, saying, "I was about to tell you, my lord, that your son did seek a quarrel with me; did draw his sword upon me; did try to induce me to follow his example, but in vain." "What!" interrupted the peer, "did you refuse to fight him? How was that? a soldier, and a man of your race?" "I did refuse to fight him, my lord," replied Langford, "for particular reasons of my own. I have had many opportunities of showing that fear forms no part of my nature, and I am not at all apprehensive of ever being mistaken for a coward." He spoke with a calm and easy dignity, slightly throwing back his head, while the fine formed nostril expanded with a sense of honourable pride. The Earl gazed upon him attentively, the angry fire that had been in his eyes gradually subsiding as he did so, and he repeated more than once, in a low voice, "So like! So strangely like!"