w in her
voice, which had almost melted the heart of Beaumanoir himself; "ye are
elders among your people, and at your command I will show the features
of an ill-fated maiden."

She withdrew her veil, and looked on them with a countenance in which
bashfulness contended with dignity. Her exceeding beauty excited a
murmur of surprise, and the younger knights told each other with their
eyes, in silent correspondence, that Brian's best apology was in the
power of her real charms, rather than of her imaginary witchcraft. But
Higg, the son of Snell, felt most deeply the effect produced by the
sight of the countenance of his benefactress.

"Let me go forth," he said to the warders at the door of the hall,--"let
me go forth!--To look at her again will kill me, for I have had a share
in murdering her."

"Peace, poor man," said Rebecca, when she heard his exclamation; "thou
hast done me no harm by speaking the truth--thou canst not aid me by
thy complaints or lamentations. Peace, I pray thee--go home and save
thyself."

Higg was about to be thrust out by the compassion of the warders,
who were apprehensive lest his clamorous grief should draw upon them
reprehension, and upon himself punishment. But he promised to be silent,
and was permitted to remain. The two men-at-arms, with whom Albert
Malvoisin had not failed to communicate upon the import of their
testimony, were now called forward. Though both were hardened and
inflexible villains, the sight of the captive maiden, as well as her
excelling beauty, at first appeared to stagger them; but an expressive
glance from the Preceptor of Templestowe restored them to their dogged
composure; and they delivered, with a precision which would have seemed
suspicious to more impartial judges, circumstances either altogether
fictitious or trivial, and natural in themselves, but rendered pregnant
with suspicion by the exaggerated manner in which they were told, and
the sinister commentary which the witnesses added to the facts. The
circumstances of their evidence would have been, in modern days, divided
into two classes--those which were immaterial, and those which were
actually and physically impossible. But both were, in those ignorant
and superstitions times, easily credited as proofs of guilt.--The first
class set forth, that Rebecca was heard to mutter to herself in an
unknown tongue--that the songs she sung by fits were of a strangely
sweet sound, which made the ears of the hearer