BOTHWELL, VOLUME II

BOTHWELL:

OR,

THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

BY JAMES GRANT, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF

"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH CASTLE," "THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER," &c., &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON: PARRY & CO., LEADENHALL STREET. MDCCCLI.

M'CORQUODALE AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON. WORKS, NEWTON.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAPTER

The Earl and the Queen

The Weaponshaw

The Handkerchief

The Leith Wynd Porte

The Red Lion

The Earl of Morton

Morton turns Philanthropist

John of Park

The Conflict in Hermitage Glen

The Pit of Hermitage

Bothwell revives an Early Dream

Alison Craig

Four Choice Spirits

The Gleewomen

A Moment Long Wished For

Anna and the Queen

The Bouquet

Jealousy without Love

Mariette and Darnley

The Plot Thickens—Conference of Craigmillar

Father Tarbet

The Whisper

The Mother and her Child

The King's Page

In Three Hours it will be Time!

The Old Tower of Holyrood

BOTHWELL;

OR,

THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE EARL AND THE QUEEN.

For since the time when Adam first

Embraced his Eve in happy hour!

And every bird of Eden burst

In carol, every bird and flower;

What eyes like thine have waken'd hopes?

What lips like thine so sweetly join'd?

Where on the double rosebud droops

The fulness of the pensive mind.

Tennyson.

Bothwell stooped and entered; the arras closed behind him, and his rich attire gleamed in the full flush of the noonday sun, that streamed through a mullioned casement opposite.

He wore a coat-of-mail, the links of which were so flexible that they incommoded him less than the velvet doublet below it. His trunks were of black velvet, slashed with red, and trimmed with silver cord. He wore long boots reaching to the knee. His bonnet was of blue velvet, adorned by his crest—a silver horse's head—which sustained one tall and aspiring ostrich feather. He wore a scarf and dagger; but French Paris, his page, bore a handsome sword and embossed helmet a few paces behind.

The Earl advanced to the throne, and, uncovering his round head of thick curly hair, slightly touched the Queen's hand with his lip. Moray and Morton exchanged another of their deep glances; for the confusion with which he did so was evident to all save Darnley.

"A good-morning, my lord!" said the Queen in French, while bowing with a most enchanting smile. "You are welcome among us as flowers in spring."

"Lord Earl, a fair good-day!" said Darnley and the other lords.

"I thank your grace and lordships," replied the Earl, taking his seat, "and I crave pardon for my tardy attention to a summons that reached me only yesterday at dawn; but I have come from Glasgow on the spur."

"'Tis well, my lord," said Mary, "for never did I stand more in need of suit and service."

"Had I a thousand hearts, they would be at the disposal of your Majesty!" replied the Earl with enthusiasm.

"Prenez garde, monseigneur!" said Mary archly; "one heart is always enough if it is true."

The handsome noble laughed, as in duty bound; showed all his white teeth, under a jetty mustache; and his jaunty gaiety and smiling gallantry were quite a relief to Mary, they contrasted so forcibly with the austere visages that every where met her eye.

"Your bride, the Lady Jane, has come to court with you, of course?" asked the Queen.

"No, madam," replied Bothwell, with a reddening cheek; "the verity is—she still—the reason—your majesty will excuse, but I am bidden to bear her dutiful commendations to your grace. I left her at my house of Bothwell."

"Ah!—in your hurry to attend our summons?"

"Exactly so—please your grace."

"My grace is much indebted to the loyalty that could so far master love as to leave the bride of a few months. Men say she is very beautiful."

"And women deny it," added the flippant Darnley; "the best proof that the men are right."

Bothwell, who seemed wholly intent in gazing on Mary, when she did not perceive him, looked as if he cared very little about it.

"And men say, too," added the gay King, "that, natheless his marriage, the Lord Bothwell is not likely to become a Carthusian"——

"Any more than King Henry," retorted the Earl, with a haughty smile. "Oh, no!—I have still a dash of the gallant left in me."

"And a wish to assist honest burghers in their conjugal duties"——

"Being, like your majesty, somewhat neglectful of my own," added the Earl, in a low voice.

The king, though he delighted in ribald jesting, answered only by one of his darkest scowls; but old Lord Lindesay burst into a hoarse laugh, and whispered to Morton—

"By my faith! but I love to see two such cocks o' the game yoked together. Bothwell's gibe hath bitten."

"My lords," said the chancellor Morton, "with the queen's permission we will again resume the matter in debate. Surely, among the bold peers of Scotland, we cannot look long for one to lead the vassals of her crown against a cock-laird of Teviotdale—a petty border-outlaw!"

"If neither the Great Constable nor the Earl Marshal will assume their batons, then I, as Lord High Admiral of Scotland, claim the leadership!" exclaimed Bothwell, starting up. "My kinsman, John of Bolton, will unfurl the royal banner in the field, if the Constable of Glastre, Sir James Scrimegeour of Dudhope, its hereditary bearer, like an obdurate heretic or craven knight, shrinks at his sovereign's mandate. Nay, never frown on me my Lords of Lindesay and Glencairn, for I value no man's frown or favour a sword thrust! The vassals of the house of Hailes are ever at the service of her majesty. My kinsmen, John of Bolton and Hob of Ormiston, lead each a hundred lances and a hundred arquebussiers on horseback; and I warrant their followers all stout men, and true as Rippon rowels. I will lead three thousand of my own people to the border, and, if need be, will hold a justice-aire that will long be remembered through Tweedside and Teviotdale."

"O, je vous rend mille graces!" exclaimed Mary, who, in her sudden bursts of enthusiasm, always preferred her darling French. "A thousand thanks, brave Hepburn! Thou shalt be my knight, and bear my favour to the south. But we need not thy brave vassals of Hailes, for we number enow of the crown in their helmets, and to-morrow our sheriff and arrayers shall show thee their various bands."

Again Bothwell knelt and kissed the hand of the queen, who glanced furtively at her husband; and in the contrast between his inertness and Bothwell's energy felt a glow of scorn within her which she struggled in vain to repress. He was still coquetting with Mariette Hubert, the same fair girl, and the Earl, whose quick eyes had followed those of Mary, said in a low voice—

"As might be expected in the consort of one so fair, his majesty is ever speaking of love."

"And, like the French, deems that in doing so he is making it."

"A biting jest, Marquis," said Bothwell to his friend d'Elboeuff, who merely shrugged his shoulders, smiled gaily, and made use of his little gold pouncet-box.

"And now, my lords, this matter, thank Heaven! is arranged," said the Queen, rising; "and gladly will I leave this desperate game of state-craft and policy for my ghittern and music, or a quiet ramble by the margin of the lake. Good morning, my Lord Glencairn!—good Lindesay, I kiss your hand! Athole, and ma bonne soeur, Jane of Argyle, come, we will retire; and as the king, my husband, seems so much better occupied, we will leave him to his reflections. My Lord of Bothwell, favour me with your hand!"

The queen's brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray, on seeing Darnley's inattention, had approached and drawn off his leather glove; but on hearing Bothwell summoned thus, he drew back with a smile on his lip, and a shade on his open brow. He bore a deadly enmity to Bothwell, whom he had more than once accused of designs against his life, and one deep glance of tiger-like import was exchanged between them, as the favoured courtier took Mary's snow-white hand in his, and led her to the hall door, where, between the marshalled ranks of a band of archers, and surrounded by the ladies of her court, with all their jewellery and embroidery glittering in the sunlight, she swept gracefully from that lofty chamber, and the heavy arras, which fair Queen Margaret had worked in the hours of her widowhood, closed like a curtain over the pageant as it passed away.

Mary, accompanied by her sister, the Countess of Argyle, Bothwell's sister-in-law, Elizabeth, Countess of Athole, and other ladies of rank, and attended by the handsome Earl, with his gay friend the Marquis d'Elboeuff, and Monsieur le Crocq, whom, as Frenchmen, he preferred to the morose and turbulent nobles of the court, promenaded among the terraces, the blooming parterres, and green hedgerows of the palace garden, through the leafy openings of which bright glimpses were obtained of the blue loch, with its shining bosom, dotted by white swans and dusky flocks of the water-ouzel.

The singing of birds filled the air with music, as the parterres did with perfume. All the flowers of summer were in their glory, and the white and purple lilac, with the golden blossoms of the laburnum, drooped over them. The sky was clear, and all of a deep cerulean blue, and in its sunshine the tints of the distant hills were mellowed to hues of the sapphire and the amethyst.

The spirits of the queen (freed from the cares of her troublesome state, and the thrall of her capricious husband) became buoyant with that delight so natural to her; and then her Parisian gaiety, the splendour of her wit, and the winning vivacity of her manner, came forth in all their power.

Her eyes alternately swam and sparkled with joy; her cheek flushed; and her merry laugh rang like music in the ear of Bothwell, who walked by her side.

A spell had fallen upon him!

With every wish to excel in her eyes, and to surpass himself in the art of conversation and gallantry, he found every attempt at either almost futile. An incubus weighed upon him; he was sad, irresolute, and anxious. Sad, because this interview with the beautiful Mary, had called up all the first hopes of his heart from the oblivion to which he had committed them; for many a year ago, when, in the first flush of her girlhood, he had dared to love the betrothed bride of Francis II. with the same deep and passionate fondness that drove Chatelard to destruction, and young Arran to madness: irresolute, because he dared not now to nourish such sentiments, yet found the impossibility of repressing them: and anxious, because the memory of his double matrimonial engagement pressed hardly and uneasily on his mind.

He strove to crush his rash thoughts and bitter regrets; but they would come—again and again.

He endeavoured to converse with the ladies of new coifs and Florence kirtles—to the French ambassador of the policy of Charles IX.—to the Marquis d'Elboeuf of the intrigues of Catherine de Medicis and Margaret of Valois—to Huntly of Moray's wiles and Morton's villanies; but he invariably found himself where he was before—by the side of Mary, listening to her musical voice, and gazing, with his old feeling of adoration, on her bright and sunny eyes, and her braided hazel hair, that gleamed in the noonday's sunshine.

And now, incited by the lingering love of other days, the demons of a more dangerous ambition than he before had ever dared to dream of, began for the first time to pour their insidious whispers in his ear, and Bothwell found that he was——lost.

CHAPTER II.

THE WEAPONSHAW.

Charmion———I found him

Encompass'd round, I think with iron statues;

So mute, so motionless his soldiers stood;

While awfully he cast his eyes about,

And every leader's hopes and fears survey'd.

All for Love.

Next day the great quadrangle of the palace of Linlithgow, and the lawn before its gates, presented a scene of unusual bustle.

Few edifices of that age, in Scotland, surpass this building in architectural beauty. Its richly-carved archway was surmounted on the inside by a cluster of gothic niches, containing statues, of which the defaced image of the Virgin now alone remains. Three tiers of mullioned windows, all of beautiful workmanship, rich with cusping and stained glass, overlooked this side of the quadrangle, the summit of which was crowned by a beautiful battlement; on the other, were the deeply-recessed and heavily-arched windows of the ancient Parliament hall. One half of this noble court was involved in cold shadow; the pointed casements and fretted stone-work of the other were shining in warm light, as the morning sun poured down its rays aslant over the varied parapets, the carved chimneys, and loftier towers, that flanked the angles of this great edifice, which, in its aspect, had much more of the cheerful summer palace than any other residence of the Scottish kings. The royal standard was waving on the highest tower; the Archer Guard, in all their bravery, were drawn up beside the gate of James IV., where there were heralds and pursuivants in their gorgeous tabards and plumed caps, pages bearing swords and helmets, and clad in all the colours of the rainbow; swashbucklers and other retainers of the feudal nobles, variously armed, and still more variously attired, wearing in their blue bonnets or steel caps the badges of their lords—the ivy of the house of Huntly, the myrtle of Argyle, or the holly of Tullybardine. These loitered about in groups, together with peddies and horse-boys, holding the champed bridles of steeds caparisoned for war, in massive trappings of steel and brocade.

The gaiety of this scene made Linlithgow seem so merry, as its old walls and countless casements gleamed in the sunshine, that the lookers-on forgot the gloomier adjuncts of that magnificent pile, where, deep down at the base of narrow stairs, are chambers, vaulted, dark, and damp. Never a ray of light penetrated to the wretch whom fate imprisoned there, though the water fell unceasingly from the stalactites of the roof, and from the slimy walls. Yet, further down beneath all these, lay the oubliette, the only entrance to which is by a narrow orifice, through which the doomed captive was lowered, feet foremost, into that pit from which he was never to be exhumed. In the centre of one of these terrible vaults, were found some years ago, a number of human bones, and a mass of hideous unctuous matter; but of the fate of those poor beings whose last remains these were, history and tradition are alike silent, and leave the imagination to brood over episodes of visionary horror!

But to return.

The old walls shone joyously in the summer sunshine, and many a fair and many a happy face appeared at the open casements; the beautiful stone fountain in the centre (a miracle of carving) was flowing with wine and ale, and a coronal of flowers wreathed the imperial crown that surmounted it.

The gravelled court was crowded with the vassals of the crown.

The Sheriff of Linlithgow and the Earl Marischal, both completely armed, save their heads, with certain captains of the queen's bands, were arraying them under arms—i.e., in modern parlance "calling the roll," and seeing that each proprietor, as summoned by his tenure, had brought his proper quota of men-at-arms on foot and horseback, all properly accoutred according to the acts of Parliament. Every lord, knight, and baron, possessing a hundred pounds of yearly rent, was clad in bright armour, "and weaponed effeirand to his honour;" each gentleman, unlanded, and yeoman, had a jack of plate with a halkrike, splints, helmet, and pesane. Their spears, "stark and long, six elnes of length," with Leith axes, halberds, crossbows, culverins, and two-handed swords, completed their equipment.

The various weapons were all flashing in the sunshine, while the standards rustled as the henchman of each baron, with a bull-dog aspect of surly defiance and pride, unfurled to the wind his embroidered banner, which displayed armorial bearings won in many a well-fought field and desperate foray. But the most important feature in this display was made by John Chisholm, comptroller of Her Majesty's Ordnance, who had under his orders a band of cannoniers, armed with swords and daggers, and clad in salades and pesanes of steel, with plate sleeves, scarlet hose, and rough buskins. These managed two great culverins, "with their calmes, bullettes, and pellokis of lead or irone, and powder convenient thereto," and all prepared for the especial behoof of those strong and masterful thieves, the lairds of Park, Buccleuch, and Cessford.

Mounted on a beautiful roan steed, which was armed with a spiked frontlet of polished steel, and had a plume of feathers dancing on its proud head, from a tube between the ears, a jointed criniere to defend the mane, and an embossed poitronal or breastplate, Bothwell dashed into the quadrangle, at full gallop, with his visor up, and, kissing the tip of his gauntlet to the Earl Marischal, reined in beside him, checking the fire of his horse by one touch of the bridle.

His armour was a suit of Italian plate, profusely gilt in that gorgeous fashion which was then becoming common, as knights were perceiving that the ponderous armour of the middle ages was unsuited for modern warfare; and consequently they adopted light and magnificent suits, descending only to the thighs, which were defended by large trunk hose, well puffed out with buckram and bombast. He wore white funnel boots furnished with large Rippon spurs, having rowels that would pierce a shilling.

In these ages, the spurs denoted the wearer's rank; those of the knight were of gold; those of the squire were of silver; the yeoman's were of iron; and it was the fashion to make them clink and jingle when walking.

The Earl of Bothwell wore a pair of plain steel, for Rippon spurs were the most famous of all. A pair ordered for James VI., cost five pounds sterling of his coinage.

"How many tall fellows hast thou under harness, my Lord Marischal?" asked Bothwell.

"About three thousand and fourscore," replied the Earl, consulting a roll; "but none of the Lennox-men are present."

"Wherefore so?" asked the Earl, whose cheek reddened with anger.

"Tush!" replied the Marischal of Scotland; "dost thou imagine they would follow other banner than that of Earl Mathew, or the King, his son?"

"The laird of Hartshaw—a Stuart—is here, I perceive."

"With thirteen good men, well horsed, and armed with steel bonnets, swords, and pistolettes."

"And Stuart of Darnholm?"

"Nay, he hath sent only his bailie with twelve men-at-arms on foot, and as many on horseback, all weaponed conform to the harness act. Dost think a Stuart will follow a Hepburn?"

"A Stuart may follow many worse, but few better. Dost thou gibe me, Earl Marischal?"

"Nay, Heaven forbid!" said the old noble hastily; "but in this thou seest the morbid jealousy of the house of Lennox. Darnley declines to lead his vassals to the field; but thinkest thou he will permit their being led by another? Thy friends, the knights of Ormiston and Bolton, have not as yet come in with their lances."

"Ha—my own people, sayest thou!" exclaimed Bothwell, as, shading his eyes with his hand, he gazed keenly along the glittering files, which were arrayed on the sunny side of the quadrangle. "They are not wont to lag when blows are expected; and, by St. Bothan! yonder they come! I see steel glittering among the copsewood."

Under two knights' pennons, a band of horsemen, with their steel caps and corselets, and the bright points of their long spears flashing in the sun, came at a hand-gallop up the ascent which led to the palace gate; appearing and disappearing as the road wound between thickets of the summer foliage.

"I know not whose the blue pennon is," said the Earl Marischal; "but the other pertaineth to Sir James of Drumlanrig. I surely discern his winged-heart and horses argent."

"Thou art mistaken!" replied the Earl; "these are my kinsmen, John of Bolton, and Ormiston of Ormiston; seest thou not his great banner argent, with three red pelicans feeding their young? Gallant Hob! the spiders will never spin their webs on thy pennon. Well met, fair sirs!" he added, as the train lowered their long lances, and passed under the low-browed archway into the palace yard. "In what case art thou this morning, Hob?"

"A steel one, as thou seest. Mass! but I am thirsty as a dry ditch with my morning ride. But, lo! yonder cometh the queen's grace and her ladies," said Ormiston, as all the lances were lowered, and there was a ruffling on the kettle drums.

Mary and the ladies of her court appeared at one of the large windows overlooking the quadrangle, where they waved their handkerchiefs, and bowed and smiled gaily, to those whom they recognised among the crowd below.

"That beautiful being!" said Bothwell, gazing on her with admiration; "shines like a sun among lesser stars."

"By cock and pie! her ladies are like a parterre of roses in the glory and sunshine of summer."

"His lordship's poetry is infectious," said young Bolton, with a laugh; "is not yonder dame in scarlet the Lady Herries of Terreagles?"

"Ah! the old Roman! she looks like a kettle-drum with a standard round it. Dost thou not see she is counting her beads under her fardingale?"

"My lord—if Master Knox were to see her"——

"Or the old Prior of Blantyre, Hob. See, he is still wearing his cap and cassock, as if the act of 1560 had never passed. 'Tis said he carries the kiss of Judas in a box."

"Enough of this irreverence, sirs; for such discourse beseemeth neither the place nor the persons," said the old Earl Marischal gravely, with that severe aspect which he had assumed since (by the retired life he was wont to lead at his Keep of Dunnotar) the commonalty had named him William-in-the-Tower.

"His Majesty the King!" muttered a number of voices, as Darnley, sheathed completely in a suit of the richest Florentine armour, so profusely gilded and studded with nails and bosses, that little of the polished steel was visible, rode into the courtyard. He was attended by the Marquis d'Elboeuf, who was similarly accoutred; Monsieur le Crocq, the ambassadors of Spain and Savoy; and several gentlemen of the Lennox. Again there was a ruffling of kettle-drums, a lowering of lances and pennons, and then the hum died away.

The housings of his horse, which had been magnificently embroidered by the queen and her ladies, bore the royal arms of Scotland, quartered with the saltire engrailed, and the four roses of Lennox.

"Excuse me, my lord," said the Marischal, riding off; "I must confer with his Majesty."

"He means the Lord Darnley," said Bothwell, with a bitter smile. "Shame on the hour that Scottish men made yonder gilded doll their king!"

"Humph!" said Ormiston, suspiciously; "art thou jealous?"

"If it should so happen," observed the Earl, in a low voice, "that he were to die, what wouldst thou think of me as a husband for the queen?"

"Burn my beard! what—thou?"

"By the blessed Jupiter!" continued the other, half in earnest and half in jest; "she might find a worse spouse than James Hepburn of Bothwell."

"Where?" asked Ormiston, pithily.

The Earl laughed; but his eyes flashed, as he said in a low voice—

"Mark me, Hob of Ormiston! let me but crush Moray, Mar, and Morton under my heel, and I will yet govern the kingdom of Scotland even as I curb this fiery horse."

"A rare governor! thou who canst not govern thyself."

"Thou seest 'tis very likely yonder tall spectre in the gilt armour may die soon."

"Gramercy me! I knew not that he ailed."

"None are so stupid as those who are resolved not to be otherwise," said the Earl, angrily. "Men die every day about us without ailing. Dost thou not understand me?"

"Devil take me if I do!"

"Oh, head of wood! I fear thou wilt never be lost by rashness."

Ormiston laughed in the hollow of his helmet, as he replied—

"Like thee, I may lose my heart in love a thousand times; but my poor head in politics only once, therefore am I somewhat miserly about it; yet I see what thou meanest," he whispered with sudden energy. "Say forth, and fear not. Hah! knowest thou not how I hate the Lord Darnley for the ruin of my youngest and best beloved sister; and that hatred is without a love for his wife, which I see thou darest to nourish."

With a cold and deep smile they regarded each other keenly under their barred aventayles; and Hepburn of Bolton, Bothwell's most stanch friend, who had partly overheard the conversation, said—

"Ere the month be out, I think it very likely this lordling of the Lennox may die of indigestion, as an old friend of Hob's did yestreen."

"On what did thy friend sup, Ormiston?" asked the Earl.

"This piece of cold steel!" replied the black giant, touching the iron hilt of his Scottish whinger.

"How, with a murrain! is it thus that thou servest thy friends at supper?"

"When they grow captious, capricious, or quarrelsome. We came to deadly feud about a few scores of nowte we had forayed on the borders of the debateable land from the clan of the Graemes, and so"——

"Thou thinkest the king may so sup, and so die?"

Ormiston answered by a short dry cough.

"True," continued Bothwell, "there are strange whispers abroad anent the Earl of Moray and his intrigues; but here comes the king! Place for his grace. Heaven save your majesty!"

"My Lord Earl, a fair good-morning—Ormiston and Bolton, my service to ye, sirs!" said the young king, bowing with that grace which marked all his actions; for his suit of mail, which seemed absolutely to blaze in the meridian sun, fitted his handsome form with the flexibility of silk. His eyes were dark and penetrating, but his face seemed in its wan ghastliness like the visage of one who had long been in the tomb; and Bothwell, when he scanned those noble features, so livid and wasted by sickness and dissipation, and compared his slight boyish figure with Black Ormiston's powerful frame, a sentiment of pity rose in his breast, and he shrunk from the dark hints which, partly in banter, and partly in the ruffianly spirit of the age, the knights had given him. These gentle thoughts were instantly put to flight by Darnley's insolent manner.

"I marvel," said he, with a marked sneer, "that the gay Bothwell tarries here among the men-at-arms, when so many fair faces, and the queen's in particular, are at yonder casement."

"I will do all in my power to make amends," replied the Earl, with ironical suavity. "Hob of Ormiston, follow me, if it please you! I will pay my devoirs to the queen's grace;" and with a dark scowl at the king, and a furtive one at his true henchman, the Earl applied his sharp Rippon spurs to his roan charger, and moved away.

CHAPTER III.

THE HANDKERCHIEF.

Where were then these Palace warriors,

That for thee they drew no brand?

Verily, we all do know them,

Quick of tongue, but slow of hand;

Yea, time will show, for this can ne'er be hid,

That they are women all, but I—the Cid!

Rodrigo de Bivar.

In those days, the manners, houses, and dresses of the Scottish aristocracy were modelled after those of France, and even to this day traces of the ancient alliance are to be found in Scotland. This imparted to the people a freedom of manner, a tone of gaiety, and a lightness of heart, which the influence of Calvinism was doomed in future years to crush, and almost obliterate.

"By St. Paul!" whispered the Earl, as he and Ormiston pushed their horses through the crowd; "Mary looks like a goddess at yonder casement."

"I will warrant her but a mere woman, after all," rejoined the matter-of-fact baron, spurring and curbing his powerful black horse. "By that dark look quhilk, just now, thou gavest the king, I can read that thou lovest"——

"Who?"

"The Queen!"

"And why not?" laughed the Earl, with a carelessness that was assumed; "has not love been the business of my life?"

"I hope it hath proved a profitable occupation. But remember that yonder face, with its bright hazel eyes and fascinating smile, is like that of the Gorgon in the old romaunt—for whoever looketh thereon too freely, shall die. Bethink thee: there was the poor archer of the Scottish guard at Les Tournelles, who died with a rope round his neck in the Place de Greve at Paris; there was Chatelard, that accomplished chevalier and poet; Sir John Gordon of Deskford, a young knight as brave as ever rode to battle, and who loved her with his whole heart, yet perished on the scaffold at Aberdeen. Did not young Arran love her even to madness, and raved as a maniac in the tower of St. Andrews? and then Signor David the secretary, who, as Master George Buchanan will swear upon the gospel"——

"Add not the scandal of that most accomplished of liars to thy croaking!" said the Earl, impatiently, as the dust of the court-yard came through his helmet. "Hob, hold in thy bridle; for thou makest a devil of a fray with that curveting horse of thine! Good-morrow to your majesty, and every noble lady!" he added, as he caprioled up to the window where the beautiful Mary, with the ladies of her court, were viewing the bustle and show of the martial weaponshaw.

"Ah, bon jour, Monsieur Bothwell!" she replied, with one of her delightful smiles; "how comes it that I see thee only now?"

"Because your majesty is like yonder glorious sun," replied the Earl; "thousands see and admire you, but few are noticed in return."

"Oh, what a hyperbole!" said the Queen, with a sad smile; "that compliment would suit the sunny sphere of Les Tournelles better than Linlithgow."

Memory cast a shade over the Earl's brow; but his cheek glowed with pleasure as the smiling queen continued—

"The vassals of the crown muster gaily for this Border war."

"And still more gaily muster the nobles of the court, to curvet and capriole their steeds before these fair ladies; but, verily, few will venture their gilt armour under dint of spear or whinger for their sake."

"Thinkest thou so—even when Bothwell leads?"

"Yes, adorable madam," replied the Earl, in a low thick voice; "even when Bothwell leads!"

"Had so many chevaliers of crest and coat-armour assembled at Versailles, there would have been many a spear broken in our names to-day.

'For Mary Beatoun, and Mary Seatoun,

And Mary Fleming, and me!'"

added the Queen, singing with all her gaiety of heart those lines from the old ballad of the Four Maries.

"And why not here, madam?" said the Earl with ardour; "give me but the guerdon you promised—a ribbon, a glove, a favour to flutter from my lance; and may I die the death of a faulty hound, if I do not make it ring like a mass-bell on the best coat-of-mail among us."

The head of the Earl's lance was close to the window, and the queen with her usual heedlessness, tied her laced handkerchief below its glittering point; and a sinister smile spread over the face of the English ambassador when he saw this incident, and thought how famously he would twist it up into one of those tissues of court scandal and gossip, which nightly he was wont to indite for the perusal of Elizabeth and her satellites, Cecil and Killigrew.

The Earl kissed his hand as he reined back his horse.

"Courage, brave Bothwell!" cried the gay Countess of Argyle; and all the ladies clapped their hands and cried, "A Bothwell!—a Bothwell!"

"Now, ho, for Hepburn!" exclaimed the Earl, spurring his beautiful charger. "Come on, Ormiston! and we will meet all yonder tall fellows in battle à l'outrance, if they will."

"I am right well content," growled the giant; "but whom shall I encounter—yonder grasshopper, d'Elboeuff?"

"I would give my best helmet full of angels to see him measure his length on the gravel, were it but to cure him of his pouncet-box and villanous perfumes," said Hepburn of Bolton; "but he is the queen's kinsman, and she may be displeased."

"Diabolus spit me!" said Ormiston, "if I care whether she is pleased or not. I will break one lance and his head together, if I can; for he styled me a Goth and a savage, last night, in his cups."

"And I will run one course with Darnley," said the Earl.

"Good! may it fere with thee, as with old; Montgomerie and Henry of France!"

"How?"

"A splinter may make his wife a widow. Cock and pie, sirs! A ring—a ring! To the baresse!—Back, sirs, back!—We would break a spear for honour and for beauty. Have at thee, Marquis!" exclaimed Ormiston, as he made the point of his long lance ring on the splendid armour of the Frenchman.

"Bon diable!" grinned the Marquis; "J'en suis ravis! I am delighted!"

"And have at your grace!" said Bothwell, slightly touching Darnley; "I have made a vow, in the queen's name, to run a course with the tallest man on the ground, and the tallest man is thee."

"By St. John! Lord Earl, thou art somewhat over-valiant," said Darnley, bestowing an unmistakeable frown upon the rash noble, who laughed like a madcap as he backed his horse among the startled men-at-arms and spectators, crying—

"A ring! a ring!—Back, caitiffs and gomerals! and then we shall see who are good knights, as King William said of old."

"Wouldst thou have me maintain the field against the beauty of my own wife?" asked the young king, with a terrible frown.

"Certes, yes! for thou seemest least sensible of it."

"Less than thee, perhaps!"

"Yes—ha! ha!"

"Then, God's death! Take up thy ground!"

The queen's archers cleared a space before the gateway, while Bothwell and Ormiston ranged themselves opposite the king and D'Elboeuff, with their visors down, their bodies bending forward to the rush, and their lances in the rest, but having wooden balls wedged on their keen steel points.

The Earl Marischal raised his baton, handkerchiefs were waved from the windows, a shout burst from the people, and, urged from a full gallop to the most rapid speed, the four heavy chargers and their glittering riders met with a fierce shock in the centre, and recoiled on their haunches, as the riders reeled in their saddles. D'Elboeuff's lance missed Ormiston, who planted the hard wooden ball that blunted the tip of his tough Scottish spear full into the pit of the Frenchman's stomach, whirling him from his saddle to the ground with a force that completely stunned him.

"Now, Marquis, lie thou there!" cried Ormiston, who was uncouth as a bear in his manner, "and pray to every saint that ever had a broken head before thee."

The lance of Bothwell smote Darnley full on the breastplate, and its splinters flew twenty feet into the air; but the king's, being by chance or design deprived of its ball, entered the bars of the Earl's embossed helmet, and wounded him on the cheek.

Deeming this an act of Darnley's usual treachery and malevolence, animated by a storm of passion, the Earl drew his sword, exclaiming—

"Ha, thou false lord and craven king! what the devil kind of demi-pommada was that?"

But the Earl Marischal, Ormiston, Bolton, and a crowd of courtiers, pushed their horses between them, and they were separated, with anger in their eyes and muttered invectives on their tongues.

"It matters not, my lords!" said Bothwell, as he wiped the wound with his white silk scarf and regained the queen's handkerchief from the point of his broken lance; "'tis a mere school-boy scratch."

"May Heaven avert the omen!—but I have known such scratches become sword-cuts," observed the Earl of Moray, with one of his cold and inexplicable smiles, for he mortally hated both the King and the Earl.

The morning was now far advanced, and the troops prepared to depart. Slowly and laboriously the little wheels of the two brass culverins, with their clumsy stocks, studded with large nails and cramped with plates of polished brass, were put in motion, by the cannoniers whipping up the six powerful horses that drew them, and the carts containing the bullets of stone and lead, the powder, and other appurtenances for the field.

Surrounded by four hundred arquebussiers, who wore conical helmets, pyne-doublets, swords and knives, and were each attended by a boy to bear his gun-rest and ammunition, the artillery, commanded by Chisholm the Comptroller, departed first through the deep-mouthed archway of the ancient palace. Then followed the several bands of horsemen and pikemen, each under their various leaders—and all riding or marching very much at their ease, according to the discipline incident to the days of feudalism, when steadiness in the field was more valued than mere military show. The long Scottish spears, six ells in length, and the white harness of the knights and landed gentlemen, flashed incessantly in the sunshine; while many a square banner and swallow-tailed bannerole waved above the summer dust that marked the route of the marching column.

They soon left behind them old Linlithgow's turreted palace and gothic spire, its azure lake and straggling burgh, as they wound among the thick woodlands that bordered the road to Ecclesmachin; and, long ere the sun set, the rattle of their kettledrums, the twang of their trumpets, and clash of their cymbals, had wakened the echoes of the Bathgate hills.

The queen and her courtiers watched their departure, together with Darnley, who had joined them, and seemed in better humour from the issue of his encounter with the Earl; but being naturally proud and jealous, he found to his no small exasperation that the ladies were more than ever inclined to praise the handsome peer, and then, for the first time, the demon of jealousy began to whisper in his ear.

"Tell me, Henri, mon ami," said Mary, with perfect innocence, "did not the Lord Bothwell look enchanting in his plate armour?"

"God wot, I neither ken nor care, fair madam!" replied the young King sulkily, as he handed his helmet to a page.

"He looked the same as when I saw him at Versailles," said the Lady Lethington.

"Ah, Mary Fleming, ma bonne!" said the Queen, in one of her touching accents; "we were only fifteen years old then."

The ladies, finding Mary in a mood to praise the Earl, all chimed in, greatly to Darnley's chagrin and annoyance.

"He is a winsome man, and a gallant," lisped the Countess of Argyle over her pouncet-box.

"He has an eye that looks well below a helmet peak," added the Lady Athole, as she adjusted her long fardingale.

"O, were he single, I would marry him to-morrow!" laughed little Mariette Hubert, glancing furtively at Darnley's shining figure.

"If thou art anxious to be a rich widow, 'twere a good match, Mariette," replied the young King, with one of his icy smiles, as he turned away; and, whistling a hunting air, descended to the court-yard, and departed on a hawking expedition, attended by a few of his own personal retinue, who were invariably composed of his father's Catholic vassals from the district known as the Lennox.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LEITH WYND PORTE.

——On they pass'd,

And reach'd the city gate at last;

Where all around a wakeful guard,

Arm'd burghers, kept their watch and ward.

Marmion.

Towards the close of a sultry day, two travellers approached one of the eastern gates of Edinburgh, when the burgher guard were about to close it for the night.

The sun of June had set behind the distant Ochils, and his last rays were fading away from the reddened summit of St. Giles's spire, and the dark grey mansions of that ancient capital, whose history is like a romance.

The mowers, who the livelong day had bent them over the grass on many a verdant rig and holm, that are now covered by the streets and squares of the new city, had quitted their rural occupations. Between green hedgerows and fields of ripening corn, the lowing herds were driven to pen and byre in many a rural grange and thatch-roofed homestead; the bonneted shepherd that washed his sheep in the city lochs, and tended them by night on the braes of Warriston and Halkerston's crofts, could little foresee the new world of stone and lime, of gas, of steam, of bustle, and business, that was to spread over these lonely and sequestered places.

Gentlemen in glittering doublets and laced mantles, with hawks on their wrists, and well-armed serving-men in attendance, rode into the city, singly or together, from hawking the gled and the heron by Corstorphine loch and Wardie muir, or from visiting the towers and mansions in the neighbourhood. Few remained without the fortifications after nightfall, for our ancestors were all a-bed betimes.

In half an hour more, the foliage darkened in the cold and steady twilight of June; but a crimson flush yet lingered in the west to show where the sun had set.

The two wearied wayfarers approached the lower barrier of Edinburgh, which faced the steep street known as Leith Wynd, the whole eastern side of which was in ruins, having been burned by the English invaders, under the Earl of Hertford, sixteen years before.

In the fair young man, armed with a round headpiece and corselet, the reader will recognise Konrad the Norwegian, and in the boy that accompanied him, may perceive the soft features and long tresses of Anna, notwithstanding the plain grey gaberdine, the sarcenet hosen, and blue cloth bonnet, under which she had veiled her beauty and concealed her sex. She had all the appearance of a slender and sickly boy, with hollow eyes and parched lips, exhausted by fatigue and privation.

Tremblingly she clung to Konrad as they drew near the low but massive arch of the Leith Wynd Porte, where he knocked on the nail-studded wicket with the pommel of his Norwayn dagger. A small vizzying-hole was unclosed, and the keen grey eye of one of the burghers on guard was seen to survey them strictly under the peak of his morion; for, by an act of the city council, every fourth citizen capable of bearing armour, had to keep watch and ward by night, completely armed with sword and jedwood axe, arquebuss and dagger, for the prevention of surprise from without, and suppression of disturbance within the burgh.

"Now, wha may ye be, and what want ye?" asked the burgher gruffly and suspiciously.

"Who I may be matters little to such as thou," replied Konrad, haughtily; "what I seek is entrance and civility, for I like not thy bearing, sirrah."

"Then I let ye to wit, that without kenning the first, thou canst not hae the second," replied the citizen, whose Protestant prejudices began to rise against one, whom he shrewdly deemed by his foreign accent to be a Frenchman, and consequently, a "trafficking messe preist," as the term was. "I fear me we hae enow o' your kind doon the gate at Holyrood. Some mass-monger, I warrant! Hast thou ever heard Master Knox preach?"

"No—who is he?"

"Wha is he!" reiterated the citizen, opening the pannel, his eyes and his mouth wider in his breathless astonishment. "What country is yours, or wharawa is't, that ye havena heard o' him, who is wise as Soloman, upright as David, patient as Job, as stark as the deevil himsel?"

"I am come from a far and foreign land," continued Konrad, endeavouring to make himself understood by the medium of a little of the Scottish tongue he had acquired.

"Ye are a merchant, maybe? I am one mysel, and deal in a' manner o' hardware that cometh out o' Flanders by the way o' Sluice, frae brass culverins to porridge cogues and kail-pats. Are ye a merchant, fair sir?"

"Yes—at your service, I am a trader," replied Konrad, glad to conciliate the man, and to hear him withdrawing the bolts.

"And in what do ye deal?" he asked, still lingering.

"Hard blows—thou dog and caitiff—and I would fain barter with thee!" replied Konrad, giving way to rage as he felt poor Anna sinking from his arm, under the very excess of exhaustion.

"Awa wi' ye! thou art some thigger or licht-fingered loon—some frontless papist or French sorner—or maybe a' thegether, as I doubt not by the fashion o' thy dusty duds! Awa! or I sall hae ye baith branded on the cheek, and brankit at the burgh cross, or my name's no Dandy the dagger-maker!" and the vizzy-hole was closed with a bang.

Konrad turned away exasperated and sorrowful. Though by this time pretty well used to insult and opprobrium from the reformed Scots, who deemed every foreigner a Frenchman, and consequently an upholder of the ancient faith, evinced their hatred in a thousand ways; and once proceeded so far as to stone, in the streets of Edinburgh, an ambassador of the Most Christian king, who was fool-hardy enough to exhibit himself in a mantle of purple velvet, adorned with the white cross of the knights of the Holy Ghost. Konrad's exchequer was now reduced to a very low ebb, for he possessed but one gold angel and two unicorns—the former being worth only twenty-four, and the latter eighteen, shillings Scots; and though he and his companion had found no difficulty in procuring food and shelter in the rural districts, where every baron and farmer gladly afforded a seat by his hall fire, a place at his board, and a hearty welcome to every wayfarer; now, when arrived at the end of their destination, in a crowded capital, the residence of a court, a trading and grasping middle class, a fierce aristocracy, and their fiercer retainers—the case was altogether different; and he gazed about, with doubt and irresolution, to find a place wherein to pass the night.

The roofless relics of the English invasion would have afforded a sufficient shelter for one so hardy as himself; but his tender and fainting companion——

"Courage, dearest Anna!" he whispered in their native language; "we have now reached the place of our destination."

"True, Konrad," murmured Anna; "but to what end? Oh, I have no wish now but to lie down here, and die! Forgive me, Konrad, this ingratitude; but I feel that I will not now—trouble you very long."

The young man once more put an arm around her; and, with a glance that conveyed a world of grief and passion, supported her to the summit of the steep street, where, between two broad, round towers, another massive barrier, that separated the city from the suburban burgh of the Canongate, frowned over the long vista to the east. The grimness of its aspect, its heavy battlements, and deep, round portal, were no way enlivened by the bare white skulls of two of Rizzio's murderers—Henry Yair, and Thomas Scott, sheriff-depute of Perth—on long spikes.

Lest Anna might perceive them, Konrad turned hastily away; and, looking round, hailed with satisfaction a house, having the appearance of a comfortable hostelry, furnished with a broad sign-board that creaked on a rusty iron rod; and half leading, half supporting Anna, he approached it.

CHAPTER V.

THE RED LION.

A seemly man our Hosté was withall

For to have been a marshall in a hall;

A largé man he was with eyen steep,

A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap;

Bold of his speech he was, and well y taught,

And of his manhood him lackéd righté nought:

Eke thereto was he right a merry man.

Chaucer.

The Red Lion in St. Mary's Wynd was one of the most spacious and famous of the old Scottish hostellaries, and Adam Ainslie, the gudeman thereof, was as kindly a host as ever welcomed a guest beneath his roof-tree. The enormous obesity of his paunch made him resemble a turtle on its hind-legs, while his visage, by hard drinking and frequent exposure to the weather, had become as flushed and red as the lion figuring on his sign-board, that overhung the principal wynd of Edinburgh.

If the ancient Scottish inns lacked aught that was necessary for the comfort of the traveller, it was not want of legislative encouragement; for so early as the days of James I., laws were enacted, and confirmed by James V., that all hostellaries "should have honest chambers and bedding for passengers and strangers travelling through the realme, weel and honestlie accoutred; good and sufficient stables, with hack and manger, corn and haye—fleshe, fishe, breade, and oile, with other furnishing for travelloures."

This edifice, for which the antiquary may now look in vain, was two stories in height, having a row of pediments over the upper windows, which, like the lower, were thickly grated. The doorway, to which an outside stair gave access, was surmounted by an old coat-of-arms and the pious legend—

Miserere Mei Deus.

marked it as once the habitation of a churchman of rank. A low archway gave admittance to the stables behind. These bordered the garden of the ancient Cistertian convent of St. Mary-in-the-Wynd, an edifice of which not a vestige now survives. In the middle of the court there lay a great stone tank for watering horses, and high above the inn, on the north side, towered the smoke-encrusted mansions of the Netherbow.

With numerous sleeping apartments for guests and their retinues, which in those turbulent times were invariably numerous, well-armed, and mounted, the hostell contained one large and rude hall or apartment, where all visitors, without regard to sex or rank, partook of the general meals, and were accommodated on plain but sturdy oaken benches. An arched fireplace, rude in workmanship as the bridge of a country burn, opened at one end of this hall; and within, notwithstanding that the evening was a summer one, a large fire of wood from the Burgh muir, and coal—a luxury on which Adam Ainslie prided himself not a little, as its use was then very limited—blazed in the wide chimney for cooking, and threw its red gleam on the white-washed walls, sanded floor, and the well-scoured benches and girnels; on the rude beams of dark old oak that crossed the ceiling, and from which hung dried seafowl, boars' hams, baskets, and superannuated household utensils, all placed hodge-podge with those warlike weapons which every householder was bound to have at hand for the "redding" of frays, and maintenance of peace within the burgh. Nor must we omit to mention a great barrel of ale that stood in a recess near the doorway, propped on a sturdy binn, furnished with an iron quaigh, and of which all on entering partook, if they pleased, with a hearty welcome.

On the appearance of Konrad and his almost lifeless companion, Ainslie's better half, a comely and buxom dame, wearing a coif of Flemish lace, a scarlet kirtle and silken sash, and having her fat fingers studded with silver rings, arose from her spindle, and bidding them welcome with the motherly kindness more natural to the time than her occupation, led Anna, whom she deemed "a puir sickly laddie," to a well-cushioned chair, and, finding him too faint to answer any questions, she turned to Konrad, who said—

"Let us have supper, goodwife! for this day hath seen us wellnigh famished. What hast thou at hand in the larder?"

"We have rabbits trussed and broiled, noble sir, capons roasted and boiled, stewed partridges, and the great side o' beef whilk thou seest turning before the fire; but that is for my lord the Earl of Morton, quha to-day cometh in frae his castle of Dalkeith, and the best in cellar and larder maun be keepit for him. Earls, ye ken, are folk that canna thole steering."

"Then get us a capon—a manchet"——

"And a flask of Bordeaux?"

"The best thou hast."

"But for this puir bairn, that seemeth sae sair forfoughten, sall I no make a milk posset?"

"God bless thee for the thought, goodwife! let it be brought, and speedily."

"Wilt thou not sup with me?" said a countryman in a plain gaberdine, who was seated at a side bench, and with the aid of his hunting-knife, (for, as we have elsewhere stated, forks were still in futurity,) was dissecting a noble capon and boar's ham, the odours of which were extremely tempting to Konrad. "Thou seest," continued his inviter, "that I am but a poor dustifute like thyself; but thou and thy boy are welcome. I am drinking Rochelle at sax pennies the Scots pint-stoup. By St. Mary! I cannot afford Bordeaux, even though it does come in by the east seas."

"Thanks, fair sir, for this courtesy," replied Konrad; "and if thou permittest my boy to taste thy Rochelle"——

"Odsbody! he is welcome."

Konrad hastily placed the proffered wine-horn to Anna's thirsty lips; she tasted it, revived a little, and again sank back, saying—

"Let me sleep—let me sleep!" and, closing her eyes, mutely resisted all Konrad's winning entreaties, that she would partake of a little food.

While sharing the stranger's hospitality, the young Norwegian, whom anxiety for his young charge had rendered suspicious of every one, covertly but keenly scrutinized him.

He was a powerfully but sparely formed man, whose well-strung limbs had been reduced to mere bone and brawn by constant exercise. His face was pleasant, good-humoured, and manly; he wore a short beard, and close shorn hair; his cheekbones were somewhat prominent; but his keen and dark grey eye had an expression, that by turns was full of boldness and penetration, merriment and fun. Beneath his gaberdine, which was of the coarsest white Galloway cloth, Konrad could perceive an excellent jack of jointed mail; a grey maud or Border plaid was thrown loosely over his broad chest and brawny shoulders; his flat worsted bonnet and a knotty oak cudgel lay on the floor, under the guardianship of a rough wiry cur. Konrad judged him to be a substantial yeoman or farmer, though at times his language and manner unguardedly imported something better.

He, on the other hand, while eating and drinking with the appetite and thirst of a strong and healthy fellow, who since sunrise had been travelling fast and far, quite as keenly scrutinized Konrad, whose occupation and degree he found himself puzzled to determine.

"By the set of thy head, and aspect of thine eye, I would say thou hast been something of a soldier, master," said the Scot.

"I have been more of a huntsman than a soldier, perhaps; yet I have done a little in both lines."

"Good! I love thee for that; thy life hath been checkered, like mine own. Thou art not one of our ain kindly Scots, or else thou hast attained the true twang of the foreigner. Peradventure, hast been pushing thy fortune under the banner of stout Sir Walter Scott, whose Border bands are now covering themselves with immortal honour on the frontiers of Saxony?"

"Nay! my sword has never been drawn against others than the fat citizens of Lubeck and Hamburg."

"Profitable warfare I would take that to be, and pleasant withal; for these Hanseatic burghers can wade above their baldricks in rixdollars, say our Leith shippers. So, then, thou art of Flanders?"

Willing to deceive him a little, Konrad nodded.

"I guessed thou wert a Fleming," replied the yeoman, laughing, "and so my heart warmed to thee; for they are all stout men and true. Mass! my own mother, who now sleeps at St. Mary in the Lows, was a Fleming of the house of Wigton, whose forbear, Baldwin le Flemyng, came from thy country in the days of St. David, to take knight's service, as I doubt not thou meanest to do."

Konrad again assented to his garrulous companion.

"Then there will be work enow for thy sword by Lammas-tide; for the stout Earl of Bothwell is about to make a royal raid into Clydesdale."

"Saidst thou Bothwell?" ejaculated Konrad, in a thick voice, and glancing hastily at Anna, who was now buried in a profound slumber, with her face concealed in her mantle.

"Yea, Bothwell—one of our queen's prime favourites; but there will be many a lance broken, and many a steed left riderless, ere he shall traverse all the windings of the Liddle. By St. Mary! but they must keep sharp watch and ward at the gate of his castle of Hermitage; for by this time, I warrant, the troopers of John of Park have all been riding by moss and moor."

"Who is this John of Park, of whom I hear so many speak, either with hatred or applause?"

"The chief of the brave clan Elliot, and long Lord Bothwell's mortal foe."

"Then would to Heaven I could meet this John of Park!"

"Hah!" exclaimed the countryman, whose eyes sparkled; "and for what end?"

"That under his banner I might have some chance of meeting Bothwell in his armour, lance to lance, and horse to horse. O God! thou alone knowest how much I have suffered at his hands, and what I have to avenge!"

"Is it thus with thee?" said the Scot; "swear that thou dost not deceive me.

"By all that is holy, I swear!"

"Good. To-morrow I shall lead thee to John Elliot of Park, who needeth much a few such spirits as thee," replied the other, in the same low tone under which the conversation had been maintained.

Here a clatter of horses' hoofs in the adjoining wynd, together with the jingle of steel bridles and two-handed swords, announced the arrival of more important guests.

"Now here cometh the Earl of Morton and his swash-bucklers—a pest on them!" muttered the countryman, instinctively grasping his cudgel; while the bluff host and his buxom better-half bustled about in a high state of excitement, dusting the long oaken table, adjusting the fire, placing fir buffet-stools, and trimming the long candles that flared in the tin wall-sconces.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EARL OF MORTON.

Dark Morton, girt with many a spear,

Murder's foul minion!

Scott.

Attended by a train of forty armed horsemen, this potent noble had arrived.

His men, as they dismounted, placed their long and unwieldy lances against the wall of the inn yard, and set about stabling their steeds with ready activity. Followed by Archibald Douglas, laird of Whittinghame, and Hume of Spott—two gentlemen of his retinue—this factious, proud, and ferocious lord, whose name is so infamous from the dark and bloody share which he took in all the deep intrigues and civil broils of that unhappy period, entered the hall of the hostelry; and certainly, from the smile that spread over his handsome features, curving his fine mouth, and lighting up his brilliant hazel eye—and from the dignity of his aspect, and the magnificence of his yellow damask doublet, embroidered with gold, his purple velvet trunks, which were slashed with white and edged with point d'Espagne, where they joined his hose of Naples silk—the politeness with which he removed his black beaver, with its long white feather, and on entering saluted the hostess with a kiss, and the host with a thump between the shoulders—no one, we say, who saw his general aspect and bearing, would have recognized the same savage and avaricious noble, who, as it was commonly said, "never spared man in his vengeance, nor woman in his lust"—who murdered Captain Cullen for possession of his beautiful wife—who poisoned the Regent Mar to secure the regency—who hung sixty men, as a pastime before breakfast, at Leith Loan—and who was yet foredoomed, to die on the scaffold for the greatest of all human crimes.

Adam Ainslie bowed and bowed again, and Lucky Ainslie curtseyed, in concert, a dozen of times, so well as their corpulent figures would permit.

"How dost thou, stout Adam?" said the Earl, merrily, as he took his seat at the highest part of the chamber board. "Save us! but this meat smelleth savourily, and my evening ride hath given me a wolfs appetite. By the rood I mine host—(pest upon these old oaths of papistry, but how they stick to one's fancy!)—thou wearest noble hosen," continued the Earl, jocosely, as, with his walking-cane, he poked Adam's preposterously bombasted trunk-breeches. "Dost thou know that the Lord Bothwell and other gallants aver, that thy gudewife keepeth all her bed and table napery stuffed into them?"

"Your lordship is pleased to be merry," simpered Dame Ainslie, placing stools for the Earl's jackmen, who came crowding in with all their iron paraphernalia clanking, and dimmed with summer dust; and a terrible clatter they made with their long spurs, gigantic boots and gambadoes, long swords and jeddard staves, as they took all the best places at the hearth and table, hustling into the background the countryman and his two companions.

Awakened by the uproar of their entrance, Anna clung fearfully to Konrad's arm; and he remarked that their new acquaintance kept as much as possible in the background, and wore his grey plaid high up on his weatherbeaten visage.

"Hast thou no city news, Master Adam?" said the Earl. "Thou knowest that one might as well bide at the bottom of a draw-well as in that lonely tower of Dalkeith. How stand the markets? and how like our burghers their new provost, the stout knight of Craigmillar?"

"By my troth, Lord Earl, there is a southland yeoman ben there who ought to ken mair of market stock than I. The queen's byding at Lithgow makes the toun dull and eerie; for the second spiering, I may say auld Sir Simon is liket right well, for he sheweth small mercy to mass-priest and papist; gif they be found within the Fortes, they dree a douking in the Nor' Loch for the first offence, and a clean drowning in Bonnington Linn for the second. His riders had a lang chase nae farther gane than yesterday, frae Wardie peel to the Braid's burn, after a mass-priest, Sir James Tarbet, who had been found lamenting over his broken idols in the chapel of St. James by the sea; but I grieve that they failed to catch him."

"Beware thee, Adam!" said the knight of Whittinghame, "or thou mayest get a broken head for broaching such free opinions in an hostellary. The head of antichrist is still floating above the current of public opinion."

"Hath Monsieur de Rambouillet, the new French ambassador, arrived?" asked the laird of Spott.

"He landed yesterday at the New Haven from Monsieur de Villaignon's galley; and, preceded by the heralds and bailies of the town, was conducted to Willie Cant's hostel in the Kirkgate of Leith, close by St. Anthony's gate."

"I marvel mickle that he came not to thee, good Adam."

"I marvel mair," added the host, testily; "for there is no an hostel in a' broad Scotland, and that's a wide word, where there is better uppitting baith for man and beast than the Red Lion; beside, 'tis a clean insult to the gude toun his lying at a Leither's hostel; but I owe this to a leather-selling bailie in Niddry's Wind, who I outvoted in the council anent the double and single-soled shoon, that made sic a stir among the craftsmen. Ken ye, my Lord Earl, on whatna errand Maister Rambooly hath come hither?"

"Some new popish league, I warrant," said the laird of Spott, curling his grisly beard. "'Tis said that the Hugonets, jealous of such a body of Switzers being marched into the Isle of France, are resolving upon open war."

"Thou mistakest, Spott," replied the Earl, with a dark frown. "Gif the best man in France came hither on any such devil's errand, I would slit his tongue with my own dagger. He hath come from Charles IX., to bestow on King Henry the collar of St. Michael the archangel. Her majesty comes from Linlithgow in three days, and we shall have the ceremony of installation at Holyrood thereafter."

"She will be here in three days, the Queen—hearest thou, Anna?" whispered Konrad. She pressed his hand in reply, and drooped her head upon his shoulder; and the heart of Konrad sickened at the reflection, that the action was prompted only by the abandonment of despair.

"St. Michael's collar!" continued the laird of Spott; "the king should kneel on Rizzio's gravestone at this notable investment. Doth it not smell of popery and brimstone?"

"So the godly Maister Knox openly affirmit in a sermon preached this blessed day," said dame Ainslie, turning up her saucer-like eyes at the soul-stirring recollection thereof; "preached—ay, in the High Kirk, (named St. Giles by the idolaters,) and he advisit the crafts to hurl the stanes of the street upon Rambooly, as the son of anti-christ."

"Master Knox should beware, and bethink him that the persons of ambassadors are sacred," replied the Earl; "but on what other points did he touch in his notable discourse to-day?"

"Oh! he spoke in a way whilk was rapturous and soul-feeding to hear, anent the abomination of singing idolatrous carols at Yule-tide, the great sin of singing ought but psalms, and of all loud laughter and ungodly merriment, whilk becometh not poor sinners like us, in the slough of despondency. He railed at the Queen and the Lord Darnley—the one for her obstinate papistrie, and the other for his wicked life—and then he spoke o' the reiving bordermen in general, and John o' Park in particular, on whom he fulminated a' the curses that ever were crammed into a cardinal's excommunication, as being the strongest and most desperate thief in a' the south country, since puir John o' Gilnokie dree'd his dreich penance from King James."

"Said he aught of the Lord Bothwell?"

"Yea, my lord—that he had taken a hawk from an ill nest."

"Meaning his espousal of a popish woman of the house of Huntly," said Morton. "Well, said he aught of me?"

"Nay, my lord—Heaven forefend! Art thou not one of his boon and steadfast friends?"

"Right—he would not talk of me," replied the fierce noble, with one of his deep smiles; and striking his walking-cane on the floor, an involuntary custom of his, added, "Well, then, master hosteller, let us to supper, for I am ravenous as a hawk, and this noble baron of beef seemeth done to a single turn. If this strange gentleman will so far favour me as to deign"——

"Excuse me, Lord Earl, but I have already supped," replied Konrad, bowing with the distant air of one who wishes to be undisturbed and unrecognised. Morton's pride and curiosity were piqued.

"Thou art English, I think, by the fashion of thy beard, and, doubtless, hast a passport from the marshal of Berwick. I will pardon the bluntness with which thou declinest my courtesy, and will add, that thou mayest find the shadow of my banner a good protection, if the quarrels between the dainty queens of these realms end in blows; for our little dame looks sourly upon thine, deeming her little else than a false bastard and base usurper."

"Thou art mistaken, Lord Earl. I am not an Englishman."

"Then what manner of man art thou, fair sir? thou seest I have a restless curiosity. A stranger?"

"At thy service, noble lord. I understand thou art the great Earl of Morton—the foe of my foe."

"At the Scottish court each man is foe to every one else. I am, in fact, a little Earl compared with such a tall fellow as Bothwell. But I may easily be the foe of thy foe, seeing that the half of broad Scotland would readily drench my doublet in Douglas blood, gif they could; but," he added with hauteur, "who is thy foe?"

"James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell!" replied Konrad in the same manner, for he was displeased by the peculiar accentuation.

"Hah! is it so? Thou art a bold fellow to mention that name otherwise than in a whisper, for it findeth an echo every where now. Knowest thou not," he added, with a glance of ferocious scorn, "that the white horse of Hepburn is now bidding fair to swallow the crowned heart of Douglas? I ask not the cause of thine enmity to this man, but if thou wishest an opportunity of seeing him in his helmet, follow my banner for one month or so; for I tell thee that the heather is smouldering on our Scottish hills, and erelong 'twill burst into a red and furious flame."

"Excuse me, potent Earl," replied Konrad, for at that moment the countryman plucked him anxiously by the sleeve; "excuse me, for I am in some sort pledged to another."

"Please thyself, a-God's name! and now let us to supper."

CHAPTER VII.

MORTON TURNS PHILANTHROPIST.

"Blessed be the Lord for all his gifts;

Defied the deil and all his shifts;

God send us mair siller—amen!"

Such was the grace, which, with half mockery and half gravity, the Earl of Morton, who acted the rigid presbyter and stern reformer merely when it suited his own fancy or peculiar ends, commenced the repast which Adam Ainslie's pantryman had arranged upon the long oak chamber-board, as a table was then named.

The upper end was covered by a cloth of damask, flowered with red silk; the lower was bare; the guests of rank were furnished with knives and spoons of silver, with glasses of Venetian crystal, delft platters, and pewter trenchers. The lower had only wooden caups and luggies—quaighs and spoons of horn—the great saltseller forming the grand point of demarcation between the two classes of society who were to partake of the same meal, at the same board, in the kindly fashion of other years. The Earl and his gentlemen sat above; their rough-visaged troopers, unhelmeted, but still wearing their corselets and gorgets, swords and gambadoes, sat below it, closely, side by side, on buffet stools and wooden benches.

They were accommodated with porridge and luggies of sour-milk; a handful of prunes thrown into each platter, with cheese and cakes of mashlum, (flower made of ground peas and barley,) and horns of ale, formed their evening fare; but the savoury baron of beef, a pasty of powts, (or muirfowl,) a pudding of plumbs and spices, with flasks of choice Canary, Rochelle, and Bordeaux, at only sixpence or ninepence Scots the pint, garnished the upper end; and to this early supper, for which our late dinners are now a substitute, this jovial company sat down, just as the four old bells of St. Giles rang the hour of nine.

"'Tis savoury meat this, Mistress Ainslie," said the Earl; "and it well deserved a better blessing."

"Whence hadst thou it, lucky?" asked the Knight of Whittinghame, a grim and bearded man; "for here is what I would call the prick of a lance."

"A true Border mark, by Mahoud!" added Hume of Spott.

"Ye say true, sirs; it may be a gore-mark," replied Dame Ainslie, curtseying; "for ken ye, the beast was the best of a drove of four hundred, lifted in Nichol forest by John of Park, whose riders sauld it to my gudeman in the fleshmercat."

"English fed, by the rood!" said the bearded knight, cutting down another slice. "Here is another goad-mark! I warrant me, John's prickers had been sorely pressed by the English captain of Bewcastle, or the lances of the Wardenrie."

"These wild powts are right tasty, host of mine," said the Earl; "whence come they?"

"From the muirlands about the toun, my lord. They are thick as locusts on the braes of the Nor' Loch and Wardie muir. One crossbow shot brings down two at once in the feeding time."

From a nook, in which she had hitherto sat unseen, Anna had surveyed, with a terror which she could scarcely repress, the number of armed men who crowded the apartment. There was a reckless, daredevil aspect about them all; their armour was rusty, and their other attire well worn; in grisly profusion, their beards and whiskers fringed their weatherbeaten faces, which were all more or less stamped with ruffianism; for Morton, notwithstanding the placid suavity of his manner, was as oily a ruffian as ever drew a dagger—and, instead of his rural vassals, he generally preferred to be attended by a band of paid "wageours," as those military desperadoes were named, who swarmed throughout Scotland after the wars between the Congregation and Mary of Lorraine had ceased.

"Konrad," said she, tremblingly, as she clung to his arm; "let us leave this place"——

"For whence?—the wayside?—to be exposed to the midnight dew, and wild animals, perhaps?"

"Surely any place is preferable to this. The faces of these men terrify me!"

Ere Konrad could reply, the Earl of Morton, who had acute ears for such matters, on hearing the soft voice of a woman, bent his keen dark eyes towards where Anna was shrinking into the shadow, formed by a projection of the wall. He divined her sex in an instant; but with his usual cunning concealed this discovery.

"'Tis a pretty lad, this, sir stranger!" said he to Konrad, kindly. "Is he thy page, or thy brother; for he cannot be thy son?"

Konrad hesitated a moment, and then replied—

"My brother, noble lord! as thou perhaps mayest see by our resemblance. We have the same fair hair, and the same light eyes."

"Thou art come hither, thou saidst, to bear a lance in some knight's train. Dost design thy sickly brother for such rough work?"

"Not at present, my lord. He has been over-tenderly nurtured for saddling horses and scouring armour. I would rather leave him to bear the fardingale of some noble lady, could I meet with such, while I push my fortune in the camp."

"So far I may have it in my power to befriend thee," rejoined the cunning Earl, with a sly wink at his two companions. "Come hither, my boy, and let me see thee?"

Thus commanded by this terrible peer, Anna felt herself impelled to obey; and she approached the Earl, whose long beard appalled, while his keen dark eyes seemed to penetrate, the most secret thoughts of her palpitating heart. He took her by the hand; and one glance at its fair soft fingers and beautiful form, together with the pallor of her changing cheek, and the timidity of her downcast face, convinced him that a very bewitching woman was concealed under that boy's plain doublet and mantle.

"That will do, boy—seat thyself," said he, lest his companions, the dissolute lairds of Spott and Whittinghame, might make the same discovery. Morton formed his plan in a moment, and resolved by open force, if not by secret fraud—a course he usually preferred—to obtain possession of this fair foreigner. He again addressed Konrad.

"Thou knowest me, fair sir—I believe?"

"Yes, noble sir, to be the most powerful of the Scottish peers."

"After the great Earl of Bothwell," said Morton, with mock humility. "I will place thy brother in the service of a noble lady connected with the court, where he will be daily in the presence of her Majesty the Queen, if thou wilt trust me so far."

"Lord Earl, I cannot find words to thank thee!" replied Konrad, touched to the soul by this sudden kindness.

"Pest!" said Spott, "his fortune will be made. Thou knowest our queen's partiality for strangers and outlandish people."

"Earl Morton, were I not pledged to another, (and I never break my work even to the most humble,) thy standard alone would I follow, to requite with my sword"——

"And to whose pennon art thou pledged?"

Here the peasant plucked Konrad by the mantle, and whispered,—"Say John of Park, and they will hang thee from that rooftree!" but Konrad was relieved from the dilemma by Douglas of Whittinghame exclaiming with a hoarse laugh—

"Ha! ha! here is James of Morton, the lord of the lion's den, turning philanthropist! ha! ha! ha!"

"Can thy brother not speak for himself?" said the Earl.

"The boy is timid and bashful."

"The women will soon teach him impudence."

"Excuse him, noble sir"——

"Say I am thankful," whispered Anna in a broken voice, while her tears fell fast; "for though grieved to the heart at parting from thee, dear Konrad, the protection of one of my own sex is so necessary, that—and then to be near the queen, that she may hear my mournful story! O! what will I not risk? Yes—yes! to this great lord say that I thank him from my inmost soul, and will accept his generous offer."

"And what, may I ask, is the name of the noble lady who is to receive this boy as a gift?" asked Konrad, after he had complied with Anna's desire.

"The Dame Alison Craig," replied the Earl. "She dwells close bye here, a few doors up the wynd, in a house that was once a convent, but is now adapted to more useful purposes. It hath been reformed—ha! ha! She is a lady of fair repute, and keepeth open house for the rich. By my beard! I know not what would become of Messieurs the ambassadors of France, Spain, and Savoy, and all the gay chevaliers and signiors of their suites, in this gloomy city of psalms and sermonizing, but for Dame Alison's suppers and balls."

Though Konrad did not understand this speech, he partly detected the sly expression of eye with which it was accompanied; but, in his Scandinavian simplicity and honesty of heart, he never imagined it was an infamous courtesan the treacherous Earl was praising; and, pleased with the hope that Anna would so easily obtain access to the queen's presence, he once more thanked him, briefly and sincerely, and, after the grace-cup had been handed round by the hostess, the guests prepared for repose.

The Earl and his gentlemen were conducted to chambers in the upper regions of the lofty hostell, the host marshalling the way with a flambeau; but their jackmen lay on the hearth, on the benches, and under the hall tables, with their steel caps for pillows, and their swords and axes beside them.

Touched with the melancholy that was impressed on Konrad's handsome face, and with the singular beauty of the seeming boy who accompanied him, the hostess offered the brothers, as she deemed them, "a snug box-bed in the guest row, bein and cosy, gif they would accept of it—nae difference to be made in the lawing."

Though Anna understood little of the Scottish woman's language, with quick perception she divined, by Konrad's confused expression, the nature of the invitation, and a blush burned on her face. He hastened to remove it, by hurriedly declining; and, wrapped up in their mantles, they took their repose on the wooden benches as well as their sad thoughts would permit them; while coiled up in his grey maud, with a hand on his poniard and his bonnet drawn over his face, their first acquaintance, the countryman, lay snoring melodiously beside them, with his red-eyed terrier keeping watch and ward by his side.

CHAPTER VIII.

JOHN OF PARK.

"He blythely blew his silver call,

And, ere the echoes slept,

One hundred archers, stout and tall,

Appealed on right and left.

These are my body guard, fair sir:

Should fortune prove unkind,

Or foes our haunts invade, there are

Full fifty more behind."

Ballad.

Grey morning was breaking, and its light struggled through the barred windows of the hostellary, edging with cold lustre and bringing into bold relief the harsh and fierce features, the muscular figures, and uncouth accoutrements of Morton's bearded troopers. They were still sleeping on the hard oak planks when the peasant stirred Konrad, and whispered—

"Fair sir, I am about to depart. If thou art still in the mood to follow John of Park to battle and foray against Bothwell—arise, and come forth!"

"I am ready," replied Konrad, feeling for the purse that hung at his girdle.

"Nay, nay, heed not the lawing! I will settle with our host's yeoman of the pantry, and thou canst do me service another time. Come softly forth; for I wish not to disturb these bloodhounds of the house of Morton."

Rising gently, the young man clasped on his steel cap, and gave a glance full of sorrow and anguish at Anna's fair and sleeping face, over which he drew the skirt of her mantle; and, praying that Heaven might take her under its peculiar care, hurried away.

"'Tis better—oh yes!—'tis better," thought he. "She is now under more powerful protection than I could afford her; and, in the whirl of war and strife, I may (for a time at least) forget that hopeless passion which her presence is turning into madness."

While his new friend, and one of the drowsy servitors, whom he had roused from his snug nest among the hay in the loft above the stables, were removing the ponderous wooden bar of the pend or archway, Konrad felt a hand laid lightly on his arm; he turned, and met Anna's tearful eyes fixed sorrowfully and pleadingly on his.

"Wouldst thou really go without bidding me one kind adieu?" she said tenderly, in the language of their native land.

"I deemed it better, Anna. Partings are ever painful, and I hoped to see thee soon again."

"My heart is oppressed by fears and misgivings"——

"Let them cease, I pray thee; but oh! above all things, carefully preserve thy disguise. Remain with this noble; he is great and powerful, and in his train, three days hence will doubtless find thee in the presence of the Scottish Queen. Once there, thou art safe. Throw thyself at her feet, and there pour out thy tears and thy sorrows together. Mary of Scotland, say the people of every land save her own, is good and gentle, pious, compassionate, and kind. Thou art sure to triumph. Farewell, Anna! may our blessed Lady, whose intercession is never sought in vain, protect and bless thee!"

"Thou wilt come and see me sometimes, Konrad—at court, I mean; for surely I must remain there after my story is heard!"

"And forget old Norway?" said Konrad, with a sad smile.

"Gammle Norgé!" reiterated Anna; "ah, never! but I would wish that some great lady, fair, beautiful, and rich, should see thee, and love thee, and, and"——

"What?"

"Make amends for the worthless heart thou hast lost."

"Never, Anna!" responded the young man in a troubled voice, while he regarded her with a gaze of love as deep as in the days of yore. "That can never be—Konrad's die is cast;" and, kissing her hands, he sprang through the archway, and, with his mind in a tumult of confusion, hurried after his guide.

A sense of sadness, desolation, and doubt, were ever uppermost in his thoughts, and absorbed all his faculties.

There were none stirring in the city at that early hour; the streets were silent and deserted; and grimly in the grey morning the grated windows of its lofty mansions, tall, and strong, and spectral, with their turnpike towers, crow-stepped gables and Flemish roofs, frowned over the narrow way.

"What time of the morning is it, thinkest thou, for I never could afford me a pocket-dial?" said the peasant, as they descended St. Mary's Wynd.

"About two hours of matin-prime yet."

"Matin-prime hath not rung for these ten years and more from the steeples of Edinburgh," replied the other, with a dark look; "but please God a day shall come, when all the services of our blessed church, the sexte and *none, the vesper and nocturnal, shall toll from every steeple in broad Scotland."

"Shall we meet John of Park in the city?"

"Marry, come up! thinkest thou he values his poor head so lightly that he trusts it there? Though of a sooth to say, 'tis worth more than I thought it; for there, on yonder gate, we will find that the lords of the land offer a hundred unicorns of gold for it. I never could read a line myself; but I heard a certain notary's servitor, a dainty youth in black buckram and a white ruff, read it to the gaping rabble yesternight. A hundred golden unicorns! ha! ha! John of Park, my poor knave! look well to thy harnpan, lest some day thou findest it grinning on yonder spikes!"

With a boisterous laugh, his guide directed Konrad's attention to a huge placard posted on the Porte of St. Mary. This barrier, which extended from east to west across the Pleasance, and gave access to the Wynd and Canongate, was removed in the seventeenth century.

The paper, which was surmounted by the rude engraving of a thistle and crown, with the initials M.R., purported to be the offer of one hundred unicorns for the "notour rebelle, traitor, and murtherour, at ye Queen's majesties home, John Elliot, umquhile designate of Parke." Imprinted by Thomas Bassandyne, one of the earliest Edinburgh printers, whose establishment was near the Netherbow.

As they left the city behind, pursuing the path that skirted the royal park, and (by the same narrow way that the good St. Margaret had rode on many a day to her gifted well) led towards the old collegiate church of Restalrig, with the ruined dwellings of its banished prebendaries nestling among the old orchards of the monkish days—the sun came up in splendour from his burnished bed in the German sea, and the summits of the city, and of the dark-green hills that overhung it, were reddened by the joyous light. Up, and farther up, soared the god of day in his glory; and Gulane Hill, St. Baldred's isle of rock, and the volcanic cone of Berwick Law, were mellowed in the morning haze.

Leaving the bridle path that led to the dwelling of the factious and turbulent Lord of Restalrig, they entered upon the dreary waste named the Figgate Whins, where, from time immemorial, the monks of Holyrood had grazed their flocks of sheep and cattle. Bordered by a low and sandy shore, and uncheered by a single habitation, this wide and lonely waste extended from the western ramparts of Leith to the chapel of Magdalene—a little oratory by the seaside, nearly four miles distant. The fragment of an ancient Roman way traversed the moorland, which was still as death, save where a few cattle browsed on the patches of grass; and each of them had a sprig of ash-tree tied with red tape to their horns, as a charm against disease and witchcraft. The gurgle of the Figgate burn flowing into the ocean, whose crested waves rolled in light on the yellow sand—and the cawing of the rooks, that were wheeling aloft from their nests in the ruined oratory—were the only sounds that broke the stillness; for Konrad, oppressed by his own sad thoughts, did not converse much—and his companion had also become somewhat taciturn and reserved.

This muir was studded by great thickets of dark-green whin, and mossy knolls, marking the roots of gigantic oaks, the remnants of that great forest whose shady dingles had once spread from the hills of Braid to the ocean, and which many a time and oft had echoed to the trumpets and timbrels of the Emperor Severus and Julius Agricola. There were deep hollows, mosshags, and sandpits, by the wayside; and, altogether, the place, as they progressed, seemed to become so fitted for outrage, murder, and robbery, that Konrad began to view with suspicion the tall and brawny fellow who had led him thus far, and who marched on a pace or two before, with his grey plaid waving in the wind, his bonnet drawn over his face, while with his knotty staff he hewed in a swordsman-like fashion at the broom-bells and thistle-heads that bordered the Roman causeway.

"Is it in this place we are to meet the knight whose pennon I am to follow?" asked Konrad.

"Yes!"

"And how saidest thou he was named?"

"The Laird of Park! a name at which men cock their lugs in Liddesdale."

"And where is he now?"

"Before thee!" said the other, drawing himself up, and raising his bonnet from his broad and manly brow. "I am Sir John Elliot of Park!"

"Thou!" exclaimed the young Norwegian, stepping back a pace, with a frown of anger and surprise, that his helmet partly concealed. "Peasant churl! how canst thou be that brave knight whom all men characterise as the foe of the great Earl of Bothwell, though thou mayest well be the strong thief he is said to be!"

"A salmon from the pool, a wand from the wood, a deer from the hill, or a drove of nolt from our English foemen, are thefts that no man hath need to blush for."

"By St. Olaf! I will rather forego my chance of meeting Bothwell in battle than follow such as thee. Nay, nay; fallen as he is, Konrad of Saltzberg hath not yet come so low as to seek suit or service from a low-born peasant!"

Long and loudly laughed the borderer at this remark, till his sunburnt face grew purple.

"Dost thou think, when I ventured into Edinburgh to learn how matters were likely to go with us in Liddesdale, I would enter with my pennon borne before me, and sound a trumpet at its gates? By St. Mary! no—and I care not mickle whether I don a blue bonnet, or Naples beaver, or a steel basinet, provided it keeps my head on my shoulders for the time. But tarry a moment, gentle sir; and, peradventure, thou wilt acknowledge there may be worse leaders than Jock Elliot of Park."

On approaching the chapel and bridge of Mary Magdalene, he placed to his mouth a small bugle of ivory, exquisitely carved and mounted with silver, and blew one clear low blast, that rang along the sandy shore, and immediately a knight's pennon and the glittering heads of sixty bright lances appeared above the broom, as they were uplifted in the sunshine, and there rode down the opposite bank a band of moss-troopers, armed, after the Scottish border fashion, in jacks of leather covered with little iron plates, steel gloves, gorgets, and basinets, and having two-handed swords slung from their shoulder-belts. As they approached the bridge-end, their strong, fleet, and active horses, though covered with dew and dust, seemed still fresh and active.

"Behold my pennon, fair sir!" said the Knight of Park, pointing to the scarlet bannerole, which bore on a golden bend a flute, the pastoral cognizance of the Elliot clan. "And these are a few of my Liddesdale lads; so, if thou art ashamed to follow the one in the ranks of the other, here we part, and in all friendship I say—God keep thee!"

"Nay—I crave pardon! I pledged my word to serve, and will keep the pledge."

"Then be it so. Ho there, Edie o' Earlshope!—Lauchey wi' the lang spear!—my horse and armour!" cried the knight, throwing down his bonnet and plaid; and immediately a strong and beautiful horse, stoutly, but plainly, bitted and caparisoned, bearing on its saddle a bundle of armour, was led forward by the laird's henchman, the said Edie, a muscular but spare sample of the thorough-bred moss-trooper.

His eyes and hair were of the deepest black, his face was long and lean, and by constant exposure had been tanned to the colour of mahogany. The bristly mustaches that overhung the clasps of his battered morion, were like iron wire. His powerful form seemed a model of muscular strength and activity, but his legs were considerably curved by constant riding; his armour was well worn, and by frequent use, rather than care, the grasp and pommel of his long and ponderous sword, that hung from a chain over his shoulder, was polished as brightly as if by a cutler's hand. Though Edie was merely the chartered portioner or crofter of Earlshope from the laird, there was much more of the outlaw than the farmer, and still more of the ruffian than the soldier, in his aspect.

"Park, thou art right welcome among us!" said he, with the respectful familiarity of a Scottish vassal to his lord in those days, when the interests of the people and their superiors were one. "What may be the tidings in yonder city?"

"Such as will cause sharp swords and sure watches to be kept in every tower that looks down on the Liddle, good gossip."

"Wow, laird!—and what be they?"

"The Lord Warden of the three marches, with four thousand lances in his train, is about to lead a raid among us, and meaneth to pay me such a visit as King James did John of Gilnokie."

"Weel—I carena a brass bodle!" growled the moss-trooper, as with a ready hand he buckled on his leader's coat-of-mail, and assisted him to mount. "I havena had a straw growing on Earlhope-rigs since Lammas-tide was 1560; nor a cow in the byre, save what I won in fair foray;—sae, gif we take to hill and moss again, we canna be mickle the waur."

"By the blood of Broomholm!" swore his chief; "gif I take to moss and moor, let the Lord Warden look to it, for I may chance one day to whet my lance on the groundstone of his own castle of Bothwell! Hast thou a horse for my friend?"

"By my faith have we—for ten friends!" replied the henchman, pointing to a troop of led horses, whose halters were fastened to troopers' bridles.

"And where got ye these nags?"

"Ou! just in the onsteadings owre the hill yonder, where I took a turn wi' Dandy Dumpie and Langspear, between the night and morning, to keep us frae wearying when waiting on ye. But as the crofters may be missing their cattle about this time, and set the countryside astir, 'twere wise to make use of rowel and rein till the Lammermuir is between us and the sea."

"Our Lady!—yes; for ere noonday this bridge will be echoing to the tramp of Bothwell's bands, who bring with them the Comptroller's cannon, to batter down every obnoxious peelhouse in the wardenrie, and my poor little tower of Park in particular. Mount, friend Konrad, and let us begone; for we have to ride fast and far ere we breakfast yet!"

Konrad sprang into the saddle of the charger proffered him—(a strong and active bay)—and rode forward by the side of his new friend, to whom he was completely reconciled, on beholding that his pennon was borne by a gentleman—and that his armour, though plain and unornamented, was of the finest steel, and every way such as became a knight. He rode with a jed-wood axe resting on his thigh; and his visor, which was lighted by two horizontal slits, clasped down.

Passing the turreted house of Crichton of Brunstan, who had taken such a leading part in the recent Reformation, they struck into a narrow horseway, that, crossing the Esk by a ford, led to the hill of Carberry—and, as they ascended, the districts of Newton and Inveresk lay spread at their feet like a beautiful map. The waves were rolling in silver and blue around the Inch and the May—St. Adrian's gifted isle—while the point of Elie, the peak of Kincraig, and all the shore of Fife, was mellowed by distance into faint and shadowy tints; but when John of Park and his troop of lances diverged along the heights that are crowned by the old tower of Falside, whose ruined turrets still overtop their grove of firs, the broad and beautiful bay of Preston opened out before them, dotted by the dark lug-sails of northern fisher-boats, and shining in golden light—yellow almost as the long expanse of sand that edged its ample margin.