In truth, while the borderer spoke, Maxwell made his appearance on the track that led to Hermitage, exchanging, as soon as he spied the earl and his henchman, for a brisk hand-gallop the more steady pace at which he had been prosecuting his journey. The greeting between the kinsmen was sufficiently cordial, between ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ and the new arrival, of the most boisterous and demonstrative nature. The rough borderer would have been at a loss to explain to himself why he entertained so warm a regard for Walter Maxwell. As the three rode slowly on together towards Hermitage, the emissary thought it a good time to broach the business which had been entrusted to him by his sovereign.

Slowly pacing over the open moor, where everything breathed peace and repose, where not a tuft of heather stirred in the soft still air, and the call of a moor-fowl or the dull flap of a heron’s wing alone broke the surrounding silence; where the softened gleams of a winter sun came down in sheets of mellowed light, and heaven above and earth below seemed wrapped in security and content, Maxwell poured into no inattentive ears the tale that was rousing all the fiercest passions of our nature in the heart of one of his listeners.

Bothwell, after bidding him a hearty welcome to the border, heard him patiently and in silence, with an enforced composure that was more ominous of subsequent evil than would have been the wildest outbreak of that wrath which he suppressed with such an effort. His jaded horse, indeed, felt his rider’s thighs tightening on him like a vice as the tale proceeded, and exerted himself gallantly to meet the unusual pressure; but only a very close observer could have marked, by the clenched jaw, the widened nostril, and dilated eye, that every word was driving its sting deeper and deeper, poisoned and festering, into the warden’s heart.

Once indeed when a brighter gleam of sunshine than ordinary lighted up the moor, and the old towers of Hermitage coming into view imparted a picturesque and even beautiful aspect to the scene, Bothwell looked up to heaven as if in helpless expostulation with the mocking sky, and then in one bitter and defiant smile, took leave for ever of those nobler and better feelings which had hitherto redeemed his character from utter reprobation.

It was at this moment that Maxwell urged his kinsman to forward him at once upon his journey.

‘I will but break bread with you, my lord,’ said he, ‘and so with a fresh horse speed my way to the southward once more; mine errand brooks no delay, and he that goes wooing for a queen must not let the grass grow under his feet while he is about it.’

‘Is her Grace indeed so hurried?’ answered Bothwell with an evil sneer. ‘Can she not wait a matter of twenty-four hours, more or less, for this long smooth-faced lad on whom she has set her princely heart so wilfully? God speed the royal wedding, say I, and good luck to the bold suitor who would lie in a queen’s bed! Here, Dick, your horse is fresher than mine; gallop on to the Castle and bid them prepare for Master Maxwell’s refection; see, too, that the Lord Rothes’ men and horses be well looked to if they be come. I have guests to-night with me at Hermitage, Walter; I pray you be not so niggardly as to depart without a supper and a night’s rest. It is ill travelling on the Border after nightfall, and I will speed you on by sunrise to-morrow with the best horse in my stable and a guard of my own men. And now that long knave is out of ear-shot, tell me, Master Maxwell, is this marriage but an affair of state and policy? or doth the Queen seem to affect it for herself? Is her heart in it, think you?’

While he asked the question Bothwell busied himself about the hawk on his wrist, it may be to conceal the trembling of his lip, which extended itself even to his hands, for his strong fingers seemed unable to take off her hood or loose the fastenings that secured her jesses.

‘In faith,’ answered Maxwell honestly, ‘her Grace bade me make no secrets with your lordship. When she spoke of marriage her colour went and came like a village maid’s going a-maying; I reck but little of such follies,’ he added with a sigh, ‘but if you ask me the truth, I think, Queen though she be, she loves him as a woman should love the man whom she bids to share a throne.’

Bothwell swore such a fearful blasphemy that his companion, whose attention had been somewhat engrossed by the irregularities of the track, looked up astonished in his face. The earl excused himself by vowing that his falcon had struck her talons into his arm.

‘The foul-hearted haggard!’ he exclaimed, flinging the bird violently from him into the air; ‘let her fly down the wind to the Solway an’ she will! She may stoop on the southern side ere I whistle for her; no such false kestrel shall ever perch on wrist of mine again.’

The hawk soared freely up into the soft calm sky, then spreading her wings to the breeze, sailed gallantly away to the westward, and was soon out of sight.

Maxwell was too good a sportsman not to be surprised at such an action on the part of his host, but attributed it to one of those outbreaks of temper in which he had heard the earl was prone to indulge; and as they now proceeded to the Castle at a gallop by the warden’s desire, who spurred his tired horse with savage energy, he had no opportunity of pursuing the subject on which they had been engaged.

That evening, however, there was much consternation amongst the retainers on discovering that ‘the Queen’ was missing from her mews; much discussion as to who should take upon himself the perilous task of informing the chief of his loss; much astonishment at Bothwell’s unexpected answer to the stammering varlet who apprised him of it—

‘May the foul fiend fly away with every feather of her! Never speak of her again! Go fetch me a stoup of wine.’

In the meantime the earl and his guest sprang from their reeking horses at a postern-door, which admitted them privately into the Castle of Hermitage. Already its courtyard was filled with the retinue of the Lord Rothes, a powerful Fifeshire baron, who had even now arrived with no inconsiderable following, on a visit to the disgraced warden. His men were well-armed and determined-looking, their horses strong, swift, and of considerable value. It argued little for the repose of the country, when lord met lord upon a peaceful visit, with fifty or a hundred spears at his back.

Extorting an unwilling promise from Maxwell that he would partake of his hospitality for one night, a concession only made by the latter on the express agreement that relays of horses should be sent forward immediately to enable him to prosecute his journey with extraordinary speed on the morrow, Bothwell placed his guest in the hands of an elderly person, whose black velvet dress, white wand, and grave manners, could only belong to the major-domo.

‘See my cousin well bestowed in the eastern turret,’ said the warden, ‘and bid them serve supper without delay. Tell Lord Rothes I will give him a welcome to my poor house the instant I have doffed my soiled riding-gear. Bring me the key of the wicket in the winding-stair, and tell “Dick-o’-the-Cleugh” to have six picked men and horses ready to-morrow at daybreak.’

With many grave deliberate bows the old man received the orders of his chief, and then preceded Maxwell solemnly to his chamber, while Bothwell, with swift irregular strides, betook himself up a winding staircase to a chamber in a remote tower of the Castle.

Knocking, but not waiting for permission to enter the apartment, he walked hastily to a table at which a man sat writing, who looked up on his approach. Then, with an expression of irritation and impatience at the calm face that met his own, Bothwell flung himself into a chair, and commenced pulling and twisting the long moustaches that overhung his mouth.

Moray, for it was the Queen’s illegitimate brother, whose occupation the warden had interrupted, looked at his host with his usual wary scrutinising expression, that seemed to extract the thoughts of others, but afforded no clue to his own. It was a handsome face, too, this mask so well adapted to conceal the workings of a mind in which diplomacy stifled every instinct of manhood, every chivalrous spark of honour, loyalty, and good faith. The bright fair complexion, the regular features, the keen gray eyes, deep-set, and glittering with scornful humour, forcibly repressed, the thin closed lips, shutting in, as it were, upon an ill-omened smile, and the broad square chin, denoted rather the daring schemer than the dashing soldier, the wary politician to whom, so as it led at last to his object, the path was none the less welcome for being devious, rather than the stout-hearted champion who would break his own way for himself through every obstacle, with his own right hand.

Gravely and plainly dressed, though in a rich suit of sad-coloured velvet, adorned with costly pearls, the figure that supported this inscrutable face was formed in fair and graceful proportions. The manners of the man were those of an accomplished courtier, dashed with something of that stealthy gravity which marks the Romish priest; yet Moray was now of the strictest amongst the Reformers.

‘A shining light,’ so said the followers of John Knox, ‘an advanced disciple and assured professor of the true faith!’

‘Mine host appears disturbed,’ said Moray, in the low impressive tone which acted as a sedative on all who came within its influence. ‘What ails ye, my Lord Earl? Hath your falcon flown so high a pitch she will perch on your wrist no more? or have our friends on the southern side so far forgotten themselves as to drive a raid across the Border? I think we have influence with the English Queen for “heading and hanging” at Carlisle as promptly as at Jedburgh!’

Bothwell winced. Hating the intrigues in which he found himself involved; balancing, as it were, on the verge of a precipice to which his passions hurried him, and from which his better nature held him back, he loathed in his heart the master-spirit that he was yet fain to obey. The demon was under the spell of the magician, but his submission was as unwilling as it was complete. He burst out angrily—

‘See to what your schemes and your intrigues have led at last! Is this the upshot of my Lord of Moray’s plotting and counter-plotting, and Randolph’s promises, and Maitland’s crabbed ciphers? Faith! a couple of hundred spears and a closed horse-litter would have done the work long ago far better than all your bonds and all your treaties. And now it is too late. The noblest Queen in Europe, the fairest woman on earth, is to be wasted on a half-witted boy, a beardless minion of the English Court. Out upon you, Earl Moray! I have worn steel since I was twelve years old, and man hath never so deceived me yet. Again I cry shame on you! Answer me how you will!’

If Moray was startled at the intelligence or angered at the manner in which it was conveyed, neither sensation was suffered to betray itself for an instant. He smiled pleasantly on his chafing companion, and answered composedly—

‘All’s not lost that’s in hazard. Surely no lord in Scotland knows this better than the warden of the marshes. Tell me the worst intelligence you have gained, and how you learned it.’

Moray’s brow grew darker and darker as his host detailed to him, not without violent gestures and many a wrathful expletive, all he had gathered from Maxwell concerning the Queen’s proposed marriage. Whether new to him or not, the intelligence seemed to give him great concern, and once, although it was now twilight, he turned his face from the window so as to conceal its expression from his dupe. When Bothwell had finished his story there was a dead silence for a few minutes. He had lashed himself into a violent passion; he was now calming down into a sullen despair. Moray’s face, on the contrary, wore a brighter look after he had ruminated a while, but his voice was as cold and distinct as ever when he spoke again.

‘And the messenger is here, you say—here, in this very castle. Lord Bothwell, if we gain time, we can place the pieces on the chess-board for ourselves. Your borders here are not without their disadvantages. ’Tis bad travelling for single horsemen; they may be robbed of letters and even jewels. Nay, if they make much resistance they are sometimes heard of no more. ’Tis a numerous family, the Maxwells, and a loyal. One more or less makes no such great odds.’

‘Nay, nay, he is my kinsman,’ urged Bothwell, who perfectly understood the dark suggestion of his guest, but to whose frank and ardent nature such counsels were most distasteful. ‘Besides, she trusted me; she trusted me. My Queen’s own words were, that “she could depend upon me more securely than on any lord in Scotland.”’

‘You best know the value of the stake you play for,’ answered Moray, with a very sinister smile, ‘and the amount you are willing to set against it. Master Maxwell is a trusty messenger, no doubt, and will do his part faithfully, an’ he get not his throat cut ere he reach Carlisle. Should this marriage ever take place, it will be prudent, Lord Bothwell, for you to make early court to young Henry Stuart. He has a noble future before him in truth. The crown-matrimonial of one kingdom; the crown in reversion of another; a Catholic alliance, or I am much deceived, with France, Spain, and Austria; lastly, no small temptation, Lord Earl, to young blood, Her Grace, my sister, the fairest woman in Europe, for a bed-fellow. In good faith the prize is worth struggling for!’

The arm of the chair which Bothwell held broke short off in his hand.

‘Enough!’ he exclaimed, ‘it shall never be. What! am I not warden here? Have I not power of life and death on the marches? But no blood shall be shed; no blood, Moray. Can we not bestow him in safe keeping? Counsel me, my lord, for I am at my wits’ end.’

Moray laughed outright.

‘I will tell you a story,’ said he, whilst he shuffled his papers together and tied them up, preparatory to changing his dress for supper. ‘When we were studying at college in France, my brothers and I had great dread that the prize would be carried off by one of our companions who had more book-learning than all the rest of us put together; well, we invited the clever youth to an entertainment, and we drenched his brains with wine—just such a red generous Bordeaux as I saw a runlet of pierced only yester even here in the buttery—then we tied him on a horse, a sorry French nag enough, but able to carry him some ten leagues away into the country, where we left him to sleep off his carouse. When he returned next day the examinations were over, and I myself, for as dull as you may think me, had taken the first prize. All is fair in love and war, my lord. The curfew is already ringing; it is time for both of us to meet Rothes at the supper-table.’

The hint was not thrown away upon Bothwell.

‘I will bestow him securely,’ said he, as a bright idea seemed to flash across him; and he too departed hastily to make preparations for meeting his guests at supper.

Contrary to the usual custom of Hermitage, this meal, instead of being served in the great hall and shared with Bothwell’s jackmen and retainers, was brought into a smaller apartment furnished with extreme splendour, and as near an approach to luxury as the times and locality permitted. This was perhaps done as a compliment to the presence of Moray, who was already beginning to accustom the nobility to his assumptions, and while he treated them with the outward cordiality of an equal, to cozen them insensibly of the attentions due to a superior.

The dishes were served with great pomp by the grave major-domo and two staid attendants splendidly dressed; the Lord Rothes, a dark handsome man, with a sinister expression of countenance, sat on the left hand of his host, Maxwell faced the latter, and the Queen’s half-brother was in the place of honour on his right; also Moray’s chair was somewhat higher than those of his companions, and of a different form.

When the meal was over, the wine, according to custom, circulated freely; whatever designs might be lurking in the breasts of the four men, the conversation was merry and jovial enough, embracing the usual topics of hawk and hound and horseflesh, with a good-humoured gibe or two at the opposite sex, and a free criticism of their charms.

Maxwell might be pondering on the difficulties of his task; Moray weaving additional meshes in that web which entangled himself at last; Rothes reflecting on his frailties or his debts his past follies or his coming embarrassments; and Bothwell eating his own heart in combined pique, disappointment, and vexation; but each man filled his cup, and pushed round the flask, and passed his frank opinion or his loud jest, with a merry voice, an open brow, and a cordial smile upon his face.

When the wine began to take effect, Maxwell excused himself from further participation in the carouse, and asked permission to retire on the plea of his early departure in the morning. After a faint resistance exacted by the laws of hospitality, Bothwell acceded freely to his request; meditating, as he did, a foul treachery against him, the earl felt his cousin’s absence would be a relief. Moray, indeed, would have had small hesitation in so spicing his wine that he would need a sleeping-draught no more, and few scruples would have deterred Rothes from ridding himself of a troublesome guest with six inches of cold steel; but the lord warden had still some rough soldier-like notions of fair play about him, and had not lost all at once every trace of the chivalry and manhood that had made him heretofore the stoutest champion of his Queen.

When Maxwell had retired, his host sat moodily for a while, wrapped in meditation, drinking cup after cup in gloomy silence, and playing ominously with the haft of his dudgeon-dagger, a weapon that was never for an instant laid aside.

Moray seemed to divine his thoughts. After a few whispered words to Rothes, who treated the whole affair as an excellent jest, he observed in a cold measured voice, and as if continuing the thread of a conversation in which they had already been engaged.

‘You cannot so prudently bestow him here, my lord, though it were a good jest to keep a queen’s ambassador mewed up in a queen’s fortress, and the prisoner would be well lodged with his affectionate kinsman.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Bothwell, rather fiercely. ‘The walls of Hermitage are pretty strong, my lord, and these riders of mine are held to have a somewhat close grip when once they lay hold.’

‘Nevertheless,’ argued the other, ‘this would be the first place suspected. Nay, it might be well that you should even deliver up the Castle to Her Majesty with a clean breast. I have thought more than once of urging you to demand an audience at Holyrood, to resign your lieutenancy or obtain a just acknowledgment of your loyalty from my royal sister.’

Bothwell’s face brightened.

‘True!’ he exclaimed, dashing his heavy hand on the board. ‘We must have no stolen horse in the stall when the ransom is told down! A clean breast and a “toom-byre,”[10] as we say here on the Border. I must send him elsewhere.’

Rothes filled his cup, with a laugh.

‘I can lodge him at Leslie,’ said he; ‘any kinsman of Lord Bothwell’s is welcome in my poor house. “Food and wine he shall not lack,” as the old song says; ay, and a bed too, my lord, if so you will it, that shall serve him till doomsday.’

Bothwell flushed dark red with wrath and shame.

‘Not a hair of his head must be jeopardied!’ he exclaimed passionately; then controlling himself, added in a more friendly tone, ‘I am beholden to you, Leslie, nor will I forget your courtesy. I shall, indeed, commit my kinsman to your care for a brief space. Four of my knaves, commanded by one whom I can trust, shall convoy him to-morrow into Fifeshire; though its lord is here with so gallant a following, Leslie House is, doubtless, not left ungarrisoned.’

‘Trust me for that!’ answered Rothes, an evil sneer again marring the beauty of his countenance. ‘They are peaceful knaves enough, the men of Fife, yet they would like well to harry the old corbie’s nest up yonder, and clear off scores for a few of Norman’s doings, to say nothing of my own. It will be long, though, ere they crack the stones of my poor fortalice with their teeth, and I care not to ride in Fife without some fifty spears at my back; there are more than as many there even now. Hark ye, Bothwell, take my signet-ring here; give it to your lieutenant, and he will find himself at Leslie House “master and more.”’

Moray, pretending not to listen, now asked for more wine with a great assumption of joviality and recklessness. A close observer, though, might have remarked that he scarce touched his own cup with his lips, whilst he encouraged his companions, who indeed were nothing loth, to empty theirs again and again. Artfully leading the conversation to the Queen’s possible marriage, to her different suitors, and other topics connected with Mary, he watched Bothwell writhing under the torture, and drowning his sufferings in revelry, with covert interest tinged by a sardonic amusement.

It was midnight ere the reckless orgie broke up, when Moray, calm, cool, and smiling, bade his companions a placid ‘good night;’ while Rothes, flushed and boisterous, trolled off a ribald drinking-song; and Bothwell, in whom wine had been powerless to drown the stings of conscience, sought his solitary chamber with keen remorse and torturing self-reproach gnawing at his heart.

CHAPTER XXX.

Heated with wine, stung with jealousy, torn by conflicting feelings, Earl Bothwell paced the stone-floor of his bed-chamber, as a wild beast traverses to and fro between the sides of his cage. His step had the same noiseless elasticity, his air the same subdued ferocity, his eye the same lurid sparkle that seems struck from some quenchless fire within. If there are indeed hours at which the master-fiend is permitted to vex those human souls, who, for some wise purpose, are delivered like Job into his hand, the Lord Warden must have been that night a prey to the arch-enemy of our race. It needed but little addition to the frenzy of his mood to imagine a dusky shape, defining itself more and more distinctly in the gloom, stepping as he stepped, turning as he turned, whispering in his ear suggestions that curdled his very blood, while he pondered them, and yet were tinged with the strange fascination which all frantic expedients possess for despair. It takes a long apprenticeship to sorrow ere a man can bow his head in resignation and cease to struggle, nay, even to quiver under the lash: but he who has gained this faculty at the cost of anguished moments, none but himself and one besides can count, is indeed master of his fate.

Such, however, was far from the condition of the tameless border-lord. He could have fought, struggled, died with the fiercest champion that ever set his teeth in the grim smile of a death-grapple; but the Hepburn blood was not the stuff of which martyrs are made, and the fiercest scion of all the bold, bad men that constituted the pride of his line, was now, so to speak, like some demoniac of antiquity, wrestling and striving against himself, torn, and rent, and infuriated by the possessing spirit, which refused to be exorcised and come out of him. That night in his lonely room at Hermitage, Bothwell learnt many new and strange things, never to be forgotten whilst he had life. Depths of guilt, into which, heretofore, he would not have dared to look, were now opened up to him, and there was seduction in the very immensity of the abyss. Crimes, dazzling from their boldness, now seemed feasible, nay, almost justifiable, and entranced him by the reckless daring with which they must be carried out. He had been dreaming hitherto a soft sweet dream for years. He was awake now, broad awake, and the vision should become reality, or he would never dream again. He had been cozened long enough! What? The game was not yet played out. Turn and turn about, fair dame! And it was Bothwell’s turn now! He laughed a low hissing laugh within his beard, and then stopped, startling in his walk, for it seemed to him that the laugh was echoed by something in the room, and that the shape was close to his ear now, whispering, whispering, one continuous stream of upbraiding, and persuasion, and reproach, with maddening promise and stinging sarcasm, and here and there a devilish scoff.

But these paroxysms wear themselves out. By degrees the earl became calmer; by degrees he recalled the past and reviewed the present, and looked steadily on the future. The whirl of contending passions passed away to make room for a stern and gloomy resolve far more dangerous, and the molten stream of thought that had seared his brain, cooled down into the settled determination of the man.

There are seasons when the whole of our past lives seems presented to us as on a stage, each scene distinct and vivid as when it actually took place. Men are taught to believe that this occurs at the supreme moment ere the spirit leaves its dwelling, and when the heart clings so instinctively and so pitifully to its treasure here. Be this how it may, there can be no doubt that at periods of strong excitement, this clairvoyance, if we may so call it, acquires extraordinary power. For a moment it seemed to Bothwell that the gloomy walls of his chamber had disappeared, and he stood again beneath the sunny skies of France. Again the towers of Joinville started from the smiling plain, and he knelt once more to tender his homage to the fair widowed bride, who looked so sweetly down upon him, with her pleading womanly beauty, softening and enhancing the majesty of a Queen. It was the first time he had ever looked on that face, which, despite of all his madness, all his crimes, was imprinted thenceforth on his rebellious heart. He had seen it since in sorrow, in triumph, in levity, nay, in bitter anger and unjust displeasure against himself, but it was still the same face to him, the type of all that was pure and good and lovely upon earth, the charm that had wound itself into his whole being, that shed its magic glow over every scene and action of his life; whether he laid spear in rest, or flung his hawk aloft in air, or watched the last rays of sunset gilding the broad brown moor on a peaceful summer’s evening, still that face was ever present to him, with its quiet thoughtful beauty, and the kind look in its deep winning eyes; then he thought of the many, many times when he had vowed in his heart to cherish undying love and loyalty for her alone, to ask no happier fate than to suffer shame and sorrow for his Queen. Would he not have given his life-blood for her, oh! so gladly that morning at Holyrood, when he alone of all her nobles had grieved with her on her day of grief, when, overcome by his faithful sympathy, and stung by the cold ingratitude of the rest, she had turned her face away and wept? And was he so changed now that he could be plotting treason against his sovereign and violence towards his love? For a moment his better nature mastered him; the fierce set features writhed, the strong frame shook, and though he was alone in the room, in the hush of midnight, the proud noble bowed his head and turned his face aside, ere he dashed away the drops that had stolen unawares to his shaggy eyelashes.

But the devil was watching his opportunity, and what a picture did he now conjure up! The beautiful Queen in her robes of ceremony, with the crown upon her head and the orb and sceptre in her hands; ambassadors from England, France, Spain, Austria, thronging with their sovereigns’ congratulations; the nobility of Scotland proffering homage before the throne; and these regal honours shared by a tall handsome stripling, who would lift his lady-face scornfully, and stretch a weak girlish hand for him, Bothwell, to kiss! Worse than all, amongst the courtiers’ jeering faces, Moray’s cool sardonic smile, as of one who had foreseen the degradation from which, had his advice been taken, it would have been so easy to escape. And then the banquet and the wedded pair, sitting side by side, and the subsequent revel and the customary ceremonies, and the laughing guests departing one by one,—and then, and then,—the stillness of night brooding over the old pile of Holyrood, and Mary once more a bride, another’s bride, and Bothwell a laughing-stock!

‘Perdition! it shall never be!’ exclaimed the earl, dashing down, while he spoke, with the violence of his involuntary gesture, the lamp that stood on the table by his side. The few moments consumed in rekindling it gave him time to compose himself, and to determine on his future conduct. It was but a brief period, yet was it long enough for Bothwell to bid farewell, at once and for ever, to all the higher and purer feelings of his nature; to change him from a man who, with many faults and with ungovernable passions, yet possessed a certain frank uprightness, a certain chivalrous devotion to the one idol of his life, into an unscrupulous ruffian, prepared to commit any crimes, to go any lengths in the prosecution of his schemes, and willing in brutal selfishness to drag his idol down to the dust, rather than see it enshrined upon the pedestal of another. One moment cannot indeed change the whole character of a human being, though it may influence his whole conduct; but as it is the last ounce that breaks the patient camel’s back, so is it the one additional atom of sorrow, or unkindness, or disappointment, added to the mass, that overwhelms the poor sufferer’s powers of endurance, and drives him into the frenzy of despair, or leaves him stunned and sick at heart, in the helpless apathy of a ruined man. It would be well to think of this sometimes when we see the bruised reed so nearly broken, the kind generous nature so wearied and suffering and overladen. It is but an ignoble triumph to lend the tottering mass that slight push which sends it crashing to destruction. It is cowardly and un-English to ‘strike a man when he is down.’

Bothwell lit his lamp, and wrapping a furred bed-gown around him whilst he thrust his feet into the mules or slippers which would best muffle their tread, proceeded with swift and stealthy strides along the passages of his Castle, towards the eastern turret in which his kinsman was disposed. All was hushed and silent within the walls of Hermitage. The drowsy sentinels might have been sleeping on their posts, for neither stir of arms nor measured tread of steel-shod foot denoted their vigilance, yet, strange to say, the warden failed to observe this unusual silence. Nevertheless, preoccupied as he was, he marked a light still burning in Moray’s chamber, and instinctively he shaded the lamp he carried with his hand when he passed the narrow casements on the opposite side of the Castle-yard. Arrived at Maxwell’s door, he listened for a while, and satisfied himself by the deep breathing within that his kinsman was asleep; then shading his light once more, he entered the room softly, and made at once for the small travelling valise, in which he hoped to find the messenger had secured his despatches. But Maxwell had travelled the Borders ere this, and had profited by his experience. Ready dressed, booted and spurred, with his sword by his side, he lay prepared for a start, sleeping indeed, yet not so sound but that a sudden noise might waken him. Whatever he had about him of value was concealed in his breast, and could not be taken from him without disturbing his repose. Bothwell felt once for the haft of his dagger, and smiled grimly to himself, as he thought how easily he might possess himself of his guest’s despatches, and how lightly he would think now of such a crime as murder under his own roof. There was even a wild devilish triumph in the reflection that he could have so changed within an hour!

After a moment’s thought, however, he again passed unobserved from the room, and returned to his own as stealthily as he had come. There he spent the remainder of the night, still pacing up and down, up and down, and an hour before dawn summoned ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ already astir thus early, to a long and mysterious consultation, in which, though he yielded eventually, for the first time in his life the retainer presumed to remonstrate with his lord.

CHAPTER XXXI.

The morning broke gloomily. A thick and heavy mist clung around the towers of Hermitage, dimming the arms and saturating the cloaks of the escort already mounted and waiting in the Castle-yard. The moisture dripped from the ears and nostrils of the horses, and stood upon the beards of their riders, while the former stamped and shook their bits impatiently, and the latter muttered a coarse jest or two, not without fervent aspirations after a tass of brandy to keep the raw air from their throats.

Presently ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ emerged from the turret containing the warden’s private apartments, wearing an unusually gloomy expression on his face, and proceeded to examine the arms and appointments of his comrades, with a disposition to find fault, that elicited sundry growls, murmurs, and a round oath or two from the impatient jackmen.

There was, however, but little delay, in starting the cavalcade. Maxwell, who had been anxiously awaiting the spare horse prepared for him, was soon in the saddle exchanging a cheerful greeting with the troopers, to which Dick alone made no reply; and while it was yet scarcely light, the portcullis was raised, and the party filed out, intently watched from one of the narrow windows by a haggard eager face, that still looked and lingered after the croup of the last horseman had disappeared. Bothwell even made one hasty gesture, as if to recall his mandate, and order the party back, but changing his mind again on the instant, with a bitter laugh, he took a long draught from a wine-flagon that stood by his bed-side, and then flinging himself on the couch, turned doggedly to the wall and tried to force his senses into sleep.

Maxwell felt his sovereign’s letter lying safe within his doublet. He examined, too, the priming of his pistols, and turned his sword-belt a little more to the front. Then he proved the mouth and mettle of his charger with rein and spur, deriving from the experiment all the confidence felt by a good horseman on a well-bitted steed. Satisfied at length on these important points, his spirits rose with the morning air and the excitement of his mission. Even Mary Carmichael’s falsehood seemed less black in hue than it appeared yesterday. The future once more showed promise of something beside a dull apathetic response to the call of duty alone. He looked along its dim vistas, and saw the light shining, though faintly, at a distance. The mission was already in imagination half-fulfilled. He had made his journey prosperously through the rich districts of middle England, and gained the capital with unprecedented rapidity, thanks to good luck in procuring horses, and his own untiring powers in the saddle. He had delivered his credentials to Lady Lennox, and presented himself at Greenwich Palace to the Maiden Queen. He could even conjure up a picture in his mind of that redoubtable lady; could imagine the flaxen curls, the stately figure, the harsh yet not uncomely features, and the dignified gestures that veiled a woman’s vanity beneath the majestic bearing of a British sovereign. He became a courtier for the occasion, and thought how he could serve his own dear mistress with a well-timed compliment, and a little apt flattery to her rival ‘Good Sister.’ He saw himself dismissed with honour, and speeding back to the North, triumphant at the safe accomplishment of his mission. Then he fell to thinking of Mary’s kindly thanks, delivered with all that charm of manner which made a word from her better than a jewel from another, and his welcome reception at Holyrood by all the loyal and well-disposed party to whom it was of no small moment to see their Queen happily married.

Perhaps others, thought Maxwell, might not have served her so well. Perhaps one of her maidens, with whom, as with the rest, loyalty was still the master passion, might be inclined to give him a welcome far warmer and kinder than her proud and distant farewell: might think she had judged him harshly, prematurely: might wish when it was too late that she had not so scornfully rejected his devotion, nay, might long to possess now what she had valued so lightly when it was her own. Then he would teach her a lesson that it would do her good to learn; then how delicious would be the triumph of meeting her coldly, politely, with calm friendship and quiet good-will, far more cutting than any amount of assumed indifference and unconcern; then she would know that she had altered her mind too late, that a man of energy and action was not to be pulled hither and thither like a puppet by the weak hand of a woman holding the string; that she had flung the falcon from her wrist once, jesses and all, and he would soar his wing now, and never stoop to lure of hers again.

Oh! it would be a happy moment; and yet how much happier to forgive her freely, and without reproach to take her hand in his, look frankly in her face, and tell her he had loved her all along, even when she was most wilful and most unkind! Was he not a man—a bold strong man? What had he to do with pride as regarded her? Nay, was it not his pride to think that whilst he yielded an inch to no one else on earth, he would always be content to accept suffering, sorrow, even humiliation, for her dear sake?

Such is the usual conclusion of one of those love reveries in which men indulge whilst under the influence of the malady; such is the climax of an infinity of stem resolution and haughty self-reproach and bitter self-examination; we make ourselves very unkind and very uncomfortable, and after all leave off very much at the point from which we started, if anything, in a less rational frame of mind than at first.

Maxwell could not but compare himself at the moment to the horse of one of the leading files of his escort, which had got bogged up to the girths in a well-head, as those particularly soft pieces of morass are called, which abound on the Scottish moorland. The poor animal made two or three gallant efforts to extricate itself, stimulated not only by the great terror a horse entertains of such a catastrophe, but by a fierce application of its long-legged rider’s spurs; each plunge only hampered it more irrevocably, and at last amidst the loud jeers of his comrades and a volley of oaths from himself, the trooper abandoned the saddle and wisely allowed the beast to be still for a few moments and recover its wind.

Maxwell’s attention, which had hitherto been somewhat taken up with his own thoughts, was now directed towards the locality in which he found himself, and the mist clearing away as the day drew on, enabled him to recognise one or two of those acclivities and breaks of the sky-line which constitute the landmarks of an open moorland district, such as he was at present traversing.

Though he had been but once before at Hermitage, his soldier’s eye had not failed to acquaint itself with the general outline of the surrounding country. He now recognised a conical-shaped hill on his left hand, that he distinctly remembered to have passed yesterday in riding from Edinburgh on his right; the wind, too, which from the appearance of the weather he judged to be easterly, struck cold upon his right cheek; he was convinced they must be going north. His first impression was that the party had lost its way in the mist; his first impulse to jeer its leader, his old friend Dick, on such a want of moss-trooping sagacity.

‘How now, master Dick?’ said Maxwell, cheerily, looking round for his friend, who rode silent and sullen in the rear; ‘I should have thought you knew your way to the southern side better than this! If you wanted to drive Lord Scrope’s horses, or empty a byre or two in Cumberland, you wouldn’t take the road to Holyrood, as I am much mistaken if we are not doing, this morning. Why, man, I came by that very cairn on the green hill yesterday. Thou must be asleep, Dick, for I know the ale is not yet brewed that will make thee drunk!’

Dick shook himself sulkily in reply, and moving his horse alongside his questioner, laid his hand on the other’s bridle-rein as if to guide him into a sounder path.

‘I’m thinkin’, Maister Maxwell,’ said Dick, with an assumption of extreme friendliness and great caution, ‘that it wud be mair wise-like just to whig cannily back to Holyrood, and leave a fule to gang a fule’s errand for himself.’

Maxwell laughed good-humouredly. Even now he was persuaded the borderer had missed the southern tract, and was annoyed at his own stupidity, perhaps inclined to veil it from his men by affecting ignorance of his charge’s destination.

‘Holyrood is a fair palace, Dick,’ said he, ‘and I left it but yesterday at daybreak. Do you think I came all the way to Hermitage only to push the wine-cup round with wild Lord Rothes, and so back again, with red eyes and a singing brain, to my duties in the Queen’s ante-room? Nay, nay, the sooner we strike the right track and cross the Border the better. Why, man, I should be half-way to York before sun-down!’

Dick seemed sadly disturbed. He fidgeted with his bridle, he loosened his sword in its sheath, he looked up and down and on all sides of him in obvious vexation. Once when a jackman rode nearer Maxwell than was convenient, he bade the man keep his distance with a hearty curse. He seemed hurried, and yet anxious to put off time, and talked at random as one does who has some engrossing subject of no pleasant nature to occupy his thoughts.

‘Ye wad be better at Holyrood, Maister Maxwell,’ said he, still harping on the old subject. ‘An’ ye were at the palace yesterday, nae doot, wi’ the Queen an’ her leddies, an’ who but you? I wish ye were there at this moment, Maister Maxwell, an’ that’s the dooms truth o’ it!’

‘Orders must be obeyed, Dick,’ answered the other, vainly trying to induce the whole cavalcade to increase their pace, which had now dwindled down to a very funeral walk. ‘That reminds me, I have a message for you from one of the Queen’s maids-of-honour.’

All the blood in the borderer’s great body seemed to rush into as much of his face as was visible beneath his morion, then the colour faded visibly, and for the first time in his life ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ turned as white as a sheet.

‘It wad no be from Mistress Seton!’ said he, almost unconsciously, and with the true Scottish negative that affirms so much. ‘Man! I wad like fine to hear it,’ and he bent over his horse’s neck and looked Walter in the face with something of the wistful eager expression that the Newfoundland dog, to whom he has already been compared, assumes when his master is going to throw a stick for him to retrieve out of the water. In the animal goes! A plumper off the pier, be it never so high, and the waves breaking never so angrily below, and you may be sure that in his noble instinct of fidelity he would drown ten times over before he would let go.

Walter freed his rein from the other’s grasp, and struck into a trot.

‘It was but to hope you had not forgotten all she taught you, Dick, good manners and such like. I may tell her when I see her again that you are such a courteous squire now, you guide the bridle-rein of a mounted man-at-arms as carefully as a lady’s palfrey. Tush, man! we are wasting time; let us strike into the right path and get on. I tell thee mine errand admits of no delay!’

He spoke impatiently, but yet in perfect good-humour, and looking on his companion’s face, was startled at the expression of intense pain that was apparent in its features. ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ looked like a man who had been shot through the body, and was endeavouring to hide his internal agony under an appearance of outward composure.

Inside that stalwart frame of his a terrible conflict was going on. Good feeling, manhood, a certain reflective sense of the duties of hospitality, above all, loyalty to the Queen, represented by an intense devotion to one of her maids-of-honour; all these sentiments were at war with the habits of a lifetime and the first feudal instinct of the henchman—implicit obedience to his chief. It is needless to say that the latter obtained the mastery.

Maxwell was a friend, and he had come from the immediate presence of her who was the one bright image that gladdened the man’s honest unsophisticated heart, that elevated his rude nature and gave him a glimpse of something better than clash of steel and clang of drinking cups, the excitement of a foray, and the pleasures of a debauch; but, on the other hand, Bothwell was the master whom he had venerated and obeyed from childhood; whose mandate it never occurred to him to dispute; whose will was law. The Rutherfords had served the Hepburns by flood and field as long as either family could count their line. It was not for Dick, so he thought, to be the first traitor of his race; yet he loathed his task, too, this frank-hearted borderer, and his face was very stern and his voice rung hoarse and harsh when he spoke again.

‘Ye say true, Maister Maxwell. Orders must be obeyed, Gude forgi’e us! and the Laird’s bidding must be done!’

Startled by the altered tone, Maxwell turned in his saddle, and at the same instant a thick woollen plaid, thrown over him from behind, was drawn tight across his head and face, a sword-belt was as quickly strapped round his arms above the elbows, a stout moss-trooper pinioned him on either side, two more were at his horse’s head, his weapons were secured, and he found himself, in the space of about half a minute, helpless, blindfold, half-stifled, and a prisoner!

Accustomed as he had been in his adventurous life to every sort of catastrophe, the present seemed to him the most unaccountable and startling of all. He had not witnessed the chafing warden’s interview yesterday with calm, impassible, unscrupulous Moray, nor guessed how much he had to thank his host, that imprisonment rather than death was his present fate. He knew nothing of the conclave held over their wine after he had retired last night by the three nobles, when Rothes had suggested so jovially that he might be blinded or left in a dungeon for life, or hidden out of the way altogether, in any manner that was most agreeable to his boon companions.

‘For,’ as the peer politely put it, while he filled his cup to the brim, ‘you need have no fear of inconveniencing me. We have a saying in Fife of which I have always endeavoured to uphold the truth—“Ask no questions of the Leslies, for their answers are sharp, silent, and to the point.” If he goes down a certain winding-stair in my poor house you might never hear of him again till you wanted him; and if need be, I could produce you his bones, at any rate, twenty years hence. Do not hesitate, I pray you; I am only happy to accommodate the warden. Bothwell, your good health!’

Nor had he overheard the orders accepted so unwillingly by poor ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ an hour or two before dawn, nor that worthy’s eager remonstrance and extreme unwillingness to fulfil his chief’s behests. Perhaps the henchman never felt so keenly that he was a vassal as when he told off six stout jackmen for the unwelcome duty, and informed them of the catchword, ‘the Laird’s bidding,’ at which they were to muffle and pinion their prisoner.

Maxwell knew it was useless to complain. A request for a little air was so far complied with that the plaid, while it still blinded him, was enough loosened to admit of his breathing more freely; but no answer was vouchsafed to the few indignant questions that, in his first surprise, he had put to his captors. The pace, too, at which they were now going, forbade conversation, and in the few words exchanged at intervals between the jackman, their prisoner failed to distinguish the tones of ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh.’ Notwithstanding the henchman’s treachery, Maxwell’s heart sank a little within him to think that he was deserted by his last friend.

After many hours of hard riding, and when he could not but feel that his horse was becoming completely exhausted, the fresh sea-breeze made him aware that he was approaching the Firth. With no unnecessary violence, though with much rapidity, he was, ere long, lifted from the saddle and placed in a boat, but the plaid was still kept round his head, and an unbroken silence preserved even by the men who handled the oars. It must have been long after nightfall when they made the opposite shore, and Maxwell, despite his hardy frame, was becoming faint and exhausted from fatigue, vexation, and want of food.

As he was again forced into the saddle, however, a flask of brandy was applied to his mouth, and at the same time a strong bony hand grasped his own warmly, and ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’s’ welcome voice whispered in his ear—

‘Tak’ anither sup, lad, and keep your heart up. Ye’ve gotten a friend to your back for a’ that’s come and gone yet.’

CHAPTER XXXII.