LACY To have been trapped like moles!—­
              Yes, you are right, we need not hunt for motives: 
              There is no crime from which this man would shrink;
              He recks not human law; and I have noticed
              That often when the name of God is uttered,
              A sudden blankness overspreads his face.

LENNOX Yet, reasoner as he is, his pride has built
              Some uncouth superstition of its own.

WALLACE I have seen traces of it.

LENNOX Once he headed
              A band of Pirates in the Norway seas;
              And when the King of Denmark summoned him
              To the oath of fealty, I well remember,
              ’Twas a strange answer that he made; he said,
              “I hold of Spirits, and the Sun in heaven.”

LACY
               He is no madman.

WALLACE
                                 A most subtle doctor
              Were that man, who could draw the line that parts
              Pride and her daughter, Cruelty, from Madness,
              That should be scourged, not pitied.  Restless Minds,
              Such Minds as find amid their fellow-men
              No heart that loves them, none that they can love,
              Will turn perforce and seek for sympathy
              In dim relation to imagined Beings.

ONE OF THE BAND
              What if he mean to offer up our Captain
              An expiation and a sacrifice
              To those infernal fiends!

WALLACE Now, if the event
              Should be as Lennox has foretold, then swear,
              My Friends, his heart shall have as many wounds
              As there are daggers here.

LACY What need of swearing!

ONE OF THE BAND Let us away!

ANOTHER Away!

A THIRD Hark! how the horns
              Of those Scotch Rovers echo through the vale.

LACY Stay you behind; and when the sun is down,
              Light up this beacon.

ONE OF THE BAND You shall be obeyed.

[They go out together.]

SCENE—­The Wood on the edge of the Moor.

MARMADUKE (alone)

MARMADUKE Deep, deep and vast, vast beyond human thought,
              Yet calm.—­I could believe, that there was here
              The only quiet heart on earth.  In terror,
              Remembered terror, there is peace and rest.

[Enter OSWALD]

OSWALD Ha! my dear Captain.

MARMADUKE A later meeting, Oswald,
              Would have been better timed.

OSWALD Alone, I see;
              You have done your duty.  I had hopes, which now
              I feel that you will justify.