CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE CHAPEL OF ST. MARTIN.

With a graceful step and stately,
    Proud of heart and proud of mien;
With her deep eyes shining grayly,
    Cometh Lady Madeline,
            Trembling as with cold;
    With cheek red-flush'd like daisy tip,
    And full-ripe pouting ruby lip,
            And hair of tawny gold.
                                                        Household Words.

Plato asserted that hopes were the dreams of people waking; and Thales the Milesian affirmed that hope was the most lasting of all things; for when all seemed lost to man, it still remained. Thus our lover, like every other lover before the flood, or since, hoped on, though prejudice, fortune, and hostility had raised between him and Madeline Home barriers that seemed all but insurmountable.

Skirting the green hill of Carberry, he reached the banks of the brawling and beautiful Esk, then a deeper and a broader river than now. He boldly swam his horse through it near Edmondstone Edge, and spurred over the then open wastes known as the mains of Sheriff Hall, where on the purple muir lay the green ridges and trenches of a Roman camp, with a gallows-tree—an old and thunder-riven oak, on which hung the bony fragments of one malefactor and the recently-executed body of another, who had been doomed to death by the Douglasses of Dalkeith. Down the steep slope from Newton-kirk he rode heedlessly, and passed the grey and ancient Ramparts of Craigmillar, where, with beacon and culverin, barred gate and moated wall, old Sir Symon Preston of that ilk, was preparing for the coming strife; then giving his horse the reins, he let him wander on, or crop the grass by the solitary way; for Florence was buried in sad thoughts, yet his eyes failed not to linger from time to time on the distant outline of the capital, upheaved upon its ridge of rock, all rugged, broken, and fantastic; the castle, spires, and every clustered mass of building, like the beetling brows of Salisbury and Arthur's bare round cone, tinted by the deep red of the western sun—a tint that seemed the brighter when contrasted with the fields of yellow corn that swayed their full ripe ears in the foreground, and the green masses of oak foliage that covered all the burghmuir in the middle distance of that lovely landscape.

From the hill which is crowned by the ancient village of Kirkliberton, he rode slowly on till he reached Kilmartin, a little cell or chapel in a sequestered part of the eastern flank of the broom-covered hills of Braid. It was a plain edifice with lancet windows, and had a cross on its gable; it was of great antiquity, having been built by a baron of Mortonhall, who had gone to the Holy Land, and who, when lying wounded by a poisoned arrow, on the shore at Galilee, had made a vow to found a cell, if he ever saw his native land again. Two aged sycamores cast a sombre shadow over a few green graves which lay within the low, half-ruined wall that enclosed the precincts. Those grass-covered mounds marked the last resting-places of various hermits who had succeeded Father Martin, who though locally canonized as a saint, is now forgotten (at least his history is only known to ourselves), and who, like him, had occupied the little cottage close by the chapel, and had drawn the element of baptism from the spring of pure water that sparkled as it poured in the sunshine over a ledge of whin rock, and gurgled in torquoise-blue between the ripe corn-rigs, and under the yellow broom-bells, to join the Burn of Braid.

The story of Father Martin is somewhat singular. Among the five thousand military pilgrims from Scotland, who accompanied David Earl of Garioch to Palestine, there was a citizen of Edinburgh, named Martin Oliver. In the year 1191 he found himself with the army of Richard of England, then besieging Ptolmais. Having been guilty of some crime, Oliver, to avoid punishment, deserted to the Saracens, and became, outwardly, a renegade to his religion. Tormented day and night by his conscience, he endured the utmost misery, and on his knees vowed to atone to God for his crime. One day when posted as a sentinel on the outworks of the town, he perceived not far from him a Christian soldier, in whom he recognized a comrade, one of Earl David's band, named John Durward, whom he addressed in the Scottish tongue, telling him that he was weary of life, and longed to atone for his pretended apostasy. A communication was thus kept up from time to time, and on a certain night, Martin Oliver introduced the Scottish Crusaders "into a part of the city." The English followed, and Ptolmais was immediately captured. So says Hector Boethius, and Maimbourg, in his "Histoire des Croisades," adds, that assuredly the Christian princes had a sure intelligencer within the town. Oliver returned to his native land, and in a hermitage amid the lonely hills of Braid he passed his days in prayer and penance for his apostasy, and to atone for serving the enemies of God, in a city where the true cross was said to be destroyed.

Many little chapels like Kilmartin, and such as St. Catherine at the Balm-well, St. John the Baptist on the Burghmuir, and of our Lady at Bridge-end, studded all the fertile Lothians, and were each kept by an old priest, who derived a scanty subsistence from the pious, the charitable or the credulous; from farmers, for blessing their herds and crops, for baptising their little ones, or praying for fine weather,—even now, when Scotland was on the verge of that tremendous change the Reformation. To Florence, the calm seclusion of this old chapel, which was situated in a green hollow of those wild and barren hills, seemed soothing and inviting, and there he resolved to rest awhile, and if possible to give himself up to deeper thought, that under its calm influence he might discover some means of extrication from his present difficulties. Dismounting, he tied his horse to the chapel door, and entered without observing that under the sycamores there stood three richly-caparisoned horses, two of which were ridden by armed grooms, in the royal livery, while the third, whereon was a lady's pad of crimson velvet, was riderless.

A plain altar, with a stone step, well-worn by the knees of generations of peasantry who had prayed there; a rude crucifix of freestone, carved within a niche, and an old skull, which, if abstracted, was said to have the power of always returning to the chapel, were the sole features of the interior, unless we add a slab in the centre, marked by a cross, and inscribed Mater Dei memento mei. This marked the grave of Father Martin, the repentant soldier of Ptolmais, who lived to the age of ninety, and died when Alexander III. was on the throne of Scotland.

Florence had scarcely entered, dipped his fingers in the stone font at the door, and surveyed the bare, bleak little oratory, with the listlessness of a pre-occupied man, when the rustling of silk and the sound of a light step behind, made him turn, and lo! Madeline Home, wearing over her usual dress a long blue riding-robe of Flemish cloth, and having on her pretty head one of the prettiest of little Anne Boleyn hoods of purple velvet, stood before him, with her long skirt gathered up gracefully in her left hand, on which sat her favourite hawk (the same bird which had excited Dame Alison's indignation), and in her right she held a jewelled riding-switch.

On beholding a person in the little chapel, she paused; but when their eyes met, a bright flush passed over her sweet delicate face, with an expression of surprise and inquiry. Her half-opened lips revealed her little teeth, so white and closely set; and her dilated eyes seemed to ask an explanation, but Florence pressed her hand, and then they exchanged one of those long and tender kisses which are never forgotten.

"Dearest Florence," she whispered, "how came you here?"

"At a time so strangely opportune, you would ask?"

"You did not follow me!"

"Follow you? Heavens, no!—and yet had I known——"

"Then how came you here?"

"By fatality—happy fortune—which you choose. God alone knoweth how, for, my sweetest heart, I know not. I rode forth from Fawside to escape from a bitterness too deep for telling; and riding on, on—I knew not, cared not whither; my grey—the grey the queen gave me—tarried at the chapel-door, and so I am here."

"How strange—when I was here too!" said Madeline, whose fine eyes sparkled with pleasure and drollery.

"A fortunate coincidence!" said Florence, caressing her hands.

"To-day I was in Edinburgh with the queen, and being on my way home to Preston, she gave me an alms for the Franciscan at Kilmartin here, with that which the good man values more,—a fragment of St. Martin's garment, no larger than a testoon; but brought from her sister, Madame the prioress of Rheims, by Monsieur d'Oysell, the ambassador."

"And you are returning——"

"To Preston Tower."

"And to your uncle Claude?"

"Yes."

"When, so near—our residences being within view of each other,—may I hope to see you?" urged Florence; "may I hope that we shall meet, in some place where none can see or interrupt us?"

A pressure of his hand and a sweet smile were his assuring reply.

"Thanks, dear, dear Madeline; then I may escort you eastward?" said he anxiously.

"So far as Carberry you may. Fortunately, I have the queen's servants in attendance on me, and not my uncle's; so let us mount and go, for the evening is drawing on, and probably we shall not ride fast," she added, with a droll smile.

"I am with you so seldom, dearest Madeline, that I am loath to lessen the joy of our happy meeting; do tarry with me here a little longer."

"But the queen's grooms——"

"Let them wait; for what do the varlets wear livery? I have a matter near my heart on which I must speak with you."

"That you love me," said Madeline playfully; "but you have told me that often already."

"Love you, Lady Yarrow! oh, I love you—love you dearly; but——"

"But what?"

"My heart beats so fast, and love so bewilders me, that I know not what I say."

"To the point—you have some secret, Florence."

"Know you a gentleman named Shelly?"

"No;—but wherefore?"

"Edward Shelly?"

"No," she replied, her bright eyes filling with wonder.

"Edward Shelly, captain of the English band named the Boulogners?"

"No—I tell you no; but why all these questions?"

"It is most inexplicable!" exclaimed Florence; and he hastily told her what he had overheard Shelly saying to Master Patten, and the astonishment and perplexity of poor Madeline was great. Then she switched the skirt of her riding-dress impatiently, and said laughing,—

"'Tis the first time I have heard of this unknown lover. I hope he is handsome and gallant,—I should like much to see him; but—but 'tis impossible all this, dearest Florence; you dreamed it, or you but jest with me."

"Nay, 'tis no dream or jest, sweet Madeline, as I am to fight a solemn duel anent it, on the Border-side, with the same Edward Shelly, unless——"

"What—what?" she asked, growing pale.

"We meet in battle before a month be past, and of that there is every probability."

"This cannot be; his falsehoods must be seen to! I shall know who this impudent varlet is, who dares to use my name even in empty jest!" said Madeline gravely; "but how truly spoke Mary of Lorraine this morning, when she said that love is more transient than friendship, for a lover is ever under delusions. But think no more of this saucy fellow, dear Florence. We need not add jealousy to the troubles that already environ our unfortunate passion. I am so happy when with you, that all existence seems a blank between each of our meetings. Poor dear Florence! I do love to read in your kind eyes the joy my presence excites in your bosom—the love of which I am the source!"

Her manner, so soft, so suave and winning, when contrasted to the harsh, stern, and imperious bearing of his mother, lent her a charm far surpassing all the attractions of mere loveliness. After a long pause, during which her hot cheek was resting on his shoulder, and his arm was pressed around her,—

"See," said she, "the sun has set, for the painted glass of the windows has lost all its brilliance; we must go, Florence, lest mischief befall us if we ride late,—and, of all things in the world," she added, with a merry smile, "let us avoid that fated place, the Elveskirk."

"What manner of kirk may it be?" he asked, as he led her forth.

"A place near this, where an ancestor of mine was borne away by a fairy; so, beware of a damsel in green, Florence," said Madeline merrily, as he lifted her to the saddle, and then, taking the bridle, led her horse along the narrow road that traversed the Braid Hills. He then mounted, and the two lackeys of Mary of Lorraine, dropping a little to the rear, followed them at an easy pace.

"You see yonder steep knoll, so thickly covered by waving broom," said Madeline; "below it is a round hollow, called the Elveskirk, where the grass is ever of the most brilliant and beautiful green, as it is said to be mowed and watered by the fairies who dwell there, and who, on the Eve of St. John, are wont to dance and hold their revels in it. Once upon a time, an ancestor of mine, a brave young knight, who was lord of the manor of Morton Hall—yonder moated tower among the dark old woods—had been dining with the abbot of St. Mary, at Newbattle, and was returning home, over the hills, near Kirkliberton. This was long ago, in the days of James I.

"The night was clear, and the moon shone brightly, when he met by the wayside a fair-skinned and golden-haired lady in green, whom he addressed in the language of gallantry, and who beguiled him to spend a few hours with her in the green hollow of the Elveskirk. Swift flew these hours, when love and pleasure chased them! and when the moon was sunk behind the Pentlands, and the east was streaked with grey, the lady suddenly disappeared, and in her place, the knight found only a wild rose-tree, that waved in the morning breeze, as if mocking him. He turned to seek his horse, muttering the while, that the father abbot's wine must have been over potent; but the steed had disappeared; so he resolved to proceed homeward on foot. As he walked on, to his astonishment, he found the face of the country changed. The ridges of Braid, and the bluff, flinty brow of Blackford, were the same as of old; but in some places where whilom the purple heather grew with many a tuft of dark green whin, since last night the yellow corn had sprung up, and was waving in the wind. Cottages, which he knew to be his own property, had sunk into ruin, and become mere piles of stones, or had totally disappeared; and elsewhere others had sprung up as if by magic, and now large trees were tossing their foliage where not a twig had grown the night before!

"At the Burn of Braid, where he had been wont to cross by a dangerous ford, and where a subtle kelpie had deluded and drowned many a belated man, my ancestor found a goodly bridge of stone, and he passed along it, as one in a dream. The Inch House, which whilom had been moated round by the river, stood now alone high and dry upon a grassy eminence; and the river itself, had shrunk between its banks to a mere mountain burn.

"Full of terror, the lord of Morton Hall turned to seek Kilmartin, the little cell we have just, left, and he saw it standing, as we see it now, all unchanged, on the brow of the hill, just where the saint was buried of old. He now discovered, that though yestereve he had been close-shaven in the old Scottish fashion, his beard had grown to a vast length, that it had become white as thistledown, and waved to and fro as he walked. His hands were changed too, as if with age, and his limbs, once so straight and strong, bent under the weight of his body, and seemed every moment to become more feeble.

"'Can this palsied wretch be myself—I who, at Dumbarton, struck down by a single blow of my axe the Red Stuart of Dundonald?' he thought, as he tottered on.

"A horror came over him, with the conviction that he had spent a long lifetime in a night, and he hastened towards the lonely chapel, the priest of which, Father Michael, was his chief friend and confessor. At the little arched door of the holy cell he met a churchman, whose face he knew not; but to whom he said, trembling,—

"'Is not Father Michael here?'

"The priest gazed upon him with surprise, and then replied, after a pause,—

"'Father Michael Ochiltree, if it be he you mean, old man, is with the saints, I trust.'

"'Dead!'

"'He became dean of Dunblane, and thereafter bishop of that see,' continued the priest, with increasing surprise; ''tis an old story, my son—Bishop Michael died in 1430, and is interred in the choir of his cathedral.'

"'Holy father,' said the lord of Morton Hall, with greater agitation and bewilderment; 'what year of God is this?'

"'It is 1520.'

"'Swear it.'

"'I swear it to thee, strange old man—it is the seventh year of our king's reign.'

"'And he is named——'

"'James.'

"'But James what?'

"'The Fifth.'

"'Mother of God!' exclaimed the knight; 'I knew but James the First. I have been ninety years among the elves—my wife, my children—yea, it may be my grandchildren, have all gone before me to the grave!'

"Rushing past the startled priest, he threw himself in a paroxysm of prayer at the foot of the altar.

"In terror, the father followed and entered; but only in time to see the tall and reverend figure of the knight crumble away to a few pieces of bone and impalpable dust. The skull alone remained, and you saw it lying upon the altar."

The anecdote or legend of the countess (one of a kind common to many countries) produced others, for the age was one of fable and fairy mythology; so the time passed swiftly as the shades of evening deepened, and the lovers rode lingeringly on.

"So, war is at hand," said the countess, after a pause; "O Florence, my soul trembles for you!"

"Fear not, dearest—for your sake I shall be wary."

"You can afford to be so, Florence; one of courage so approved, and in a close helmet——"

"Ah," said he smiling, "you fear that my face may have a ghastly scar, like my Lord Kilmaurs'! But I can guard my head better than he. As the doughty Douglas said to the King of France, 'I can aye gar my hands keep my face.'"

"What would you feel, Florence, were I laid before you, mutilated—mangled—dead?"

"Ah, why a thought so horrible!" he exclaimed, impressed by her strange manner.

"That you may imagine what I shall feel, if such should be your fate."

"For Heaven's love, Madeline, let us talk of other things."

The moon was rising from the glittering sea, when Florence, with a sigh, drew the bridle of his horse, a mile eastward of Carberry; for now they were close to the barony of Claude Hamilton, and to have proceeded further with the young countess would have been alike unwary and unwise.

"So here we part, dear Madeline!" said he sadly.

"And part, we know not when to meet again."

"Nay, I cannot leave you without knowing when that joy again awaits me. I must have promises, for they are better than hope."

"And I, Florence, have had a frightful dream, and dreams are said to be warnings."

"Nay, Madeline; they are but the reflection of the past, and not the foreshadowings of the future; so, no dream could scare me—but what was yours?"

"That your mother—that Lady Alison was slaying me."

Florence felt a pang even at this improbable idea; though he smiled, and to change the subject said,—

"May I hope that, at dusk to morrow, you will meet me—you pause—ah, promise me——"

"Where!"

"In some secluded place—the church porch of Tranent—'tis always open for vespers."

"I have a horror of that gloomy place, where so many dead are lying, and at such an hour!"

"But what fear you, when I will be there?"

"I shall come—but Father John——"

"Will not betray us, dearest Madeline! be assured of that; the good priest loves me well."

With some reluctance, she consented to meet him in the gloaming, at the place appointed, on the morrow's eve. He kissed her hand, and they separated; but so long as her light figure and her waving riding-skirt were visible, he continued to gaze after her, as slowly and thoughtfully he rode up the winding way that led to the gate of his home. He gave a glance towards Soltra and Dumprender Law; still their summits were dark, and no spark of light thereon as yet gave token of the coming foe.

The evening was dark, and the tints of the landscape were sombre and sad. It was the autumn of the year, and in his heart the ripe autumn of a love, that might have no spring or summer.

On this night the grim and indignant Lady Alison did not appear; and Florence, who, by his recent unexpected interview, and the hope of another with Madeline Home, felt as if he was in the midst of some tremendous treason against the peace and honour of his own family, experienced some relief in the absence of his mother; for such is the power that may be attained by a strong temper and resolute will over a gentle and affectionate, but better nature. And now such was the tender influence of Madeline, that Florence had returned with every angry passion and bitterness soothed, and he became happy again, for he seemed yet to hear her sweet voice lingering in his ear, and the last Mss they had exchanged in the old chapel of St. Martin seemed yet to be hovering on his lip and thrilling through his heart.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE LURE.

I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall—I will do such things,—
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;
No, I'll not weep.
                                                                                        King Lear.

Next day Lady Alison was moody, reserved, and sullen; she spoke little, or muttered as she sat in the bay of the hall window whirling her spindle, or secluded herself in her bower-chamber. Maud, the old nurse, who had lost a husband and two brothers in the feud with the Hamiltons, alone shared her angry communings; and even Roger, the bailie, who deemed himself one of the dame's chief counsellors and prime minister, on this day found her morose and unapproachable. Florence dreaded a renewal of the conversation of yesterday; thus, avoiding the presence of his mother, he busied himself among the horses of his retainers, seeing that all were carefully shod and proved to be sound in wind and limb, while an armourer from Edinburgh was at work on the iron trappings of steed and man. The grindstone was whirling in the court-yard; and songs were sung and tales told of the wars of James IV; while blades were burnished and pike-heads pointed and tempered anew: for now, like a thousand other castles in Scotland, the little fortalice of Fawside resounded with the bustle of military preparation.

So passed the noon of day. Florence watched the western verging of the sun as evening drew near, and the rays revolved round the dial. Then his heart beat quicker with anticipated happiness; for the hour of his meeting with Madeline drew nearer and more near. Yet time never seemed to pass so slowly.

As the hours of this long day succeeded each other, Lady Alison strove to smother the angry scorn her son's too peaceful spirit roused within her; but being loath to nurse this growing bitterness against him, she sought him in the garden, which then lay on the sloping bank to the southward of the tower wall.

On the face of a grassy terrace Florence reclined, with his head supported on his elbow, and so lost in thought that he did not hear her approach. In the hollow of his left hand lay the opal ring of Madeline; and it caught the keen eye of Lady Alison as she propped herself on her long cane and stooped over him. Startled by finding his deep and fond reverie so suddenly interrupted, Florence hastily placed the ring on one of his fingers, and resuming his volume of "Gologras and Gawaine," which lay near, arose with a flush of annoyance on his cheek. Rapid though the action, it was not done quickly enough to escape the keen eye of Dame Alison, and her sharp, angry, and anxious glance was at once riveted on the trinket. She saw that it was an opal; and the mysterious and malignant power which that stone was believed to possess and to exert over mortals at once occurred to her, and gave her maternal heart a twinge of alarm.

"Here is some new and fatal mystery!" she muttered; "dool and plague be on the hour I sent my only son to France! What bauble is this, Florence, that finds such favour in your sight?" she asked. And, as he expected the question, he replied calmly,—

"A trinket—only a trinket, mother; few gentlemen about the court are without such."

"My bairn," said she, seating herself by his side on the grassy slope of the terrace, and taking his hand in hers, while a fond smile spread over her face to conceal the anxious and searching glance of her grave grey eyes, "there was a time when a good sheaf of feathered arrows, a gay baldrick with pasements of gold, a crossbow with a stock inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, or a sword with a handsome guard, were toys that pleased you better, but that was before——"

"What, mother?"

"Before ye went to France, and to that devilish place Vendome? Ye have been sairly changed, my bairn, sinsyne, nor like the name ye inherit!"

"Dear mother," said he, kissing her hand with that combination of gallantry and affection which went out with the age of periwigs, "may I hope that I find more favour in your eyes to-day?"

"Favour, my winsome bairn!" she reiterated, while playing with his curly locks and the tassels of his ruff, and smiling fondly in spite of herself.

"Or am I still a lurdane and a maudlin fool?"

The old woman's brow darkened with an expression of care and trouble.

"I never thought ye either, Florence; but why has the just and natural bitterness of your heart for him who slew the nearest and dearest of your kinsmen turned all to peace and sweetness? Was it for this I brought ye hame frae France?—woe worth the day I ever sent thee there! There is magic in it; I tell thee, Florence, 'tis sorcery, and thou art under spell!"

"Perchance I am, mother," said he sadly, but with a fond smile, for he thought of Madeline.

"Perchance ye are?" she reiterated scornfully. "Art puling again like a yammering bairn, instead of acting like a bearded man—like the son of that brave father whom Preston and his people foully murdered in his harness, under tryst."

"Are you come again to taunt and to torment me?" said Florence, attempting to rise; but she clutched his right hand with fiery energy.

"Sit ye there and listen!" she exclaimed. "Ye are foully bewitched—I know it. Whence got ye that devilish bauble whilk ye were worshipping even just now as if it were a saint's bone or the true cross? 'Tis an opal; and know ye not the opal is a stone from the pillars of hell, and ever worketh the destruction of the wearer? Speak, ye witless one—speak!" she continued, raising her voice, while her grey eyes flashed with fire, and her wrinkled hand struck her cane again and again into the earth. "Some cursed witch of France hath wrought this mischief, and stolen alike thy manhood and thy heart. Give it me, that I may place it in the flames from whence it came, and so destroy the spell by which Preston is spared and thou art befooled. The ring, Florence—the ring, I say!"

"Nay, mother; in this you must hold me excused. But believe me, on the honour of a gentleman, no woman or witch of France gave this trinket to me."

His mother drew back a pace, and surveyed him with a singular combination of expressions in her dark-grey eyes: maternal love, rage, pity, and shame were there displayed by turns in all their strength.

"In our house, degenerate boy, have been ten knights created, where you will never kneel, under the king's banner, when its staff was planted in a foughten field where dead men lay thick as harvest sheaves; and of these ten, every man fell in battle with his belt and spurs on; but I trow, my silken page, thou wilt die comfortably in bed and with a whole skin."

Poor Florence felt the scorn of his mother deeply, and his anger at her determined injustice now began to kindle.

"I am under no spell, mother," said he calmly; "but I love a lady who is second to none in Scotland, save the queen herself."

"Indeed!" replied his mother, a new anxiety animating her breast. "And who may this peerless one be who has captivated the timid and peaceful heart of my renegade son?"

"Still so unkind and scornful! Dearest mother——"

"Who is she?" she repeated angrily.

"One whom you have never seen, mother,"

"Her name!" she demanded imperiously.

Florence paused; to tell his mother all would be perhaps to kill her on the spot, or to draw her bitterest malediction on his head.

"Her name, I say!" she reiterated fiercely, while a flush came over her wrinkled face; "say no ignoble name to me, Florence; but remember, degenerate as ye are, that your blood is the reddest in Scotland. Still pausing—still quailing before me, eh! 'Tis a woman you are ashamed of, and as a proof thereof, you dare not utter her name to your own mother."

Florence felt that a crisis in his fate was coming fast; and that an end should be put to a conversation so unseemly, so bitter and humiliating; so he replied,—

"Her name is Madeline Home."

His mother glared at him with a startled expression, as if she deemed him an enemy.

"Did I hear you aright?" she gasped in a low voice, while trembling like an aspen bough; "what mean you?"

"Mean?" murmured Florence, dreading the effect of his communication.

"Yes," she replied, still surveying him as if she deemed him a lunatic about to become troublesome.

"Mother, to end all this, I love Madeline Home, the Countess of Yarrow."

"Love—love her?" she gasped, for she was too old and too excited to raise her voice when suffering under deep emotion; but snatching her bodkin from her busk, she would have stabbed him, had not the nurse, Maud, arrested her hand and clung in terror upon her arm. There was a long pause broken only by her sighs. Florence attempted to take her hand, but she fiercely thrust him aside; for had Claude Hamilton appeared and made her a proposal of marriage, her intense disgust, bewilderment, and rage, could not have been greater. "My husband is in his grave," she said in a low and moaning voice; "the sea of life ebbs and flows as it rolls round the place of his sleep; but he hears its billows no more. Blessed be Heaven that spared him what I now feel; BUT, if the dead know aught that passes upon earth, beware boy, lest his bones may clatter in their bloody shroud—for it was a bloody shroud in which I wound him,—and his soul, at the foot of the throne of Him who died on Calvary, may curse thee, Florence, curse thee for loving a daughter of the race of Preston!"

Her calmness was more oppressive to Florence than her usually impotent anger.

"To love her—oh, to love her!" she continued,—"a wretch whose father, Quentin Home of Yarrow, drew his sword by Preston's side, in mere wickedness against your father, and may for aught I know, be one of his slayers. Boy, on thy peril, in thy raving, forget not our righteous feud!"

"Unhappy feud; what good has it ever done us?"

"Who thinks of good, when speaking of an hereditary foe? Shame on me that I bore thee! Shame on thy father that he begot thee! for by the holy Lamp of Lothian—yea, by the cross of the true Church, thou art fitted for naught in this world but to snuff candles, swing a censer and mumble latin, like old Mass John of Tranent. Oh, ungrateful, undutiful, and false! If ever thou hast a child, may it sting thy heart to the quick, even as at this hour thou stingest me! Thy father is in his grave——"

"By its side, Claude Hamilton is ready to make every honourable and religious amend; as Christians let us forgive——"

"'Tis the cant of shorn monks,—but is it the creed of a Scottish gentleman? Give me thy sword, and take my spindle and distaff; for by the God who hears us, they will become thee better than any warlike weapon. Thanks be to Heaven that I am the mother of another son who is there; but while on earth he knew his duty to his race and name. Hear me,—hear me!" she continued deeply, and wildly grasping his right arm, as much to support her feeble form as to give energy to her words: "With this right hand on the pale corpse of my husband, and with the other raised to heaven, I swore to have a dreadful vengeance on the house of Preston! With the same hand on the corpse of my Willie—that comely corpse,—sore gashed by Preston's curtal axe, I swore again that deadly vow; by the tombs in which they moulder side by side—that brave old father and most faithful son,—and on bended knees, by God's holy altar, a thousand times have I registered the same terrible vow,—registered it in thy name, Florence! I am a weak, very weak, and sorrow-stricken old woman; my trust is in thee, Florence; and woe to thee, woe, if that trust be unworthily placed!"

Exhausted by her emotions and this outburst, she sank upon a stone bench that was near, her fingers convulsively clutching her long cane, her pale lips quivering, and her bright but hollow eyes rolling on vacancy. After another long and painful pause, she spoke again through her grinding teeth.

"She is said to be beautiful—this earl's daughter,—this border churl's brat?"

"So beautiful and so winning, mother, that you could not fail to love her——"

"What, I?"

"Yes; and so good and pious! Ask Father John if she ever misses a prayer, a mass, or other ordinance of the Church, and whether she is the mother of the poor whereever she goes."

"Marry come up!" exclaimed the fierce old dame, pressing her hands upon her throbbing heart; for this praise bestowed so ardently by her son upon one of that hated race stung her to the soul. "Oh that I had her in the vault of the tower," thought she, "or in yonder turret, or in my bower-chamber, gagged, and bound hand and foot! Verily, a hot iron would soon efface all trace of the fatal beauty by which this sorceress hath bewitched and spread a glamour ower thee!"

As this terrible idea occurred to her, she deemed it a wiser mode to dissemble with her son, than to quarrel with him, in attempting to exert an authority which at his years was absurd, and could not be enforced. So, with the cunning, rather than the wisdom of age, she gradually seemed to recover her composure; and for the purpose of luring information from her son, began to speak with pretended calmness, though her chest heaved with suppressed emotion, and when his face was averted, her eyes glared like those of a basilisk.

"These tidings of attachment are indeed something to startle and amaze," said she through her clenched teeth.

"Nothing is new under heaven, mother," said Florence, with a sigh; "the years and events that have passed are but the mirror of those to come."

"This love of thine, where hatred was wont to be, belies such musty morality. Love Madeline Home, indeed? It will be with the chance of having a score of rivals."

"Well," replied Florence smiling, "a score are better than one."

"One thou couldst kill."

"A score shall not kill me, at all events. And now, dear mother, if Madeline loves me, may not an earl's coronet, if one day blazoned in the old hall there, glint bravely in your old eyes?"

"The coronet of the Homes of Yarrow!" she said through her still grinding teeth; "and this earl's mother—who was she? An Achesson, of Gosford, or the Guseford, for they made their money in the days of the Regent Albany, by supplying the gluttons of Edinburgh with geese. Oho! of a verity, a brave alliance for one whose fathers have borne their crests on their helmets in battle five hundred years ago! But you see her frequently—this Countess of Yarrow?" she asked, on remembering her new tactics.

"Alas, no."

"Indeed! how cometh this about?" she asked, taking her son's hand in hers, with seeming fondness.

"Fate—yourself, mother, are alike adverse to us."

"When are ye to see her who hath so begowked thee—this bonnie bird, again?"

"Mother, you do not mean her evil?" asked Florence suddenly, for the expression of her eye bewildered him.

"Wherefore such a thought!" said she, as her withered cheek reddened; "but when do you meet?"

"To-night," said he, after some hesitation.

"So soon—hah! and where?"

"In the old porch of Tranent Church."

"Where they are lying—a fitting place for such a tryst!" she thought. "At what time?" she asked in a husky voice and while lowering her now stealthy eyes on the grass.

"The gloaming."

"'Tis two hours hence, by the dial. We may sit and converse yet awhile; but you look pale and weary, my bairn, and must take a cup of my medicated cordial."

"I thank you, dear lady and mother," said the unsuspecting youth, happy to perceive a change in the manner of the old lady, who summoned the nurse Maud, and, while giving her a key, whispered in her ear certain directions. In a minute after the old woman came out of the tower with a silver cup in her hand.

"Drink, my bairn—drink," said the nurse, patting the cheek of Florence; and he, heedless of what the contents might be if he pleased Lady Alison, drank them to the dregs, and turned with a smile to resume the conversation on the subject that was nearest his heart. He began to talk; but he knew not what, for his tongue seemed to speak without his control; and within five minutes his utterance became heavy and inarticulate; he made a strong effort to recover himself, but his voice was gone; his eyes wandered—the tower, the garden, the terraces, and trees, seemed to be multiplied by a hundredfold, and to be chasing each other in a circle; then a deep drowsiness, against which he strove in vain to contend, fell upon him, and he lay motionless and still, but breathing heavily.

These two stern old women—the lady and the nurse—exchanged a glance of triumph and satisfaction; but the latter kindly covered him up with a mantle, and kissed his brow; while the former, in her fiery energy, almost tore the opal ring from his finger, and in doing so pressed the spring of the secret inclosure, which Madeline had referred to, when she first gave it to Florence. The stone arose, and under it was a little coil of hair, with the ominous words—

"What ye resolve
Death shall dissolve."

"So may it fare with the resolve of the donor!" said Lady Alison. "Maud, look ye to this moonstruck fool while I look to the false witch who hath begowked him. Now, ho! to keep this gay love-tryst at the kirk of Tranent!"

In ten minutes after this, accompanied by Roger of Westmains and three other armed men, who knew no will but hers, and had no scruple in obeying it; for they regarded her with as much veneration and fear as the dingy Hindoo does Brahma, or the miserable Persian does the bearded shah, she had left the tower of Fawside, and taken the eastern path direct to the church of the vicarage.

CHAPTER XL.

THE WAKENING.

He kneel'd in prayer in a lonely room,
    Raised hand and streaming eye,
With a swimming brain, and a burning heart,
    And a wild and bitter cry;
And a light came down on his stormy fears,
    For a time; but the light grew dim:
And now, through the gloom of the pitiless years,
    What hope, what hope for him?
                                                                Lyrics of Life.

The sun had set—the evening was grey and cloudy—when consciousness slowly returned to Florence. A swimming of the sight, a throbbing in the head, with an intense cold over all his limbs, were his first sensations on awakening from the long trance into which the potent drug given him by his mother had cast him two hours before.

"My appointment—the meeting—Madeline!" were his first thoughts; and he staggered up but to sink again upon his hands, with drooping head and bewildered brain; for the garden with its walks, trees, terraces, and shrubbery—the castle, with its grated windows and round tourelles (of which the corbelling now alone remains), and its large square chimneys—seemed to be all in pursuit of each other, as when he saw them last; and, in short, some minutes elapsed before he became fully conscious of existence, or able to stand erect and think with coherence, if not with calmness.

"Madeline's ring?" It was gone.

A sudden light seemed to break upon him. He recalled his mother's hatred and denunciations against her, and upon their love; her sudden change to assumed placidity; her remarks upon the ring; and then the cup of cordial—her own "medicated cordial"—given after a sudden whisper to Maud, who for years had been in all her secrets, the partner of her loves and hates, her sorrows and her joys. He saw it all; he had been duped—most foully duped—and his ring abstracted. He rushed into the castle and sprang up-stairs in search of Lady Alison; her bower chamber was vacant; she was not in the hall; spindle, spinning-wheel, and distaff stood unused in the embayed window; and he was informed by Maud that she and Roger of Westmains, with three other armed men, had set out on horseback two hours ago.

"Strange and unusual this!" said he; "for, save to mass, my mother never leaves her own gate. Where has she gone?"

Maud replied, with eyes averted, she did not know.

"You do know!" exclaimed Florence impetuously,—"speak!"

The old woman fumbled with the lappets of her curchie, and endeavoured to withdraw.

"Speak!" continued Florence, confronting her. "I am the victim of some vile plot. Ye have half-poisoned me, beldame, by some damnable philter; for at this moment there is a bitter sickness in my heart and in my soul! Speak, old nursie, speak, or, though your foster-son, by Him who hears us on high, I will hang you over the tower wall as I would a hag of Egypt!"

"Weel," replied the woman, trembling, "she gaed by the loan end to the kirk."

"Hah—to Tranant! I see it all. Fool! fool!—dupe that I have been, not to read the cruelty that glittered in her eye, while her lips seemed to smile! My horse—quick—my horse!" he exclaimed; but, without waiting for the groom, he rushed bareheaded to the stable-yard, saddled the first nag that stood at hand, leaped on its back, and galloped madly over hedge and ditch, through field and meadow, straight for the kirk-town of Tranant.

The whole affair seemed to unravel itself now. Aware of the appointment in the gloaming, his mother had gone in his place to meet Madeline; and his heart trembled at the prospect of the terror, the insult, if not the actual danger, to which the young countess might be subjected by Lady Alison; his swollen heart beat painfully, and wildly he rode, spurring his panting horse, and pricking it with his poniard as it lingered at every desperate leap.

Much of the fine old wood which once covered the district has now been cut down, rendering the landscape somewhat dreary and bare; but though flat and (for Scottish scenery) unpicturesque, it was then, and is still, fertile and well cultivated.

On this evening it seemed particularly gloomy. The sun, long before he set beyond the dark hills of Dunblane, had been thickly enveloped in masses of dun and grey cloud, thus imparting a sombre aspect to the waves that tumbled in the estuary of the Forth, and flecked its breast with foam, while the breakers that roared and hissed upon the rugged shore were spotless as winter snow. The white sea-birds were skimming over the harvest-fields, betokening a storm at hand; and the red glare of the salt-pans, which belonged to the monks of St. Mary, and were perched upon the bleak and rifted reefs of freestone that jutted into the dashing sea, streaked the dull-grey background with sudden gleams of vertical fire, imparting a weird aspect to the scenery.

The gloom of the evening and the sombre aspect of nature inspired Florence with vague alarm, and with a strange foreboding that amounted to an emotion of horror, as he rode heedlessly and headlong towards the old church of the vicarage.

It stands upon the southern verge or slope of a long narrow vale, which was then covered by giant whins and wild gorse, and at the bottom of which a brawling brook forced its way past all obstruction to the sea. Of old it was named Travernent, which, say some, meant the hamlet in the valley; but, according to the writings of Father John, was the battle-shout of certain stout Scots who routed a party of Danish invaders and drove them into the sea. The church, a plain edifice of gloomy and forbidding aspect, built no one knows when or by whom, has a square tower and vaulted roof, and belonged of old to the monks of Holyrood. Its windows were few, and, by the immense number of dead interred for ages within and without its massive walls, this sombre temple seemed to have sunk far below the original level of the ground. On the steeple was a weather-cock, which, as the Hamiltons of Preston were wont to aver, tauntingly flapped its wings whenever a Fawside died.

The door, as in the churches of all Catholic countries, stood open, and when Florence dismounted and entered, the interior was so dark, that the only light came from the little tapers that twinkled before the altar which stood under the cross-arches of the rood-tower, and from the altar-tomb of Thorwald Lord of Travernent, whose effigy, cross-legged, for he had been a crusader, lay in the chancel, while on the wall near it there hung his rusty sword and mouldering hood of mail.

Florence passed the tombs of his father and brother with a hasty glance and with a shudder; for the memory of their faces, their fate, and the heritage of hatred they had bequeathed, came too vividly before him—too vividly at this terrible hour.

"Madeline!" he exclaimed; but there was no reply. The gloomy church was open, vacant, bare, and silent, and its solemn aspect was oppressive to his mind.

"Madeline!" he repeated, in a louder tone.

He was turning away to pursue his inquiries elsewhere. when he perceived, immediately under a monument on the wall, which still bears the shield and name of his father,

LORD Fawside of that Ilk.

and within the shadow caused by the tomb, on which his armed effigy lay, the figure of a woman stretched without motion on the floor, over which a dark stream of blood was flowing even to his feet; and with a moan of agony, rather than a cry of alarm, he sprang towards her.

CHAPTER XLI.

A BLOODY TRYST.

O bide at hame, my lord, she said;
    O bide at hame my marrow,
For my three brethren will thee slay,
    On the dowie dens o' Yarrow.
                                                            Old Ballad.

On this gloomy evening, the 2nd of September, the tower of Preston, like every other tower and fortalice in Scotland, presented a scene of bustle and warlike preparation. Clumps of tall Scottish lances, newly shafted and freshly pointed, stood in rows against the barbican wall: the clink of the smith's hammer, as he welded horse-shoes or riveted armour that had been cut or broken in recent frays, was heard in various quarters; the hands of Symon Brodie, of Mungo-Tennant, and other sturdy vassals, were all busy, scouring breastplates, burganets, and gauntlets; and here, as in Fawside, the red sparks flew from the whirling grindstone, as the hard edge of the Jethart axe or the long fluted blade of the broadsword were applied thereto by those bronzed and bearded ploughmen whom the coming week was to see transformed into helmeted men-at-arms following the laird to the field for Scotland and her queen.

Amid this somewhat unwonted bustle the young Countess of Yarrow easily and unseen reached the castle garden, and from thence, by a private door, proceeded on foot to the place of rendezvous, attended only by a little footboy, who bore her missal in a velvet bag, on which her coat-of-arms was embroidered in the Scottish fashion for ladies, i.e., without supporters, but surrounded by a cord of her colours, all fairly emblazoned by Sir David Lindesay of the Mount, and named in the courtly language of heraldry a cordeliere, or lace of love.

On reaching the church, which was little more than one Scottish mile from the gate of Preston, she sent her attendant on a message to the thatched village, with some bodily comforts for certain of her poor pensioners; and, without perceiving that Roger of Westmains, with three armed men in helmets, jacks, and plate sleeves, with four saddled horses, were half concealed in a thicket of thorns close by, she entered the gloomy fane just as the sun set enveloped in clouds, as already described, thus making more sombre the shadows of an edifice, the aspect and memories of which made her shudder, and blanched the beautiful smile which the hope of meeting her lover spread over her face.

"Florence!" she exclaimed timidly, pausing at the entrance of the church, which seemed so empty and desolate; and as she gazed anxiously up the nave, the figures of none met her eyes but those of armed men carved in stone, and stretched in death-like rigidity on their Gothic biers, surrounded by little figures called weepers, in niches—effigies all swept away by the mad fury of the Reformers, twelve years after.

"Florence!" she repeated, in a lower and more agitated voice; still there was no response; and she was about to withdraw with a mingled emotion of pique and alarm, when suddenly, from between the tombs of William Fawside and his father Sir John, there started up the tall and weird-like figure of a woman clad in a long black dooleweed, on the left shoulder of which was the usual mark of mourning, a white velvet cross. Her face was pale as that of a corpse, but her features were convulsed with all the energy of fierce and concentrated passion and venom. Her mouth was open, but her close rows of firm white teeth were clenched, and her hollow eyes shone with a baleful light. Towering above the shrinking Madeline, she put forth a long arm, and, with a wild exclamation of triumph, grasped her hand, and retained it with all the unyielding tenacity of an iron vice, and shook her wrathfully the while.

"Madam, madam!" exclaimed the poor countess, who believed herself in the power of an insane person, "what mean you by this?"

"That ye shall soon learn," hissed Lady Alison, shaking her more violently than ever.

"Help—help!" cried Madeline! "I will not be so abused! Woman, who are you, that dare to use me thus!"

"Dare?" she said; "dare?—ha! ha!"

"Yes, I repeat, dare! I am a lady of honour—Madeline Countess of Yarrow."

"And I am Alison of Fawside; and now, between these cold tombs, in each of which there lieth a murdered man—the corpse of the husband in whose kind bosom I slept for thirty years, and the corpse of the son I bore unto him and suckled at these breasts—murdered by Claude Hamilton of Preston, your nearest and only kinsman! Need I tell more to thee, Madeline Home?"

On this announcement Madeline remembered her recent dream; then a deadly terror possessed all her faculties and for a time froze her very utterance; while, as if feasting upon the fear her presence excited, the fierce old woman like an enraged Pythoness, surveyed her with gleaming eyes.

"Lady—Lady Alison, hear me; of all these horrors, I at least am innocent," faltered Madeline. "Release me, and on my knees I will unite with you in prayer for the dead."

"Prayer! thou sorceress, thou hell-doomed witch, who would rob me of my only living son!"

"Madam——"

"Nay, speak not, and crave no pity, for only such pity shall ye have as my winsome Willie had when bleeding he lay under Preston's curtal axe at the barriers of Edinburgh! And so my bonnie Florence loves thee? Aha! aha!"

"Oh God! is there no succour near?" sighed the shrinking girl; for there shone in the old woman's colourless face a pale and almost infernal light.

"He loves thee—ha! and yet thy beauty is no such wondrous matter, after all. A poor and pale-faced moppet like thee would never bear men to succeed the two stately knights who lie beside us! So, so! it is thou, witch, who wouldst rob me of the only son thy murderous race have left me—rob me of him by necromancy? Hah! Wretch! whence got ye that magic ring, that accursed opal, which I have thrown into the flames, but which hath cast a glamour in his eyes and made him love his enemies? Or got ye a love-philter from that quack apothegar, above whose door there swingeth a stuffed devil in the light of open day, Master Posset? Speak! 'Tis like the courtly ways of that woman of the house of Guise and those who serve her. Speak! thou pale-faced Jezebel—speak! lest I strangle thee!"

"Oh!" murmured Madeline, sinking lower on her knees, overcome by the horror of being an actor in such a scene as this. And now, endued by supernatural strength, this terrible dame dragged her between the tombs of the Fawsides. Then Madeline's spirit revolted against these insults, and she strove to rise and free herself, but Dame Alison by main strength held her down and retained her, kneeling at her feet. "Lady," exclaimed the countess, "you are alike unjust and cruel, insolent and wicked. I am a lady, an earl's daughter——"

"And what am I? A daughter of the house of Colean, whose sires were knights and barons in Carrick since the days of Malcolm IV. and William the Lion. Listen, thou trembling minx! My son came over the salt sea from France, hating, with a hatred deep as its waters, all who bore the name of Hamilton, and intent on slaying the man who slew his father and brother under trust and tryst, foully, as Judas betrayed his holy Master. How is it now? He is James of Arran's soothfast man and tool, and thy plaything and toy—a puling moonstruck fool! And how came this to pass? By the agency of Satan and of such as thee; for, by St. Paul, I believe the holy water in yonder font would hiss upon thy pallid face if I cast it there, as it would do upon iron in a white heat? Love thee, indeed! Perchance he would have wedded thee, too! Ha! ha!"

"Madam," said Madeline, who was too patient and gentle not to be brave and resolute in a good cause, and who blushed amid her terror, "in that case he might, by the queen's grace, have shared the fair coronet my father bequeathed to me from the field of Solway."

"Foul shame and fell dishonour blight the new-fangled toy!" exclaimed Lady Alison with growing rage; "there were no earls in Yarrow when a laird of Fawside saved King David's life amid the Saxon host at Northallerton! But 'tis thy face that hath bewitched my son; and if a hot iron can mar and destroy the beauty he sees in it, by God's wrath it shall soon perish and shrivel up like parchment in the fire! Ho! Roger—Westmains, come hither!"

At these terrible words the fear of Madeline could no longer be controlled, and the recesses of the solitary church echoed with her cries for succour—cries which there were none to hear; and now, in the excitement of this struggle, a new idea seized the mind of Dame Alison. Wreathing her hands in the dishevelled hair of Madeline, she madly dashed her repeatedly against the tombs on each side. To save herself, the poor girl caught the carved projections, and, clinging, held them more than once; but such was the strength of Dame Alison, that her victim's grasp was repeatedly torn away.

"Here," exclaimed the stern widow—"here, between the bones of my dead husband and son, as on a shrine of vengeance, do I offer up your blood, even as the pagans of old offered up their sacrifices to the spirits of hatred and revenge! Die—die! and by the hand of her whose son ye sought by your damnable arts to ensnare and to destroy!"

With these words she drew the long steel bodkin from her busk, and thrusting it twice into the bosom of Madeline, rushed from the church, and left her stretched on the pavement gasping for breath, and choking in warm and weltering blood.

Some accounts say this terrible deed was perpetrated with a poniard; but the vicar of Tranent distinctly records that she used her "buske bodkyne."

CHAPTER XLII.

THE PASSING BELL.

Night-jars and ravens, with wide-stretch'd throats,
From yews and hollies send their baleful notes;
The ominous raven, with a dismal cheer,
    Through his hoarse beak, of following horror tells,
Begetting strange imaginary fear,
    With heavy echoes like to Passing Bells.

With his heart filled by emotions of horror which the pen cannot describe, Florence raised Madeline, whom, though stretched upon her face, he knew instantly. Ah, there was no mistaking the beautiful contour of her head, from which the little triangular hood had been torn so roughly; or those tresses of rich and silky hair, in which Lady Alison had so ruthlessly twisted her fingers, that trembled alike with wrath and rage. Madeline was deathly pale; her eyes were almost closed, and a crimson current flowed in a slender streak from, her mouth; while her bosom, like the pavement on which she had lain for some minutes, was covered with blood. Her dress, which was of pale yellow silk slashed with black, at the breast and shoulders was covered with gouts of the same sanguine tint as the tiled floor of the church.

Mechanically, as one in a dream, Florence raised her, and as he did so, he recalled her strange and boding words of yesterday. Then something rolled under his foot. He looked down; it was a long, slender, and sharp-pointed bodkin—his mother's busk-bodkin! Tinged with blood, it told the whole terrible tale. He uttered a moan of mental agony, and, reeling against his father's tomb, remained for some moments stupefied, and incapable of action or coherent thought.

Madeline was insensible, yet he pressed her to his heart; and while his tears fell on her cheek, he kissed away the blood that flowed from her lips. Steps were now heard, and the old vicar, Father John, with eyes dilated in horror of the inhuman deed, and at the sacrilege committed in his secluded church, approached hastily; for the little page had heard the cries of his mistress, and for succour had rushed to the vicarage, which adjoined the burial-ground—but the succour came too late.

"'Tis all over with us now, Father John?" exclaimed Florence in broken accents; "by this cruel act my mother has broken my heart, and cast eternal infamy upon our name; and in destroying Madeline she has slain her son more surely and more wickedly than even the sword of Preston could have done."

The priest knelt down and chafed the hands of Madeline; but they were cold and passive.

"The blow—a double blow, good father—has been struck! She is dying! Madeline!—Madeline! The stab that slays you slays me too! Oh, madness!—oh, agony! Oh, fiendish mother, to work a sorrow so deep as this! Madeline, do you hear me? For God's pity, grace, and love, good vicar, say something—do something—for I cannot lose her thus! Speak, or I shall go mad, and dash my head against my father's tomb!"

For a moment Madeline, roused by his voice and energy, opened her eyes; and, on recognizing Florence, a sweet, sad smile passed over her soft features.

"My mother did this, Madeline; say it was or it was not she; am I mistaken—speak—speak!"

Loath to give pain where she loved so well and tenderly, and believing herself to be dying, she did not answer, save with sad smiles, to his earnest inquiries respecting her wounds, and his unavailing protestations of love and sorrow.

At last, when he implored her to speak, she attempted to say something; but her lips and tongue had lost their power; her eye grew dull, and she became insensible; her hands and her head drooped, and her long hair swept over the floor of the church as she was borne away.

The alarm had now spread to the village; so, while this scene was passing in the dusky and half-lighted church, and Florence in his grief was uttering a succession of incoherences, a crowd, principally of women, who viewed him with louring and hostile eyes, had gathered round; and by them Madeline, amid many expressions of woe (for the influence of her family was great in the neighbourhood), was borne carefully and tenderly into the vicar's house; and while she was undressed, and her wounds—two small but deep orifices—were stanched, horsemen were sent at full speed to Preston-tower, to that quaint compatriot of Rabelais, Master Posset, at Edinburgh, and to a certain nun of Haddington, Christina Hepburn, prioress of the Cistercians, a kinswoman of the Earl of Bothwell—a lady who had great skill as a leech, and enjoyed a high reputation as a woman of holiness.

Pressing his lips to the brow of Madeline, whose features were cold and passive as her clammy hands, Florence left her in charge of the vicar and her new attendants, and mounting his horse, which he knew to be swift and strong, he prepared to follow, and if possible to outride, the messenger for Edinburgh, as he had the greatest faith in Master Posset's skill; and with something like a prayer to Heaven, mingling on his lips with an imprecation on his mother, he leaped into the saddle, urged his horse across the rugged ravine which the old church and vicarage overlooked, and then galloped westward, blind with grief and confusion of thought, for his brain was yet giddy with the potent drug by which he had been so wickedly deluded, and a half-stupor hung over his senses.

Darkness, dense and gloomy, had now set in. The sky was without stars, and the country was enveloped in obscurity. As he rode on, urging his horse from time to time, to get it well up in hand, a light at the horizon caught his eye. He turned, and felt a shock like that of electricity: but they knew nought of electricity in those days.

On the brow of Soltra the red beacon was in flame; and now another, that rose on the summit of Dunprender, expanded from a star to a sheet of fire; another and another, on many a tower and hill, were lit up in rapid succession; and soon a chain of fires garlanded with flame the far horizon of the night, from the southern borders, sending to the distant Highland glens the tidings that the foe was advancing and the day of battle was at hand.

A fierce sensation, almost of joy, glowed through the throbbing and agonized heart of Florence. He considered those certain signals of the coming war—the war that in another week was to lay all Lothian desolate, like the shores of the Dead Sea—as so many flaming lights that would guide him to Madeline in the other world; for by her changed aspect and dreadful pallor, he dared not hope that she would survive the night. As he paused a moment, to watch the beacons kindling and blazing in succession on the murky sky, there came over the open plain from Tranent, a sound which made him shudder, and caused the pulses of his heart to stand still.

It was, indeed, a dreadful sound—the solemn tolling of the passing bell, which informed him that Madeline Home was dying, or was already no more!

By this old custom, which of course was abolished in Scotland at the Reformation, all the faithful were invited to pray for the departing soul; and its sound was also supposed to scare away the fiends who were in waiting to wrest it from its guardian angels, as they winged their way towards the stars.

He stood upon the bleak, open heath as if transformed to stone, every knell of the solemn soul-bell seeming to echo in his heart and in his brain; yet his thoughts were without coherence and his lips without prayer. His mother—his dreadful, blood-imbrued mother, with her tall sombre figure, seemed to tower before his vision, like a shadowed angel of destruction! He dared not think of her.

The reins fell from his hands, and covering his hot, tearless eyes, he groaned aloud in his agony, and felt as if under a horrible spell.

Still the solemn bell continued its monotonous tolling, and it came to his ear by fits upon the hollow wind. Had Florence not been too certain that he was awake, he would have deemed that he was involved in some hideous dream or vision of the night.

"Oh, to shut out that dreadful sound, and to forget it for ever!" thought he. "A thousand times I have heard it ring before, but never with a cadence so dreadful as to-night."

At that moment he heard the galloping of a horse; its steps faltered as it came along, for it seemed worn and faint by the speed to which it was urged by whip and spur, and by the toil of the long journey it had undergone. On arriving near Florence, the rider reined suddenly up, and then, as if the endurance of life could be no longer taxed, the panting and foam-covered horse, sank lifeless, or nearly so, upon the roadway.