Signed, at Orleans, Norman Leslie, the younger, of Pitcullo, this eighth of May, in the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and twenty-nine." When I had ended, he took away his blasphemous dagger-point from my throat.
"Very clerkly read," he spake, "and all runs smooth; methinks myself had been no poor scribe, were I but a clerk.

Hadst thou written other matter, to betray my innocence, thou couldst not remember what I said, even word for word," he added gleefully.

"Now I might strangle thee slowly"; and he set his fingers about my throat, I being too weak to do more than clutch at his hand, with a grasp like a babe's.

"But that leaves black finger-marks, another kind of witness than thine in my favour.

Or I might give thee the blade of this blessed crucifix; yet dagger wounds are like lips and have a voice, and blood cries from the ground, says Holy Writ.