BOTHWELL, VOLUME II (continued 2)

Accustomed to the savage landscapes of his native Norway, there was a soft charm in that varied and magnificent panorama which for a time won Konrad from his melancholy thoughts.

An amphitheatre of fertile hills, and rich copsewood of the darkest green, rose gently upwards from the encircling shore, till their long blue undulating line stood defined distinctly and clearly against the pale and azure horizon. From the strongholds of the Lords of Winton and Dolphinton, and many a baronial dwelling, whose lofty turrets and crested gateway have long since crumbled into dust—from many a thatched cottage and many a snug home-farm—the smoke was rising amid the summer woods, to mingle with the morning mist, and melt in thin air.

Afar off, like a speck at the edge of the distant sea, a sail was visible, marking the faint line where sky and ocean blended into one; and Konrad gazed at it long and wistfully. It might be bound for his northern home; and for a time his eyes, his heart, and his wishes, followed it. But he soon lost sight of the sea and the distant capital, on entering the moorlands that lay to the southward of Falside and Carberry; for the experienced border knight and his moss-troopers, to avoid the Earl of Bothwell's line of route, had resolved, by taking a circuitous and solitary way, to gain, unseen, their native wilds of Liddesdale.

CHAPTER IX.

THE CONFLICT IN HERMITAGE GLEN.

And it's hame, and it's hame, my bonny brown steed,

And it's riderless hame ye maun gang;

For the warden has me fast, this night is my last,

The morn he swears I maun hang.

Old Ballad.

Anxious to forget both Anna and his Countess, Bothwell hastened to plunge into the ardour and excitement of that wild and predatory warfare which was then maintained on the frontiers of the two countries. The memory of the wrong he had done his wife, stung him more than those endured by Anna; for he deemed his marriage with her a jest, a nullity, while his espousal of Lady Jane had been as solemn as the church could make it.

He salved his conscience, too, with the recollection of Anna's facility and faithlessness to her former lover, and made it an excuse for endeavouring utterly to obliterate from his mind all memory of his intrigue with her—for he deemed it nothing more. And now, when finding himself rising into eminence and power at court, he only viewed with fear her probable escape from Noltland, and the custody of Sir Gilbert Balfour; and that fear engendered a sentiment very much akin to hatred—for to such a bitter feeling will the most passionate love turn at times.

The complaints of the Earl of Bedford, lieutenant of the English marches, concerning the incessant forays of the border clans, caused the queen and her ministers to resolve on holding an assize, or court of justice, at Jedburgh, upon the 27th of August, and the nobles, barons, and freeholders of the adjacent shires were summoned by writ to meet their majesties, Henry and Mary, on the 23d, at Peebles; while the magistrates of the former place made preparations to accommodate such a vast retinue of men and horses.

While Bothwell continued warring on the borders, the approach of harvest caused a postponement of the royal visit till the 8th of October, when the queen joined him at Melrose, not alone, or nearly so, (as we are falsely informed by Buchanan,) but attended by her whole court and council, her archer guard, the officers of justice, and a strong armed force, as her father, James V., had come there thirty years before. King Henry, either from cowardice, caprice, or whim, chose to absent himself, and go no one knew whither, but as the queen shrewdly guessed, to visit one of his innumerable inamoratos.

After capturing many of those moss-troopers who were known to be lawless and predatory, who harried the beeves of their countrymen as well as those of the English, and delivering them to all the brief severities of Jeddart justice, especially our late acquaintances, Edie of Earlshope and Lauchey-with-the-lang-spear; after storming and dismantling many of their dwellings—those strong but solitary peelhouses which are either situated on rocks almost inaccessible, in the depths of forests, or among the pathless wilds of the border morasses—the impetuous Earl turned the whole tide of war and justice against the great master-reiver of that district, John of Park and the clan Elliot, who had hitherto successfully eluded his desultory operations.

Careless of his future fate, and glorying in the dangers of the wandering and Bedouin-like life of the Scottish moss-troopers—now garrisoning some solitary peel that overlooked many a silvan strath and silver stream; now biding in some unfathomed cavern; now stabling their steeds among the haggs of some deep moss, from whence they issued all in their armour, with uplifted lances, on the terrified troops of the wardenrie—the young Norwegian engaged with ardour in every desperate foray and attack on which John of Park dispatched him; and his daring, his activity, and indomitable hardihood, made him the byword and the idol of the wild spirits among whom his fortune had cast him; but they knew not that, in every action, in every deed of arms and essay of danger, one thought—one hope—was ever uppermost in his mind, to come within a lance length of the Earl of Bothwell.

On the other hand, that gallant noble having heard of this new desperado, with whose wild chivalry all the borders were ringing, and also of Anna's flight from Noltland, became doubly anxious for his capture, if not for his destruction.

Now many a time the reflection came home to his mind, how bitter were the dregs of the cup of deceit—and now he found how one false step required a hundred to repair it.

These foes had their long wished-for interview sooner than they anticipated.

On hearing of the queen's arrival at Jedburgh, Bothwell had ridden from his stately castle of Hermitage to visit her, and was returning, accompanied only by his gossip and boon companion, Hob of Ormiston. They were both lightly, but well armed, and splendidly mounted; for, by the ancient way, the castle of Hermitage is nearly twenty-five miles distant from Jedburgh.

The latter, a populous town, then twice the size of Berwick (as a letter of the English protector Somerset informs us), with its lofty abbey tower, its embattled ramparts, and six great bastel-houses, had been left behind; and the sun was setting when the Earl and his friend penetrated into the bleak and mountainous district of Liddesdale.

The vale of the winding Hermitage, with its fertile borders of fine holmland and rich copsewood, was then growing dark, and the sun's last rays were fading on the summits of Tudhope-hill and Millenwood-fell, whose steep and silent outlines stood in bold relief against the cold blue sky of October. This region was then almost without roads, and destitute of other inhabitants than the fox and the fuimart, the deer and the eagle. The country was swarming with exasperated outlaws and broken men of every description; and thus the Earl and the Knight rode fast without exchanging a word, for they knew that they ran considerable risk of being roughly interrupted, ere they reached the gates of Hermitage.

"By cock and pie!" grumbled Ormiston, under his barred aventayle, as he breathed his horse a little; "'twas a rash deed and a perilous, to come on this hellicate errand alone, like two knights of the Round Table, when we might so easily have had a hundred good lances at our cruppers."

"Heed it not, good Ormiston!" laughed the Earl, who was in excellent humour with himself and every thing else; for Mary had received him so affably, and thanked his good service so graciously. "Heed it not, I pray thee! If thou reachest the gate of Hermitage with a whole skin, thou canst stuff it well with wine and baked beef; but if thou gettest a Lockerby lick between this and its gates—why"——

"Thou must pay the masses for my soul, as I have not had a plack in my pouch since Michaelmas, and I doubt mickle if Mass John of the Priesthaugh will credit me."

"'Tis said that John of Park wears a corselet of Milan inlaid with gold, and worth a hundred angels. 'Twould be a rare prize for thee, did we meet him here by the Birkwoodshaws."

"By the mass! I hope not; for I have no wish to lose that which will not make the laird of Park one jot the richer—my poor life—which he will have lances enow to send to the devil in a twinkling!"

"If we are to be intercepted," rejoined the Earl, "by broken knaves, I wish they would show face while our horses are fresh, and we could run a course on the level sward here with some pith and spirit."

A pause ensued, during which nothing was heard but the dull tramp of the steeds on the grassy waste, its echo from the mountains, the hard breathing of the riders, half suppressed in the hollow of their helmets, and the clinking of their mail. Suddenly the Earl drew up; for an abrupt turn of the path traversing that beautiful valley, which is ten miles in length, brought them close to a band of some twenty moss-troopers, riding leisurely down the hill side in full harness, with their steel caps and lofty lances glinting above the hazel bushes that tufted the mountains. They were trotting in a circle, and goading on a herd of fifty or sixty fat oxen, which they had harried from the holme of Canonbie Priory, which had been ruined and destroyed by the English, on their retreat from Solway Moss, twenty-four years before.

"Cock and pie!" exclaimed Ormiston.

"Devil take thine oath of cock and pie!" exclaimed the Earl, testily. "It cometh in on all occasions—grave as well as gay. Seest thou not that yonder is a band of Liddesdale lances, and we have now a chance of being overborne, slam, and thrown into the Hermitage, with a stone at our necks, to make amends for our late hard justice at Jedburgh."

"The knaves will scarcely dare to slay thee, who art the queen's lieutenant, and warden of the three marshes; but I doubt mickle if their scruples will extend to Hob Ormiston."

"Think not they will spare either of us, gossip of mine; and thou biddest fair to feed the crows, as the pelicans in thy banner do their young."

"I will be right well content to die in my helmet, if I cannot redeem my life with that of the best knave among them!"

"Then come on, a-God's name!" cried the Earl; and, brandishing his sword, he rode straight towards two of the moss-troopers who had advanced to reconnoitre; while the remainder, spurring at full gallop, and goading on the plunging and maddened herd of cattle with their sharp lances, pursued their path at full speed towards the wildest district of the mountains.

Leaping their horses across the mossy and reedy margin of a mountain runnel, the Earl and his companion rode leisurely to within twenty paces of the other horsemen, and then, for a minute, they all steadily surveyed each other by the fading twilight of the valley.

"These are tall fellows, and their bright armour would seem to announce them gentlemen of name," said the Earl. "Mass! is not that John of Park in the fluted steel?"

"And our Norwegian!"

"Now, by Heaven!" exclaimed the Earl, grasping his long sharp sword, and adjusting his iron gloves; "our bout will be a tough and a bloody one—man to man! 'Tis good chivalry this for a moss-trooping knave. Have at thee, Sir John of Park! I am James, Earl of Bothwell."

"Come on, lord warden, and welcome to a Liddesdale lick!" exclaimed the moss-trooper, putting spurs to his steed. "Thy head or mine, for a hundred unicorns! ha! ha!"—and rushing on, they encountered hand to hand.

Konrad, who had been most anxious to meet Bothwell in a solemn and vengeful single combat, finding himself thus anticipated, turned the whole tide of his wrath upon the gigantic Ormiston, whom he engaged with greater determination than fury.

The Knight of Park wielded his light Jedwood axe with such skill and dexterity, that the fourth blow broke Bothwell's tempered blade like a crystal wand, and left him defenceless.

The powerful borderer pressed on, and, with his axe upraised, was about to hew the Earl down, through head and helmet, to the neck, when the latter suddenly reined back his horse, blew the match of a poitronal (so named from its having a square butt, and being discharged from the breast) and fired! The large bullet passed through the neck of Park, piercing like silk his jointed gorget; he fell forward supinely on his horse's mane, and rolled upon the turf with the blood gushing through the bars of his aventayle.

Leaping from his horse, Bothwell bent for a moment over the wounded man, whose broad bosom heaved convulsively under its steel case; but for a moment only, till, inspired with new strength by the agonies of death and despair, he made one sudden and serpent-like bound, and, swinging his Jedwood axe by both hands, dealt the Earl a furious blow on the helmet, and again sunk prostrate on the turf. The tempered headpiece partly saved the warden, who reeled a pace or two, half blinded by his own blood, for the blade had penetrated and slightly wounded him.

"Base ronion!" he exclaimed, compressing the throat of the dying moss-trooper with his armed heel, "dost thou surrender now?"

"Yes—my soul to God! but never my sword to thee," he muttered, and expired.

Faint and giddy, the Earl leant against the saddle of his horse, while the combat was waged fiercely between Konrad and Ormiston, whose horses were alternately beaten down on their haunches by the fury of the conflict; but the skill of the former was completely overborne by that of the latter, when united to his vast muscular power. Often they paused and panted, and surveyed each other with tiger-like ferocity, while their warded weapons were pressed together, and then again they engaged with all the fury of two mad bulls.

Bothwell watched the fray with interest, for he had a firm friend to lose on one hand, and a dangerous foe on the other; thus he was doubly anxious for the success of Ormiston, who, after a long pause, suddenly, by one tremendous back-stroke, that fell like a thunderbolt on the helmet of his younger and more slender adversary, unhorsed and stretched him motionless on the turf, where the strong and ruthless victor sprang upon him like a demon, with his vengeful blade withdrawn for the death-thrust.

"Nay, nay!" said the Earl, staying the hand and weapon. "To Hermitage! to Hermitage!—its gates are strong, and its vaults are deep enow to hold a wilder thief than this. To-morrow I will hold a court in the hall, and consign him to the dule-tree for foraging in the wardenrie. I would rather he should perish thus, by the hand of justice, than by thine or mine; and now let us hence, ho! lest yonder band of knaves leave their quarry under escort on the muir, and return to the rescue."

"And John of Park's dainty suit of mail, and his corselet, worth—how much didst thou say?"

"A pest upon thee, man! I did but jest; yet thou speakest like a rascally Lombard Jew. Is this a time to think of such things? There, hide the carrion under yonder bush, and I will send John of Bolton down the glen, with a few lances, to bring thee the suit of mail, and me the wearer's head. But assist me to bind this knave on horseback, and then, away!"

The Earl was immediately obeyed, and the half senseless captive was lifted on his horse, bound to it by the scarfs of the victors, who took each his horse by the bridle, and following the windings of the glen and stream, whose clear surface was now shining in the starlight, set off on the spur for the famous old border stronghold of Hermitage, which had been built in the thirteenth century by Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith.

Blind and faint by loss of blood, the Earl almost sank from his horse on reining up at the castle gate, where he was received into the arms of Hepburn of Bolton, and other faithful retainers, who bore him to his apartments.

Alarmed on beholding his dark hair clotted and his features disfigured with blood, when his helmet was removed his attendants conducted him to bed, and despatched a horseman to the village of Castleton for the leech of the district, Mass John of the Priesthaugh, a friar of the suppressed Priory of Canobieholm; while an express, announcing the severe wound of the Earl, and the death of John of Park, was immediately despatched to the queen at Jedburgh, where she was then residing, and occupying a small house that still remains in a sequestered street of that venerable burgh. This edifice is styled (no one knows why, says the Magister Absalom) the House of the Lord Compositor, and some of the tapestry with which it was adorned for her occupation is still preserved.

The moss-trooper who bore the message, Pate of the Prickinghaugh, tarried at every peel-house and cottage in the vale of the Hermitage, to have his thirst quenched and announce the fall of John of Park, the "prettiest man" in all the wide borders; but Pate drained so many horns of whisky and ale, that, by the time he reached Jedburgh, he reversed the order of matters, and created a tremendous sensation among the courtiers by announcing that John of Park had been victorious, and the great Earl of Bothwell slain.

CHAPTER X.

THE PIT OF HERMITAGE.

———The dusky vale

Of Hermitage in Liddesdale,

Its dungeons and its towers,

Where Bothwell's turrets brave the air—

Marmion.

In the middle and darker ages, the first chambers of every Scottish castle were a range of vaults, arched with stone, rising from walls usually ten or sixteen feet in thickness. In these the winter stores were kept; but there was one, generally the lowest, the darkest, and most damp, which was emphatically named the PIT; where the lord of the barony kept the most refractory of his vassals, and the most hated of his feudal enemies; for every Scottish peer and lesser baron had the right of pit and gallows attached to his fortified dwelling.

In a hundred castles we could name, the pit is immediately below the hall—in Hermitage it was lower still; and though, perhaps, it was no worse than many others in Scotland, to poor Konrad, who, on the day (or night, for both were alike there) succeeding the combat in the valley, found himself a captive therein, never, as he imagined, did human cruelty devise a den more horrible. But he knew not of the oubliettes of Linlithgow and St. Andrews.

He found himself buried, entombed, and lost in pitchy darkness.

The atmosphere was close, and damp, and still—so very still, that he heard the regular and monotonous plash of a drop of fetid water, that fell at intervals from one of the long stalactites that hung pendant from the low slimy arch of the vault.

He was cold as death, and miserable, and broken in spirit.

The memory of Park's fall, and his own capture, seemed like a dream; all was chaos and confusion in his mind. Altogether, he had but an indistinct sense of existence; and after a time became without one idea of where he was. A torpor was stealing over him, conduced by the monotonous plash, plash, plashing of the before-mentioned drop into the little pool below it; at times, it seemed to echo through the vault like the fall of a goblet of water, for to this only sound his sharpened sense had become painfully acute.

Still the benumbing torpor continued gradually to steal over him, and at length he slept on the damp, moist floor of that frightful vault, which yet survives, and is recorded in the Scottish annals as being the scene of a terrible event.

He slumbered; but even then his mind was active and sleepless. His last waking thoughts were of Anna; his first dream was of his home—and old Norway, in all its stern beauty of wood, and rock, and mountain, rose before him. He saw his native hills, with their blue and hoary summits of thunder-riven rock, towering far into the azure sky in shadowy masses; and he could trace the rough paths where he had often pursued the bear and the roebuck, diminished to threads in the distance, as they wound up precipices overhung by the gloomy pine. He saw grey Bergen on its chasmed cliff, and Christiana's rock-bound bay. Old and familiar faces were before him; loved voices were in his ear; and, with a sob of astonishment and joy, he awoke.

A lambent and flickering light was burning near him; like a great glow-worm, it glimmered in the fetid atmosphere. He thought some spirit of the darkness was visible: to this day the Norse are full of such superstitions; but though his eyes (after being nearly twelve hours in such intense darkness) ached on beholding the lamp, he soon perceived the dun outline of a human countenance peering into the gloom, with its eyes shaded by a hand.

It was the saucy face of French Paris, Bothwell's favourite and most trusted page, to whom he had given particular charge of Konrad, that none other should approach him, or become acquainted with the important secret he possessed.

"Where the devil art thou?" he asked; "for I cannot see the length of my own nose in this accursed pit. O ho! good-morrow—I see thee now. So thou art the rider who was with John of Park when he so sorely wounded my lord, who now lieth in deadly peril."

"If thy lord is the Earl of Bothwell, I would thank God for the tidings, if I dared to thank him for aught so unchristian. How dares he to confine me in such a place as this?"

"Lest thou shouldst slip through his fingers like a Teviot eel," replied the page with a grin. "Thou art not a Scot, by thine accent; how camest thou to be involved with my lord, the Earl, in that affair—thou wottest of what I mean? I am somewhat curious about it. 'Twas I who conducted thee to his countess, and then to the postern door at Bothwell castle."

"True—I remember thee now."

"Why art thou here?"

"By a combination of circumstances over which I had no immediate control; because I knew not the merits, and saw not the issue, of this border war, in which I had taken service; by destiny—or the guidance of an evil spirit—which you will."

"Holy Paul!" said the page, retreating a pace or two, but immediately advancing again, for he was burning with curiosity to learn the Earl's secret. "If thou talkest thus, I must have thee burned for sorcery!"

"Thou! And who art thou?" asked Konrad, with more surprise than scorn.

"One whose favour may set thee free, but whose anger may leave thee here to rot," replied the pert page, assuming an aspect of dignity. "Dost thou not know that thy life is in my hands, and that, instead of leaving thee the choice food and good wine sent thee by the Captain of Hermitage, I may keep them and leave thee to perish, even as the Knight of Dalhousie perished here two hundred years ago. Ha! dost thou see these relics?" continued the young ruffian, raising his light and revealing a few human bones, and part of a jaw, lying amid the little pool before mentioned, and amid which the monotonous plash of the drop constantly made concentric circles to glitter and expand.

"What terrible history is concealed here!" exclaimed Konrad, with a louring brow.

"A history well known alike in Lothian and Liddesdale," replied the page, drawing nearer him with a horror that he could not repress; "and a foul shame it is to Christian men, that these poor bones have lain here so long unburied. But verily the place hath few tenants."

"Whose are they?" asked Konrad, with deep interest.

"As Heaven hears me, the spirit that once tenanted these poor remains was that of as brave a knight as ever rode to battle!" rejoined the page, with a sudden earnestness; for the aspect of the mouldering bones, lying amid that green and slimy pool, and the gloom of the black dungeon, were not without producing a strong effect on his feelings and fancy. "Listen! It was in the year of our Redemption 1341, when David II. sat upon the Scottish throne. In those days, when the southern Edwards, with all the chivalry of England, the tribes of Wales, the kerne of Ireland, the knights of Normandy, Guienne, and Aquitaine, and all the lanzknechts of Flanders and Alinayne, strove for many a year on many a bloody field to win broad Scotland to their crown, this stronghold of Hermitage belonged to one of the bravest of the Scottish patriots, Sir William Douglas, the Lord of Liddesdale, whose feats of arms had won him the title of Flower of Chivalry. His dearest friend and most loved companion in arms was Sir Alexander Ramsay, Lord of Dalhousie, on the wooded Esk, one of those brave knights whose mailed bosoms had formed in all these wicked wars the best bulwarks of Scottish liberty. In every field, Douglas and Dalhousie were side by side in rivalry and love; at the rescue of Black Agnes, the Lady of Dunbar, and at that brave battle on the Muir of Edinburgh, where the banner of Guy Count of Namur was beaten to the earth, and his Flemish bands destroyed.

"It chanced in these wars, that Ramsay, having won by storm the strong castle of Roxburgh, King David bestowed on him the sheriffdom of that district, an office which, by ancient usage, had ever appertained to the lords of Hermitage and Liddesdale.

"From that hour a deadly and a mortal hatred possessed the heart of Douglas; and on his knees before the altar of St. Bryde, in Douglas-dale, he made a deep and impious vow of vengeance. Hearing that the new sheriff was administering justice in the kirk of the blessed Mary at Hawick, he entered the town at the head of his vassals; and the Knight of Dalhousie, having no suspicion of injury from his old friend and comrade in arms, was easily taken at vantage, wounded, and overpowered.

"Stripped of his armour, and loaded with chains, he was dragged through many a wild moss and moorland to this strong fortress, and here into this deep vault his captor thrust him down, manacled and bleeding with all his rankling wounds, and here the doomed man was left to die!

"It is a dark story, and I see thou startest. Here the wounded knight was left to struggle with hunger and with thirst, with cold and with agony. Above the place of his confinement there lay a heap of corn, and through a joint in the arch the grains fell one by one, yet few and far between—even as the water now drops from the same place—and with these he prolonged life for seventeen days, despite the agony of his festering wounds. On the seventeenth he died!

"And here his bones still lie, for the dampness of the vault has preserved them."[*]

[*] Some of these remains were found by Sir W. Scott, and by him presented to the Earl of Dalhousie. He was taken on the 20th June, sayeth the "Black Book of Scone."—Mag. Absalom.

"Rest him, God!" ejaculated Konrad, with a shudder which he could not repress.

"Such will be thy fate if thou art left here!"

"Whatever Heaven hath in store for me is welcome. I am tired of life."

"Thou snufflest like a Reformer. What! tired of life, and thou so young?"

"'Tis the verity!" responded the prisoner with a sigh; "but what thinkest thou, page, will be my fate?"

"Why, if my lord dieth of his wound, thou shalt assuredly hang over Hermitage gate; if he recovers, thou shalt hang, too, as a disturber of the borders, and be gibbeted somewhere to feed the crows, and frighten thy comrades. So, it is hang any way!" added the page, with one of his malicious grins.

A deep sigh, inspired as much perhaps by anger as by grief, heaved Konrad's breast; but he made no reply.

"How now!" exclaimed the page, as through the open door of the dungeon the report of a falconet on the tower-head came faintly down the windings of the narrow stair that led to the vault; "that will be a raid of the Elliots or Armstrongs! They will all be riding to revenge thy comrade, John of Park; if so, thou wilt soon have company here. But lo, now—eat and drink while thou mayest; and omit not to bless Sir John Hepburn of Bolton, who sent thee this good fare in lieu of oatcakes and cold water."

Another and another falconet rang on the bartisan of the great tower of Hermitage, and, double-locking the door of the pit, French Paris hurried away.

CHAPTER XI.

BOTHWELL REVIVES AN EARLY DREAM.

Fiorello.—Gramercy for the boon!

Seek, sir, henceforth, the love of those you trust,

And never more seek mine. Sir, fare you well!

Excuse the blunder which beguiled me hither;

And hie you, if conveniently you can,

To some more distant spot than whence you came.

The Virgin Widow.

Let us change the scene.

Clad in a rich gown of damask furred with miniver, a white satin doublet, and hose of russet velvet, the Earl was reclining on a well-cushioned settle, or what would now be named a sofa. A velvet cap was drawn well over his brow, to conceal the bandaging that retained certain cooling and healing herbs upon the scar which the moss-trooper's axe had inflicted, and which Mass John of the Priesthaugh had carefully dressed about an hour before.

The great noble was in a dreamy mood; for he too had his visions, like poor Konrad, who occupied the terrible pit where Dalhousie died, some eighty feet below. The boom of the brass falconets was barely decernible in the remote apartment of the Earl, so massive were its walls, so close its wainscoting, and so thick the tapestry that lined it; and he slept on undisturbed by the warlike sound.

He dreamt of Anna; her upbraiding eyes were fixed on his, and he heard her voice like a confused murmur in his ear; every expression of her face was before him as of old, by turns tender and love-like, haughty and sad. Then her features changed, and rapidly as thought became those of his unhappy and almost forgotten Countess, in all her pallid beauty, her infantile smiles and black beseeching eyes. Anon they changed again, and, fading or altering into others, grew more and more like those of Mary the Queen, with her pure broad open brow, and deep dark thoughtful eye; her aquiline nose and haughty nostrils; her smiling mouth and dimpled chin. A sound awoke him.

He started, and arose to find the very face of which he dreamt before him; the same eyes and laughing little mouth, so full of archness and drollery.

It was, indeed, Mary the Queen, in her little lace coif, her velvet hood and ruff, her long diamond stomacher and longer fardingale, just as we see her in the old paintings at Holyrood. She was leaning on the arm of her sister, the stately Countess of Argyle; the Earl of Moray, Hob Ormiston, and French Paris, were grouped, with several ladies, a pace or two behind, and all were attentively regarding Bothwell, whose strong figure, cased in his close-fitting vest and velvet hose, seemed a model of manly symmetry and grace, as his features, dark, regular, and classic, did of that kind of beauty which we find in the pictures of the old Italians—the white and martial forehead, with its short black curly hair, the straight nose and jetty eyebrows, the curved mouth, and well-defined chin.

"Madame—Madame! is this a dream?" exclaimed Bothwell, starting from his couch, and, though giddy with debility, kneeling before her with a reverence almost unknown in the Scottish court since her father's days. "To what is my house of Hermitage indebted for the unmerited honour of this sudden visit? Have the Liddesdale thieves been at Jedburgh gates?"

"Oh, Jesu Maria!—no," said the Queen. "I hope that if all the Elliots came, and the Armstrongs too, that with Erskine's archer guard and the burgesses, we could have maintained yonder town, with its tall bastel-houses, till the lord warden sent his lances to our rescue."

"Then hath the English marshal of Berwick or his prickers dared"—began the Earl again, as with a kindling eye he looked round for his sword.

"Nay, nay, my dear Earl—thou thinkest ever but of blows and battle. Thou hast none other than thy dull-witted messenger to thank for a visit from all this good company."

"Pate of Prickinghaugh!"

"Ah, mon Dieu! the same," replied Mary, laughing at the name. "Well, this Maitre Preekinhaw brought us tidings that thou wert either dead or dying. So, setting out with a small train from Jedburgh, with my noble brother, the Earl, (here Bothwell, with an eye that was full of irony, exchanged a profound bow with Moray,) I rode hither, intent on learning in person the truth or falsity of this sad news; and that I might, if they were so, avenge on the whole sirname of Elliot, the loss of the only Scottish peer that would draw his sword at the command of his sovereign. So you see, Monseigneur Bothwell, that whatever the Protestants say of poor Mary Stuart, she is not ungrateful for service promptly rendered."

"Oh, Madame!" said the Earl, in a thick voice, as he clasped his hands, and bent his eyes on the ground; "you overpower me! I never deemed thee otherwise than something angelic, and such I find thee now."

"Ah!" replied the Queen merrily, as she seated herself; "every pretty woman is so in the eyes of a brave gallant!"

The Earl bowed profoundly; but how little did the gay and thoughtless queen divine the secret sentiment that made his voice to tremble, and his eye, that was ever so clear, and calm, and dark, to flash and sparkle.

While French Paris and little Calder served round confections, refreshments, and wine, in slender Venetian glasses, fruit on silver salvers, and milk-possets in crystal jugs; and while the grave Earl of Moray, the burly Hob of Ormiston, and the courtly young Lieutenant of the Archers, chatted with the ladies at the further end of that long and stately chamber, the lofty and painted casements of which overlooked the steep bank on which the double donjon of the castle rose, and from its height commanded a view of the far-stretching Hermitage, winding like an azure snake through the green and pastoral valley—the queen, with all that vivacity and French gaiety of manner which were so natural to her, was detailing the particulars of that celebrated ride to Hermitage, which was to bear so prominent a place in all the histories of her actions, and which has always been adduced by her enemies as a proof of what had never entered her mind—a passion for Bothwell, to whom she had never evinced any other sentiment than gratitude.

On hearing the alarming tidings of his death, as brought by Pate of Prickinghaugh, she had immediately set out from Jedburgh; and, accompanied by her brother Moray and a slender retinue, penetrated into the wild and mountainous district between Liddesdale and Teviotdale—a journey twenty-five miles in length—obstructed by every local difficulty; steep rocks and deep morasses, foaming waters, peat haggs, and slippery scaurs—to her a terra incognita—where the solitary peels of moss-troopers and savage outlaws, perched like eagles' nests on the hill-summits, overlooked the pastoral glens below. In an almost impassable morass her horse sank to the saddle-girths; and she was only rescued from her perilous condition with the utmost difficulty. The place is still named The Queen's Mire.

Of all these past dangers she spoke with a raillery that made yet more charming her great beauty, which the exercise of so long a ride in the pure morning air had greatly enhanced; and the Earl, as he gazed upon her, thought in his secret heart that never was there a being more beautiful and glorious.

Anna and his Countess were alike forgotten!

Mary, the dream of his boyhood at the gay Tournelles—Mary, the bright, the beautiful, and joyous girl of seventeen—rose on his memory as he had seen her, when bestowed in marriage on the sickly Dauphin. Now that being, so long and so hopelessly his idol, was before him, expanded into one of those magnificent women that are believed to exist only in the most enthusiastic visions of the poet and the painter; she was with him, seated by his side, in his own stronghold of Hermitage, amid the wilderness of Liddesdale.

They were looking into each other's dark eyes, and Bothwell felt his heart tremble; for thoughts both wild and strange were floating through his mind. But they faded away when again he gazed on the pure serene brow and clear full gaze of Mary, who in her heedlessness and conscious rectitude, never dreamt of the view the Earl was taking, and the censorious world would yet take, of that unfortunate visit to his castle of Hermitage.

"And so it was the falsity of this drunken jackman, Pate of the Prickinghaugh, that led your grace into this deadly peril," said Bothwell. "Sir John of Bolton," he added to his friend, who stood near, and who, at a silver chain, wore an embossed key of the same metal, indicative of his office as Captain of Hermitage; "thou wilt look well to this, and see if a month or two in the pit will cure him of exceeding in his cups for the future."

"Nay, nay!" exclaimed the Queen, turning pale, "God and Saint Mary forbid! If I forgive him, surely thou well mayest."

"Your Majesty will excuse me—I am sufficiently rebuked by that glance of displeasure. But this man is only a rascally border pricker."

"True, my lord," said Hepburn; "but one over whom thou hast no control."

"How! doth he not follow my banner?"

"Yes—but merely as an excuse to plunder the Elliots on the one hand and the Armstrongs on the other. He brings twenty tall troopers, all well-lanced and horsed; his kinsman, Watt of the Puddingburn, brings as many more from his tower on the Liddle; and these would each and all be notable disturbers of the wardenrie, did it not suit Pate's humour at present to follow your banner."

"Droll personages!" said the Queen; "but, Lord Bothwell, thou shouldest feel nought but gratitude to this moss-trooper, when it is to his mistake alone thou art indebted for this visit from me."

"I was upon the point of saying so," rejoined the Earl, who felt, he knew not why, a confused sense of awkwardness and timidity, hitherto unknown to him; and this caused pauses in the conversation which served to increase his confusion; for the more he taxed his mind for gay topics, the more seriously he became embarassed.

"Fidelé," said the Queen, in her softest tone to a favourite Italian greyhound, which, with a silver bell jangling at its neck, leaped gracefully upon her brocaded dress. "Fair Fidelé, of all the world thou alone lovest thy mistress best; and in good sooth I may well love thee better than the world, for thou lovest me for myself alone. Ah! Monsieur Bothwell, thou knowest not how dearly I love all little dogs, and parrots, and pigeons, and every little animal. I have quite a large family to feed every morning at Holyrood. Monsieur my uncle, the Cardinal de Guise, has sent me a beautiful cage full of red-legged partridges; and my kinsman, the Marquis d'Elboeuff, has brought me from Madame my aunt, the good Prioress of Rheims, a vase full of the most beautiful little fishes, which I mean to put into Lochmaben. I fear thou wilt think all this very childish in me, who am a queen—and queen of such an austere people;" and, while shaking a bunch of grapes at the leaping hound, she began to sing—

"Bon jour, mon coeur,

Bon jour, ma douce vie!

Bon jour, mon oeil,

Bon jour, ma chere amie!"

She ceased suddenly; the hound looked up wistfully in her face, her eyes filled with tears, and Bothwell seemed disturbed.

"Your Majesty is thinking of France?" said he in a low tone.

"Nay, I am thinking of poor David Rizzio," replied the Queen sadly. "'Twas a song of his. But I have heard it elsewhere."

"You loved much to hear this old man sing."

"Oh yes! for the long forgotten memories, the buried hopes, and all the tenderness of his soft French, and softer Italian airs, called up within me—drew me ever away from the bitter present to brood upon the happy past, or to muse upon the dubious future. Oh, thou canst not know how dearly I love music! Music and sunshine—I wish I was a bird! Poor old Rizzio!" she continued, with sparkling eyes. "Though indifferent in person, he was the best in the suite of the Count de Mezezzo, the Savoyard ambassador; and was a gentleman of such attainments as few in Scotland save thyself can boast. How my heart fires within me, when I think of the dark and savage noblesse who destroyed him! So illiterate and unlettered; and yet these base barons, not one of whom could sign his own barbarous name, were the men who broke my gallant father's heart, who debarred my mother the rights of sepulchre, and who have dared to become the spiritual judges of my people, levelling in the dust the church that was founded on a rock, and against which not even the gates of hell were to prevail!"

"For Heaven's sake, madame, hush!—walls have ears."

"Les murielles ont des orielles; it was a saying of ma bon mere, Catharine de Medicis," said the Queen ironically.

"Nothing that is said in Hermitage shall go beyond its walls," replied the Earl, who was pleased to find that the courtiers at the lower end of the room were intently viewing the landscape, or observing a game at Troy between the Lady Argyle and the flippant page, French Paris, who was a great proficient. The whole group was partly concealed by a loose festoon of arras that divided the chamber. "But," continued the Earl, who despised Rizzio as an upstart favourite, and, like all the nobility, regretted his death but little; "the destruction of a royal favourite is nothing new in Scotland. There was the Raid of Lauder brig, where Angus and the nobles hanged half King James's court over the parapet in horse-halters—but I beseech your majesty to think of these things no more."

"True! Few can recall the past with pleasure, and Mary Stuart least of all," replied the Queen, whose melancholy eyes filled again with tears; and then Bothwell knew that she was thinking of the weak and profligate debauchee, on whom, in the first flush of youth and love, she had thrown away her hand and heart, and crown; "so pray, my good lord, let us talk of whatever is most pleasing to yourself."

"Then I must talk of—thee."

"Ah!" rejoined the Queen, with one of those artless and engaging smiles which a pretty woman always assumes on receiving a compliment; "and do you really think often of me?"

"Madame," replied the Earl in a low voice, while his colour came and went, and he could hear his heart beating; "I have thought more than I have ever dared to tell."

"Jesu Maria!" laughed the Queen, clapping her white hands; "have you lost your tongue?"

"Nay, madame—my heart!"

"That is very serious—but search for another, Monseigneur Bothwell."

The voice of the Earl trembled as he replied, "I want no other but—thine!"

At this daring avowal, a blush crossed the queen's cheek; but, supposing that the Earl was merely pursuing a jocular strain of gallantly, she replied—

"Oh fie! remember, Lord Earl, that at Versailles, the old hunting-lodge of Francis I. (all that is long—oh! very long—ago), thou didst taunt me with being without a heart."

"I did, as I now remember me," said Bothwell, over whose brow a shadow passed. "That was ere your grace became Dauphiness—yet it seems as if 'twere yesterday. But you have a heart, madame—one that is warm, affectionate, and well worth the winning."

"Well!" replied Mary, rising with a cold and haughty smile, as she thought of Darnley; "it is already lost and won."

"By one who appreciates its value?"

The queen gave him a glance full of reproach, for she felt all the taunt contained in the quiet query.

"I hope so!" she said.

"Dear madame," replied the Earl, in the same low, earnest voice; "you can neither deceive yourself nor me by these replies. The Lord Darnley is my foe; but you are aware that I speak more in a sentiment of dutiful love towards your majesty, than enmity to him who stirred up John of Park, and the whole clan Elliot, to slay me. On him thou hast sacrificed a love the bravest of our Scottish peers, and the proudest princes of Europe—Charles of France, Carlos of Spain, and the Archduke of Austria—have sued for in vain. Oh, madame!" continued the Earl, with pathos in his voice, while his cheek flushed and his eye kindled as he recalled the boyish love of his early day, when he had first seen Mary at the court of France. "I know that the human heart can love truly, fondly, and sincerely, but once—and once only. Let that love be blighted or crushed, and all future impressions are but fancies, to be begun with a smile and relinquished without a sigh. Oh, yes! there is an amount of love, of ardour, of agony, despair, that we feel but once, and then we become deadened and callous. Oh! who in a second love ever felt the same freshness, the same depth of anxiety, the same fear and hope and joy, that alternately filled his heart in the dawn of that first passion, that grew like a flower in Eden, and fills the whole creation with happiness, rendering us blind and oblivious of all save the object we love?"

"And since when has your volatile lordship known all this?" asked Mary, with her usual raillery.

"Madame, since I first beheld—thee!" replied the Earl; and, borne away by the gush of his old and long-cherished love, he sank on his knee, and pressed to his lips the hand of Mary, over whose fair brow and beautiful face a deep and crimson blush of anger passed, as the shadow of a summer cloud flits over a corn-field.

"Rise, my lord!" she said with a hauteur that froze her admirer. "Lord Bothwell, thou art in a dream!"

"It was, indeed, a dream," replied the Earl sadly, as he thought of the double vows that separated them for ever. "St. Bothan help me! a dream of other days, that can return no more! Oh, madame, I pray you, pardon me"——

"I do pardon thee," replied the Queen, with one of her calm smiles; but added, significantly, "I think 'tis time we were riding from Hermitage."

"So soon! after your escape—your fatigue—and when a storm is gathering? See, the peaks of Millenwood-fell and Tudhope-head are veiled in mist."

"This instant!" replied Mary, with one of those gestures which there was no disputing. "Jane, Lady Argyle, we are about to depart. Sir John Hepburn, summon our train."

"Permit me, madame, to accompany you. Ho!—French Paris—my armour!"——

"Lord Bothwell—in thy wounded state! I command thee, nay!"

"True—true; I thank your majesty," stammered the Earl, whose head swam between the effect of his wound and this interview. "But Hob Ormiston, with his train of lances, will see you to the gates of Jedburgh."

In five minutes more Mary was gone, after being only two hours in Hermitage, as the Lord Scrope saith quaintly, "to Bothwell's great pleasure and contentment." There was a clatter of horses in the court, a discharge of brass cannon from the keep, and all again was as still in the great and solitary castle of Hermitage as in the pit below it.

From a window the wounded Earl watched the train of the queen and her ladies, the tall and mail-clad figures of Ormiston and his men, with their long spears glinting in the glow of the western sun, as they followed the windings of the mountain stream, and traversed the long and desolate dell that led to Jedburgh.

They disappeared in the distance; and then, overcome by excitement and loss of blood, the Earl threw himself upon a couch, from which he did not rise for many days.

On Mary's return to Jedburgh, a severe cold, caught during this visit to Hermitage, ended in a fever, that was aggravated by a pain or constitutional weakness in her side, of which she had long complained; and notwithstanding that she lay on a couch of sickness so deadly, that Monsieur Picauet, her physician, despaired of her life, the conduct of Darnley was singularly cruel and ungrateful. A letter of the French ambassador shews, that he treated with contempt the tidings sent to him of the queen's illness, and that he remained spending his time in idleness and dissipation at Glasgow. It is probable that though his absence wounded her pride, it caused her no great grief, as she had almost ceased to love him.

The Earl of Bothwell, though not without a strong dash of that profligacy which tainted the Scottish nobles in the age succeeding the Reformation, was immensely inferior as a roué to Darnley; whose coldness, insolence, and brutality, formed a vivid contrast to the artfully preferred addresses, readily performed services, and gallant demeanour, of the handsome Earl.

A month passed away.

Bothwell remained at Hermitage under the care of Mass John; the queen at Jedburgh under the more able hands of M. Picauet, and slowly recovering from her illness. Hob Ormiston, and other barons, guarded her with a thousand lances, while Darnley remained at his father's house of Limmerfield, near Glasgow, wiling away the days in hunting and hawking by Kelvin grove and Campsie fells; and spending the nights in dicing, drinking, and "wantonesse" in the bordels and hostellaries of the Tron and Drygate.

Meanwhile, Konrad continued to be a close prisoner at Hermitage; for the Earl, though urged on one hand by Ormiston to dispatch him by brief border law, was advised on the other, by the gentle Hepburn of Bolton, to transmit him to the Justice Court.

Thus he wavered; for a sentiment of pity, while it withheld the execution of either of these measures, struggled with a sense of the danger that might spring from the secret his prisoner possessed; and then at times there came a demon's whisper that urged the proud Earl to destroy!

Konrad neither sued for mercy or liberty; but feeling happy in the nourished hope that Anna was now under the sure protection of the queen, he awaited with patience whatever fate had in store for him.

Thus day after day rolled on, and he never saw other face than that of French Paris; who, as the most trusted of all Bothwell's numerous retinue, was alone permitted to approach him.

CHAPTER XII.

ALISON CRAIG.

And death and life she hated equally,

And nothing saw, for her despair,

But dreadful time, dreadful eternity,

No comfort anywhere;

Remaining utterly confused with fears,

And ever worse with growing time,

And ever unrelieved by dismal tears,

And all alone in crime.

Tennyson.

Poor Anna! All that she had made Konrad endure by her desertion, was now endured by her in turn, with the additional bitterness, that the retribution was merited; and the memory of the last glance of Konrad's melancholy eyes, when he parted with her at the gate of the hostellary, was indelibly engraven on her mind.

The Earl of Morton, the most treacherous, cruel, and debauched man of that profligate age, had her now completely in his power, and could, when he chose, make her his victim either by secret flattery or open force; he could keep her in some quiet dwelling of the city, or send her to his strong castle of Dalkeith, where she would never have been heard of again; but this godly upholder of the new faith preferred the former and more gentle course.

In St. Mary's Wynd, not many yards from the famous Red Lion, and on the west side thereof, stood a small edifice, having three rows of gothic windows, the upper being more than half on the roof, all grated by half circular baskets of iron, and having a low-ribbed doorway, bearing on its lintel a pious legend in old contracted Latin.

In Catholic days this had been a convent for Cistertian nuns, and an hospital founded and dedicated in honour of the blessed Virgin Mary, by some pious citizen, whose name and era local history has failed to record. This hospital was so poor, that its inmates were supported by the voluntary contributions of the good and charitable; its revenues were so small, that the salary of the chaplain in 1499 was only sixteen shillings and eight-pence yearly.

The change of manners and religion had wrought their wonders here as elsewhere; for the little gothic oratory, where the fair Cistertians in their white tunics, scapularies, and hoods, had offered up their prayers to God, and to his mother their patron; the little hospital, where the sisters of mercy had attended to the sick and infirm; the kitchen, where they fed the poor; and the gloomy dormitories, where they slept on their hard pallets between the nocturnal and the matin prayers—had all been wofully perverted from such purposes; for, favoured by the Earl of Arran and other gay courtiers, on the universal plunder of the temporalities, this edifice had been gifted to Alison Craig, a celebrated courtesan, who, though living under protection of the "godly Erl of Arrane," as Knox tells us, in language which we choose not to repeat, yet contrived to be on very friendly terms with many other nobles, some of whom were his deadly enemies.

Though deeming her a lady of high birth, the appearance of Alison Craig did not prepossess the timid Anna much in her favour, when, on the noon of the day after parting with Konrad, she was introduced by Morton with much mock formality. The dame was seated before a little mirror of thick plate-glass inserted in a ponderous oak frame, that nearly filled up the recess of a little window, overlooking what had once been the convent garden, but was now a piece of waste ground, extending to the back of a neighbouring close. The windows at the other end overlooked the wynd, which was then a central and great thoroughfare, being the only entrance to the city from the southern roads.

The apartment was in confusion; a broken sword and a velvet mantle were lying on the floor, attesting that a brawl had taken place there overnight; the candles had all burned down in their sockets, and the girandoles were covered with grease; a close smell of wine and perfume made the atmosphere of the panneled chamber oppressive.

Alison Craig was tall and corpulent, and about thirty-five years of age. Her features, which were not without beauty, were somewhat coarse, and undisguisedly bold and wanton in expression. She wore no other head-dress than her own luxuriant hair extravagantly frizzled, and having a bob-jewel dropping on her forehead, which was as white as daffodil water could make it. She wore a huge double ruff, a long peaked stomacher of damask brocade, a petticoat of prodigious circumference, and sleeves barrelled and hooped; while, contrary to the modest fashion of the time, she displayed very much of a fair neck and full bosom, which the Earl of Morton immediately kissed on his entrance, to the no small astonishment of Anna, who began to think it was the fashion of the country.

A slovenly damsel was rouging the pallid cheeks of the fair Cyprian, whose plump fingers were toying with a rare jewel, that Morton recognised as one he had frequently seen at the neck of King Henry, whom he knew to be one of Alison's patrons, though a mortal foe to Arran, Chatelherault, and all the clan of Hamilton.

"Sweetheart, good-morrow," said the Earl, running his fingers through the perfumed tresses of Alison. "I have brought thee a pretty page, of whom, as thou valuest the friendship of Morton, particular care must be taken."

"What is the friendship of Morton to me?" she asked with an air of pretty disdain. "Thou seest this bauble?"

"'Twas once that blockhead, Darnley's. Woman, thou holdest that which has been worn by the most beautiful queen in Europe!"

"And may be worn by a queen again, gif this giglet Mary were dead or set aside."

"How?" said Morton, knitting his brow, for the woman's insolence irritated him, "at what dost thou dare to hint?"

"What Darnley has dared to promise—here, ay—here in this very chamber!"

"Go to, woman! thou art stark mad, and he had been drunk, like a fool as he is. But let us not quarrel, pretty sweetheart; for seest thou"——and here the Earl whispered something in the ear of the woman, whose eyes were lighted with a malicious smile as she surveyed Anna. "Thou wilt see to this? I know thee of old, sweet dulcibelle—eh?"

"My lord, when thou art good to me, I will obey thy pleasure in all things."

"And now tell me what news are abroad in the city, for I have not been within its gates yet?"

"Nought but Bothwell's expedition to the borders, and the queen's wrath at the luke-warm loyalty and cautious valour of such as thee, and thy boon-fellow the Earl of Moray."

Morton smiled, as he patted her painted cheek, and said—

"Thou art sarcastic, and out of humour, sweet mistress; what lackest thou?"

"A runlet of right Rhenish to bathe me in. Thou knowest, Lord Earl, that all the great ladies of our court bathe so; for its powers, say physicians, are miraculous on the skin."

"Thou shalt have the Rhenish, only excuse me, I pray, ever drinking any of that wine with thee thereafter. Any thing more?"

"Perfume: I lack some, and must have it from Monsieur Picauet."

"How! will no other than the queen's physician and perfumer serve thee? Thou shalt have the essences, too, and"——

"A hundred angels of silver, too—eh?"

"A hundred yelling devils!" replied the Earl.

"I will not require thy page with so many attendants."

"Thou art a cunning gipsy," said Morton, grinning under his long beard, and taking a purse from his girdle, where (as pockets were not then invented) it hung beside his dagger. "Here are eighty for thee; and not one devilish tester more can I give, even were it to purchase my own salvation—so, now let us kiss and be friends."

Alison was now in excellent humour; she sang a few snatches of "Gilquhiskar," and "Troly loly Lemendow," two merry old ditties, while she played with Morton's preposterous beard, and acted the coquette, and he affected the gallant—each in secret despising the other. But after a time, relinquishing the frizzling of her locks and adjustment of her Elizabethan pearl bobs, Alison turned her attention to the crowd of jostling passengers, that now, as the morning had advanced, and the Porte of St. Mary was open, streamed through the wynd.

Meanwhile that Anna, timid, confused, and broken-spirited, in her character of page, had retired a little into the background, Alison Craig was amusing the Earl by quizzing the appearance and gait of every person who passed—handling them with all due severity.

"Marry, come up! look, Lord Earl! yonder goeth Master George Buchanan, in his conical beaver and threadbare cloak, with a great book under his arm. Tantony! but he looketh very rusty to be Director of the Chancery—but, lo!" she exclaimed, as a burly country gentleman, in a whalebone ruff, and barrelled doublet of green broad cloth, with a great broadsword belted about him, and his lady riding lovingly on a pillion behind him, ambled up the street; "'Tis the old laird of Braid, and Dame Marjory Fairly, his gudewife."

"They are just married, sweetheart—else why ride they so lovingly?"

"Nay! they have been wedded these thirty years, and had two tall sons shot at the siege of Leith, by Monsieur Brissac," replied the lady, with an explosion of laughter. "But the laird is a gomeral, and his dame in her great tub-fardingale—O Jesu! see yonder gay galliard, with a feather in his hat and a falcon on his thumb!"

"'Tis Master Sebastian, who playeth the viol at Holyrood."

"Ah! the Savoyard. And, lo you! there goeth the Knight of Spott, without a cloak to hide his threadbare doublet. Well! were I thee, Sir Knight, I would buy me worse garments, or avoid the city. But I warrant he hath spent his last bodle on a can of Flemish beer at the Red Lion."

"He is a gentleman of my following," said the Earl with a frown. "His gudesire spent his all in the wars of King James, and fell at Flodden like a true Scottish knight, with his pennon before and his kindred behind him; his son, else, had been a richer man to-day."

"Gramercy me! here cometh Mistress Cullen, too, in her top-knots and flaunters, walking daintily, as if she trod on egg-shells, with a lace ruff under her saucy chin, and her nose in the air. St. Mary! she wears three bob-jewels while I have only one."

A very pretty woman, whose face was shewn to the utmost advantage by her little white coif, and whose uplifted train displayed her handsome ankles cased in stockings of red silk, stept mincingly up the wynd; and as this was a lady with whom Morton had an intrigue, and whose husband he ultimately put to death in furtherance thereof, he assumed his beaver-hat and walking-sword, hurriedly kissed Alison, and patted the cheek of the page, saying significantly—

"When next we meet again, little one, I hope to see thee in more fitting attire."

But as he bowed himself out, by the bright glance of his cunning eyes Anna knew with terror that the secret of her sex had been discovered.

And she was left alone with this dangerous woman, of whose character she was wholly ignorant, though her surprise and suspicion were naturally excited by the too evident lightness of her demeanour. As the worthy Dame Craig knew neither French nor Norwegian, and Anna had no Scottish, the latter was wholly at a loss to make her story known; and resolved to await in patience an opportunity of ending all her tribulation, by throwing herself at the feet of Mary, which she doubted not to have soon an opportunity of doing, when in the train of a lady who was on such terms of intimacy with the most powerful nobles of the court.

On waking next morning, she found on a chair by her couch, in lieu of the well-worn doublet with which poor Konrad had disguised her, a double ruff of Brussels lace, a peaked stomacher of blue Genoese velvet, sewn with seed pearls, and a skirt of blue Florence silk, covered with the richest needlework: there was a suite of beautiful jewels for her hair; bracelets, and a carcanet of rubies for her neck, all of one set. These, and the entrance of one of Dame Alison's flippant and tawdry damsels, announced to Anna that now all disguise was at an end.

The jewels had been sent by the Earl, who, by force or fraud (but seldom by purchase), had always an immense assortment of such things at his castle of Dalkeith, in the vaults of which he is said by tradition to have buried twelve casks filled with plate, precious stones, and bullion, the plunder of desecrated churches, demolished abbeys, and stormed fortalices.

At ten in the morning he paid her a visit, fresh from St. Giles' church, where, to please the public, he had been compelled to attend one of Mr. John Knox's furious ebullitions against "antichrist and the belly-gods of Rome," and against that queen and court who were introducing into the land "muffs and masks, fans and toupets, whilk better became the harlots of Italie than the modest and discreet women of Scotland."

The gallant Earl was intoxicated by the air of innocence and purity that pervaded the beauty and saddened manner of his intended victim; and the sentiments she inspired lent a charm to his manner that increased the natural grace of his very handsome person, which was arrayed in a suit of the finest black velvet, slashed with pink satin.

We must make this a brief chapter, says the Magister Absalom quaintly in his MSS., as the scene hath long lost the odour of sanctity.

Confused, silent, and with her eyes full of tears, the helpless and lonely Anna heard all his addresses in the broken French he had acquired among Mary's courtiers, without knowing what they imported, till suddenly the whole danger of her situation flashed like lightning on her mind, and, rising from her chair, she drew back, and with a crimsoned cheek, a dilated eye that filled with fire, exclaimed—

"Forbear, Lord Earl! I am Anna, Countess of Bothwell!"

Impressed by her air, and thunderstruck by the announcement, Morton stood for a minute silent and irresolute; but so accomplished a gentleman and courtier was not to be easily rebuffed; and approaching with an air in which the deepest respect was curiously mingled with impudence and surprise, he led her to a chair—entreated her to forgive him, to be calm, and to tell by what chance he had the happiness—the unmerited honour—of being introduced to the wife of his dearest friend, in a manner so very odd.

Won by the frank air and oily address of this polished noble, the too facile Anna, with all the usual accompaniments of tears and hesitation, related her story; and Morton heard it in attentive silence, but with a secret glow of pleasure and triumph that he could not conceal, for it sparkled in his dark hazel eyes, and glowed in his olive cheek. But, to Anna, these seemed indicative of his generous indignation at Bothwell's faithlessness and cruelty; whereas, the factious Earl felt only joy at the prospect of having it now in his power to stop the successful career of the rising favourite—to set him at feud with the powerful house of Huntly—to bring upon him the wrath of a most immaculate and irascible kirk, and the scorn of a virtuous queen.

"By the devil's teeth, but this is glorious!" thought he; "I must hie me to Lord Moray."

Begging that Anna would compose herself—would be patient—would trust the management of her affairs implicitly to him, and all would yet be well, he left her, courteously saluting her hand, and whispering terrible denunciations of vengeance against Alison Craig if she permitted any one to have access to her—allowed her to escape—or failed to treat her with the utmost respect and kindness.

He then mounted his horse, and accompanied by Hume of Spott, and Douglas of Whittinghame, with sixty armed horsemen, set off on the spur for the mansion of the Lord Moray, the massive tower of Donibristle, situated on a beautifully wooded promontory of the Fifeshire coast, and washed by the waters of the Forth. But it so happened that the intriguing Earl was elsewhere; and, as there were neither post-offices nor electric telegraphs in those days, several weeks elapsed ere those noble peers, and comrades in many a feudal broil and desperate scheme of power, could meet and mature their plans, which, however deep, were ultimately frustrated by the Earl of Bothwell himself, as will be shown in the two following chapters.

CHAPTER XIII.

FOUR CHOICE SPIRITS.

Belyve as the boom o' the mid mirk hour

Bang out wi' clang and mane;

Clang after clang, frae St. Giles's tower,

Where the fretted ribs, like a boortree bower,

Make a royal crown o' stane.

Mems. of Edinburgh.

A month, we have said, had passed away.

Konrad of Saltzberg still remained a captive in the hands of Bothwell, who was constantly urged by the savage and unscrupulous Baron of Ormiston to put him to death, as the best and surest means of stifling for ever the secret he possessed. But a sentiment of pity for the wrong he knew the captive had suffered at his hands, warmed his generosity, prevented him stooping to so deliberate an act of baseness and cruelty, and saved Konrad for a time.

He dreaded setting him at liberty, and therefore took a middle course; and, resolving to trust the ultimatum to fate, transmitted his captive to Edinburgh, escorted by French Paris and ten moss-troopers, who consigned him to the care of Crichton of Elliock, the queen's advocate, as a border outlaw. While awaiting his examination before the council, he was placed under the sure surveillance of Hepburn of Bolton and the Royal Archers, in the old tower of Holyrood, which had been built by John, Duke of Albany.

By this time the queen had recovered from her illness; and, guarded by her archers and a thousand border lances on horseback, arrived at Edinburgh on the 24th of November, and resided alternately at the Palace and at Craigmillar, a castle three miles south of the city. Though his wounds were barely healed, Bothwell, with a small retinue, immediately left Hermitage, and followed her to the capital, while Moray and Morton were plotting and laying their schemes in Fifeshire.

Thus were all the parties of our drama situated on the 24th of November, 1566, when this chapter opens.

The night was cloudy and dull; a cold wind swept in gusts through the narrow streets, and not a star was visible, for one of those dense mists, named a harr by the Edinburghers, had risen from the German Sea, and settled over the city. The High Street had long been deserted by all save four belated revellers, who were muffled in their mantles, and wandering about without any apparent object.

At midnight, the aspect of the greatest thoroughfare of Edinburgh was then peculiarly desolate and gloomy. It was destitute of lamps, though paved with huge square stones, as an old writer informs us, and bordered by edifices "so stately in appearance, that single houses may be compared to palaces." Many of these mansions rose from stately arcades of carved stone. One great arch at the head of Merlyn's Wynd was profusely decorated; and before it lay six stones, marking the grave of the great city paviour, John Merlyn, who was so vain of his having been the first to causeway the High Street, that he requested to be buried beneath it. Another magnificent edifice, built in 1430, adorned by gothic niches, containing the effigies of saints and warriors, reared up its imposing façade near Peebles' Wynd, and Hugo Arnot, in whose time it was extant, avers that no modern building in the city could be compared with it.

Dark and shadowy, looming like ranks of giant Titans through the flying mist, the striking outlines of these fantastic mansions overshadowed the way; and under the gloomier shade of their groined arcades, our four friends, muffled and masked, wandered to and fro without having any decided object in view.

They were no other than the Earl of Bothwell, the Marquis d'Elboeuff, and their friends, Hob of Ormiston, and John Maitland, lord of Coldinghame, brother of the famous Lethington, who, though a gay roué, held the offices of Lord Privy Seal and Prior of Coldinghame—the Priory he held in commendam. They had all been drinking joyously overnight at Adam Ainslie's, and had now sallied forth bent on brawl and mischief, despite the burgh acts, which were very stringent regarding "night walkers;" for the bailies had enacted that each night at the hour of ten, after forty strokes had been given by the great bell of the High Kirk, (the old name of St. Giles had been voted idolatrous,) any person found walking in the streets should be summarily imprisoned during the pleasure of the provost; while, for the better maintenance of a nightly watch, the city was divided into thirty districts, over each of which were two captains, a merchant and craftsman, empowered to keep the peace of the burgh by dint of jeddard axe and Scottish spear.

But our four gallants had sallied forth prepared for every emergency. Bothwell was completely mailed in the fashion of the time, all save the head, on which he wore a blue bonnet, and his legs, which were defended by his bombasted trunks and quilted hosen. The Marquis d'Elboeuff was similarly accoutred, but wore one of those strong and plain salades, which had only one horizontal slit for the eyes, and he bore on his left arm a light French rondelle or buckler; but Ormiston and Coldinghame wore only pyne doublets, or undercoats of defence quilted with wire, and so called from having been first worn by pions, or foot-soldiers. They were all disguised by black velvet masks and dark mantles, under which they carried their swords and daggers.

"How goeth the night, Marquis?" asked Bothwell, as they stumbled along the dark street, breaking their shins against the outside stairs that then in hundreds encumbered the way.

"By St. Denis!" lisped the French noble in his broken dialect; "I know not, for I never was rich enough to buy me a horologue."

"How! is thine appanage of Elboeuff in the Rumois so poor?"

"'Tis past midnight," said Coldinghame; "I heard St. Giles toll twelve."

"A bonny hour and a merry for thee to be abroad, Lord Prior, when thou oughtest be saving thy nocturnal," said Bothwell.

"True; but belonging, as I do, to the Reformed kirk, I own no monastic law; no! by the most immaculate Jupiter!" bawled the lay prior as he swaggered along; "'Tis very long since I abjured the follies of the Church of Rome."

"She lost much by thy defection," said Bothwell, scornfully; "but devil take me, Prior, if thou art not very drunk."

"By the body o' Bacchus, thou art no better than a horned owl to say so! But keep your rapiers ready, sirs; for yonder is a tall fellow who seems disposed to bar the way."

"Where? ventre bleu!" exclaimed d'Elboeuff, drawing his sword.

"Where?—where?" asked the others.

"Why, right on the crown of the causeway; and, fore Heaven! he doth seem a marvellously tall fellow."

"By cock and pie! 'tis the city cross, thou blind bat!"

"Right, Ormiston!" replied Bothwell; "but his reverence is so drunk that he knows not a cross from a cow. Past midnight? soh! a famous hour for such regular men as we to be strolling along the streets, like knights of the post; and thou, bully Hob, art without thine armour."

"I have a pyne doublet that would turn the bolt of an arblast—double quilted."

"The streets are dull, and I am very sleepy," stammered Coldinghame.

"Speak not of sleep, my Lord Privy Seal," said the Earl; "for we have a notable brawl to make yet. We must show these rascally bailies that their night-watch and captains of the thirty wards had no reference to us, who are lords and barons of Parliament."

"Thou hast ever some wicked thought in thy gomeral's costard. A brawl! with whom, pray?"

"With thee, Lord Prior, if thou talkest thus!" rejoined Bothwell, adjusting his mantle, angrily.

"Vrai Dieu! chevaliers," said the Frenchman; "after so happy a night, don't quarrel, I pray you."

"I would give a score of bright bonnet-pieces to meet a few of Moray's or Morton's swashbucklers coming down the street just now! I am in the right mood for a fray," said Black Hob. "Suppose we ring the Tron bell, and shout fire, sack, and the English!"

"Or break into the house of some rascally bourgeoise, and carry off his pretty wife," said the Marquis d'Elboeuff. "Oh, ventre bleu! de Brissac, de Vendome, and I, have played that prank many a night among the Hugonets in the Rue de Marmousets, and the dear rogues in the Rue de Glatigy"——

"At Paris, thou meanest," said Bothwell; "but our wooden-headed burghers set a value upon their conjugal ware different from your countrymen. The price French, is by francs and livres; the price Scottish, blows and steel blades. One might as well venture into a wasps' nest."

"Nom d'un Pape! Bothwell is growing tame," retorted the Marquis. "I knew that being once regularly wedded would spoil him."

"Once!" laughed Ormiston. "I warrant him"——

"Peace, gomeral!" thundered the Earl, placing his gauntleted hand on Hob's mouth. "What wert thou about to say, i' the devil's name?"

"Only that I would wish to show some of these fanatical Protestants that, being doubly damned, they have no right to keep their wives and daughters, or handmaidens, all to themselves."

"Tete Dieu!" cried d'Elboeuff, brandishing his rapier; "ah, the selfish Hugonets!—we must teach them the new law. Who will follow me? for Bothwell seemeth white-livered."

"Dost thou gibe me, Marquis? God wot! I should like to see thee ettle at aught that I will not surpass."

"Then here is a house. Draw, chevaliers!—vive la joie! let us beat up the door, knock down the bourgeoise, and carry off the first pretty woman to my hotel in the Cowgate!"

Lord Coldinghame grasped his cloak, saying—

"Beelzebub! Marquis, art thou mad? 'Tis the house of Master John Knox."

"A million of thunders!" grumbled the Frenchman, falling back abashed on hearing that formidable name; "we should have the whole city about our ears. But come—allons! I will show ye a place better suited for such merry rogues as we than the house of that arch-heretic. There is Madame Alisong Cragg—a notable lady of joy!"

"Bravo, Marquis! thou art right!" exclaimed Bothwell; "my rascal, French Paris, tells me there is a famous foreign beauty concealed there—brought, 'tis said, by Morton or Arran. And dost thou know that the ambassador of Duke Philibert of Savoy—what is his name?"

"The Count di Mezezzo."

"Ah! the same—saw her yesterday as he rode past, and hath raved about her ever since."

"Monsieur l'Ambassadeur has the eyes of Argus for a pretty woman; so allons, messieurs!" said the gay Frenchman, and they all staggered arm-in-arm down the wynd.

"Hark! listen!" said Bothwell.

They halted under the windows of Dame Craig's dwelling; some of these were partly open, and emitted into the misty street the odour of a close room and a luxurious supper—the fumes of wine and a night debauch. Through the thick gratings that defended them, flakes of light streamed into the dark and gloomy wynd, while a clear and manly voice was heard to sing one of those blasphemous ballads which were so obnoxious to Queen Mary—

"Ane cursed fox hath lain in the rocks,

Hidden this many a day,

Devouring sheep; but a hunter shall scare

This cursed fox away.

"The hunter is Christ, that spurs in haste,

His hounds are St. Peter and Paul;

The Pope is the fox, and Rome is the rocks,

That rub us to the gall.

"Poor Pope! had to sell the Tantony bell,

And pardons for ilka thing;

Remission of sins in old sheep skins,

Our souls from hell to bring.

"With bulls of lead, white wax and red,

And other whiles of green;

This cursed fox, enclosed in a box,

Such devilry never was seen."

On hearing this doggerel ballad,[*] Bothwell and his friends drew their swords in deliberate anger, intent, less on a brawl, than on punishing the singer; for this ditty was one of those which, by the efforts of the more zealous clergy, had been set to the ancient music of the Catholic church, and were usually sung by the lowest rabble, "to ferment that wild spirit of fanaticism, which in the following age involved the nation in blood, and overturned the state of three kingdoms."

[*] For which see Andre Hart's Godly Ballade Buik.—NOTE by the Magister Absalom.

Neither Bothwell nor d'Elboeuff were very rigid Catholics, yet they burned to punish this irreligious ribaldry, coming as it did from a place which, in their younger days, had been appropriated to purposes so very different. Black Ormiston and John of Coldinghame cared not a bodle about the matter; but, nevertheless, they muffled their mantles about their left arms, adjusted their masks, and assailed the house with drawn swords.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE GLEEWOMEN.

Fiorello.—Hallo! house here! Hey, good people!

Hallo! house here! Faith, you sleep ill!

Bartolo.—Who can this be? Ugly fellow!

Drunken rascal! thus to bellow!

The Barber of Seville.

Furiously they knocked, and immediately the lights were extinguished, the singing ceased, and the windows were closed. Again and again they thundered on the planking of the nail-studded door, till the solid walls of the house were shaken, but there was no attention paid.

"Ho, within there!" cried Bothwell; "Alison, devil take thee, art thou deaf or drunk?"

"Ventre St. Gris!" grumbled the Marquis, skipping aside, as a stoup of water was poured from the upper story upon his laced mantle. "I will spit them all like larks. Tonnere! but I will."

"Hallo! 'ware your costards, sirs!" exclaimed Ormiston, as a large billet of wood came down next. "Cock and pie! the garrison shew mettle."

"Who are without there?" asked a man, through one of those reconnoitring holes with which all the doors in the city were then provided; but they could perceive the voice to be a feigned one. "What ribald cullions are ye?"

"The godly Earl of Arran, and his friend Master John Knox!" replied Bothwell, in a snuffling voice, amid a shout of laughter.

"Lewd varlet, thou liest! for the Lord Arran is here a-bed."

"Oho! then, tell him there are four tall fellows here, each of whom is better than he; so bid him take sword and cloak and come forth, lest we burn the house and Dame Alison to boot, for we have vowed a vow to make entrance."

"Help! help! Axes and staves! Armour! armour! Fie!" screamed the shrill voices of Alison Craig and several of her gleewomen and companions from the upper windows. "Thieves! stouthrief! and hamesucken! Help! help!"

"Sacré bleu! what a devil of a noise thou makest, Madame Alisong!" cried d'Elboeuff. "Ma belle coquette—ma chère madame."

While Bothwell and Coldinghame were endeavouring to burst open the door (using as much energy as if the whole salvation of men depended upon their success), it was suddenly opened; a strong glare of light flashed into the gloomy wynd, and a tall cavalier, masked and muffled in a mantle of scarlet velvet, and wealing a very broad beaver flapped down over his eyes, appeared in the passage, armed with a long glittering sword and bowl-hilted dagger for parrying. He burst out, and commenced hewing right and left; but, finding his escape barred in every direction, he fell on desperately, bending all his energies to slay Bothwell, who encountered him hand to hand.

Daringly they fought for some twenty passes, the fire flashing from their swords, when the stranger suddenly broke away and escaped, leaving behind his rich mantle, of which the Earl immediately possessed himself.

"Scarlet taffeta—lined with white satin—laeed with gold, too! Now, whose ware may this be?"

"The King's!" said Ormiston and others.

"Darnley's—now, by Heaven!—"

"Send it to her Majesty," said Hob, "with Madame Craig's leal service."

"Nay, by St. Bothan! I will wear it under King Henry's nose at Court to-morrow," replied the madcap noble, as they all burst into the house with their drawn swords, and made a tremendous uproar by rushing from room to room, up the narrow wooden stairs, and through the pannelled corridors, pursuing the shrieking glee-girls with oaths and boisterous laughter. In one apartment they found the remains of the feast, and several flasks of good wine, which they immediately confiscated for their own use, and then made more noise than ever.

Alison Craig was dragged from her hiding-place in an oak almrie by the reformed Prior of Coldinghame, who placed his rapier at her throat, and threatened instant death if she did not produce the fair Ribaude, whom the Lord Morton had committed to her charge.

"Aroint thee, dame!" said Bothwell. "We will have thee ducked on the cuckstule as a scold, and pilloried for dancing round the summer-pole, which thou knowest to be alike contrary to the Bible and John Knox."

Pouring forth alternate threats of vengeance and entreaties to desist, Alison, whose well-rouged cheeks and painted brow were by turns blanched with terror and crimsoned with rage, led them reluctantly towards an apartment which, in former days, had been a little private oratory for the Lady Superior, or Reverend Mother. The pointed door was of oak, carved with the emblems of religion—the crown of thorns, and the hands and feet pierced by nails; the sacred heart and the cross were still there, but they ornamented what the change of manners had made the abode of a gleewoman.

Bothwell, whose whole spirit was now bent on mischief and frolic, with one kick of his heavy buff boot split the old door in two, and, as the falling fragments unfolded, to his consternation he beheld—Anna Rosenkrantz!

Pale, terrified, and motionless as a statue, she was standing about six paces from him, and near a little table, on which lay her crucifix and missal, in evidence that she had been praying devoutly. Her cheeks were blanched, her eyes were dilated, and her lip curled slightly with anger at the insults she anticipated; but with a serene brow, and aspect of modesty and dignity, she drew herself up to her full height, and with her stately train sweeping behind, and her high ruff bristling with starch and pride, confronted these violent intruders, the two principals of whom she failed to recognise under the black velvet masks—an article of wearing apparel which the residence of so many French, Spanish, and Italian ambassadors, had now made common among the Scottish noblesse.

"Death and confusion!" muttered the Earl, falling back a pace.

"Cock and pie!" said Ormiston, under his bushy mustaches; "we have started the wrong game."

"Aha, my belle coquette!" said d'Elboeuff, advancing with his blandest smile, and kissing his hands as he bowed to the rosettes at his knees; "ma jolie damoiselle—comment vous en va?"

"Hold, Marquis! we are in error," said the Earl, in a deep and fierce whisper, as he grasped the arm of the French noble, and drew him back.

Though Anna did not hear the words, there was something in their accent and in the air of Bothwell that struck a chord in her memory; her colour heightened, and her eyes lit up. He saw in a moment that he would be recognised; and, pushing his friends before him by main strength down the narrow stair, he drove them into the street—an unexpected proceeding—which filled them with so much rage, that their swords would infallibly have been turned against him had other work not been prepared for them.

Now the blaze of torches filled the narrow wynd, glinting on its fantastic architecture, its grated windows, and carved outshots, on the steel caps, green doublets, and arrow-heads of a band of Mary's Archer Guard, which hurried to the scene of the uproar, led by their captain on horseback, in a handsome suit of light armour, to assist the two civic commanders of that district—a baxter and a dagger-maker—who, with twenty citizens in steel bonnets and jacks, and armed with partisan and whinger, had also sallied forth to maintain the peace of the burgh.

Dreading that, if taken, he would be unmasked, discovered, and brought before Mary, and, by being involved in an adventure so dishonourable, lose perhaps her favour for ever, Bothwell fought desperately up the street, and wounded several of the archers, shouting all the while, "A Hamilton! a Hamilton!" to mislead the assailants as to his identity, and make them suppose him to be the young Earl of Arran, who was known to be slightly deranged by his love for the queen.

On hearing the war-cry of his house, the clang of the swords and axes, and all the uproar excited by such a brawl, (where the parties engaged were well protected by defensive armour), Gavin Hamilton, abbot of Kilwinning, a younger son of the Duke of Chatelherault, with a few of his retinue, sallied forth in armour to aid the Earl and his three friends, who had gradually changed the scene of their conflict to the broad central street of the city, up which they were pressing with great vigour.

The arrival of the gallant abbot, caused a continuance of the brawl with renewed energy and fury, and the dense masses pressing to the centre, shouted on one side, "A Hamilton!" on the other, "A Darnley! a Darnley!" and swayed too and fro, from the turreted platform of the city cross to the Tron beam, where the merchandise was weighed; while the clangour of bells, and the clamour of the arming citizens, uniting with the fury of the fray, drowned the cries of the wounded, and the twanging of the bows, as the royal archers shot at random into the mist and gloom.

The deacons of the crafts were crying "Armour! armour! Axes and staves!" Craigmillar, the provost, was buckling on his harness in his strong dwelling at Peebles Wynd, and the council were mustering in their usual place of meeting, the Holy Blood Aisle in St. Giles' Church; but the arrival of the Earls of Huntly and Moray with a fresh band of archers, compelled the Abbot of Kilwinning to make a hasty retreat. Black Hob escaped with him, and reached in safety his own dwelling in the Netherbow, above Bassyndine the printer's establishment; but Bothwell and his two remaining friends were made prisoners, disarmed, deprived of their masks, and rather unceremoniously conducted to Holyrood.

"I thought, good-brother of mine, thou hadst got rid of thy follies, and become a very Carthusian," said the young Earl of Huntly, with some little scorn, to Bothwell, as he returned him his magnificent rapier.

"Ah—indeed!" said the other with a polite smile.

"My sister—Jane—thy countess," continued Huntly gravely; "from being quiet, silent, and dejected, since thou leftest Bothwell castle, hath become delirious—yea, frantic; and canst thou tell me aught of this Anna, of whom she raves incessantly?"

"By the holy Paul!" replied Bothwell, with admirable coolness, "I know no more than thou. 'Tis some phantom of her brain, and this horrible calamity hath so oppressed me, that"——

"Thou plungest into every mad extravagance and folly. Thou spendest thy days among dicemen and drinkers, thy nights among wantons and gleewomen, with such blockheads as Ormiston and d'Elboeuff, to bury all memory of my sister—ha! is it?"

"Exactly; 'tis the wisest mode and the merriest, by the mass! So a fair good-morning, my Lord—well-a-day, fair, noble Moray!" said the Earl, bowing to the nobles of his escort as he raised his plumed bonnet, and entered the little doorway of the Duke of Albany's tower. A dark frown knit the broad brow of the young Highland noble, as he watched the Earl's retreating figure, and he muttered in Gaelic between his teeth—

"Had not my sister vowed before the altar of God to love, obey, and cherish thee, by all that is sacred on earth and blessed in heaven, false Lord of Bothwell, this dagger had rung on thy breast-bone!"

Elboeuff and the Prior of Coldinghame were also conducted to separate chambers, where, just as daylight began to glint on the city vanes, and to lighten the gloomy courts and cloisters of the ancient palace, they were securely locked up, and left to their own confused reflections, and the occupation of nursing their bruises.

CHAPTER XV.

A MOMENT LONG WISHED FOR.

Bright queen! illustrious nymph, whose gentle sway

Fair Caledonia's hardy sons obey;

Whose sacred hand the royal sceptre bears—-

The ancient sceptre of two thousand years.

Oh, great descendant of a noble line!

Thy rank superior, but thy worth divine;

Beyond thy sex with every virtue bless'd;

Beyond thy birth of dignity possess'd!

Buchanan to Mary Stuart, 1659.

The red October sun was gleaming on the casements of Holyrood, and filling the north and western sides of its courts (the palace then had five) with light and warmth, while the southern remained in shadow. The royal standard waved on the tower of James V., then the northern and most lofty part of this palace, which was burned by the fanatics of Cromwell, and was much more irregular in architectural design, and very different in aspect from the present stately edifice, which the skill of Sir William Bruce engrafted on the old remains.

The queen's archers were bustling about the gothic porch and outer gates, with their bows strung and belts bristling with arrows; the tramp of hoofs, the clatter of harness, the voices of pages, grooms, and yeomen, rang in the royal stables, and all the usual stir and business of the day were commencing, though somewhat earlier—for on that morning the Privy Council were to meet, and already the Lord Chancellor, Morton, Stewart the High Treasurer, the Secretary of the Kingdom, Macgill of Rankeillor, the Lord Clerk Register, and many other nobles and officers of state, were arriving, attended by their usual retinues of armed horsemen, and quarrelsome swashbucklers on foot, clad in half armour, with swords, targets, and pistolettes, and having the badges of their feudal lords fixed to their basinets.

Elbowing his way through the mass of pages, valets, and men-at-arms, that filled the outer court, and whistling merrily as he went, the handsome young lieutenant of the royal archers, Sir John Hepburn of Bolton, was seen clad in his gayest attire—a green velvet doublet trimmed with scarlet, and laced with gold, a purple mantle, and blue bonnet garnished with a white feather. He ascended the narrow and winding staircase of the Albany tower, where Konrad was confined, and into which he was admitted by an archer of his own band, who was posted as sentinel in the corridor.

By Bothwell's directions, Konrad had been treated like a knight or gentleman rather than an outlawed moss-trooper, or broken borderman, under which name he was charged with an attempt to slay the queen's lieutenant.

Calm and collected, but sad and thoughtful, he was leaning against the grated window, and watching the October sunrise, the warm light of which was rendering yet more red the faded foliage of the copsewood that lay to the eastward of the palace, and the old red walls of the Abbey church, where at that moment the queen was kneeling on St. David's grave, and praying at the same altar before which her sires had prayed four hundred years before.