"See justice done to me. My half-brother is gone upon a sorcery. His lands and gear are forfeit to me that inform against him and his name and bride have been given me by the Prince Bishop." Then the lawyer, Magister Stone of Barnsides by Glororem, ran across the hall from the little door in the great ones. He began, as it were, a sort of trafficing between the Knight and the Bishop, not neglecting the Lord Percy and the Knight’s father, but running backwards and forwards between the one and the other, raising his hands to their breasts and squeaking, though there was no hearing what he said. His weazened face, his brown furred gown, his chattering voice and his long jaw worked incessantly so that he resembled a monkey that was chewing straws with voracity and haste. A Widdrington, a Eure and a Selby, desperate young men and fast friends of the young Lovell, rushed upon the Decies with their daggers out. But the Bishop pushed them back and cried out for silence. And because all there saw that the Lady Rohtraut, upon her feet, was pointing down at the Lord Lovell and calling out to him, they held their tongues to hear what she was saying. They caught the end of a sentence calling upon the Lord Lovell to have that filthy and blaspheming bastard cast from the top of the White Tower. Then all eyes saw that the Lord Lovell was laughing. He had begun with a slow grin: by little and little he had understood that his son at last had made a fine, impudent stroke. He had struck his thigh with his hand; he had tried to cry out that this was the finest stroke of all and that his son had got up early enough, at last. But he could get no words out. Then he had begun his laughing. He laughed, rolling from side to side: he laughed, shaking so that his leathern chair cracked beneath him. His stomach trembled in an agony of laughter, his eyes gazing painfully and fixed at the scarlet and green chequers of the tablecloth. Between tornadoes of shaken laughter he gasped for breath, and all the while the Lady Rohtraut stood gazing down upon him as if he were a loathsome dog struck with a fit. All men there stood still to watch him laugh. And suddenly he threw his arms above his head, his face being purple and his eyes closed like a drunkard’s. With the passion and strength of his laughter the blood gushed from his mouth and nose like falling scarlet ribbons. His body came forward on the tablecloth; monks and doctors craned forwards over him. The Percy moved disdainfully away as if from a sick and filthy beast, and over the table the body shook and quivered in the last gusts of laughter.