Mary of Lorraine

CHAPTER V

THE "GOLDEN ROSE."

Leo.—What would you have with me, honest neighbour?

Dog.—Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you, that decerns you nearly.

Leo.—Brief, I pray you; for, you see, 'tis a busy time with me.

                                                                        "Much Ado about Nothing."

The sun was setting in the westward—for in the year of grace 1547 it set in the westward just as it does now, though history omits to record the fact. Seven had tolled from the square towers of St. Mary and of the Commanderie of St. Anthony at Leith, on the evening of the first of August, the same on which we left a mother seated in the old tower upon the hills waiting anxiously for her son, when the latter—to wit, Florence Fawside—left the ship of the Sieur Nicolas de Villegaignon, knight of Rhodes, and admiral of the galleys of France, and landing with all his luggage, which consisted of three large leathern mails, found himself once more on terra firma, after a long but prosperous voyage from Brest; and, with a glow of satisfaction on his nut-brown visage, he stamped on the ground, to assure himself that it was not a planked deck, but the land—and good Scottish land too,—as he hurriedly approached the quaint wooden porch of "Ye Gowden Rois" (i.e. the "Golden Rose"), an hostel which bore that emblem painted on a huge signboard that swung between two wooden posts.

The latter were placed near the bank of the river, for although, to the eastward, there lay the charred remains of a wooden pier, burned by the English in 1544, Leith was destitute of a quay in those days; and thus a row of little gardens extended along the eastern bank between the water and the street of quaint Flemish-like mansions which faced it. These plots, or kailyards, were divided by privet or holly hedges, and among them lay fisher-boats, tar-barrels, rusty anchors, brown nets, and bladders, with other débris of the mercantile and fisher craft, which lay moored on both sides of the stream below Abbot Ballantyne's Bridge, the three stone arches of which spanned the Leith, where the pathway led to the church and burying-ground of St. Nicholas, and where stood a gate, at which a somewhat lucrative toll was levied by the monks of the Holy Cross.

Passing between the signposts and up the bank, Florence Fawside found himself before the "Golden Rose," a long irregular house three stories in height, built all of polished stone, yet having a front of elaborate timberwork forming two galleries, supported on carved pillars, and surmounted by three gables, whose acute apex sharply cut the sky-line, and gave the edifice a quaint and striking aspect. Cloaks of velvet and of camlet, horse-cloths, crimson saddles, belts of gold or buff leather, with one or two huge pieces of gaudy tapestry, were hung carelessly over the oak rails of the galleries, in which many persons were lounging, for the house and the stable-yard behind it were alike full of guests and bustle. The "Golden Rose" was the principal hostelry in Leith, and had been built for the accommodation of travellers, a few years before, by Logan of Restalrig, Lord Superior of the barony. Hence, the landlord, Ralf Riddel, being one of his vassals, was bound to give "up-putting to all the laird's retinue, man and horse, when they chanced to pass that way," a contingency which happened more frequently than the said Master Riddel, with all his inbred respect for the house of Logan, perhaps relished, especially as no overcharge could be made upon other visitors, for, by a statute of the late King James V., the bailies of royalties and regalities made a regular tariff of prices to be observed by all hostellers throughout the realm, and by this tariff the charges for corn, hay and straw, fish, flesh, bread, wine and ale, were all regulated and enforced under high penalties; but, by the same law, persons travelling with much money in their possession are wisely advised to reside with their friends. As Fawside entered, he observed a group of gentlemen, richly dressed, observing him narrowly from a dark gallery above the porch.

Though the arrival of a stranger, especially one on foot, did not usually excite much attention at the establishment of Master Ralf Riddel, the air and bearing, the handsome figure, and fine features of the young laird of Fawside, with his short-clipped beard and black moustache, à la François I., his magnificent crimson-velvet doublet, which was profusely embroidered with gold, and stiff as buckram and lace could make it, his enormous ruff and long sword, his little French cap of blue velvet, adorned by a long white feather, and diamond aigrette, the gift of Anne of Albany, his long black riding-boots, the tops of which joined his short trunk-hose, altogether caused the tapster and ostlers to make so favourable a report of his appearance that he was speedily waited on by the gudeman of the establishment in person.

He was conducted to an apartment the grated windows of which overlooked the stable-yard. The latter was full of pages, liveried lackeys, and armed troopers in iron-jacks, steel bonnets, and plate sleeves; horses, saddled and unsaddled, were led to and fro; and clumps of tall spears were reared here and there against the walls. The clamour of voices and clatter of hoofs, together with the neighing of steeds and barking of dogs, made the place instinct with life. The hostel was occupied by several of the noblesse and their retinues—for then no great lord could travel with out a troop of horse in his train; but, all unmindful of the bustle below, young Florence of Fawside, when the landlord returned, was gazing earnestly to the eastward, where, upon the crown of the high green eminence or sloping upland that overlooked the spacious bay of Musselburgh and stretched far away into Haddingtonshire, all bathed in gold and purple by the setting sun, he could discern, some ten miles distant, the outline of his old paternal home rising above the thicket of trees by which it was environed.

On turning, as he heard a step behind, he saw, on the roughly-hewn fir boards which formed the floor of the apartment, an ominous black stain, nearly a foot in circumference, to remind him that he dwelt in a land of swords and danger.

"I require a horse, gudeman," said he, divesting himself of his velvet mantle and rich sword-belt.

"A horse!—at this hour, sir?"

"Even so, my friend, for in less than an hour I must ride hence. You have, doubtless, a swift nag to spare?"

"Yea, sir, ten, if ye lacked them—ten, than whilk my Lord Regent hath none better in stall."

"'Tis well; and now for supper. I have been long in the land of kickshaws and frogs, where bearded men sup fricassees bedevilled with garlic and onions, in lieu of porridge and sturdy kailbrose; so, gudeman of mine, I long for a right Scottish dish."

"That shall ye have, fair sir, and welcome, with a stoup of Canary, Bourdeaux, or Alicant——"

"Nay, I am no bibber, believe me."

"We get brave gude wine hereawa in Leith, sir, by our trade with the Flemings of the Dam."

"After seven years in a foreign land, gudeman," said Florence, slapping the hosteller kindly on the back, while his heart swelled and his eyes filled, "your Scottish tongue comes like music to my ear—yea, like the melody o' an auld song, man; and I snuff up my native air like a young horse turned out to grass; for, save once a year, by a letter given me by a passing traveller hastening Paris-ward, I have heard naught from home, or of aught that passed in Scotland here."

"Nocht, said ye?"

"Naught—so the term of my absence seems marvellously long—naught but evil," he added, with a darkening expression of face.

"Evil!"

"Yea; for I have returned to avenge the death of a dear kinsman."

"Such errands are nothing new in Scotland," said Ralf Riddel, sighing and shrugging his shoulders.

"No—in these hot days of feud and endless quarrelling. 'Tis a heavy task I have in hand, gudeman; but it must be done, when I have obeyed the behests of those I left in France."

"Belong you to hereawa, sir?"

"I do," replied Fawside, smiling.

"May I be pardoned for—for——"

"For what?" asked Florence, while the hosteller smoothed down his front hair, and twirled his bonnet on his fingers; "for what should I pardon you?"

"For speiring your name?"

"You may be pardoned, but not gratified, gudeman," replied Florence, laughing. "There are over-many under your rooftree to make it safe for me to utter my name aloud, alone as I am; for though I have been wellnigh seven years away, I have not forgotten the danger of rashly telling one's name in fiery Scotland."

"You are right, sir; yet my house is one without reproach."

"What says this dark stain on the floor?"

"That there I slew an Englishman, in the May of '44, when all Leith was in flames—houses, ships, and and piers—and ten thousand of his comrades, under the Lord Hertford, were on the march for Edinburgh. Yea, sir, I slew him there by one blow of my jeddart staff, for making his quarters good at sword's point. The 'Gowden Rose' is a house without reproach."

"But its visitors may not be so, despite their silken doublets and gilded coats of mail. Whose jackmen and lacqueys are these in the stable-yard?"

"The followers of the Earl of Glencairn, and of his son, the Lord Kilmaurs; of the Lord Gray and his son, the Master, with others whom I ken not; but they muster eighty horsemen in all."

"The English faction!" muttered Fawside. "By Heaven, 'tis high time I had the water of Esk behind my horse's heels. And these lords——"

"Are all on their way to Stirling, to keep tryste with the Lord Regent."

"Fool that I was, not to know at once the shakefork of the stable worn by the ruffians of Glencairn," said Fawside, referring to the cognizance of the Cunninghames, which is argent, a shakefork sable, granted to Henry of Kilmaurs, who was master stabler to King Alexander III.

"And those fellows in pyne doublets and cuirasses?"

"With the oak branch in their burganets, and morsing horns at their girdles?"

"Yes."

"They are the liverymen of the laird of Preston."

"Of Claude Hamilton of Preston!" exclaimed Fawside, instinctively assuming his sword.

"Yes."

"By St. Giles, I was right to speak below my beard, and utter not my name." Then, in a fierce whisper, he added, "Is he here?"

"No."

"So much the better. But get me supper and a swift horse. Sumpter nags will come anon for my leathern mails, which I leave in your care, gudeman. Beware how you let men handle them, though my papers and valuables I carry on my own proper person, where my sword can easier answer any kind friend who inquires after them."

"My house, I have said, is stainless and sakeless."

"And now for supper," said Florence impatiently.

"I can let you have a pie of eels, from Lithgow Loch; a hash of Fife mutton, yea, mutton from Largo, where they say every tooth in a sheep's head is worth a French crown."

"Good!—the supper quick, the horse quicker," said Fawside laughing;—for it was a superstition in those days, and for long after, that the teeth of the flocks which browsed on the conical hill of Largo were turned to solid silver by its herbage.

He then turned once more to the window, to gaze on his mother's distant dwelling,—on those hills from whence the last gleam of sunlight had now died away. He drew from a pocket in the breast of his beautiful doublet two letters, tied with white ribbons saltirewise, and sealed with yellow wax, impressed by three fleur-de-lys. One was addressed—

"A Madame ma soeur, la Seine d'Ecosse."

The other bore—

"For Monseigneur the Earl of Arran, Lord Hamilton, Knight of St. Andrew and St. Michael, Regent of Scotland."

The young traveller surveyed these important missives with a smile of satisfaction, and once more consigned them to the secret pocket of his doublet. While left thus to himself and his own thoughts, certain parties in an adjoining apartment were taking a particular interest in his affairs.

CHAPTER VI.

CURIOSITY.

                                                        "Who's he?
I know not—Duke Humphrey, mayhap;
But this I know, my sword will test it soon."
                                                                                Old Play.

This apartment, which was next to that in which Florence Fawside was testing the merits of the eels of Linlithgow Loch (which are still much prized) and Ralf Riddel's Largo mutton and Alicant wine, opened off the shady gallery wherein we left a gaily-attired group, who had watched the traveller enter the "Golden Rose."

This group, which had also been observing a number of poor lepers, who, under a guard of men-at-arms, were on the sands waiting the boats which were to convey them to banishment on Inch Keith, and had made them the subject of various cruel and ribald jokes—this group, was composed of several men of better position than conduct, for it consisted of that Earl of Glencairn, who had slain one of his nearest relations under tryst; of the Earl of Cassilis; of Patrick Lord Gray of Kinfawns, and his son the master; John Lord Lyle of Duchal, and his son James the Master of Lyle, who had together slain Sir John Penny, an unarmed priest. Several gentlemen of their different surnames were with them—all men who had more or less shed blood in the private quarrels and open feuds of that wild and lawless time. All were richly dressed, for the age was one of profusion and ostentation; the splendour of the third and fourth James was yet remembered in the land, which had not as yet suffered by the civil wars and depression subsequent to the Reformation. Many of those to whom we are about to introduce the reader had their coats of arms embroidered on the breasts of their gorgeous doublets; but the greater number wore half armour, gorgets, breast-plates, and plate sleeves; and all, without distinction, had long swords, Scottish daggers, and Italian pistols or calivers at their girdles; and they were all, in secret, members of the anti-national or English faction—of which more anon.

"I have a presentiment that yonder young galliard in the crimson velvet bravery bodes us no good," said the Lord Kilmaurs in an undertone. He was a stern and reckless noble, whose brown-velvet hat had already been perforated by two bullets in a brawl that day.

"Why think you so, son?" asked his father the earl, whose cold grey eye ever suggested the idea that his lordship said one thing while thinking another.

"He came from yonder gilded galley of the Sieur de Villegaignon—and see! here come the admiral's own bargemen, with the lilies of France upon their pourpoints, bearing his mails. By my soul, sirs, this spark is served like a king's ambassador!"

"And may he not be the envoy of Henry of France?" asked some one.

"Nay, for he is only young Florence Fawside of that ilk, as I understand," said the Lord Kilmaurs, to whose right eye a savage glare was imparted, together with a spasmodic contortion of that side of his face, by a dreadful sword-wound, which he received at the defeat of the English at Ancramford.

"Only!" reiterated his father, with an accent upon the word; "Mahoun! art thou sure of this?"

"Sure as I am a living man."

"But men say he is still in France," urged the Lord Lyle.

"Nay, my lord," began the Master of Lyle, "for the old beldame his mother——"

"She is a Kennedy of Colzean, and my near kinswoman," interrupted Lord Cassilis haughtily.

"I crave your pardon, though fortunately we are not of Carrick, where all men court St. Kennedie," replied the other, bowing with a smile on his lip and a sneer in his eye; "but Dame Alison hath written letters into France to the Duchess Anne of Albany and Vendome, desiring her to send back the youth, that he might avenge the death of his brother, whom Claude Hamilton of Preston slew at the king's barresse, and in fair fight, as we all can testify."

"Ay, old Preston's sword hath been reddened alike in the blood of father and son, a strange but not uncommon fatality."

"Consanguinity, my Lord Lyle, should make that quarrel ours too," said the Earl of Cassilis; "but fortunately, I have no wish to embroil myself with Preston, and the old dame Alison hath ever disdained our aid and alliance."

"If that bedizened spark be really Fawside her son, he has been long in the service of Anne de la Tour of Vendome, widow of the late Regent Albany," said one who had not yet spoken, and whose accent marked his country as England, though he wore the badges and livery of the house of Glencairn; "and rede me, sirs, he hath some other mission to Scotland here than his mother's feud with the Prestons."

"Thou art right, Master Shelly," said James Master of Lyle, as a sudden gleam shot athwart his sinister visage; "in these days, when trusty messengers are scarce and bribes high, falsehood dear and fidelity dearer, I doubt not he hath letters from Henry of Valois to the Queen-Mother, and from the grasping princes of the house of Guise to the Regent Arran—and these letters must be inimical to us. Is it thus thou wouldst say, my valiant captain of the Boulogners?"

"It is," replied the disguised English soldier, whose steel salade was worn well over his handsome face, for concealment.

"Such letters would let us see their game, which 'twere well to know ere they can learn ours," said Glencairn. "But if they are concealed in the lining of his doublet, in the scabbard of his sword, in the quills of his feathers, or perhaps indited with invisible necromantic ink by Catherine de Medicis—for I have known all these plans resorted to—we may kill the poor knave for nothing, and raise a pestilent hubbub in the burgh to boot."

"Kill him here, then," said Kilmaurs, his son.

"What, in the hostel?" said his father, starting.

"Yes," was the brief and fierce response.

"'Twould embroil us with Logan, whose property it is. But every thread of his garments shall be searched. 'Twas a shrewd thought of thine, Master Edward Shelly, for time presses in the matter of our baby-queen's marriage to thy baby-king."

"If we find such letters on him," said Kilmaurs with a ferocious glance at each of his companions in succession, "by the five wounds of God he shall swallow them ere he die. I made an English spy eat five on the night before the battle of Ancramford."

"And how fared he after?" asked Shelly laughing.

"Ill enough, I trow."

"How?"

"He straightway swelled up like a huge ball, and burst, whereby I opined that the letters had been written with poisoned ink."

"And these letters——"

"Were all anent the ransom of a friend of mine, who shared in England the exile of Mathew of Lennox, and whose lands had been gifted by the late James to me."

"Let us see to this man at once," said Lord Lyle; "for I assure you, sirs, that if this fellow beareth letters out of France to mar our lucrative plans, by my father's soul I will slay him, even as I slew that shaveling mass-priest Penny!"

"And how slew ye him?" asked Master Shelly, an Englishman of pleasing countenance and good presence, who seemed amused by the quaint ferocity of these Scottish lords.

"I slew him like a faulty hound, because I liked him not," replied Lyle with a fierce grimace; "and hewed off his shaven head with my whinger. Then my son reminded me that a soothsayer, the prior of Deer, who now sleeps in Roslin chapel, had foretold by his cradle that in days to come his head should be the highest in Scotland. In sooth, it shall be so, quoth I; and, fixing it on my spear, which was six Scottish ells in length, I rode home with it thus through all the Carse of Gowrie to my castle of Duchal, where you may yet see the bare pyked bones of it grinning on the bartizan wall."

"And what answer made you to the law?"

The other drew himself up with ineffable hauteur, and briefly replied—

"I am the Lord Lyle!"

"Hush, sirs," said Glencairn; "our man is in the next room, perhaps, and may overhear us."

"Let us see to him," said Kilmaurs, loosening his dagger in its sheath.

"Stay, sirs," said Shelly the Englishman; "and excuse me if I am less reckless in bloodshed than you; for, under favour, and with all due deference be it said, I came from a more peaceful land, where if the sword is drawn, it is usually for some weightier reason than because one man wears a dress striped with red and another wears it striped with green, or because one man wears a tuft of heather in his steel cap and another sports a sprig of laurel; and so, ere you proceed to violence in this matter, I would pray your lordship to be well assured of who this stranger is."

"If we suspect this knight of the crimson suit of being a spy of the Valois or the Guises, what matter is it who he is?" replied the master of Lyle impatiently. "But there is the landlord in conference with one of Preston's followers, so, let us inquire of him."

"Ralf Riddel!—gudeman, come hither," said Kilmaurs.

Thus commanded, Riddel ascended to the gallery, with several low bows, while the man with whom he had been conversing, and who was no other than Symon Brodie the butler of Preston, an unscrupulous and bloodthirsty swashbuckler, remained, bonnet in hand, on the steps a little lower down, to listen greedily to all he might overhear from a group so gaily attired.

"Did not yonder gay galliard come from a ship in the roads?" asked Lord Kilmaurs.

"Who?" responded Riddel, with evident reluctance.

"He of the crimson-velvet doublet and long French boots."

"Yes, sir," replied Riddel, with increasing hesitation, for he read mischief in the eyes of all.

"From the galley of Nicolas de Villegaignon?"

"Yes, my lords."

"He hath come from France, then!" said Kilmaurs sternly.

"It would seem so."

"Seem! Speak to the point," continued the fiery heir of Glencairn, "or, by the horns of Mahoun! we will burn thy house to the groundstone. It is so!"

"Yes—my lords,—yes."

"Speak out, cullionly knave," thundersd the Lord Kilmaurs, the long scar on whose visage became purple as his anger increased; "his name——"

"I ken it not."

"How—ye ken it not?"

"No."

"Why!"

"He conceals it."

"Hah! that betokens secrecy!" exclaimed Lord Lyle.

"And as we have secret projects," added his son, "we must suspect all of having the same; so doubt not that he hath letters. All who come from the vicinity of the Louvre, or the Hotel de Guise, bring dangerous letters to Holyrood, dangerous at least to us, and we must have them."

"He has come from France, my lords,—from France direct," said Symon Brodie, approaching and speaking in a whisper, as the abashed landlord withdrew. "Mairower, he is Florence Fawside of that ilk."

"You know him, then?" said several.

"Yea, and a' the race; I ken their dour dark look, and wha but he could wear on his breast, gules, a fess between three besants or?"

"Right, by Heaven!" said the master of Lyle.

"A follower of Anne of Vendome must have letters from which we may glean what France or the Lorraine princes mean to do," said Shelly bluntly; "cut him off if you will, but not here,—it must be done secretly."

"To horse, then," said Glencairn hoarsely, as if, wolf-like, he already scented blood on the soft evening breeze that came from the glassy river; "to horse, and beset all the roads—Leith-loan, the Figgate Muir, and every path to the southward and the east,—for if he passes the brig of Esk to-night our cause perhaps is lost. He bears, doubtless, letters to the Regent and Queen, with promises of war with England and succour from France. Pietro Strozzi, the Marechal Duke de Montmorenci, or the Comte de Dammartin, with twenty thousand arquebusiers and gendarmes, thrown into the scale against us, would leave our cause and the boy King Edward's but a feather-weight. To horse, sirs, and away; for this August gloaming darkens fast, and night will be on us anon!"

As the earl spoke, they all hurried to the stables, and proceeded to saddle and mount their horses for the deadly purpose in view, and none were more active than Symon Brodie and seven other armed lackeys of the Laird of Preston, who joined in the affair, with no other interest or intention than to cut off the poor youth, in prosecution of the wretched quarrel between their master's house and his; for men joined in such deadly things in those days, as readily as now we go to see a horse-race, a fire, or an election row.

Master Edward Shelly, the Englishman, who was disguised as a follower of the House of Glencairn, joined in the plot also, but with some unwillingness; for he ran considerable risk. By the laws of James II., any Englishman found in Scotland became the lawful captive of the first man who discovered him; and any Scottish subject who met an English man under tryst, as these noblesse were doing, was liable to imprisonment during the king's pleasure, and to the forfeiture of all he possessed.

Such was the law passed by the parliament at Stirling, in 1455.

CHAPTER VII.

THE BRAWL.

My sword, my spear, my shaggy shield,
    They make me lord of all below;
For he who dreads the lance to wield
    Before my shaggy shield must bow;
His lands, his vineyards must resign,
For all that cowards have is mine.
                                                                    Dr. Leyden.

Being a married man, Ralf Riddel went straightway to his spouse, and in whispers—lest the panelled walls might have ears—he communicated his suspicions of the deadly intentions of his titled guests. A landlady of the nineteenth century would instantly, on learning such tidings, have made an outcry and summoned the police; but Euphemia Riddel received them with the coolness incident to those days, when every other morning a man slashed by sword or dagger was found dead or dying somewhere in the streets of Edinburgh.

"And what mean ye to do, gudeman?" she asked.

"Leave the event to Providence, gudewife."

"To Providence and their whingers!" she exclaimed.

"Hush, or the hail hive will be on us!" said he in a terrified whisper.

"Foul fa' ye, Ralf Riddel, if ye permit this wicked slaughter of a winsome young man!"

"But they would ding their daggers into me in a trice."

"What of that?" she asked sharply.

"A sma' matter to you perhaps, but mickle to me; and if I was pinked below the ribs by these bullies, Symon Brodie, that bluidthirsty and drunken butler o' auld Preston's would soon be drawing in his chair at the ingle. That chield is ower often here, gudewife, and I dinna like it. It is no aye for ale and up-putting he comes to the 'Golden Rose.' But what shall I do anent Fawside?"

"Gowk! do that whilk is right."

"And that is——?" queried Ralf, scratching his head—

"To send a saddled horse to the Burgess close, and let the young laird out by the back yett while these lords and loons are busy in the yard. Take the horse round by your own hand while I see to the puir gentleman."

The matter was thus arranged at once; and while the gudeman of the hostel led the nag through a narrow by-lane to the place indicated, an old and narrow alley of dark and lofty houses which opened eastward off the bank of the river, his better half acquainted the young traveller with the danger which menaced him. With the boldness of his race, he at first refused to fly, and resolved to confront these men and fight them. Then he thought of his mother, and yielded to the entreaties of the good woman, his preserver.

"I will owe you a brooch of gold for this, gudewife," said he, kissing her hand and buckling on his sword.

It was the first time so brave and handsome a gentleman had done her this courtesy, and the heart of the woman swelled anew with pride and sympathy.

"Away! away!" she exclaimed, "lest dool and wae light on thy house and home to-night!"

"I thank you, gudewife—thank you kindly; I would not for worlds, were they mine, be maimed in a night-brawl by swashbucklers such as these, for I have greater and nobler work to perform than crossing my sword with such a rabble rout."

"Ay, the defence of our holy Kirk of Rome?"

"Nay; I shall not be slow in defending that if the time come; but I have a beloved father's murder under tryst and a tender brother's death in mortal combat to avenge, with the wrongs of centuries, upon the Hamiltons of Preston!" replied Florence, who, instead of having his ardour cooled by the fate of his relatives, longed with intense eagerness to see unsheathed against him the same sword by which they fell, that he might slay its wielder without mercy or remorse.

"And now, fair sir, away!"

"And the horse——"

"Is at the Burgess Close foot, nigh unto the loan-end. Ride straight for Edinburgh, lest the eastward road to the Abbey Hill be beset."

"Thanks, madam," replied Florence, with a low French bow, as he loosened his long sword in its sheath, left the inn by a private door, and piloting his way in the twilight between hedgerows and low thatch-roofed cottages, reached the place where Riddel stood, holding the horse by its bridle. The hosteller would not listen to a word of thanks from Fawside, but urged him to "ride swiftly;" and assuredly time pressed, for he was barely in the saddle when at least forty armed and mounted men issued with scabbards, petronels, and hoofs clattering, from the stable-yard, and, separating into parties, proceeded at a rapid trot to beset the paths in every direction.

Fawside gave his horse the spur, and Riddel saw the sparks of fire fly from the flinty road as it sprang away towards the city.

When again the hosteller of the "Golden Rose" saw his fair roan nag, it was pierced by bullets, half-disembowelled, and lying drowned in the lake which then formed the northern moat of Edinburgh.

The darkness had now completely set in; and, save where a few trees, turf fences, or low dykes of stone and earth inclosed the fields, the whole country between the city and its seaport was open, but varied by many undulations and eminences covered by furze, tufted broom, and dark-green whin, or broken by hollows that were swampy, where the coot squatted in the oozy pools and the heron sent up its lonely cry from amid the thick rushes and masses of the broad-leaved water-dock.

Leaving Leith, which was then without those strong walls and iron gates by which it was engirt during the stormy regency of Mary of Lorraine, Fawside, after tracking his way almost instinctively through narrow alleys of thatched cottages and kail-gardens, ascended the brae above the Abbot's Bridge, and reached the road that led by the Bonny-toun (or Bonnie-haugh), a little hamlet where, in after-years, old Bishop Keith wrote his "History of the Scottish Church;" but the hum of the river, which there poured over a ledge of rough rocks, had scarcely died away in his rear, when swiftly and furiously he heard the clatter of iron hoofs upon the dusty bridle-road he was traversing.

At that moment the near hind shoe of his nag gave way, but by adhering to the hoof by a nail or two for some paces, nearly brought the animal down on its haunches, and even this trivial occurrence served to lessen the distance between Fawside and his pursuers, who cared not to disguise their purpose, as they shouted, halloed, and taunted him by all the epithets and scurrility incident to the vulgar of the time; and foremost of all this rout, who were becoming excited with a thirst for blood and all the ardour of a hunt or race, rode Symon Brodie, the butler of Preston, mounted on a blood horse which belonged to his master, and had more than once borne at its neck the silver bell, the prize of the winner at Lanark races.

"Come on! come on!" he was exclaiming; "and look, lads, to your whingers and spur-whangs, for we win on him fast! Turn ye, Fawside! turn ye! and face, if ye dare, the same men that slew your kinsmen! Through! through!—a Hamilton! a Hamilton!"

These taunts made Fawside's blood boil within him, and a storm of hatred at these enemies of his family now tracking him with the most deadly intentions, gathered with stern ferocity in his heart: but the odds were too many against him; and though his cheek glowed and every pulse quickened with passion, he held on his way towards the city without swerving or casting a single glance behind. His pursuers were now so close, that he could hear them encouraging each other and laughing at those whom they distanced.

"Spur on—spur on!" cried the butler; "this gay galliard has nine golden targets at his velvet hat."

"They will blink brawly at our bonnet-lugs in the morning sun!" exclaimed another, goring his horse on hearing this fabricated incentive to blood and robbery. "I have plundered Dame Alison's eel-arks in the Howmire for a month past, and grazed my nowte on Birsley brae, but I must e'en change a' that if the laird win hame."

"The auld devil in the tower will burst her bobbins wi' spite if we slay her son!" said a third.

"On, on," cried others, "ere he gain the town-gates, for then the watch and the craftsmen will be raised like a hornet's nest on us, and the provost has but one word for brawlers—the Wuddie!"

"Sooth ay!" panted Brodie, pricking his horse with his dagger to increase its speed; "beware o' the Buith-holders and armed burgesses, for he is a landed man, and if we slay him——"

"Aver that we took him for a brawler, a dustifute, or fairand man."

"Havers!" exclaimed the savage butler; "wit ye, lads, 'tis our master's just feud. The young wolf hath come from France to slay our master. Preston is auld now, while he is lithe and young; no battle could be fair between them, so let us cut him off ere we ride homeward to-night—cut him off I say!"

"By my father's hand!" exclaimed another horseman who came abreast of them, and panted as he spoke, "I will venture both craig and weason to drive my dagger in his brisket. I will teach Scottish men to become the spies of France."

"Or the paid hirelings of England," retorted Fawside, now turning for the first time, and with his wheel-lock petronel discharging a flying shot at haphazard among his pursuers. One by the side of the last speaker, who was the Lord Kilmaurs, fell prone with a loud cry on the narrow path. Whether he was killed outright, or merely wounded, his comrades never tarried to inquire; but with a shout of rage and defiance, continued the race for death and life in the dark.

This episode occurred near a mill belonging to the monks of Holyrood—a quaint old edifice, having enormous buttresses, and in which King Robert I., when well stricken in years, is said by tradition to have found shelter on a stormy winter night, when the path to Edinburgh was buried deep under the drifted snow.

Skirting a little loch, the waters of which turned the mills of the canons of Sanctæ Crucis, the fugitive continued his flight towards the city, up the undulating slope now covered by the New Town of Edinburgh, but then a wilderness of furze and broom, till he reached the North-loch, which formed a moat or protection for the capital of the James's; for on that side there was no other defence than this artificial sheet of water, which the magistrates could at all times deepen by closing the sluice at the eastern extremity, between the Dow-Craig, or Calton, and the Craig-end gate.

Before Fawside the long and lofty ridge of the ancient city on its steep of rock and hill, upreared its rugged outline against the starry sky, broken into a hundred fantastic shapes, and terminating at the westward in the black and abrupt bluffs, crowned by the ancient castle, which then consisted of four huge donjons or masses of mason-work, the towers of King David, of St. Margaret, of the constable, and the royal lodging; but all were black and grim, for neither in the guarded fortress nor the walled city did a single ray of light shine out to vary the dusky gloom of the scenery. Our fathers went to bed betimes in the year 1547.

In the bosom of the long and narrow loch which spread before him, the reflected stars were twinkling, and headlong down its grassy slope he rode, and, without a moment's hesitation, plunged in his panting horse, with knee and spur, voice and bridle, urging it to gain the opposite bank; then plunge after plunge resounded on both sides, as nearly a score of horsemen leaped in after him, dashing the waters into a myriad foamy ripples, and resolved to follow him to the last; while others, less determined, or less interested in his destruction, or the capture of the supposed French missives, reined up their chargers on the bank, and fired their wheel-lock petronels at him, as his roan horse breasted the dark water bravely, and snorted, swimming with its head aloft and flanks immersed. Ere it was mid-way across, the poor animal uttered a wild cry, writhed under the rider, and by throwing back its head in agony, announced that it was mortally wounded, for it sank almost immediately, leaving Fawside to disentangle his feet from the stirrups and strike out for the opposite bank. Fortunately he had learned to swim expertly in the Loire, when at Vendome; thus he soon gained the opposite bank, but not without considerable difficulty, as its steep slope was covered by rushes, slime, and weedy grass.

The wheel-lock, or pistol, used by the men-at-arms of those days, was an invention of the Germans, and we have a minute description of it in Luigi Collados' treatise on Artillery, published at Venice in 1586, when it was deemed a firearm as perfect as now we deem our boasted Enfield or Lancaster rifle. The lock was composed of a solid wheel of fine steel revolving on an axle, to which a chain was attached. On being wound, this wheel drew up a strong chain, which, on the trigger being pulled, whirled the wheel with such velocity that the friction of its notched edge struck fire from a flint screwed into a cock which overhung the priming-pan. The wheels took some time to wind up or span, as it was technically termed, by a spanner or key, which the pistolier carried by a ribbon at his neck; but after all this preparation, like many better inventions of a more modern time, this weapon occasionally hung fire, and refused to explode at all.

However, on the present occasion, the wheel-locks of Florence's pursuers did their duty fatally for the poor horse he rode, and, boiling with a fury which he could no longer restrain, panting and breathless with his rapid ride, his recent immersion and present danger, he unsheathed his sword, determined to kill the first who came ashore, ere he turned once more to fly.

The first who came within his reach proved to be a follower of the Lord Glencairn, Hobbie Cunninghame, or Hobbie of the Kuychtsrig, who, in the preceding year, had been nearly hanged for abstracting "the provost's ox"—a fat bullock presented annually by the town-council to their chief magistrate,—and whom he cut down by a single backhanded stroke. The second he slew at the third pass, and he felt, as he ran him through the body, something of a shudder when the man's hot blood poured through the cut-steel network of his swordhilt, and mingled with the cold water of the loch which dripped from his doublet sleeves. But he thought, perhaps, little more about it, as he turned and rushed up the nearest close or alley, pursued by a dozen of his untiring enemies, who abandoned their horses, and, with an ardour which their recent swim in the water failed to cool, followed him on foot up the steep slope, with swords and daggers drawn.

To quote a French writer when describing a similar incident—

"Let not our readers have the least bad opinion of our hero, who, after having killed a man, feared the police, but not God; for in 1547 all men were alike in this. They thought so little in that age of dying, that they also thought little of killing. We are brave now; but they were rash. People then lost, sold, or gave away their lives with profound carelessness."

Remorse or regret has nothing to do with this kind of killing; and any man who enjoyed a day or two shooting during the siege of Lucknow, or in the rifle-pits at Sebastopol, will tell you the same thing.

Fawside's blood was now fairly up, and he felt that with fierce joy he could make mince-meat of them all. The struggle was not merely a life for a life, but twelve lives for his—twelve swords against one! He reached the High Street, which traverses the crest of the lofty ridge occupied by the ancient city: it was involved in almost total darkness; for though in the reign of the late king the citizens had been ordained to hang out oil lanterns at certain hours, under the weaker rule of the Regent Arran they preferred alike to save their oil and the trouble. A vast breadth of opaque shadow enveloped this great thoroughfare, which was then encumbered by piles of timber and peat-stacks for fuel, as each citizen had one before his door; and there also—as in the streets of London and Paris at the same free-and-easy period—were huge mounds of every kind of household débris, amid which the pigs occupying the sties under fore-stairs and out-shots, revelled by day, as the kites and gleds did in the early morning before the booths were unclosed and the business of the day began; for these sable tenants of the adjacent woods swarmed then in the streets of Edinburgh, just as we may see them still about sunrise.

Between these piles of obstruction the skirmish continued, and Florence Fawside, finding that nearly all the arches of the various closes and wynds were closed and secured by massive iron-studded doors, which had been hung upon them as a security since the late invasion of '44, was compelled to continue his retreat through the Landmarket towards the Castle Hill; and then, having distanced several of his pursuers, he turned in wild desperation to face three who were close upon him, and whose swords there was no avoiding.

"They seek my letters or my life," thought he; "but my letters are more precious than my life—ay, more precious to Scotland and her little queen than the lives of fifty brave men. My mother—oh, my mother! what will be her thoughts if these assassins succeed in destroying me—hunting me thus to death like a mad dog. Oh, what a welcome home to my country!—the first night I tread again on Scottish ground. Hold your hands, sirs!" he exclaimed aloud. "I am on the queen's service, and the Lord Regent's too. Hold!—this is stoutrief, open felony and treason!"

"Fellow, thou makest a devil of a noise!" said the young Lord Kilmaurs, making a deadly thrust, which Florence parried, and almost by the same movement cut one of his companions across both legs, and for a moment brought the ruffian down upon his knees; but he started up and thrust madly at Fawside, whose back was now close to the wall of a house on the northern verge of the street, which there became narrow, as it approached the spur-gate of the Castle.

"Fie! armour—armour fie!" he exclaimed, using the cry of alarm then common in Edinburgh.

"Ding your whingers into him," said Kilmaurs furiously, as he paused for a moment to draw breath and let his companions' swords have full play, while his livid visage seemed by the starlight pale and green, as that of one who had been a corpse many days, and his dark eyes glittered like those of an incarnate demon. "At him to the hilt," he continued, "lest he rouse the burgh on us; for the common bell will be rung in five minutes, and then every bloated burgess and rascally booth-holder will be at the rescue, with halbert, jack and steel bonnet. At him, I say!"

"Are you Egyptians or thieves," said Fawside tauntingly; "if so, take my purse among ye and begone, in the name of the devil your master."

"No thieves or Egyptians are we," said Kilmaurs, again handling his sword with a savage laugh; "but Scottish gentlemen, who would fain know what paper news you bring out of France."

"From the three princes of the League," added Glencairn.

"The bloody Cardinal de Lorraine, and that foul kite of Rome, the Duc de Guise."

"And the Duc de Mayenne," added others, falling on with their swords.

"Ah!—'tis my letters rather than my life they seek," muttered Fawside. "Let me be wary—oh, let me be wary, blessed Heaven!"

He had now his single blade opposed at least to four; but, thanks to his own skill and the improvements made by a French master-at-arms on the earlier tuition he had received from old Roger of the Westmains, he kept them all in play, though his wrist began to fail and his sword-arm tingled to the shoulder. There shot a sharp and sudden pang through his left side, and on placing his hand there he felt the warm blood flowing from a wound. The sword of his first adversary, Lord Kilmaurs, had glanced along the ribs, and at the same moment a Cunningham gave him a stab between the bones of the sword-arm with a species of dagger, then named a Tynedale knife. There is an old saying that a Scotsman always fights best after seeing his own blood. Be that as it may, Fawside, on finding the current of his life now pouring from two wounds, that he was becoming weary, that there was a singing in his ears, a cloud descending on his eyes, and that the men with whom he fought seemed opaque shadows whose numbers were multiplying, and whose sword-blades his weapon sought and parried by mere instinct rather than by efforts of vision and skill—and, more than all, that many other merciless adversaries were coming clamorously and hastily up the street, a wild emotion of despair gathered with fury in his heart, at the prospect of never seeing his grey-haired mother more, and of being helplessly butchered on the first night he had set foot in the streets of Edinburgh after an absence of well-nigh seven years—butchered by men whom he knew not, and had never offended. Yet, with all this, he now disdained to cry for aid, but fought in silence and despair.

"He sinks at last!" said Symon Brodie with savage exultation. "A Hamilton! a Hamilton! Fawside, ye shall die!"

"Be it so. Then I to God and thou to the devil, false cullion!" he exclaimed, and by two well-directed thrusts he ran the half-tipsy butler and another knave through the body; but their steel caps had scarcely rung on the causeway when five or six other swords flashed before his eyes, and he received a third wound in the breast. On this a cry of agony, which was received by a shout of derision, escaped him.

"Kilmaurs, is not this fellow killed yet?" asked the Master of Lyle, who was one of the new-comers. "Devil bite me! is this French trafficker to keep twelve swordsmen in play and kill them all at his leisure!"

"Upon him now, his guard is down!" exclaimed the ferocious Kilmaurs, exasperated by the taunt of his compatriot, as he rushed forward to despatch the poor lad, whose head and hands were drooping as he reclined against the wall of a dark shadowy house, and felt that life and energy were alike passing away from him; when suddenly a tall man mingled his voice in the combat, and being armed with one of those poleaxes which all citizens were bound to possess for the purpose of "redding frays" within the burgh, he beat them back, shouting the while,

"Armour! armour! fie—to the rescue—fie!"

"What villain art thou?" demanded Glencairn imperiously, grasping his right arm.

"Fie! gar ding your whingers into him!" cried the others. "What matters it who he is?"

"Speak, rash fellow, lest I kill thee!" said the lofty noble. "I am the Lord Glencairn!"

"And I am Dick Hackerston, a burgess and free craftsman—a hammerman of Edinburgh. Fie!—have at ye a'! Is this fair play or foul, my lords and masters?" he exclaimed, as he swept them aside by describing a circle vigorously with his poleaxe.

At that moment blindness came upon the eyes of Florence, and a faintness overspread his limbs. The stone wall against which he reclined seemed to yield and give way; he felt the atmosphere change: a red light seemed to shine before his half-closed eyelids; and voices, gentle, softly modulated, and full of tender commiseration, floated in his ears.

He sank down—down he knew not, recked not where. ........ He heard a door closed violently ......... A stupor like death came over him, and he remembered no more! ........

CHAPTER VIII.

THE REGENCY OF ARRAN.

Yet if the gods demand her, let her sail,—
Our cares are only for the public weal:
Let me be deem'd the hateful cause of all,
And suffer, rather than my people fall.
The prize, the beauteous prize, I will resign,
So dearly valued, and so justly mine.
                                                                                Iliad, i.

It has already been stated that the Regent of Scotland at this time was James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, better known amid the civil wars and woes of future years as the Duke of Chatelherault, a fief in Poitou, and formerly capital of the duchy of Chatelheraudois. His father was the first who obtained the earldom of Arran, and his mother was Janet Beaton, of Creich, niece of the unfortunate cardinal who was slain in the Castle of St. Andrew's. The French dukedom he received for the spirit with which he maintained Scottish and French interests against the valour of England and the machinations of that degraded and anti-national party the Scottish peers of King Henry's faction, a few of whom have already been introduced to the reader in the preceding chapter.

The little queen was a child in her fifth year; and Henry VIII., that wily and ferocious monarch, during his latter days left nothing untried, by subtle diplomacy, by open war, by hired assassins, and by bands of foreign condottieri leagued with his own troops, to remove from his path all obstruction to a marriage between his son Edward and the young queen of Scotland. He proposed to Arran, if he would deliver her person into his blood-imbrued hands, to assist him with all the power of England and Ireland to make for himself a new kingdom beyond the Forth, and to give his daughter Elizabeth, the future queen of England, in marriage to Arran's heir, the young Lord James Hamilton, then captain of the Scottish Archers in France; but the Regent knew how little Henry's boasts would avail him at the foot of the Grampians, or had patriotism enough to reject a proposal so wild and so disastrous with the disdain it merited; and so, in time, the English Bluebeard was gathered to his wives and to his fathers, bequeathing to the Duke of Somerset, Protector of England during the minority of Edward VI., the pleasant task of arranging, by fair means or foul, a matrimonial alliance between that prince and the little queen of "the rugged land of spearmen."

Cardinal Beaton, long a faithful and a formidable enemy to Scottish treason and to English guile, had perished by the hands of assassins, whose secret projects were better understood at Windsor than at Holyrood. The invasion of Scotland, and the almost total destruction of Edinburgh—the burnings and the devastations in the fertile Lothians by Lord Hertford's army, with the rout of the English at the bloody battle of Ancrum—ended for a time all hope of Somerset ever accomplishing the perilous work so rashly bequeathed to him by his grasping and imperious master; yet, being a brave and high-spirited noble, he still continued the attempt in secret, as he could never despair of having the nation ultimately betrayed while that faithless class, its nobility, existed.

The Scottish peers were now, as usual, divided into two factions, one who adhered to the old treaty with France, and the other—the basest, most venal, and corrupt—composed of those who urged the advantages of the matrimonial alliance between the infant Queen Mary and the boy King Edward. These men, though bearing names of old historic memory, the

            "Seed of those who scorn'd
To stoop the neck to wide imperial Rome,"

were mean enough to receive in secret sums of money, first from Henry of England, secondly from the Protector Somerset, and by written obligations to bind themselves to further the selfish and aggressive schemes of both; while, in the same spirit of political perfidy, they gave to the Scottish Regent Arran the most solemn assurances of their entire concurrence with him, in his conservative measures for obeying the will of the late King James V.—whose noble heart they broke,—and in defending the realm of his daughter against all foreign enemies, more especially their ancient foemen of the south. On one hand they openly announced their resolution to support the Church of their fathers, and the faith that came from Rome; on the other, they secretly leagued with those who slew the primate of Scotland in his archiepiscopal castle at St. Andrews, and plotted for the plunder of the temporalities.

The noble Earl of Huntly, with Arran and the more patriotic—the unblemished and unbribed,—looked towards France for a husband for their queen, and for troops to enable them to resist the combined strength of Cassilis, Glencairn, Kilmaurs, and more than two hundred titled Scottish traitors, when backed by the military power of England, and those Spanish and German mercenaries under Don Pedro de Gamboa and Conrad Baron of Wolfenstein, whom the Protector maintained in Norham, Carlisle, and other strongholds near the border.

The weakness of Arran's government, the feeble power of the newly-instituted courts of law, the licentious lives of a hierarchy whose Church and power were nodding to their fall, the gradual declension of an ancient faith, and the dawn of a new one divested of all that was striking or attractive to the imagination, and which, from its grim novelty, the people neither loved nor respected at heart,—all tended to arrest the rapid progress which Scotland had made in art and science, music and poetry, architecture, literature, printing, and commerce, under the fatherly care of the six last kings of the Stuart race. Hence there was generated, about the epoch of our story, a greater barbarism among the feudal aristocracy and their military followers, all of whom were ever but too fierce, turbulent, and prone to bloodshed. Thus outrages, feuds, raids, and combats, the siege and storm of castles and towers, were mere matters of every-day life; and a fight of a few hundred men-at-arms a side, with lance and buckler, sword and arquebuse, in the streets of Edinburgh, Perth, or Aberdeen, occasioned less excitement among their warlike citizens than an election row, a casual fire, or a runaway horse, in these our jogtrot days of peace societies and Sabbatarian twaddle.

The more ancient laws of Scotland, by which a man's life might be redeemed for nine times twenty cattle, or when for shedding blood south of the Scottish Sea (i.e. Firth of Forth) a penalty of twenty-five shillings was levied, or when, for committing the same offence north of the same sea the value of six cattle was exacted—had now been succeeded by a regular code of stricter statutes, to be enforced by regular courts of law and justice. Yet blood was shed and life taken more often than before, in sudden quarrel and old hereditary feud, daily—yea, hourly,—without other punishment or remedy than such as the nearest clansman or kinsman might inflict with the sword and torch—and these were seldom idle.

The times were wild and perilous!

All men wore arms, and used them on the most trivial occasions. Even James V., so famous for his justice and lenity, when a boy in his eleventh year, with his little Parmese dagger, stabbed a warder at the gate of Stirling Castle, because the man would not let him out to ramble in the town.

Hence such outrages as the murder of Cardinal Beaton in his own castle, the slaughter of Sir John Fawside by Claude Hamilton of Preston, on the skirts of Gladsmuir. The besieging of John Lord Lindesay, sheriff of Fife, when in the execution of his office, by the lairds of Clatto, Balfour, and Claverhouse, with eighty men-at-arms, while at the same time the Grants amused themselves by sacking and burning the manor-house of Davy, in Strathnavern, and making a clean sweep of everything on the lands of Ardrossiere. Even the king's artillery, when en route from Stirling to Edinburgh, in 1526, were attacked, the gunners killed or dispersed, and the guns taken, by Bruce of Airth, who required a few field-pieces for his own mansion. Hence the slaughter of the Laird of Mouswaldmains by Bell of Currie, and of the Laird of Dalzel by the Lord Maxwell. Hence the abduction of Lady Margaret Stewart, daughter of Matthew Earl of Lennox, by her lover, the young Laird of Boghall, and the death of her husband John Lord Fleming, great chamberlain of Scotland, by the sword of John Tweedie, Baron of Drummelzier, who slew him when hawking, on the 1st November, 1524. Hence the slaughter of the Laird of Stonebyres by the rector of Colbinton; of two gentlemen named Nisbet, in the king's palace and presence, by Andrew Blackadder of that ilk; the murder of the Laird of Auchinharvie by the Earl of Eglinton; the assassination of that fine old priest and poet, Sir James Inglis, abbot of Culross, by the Baron of Tulliallan, in 1531, and the firing of the thatched kirk of Monivaird, in Strathearn, by the Drummonds, who destroyed therein "six score of the Murrayes, with their wives and childraine, who were all burned or slaine except one."

These little recreations of the Scottish landed gentry and their retainers were occasionally varied by branking scolding wives with iron bridles, or ducking them in ponds; burning witches and Lollards; hanging gipsies, and boring the tongues of evil-speakers with hot iron;—so that seldom a day passed, in town or country, without some stirring novelty of a lively nature.

One tract of land, where, in the year of Flodden, one thousand and forty-one ploughs had usually turned up the teeming soil, was now, as the Lord Dacre says, "clearly wasted, and had no man dwelling therein,"—wasted by his wanton inroads; and this desolated tract lay in the middle Marches, on the banks of the Leader, the Euse, and the Ale—the lovely border-land,—the land of war and song—of the sword and lyre; but there grew little grass, and less corn, where the hoof of the moss-trooper's steed left its iron print in the soil.

Superstition was not wanting to add to the terror of warring clans and those English devastators who, in 1544, laid Edinburgh in blazing ruin, and swept all the fair Lothians, as if the land had been burned up—tree, tower, and corn-field, hamlet, church, and hedgerow—by the fire which fell of old on the cities of the plain. Lady Glammes, a young and beautiful woman, was burned alive at Edinburgh, for treason, and some say sorcery; and in the year of our story, 1547, there was buried in the beautiful chapel of Roslin, Father Samuel, the prior of St. Mary of Deir, who was deemed a wizard so terrible that all the sanctity of the place could scarcely keep his bones from rattling in their stone sarcophagus.

Wonderful things were seen and heard of in those quaint old times.

In 1570, a monstrous fish, having two human heads, each surmounted by a royal crown of gold, swam up Lochfyne; and seven years after, a swarm of fish, each having a monk's hood on its head, came up the Firth of Forth. In Glencomie, a gentleman of the house of Lovat slew a veritable scaly dragon, which vomited fire like that encountered by St. George of old, and set the purple heather in a flame. The northern sky was nightly brightened by ranks of glittering spears and waving pennons. In the woful year of Pinkey-cleugh, a calf was brought forth with two heads, on Robert Ormiston's farm, in Lothian; and if other omen of evil to come were wanted, on the Westmains of Fawside, a huge bull which belonged to our friend Roger the Baillie, and was the pride of the parish, when browsing on the green brae-side, turned suddenly into a black boulder-stone, which may yet be seen by those who take the trouble of inquiring after it; while a "fierce besom" or comet that blazed o' nights in the southern quarter of the sky, portended evil coming from England, and made old men and grandmothers cower with affright in their cosy ingles beyond the fire, and tell their beads as their minds became filled with forebodings of dolor and woe: for though hardy and brave, they were simple souls—our Scottish sires, three hundred years ago.

Such was the state of the kingdom in the year of our story, and during the regency of Arran.