CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE EARL'S DARING.

Dione, then: Thy wrongs with patience bear;
And share those griefs inferior powers must share;
Unnumbered woes mankind from us sustain,
And men with woes afflict the gods again."
                                                                    The Iliad, Book V.

A few chapters back we left the Earl of Ashkirk alone upon the solitary beach near the cavern, on the morning of that day which beheld his unhappy sister for the first time an inmate of the Castle of Edinburgh.

His more bitter feelings of hostility to James had been soothed, for the monarch possessed the charm of the Stuart race—that charm which won the hearts of all whom they addressed; but, being still unforgiven, Lord Ashkirk felt himself an outlaw, with the axe of the doomster hanging over his head, while he had to suspect a spy or a foeman in every man he met.

With his eyes fixed on the island castle where his mother and Sybil Douglas of Kilspindie were imprisoned,—with all his thoughts centred there, and bent on visiting and freeing them from the thraldom and captivity of a Hamilton, he walked along the sandy shore, revolving a thousand rash but gallant plans and projects.

He was buried in deep thought, and gradually his head sank upon his breast.

A draught of water from a spring, a bannock and a piece of cheese received at a cottage where he tarried, and, in the hospitable fashion of the olden time, asked for it without shame and obtained it with a welcome, sufficed him for food; and, retracing his steps, he wandered westward up the margin of the broad river, until he reached the little kirktown of Wester-Kinghorn (which now bears another name), lying behind the Burnt-island, nestling under the brow of hills that are upheld by basaltic columns, whose summits have been scorched by volcanic fire, and whose rifted sides have repelled the waves of the antediluvian world.

On the high and rocky island, which, though it has now become a promontory, was then completely surrounded by the sea at high water, stood a tower belonging to the Duries of Durie.

Crossing the sandy neck or isthmus while the tide was low, the earl concealed himself among the copsewood which covered the island on the eastward, from whence he had a view of Inchkeith, distant about three miles, reddened by the setting sun which covered with a golden tint the calm, broad waters of the Firth.*

* Firth, from Fiord; not Frith, from Fretum, as Dr. Johnson erroneously supposed.

The wood was in full foliage, and cast a pleasant shade upon the rocks, which were spotted with grey lichens or covered with verdant moss. Here passed the day; and evening came, with silence and darkness, for even the stillness of that lonely isle became more still. The wild bees and the buzzing flies forsook the caps of the closing flowers for their homes in the hollows of the old pine-tree; the notes of the mavis and merle died away; the deer came no more to drink of the stream that trickled from the rocks, and the foliage of the isle became moist with the falling dew.

As if in contrast to the storm of the previous evening, the night came on clear, cloudless, starry, and beautiful.

Avoiding that side of the isle which was overlooked by the Duries' castle of Ross-end, the earl sought the beach, where a few fisher-boats were moored to rings in the rocks of a lonely creek.

The place was deserted, and not an eye beheld him. His resolutions and execution were brief: selecting the smallest, he sprang on board, cast off the painter, and seizing a pair of oars, each one of which would have required an ordinary man to handle it, he pulled away from the shore with a strength and activity that the sturdiest of our fisher-wights might have viewed with satisfaction and envy. Though as accomplished a knight as ever rode to battle, the earl was somewhat of a seaman, for his father's castle in Forfarshire looked down on Lunan Bay.

He was master of the little bark both by sail and oar; and knowing somewhat of the dangerous navigation of that stately river, avoiding those perilous rocks known as the Gunnel, on gaining the mid-stream he set the brown lug-sail, which the unsuspecting proprietor had prepared for the little fishing voyage of the morrow, and, favoured by the ebb-tide, the current, and a soft west wind, bore with the speed of a seagull straight down towards Inchkeith.

If the wind freshened, he had a thousand chances to one of being swept helplessly out into the German Ocean; but the bold earl never thought of that.

Alone in the middle of the broad and rapid Firth, its aspect seemed to him magnificent, as the deep red light that lingered behind the western Ochills tinged all its waves with a purple hue; but their foam became a shower of silver, and white as winter frost, when it broke against the shining cliffs, whereon rose the castle at the west end of the island.

As the earl had resolved on freeing his mother and Sybil from their captivity, his natural boldness prevented him from seeing any difficulty in achieving this project, though he was alone in the enterprise, armed only with his poniard and an old sword which he had picked up in the brawl of the preceding night, and though the castle was commanded by Sir James Hamilton of Barncleugh, with a small but chosen party of soldiers.

"If a Seton could fear, I should certainly be afraid now," said the earl, on seeing how the waves burst in foam on all sides of the Inch—one moment sinking low, to show the reefs, which rose like jagged teeth above them, and the next dashing in torrents against the black volcanic bluffs. "Tut! by the pope! what a mouthful of salt-water!" he added, as the spray was blown in his face, when he dashed his boat through the breakers, and then, running along the lee of the shore, struck his sail and slowly crept near the little creek, which there forms the only landing-place; for on the east rushes the whole current of the Firth, and on the west breaks the thundering force of the German Sea.

The night had now come on, and solemn stillness reigned upon the isle.

The gates of the square tower which crowned its highest summit were closed; but here and there a red ray glimmered from the deep windows of its dusky mass.

"One of these lights," thought the earl, as he gazed upward, "may shine on my dear Sybil's dark glossy hair and snow-white brow."

The tide was low, and he ran the boat into a little cavern which lay near the creek; it was, in reality, but the top of a deep chasm in the rocks, having a clear sandy bottom, where he could distinctly perceive the layers of dark pebbles, of bright shells, and waving sea-weed, far down below, when the clear moon rose above the Lammermuir, to shed its radiance on the heaving water.

Resolving to wait till midnight, when all the inhabitants of the town most probably would be asleep, and when, with more security, he could make a reconnaissance of the isle and the barbican wall, the earl guided his boat into the narrow little fissure, which is one of many that perforate the island. While endeavouring to prevent its jarring on the flinty rocks, he was greatly alarmed by perceiving a human figure spring off a shelf of the volcanic wall, and plunge heavily into the deep dark water of the chasm, which penetrated, he knew not how far, into the heart of the island, but which, as it receded, became more appalling by its utter obscurity and subterranean character.

Incident to the age, rather than the man, the earl's supernatural fears of kelpies, gnomes, and water-spirits, now became altogether secondary to the dread of having been discovered by some human denizen of the place. He felt for his poniard, and paused. Behind him yawned the pointed arch of the cavern, with the distant sea-beach shining in the moonlight; before him lay rocks and water buried in darkness. He lingered, oar in hand, scarcely daring to breathe, but heard only the ripple of the rising tide as it chafed on the walls of the chasm.

Suddenly, another sound smote his ear, that as of a diver rising to the surface; then came a hard breathing on the water, and the regulated plashing as of some one swimming away into that very obscurity which the earl's eyes ached with regarding, but failed to penetrate. His hair bristled, and his heart quailed with momentary terror of a spirit, or evil thing; but from that very terror he gathered a courage, and, by his oar and hands, feeling the rocks on each side, shot further in his sharp-prowed boat, intent on overtaking the swimmer, and discovering whether it was a man or devil; but he had not gone twenty yards when the chasm terminated in a sheer wall of rock; and again he paused to listen. The dash of the water had ceased.

He thought he heard other sounds, like those of footsteps clambering up the rock; but feared he was mistaken, for all became immediately still, and he heard only the murmur of the water as it boiled among the reefs without.

"Tush!" thought he, reddening with shame at his own alarm; "it has only been some poor seal or sea-dog basking on the rocks in the summer moonlight. By midnight the moon will be in the west—till then let me sleep, for these last two nights I have never closed an eye;" and looping a rope round a pinnacle of rock, he securely moored the boat, and reclined within it to sleep.

Such was the effect of the weariness oppressing him, that in three minutes he was buried in profound slumber, rocked by the motion of the boat, which gently rose and fell on the undulations of the water; for though around the isle the swell was heavy, the waves being broken by the jutting of the rocks at the cavern mouth, they rolled gently and smoothly into its dark recesses.

Now while the earl all unconsciously was sleeping, this little cavern of the sea was filling fast; for as the rising tide on the German Ocean met the downward current of the Forth, the water rose rapidly against the impending walls.

Ashkirk knew not how long he slept, when he was suddenly awakened by an unusual sound, and, on attempting to rise, struck his head with violence against the stone roof of the cave, close up to which his boat had floated on the rising tide.

His situation was fraught with danger and horror.

Moored fast to a point of rock now far beyond his reach, the boat was wedged between the top of the cavern and the surface of the swollen water, leaving him thus imprisoned, coffined, as it were, in utter darkness, and with the deadly fear that the whole of this now submarine grot would be covered by the gurgling tide, in which case he would assuredly be drowned, "and die the death (as he thought) of a rat in a drain."

The partial gleam of moonlight which had illuminated the mouth of this frightful trap had now passed away, and the darkness within and around it seemed palpable and opaque. He could no longer discern where the entrance lay, and his heart sank in the fear that the water had risen over it. He now heard the wavelets rippling, with a thousand hollow echoes, in the fissures and recesses, and gurgling with a sucking sound as they filled each in succession, and rose towards the gunwale of his boat, which had become perfectly immovable.

And the tide was still rising!

He found that he could not survive ten minutes longer. Already the air was stifling, and the necessity of making one desperate struggle for life became immediately apparent. Lying almost on his back, he groped breathlessly around him, and discovered a vacant shelf of rock upon his right. Clambering within it, he found with joy that it led to an inner and upper cavern. He had scarcely left the boat when, with a hoarse gurgle, the tide rushed in and filled it.

As he ascended, a faint red light now flickered on the dark, stony walls of this slimy retreat; then, indeed, the heart of the gallant earl began to tremble, as his dread of supernatural beings returned. He remembered the strange figure which had disappeared so suddenly into the lower cavern when he first entered it. Again the terror of the water-kelpie came vividly upon him; for, in that time, all Scotsmen feared that evil denizen of their native seas and lakes.

Though dark, damp, and slimy, it was evident to the earl that the water did not usually rise so far as this upper retreat; and as the light reddened and increased around him, it revealed the solid masses of whinstone rock which composed the enormous walls of this subterranean vault. Here and there were columns of basalt, or perpendicular lava, with masses of sparkling spar, pitchstone, and porphyry. Still this strange and crimson light brightened and wavered, dying and growing again, till, overcome by dread of dwarfs and fairies, or spirits still more fell, several seconds elapsed before the earl removed his hand from his eyes, and looked steadily around him.

At the upper end of the grotto, which measured somewhere about twenty feet square, there burned a fire of wood, green bushes, and crackling sea-grass; and thereat was seated—neither a witch brewing hell-kail, nor a wizard working spells; neither a stunted dwarf forging fairy trinkets, nor some fair water-spirit rising in her naked beauty from a silver shell, but simply a man roasting one of those wild rabbits with which the island has in all ages abounded, and who, with his breath, was blowing aside the smoke, which curled to the upper air through a chasm in the roof.

Lord Ashkirk paused irresolutely; for, in advancing, he might fall upon an enemy, and in retiring, he would inevitably fall into the water, which murmured angrily in the cavern below. The whole aspect of this subterranean cook was wild and strange; and though he stooped immediately over the red embers that gleamed on a shelf of basalt, the intruder failed to discover his features.

Suddenly, something familiar in the attitude flashed upon his memory.

"Sabrino!" he exclaimed, and approached him.

Sabrino—for this mysterious personage was no other—turned round, and bounded backward with a terror which was ludicrously expressed by the blue aspect of his usually sable visage, his dilated yellow eyes and expansive mouth, in the recesses of which he rolled about the voiceless fragment of his mutilated tongue.

"O—ah!" he stuttered, capering with terror, "O—ah—ees a-mee!"

"Now, by St. Mary! I thought thee the devil himself roasting some poor man's child. Why art thou not attending my mother in that rascally old tower above us? How camest thou to be hiding thus, and in a condition so dilapidated? But, first of all, how is my Lady Sybil—tush! I waste my time in questioning thee, poor pagan, who art incapable of Christian speech."

As Sabrino's whole vocabulary consisted of a few guttural sounds, a vast number of contortions of visage and shark-like grins, which were seldom very intelligible to any one save the countess or Lady Jane, who had acquired a knowledge of his meaning by habit, an answer to the earl's three questions was not to be expected. After his first terror and the extravagance of his after-joy had subsided, his story, if he could have told it, might have been related in a few words.

The blow inflicted by the oar had neither killed nor stunned him; for, luckily, that portion of his frame whereon it fell, namely, his head, was stronger, by nature, than a casque of steel; thus, he merely sank to come up again a few yards distant; but he dared neither to swim after the boat, nor return to the tower where his mistress was imprisoned, and from which he had been so unceremoniously repulsed. Full of hatred and fear of the white men among whom his evil fortune had cast him, the unhappy black page had found this shelter when pursuing a rabbit by moonlight among the rocks. Externally, a thick clump of whin-bushes concealed the fissure that gave admittance to this upper grotto, where, for fourteen days, Sabrino had lurked, coming forth only at night to pick up fuel and shell-fish, crabs, mussels, whelks, and other debris of the ocean on the beach, and to catch the wild rabbits as they slept among the long reedy grass in the moonlight.

During the day he remained close in his retreat; for he knew well that Sir James Hamilton's men in the tower would have thought as little of shooting him, by bow or arquebuse, as of winging a Solan goose.

In these fourteen days, much of the original savageism of the African's aspect and disposition had returned. He looked wild, haggard, and strange, as his glassy eyeballs, and the gold earrings with which the countess had adorned his large ears, glittered in the light of the embers. On his thick woolly head was a cap or crown, which he had woven of seaweed, and ornamented with the crabs' claws and the cockleshells of his late repasts; his once gay doublet of white satin slashed with scarlet silk and laced with gold, his tight white hose and trunk breeches, together with the metallic collar of thrall, which had the Countess Margaret's arms and cipher engraved thereon, were all wofully changed in aspect, the former being torn to rags, and the latter encrusted with salt by the saline atmosphere of the Firth.

All this and much more the poor mute endeavoured to explain by signs, which were totally unintelligible to the Earl of Ashkirk; who, however, understood one point of the narrative, the necessity of remaining closely concealed.

As Sabrino, to avoid discovery, had to cook all his viands in the night, another rabbit was put to the spit before his fire, on which he threw some of the driftwood and dried seaweed procured from the creek; and there can be little doubt that the glow of this subterranean fire, appearing at times through the fissure in the rocks that bounded the western side of the little valley, formed the gleams of fairy light, which were the source of such alarm to the countess.

Her outlawed son made a hearty meal, which passed for both supper and breakfast, as by the time it was concluded Sabrino had carefully extinguished his fire, for morning had dawned, and the beams of the rising sun shone far into the lower cavern, glittering on its wet walls, and casting their reflection on its slimy recesses. The tide, which in full flow completely filled it, had now ebbed; but there were many fathoms of water, dark and deep, in the chasm where the earl's boat lay floating, swamped and brimful to the gunwale; and the task of baling it with his bonnet, for lack of another vessel, was a long and protracted one.

"Now, my friend Sabrino," said he, "dost thou know what has brought me to this rascally island?"

A knowing leer glittered in the shining eyes of Sabrino; and pointing to the tower, he kissed his hand, laid it on his heart, and then pointed to the water.

"Thou art right: to take my black-eyed Sybil from that villanous prison-house. By my faith, thou wouldst make a glorious lover! what a bright leer thou gavest! I would give a hundred golden unicorns to find a sable Venus for thee, my poor Sabrino; and who knoweth, but through the kind offices of the prior of Torphichen and other knights of Rhodes, I may do so. Now, dost thou know in what part of yonder tower Lady Sybil Douglas and the good lady my mother dwell?" asked the earl, pointing to the castle of the Inch, from the whin-bushes which screened the entrance to their hiding-place, and faced the little valley overlooked by the island fortress, and the winding path which ascended to it. "Not those chambers which overhang the ocean, I hope?" he added, anxiously.

Sabrino nodded his head sorrowfully.

"Ah! twenty furies! dost thou say so? How shall I ever reach them, unless I become a hoodie-crow or a Solan goose? Do they ever walk in the valley?"

Sabrino nodded again.

"Close to these rocks—eh?"

Sabrino shook his woolly head.

"Are they guarded? The devil! thou noddest thy head again. Indeed, this wary old trooper, Barncleugh, keeps a sure watch over them. By Satan's horns! I may mar his wardship yet. Do he or they know that thou art here?"

Another shake of the head replied in the negative.

"Sabrino, my dark-complexioned friend, listen and look; open thy huge eyes, prick up thy capacious ears, and attend to me. To-night I will scale that castle wall, and thou shalt assist me."

"Ees."

"I have observed that the windows on that side are not barred, because they overlook the water. Thou wilt clamber, and not be afraid?"

"Ees—ees," replied the negro, capering about.

"But we may be shot by the arquebuses of the watchmen."

"O—ah!" howled Sabrino, scratching his woolly head.

"But do not let that affright thee, my Ethiopian; for it hath been the hap of better men before us. An unlucky cannon slew King James II. at Roxburgh, at the very moment he was passing a jest with my gallant grandsire. What matters it whether we are shot now, or die quietly twenty years after this, for in the twenty-first year time would be all the same with us, at least so far as I am concerned personally; but I have it imperatively upon my mind to send certain Hamiltons to the other world before me, ere I can give up the ghost in peace."

The eyes of the negro gleamed, and he laid his hand on his dagger.

"How readily thou snuffest blood, my sable devil. I doubt not thou gottest it with thy mother's milk; for, among the knights of Torphichen, I have heard it said, that in the far-away land from whence thou camest, a child receives its first food on a spear, even as our fierce clansmen in the north give the young Celt his first food on the point of his father's claymore. Well, then, listen. Thou seest the wall of yonder barbican, all grey, weatherbeaten, and tufted with grass; well, where that wall joins the tower, I will ascend, and so reach the windows of their apartment. Thou starest. Ah, my friend, thou knowest not my capabilities in the climbing way. I have done as much before for the mere love of life, and shall I not do thrice as much again for the love of Sybil Douglas, who is dearer to me than a thousand lives?"

The negro clapped his hands, lolled out the fragment of his tongue, and danced about to the jangle of his long earrings, which clanked on his metallic collar.

Being naturally at all times of a sociable and convivial turn, the young earl, to while away the time, talked constantly to the poor mute, gravely and with drollery by turns, amusing himself with his childish wonder and savage simplicity, for they served to pass the otherwise dreary day; and gladly Ashkirk beheld the sun sink, and the hour for more active employment draw near.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE EARL'S SUCCESS.

                                                "You will quickly find
I'll reach its gates, although, volcano-like,
With thickest clouds it strikes the bright sun blind,
And lightnings flash, and bolts around me strike."
                                                                                    CALDERON.

During the whole of that day, from his secret hiding-place, the earl watched the little green valley that lies in the bosom of the island, and the narrow winding path that ascended from it to the round gateway in the barbican wall of the tower. The latter was an exact square of considerable height, surrounded at the summit by a heavy battlement, having little tourelles at the angles, a row of those brass cannon then known in Scotland as chalmers, and a staff, from which was displayed the blue national standard, with the white cross of St. Andrew. But the anxious earl watched fruitlessly; for on this day, neither at the windows, on the ramparts, on the pathway, nor in the valley, did the countess or Sybil appear.

About mid-day, Sir James Hamilton of Barncleugh, the governor of the little stronghold, came forth, and at the gate sat down to his daily employment of playing chess with his seneschal, and drinking Rochelle, while a few of his soldiers solaced themselves by a game with quoits in the valley below, where, as Sabrino endeavoured to acquaint the earl, the same men had played at the same game, at the same time, every day since he had been on the island; for so passed the time in this little isolated and monotonous place; and nothing ever disturbed the perfect equanimity of its governor (who was content to vegetate like a fungus or a mussel on the rocks), save when the Leith provision-boats brought some waggish rumour that his lady, who was a dame of the tabourette at Holyrood, intended to join him—the very idea of which made the bluff old knight tremble in his wide trunk base.

So close were the quoit players to the place of the earl's concealment, that more than once he shrunk back with alarm, expecting instant discovery, when any of them overshot the mark, and hurled his iron discus to the very verge of the dark whins which shrouded the mouth of the cavern. This group of men continued to play with ardour until sunset; for of this game (which was famous of old among the ancients) the Scots in all ages, as in the present day, have been passionately fond.

While the earl, lover-like, was wasting his time in gazing at the tower which contained Sybil, the black page sat near him, cross-legged, engaged in knotting a ladder from a coil of rope he had found in the boat, and formed it very ingeniously by loops equidistant on each side of the shaft of a stout boat-hook, solacing himself the while by a deep guttural croaking, which he meant for a song, and grinning from ear to ear with delight as his work progressed.

As the sun set behind the Ochills, a culverin was fired from the high carved poop of the Admiral Sir Robert Barton's ship, and St. Andrew's cross was hauled down from the bartizan; the governor and his little garrison retired to supper, the gates of the tower were closed, and then a perfect stillness reigned throughout the island, which exhibited no sign of life, save when a seagull flew screaming round the tower above, or a wild rabbit shot like an evil spirit across the darkening valley below.

The night came on calm, still, and solemn, and the stars were reflected on the broad blue bosom of the Forth. The moon seemed to linger long behind the distant Lammermuirs; but the myriad of stars that dotted the canopy above shed a clear white light on the magnificent river, the bordering hills, and all its rocky isles. Here and there a red spark, twinkling afar off, marked where a town or hamlet lay, for thickly were they scattered along its fertile shores.

The blue waves were rolling in silver light against the black rocks and volcanic columns of the isle, as the earl guided his boat from its place of concealment, and moored it by the beach; for on this night he had resolved to attempt one of those rash and bold essays of which his life was one continued and exciting succession. With anxious and longing eyes he gazed at the square and lofty tower which stood in dark outline between him and the west, where, above the distant chain of the Ochill mountains, a red light lingered like the last flame of a dying conflagration.

It marked where the sun had set.

"Now," said the earl, as he sprang ashore, "thank heaven, Sabrino, I have bidden adieu to thy dark and dirty foxhole!"

Armed with his sword and poniard, and carrying with him a stout rope and the boat-hook, which, like the boat itself (acting under the law of necessity), he had appropriated to himself, the adventurous earl, accompanied by his sable follower, stole up the dark valley, across which fell the sombre shadow of the tower (for though rising, the moon was not yet visible), and crept softly close to the rampart of the barbican.

From thence they piloted their way along the base of the wall, until they reached an angle that overhung the water, which, at the frightful depth of a hundred and sixty feet below, was chafing in foam against the foot of the cliffs, beetling on the very verge of which the tower was founded. According to Sabrino, the windows of the apartments occupied by Sybil Douglas and the countess overlooked this comfortable abyss.

To pass the corner of the wall which overhung the precipice was the most dangerous part of the adventure; and, observing that his leader paused with perspiration on his brow and perplexity in his heart, the negro pulled the skirt of his doublet, and made a motion indicative of advancing himself.

"My trusty imp!" said the earl, "where a Seton lingers, it will never do for thee to take the lead; and yet, without the wings of a crow or the claws of a cat, I know not how the devil I shall pass this hairbreadth precipice!"

While Ashkirk was speaking, Sabrino, who on many a night before this had scrambled like a squirrel over every part of the island, shot past, and, with his arms embracing the corner of the wall, achieved the feat, and with a guttural laugh held out his hands to assist the earl round.

"Thou art certainly a son of our old friend with the horns; but, by my faith, fall or not, I follow thee!" and grasping the hand of the agile African, with one stride the earl was beside him.

Then he found himself upon a shelf of rock scarcely eighteen inches broad, with the waves of the Firth hissing in foam far down below—so far, that their angry boom was but faintly heard, while the scared seagulls and gigantic Solan geese, flapping their wings like thunder, flew out of their eyries, plunging and screaming in the abyss beneath.

About three miles off, the lights of Leith were faintly glimmering through that haze which often shrouds its shores.

Though eminent for courage in a gallant age, the earl felt his heart grow sick for a moment at his perilous position. At his back was the wall of the keep, some seventy feet in height; and twenty feet from where he stood was a large window secured by two bars of iron in the shape of a cross; and there Sabrino indicated, by a multitude of signs, contortions, and guttural sounds, the countess resided.

"I have thrown a lance six ells long, at a smaller mark than that window," said the earl; "and I must be blinder than a bat to miss it; but as thou knowest, Sabrino, the business just now is not to hit the window, but to click the boat-hook to the bars. Ah, plague! if we should only break the glass, and the window be, after all, that of Sir James Hamilton, or some of his fellows! my blood runs cold at the thought; they could pop at us so leisurely with their hand-culverins; and I assure thee, I have no wish to be shot like a poor pigeon here."

As the earl spoke, he secured one end of the rope to the ladder which had been formed of loops on the shaft of the boat-hook, and tied the other round his waist; he then, with all the force that his dangerous footing permitted him to exert, shot up the hook towards the window; but missing it, was nearly thrown over the cliff by the jerk of its descent.

"Courage!" said he, grasping it again; "I am only twenty feet from thee, my dear Sybil."

Again he threw, and with joy beheld the steel hook attach itself to the iron cross-bar of the window. Then he waited breathlessly to hear if the noise caused any alarm; for there was as much chance of a moustached soldier appearing at the window as of Sybil Douglas presenting her fair face and startled eyes. All remained still but the screaming of the sea-birds around them, the dash of the breakers below, and the dull hum of the rising wind as it swept along the Firth. Then fearlessly the brave earl began his ascent. On the strength of the rope, the hook, or the shaft, he never bestowed a thought; but solely intent on seeing his mother and Sybil, clambered eagerly but carefully up the rough wall, which was grey and weatherbeaten by the saline atmosphere and ocean storms of many a century, and against which the ladder swung frightfully to and fro, until he reached the window, grasped its massive cross-bar, and gained a comparatively secure seat on its deep, broad sill.

He peered in, and listened, as well as the thick panes of coarse and encrusted glass, which filled the window, would permit, and between the yellow damask curtains saw a plainly-furnished sleeping apartment, in which Sybil and his mother were kneeling at prayer, before retiring. Their rosaries were at their wrists, and they knelt before one of those little altars which then formed a part of every Scottish household; as they do in Catholic countries still. It was somewhat like a cabinet, and had a figure of the Madonna, bearing in her arms the little infant Jesus. Upon her head was a wreath of freshly-gathered flowers, and before her burned two little wax-tapers, which had been consecrated at the last candle-mass by the abbot of Inchcolm.

The earl waited until their orisons were over; and while they prayed his heart swelled within him at their unaffected piety; for his memory went back to other days, when, in their secluded home at Ashkirk, in Angus, he had knelt by his mother's side, and first learned to lisp the very prayers she was now repeating. An emotion of shame came over him, on reflecting that in the wandering life he had led, and especially during his exile at the court of the libertine Henry VIII. of England, he had neglected every office of religion. He observed that his mother had become paler and thinner, and that her hair seemed to be silvered with white; but that might have been the effect of fancy, or of the dim light of the apartment.

Sybil had lost somewhat of her rich bloom; but her dark eyes were bright as ever. Her black hair flowed from under her triangular cap, and hung like a silky veil over her shoulders, the curve of which, as she knelt with her head bent forward, was eminently beautiful. The edge of each large ringlet, the pearls of her cap, and the top of her smooth forehead, were all tipped with pale light by the tapers. She wore a long dress of purple satin, with an open neck; and in the light and shadow its folds seemed to glitter with many prismatic hues. It is impossible to say whether it was the brilliant and piquant expression, the noble features, and pure complexion of Sybil's face that made her adorable, but, taken together, these attributes of the old Douglas race made her singularly so.

The moment their orisons were over, the old countess arose to the full extent of her great stature; and though aged, being unbent, her figure was remarkably elegant, its height being increased by her shoes—the "cork-heeled shoon" of our old national ballad—and after solemnly crossing herself three several times, she extinguished the tapers on the altar, and kissed Sybil with all the affection of a mother.

The sole light in the chamber now came from two wax-candles, which were held in the outstretched arms of a grotesque figure of Florentine workmanship, placed on the dressing-table at the farther end, and immediately opposite the window where the earl had perched himself.

CHAPTER XL.

SYBIL.

"Come, my Antonia, come,
I'll lead thee to the blissful land of love,—
I'll lead thee to the pinnacle of joys,
Where round thy path the fairest flowers of earth
Shall bloom in radiant beauty to reward
Thy noble deed—come, dearest."—THEODORE KÖRNER.

A guttural laugh announced to the earl that Sabrino had also ascended the ladder, and was rejoicing at the sight of his mistress.

"Hold fast! by my faith, thou hast the hands and feet of a marmoset. Hush! I would hear them talk a little," said the noble, adjusting himself upon his giddy perch. "By Jove! we are like a couple of crows up here—thou like the black, and I like a white one."

"Ees," grinned Sabrino, whose whole vocabulary was nearly comprised in that sound.

The moment their orisons were over, Sybil went to the opposite window, and, withdrawing the curtains, gazed steadfastly towards the eastern end of the little valley.

"Dost thou see it again, bairn—that ill-omened light?" asked the countess, approaching.

"Yes; oh, yes!" replied Sybil, with a voice of surprise and fear; "brighter to-night than ever before."

"Then it must be either a corpse-licht, that burneth on the grass, to mark where a slain man sleeps, or a fairy-candle, at the rock where the whin-bushes grow. Corpse-lichts burn blue, and fairy-candles are siller white."

"But this burns redly, and it brightens fast!"

"By the Lord!" said the earl, with alarm, "in our hurry to-night thou hast forgotten to extinguish our fire, master Sabrino; and we have widened the aperture at the chasm. Mass! if the knaves of watchmen see it, we shall be discovered and taken!"

Sabrino turned skyblue in the dark at this terrible suggestion.

"There is a knowe among the hazelwoods near our castle of Ashkirk, where the gude neibours dwell; and ever and aye on St. John's night, a light of siller white shines among the grass that grows beneath the thick dark trees. Now it chanced that, on the eve of that blessed festival, in 1510 (oh, waly! only three years before dreich Flodden-field, and good King James's death), Hughie o' the Haugh, a poor cottar-body, who dwelt at the glenfoot, was coming home from the next burrow-toun with a bag of barley on his horse's back, and trudging, staff in hand, behind, lamenting sorely at the tidings he had that day heard at the market-cross; for brother Macgridius, of the blessed Order of Redemption, had seen his son, a puir sailor lad, taken prisoner by the cruel pagans at Barbary, who demanded a hundred pieces of gold for his ransom. Hughie could as easily have raised the Bass Rock as a hundred pieces of gold; and he went homewards, with his bonnet owre his eyen, groaning in great anguish of mind. Oblivious of all but the loss of his only son, poor old Hughie followed his horse, which knew right well the drove-road that led to his thatched stable, at the back of the auld farm toun; when suddenly, at the fairy knowe, the animal pricked up its ears, trembled, and stopped, as a wee diminutive mannie, not two feet high, and wearing an enormous broad blue bonnet, and a long beard that reached to his middle, rose off the stone dyke, and bade Hughie hail.

"'Gude e'en, Carle Hughie,' said he; 'how went the markets?' he added, with an eldritch laugh.

"'Sorrowfully for me,' replied the other, wiping his eyes with the neuk of his plaid.

"'Wherefore, Hughie, wherefore, ye silly auld carle?' quoth the little man.

"'Because I come back with a light purse and a sorrowfu' and heavy heart,' replied the poor cottar, peering under his bonnet, and terrified at the wee figure; for he knew it was one of those unco creatures whom it was dangerous to seek, and still more dangerous to avoid or to offend.

"'I am sorely in want of barley, carle,' said the mannikin, stroking his long white beard; 'ye must sell me that load, and at mine ain price, too.'

"'I lack siller, gude sir, as sorely as ye can lack the barley,' urged the poor crofter, who feared that the payment might be fairy-pennies or pebble-stones.

"'I never was hard on a puir man yet,' replied the little mannie, testily; 'and I have dealt wi' your race, Hughie, for many a generation. When grain is plenty I buy it; for I tell ye, carle, that a time of sad and sair scarcity for puir Scotland is fast coming. So, here! I ken what ye are graning for, ye greedy body,' quoth the creature, plunging each of his hands into the enormous pockets of his doublet, 'here are a hundred pieces of good red gold; ransom your son, and give me a help wi' the barley pock; my back hath borne a load like that, and mair.'

"With fear and joy mingled, Hughie received the gold, and transferred the bag of barley from the back of his horse to that of the little man, of whom it left no part visible, save his bandy legs, his walking staff, and the end of his long white beard.

"'Gude e'en to you, Carle Hughie; a safe voyage hame to you, son,' said the awesome buyer, and manfully striking his staff into the ground, he trudged up the steep knowe, and disappeared below the dark trees.

"Hughie hastened back to brother Macgridius, and, with joy, paid him the hundred pieces of gold for his son's redemption from slavery; and not without many a fear that before his eyes the coins would turn into birch leaves or cockleshells; but that was impossible, for they were ilka ane our gude Scottish gold, but six hundred years old, for they bore the name of king Constantine IV., who was slain at the battle of Cramond."

"And Hughie's son was released?" said Sybil.

"Yea, child, and is now master gunner of Sir Robert Barton's ship at Leith."

With his legs dangling over the surf, and being in imminent danger of drowning, it may easily be supposed that the earl listened to this fairy legend with the utmost impatience; but while his mother spoke, and Sybil listened with the utmost good faith and reliance (for in those days, as at this hour, in some parts of Scotland, one might as well have doubted their own existence as that of fairies and other spirits of good or evil), the earl had gently raised the heavy and massive sash of the window, slid into the room, and concealed himself behind the thick damask curtains, his heart beating the while with the mingled desire of rushing forward to embrace his mother and Sybil, and a fear that their alarm might be communicated to the inhabitants of the tower, many of whom had not yet retired to rest.

"Look, look, Sybil!" exclaimed the countess, "the whins are on fire. Surely that is no fairy light!"

As she spoke, a watchman on the tower-head sounded his horn.

"Hark! the castle is alarmed!" said Sybil.

The earl saw that not a moment was to be lost now. Their fire in the cavern had by some means communicated itself to the whin-bushes at the entrance; an alarm had thus been given, and immediate action became necessary.

"Sybil," said he, "Sybil——"

"Just Heaven! my son's voice!" exclaimed the countess, becoming deadly pale, and feeling in her bosom for her case of reliques. "It is a spirit—a warning! It is a spirit!"

"Ten devils, lady mother! do not cry out!" implored the earl, gradually emerging from his hiding-place; "I am not yet a spirit, thank Heaven, and have no wish to be one."

"Then, oh, Archibald, how came you here?" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him.

"By the window," he replied, embracing Sybil in return; "by the window, as you may see."

"And Sabrino, my poor Sabrino!"

The black sank upon his knees to kiss her hands, and then danced about the room, performing the most extravagant capers to the sound of his long clanking earrings.

"By my soul, mother, the times are sorely changed with the Setons, when my father's son comes to visit thee and his betrothed wife like a rascally stoutriever by the window instead of the door—in the night instead of the day.

"The window!" they repeated, and became speechless for a moment, as they thought of the precipice, and the water at its foot.

"Faith, very few, I believe, would have dared what Sabrino and I have dared and done—but it was for thee, mother, and thee, my life, my love, my dear Sybil!" said Ashkirk, kissing her olive cheek.

"My brave Archibald, did the power of sorcery or of Providence bring thee to this prison island?"

"Neither, lady mother, but a smart boat, which, in another hour, shall convey you hence, with a fair breeze and a flowing sail."

"But how?"

"I know not yet, for we have to leave this tower, and baffle the old bear, its governor, the Laird of Barncleugh."

"My son, here have we dwelt for more than two weary weeks, and never a letter nor message hath come from thee or Roland Vipont."

"Vipont is on the king's service in Douglasdale, and for fourteen days I have been a prisoner in the house of Redhall; for the other two I have been vagabondizing."

"And Jane," said Sybil, "your sister Jane?"

"Is safe, I trust; but whether with Marion Logan, at Restalrig, or with my old friend Josina, the fair prioress of St. Catherine, I cannot for the life of me say. Now, pretty rogue, at what art thou laughing?"

"At thy figure, lord earl; 'tis like the satyrs on some old tapestry; thou art quite a wild man."

"True, cousin; I am scarcely fitted for appearance at Falkland or Holyrood, or in the Hall of the Three Estates, unless it were, as it may too soon be, at the bar. But ah, Sybil, my dear Sybil, what pleasure the sound of your voice gives me! 'tis like the dream of—— Hark! what an uproar! the burning whins have alarmed old Barncleugh and all his fellows. Come now, Sabrino, my man of the earrings, a truce to these mad capers—dost thou hear me?"

Sabrino stopped a fandango which he was performing on his head and hands, and pricked up his enormous ears.

"Quick with our rope ladder, for thou, my mother, and Sybil too, must descend from this window on the dark side of the tower; it is not more than fifteen feet from the ground, I think."

"But the barbican gate?" said Sybil.

"I will unlock it with the point of my sword," replied the fiery earl, as a savage gleam shot from his eyes.

"Nay, nay," said the countess, crossing her hands, and standing very erect, "I cannot think of flying thus; the king has placed me here, and the king must release me."

"What frenzy is this? Besotted by his French marriage, the king hath become a fool. Quick, Lady Ashkirk, we have not a moment to lose. Hark! the whole tower is silent now, for its inmates are away down in the valley, seeking the source of that sudden fire. Oh, if the knaves should discover my boat! Quick!—are you a coward, my mother—the widow of my father?"

"A coward never came of the line of Kilspindie, and a coward had never slept in your father's bosom, Lord Archibald," replied the tall matron, proudly, and with asperity, as her eyes filled with tears. "Thou knowest not, my son, how life sometimes rises in value with the unfortunate; but it is neither the love of life nor the fear of death that restrain me now, but a shame to fly, like a thief in the night, from the wardship of either king or clown."

"Now, by the faith of Seton! these are pleasant remarks to me, who have been skulking like a thief and a vagabond too, for the last few years—a creditable occupation for an earl! If thou stayest, here will I stay too," said Ashkirk, and seating himself, he folded his arms; "if Barncleugh find me, thou knowest my doom, for I shall die the death of an outlaw and traitor. By my soul! 'tis outrageous, this!"

"Thou art right," replied the old lady, trembling with sudden alarm; "I thought not of that. Quick, then! Old as I am, thou shalt see that now, as in the days of James IV., of gude memorie, I am a true daughter of old Archibald Greysteel."

"We have lost ten good minutes already," replied the earl, lowering his rope ladder from the small window, which, luckily, was ungrated, being within the barbican. Fortunately a gusty wind had risen, and the moon, which was partially obscured by passing clouds, having verged far to the south-east, threw the sombre shadow of the tower over that part of the court into which the fugitives were about to descend. The little castle was almost deserted, the iron gate of the barbican stood wide open, and the barking of dogs and hallooing of men ascended from below, where Barncleugh, with ten or fifteen of his followers, searched the valley for the source of that nocturnal fire which, on this occasion, had become so palpable, and caused such alarm.

"I will descend first, and hold steady the foot of the ladder; and do thou, Sabrino, my gallant imp, hold fast its top," said the earl, as, with his drawn sword in his teeth, he slid in a moment to the ground; "come, dearest Sybil, do thou set my mother an example."

With Sabrino's assistance, the young lady got out upon the ladder, which she clutched with a death-grasp, while the wind expanded her dress, and blew all her long black hair about her face.

"Oh, cousin Ashkirk!" she exclaimed, in great terror.

"Oh, cousin Sybil!" replied the earl, jestingly, in the same tone, to reassure her; "I will swear that thou hast the handsomest ankles and the handsomest leg in all the Lothians."

This intimation made her come down very quickly, and the earl received her in his arms with joy.

"Now, my lady mother, quick, bestir thee," said he, in a low voice. But terror seized him when a cry from his mother replied, and the explosion of a petronel followed; then Sabrino sprang from the chamber, and descended the ladder with the rapidity of light, and with his poniard in his hand.

There was blood on its blade!

A servant of Barncleugh had rushed in, and, surprising them, had fired his petronel at the negro, who, springing at him like a tiger-cat, inflicted a deadly wound with his poniard.

"Away, Sybil! come away! We have not a moment now to lose!" said the earl.

"But your mother, your poor mother!" she urged.

"Her own folly has done it all; those ten minutes had freed her; but she must be left for the present;" and, almost dragging Sybil, he led her out of the barbican and down the valley, keeping carefully on its shadowy side, which, fortunately, lay towards the beach.

CHAPTER XLI.

A HAMILTON! A HAMILTON!

"Oh, stay at home, my only son,
    Oh, stay at home with me!
For secretly I am forewarned
    Of ills awaiting thee!
Last night I heard the deid bell sound,
    When all were fast asleep;
And aye it rung, and aye it sung,
    Till all my flesh did creep."
                                            THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

Unobserved, they reached the verge of the beach, and were about to descend, when Sabrino suddenly grasped the arm of the earl.

He turned.

The negro had his poniard in his right hand, and placed a finger of his left on his lips, in token of silence; there was a savage gleam in his shining eyes.

"Well, Sabrino, what dost thou see now?"

Sabrino pointed, and, a few yards below, the earl saw a man, having in his hand a drawn sword, which glittered in the moonlight. That he was a gentleman was evident by his dress—a plum-coloured doublet, orange hose, a blue velvet mantle, and waving feather. He was ascending straight from the little creek, where the boat was moored to a fragment of rock, and had, beyond a doubt, discovered it.

"My lord!" said Sybil, breathlessly; "'tis Sir James of Barncleugh himself."

"Oho! I have not met this worthy laird since we broke the pikemen of Arran at Linlithgow brig. He owes me more than one sword cut; and I do not like debtors of that kind."

"Oh! if possible, avoid him."

"My dear Sybil!——"

"Death will come of it!"

"A little prick with a poniard will do him no harm."

"But while you fight, his people will come upon us. Now, dear Archibald, pray——"

"I am not in the sweetest of tempers just now: and—soho! thou Hamilton! clear the pathway, or I will trounce thee soundly."

"Who are you?" asked Sir James, standing on his guard, right in the centre of the path that led to the boat; "and what seek you here, sirrah?—stand and answer."

"I sought Sybil Douglas, Sir James."

"What do I hear—the Earl of Ashkirk! Now, by the soul of Arran! thou leavest not this island but in a coffin. Pardon me, my young lady of Kilspindie," said the old governor, courteously raising his blue velvet bonnet to Sybil; "pardon me, but this rash gallant must pay the penalty of coming uninvited here. Hallo! a Hamilton! a Hamilton!"

"Dishonour dog your heels, base Barncleugh! and may that accursed slogan never be heard but in shame and defeat!" exclaimed the earl, infuriated to find him thus crying aloud to summon his men, who were scattered over the island, and many of whom were visible in the moonlight, and not far off. "To the boat, Sybil, and leave me to deal with this rough tilter! To the boat; see to it, Sabrino. Sir James Hamilton, I have fought fifteen times, and three of my adversaries are dead; thou shalt make the sixteenth combatant I have encountered, and the fourth I shall have slain; and, as God be my judge, unwillingly. Come on!"

Both drew their daggers, and stood with their swords on guard.

In the sixteenth century, fencing in Scotland was very different from what it is to-day—a pastime for boys. It was then the indispensable accomplishment of the soldier and gentleman, for every gentleman was then a soldier. Long, straight, and heavy, the swords were double-edged; consequently, there were as many cuts as thrusts; and being furnished with long arm-pit daggers, the left hands of the duellists alternately acted offensively and defensively, and very often gave the finishing blow, when the sword of one adversary had beaten down the other's guard, and the combatants came to closer quarters.

Alarmed lest the voice of Barncleugh should have reached his people, excited by the imminent danger of his position, and by the instinctive feudal hatred of Sir James Hamilton, the earl attacked him with the utmost fury, assailing him with point and edge; and warily the older swordsman received him, warding the cuts with his rapier, and parrying the thrusts with his poniard. The steel rang and flashed like blue fire in the bright moonlight; and a shower of red sparks flew from either weapon as their keen edges met, and made the arm of each combatant tingle up to the shoulder blade.

Somewhat older fashioned, and more stiff than the earl, the knight of Barncleugh was unable, like the former, to lengthen and shorten himself—one moment to spring agilely to the right, and the next to make a furious assault on the left; or, in avoiding a breast-high thrust, to lie so far back that his dagger-hand rested on the turf. Firm and erect, the old laird stood like a tower; and the whole of his skill (which was not little) lay in his sharp and unerring eye, his strong but pliant wrist.

Meanwhile, Sabrino had placed Sybil in the boat, and standing in the water, which came up to his armpits, held the bow to the edge of the rock, that the earl might readily leap on board.

The result of a combat between two such well-matched swordsmen was a number of mutually inflicted cuts and scratches, which exasperated them both. But their animosity had different incentives—Barncleugh fought for honour alone: but the earl fought for his honour, life, liberty, and possession of Sybil Douglas; a cry from whom, together with a distant "Hallo" informed him that the conflict was observed by several of Barncleugh's soldiers, who were hurrying down the steep pathway that led to the creek. This made the earl fall on with such fury, that the calmer Barncleugh ran his sword through his doublet (and grazed his ribs) up to the very hilt.

Imagining that he was run through the body and slain, the earl seized the guard of Barncleugh's sword, to retain it in his body, and closing up with his own sword shortened in his hand, buried the point in the breast of Barncleugh, whose plum-coloured doublet was covered with blood in a moment. Then hurling him to the earth, he sprang wildly on board the boat, with one sword in his hand, and another, to all appearance, in his body.

At the same moment, a loud "Hallo!" again rang in his ears—a rapid explosion followed, and the balls of three arquebuses whistled past his head. Thinking only of Sybil, he pushed off the boat, forgetting altogether the poor black page, whose tongue was unable to cry either for pity or succour; and thus Sabrino was left behind again.

Raising himself on his left hand, while with his right he endeavoured to staunch the blood that flowed from his wound, Sir James Hamilton cried hoarsely and feebly—

"To your arquebuses again, ye knaves—again! Shoot, and shoot surely! See, 'tis the black devil again!—there—there—in the water! To your arquebuses—shoot, shoot, with a wannion upon you!"

The three arquebusiers stuck their forks in the sand, and levelled their heavy fire-arms over them. Again two large bullets whistled after the earl, and one dashed the spray about the black woolly head of Sabrino, which was visible on the moonlighted water; but he dived like a duck and disappeared. The reports of these large fire-arms rang with a hundred reverberations among the cliffs and caverns of the isle, and in the fissured rocks of the Longcraig (a reef which guards it on the east), until they died away on the winds that blew freshly down the river from the west.

"To the boat! to the boat!—follow, and shoot! A Hamilton! a Hamilton!" cried Barncleugh, as he sank back choked in blood.

"Seton, and Set on!" replied the earl, with the punning slogan of his house; "for, by St. Andrew, there is one Hamilton less in the world!" and with savage glee he plucked from his doublet, and flung back to the shore, Sir James's sword.

Then snatching his oars, he placed his feet firmly against the stretchers in the bottom of the boat, and intent only on leaving the island as far behind as possible, pulled with all strength away from its rocky shores.

After some delay, Barncleugh's followers unmoored their boat, which, by a chain and padlock, was secured to an iron ring; and then pushed off, two plying their arquebuses, while four plied their oars. Away they came, with a shout that floated far over the still water; but by this time the earl was nearly half a mile from the island, and, acting under a natural reaction of feelings, Sybil waved her handkerchief, in token of the triumph and defiance which had replaced her previous terror.

Lustily pulled the brave earl, and even Sybil would have put her dimpled hands to the oars to assist him, had she not soon required both to grasp the seat beside him, as their little boat rose like a cork on the heavy ground-swell that rolls between the island and the shores of Lothian.

The wind was rising.

It blew freshly down the Firth, and as the tide was ebbing now, a strong current ran seaward—a current against which the solitary rower struggled in vain; for in fifteen minutes he found they were swept far below the island.

He saw the four oars of his pursuers flashing in the moonlight, and the glitter of steel announced that they were well armed; while every successive gust of wind that swept over the curling water brought nearer and nearer their triumphant shout; and he could see how, at times, they paused, and complacently looked over their shoulders to contemplate the distance as it lessened by their efforts.

And it was lessening fast!

The earl thought of Sybil, and of what her feelings would be if he was taken, and of what she and his mother would experience if he was brought back to the island a breathless corpse. These anxieties received an additional impulse by the flash of an arquebuse from the pursuing boat; and the earl saw that the bullet skipped over the waves far ahead of him.

There was now but one alternative, and he did not hesitate to adopt it.

Stepping the little mast, he hoisted the lugsail, squared it to the western breeze, grasped the tiller, while Sybil threw her arms around him; and now their boat, sharp-prowed and clinker-built, like all the Scottish fisher craft, favoured by the wind, by the ebbing tide, and the fast flowing river, flew like a gull down the widening Firth; and then a shout of anger announced that the followers of Barncleugh were left far behind.

* * * * *

Grasped by a watchman of the tower, when in the very act of attempting to descend, the Countess of Ashkirk, as we have related, had been left behind; but she saw from her window the flash of steel on the beach; she heard the shouts and outcries of the Hamiltons, and prayed and trembled for her son. She saw the two boats which shot off from the island, on the bright surface of the glittering river, which was all shining like a mirror, save where a flitting cloud obscured it. She had seen these boats lessening in the distance; and again on her knees she implored St. Bryde of Douglas to watch over the safety and escape of her son, vowing to endow in her name a yearly mass and an altar in the great church of St. Giles.

The countess knew not that her "brave rash bairn," as she called him, had achieved both his safety and escape, until Sir James Hamilton was carried into the tower bleeding profusely, and almost dying. Now it was that the fierce feudal hatred in which she had been nurtured, and in which she had reared her own son, jarred with her natural kindliness and pity; and it was with a strange, and, as she often thought, unchristian sentiment of joy and triumph, mingling with her tenderness and compassion, she prepared lint and bandages, with some of her favourite salves and recipes, for the wounded castellan, whose sword-thrust she proceeded to probe and dress.

The moment Sir James's wound (which was a deep, but not dangerous stab in the breast) was dressed, she hurried to the tower-head, and looked towards the east, but neither of the boats were visible. The moon had become obscured, the rising wind howled drearily through the embrasures of the battlement, and the dusky shadow of a dark cloud rested upon that part of the Firth where the boat of the earl had last been visible.

The heart of Lady Ashkirk became oppressed by vague terrors; and after praying as only the people of the olden time could pray, when faith was strong in the land, and superstition was stronger, she returned to the bedside of her patient; and such was her care and skill, that in three days the hardy old knight was again seated at his little tripod table by the tower gate, with the ocean below, and the gulls around him, drinking his peg tankard of spiced Rochelle, and playing chess with the seneschal of the establishment, who knew his duty too well ever to attempt to win a game; thus that easy-tempered personage allowed himself to be defeated ten times a-day, if nine victories did not satisfy the old knight, his master and antagonist.

CHAPTER XLII.

DAVID'S TOWER—THE PHYSICIAN.

"Ah, no more can gladden me
    Sunny shores or dark projections,
    Where in emulous reflections
Blend the rival land and sea;
Where alike in charms and powers,
    Where the woods and waves are meeting—
    Flowers with foam are seen competing—
Sparkling with the snow-white showers."
                                                CALDERON'S Constant Prince.

In the reign of James V. the Castle of Edinburgh was composed of numerous round and square bastel-houses, which, connected by curtain walls, surrounded the summit of the rock, and were built in various ages by successive princes, and presented the various cadences of architecture, from the strong grim peels of Malcolm Ceanmhor to the florid Scoto-French towers of the fourth and fifth Jameses.

The principal of these bastel-houses was named King David's Tower.

It was erected by David II. in 1357, and therein he died on the 7th May, thirteen years after, when planning a new crusade. This keep was of great height and strength, and overhung the cliff, which now looks down on the gardens of Princes-street, two hundred feet below. One of its lofty turrets was struck by lightning during a terrific storm, on All Saints' Day, 1524; the shattered fragments fell into the loch, and the electric fluid set the apartments of the queen-dowager Margaret on fire. On its summit James V. placed thirty pieces of cannon. The larger chamber within it was named the Lords' Hall; another was styled the New Court Kitchen;—but its first apartments were a range of dreary vaults; for the whole edifice was a veritable castle, with its dungeons below and battlements above. On the latter were a flag-staff, and an iron baile to herald foreign invasion to the shores of Fife and Stirling; just similar to one which still remains on Mylnes-mount below the Argyle battery.

In the same vaulted apartment wherein James V. had, six years before, confined John Scott, a miracle-monger, who pretended that the Virgin Mary could maintain him for any length of time without food, Lady Jane Seton had been detained since her condemnation. Though the strength of the tower was great, its walls of stone being ten feet thick, its doors of iron deep and narrow, and having other securities in the shape of high curtain walls, higher rocks, cannon, towers, and portcullises, the Master Porter of the castle (that supernatural guards might not be wanting) had painted on the chamber door a flaming red cross; and thereafter nailed on a horseshoe, a fox's face, with a bunch of rosemary and rowan-tree, all of which, he had no doubt, would do more than stone redoubts and iron doors to keep the witch in and the devil out.

Let us take a view of her as she appeared on the second day after her trial, for it was now the second, and she had but three days to live.

It was evening now, and the kirk and convent bells of the city below were floating upward to her grated window, which was open, for the season was the sultry month of July. The whole apartment was as bare and stony in its aspect as the arch of a bridge, or any of those caverns in which we have seen Lord Ashkirk hiding; for the groined arch, the low massive walls, and the floor, were all composed of squared blocks of freestone, quarried from the rocks in the neighbourhood. Its whole furniture consisted of a chair and table, the latter being composed of mere fir planks; a leather jar of water, and a bed situated within an arched recess, like a pedestalled tomb in some old church; but, being destitute of curtains and bedding, it was a mere paillasse. Everything was inferior to what was used by the king's soldiers.

A witch required little.

All shrunk from her now; even Lady Cranstoun Riddel, who had formerly been so kind, avoided her; while her husband, the governor, having before his eyes the wrath of the king and the cardinal (who was more dreaded than ten kings), also remained aloof. Thus no visitor ever disturbed her sad and solitary reflections, save the under-warder, who came hastily and stealthily to deposit her food—a coarse bannock and water tinged with a little wine—and as hurriedly withdrew, fearing to meet a glance of her eye—-for witches were thought to possess eyes of evil power.

The coarse bannock, the sole food offered her, remained untasted, for it was salt and bitter; the water was her only nourishment, for assuredly it contained but little wine; as the warder, who prepared it, drank the greater part; for a sorceress, who was to be burned in three days, might do very well, he thought, without wine.

Thus agony of mind, pain of body, and lack of food had sorely reduced her. She became apathetic, and sank into a stupor so deep, that it seemed as if no change of circumstances could ever tranquillize or restore her to existence and the sunshine of life.

Her large dark eyes were dry, hot, and tearless. In their stony aspect, they seemed never to have beamed in joy, or wept in grief. Her face had the pallor, the lividity of death, and her cheeks had become frightfully hollow, while her thin lips were a vivid and unnatural scarlet. They seemed to have shrunk, and showed more than before of her teeth; and even these seemed larger and, if possible, whiter than usual. There was something dry, arid, and parched in her whole aspect—as if the fire of inward grief was consuming her. As her stooped head rested on her hand, with eye fixed and jaw relaxed, her expression, at times, grew altogether vacant.

She had on the same dress in which she had appeared before Abbot Mylne and his tribunal, and the same pretty little angular cap, below which her fine hair was simply braided. She was destitute of ornament, having been robbed or deprived of all her rings and bracelets by Sanders Screw and others, into whose hands she had been so ruthlessly consigned.

Her haggard beauty was appalling, as the calmness of her despair was unnatural. Her whole mind seemed to be unhinged.

Her cheek reclined in the hollow of her right hand, and her elbow rested on the table; her vacant gaze was fixed on the landscape, which extended to the north and westward, for her chamber had two windows, and, from the west, the cool soft wind played on her hot, white cheek, and lifted her heavy hair.

The glorious plain that from the foot of the steep Castle Rock stretches almost to the gates of busy Glasgow, was yet hazy with the humid summer mist, from amid which stood boldly forth the lordly Pentlands, with their peaks of brilliant emerald green, or heath of russet brown, and the rugged rocks of Corstorphine; while afar off, and dim in the distance, among the Highlands of Stirlingshire, rose the pale blue cone of Ben Lomond, the king of the Scottish hills, then the fastness of the fierce Buchanans.