"
"For shame, Morton--an orphan boy!--Hearken thee, my child--Thou
hast told me some of thy accomplishments--canst thou speak truth?"
"Ay, my lord, when it serves my turn," replied Graeme.
"It shall serve thy turn now," said the Regent; "and falsehood shall
be thy destruction. How much hast thou heard or understood of what we
two have spoken together?"
"But little, my lord," replied Roland Graeme boldly, "which met my
apprehension, saving that it seemed to me as if in something you
doubted the faith of the Knight of Avenel, under whose roof I was
nurtured."
"And what hast thou to say on that point, young man?" continued the
Regent, bending his eyes upon him with a keen and strong expression of
observation.
"That," said the page, "depends on the quality of those who speak
against his honour whose bread I have long eaten. If they be my
inferiors, I say they lie, and will maintain what I say with my baton;
if my equals, still I say they lie, and will do battle in the quarrel,
if they list, with my sword; if my superiors"--he paused.
"Proceed boldly," said the Regent--"What if thy superiors said aught
that nearly touched your master's honour?"
"I would say," replied Graeme, "that he did ill to slander the absent,
and that my master was a man who could render an account of his
actions to any one who should manfully demand it of him to his face."
"And it were manfully said," replied the Regent--"what thinkest thou,
my Lord of Morton?"
"I think," replied Morton, "that if the young galliard resemble a
certain ancient friend of ours, as much in the craft of his
disposition as he does in eye and in brow, there may be a wide
difference betwixt what he means and what he speaks.
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