LEGENDS OF THE BLACK WATCH: (continued 4)

In the year 1768, his regiment was cantoned in Galway, where it was reviewed by Major-General Armiger, and the old gentleman was wont to boast, that except two Lowland Scots, every soldier in its ranks was from the clans that dwell northward of the Tay, "and happily for the corps," he used to add, "these two were knocked on the head during the onfall at Long Island." The regiment, then for the third time in Ireland, remained there for seven years. During 1772, it was employed in suppressing tumults occasioned by the complicating interests and adverse views of the Catholic and Protestant landlords and tenants in Antrim and elsewhere; and in this delicate service their Highlanders were found particularly useful, from the knowledge of the language and their gentle bearing towards the people, whom by old tradition they believed to be sprung from the same stock as themselves. Though some of the Highland tribes have a proverb which says, cha b'ionann OBrien is na Gaël—that O'Brien and the Gael are not alike, yet they found many sympathies in common—to wit, a love of fun and breaking heads; a jealousy of the English; an aversion to still-hunting, and a just, laudable, and commendable antipathy to all gangers and tax-gatherers.

For the ticklish service of settling disputes in the neighbourhood of Antrim, it pleased his Majesty George III. to order that an additional company of the Black Watch should be raised among the Breadalbane Campbells; and it was soon seen, that though the slaughter of Ticonderoga had carried woe and desolation to many a lonely hearth and loving heart in the country of the clans, so far from extinguishing the military ardour of the Highland youth, it made them more than ever anxious to enrol themselves in the ranks of the Reicudan Dhu, for so was the regiment named, from the dark colours of its plumes and tartans, in contradistinction to the troops of the line, who wore scarlet coats, white waistcoats, pipeclayed breeches and flour-powdered wigs, with queues, pomatumed curls, and looped-up hats, having the true Blenheim cock and the star of Brunswick—i.e. the black leather cockade of the Protestant succession, which still survives on the chapeaux of the penny postman.

My grandfather was popular among the Breadalbane men, to please whom he had, at various times, hanged sundry MacNabs and Mac Alpines, whose ideas of the eighth commandment were somewhat vague; thus on being sent into "the marquis's country" to recruit, he raised the required company in three days, and marched down from the hills of Glen Urcbai with pipes playing, across the dreary Braes of Rannoch, and down by the Brig of Tay with a hundred of the handsomest men that ever became food for gunpowder, all clad in their native tartans, and well armed, each with his own sword, dirk and pistols, to which the Government added the usual arms and accoutrements of the line. From Perth, the captain was ordered to march his company to Glasgow, there to embark for Ireland; and proceeding en route, after leaving Falkirk and traversing the remains of the Torwood, he found himself, with his little command, approaching the burgh of Kirkintulloch one dreary November evening, just as the dusk was closing in, while the rain fell in torrents, and the wind swept in gusts through the pastoral hollows and hurled the wet and withered leaves furiously before it. There he was compelled to halt, and oblige the authorities to procure immediate quarters for a hundred Highlanders—a race of whom the westland Whigs had harboured a holy aversion and wholesome terror, since the epoch of the Great Montrose and his daredevil Cavaliers, one hundred and twenty years before.

"But what has all this to do with the Wife of the Red Comyn?" the reader may ask. I answer, everything—for had not my grandfather halted on that wet November night in the ancient burgh of Kirkintulloch, that good lady—though she made some noise in her time—had never been introduced to the reader's notice. So patience yet awhile.

The soldiers were soon distributed among the people by the town constable, and in a few minutes after seeing the last man off to his billet, my grandfather found himself standing before the gate of the Castle of Kirkintulloch drenched through plaid and philabeg, while the rain dripped gracefully from his long feathers into the nape of his neck, and the water spouted from his scabbard as from a syringe when he sheathed his claymore. Draggled and weary, he knocked furiously against the gate of the huge mansion, on which, as being the most important in the town, he was billeted as commander of the forces. Being a Celt, and not blessed with overmuch patience, he thrust his billet-order almost into the mouth of the servant who opened the door, and then swaggered in with all the air of a man who had heard the forty days' cannonade at the Moro; but a couple of good drams from a jolly magnum bonum of Ferintosh, which were given to him without delay, at once restored his equanimity, and, chucking the plump housekeeper under the chin, my grandfather—or, as I shall call him in future, the captain—proceeded upstairs.

This ancient Castle of Kirkintulloch, which had been stormed by Edward I. of England, but re-taken by the Scots, was a good specimen of the gloomy mansions of the Middle Ages, when every Scotsman was forced to keep watch and ward against his neighbour, and, more than all, against Southern invasion; for it was built by the Comyns, who flourished in the days of Malcolm III., and were Lords of Linton Roderick and of Badenoch, and who made a great figure during the reigns of the three Alexanders and Robert I.

In those turbulent times every Scotsman was a soldier, and a brave one, too; every house was a fortress, every fortress a citadel, and its inmates were a garrison, while the urgent necessity for security caused the Scottish baron literally to found his dwelling on a rock.

A site alike remote and inaccessible was usually selected, on the isle of some deep lake, or the brow of a sequestered hill, and there the Scottish feudatory raised the mansion in which his race were to dwell, to be married and given in marriage, to be born and to die, "while grass grew and water ran"—the strong square peel-house, with its corbelled battlements, through the openings of which missiles could be shot securely; its stone-flagged roof; its irregular slits or windows, all strongly grated, though ninety or a hundred feet from the base, and girdled by a barbican, having an arched gate and flanking towers. Such was unvaryingly the external aspect of the dwelling of a Scottish baron, and such was the Castle of Kirkintulloch.

Above the gate, which bristled with loopholes for musketry, were the armorial bearings of Robert Comyn, who was slain at the battle of Alnwick, and the monogram of his descendant, the black Lord of Badenoch, who married the Princess Marjorie, daughter of King John Baliol, and whose son was the last of his race.

After taking a draught from the cup of ale which was filled for him, as for all other visitors, from a barrel which stood in a recess of the entrance lobby, the captain ascended the hollow-stepped stair to the common hall of the venerable tower.

Internally the accommodation and construction were of the plainest description. A narrow turnpike stair gave access to the various floors of the keep. The first of these being the levelled rock on which the edifice was founded, was vaulted, and contained the pit or dungeon, with cellars for the stores necessary to a crowded household during the long northern winter, and there was also a deep draw-well hewn through the living rock. The next contained the arched hall into which our wet and weary captain was ushered with much formality. Its floor was paved; the fireplace was of stone, and had ingle-seats within its arch. The windows were deeply embayed, and were secured by shutters within and iron bars without. The sun, when it shone through the half-darkened halls of those days, must have imparted to the dwelling of the Scottish baron the aspect of a prison; thus their prisons became dungeons, for the good folks of the olden time knew no medium in anything.

A gigantic fire blazed redly on the hearth, and by its light the captain could discern a number of those unfortunate wights who, as casual guests, trenchermen, or boys-of-the-belt, in that year, 1772, shared the old-fashioned hospitality of the Flemings of Kirkintulloch; but not being of sufficient consequence to have separate apartments, lay rolled up in their plaids on the benches, or among the stag-hounds that nestled together on the warm hearthstone.

The reader may deem my description somewhat minute, but the events which occurred to my venerable kinsman in the old stronghold of the Comyns, and a tale which he heard there, served to impress every feature of it on his memory, and thus it bore a prominent place in his narrative.

As he entered the hall, a stout and jolly-looking old man, who sat with his sturdy legs stretched out before the fire, one hand supporting a long pipe in his mouth, the other resting on a silver tankard of mulled claret, rose up at his approach and bade him welcome. The fashion of this person's dress was old—for still the Scots are always a year or two behind every innovation; his red vest was deeply flapped, his coat of brown broadcloth was square-tailed, with enormous cuffs and silver buttons; he wore a brown bob periwig with a single row of curls round the bottom thereof; square buckles on his square-toed shoes, and a hat cocked with great exactness in the form of an equilateral triangle, completed the costume of the old chamberlain or castle bailie of the Laird of Kirkintulloch.

"A cold night, bailie," said the captain; "I am sorely chilled, having marched from the Torwood amid this tempest of wind and rain."

"The more are you welcome, sir, to the Castle of Kirkintulloch," replied the bailie, placing a chair; "and if a draught from this tankard of hot mulled claret will comfort you, take it and welcome, while something better is preparing."

"A thousand thanks, good bailie," replied the captain, as he drained the silver pot which came seething from the glowing hob.

Being thoroughly drenched, he begged the bailie would have him shown to an apartment where he might change certain portions of his attire. A boy in the livery of the Flemings, with their goat-head worked on his sleeves, appeared to conduct him, and, taking a candle, the lad, who was evidently displeased at being summoned from the warm fire of the kitchen, which in the Scoto-French fashion adjoined the hall, hurried up the staircase before the captain, leaving him to follow as he pleased.

I have already hinted that my grandfather was somewhat short-tempered, so he swore one of those hearty oaths which our army picked up so glibly in Flanders, adding, "Hollo! you young devil—do you mean to leave me here in the dark?"

Without heeding him, the lad sprang to the top of the stairs, and hastened across the landing-place into an apartment, leaving the captain to ascend by no other light than the feeble rays that fell from a candle in a tin sconce, which hung on the wall in the first turn of the spiral stair. Looking angrily up in search of his guide, the captain saw—or thought he saw—a lady cross the landing-place.

She was tall, and her white profile was stern and grave, and she was attended by the most diminutive black dwarf in the world—a little creature who appeared absolutely to perspire under the weight of her enormous train, which was of some dark rich stuff, but brilliantly brocaded with white stars. The captain paused and bowed very low, lifting up the end of his long claymore, believing that this stately dame might wish to descend; but when he raised his head again she was gone! Her disappearance was so sudden that he was confounded, and rubbed his eyes.

"Can the long march against a chill November wind have affected my vision?" thought he; "or has that brimming tankard of hot claret affected my nerves? Impossible! Tush—the dame has been scared by my draggled appearance, and has hastened into one of these apartments;" so the old gentleman swore another Flemish oath, and reached the top of the stairs.

The guide now reappeared, and he would certainly have had his ears pulled, but the captain's mind was strangely agitated by thoughts of the lady, whose tall aristocratic figure, and pure, cold, and almost sublime profile seemed to be still before him in the dusk.

He was shown into a handsome bed-chamber, which was lighted by four candles in brass-mounted holders of carved oak. The walls were hung with antique leather, of a pale yellow colour, embossed with red flowers; the bed was very ancient, and resembled the canopied tombs one occasionally sees in old churches. Over the mantelpiece was a Latin legend, informing the visitor that in this chamber the wife of the Red Comyn had died a prisoner in the year of our redemption 1310.

"Four hundred and sixty-two years ago," quoth the captain, after airing his subtraction a little; "ugh! how gloomy the place looks, compared to the cheerful hall—so gloomy, indeed, that I shall be here as little as possible before marching to-morrow."

He flung off his belted plaid, badgerskin sporan, and sword-belt, wrung the water from his kilt and from the curls of his periwig, smoothed his queue, donned a pair of dry hose, and, after giving a casual glance to the primings and charges of his pistols, which were a pair of true steel-butted Doune pops, from the armoury of old Thomas Caddel, he turned to leave the chamber, from the ceiling of which a dried kingfisher hung by a thread; for it is an old superstition that the bird will turn his bill to that point from which the wind blows.

Taking one of the candles, the captain left the chamber, and was about to descend, when by some "glamour" he mistook the way; for being supperless, I am convinced that the hot wine had affected his head; he stumbled against a door; it flew open, and he found himself in the dressing apartment of a lady, whose face was turned towards him, and by the lights on a side-table he perceived at a glance that she was the same queenly dame who had recently crossed the landing-place. She gazed fixedly at the amazed intruder, as she stood before a mirror, with her round polished shoulders turned towards him, and her jet black hair gathered up in heavy masses on her slender fingers, for she seemed in the act of dressing it. From a faultless bust, her dark dress, brocaded with stars, hung in magnificent folds to her feet, where, crouching like a marmoset, the hideous little dwarf was sitting. Her figure was beautiful, but so motionless and still, as she gazed with eyes full of indignation and inquiry, that the words of apology hung half arrested on the lips of the bowing intruder, who, in another moment, discovered that he had before him a—picture—only a picture; but one painted in the first style of antique art.

Nothing artistic could be more beautifully executed than the upturned and polished arms, from which the lace that foreign looms must have woven, hung in loops upheld by diamonds. A necklace of precious stones encircled her neck, and a large band of the same formed a coronet round her head, and gave an imperial grace to her lofty beauty of feature and of form.

The captain gazed on it till the figure appeared to come forward and the canvas to recede, till the eyes seemed to fill with light and the proud lips to curl with a scornful smile; and then he turned away, for the strange picture bad a mysterious effect upon him, and hastily he sought the hall, where a hot and savoury supper smoked on the centre table, and where the bailie or castellan of the absent proprietor impatiently awaited him.

"Come awa, sir—come awa; I thought you meant to bide up-stairs a' night. Here are hot collops, devilled turkey, stewed kidneys, mulled claret, port, sherry, and whisky toddy—draw in a chair, sir, and make yourself at hame."

"I have a hawk's appetite, bailie," said my kinsman, applying himself assiduously to the devil and the sherry.

"And I ditto, double—for I have ridden in from Stirling market to-day; try the cold gibelotte pie."

"Thank you; I'll rather stick to my old friend—a devilled bone smacks of the bivouac. Pass the sherry, bailie. Thank you."

"Try the kidneys; they would serve a king."

"Thanks. By the bye, who is that noble lady now residing here?"

"Noble lady?" reiterated the bailie, looking up with his mouth full, and surprise in his flushed face.

"Yes; she whom I passed, or rather who passed me, on the staircase to-night." The bailie pushed back his chair and plate.

"A lady, sir!" he stammered, while his eyes opened wider.

"She in the black dress brocaded with white stars."

"Gude hae mercy on us!—and a dwarf holding up her tail?"

"The same."

"The Lord take us a' into his holy keeping! Ye have seen her?"

"Seen who? What the devil do you mean?"

"The wife of the Red Comyn!"

"Come, that is good; but I am too old a soldier, bailie, to believe all this."

"Keep us frae harm!" continued the old man, as his rubicund visage grew pale, and he glanced stealthily over his shoulder while lowering his voice; "she hasna' been seen for these ten years past; heaven send it portends nae evil to our family!"

"Our family," meant the house; so completely were the old Scottish domestics identified with those they served.

"Lord help you, sir," he continued, draining a hot jug of toddy almost at a draught; "you have seen a wandering spirit."

"It may have been fancy, bailie; but I certainly saw her picture, and that is tangible enough."

"That picture was painted two hundred years and mair after her death; and there is a devilish story connected with it too."

"'Pon my honour, bailie, you quite interest me," said the captain, brewing a jug of smoking toddy, and drawing a chair nearer to the fire; "the atmosphere of this place becomes full of diablerie. Painted two hundred years after her death! I hope the likeness is good; but tell me all about it."

"She was the wife of the last Comyn to whom this castle belonged, and she was a woman possessing alike the pride and temper of Lucifer; but they cost her dear, for she suffered a sore penance in the yellow bedchamber up-stairs, and there 'tis said her spirit walks to this hour. Now it chanced that in the days of King James IV., his Master Painter, the famous Sir Thomas Galbraith, the pupil of Quentin Matsys, of Antwerp, and the friend of Leonardo da Vinci and of Titian Vecelli, came here during the lifetime of John Lord Fleming—the same who was so barbarously assassinated by the cursed Laird o' Drummelzier, wi' whose folk we have a feud outstanding yet, like an auld debt—well, the King's painter slept, or rather, perhaps, passed the night in the yellow room, and from that time he was a changed man; from being rosy-faced, he became pale and wan, hollow-eyed and ghastly; from being as full of fun and frolic as the King himself, he became sad, woful and thoughtful, and he shut himself up in the haunted-room, where he worked day and night for a whole week, without eating, drinking, or sleeping, as folks aver, until that awful picture was finished; and whether it was done from the memory of one vision of the spirit, or whether the wife of the Red Comyn came to him nightly from hell, and sat for her portrait, I cannot say; but when finished by Sir Thomas Galbraith, it was the last work he did on earth, for he was found dead, seated before it, one morning, with a pallet on his left thumb and a brush in his right hand. Terror was on his dead face, and the marks of strangulation were round his throat; so the Flemings buried him in the auld Kirk of St. Ninian, at the Oxgang, where his grave is yet to be seen. I would fain have the picture burned, but the family set a high value upon it; yet I verily believe, if a puir presumptuous auld carle like me dare judge o' sic things, that its presence here may keep the spirit o' that awfu' woman hovering about the walls o' the auld castle she rendered accursed by her crimes!"

"Well, bailie, tell me the story and——"

"Mak' another browst o' toddy while the water is hot, sir," replied the castellan, as he stirred up the fire with an enormous poker, and as the flames roared in the tunnel-like chimney, the red sparks flew up in pyramids.

"I am charged to the brim," said the captain; "so fire away, my friend, I am all impatience."

After a few preliminary hems, coughs, and flourishes, with sips of toddy between, the bailie told the captain the following strange story, which I give in my own words, being vain enough to prefer them to his.

————

In the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Castle of Kirkintulloch was the principal residence of John Comyn Lord of Badenoch, who, as nephew of King John Baliol, was a competitor with Bruce for the crown of Scotland, and he was called the Red Comyn to distinguish him from his father, the Black Comyn, who was so named from his swarthy complexion.

In those days the country around this castle was covered by forests of oak and pine, through the secluded hollows of which the Kelvin and the Logie crept with that slow and sluggish current which gives them more the aspect of Flemish canals than streams that roll from Scottish mountains. The rising burgh was then roofed with stone, or thatched; the Roman fort on the Barhill was nearly entire, as when a thousand years before the soldiers of the Cæsars had relinquished it before the furious Scots; and the now ruined tower of Sir Robert Boyd, Baron of Kilmarnock, Hartshaw, Ardneil and Dalry, was still the stronghold of his family, who were the sworn enemies of the Baliols and all their adherents. So deep, indeed, was their hatred, that they would not bury their dead in the same church; thus, while the Boyds were laid in the Chapel of St. Mary (which is now the parish kirk), the Comyns were interred in the Church of St. Ninian.

The Red Comyn was powerful, cunning, and dissembling; being ambitious, and though he fought under Wallace at Falkirk, intensely selfish, he feared to lose his estates after that disastrous battle was lost; and as usual with Scottish nobles, considering his own interest before the common weal or the national honour, he joined the English ranks, and fought against his own country in the army of the traitor-king, John Baliol.

He was a woful tyrant to the burgh of Kirkintulloch; for, in defiance of the old laws of the land, he enforced the bludewit, the stingisdynt, the marchet, the herezeld, and other exactions now unknown within the ports of a Scottish town; and as all pleas between burgesses and travelling merchants must be settled before the third flowing and ebbing of the tide, he usually decided them by whipping the burgess and confiscating the goods of the stranger. Moreover, although it had been ordained by the kings of old, that on any burgess departing on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or other sacred place, his goods and family should be protected "vntill God brought him name againe," the wives of the absent were often seized by Comyn, and their goods by his lady.

At his mills he exacted exorbitant mulctures, and he hung all who dared to complain; if any ventured to grind wheat, mashloch, or rye with hand querns, they were also hanged; and though it was statute and ordained that he who stole a halfpenny-worth of bread should be scourged, that he who stole a pair of shoes should be pilloried, or eightpence worth should have one leg cut off, the tyrant hanged them all. Thus his Dule-tree was never without a man hanging from it, with the black gleds flying round him; for Comyn ground alike to the dust the burgesses within the walls and the gudemen of the Newland Mailings without; so that it was generally said in Dumbartonshire, that the devil himself would be a gentler overlord than he; and he was so hated that men remembered the dreadful fate of his father in Badenoch, and it came to be whispered about that there was a prophecy made by a weird woman, that he too should die a violent death!

His wife, Lady Gwendoleyne, was esteemed one of the most beautiful women in Scotland, and none had outshone her at the Court of Queen Yolande, the consort of Alexander III. Lovely beyond all comparison, tall, stately and magnificent in form, with pale commanding features and dark eyes, indicative rather of pride of birth and loftiness of mind than of gentleness, she made the people—even those whom her beauty dazzled, and her slightest smile would have won for ever—shrink and quail before her, as beneath the eye of some mysterious spirit; for the keen black eye of that imperious lady is said to have been as dangerous in its beauty as it was terrible in its expression.

She had been wedded early to the Red Lord of Badenoch; they had three daughters, the youngest of whom (according to Andrew Wyntoun) was married to the traitorous MacDougal of Lorn. They had also one son, who at the time this history opens, A.D. 1306, was in his eighteenth year, and was said to be a handsome, gallant, and high-spirited youth; but, unfortunately, devoted to the false Baliol, at whose mock Court in the Castle of Perth he resided, and there he had been educated.

Notwithstanding her own unparalleled beauty, her husband's rank, power, and overweening authority, Lady Gwendoleyne was far from being happy! A thorn sharper than a poisoned arrow rankled in her heart, in the form of a restless jealousy of her husband, to whom she was passionately devoted, and whom she loved with all the ardour of her impulsive nature. And though he seemed to be, in manner, all that befitted a faithful and attached spouse, he was yet an object of suspicion to Gwendoleyne; for some artful minion had skilfully sown the seeds of mistrust between them, and several of Comyn's unguarded actions and interferences with the wives of pilgrim-burgesses had given her every reason to deem her fears were just and true; hence her fiery heart became a prey to furious passions and to bitter thoughts, and she looked about her, longing for some fitting object on which to vent her wrath.

Her husband's kinsman and her own dear friend, old Sir Alexander Baliol of Cavers, Great Chamberlain of Scotland, to whom she often hinted her complaints against Comyn and her suspicions of his infidelity, endeavoured to laugh away her fears.

"Madam," said he, on one occasion, "jealousy is the soul of a love which will brook no rival even for a moment. I mean not to hint that you love Red Comyn too much, but without this jealousy your love for him perhaps would die."

"You are too subtle a casuist for a woman, Sir Alexander of Cavers," replied the lady, cresting up her beautiful head; "but you must be aware that the disposition and manners of Comyn, your kinsman, are at least but too well calculated to excite my suspicion and distrust. To wit: his passionate and unconcealed admiration for female beauty; this is known over the whole country, and thrice, on vague suspicion, I have had to discard certain ladies of my household, and thus make their families deadly enemies of ours. And say, my good Lord Chamberlain, are these wandering sallies not shameful, when perpetrated by one who has a son now in his eighteenth year, and tall and handsome as himself?"

Sir Alexander thought of Comyn's gigantic red beard, and smiled when remembering the handsome youth, who had all his mother's beauty, without his father's ferocity of aspect and bearing.

"You smile, Sir Alexander!" said the fiery dame. "You smile—'tis very well, sir! You know more of the Red Comyn and his secrets than you care to tell me, and that courtier's smile assures me that I am an injured wife——"

"I beg to assure you, Lady of Badenoch——"

"Assure me of nothing, Lord of Cavers, if you cannot assure me of your kinsman's faith and purity."

"Madam," said the old Lord Chamberlain, testily, "there are two kinds of jealousy—a pure fear by which the young and restless lover is animated—and a grovelling suspicion, which is jealousy in the worst sense of the term. Your suspicion wounds your self-esteem—it piques your honour—and is but a new phase of selfishness, for you suspect yourself an injured woman."

"And justly too, for Comyn's coldness to me during the last month cannot be accounted for but by some new fancy."

"Your husband is never jealous of you, madam."

"That only proves his indifference. 'Tis shamel, false, and unknightly; and I only trust that the presence of our boy, the young Sir John, whom the King has just knighted, will in some degree recal my wandering husband to a sense of his own honour and the honour of his wife and daughters."

"Madam, how often shall I assure you that the husband of one so beautiful as you could never prove false—I am an old man, your father's friend, and may well say this."

"True, you are an old man, and were my father's friend," resumed the lady, whose black eyes flashed with dusky fire through their tears; "thus it is the more culpable in you to be in my husband's wicked secrets, and endeavouring thus to blind and to deceive a loving and devoted wife. But woe to Comyn and to you in that hour when I prove the falsehood of you both!"

And gathering up her long silk kirtle, which was worn without sleeves, but was so long in the skirt as constantly to require upholding by one hand, she swept away with the air of an offended queen, and with her long and magnificent hair floating over her shoulders from under a band of burnished gold.

"Alas!" thought the old chamberlain, shrugging his shoulders, "how true it is, that love being jealous, maketh a good eye look asquint."

In those days maidens of good family were received into the houses of ladies of high rank to be delicately nurtured and well educated; for which, strange as it may now seem, a befitting fee or pension was paid. Now, among the ladies of the tabourette, or dames d'honneur of the Lady of Badenoch, were the daughters of many noble houses of the Baliol faction, and who were consequently false to their country. Thus she had Margaret, daughter of that Lord Abernethy who basely accepted from the English King a commission as Captain-General of the Scottish rebels; Muriel, daughter of Sir Gilbert de Umphreville, the forfeited Earl of Angus; Isabel, daughter of David Lord Brechin, who was accused of a design to betray Berwick to the English; Rosamond and Alice, the daughters of John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and Lord High Constable of Scotland, another prime traitor of the Baliol faction; and Yolande, daughter of William de Gifford, Lord of Yester, in East Lothian. All these were beautiful girls, and, save the last, were proud, haughty, and reserved; for their manners and bearing were all modelled exactly after those of Lady Comyn. Yolande de Gifford, whose father, though a lord, had, strange to say, been true to Scotland, was an orphan, and had been taken into the Castle of Kirkintulloch at the request of Bernard, Abbot of Arbroath, the Lord Chancellor, and almost in pity, as all her father's lands in the shire of Haddington had been seized by John Baliol. She was the most beautiful of Gwendoleyne's attendants, and perhaps the most reserved and gentle, for she felt herself friendless and alone among the selfish courtiers of the Scottish King. Blue eyed, golden haired, and softly skinned, Yolande, who had been so named after her godmother, the late queen (Yolande, Countess de Dreux), was, indeed, the most gentle and loveable of all gentle creatures, and she shrank under the bold black eyes of Lady Gwendoleyne, as a sensitive plant might shrink beneath a hot sun, or before the keen north wind.

Yolande, when the tresses of her rich hair were gathered in the golden crespinette then worn by ladies of the Scottish Court, to show the contour of the neck and shoulders; when her blue kirtle, with its tight sleeves, displayed her beautiful form, over which floated her surquayne or velvet mantle, tied with tassels at each shoulder, looked only second in beauty to Lady Comyn herself, for they were nearly of a height; and her pretty white fingers were the most expert of all the ladies there at the weaving of those endless waves of tapestry at which all noble demoiselles then worked daily for the comfort and decoration of their dwellings and churches. Such was then the industrious custom; and we are told that Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror of England, sewed with her own fair hands sixty-seven yards representing the history of the Conquest of South Britain, beginning with Harold's embassy to the Norman Court, and ending with his death at Hastings.

After a long absence at King Edward's Court in London, Red Comyn returned to Scotland, which was then groaning under the yoke of the infamous King John Baliol, the tool of the English, and a faction of traitorous Scottish nobles. On arriving at his home, he gave presents to all the ladies of his household—to one a necklace, to another a bracelet, a crespinette, a brooch, and so forth; but to Yolande de Gifford he gave a golden ring.

A ring!

The restless suspicions of his lady had now discovered a clue to something real and tangible; and now she had an object on which her vague jealousies could settle with security. Yolande de Gifford, the playmate of her absent son—the viper whom she had taken into her bosom at the entreaty of the cunning Abbot Bernard, was doubtless involved with her husband in one of those intrigues which had embittered her whole life, although she had never been able to detect them or discover solid proofs.

"Let me be wary and watch well," said she to herself; "should it be so, by the cross that stood on Calvary, my Lord of Badenoch shall pay dear for his fair-haired toy!"

Iago's words have been quoted a thousand times, and none are more true; for

Lady Comyn suddenly discovered that the timid Yolande had been abstracted and thoughtful, neglectful of her apportioned duties, and inattentive alike to the conversation of her companions and the commands of her mistress. Was not this a sign of love and of secret thoughts? She frequently and bitterly reprimanded her, till even the gentle Yolande could not forget that she was the Lord Yester's only daughter, and replied with honest pride and proper spirit, asserting her own position and rank.

"This insolence and hauteur are alike unbecoming," said Lady Gwendoleyne; "and you shall be banished, minion, from my hall and bower, though the poorest convent in Scotland be your portionless home!"

And assuredly this harsh threat would have been put in execution, but for the determined intervention of the Red Comyn, whose kindness to the orphan increased with his haughty wife's displeasure; and so she set her little black dwarf, who was dumb, to watch Yolande constantly. This dwarf was a present from Sir Thomas of Charteris, the famous Red Rover and pirate, who afterwards became Lord of Kinfouns, and was conquered on the high seas by William Wallace.

About the time that great preparations were making for the return of her son, the young Sir John Comyn, whom—whether the youth was so disposed or not—-she meant to wed to his cousin, Alicia Comyn, daughter of the Lord High Constable, she was again imparting her griefs to Sir Alexander of Cavers.

"Comyn goeth from bad to worse; he braves me now, and dares to keep his minion here, whether I will it or no. By God's teeth, sir, could I but discover aught to prove my suspicions right, I'd slay that pale-faced Yolande with Red Comyn's own dagger!"

"I beseech you, lady, to compose yourself, and to be assured that your suspicions are alike unjust and cruel; for they malign your husband and crush this friendless maiden to the dust."

"I tell you that I hate her!" responded the imperious dame, grinding her beautiful teeth, while her magnificent eyes flashed fire.

"Then get her married," said the Chamberlain of Scotland, pithily.

"Who in these selfish times will be mad enough to wed the penniless daughter of a forfeited house? Who would ask her love?"

"I for one, were I young as herself; but let her seek a husband according to the ancient law."

"Sir Alexander, you mock me again."

"Heaven forbid, fair kinswoman; I do but remind you of an Act of Parliament passed in the reign of the late Queen Margaret."

"Pshaw—the Maid of Norway—well?"

"Anent spinsters, like this Yolande."

"Well—well," continued Gwendoleyne, stamping her pretty foot.

"In 1288, it was statute and ordained, 'that during the reign of her Most Blessed Majesty, ilk maiden ladye of baith high and lowe estate shall have libertie to bespeak ye man she likes: albeit, if he refuses to take her to be his wyf, he shall be mulctit of ye sum of one hundred pounds or less, as his estate may be, except and alwais, if he can make it appear that he is betrothit to ane ither woman, when he shall be free."

"Yolande is proud as myself, for she comes of a race that would not stoop their crests to kings; and this is but mockery, my Lord Chamberlain, so—but what is this now?"

At that moment the little black dwarf crept close to her side, pulled her skirt, and pointed towards the chamber of Yolande Gifford. The yellow glossy eyes of the stunted negro gleamed with malevolent light, as, snatching up her train, the lady swept out of the hall; and the Chamberlain shrugged his shoulders and blessed his stars that he was still a bachelor, while he whistled merrily, and resumed his employment of teaching a hawk to shake its little bells and coquette with its wings.

With all her pride and spirit, her furious will and temper, so completely had the demon of jealousy taken possession of her soul, that Gwendoleyne stooped to the humility of eavesdropping; and on hearing the murmur of voices whispering in the chamber of Yolande, she crept close to the thick arras that covered the door, and listened with all her soul in her ears.

"Go, I implore you," she heard Yolande say, in a stifled voice; "alas! if you are discovered here, what will my tyrannical mistress say?"

"Just what she pleases," replied a voice, and then there was a sound—a kiss—which set the listener's blood on fire.

"I am watched by that hateful imp her dwarf, and live in daily terror of her discovering all," continued the sobbing Yolande; "and you know what her views are concerning yourself. Go—go—John Comyn, for the love of God and Saint Mary, go!"

"John Comyn!" muttered lady Gwendoleyne; "oh, wretch! that I had a dagger here to avenge this double perfidy!"

A pause ensued.

"To-morrow evening be it, then—at the Roman Peel," said a low voice.

"When the moon is over Campsie Fells."

"You will not forget, beloved Yolande."

"Oh, no—no; and let that meeting be our last, for another day will change the face of everything," wept Yolande.

Unable longer to restrain her fury, the white hand of Lady Comyn tore aside the arras, and she rushed into the apartment with all the aspect of an enraged Pythoness, while at the same moment the figure of a man vanished from the open window, and his steps were heard crashing through the bushes and trees without, as he retired hastily and in the dusk; but Gwendoleyne saw—or thought she saw—enough, to be convinced that the fugitive was no other than her husband!

"Alas! madam," cried Yolande, sinking on her knees in an agony of terror, "you have discovered us."

"At last—yes, at last!" exclaimed the fierce, exulting woman, in hoarse accents, as she savagely wreathed her slender fingers, which rage had endued with triple strength, in the golden hair of Yolande, and proceeded to drag her several times across the oak floor; "beggar! viper! outcast!—ha, ha, ha! thou shalt die now!" and she laughed as she tore out those beautiful tresses in handfuls, till the poor girl's shrieks died away, and she sank senseless at her feet. Then Gwendoleyne locked her up, and after tying the key of the chamber to her silver girdle, retired to her own apartment to still the fierce tumult that swelled her fiery heart, and to lay her plans of deeper and surer vengeance. Alas! they were but too soon formed and matured for pity or remorse to arrest them.

The night passed away, and though she had alternate fits of tenderness and tears, with gusts of jealous rage and passion, the morning found her cold, calm, inexorable, and resolved to have a terrible retribution on the Red Comyn for this attempt to deceive her; and the arrival of a hasty message from him, stating that he was compelled to depart with a slender train on public business to the town of Dumfries, only made her smile the more bitterly, as she thought she saw the game her truant husband meant to play; but she resolved to checkmate him.

"Dumfries, my Lord Chamberlain!" she said, with a scornful smile upon her lovely lip; "now what fool's errand takes him there?"

"To hold a conference with Sir Robert Bruce, the young Earl of Annandale," replied the other, in a low voice; "the Bruces have some bold project now in hand."

"A project."

"Ay, to root the English faction and all Baliol's people out of Scotland. Comyn hath known of this project long, and duly gives King John and King Edward notice of its progress; thus Bruce ere long must perish amid his own plots and follies."

"And without waiting for our boy's arrival from Perth, without even bidding me adieu, Comyn has gone to confer with him? 'Tis well—I wish him speed on his journey. But there is a prophecy concerning him; so let him beware lest he perish by a violent death like his kinsman who died at Craigie, and who had no other grave than his own girdle."

"Now, grace me guide, lady, talk not thus," replied Sir Alexander, growing pale at her words, which referred to a terrible tale; for it came to pass in the days of King Alexander III., that it was foretold by Thomas the Rhymer, that Comyn Earl of Buchan, who was ranger of the royal hunting forests of Plater, would die by a violent death; so he mocked the seer, saying—

"Thou art Sir Thomas the Liar, rather than the Rhymer."

But the aged chief replied solemnly in verse, as was his wont when inspired by his mysterious power—

And so it came to pass soon after, for when the earl was hunting in the gloomy Den of Howie, as he galloped over the green hill of Arkeybrae, his horse became dazzled by the setting sun, and threw him with such violence that his brains were dashed out by some blocks of grey stone, which to this day are named Comyn's Craigie, and there his bones were found after his hounds had gnawed and torn them asunder.

"So, for God's love, dear lady," resumed the Lord of Cavers with a shudder, "refer no more to these dark and terrible predictions."

The white lips of the haughty lady smiled, but a wild expression of rage and sorrow filled her eyes, and the glance she gave her kinsman was to him inexplicable, as she had not a doubt that this sudden journey was all a device of her husband to meet, or perhaps to elope, with Yolande. Dark and terrible were the silent thoughts of Gwendoleyne as the evening drew on. The old prophecy that like the Black Comyn, the Red one would die by a violent death, seemed ever before her in letters of fire; and she thought that now the time had come.

"How was I ever weak enough to expect that a fair-haired man could be true to me?" she muttered; "in all old Scripture tapestries are not Cain and Judas represented with large yellow beards, or red ones, like that of my husband Comyn! Oh, woe is me! and cursed be the hour I forsook Sir John the Grahame to become the wife of his home and the mother of his children!"

All that day she kept Yolande carefully under lock and key, and without food or drink, while the black dwarf watched the window and the corridor. The sunset faded on the green ridges of the Campsie Fells, evening darkened into sombre night, and the pale light of the moon, long before her rising, was spread across the blue and starry sky behind the hills of Lanarkshire. The woolly-leaved birches that fringed the banks of the Logie and Kelvin, diffused a rich fragrance as the dew of eve fell on them; and the lonely heron sent up its mournful cry at times, as it waded in the pools that gleamed below the castle walls.

Attired as Yolande, in a dress of dark velvet starred with silver, with her black locks gathered in a golden crespinette, a veil spread over her head and shoulders, and with her little white hand grasping the hilt of a jewelled dagger that was concealed in her bosom, the wife of the Red Comyn left the Castle of Kirkintulloch unseen by all, and by a little postern on the south, and, skirting the houses of the town, reached the trysting-place, the Caer-pen-tulloch, or old Roman fort at the west end of the hill. The fallen ramparts of the tower were eighty feet square, and the yellow broom, the green whin, the purple foxglove, and the sweet wallflower, all flourished together on the masses of fallen masonry which were covered by long grass that waved mournfully to and fro between the pale Gwendoleyne and the white starlight. The place seemed very silent, lonely, and desolate. All was intensely still, save the fierce beating of her heart, which teemed with passion, as her eyes did with tears she scorned to weep. Time stole away. The moments seemed like hours.

No one came! Could she have mistaken the place—the time?

Now the yellow moon began to peep above the distant hills, and its lustre glinted on the green mounds and shattered masonry of the ancient peel.

Up, up it came, and now its whole disc was gleaming above the dark mountain-ridge, and tipping each rock and peak with fire.

Gwendoleyne prayed in her heart that no one might come—that she might have been deceived—that Comyn, the father of her four children—but, hark! the hoofs of a horse rang hollowly on the green turf, and through the archway of the ruined enclosure rode an armed man, who sang merrily the same march to which, eight years after, Bruce marched his victorious host to Bannockburn.

"'Tis the Red Comyn's favourite song!" said she, shrinking aside; "now mayest thou be accursed from the bearing cloth in which thou wert baptized to that shroud of blood in which thou shalt lie! Now by the soul of him who loved me well, the Grahame who fell at Falkirk, and by the life of my son—my dearest hope—I shall have a terrible vengeance!"

The knight, on whose head was a plumed chapel-de-fer, with a mail coif that concealed the lower part of his face, wore over his armour an embroidered cointise, with the cognisance of the Comyns, two ostriches, with the motto "Courage." He dismounted, and after looking about him for a moment, discovered Gwendoleyne, to whom he hastened with an exclamation of joy, and she recognised on the breast of the surcoat some embroidery, on which she had but too surely and too lately seen the white hands of Yolande Gifford plying the needle! What other proof of perfidy was necessary?

An arm was thrown around her, and passionately and joyously she was pressed to the breast of the new comer. But while trembling with ungovernable fury to find herself exposed to embraces intended for Yolande, she drove her poniard in the heart of the lover twice, exclaiming,

"Die, villain and deceiver—die in your adultery—die!"

"Mother—oh, mother!" cried a voice, which froze the marrow in her bones; and the frantic and wretched Gwendoleyne discovered that she had slain—not the Red Comyn—but their beloved and only son.

The plumed chapel-de-fer rang as the wearer sank to the earth.

A gurgling sound was all that followed; the ruined tower swam round that miserable woman, and, multiplied by a thousand times, the horse of the murdered knight seemed to career around her; till borne down by misery, by a revulsion of feeling, by over-tension of the heart, and by horror of what she had done, Gwendoleyne sank senseless on the body of her son.

The young Sir John Comyn had loved the orphan Yolande, and on his return had secretly wished to meet—perhaps, for all that we can learn now—to espouse her; but this terrible catastrophe ended his life and intentions together.

Meanwhile, like a true Scottish baron bent on selfish schemes of family ambition and degrading aggrandizement, Red Comyn had ridden fast to meet Robert Bruce, the younger, at Dumfries, and to concert with him a pretended plan to free Scotland from the English and from John Baliol; but of this scheme the red-headed traitor had duly informed King Edward from time to time. On Comyn's arrival in Nithsdale, the gallant Robert, afterwards King of Scotland, had fled in safety northward, by reversing his horse's hoofs, as the ground was covered with snow; and being furnished with clear proofs of his compatriot's villainy, he pursued him to the church of the Minorites at Dumfries, whither he had fled for sanctuary, being full of conscious guilt; but neither the house of God nor its high altar could protect this perfidious wretch, who was false to Scotland and her people; and the prophecy that "Red Comyn should die by a violent death" was terribly fulfilled; for there Bruce, Lindsay, and Kirkpatrick buried their daggers in his heart upon St. William's day, the 10th of February, 1306.

So perish all who are false to their country!

He was the last Comyn of the house of Badenoch, and was, moreover, the last of his race—a race which Scotland well could spare.

Lady Gwendoleyne never spoke after she was borne into the castle with the dead body of her son. She lived for five years a close captive in that yellow chamber, and during those terrible five years a word, even of prayer, never passed her lips; but a period was put to her sufferings, for this proud and resentful beauty died on the 10th day of February, 1310, at the hour of three in the afternoon, the anniversary of the very moment in which her husband died under the three daggers in the Minorite Church of Dumfries.

She was buried before the Shrine of St. Ninian, with all the grandeur of a princess and all the splendour of the Roman ritual; her son slept by her side, and Sir Alexander of Cavers reared a stately monument above them; but that fierce woman's restless spirit is still said to haunt the Castle of Kirkintulloch and the Roman ruins at the west end of the town; for it is supposed that she will never find repose or peace until the day of doom.

—————

Such was the story told to the captain by the castellan of the old fortress of Kirkintulloch, scarcely one stone of which now stands upon another, as it was removed about the beginning of the present century.

"And Yolande Gifford—what of her?" asked the captain.

"She did not die of love or grief either, but lived to be a very old woman, and passed away in about her eightieth year, when Robert III. was King, a prioress of the Bernardine nuns of St. Mary—a convent of which you may still see the ruins on the north bank of the Avon, about a mile above Linlithgow Bridge."

"A melancholy story!" said the captain; "what a devil of a wife that Gwendoleyne must have been—but no better than such an infamous traitor as Comyn deserved!"

"Beware ye, sir," said the castle bailie, lowering his voice, and looking furtively round him; "she is said to walk about—ay, at this very hour, and may pay you a visit that you may never get the better of."

"I'll be hanged, bailie, if I go up-stairs to-night—or this morning, rather," said my grandfather, laughing; "I would rather face the Dons at the Moro again, than meet that dame in black velvet with her devil of a dwarf—so make a fresh browst and stir up the fire."

The clock struck four.

"Four!" said the soldier; "four already; and we march in an hour!"

The bailie, who was a jolly old fellow, brewed a fresh jorum of hot toddy—by this time they had under their girdles ten jugs each; and my grandfather now began to spin his yarns, and detailed the slaughter of Ticonderoga, the scalping and flaying at Fort Pitt, the storming of the Moro, where British musket-butts and the pates of the Dons tested the hardness of each other; he proceeded on the expedition up the Lakes, and had just opened the trenches before Montreal, when he found himself at the bottom of his tenth jug, the fire out, the bailie asleep in his easy-chair, and heard the warning drum beaten in the streets of Kirkintulloch—the warning for the march, while the grey dawn stole through the ancient windows.

It was daylight now, and fearless alike of Dame Gwendoleyne and her dwarf, my grandfather sallied down-stairs, and propping himself between his claymore and the walls of the houses, or an occasional pump-well as he passed it, reached the muster-place, and holding himself very erect, gave, with great emphasis, the command to "march." His detachment marched accordingly, and—here ends our story for the present.

VI. STORY OF THE GREY MOUSQUETAIRE.

A FRAGMENT OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.

Among the captains of "Ours" who had the honour of serving in the Seven Years' War was one named Allan Robertson, a gentleman of the clan Donnoquhy, and a cadet of the loyal house of Struan, who bore the singular soubriquet of the Mousquetaire Gris, and whose adventures during the early part of his military career were very remarkable.

In his latter years, when leading a quiet "half-pay life" in the Scottish capital, Allan was known to all the military loungers about "Poole's Coffee-house," at the east end of Prince's Street, then the great rendezvous of the military idler, as a warlike octogenarian—a silver-haired remnant of other days—and as a brave and warm-hearted old Highlander, who was so devoted to the memory of the 42nd, that he never saw those two numerical figures, even on a street door, without lifting his hat, and saying, "God bless the old number!" for his heart swelled at everything that reminded him of the venerable Black Watch.

The manner in which Allan joined the regiment was in itself romantic and singular.

Among the French army at the famous battle of Minden, in the year 1759, when the Household troops were led by Prince Xavier of Saxony, brother of the French Queen, no cavalry distinguished themselves more by the fury and valour of their reiterated charges than the Compagnie Franche, or "Free Company" of the Chevalier Jules de Coeurdefer, and two other bands entirely composed of gentlemen of the highest rank and of irreproachable character, who were named from the colour of their uniforms Les Mousquetaires Gris et Rouges, led by the Vicomte de Chateaunoir.

In the fury of their last attack, the gallant Prince Xavier was slain by the 51st Regiment, and the leader of the grey troop (for all these noblesse served on horseback) was left behind bleeding on the ground, though a desperate rally was thrice made by the energy of one Grey Mousquetaire to rescue and carry off the colonel. These noble rallies were made in vain; for, after a third attempt, the Mousquetaires were swept from the plain of Minden by the terrible charge of the Scots Grey Dragoons, led by old Colonel Preston, the last soldier who wore a buff coat in the British service, and who had risen to command from being a kettle-drummer in the old Flanders War.

The faithful Mousquetaire fell in this flight, being pierced by a musket-shot from one of Lord George Sackville's Dragoons, and he lay all night on that sanguinary field, near the leader he had striven so valiantly and in vain to rescue.

A distinguished Highland officer, whose memoirs have been published, mentions that on the 2nd of August, the day after the battle, he rode over the plain, accompanied by Major Pringle of Edgefield.

"On one part of the field we saw a French officer, who had been wounded in the knee, sitting on the ground, with his back supported by a dead horse. We accosted him, and offered any assistance in our power. He proved to be the commanding officer of Les Mousquetaires Gris, and was distinguished by several orders, which, with a handsome snuff-box, had probably excited the cupidity of some of the wretches who are never found wanting in the train of an army. We left him in high spirits, having undertaken to bring a cart or tumbril to carry him from the field; but with the hasty imprudence of young officers, we rode off together on this duty, instead of one of us remaining with the wounded man. It could not be more than ten or twelve minutes when we returned with the cart, and found—to our unspeakable concern—the murdered body of the poor French colonel (the Vicomte de Chateaunoir) lying naked on the ground."

Another officer adds, that near the corpse of the unfortunate colonel, which had been so ruthlessly stripped by the German marauders and death-hunters, lay, pistol in hand, the Mousquetaire, who had made such vigorous efforts to save him in the last charge of yesterday. He was still breathing, and after having his wound hurriedly dressed by a surgeon of the 51st, he was conveyed to the rear, in care of Major Pringle, who was a son of Lord Edgefield, a distinguished senator of the Scottish College of Justice. At the place where they found him, the adverse artillery had furrowed up the plain like a ploughed field by their shot, which lay so thick and half sunk in the turf, that they resembled on iron pavement, strewn with all the destruction and debris of battle.

The Grey Mousquetaire was a tall and handsome man, bronzed by the weather and scarred by battle. On the breast of his grey uniform glittered those decorations which few of the corps were without—the golden crosses of St. Louis and St. Lazare.

Pringle conveyed him to his own tent, for he knew well that the Mousquetaires were all men of no ordinary rank, and there he supplied him with wine and other comforts. As yet, he had not spoken; but as he gathered strength, he began to mutter and talk to himself in a strange language.

"Assuredly this man is not a Frenchman!" said Pringle, kneeling down to listen.

The Mousquetaire Gris was praying in the Erse tongue!

"What—are you a Scotchman?" exclaimed the astonished major.

"A Highlander," sighed the other.

"I recognised your Gaëlic at once."

"Likely enough," responded the other, in a low voice; "the Gaelic was the first language I heard, and, please God, it shall be my last! I spoke but the tongue I learned at my mother's breast!"

"And you are a Mousquetaire Gris?"

"Yes—that grey uniform is all the inheritance which the dark day of Culloden has left me."

"Poor fellow!" said Major Pringle, with commiseration; "and you are—"

"Allan Robertson, of the house of Struan, who, thirteen years ago, was a captain in the Athole Regiment under his Royal Highness Prince Charles, whom God long preserve!"

"Hush—hush!" said Pringle, hurriedly; "remember that you are in the British camp."

"I care not," replied the other, with flashing eyes; "I have shouted his name at Preston, Falkirk and Culloden, and why should I shrink from naming him here?"

Major Pringle kept the Jacobite officer in his quarters, and in a few days he was able to sit up in a camp bed, and converse with ease and coherence; and many Scottish gentlemen of the army whose political sympathies were with the exiled race, frequented the tent, and supplied him with whatever he required and their own necessities could spare. He asked particularly about the wounds on the breast of his dead colonel, the Vicomte de Chateaunoir, and on being informed that they must have been done with a dagger, he became dreadfully excited, and exclaimed,

"Jules de Coeurdefer has murdered him!"

"Who?" exclaimed Major Pringle and several officers who were present.

"A wretch most justly named Coeurdefer, who serves in the French army, to its disgrace; a noble and an outlaw—a soldier and a robber! a ribaud, with whom the Mousquetaires Gris et Rouges have had more than one sword-in-hand encounter."

Among the mass of papers and regimental memoranda, from which these legends are gleaned and prepared, I find this Chevalier Jules de Coeurdefer frequently mentioned us a prominent character during the early part of the Seven Years' War; and some of Robertson's adventures with him during his service in the Grey Mousquetaires were very remarkable. His narrative was as follows.

—————

"We, the Red and Grey Mousquetaires, by forced marches from Paris, quitted the gay Court of Louis XV., and joined the army of M. de Contades about the end of May, crossed the Rhine with him at Cologne, and on the same day the Free Band of the Chevalier de Coeurdefer joined us, to the great annoyance of the whole army; for our hitherto quiet and well-ordered camp became a scene of incessant disquiet, by drunken brawls, duels, and severe military punishments; for as this Franche Compagnie, like the wild Pandoors of Baron Trenck, subsist only by gambling and secret robbery in camp, and by open plunder and ruthless bloodshed in the field, you may imagine our repugnance to co-operate with them; and our astonishment that leaders so strict as M. de Contades or Prince Xavier of Saxony would tolerate their presence among us for a moment. Their ranks were filled by men of all nations—runaway students, spendthrifts, cashiered officers, deserters, fugitive malefactors—in short, by men ready for any desperate work, and being deemed the cheapest food for gunpowder, they had enough of it.

"Their captain, the Chevalier Coeurdefer, is the representative of an ancient but decayed family in Lorraine, who spent his patrimony among the gambling-houses, the cabarets and bordels of Paris. Dismissed summarily from the French line when a captain in the Regiment du Roi for barbarously slaying a brother officer, after severely wounding him in a duel about a courtesan, he has now joined our army against the Prussians, in the hope of winning himself a new name by reckless bravery, cruelty, and outrage. He is handsome and young, but without fear of God or man; without religion, and without honour. Even their chaplain—"

"What! they have a chaplain?" exclaimed Pringle, laughing.

"Yes, a canon of Notre Dame, who was unfrocked by the Archbishop of Paris for having an affair with a citizen's wife in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He is a burlesque on the clerical character, and fights—as I was about to say—more duels than even the chevalier his leader. One of this choice band plundered a church at Cologne, and as sacrilege could not be tolerated, Prince Xavier made a great hubbub about it. The thief had been seen; he wore the tattered uniform of the Franche Compagnie, and had huge red whiskers. The chevalier paraded his men next day for inspection. Bearing a piece of the true cross, the holy fathers came along the line in solemn procession to discover the culprit; but lo! every man was shaven to the eyes, and not a vestige of whisker was to be seen in the whole band of the Chevalier Jules.

"On the 2nd June, 1759, with the force of M. de Contades, we joined the Maréchal Duc de Broglio near Giessen, and left M. d'Armentieres with twenty thousand men to oppose Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, in the neighbourhood of the Wesel; and on this important day we had an open rupture with the Free Company of Coeurdefer, for when detailed together to form the advanced guard of horse, the gentlemen of the Mousquetaires Gris et Rouges flatly refused to share a post of honour with a corps of outlaws. Then the chevalier, flaming with irrepressible fury, flung his glove in the face of our colonel, Henri the Vicomte de Chateaunoir, with whom he had an old unfinished feud, and a duel to the death was only prevented by the determination of the maréchal duc, who bound them both down by solemn promises to keep the peace towards each other, at least until the close of the campaign; but the villain Coeurdefer made a vow of vengeance, swearing to 'lay the vicomte at his feet, where he had laid many a better man;' and you see how he has kept that vow, for by him or by his men our wounded leader was murdered on the field on the morning after Minden!"

"I do not understand," said Major Cringle, in whose tent this conversation took place one evening, when, with a few droppers-in, he and the now-convalescent Mousquetaire lingered over a few bottles of Rhenish wine; "in fact, it seems to me a marvel how a gallant soldier such as the late Prince Xavier of Saxony could tolerate the presence of such a ruffian and bully as this Captain Coeurdefer."

"For various reasons; he is brave——"

"Bravery is no strange quality in the French or Imperial armies, I think," said one of the 51st.

"Moreover, he is an expert forager, skilful in war, useful in council, and leader of two hundred troopers, who have only one virtue—their devotion to him. Besides, the brutal qualities he displays are not singular in the history of wars in Germany. We have had many such examples as he among the mixed races which make up the armies of France and Austria.

"In the last century there was the terrible Count Merode, a colonel of musketeers, whose name has become a proverb for all that is vile; and there was the ferocious Jehan de Wart, a colonel of horse, who in Bavaria spared neither man, woman, nor child, when the lust of blood glowed in his fiery heart."

"Thank Heaven! we have no such fellows among us," said the officer of the 51st, complacently.

"Sir," said Allan Robertson, with a cloudy brow, "you forget the nine of diamonds—the exterminating order of Cumberland, written on the night before we fought you at Culloden."

"But the assassination of your poor colonel," began Pringle, hastily, to change the turn the conversation was taking.

"Ah! that was a frightful episode in this new war; and yet believe me, my dear major, Coeurdefer has committed many such acts, and has always contrived to elude the hand of justice. Witness his vow to lay our colonel at his feet, where better men had lain. Liar that he is! Chateaunoir was the first gentleman in France! But true it is that, of the many who have lain at the feet of Jules, few have fallen in battle or fair combat."

"You seem to have serious cause for disliking him," said Pringle.

"Disliking!" reiterated Robertson, while his eyes sparkled and his pale face glowed with anger—"say abhorring him!"

"You had your sword," said the officer of the 51st.

"But it is the sword of a Mousquetaire," replied Robertson, sternly; "the chevalier ranks with a field officer."

"True," said Pringle; "you must pardon my friend, who forgets surely what discipline inculcates. And the cause of this animosity?"

"Is a dark and painful story," sighed Robertson, as he drained his green glass of Rhenish, and tossed it on the turf floor of the tent.

"Let us hear it."

"Before the rising of the clans in 1745," began Robertson, "I was a student at the Scottish College of Pontamousson, where I learned Latin and the classics under the tuition of old Father Innes. I had then a dear friend named Louis d'Herblay, a native of Remiremont, at the foot of Mount Vosge in Lorraine. Louis was handsome, brave, and courteous; an expert maker of verses; a tolerable player on the guitar, and a smart handler of his sword, which he had seldom occasion to use, for he was beloved by every one; a successful love affair with Mademoiselle Annette, a pretty and sprightly girl, had put him in the best of humours with all mankind. Annette was the only daughter of the old Marquis de Chateaunoir, father of the vicomte of that title, Great Maréchal of Lorraine and Bar-le-Duc.

"Jules Coeurdefer, the spendthrift, gambler, and roué, was then, to our great regret, at college with us too, and having not yet come to his estates, his finances being far below his ambition and expenditure, to keep these equal he had betaken him to cards, dice, successful bets, to bullying some and cajoling others—and to every means his wild and wayward course of life permitted—a course which was the scandal of the good fathers of Pontamousson, and soon procured him the only favour he wished at their hands—expulsion.

"Between him and Louis d'Herblay there grew an aversion—a hatred that waxed stronger daily; an antagonism on his side, but on the part of Louis a cold and haughty bearing; for he despised the life and habits of Coeurdefer, whom he had thrice fought and thrice disarmed, when involved with him in tavern brawls beyond the college gates; for within these barriers no sword or other weapon was ever worn. But in the very spirit of a Venetian bravo, Jules was known, or suspected, to bear about his person a small crystal poniard, the most savage of all weapons for inflicting a wound; as the blade, when broken off at the hilt, remained like a deadly sting in the body of the victim. It was a weapon which could be used but once only, and then with terrible effect.

"I have mentioned that my friend D'Herblay had a successful love affair. As a trophy of it, he wore at his breast an antique cameo of great size, set round with diamonds, and within it was the hair of Annette concealed by a secret spring. He was not rich, but was sufficiently wealthy and well born to render him an acceptable suitor even to the most wary of fathers; thus it had been arranged that, as soon as he left college, his marriage would be celebrated. Father Innes, our old preceptor, was to perform the ceremony; all the students congratulated Louis, and looked forward to his nuptials as to a fête—at least, all save Coeurdefer, who kept ever aloof from him, and smiled with the quiet covert smile of malice and hate, when D'Herblay or his affairs were mentioned in his presence.

"At last came the time appointed for Louis to leave the college, and I was to accompany him to Remiremont. He bade adieu to all the old Scottish priests of Pontamousson, and severally shook hands with all his brother students—all till he came to where Coeurdefer was lounging outside the gates smoking a huge German pipe; and D'Herblay, in the happy fulness of his honest heart, being unwilling to leave a foe behind him, approached and held out his hand, saying—

"'Farewell, M. le Chevalier, though we have not always been the best of friends, I nope we do not part as enemies. Here is my hand to you—my hand, in token of friendship and future amity."

"Despite the honest frankness that beamed in the blue eyes of D'Herblay and the confiding generosity of his speech, the coarse Jules Coeurdefer gave him a sullen frown, and while rudely emitting a volume of smoke full in his face, with a sullen gesture of contempt, strode away.

"All the students muttered 'Shame!' and for a moment a cloud hovered on the usually smooth brow of D'Herblay.

"'Bah!' said he, turning to me, 'one who is so happy as I, can well afford to pity the wrath of one so poor in spirit and in Christian charity. Farewell, Jules,' he added, as we leaped on our horses; 'when next we meet, we shall part less sullenly.'

"'Yes—when next we meet, our parting shall be different,' replied Coeurdefer, looking over his left shoulder, with a black frown in his face, as we trotted from the college gates.

"'He means me mischief—pooh! let the fool do his worst,' said Louis. We soon dismissed him from our thoughts, and laughing and chatting gaily, waving our hats to the old people, and kissing our hands to the young girls, we rode through the old familiar streets of Pontamousson, and took the road that led direct to D'Herblay's home, which lay more than twenty leagues distant. And now, gentlemen, observe that within one hour after we left the college gates, Jules de Coeurdefer, alone and unattended, also departed on horseback, ostensibly to return to his father's house on the French side of the Rhine.

"We cantered along the road to Nancy, between the yellow cornfields, feeling happy as boys in our new freedom, and singing together a song which Louis had composed in honour of Annette de Chateaunoir, and thus we pushed on without halting at the capital of the duchy, save for a few minutes at a jeweller's, where my friend bought a diamond bracelet for his future bride. Blaziers and Neufchateau were soon passed, and then we reached Epinal, which, in 1466, was bestowed upon the once independent princes of Lorraine; and their castle, now a ruin, crowns an eminence above it.

"Epinal is within ten miles of Remiremont, and there we were compelled by the state of our horses to halt, notwithstanding the impatience of my friend, to whom a night spent so near the residence of Annette seemed an age, and the ten miles that intervened a thousand leagues; but we called for supper and made ourselves comfortable at an auberge. Louis assumed his guitar, and we sought to while away the time; and the hours flew quickly, for we had a thousand plans to form and things to talk of.

"Alas! how little did we dream that Jules de Coeurdefer, like a bloodhound, was tracking us swiftly and surely, by Nancy, Blaziers, and Neufchateau, and had actually lodged himself in an auberge opposite ours, at Epinal.

"After sitting up late, we retired. Overcome by an excessive lassitude, induced by the long and arduous journey of the past day, I fell into a deep and profound sleep—so deep indeed, that the noon of the next day had rung from the church bells ere I awoke, and inquired for my companion. Thus, you may see, sirs, the difference between one who is a lover and one who is not.

"Louis had been up with the lark, as the aubergiste informed me, and full of impatience to visit his mistress, had mounted a fresh horse, and set forth alone, leaving a message for me to follow him to the mansion of the marquis, near Remiremont; adding, as an apology for his abrupt departure, that he was loth to rouse me from a slumber so comfortable and profound.

"I ordered my horse, paid my bill, and departed at leisure, for I had no hope of overtaking him. An easy trot of tea miles brought me to Remiremont, which is a pretty little town on the left bank of the Moselle, and without difficulty I reached Chateaunoir, the fosse of which was filled by the river. The edifice was ancient, surmounted by heavy turrets and all built of black stone (hence its name), and it stood embosomed among fine old trees.

"I sent up my name, and inquired for M. d'Herblay.

"'How—is he not with you, M. Allan?' asked the old marquis, with astonishment in his tone and manner.

"'No,' said I; 'he quitted Epinal at least four hours before me, leaving a message for me to follow him hither.'

"'Four hours before you, and he has not arrived yet!'

"'This is most perplexing, M. le Marquis!' said I.

"'Oh, mon Dieu! what can have happened?' exclaimed mademoiselle, whom I now saw for the first time, and who was a fair blonde, with a beautiful skin and long dark eyelashes, which lent a softness and inexpressible charm to her face.

"I could not reply. My heart misgave me; for knowing D'Herblay as I did, I feared that something most unusual must have occurred to prevent his appearance at the chateau.

"Noon passed; the sun verged westward, and still he did not appear. I became seriously alarmed; the old marquis was perplexed and irritated; while Annette wept in silence.

"Horses were ordered at last, and with Chateaunoir, his son the Vicomte Henri, afterwards Colonel of the Grey Mousquetaires, and all his servants, I set forth to search the roads and inquire for my friend. For some time we prosecuted this object in vain; but after much labour and anxiety, judge of our horror, when in a secluded orangery, about two miles from Epinal, the young vicomte found a man lying on the grass wounded, bleeding and dying, surrounded by a group of pitying and terrified vine-dressers.

"The damps of death were on the brow of this unfortunate, who proved to be my friend, poor Louis d'Herblay.

"He was frightfully pale, having received several wounds—one of these in the bosom occasioned him the most exquisite agony. From this wound he had bled for some hours undiscovered, and now he was beyond all hope of recovery. Revived partially by our presence, by a cordial poured between his lips, and by the stoppage of the crimson tide which had soaked the soil whereon he lay, in broken accents and at long intervals, he related what had befallen him; and every word he uttered there, so slowly, painfully, and laboriously, sank deeply in our hearts, for they were too surely the last words of the dying.

"Loth to arouse me untimeously at Epinal, my kind friend had arisen, and softly descended the wooden stair, saddled his horse, and left the auberge by dawn. He departed from Epinal at a canter, and in the overflowing happiness of his heart was singing merrily, when at a solitary part of the road, he heard the hoofs of a galloping none, and a voice impetuously calling upon him to stop. Believing this follower was I, who had discovered his secret and hasty departure, he turned to find himself confronted by a tall stranger, whose face was concealed by a black velvet mask, and whom he believed to be a brigand or assassin.

"'Monsieur,' said the strange horseman, in a voice which, by its varying tones, was too evidently disguised as his face, 'you are abroad betimes.'

"'As you also are,' replied Louis; 'but was it you, monsieur, who called upon me to stop?'

"'It was.'

"'For what purpose?'

"'That you shall shortly see.'

"'Shortly—nay, as soon as you please, for I am in haste.'

"'Indeed!' said the other scornfully and slowly.

"'What is your wish, sir?'

"Simply, that you measure swords with me in this meadow.'

"'Why?' asked Louis, with astonishment.

"'I intended to have pistolled you through the back, sans cérémonie, at first; but my heart relented; thus, I mean to afford you a chance of saving your miserable life—though I must have your purse and valuables.'

"'You are, then, a robber."

"'If one whose funds are down to zero, and who is desperate, be a robber, then I am one,' replied the mask, still in his feigned voice.

"'I am no poltroon, yet I will gladly save your soul the commission of a double crime,' said poor D'Herblay, who was the very mirror of generosity; 'here is my purse, good fellow—pray accept it and be gone, for I have no time to trifle with you.'

The unknown coolly put the purse in his pocket and drew his sword, saying, with an ironical laugh—

"'I thank you, though I would have had it, at all events; but still,' he added, grinding his teeth, 'you must fight with me!'

"'Leave me until to-morrow,' said Louis; 'there is one awaiting me at Remiremont—one expecting me to-day—whom I would not disappoint—a lady who loves me, monsieur.'

"The stranger laughed scornfully.

"'Let me see her but once again, and I shall meet you with joy.'

"The stranger laughed louder, and said bitterly—

"'Why not meet me now?'

"'I know not,' urged poor D'Herblay, who was anxious to ride on; 'but your presence chills my heart—I have a dark and solemn presentiment.'

"For a third time the other laughed ferociously, while his eyes sparkled through the holes in his mask, and he menaced D'Herblay with his sword, saying—

"'Fight—fight!'

"'To-morrow—I tell you, to-morrow.'

"'Never—be it now or never!'

"'I am too full of happiness to fight.'

"'Happiness!'

"'She whom I love—she whom I am to wed, expects me at Remiremont.'

"'She whom you love, and whom you hope to wed, shall never see you, but as a breathless corpse, fool!'

"'If I am slain, who will bear my last words to Annette?'

"'The spirits of the air or the demons of hell—I care not which,' was the fierce response.

"'Fool that I was to leave the auberge without my friend. Moreover, I decline to fight with a rascally ferrailleur!'

"This epithet, which is used in France to distinguish a person who, without provocation, delights in quarrelling and forcing others to fight, made this highway brawler tremble with rage.

"'Coward!' he thundered out.

"'Hah!' exclaimed Louis, leaping from his horse, and in his passion forgetting all but vengeance.

"'Coward, come on!' reiterated his assailant.

"Louis pressed to his lips the cameo locket which contained the hair of Annette, and with a prayer to Heaven that he might be spared to see her, rushed upon his furious antagonist. A desperate duel began, and so ably were the voice and costume of the masker disguised, that never once did a thought of Jules de Coeurdefer cross the mind of D'Herblay. They had withdrawn from the roadway into an orangery, and taken off their coats and vests to afford them greater freedom. A perfect fencer, Louis stood erect, with his head upright, his body forward on a longe, all the weight on his left haunch—feet, hands, body, arm and sword in a line, and completely covered by his weapon.

"Their swords clashed and gleamed in the bright morning sun; both were expert combatants, and most of their passes were skilfully made and as skilfully parried. The masker made a feint to the left, but changing the attack, suddenly ran his weapon through the sword-arm of Louis, fairly wedging the blade between the bones below the elbow, and covering his shirt with blood in a moment. Paralysed by this, his future defence was feeble. He received repeated wounds, and was at last laid prostrate on the earth, bleeding and senseless.

"'Lie there, thou moonstruck fool!' exclaimed his ruthless conqueror, giving him a final stroke in the breast. Tearing away the cameo locket, he left the unhappy D'Herblay a dying man, for he expired in our arms as we were conveying him to Remiremont.

On examining the wound in his breast, we found that it had been made by the blade of a small crystal poniard, which was purposely broken off from the hilt and left rankling in the orifice to insure by a mortal stroke the death of the victim!

"My first thought was of Coeurdefer, whom I knew to be the possessor of such weapons, which he had brought from Venice, where they are commonly used by the bravoes; but the proofs I could adduce were too slight for me, a stranger and a foreigner, to accuse the son of a powerful baronial family; thus the terrible suspicion remained locked in my own breast—a suspicion that grew less, however, when I remembered that the victor, like a common footpad, had taken the purse and locket of my poor friend.

"The grief of a kind, warm-hearted, and affectionate girl like Annette may be imagined. She wept little, but her sorrow was the deeper that it was unrelieved by any external manifestations. She was long inconsolable.

"Now came the war consequent to the League formed at Vienna, in 1757, to strip the King of Prussia of his dominions, and an alliance was formed by France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, when Britain declared war against the former, and all Europe seemed to 'go by the ears' at once.

"The old Marquis de Chateaunoir marched as Colonel of Horse under the Maréchal d'Estrées, and fell at the passage of the Rhine. His son, the Vicomte Henri, became a soldier, too, and soon obtained the command of the Mousquetaires Gris, into which I, then a fugitive from the Scottish Highlands, was admitted by his request; but long before all this poor little Annette had become a canoness of Remiremont.

"This ecclesiastical establishment, by the peculiarity of its constitution, is one of the most singular in the church. It was founded by St. Romerick, a famous abbot, who lived in the days of Clotaire II., and who built his first convent on what was then a bare and desolate place, at the foot of Mount Vosge. All the ladies in it, the abbess excepted, take certain vows, reserving to themselves the right of quitting the convent and marrying if they please; and all must prove their nobility by four descents before admission. The abbess had both spiritual and temporal power under the Pope and Dukes of Lorraine.

"Annette was a canoness for three years, and lived in peace, viewing the world only as a place wherein to practise those little acts of kindness and Christian charity which the ladies of St. Romerick practised so freely as to make their establishment a boon and a blessing to that sequestered little city among the mountains. There her virtues, her attention to the sick, and her charity to the poor, excited the admiration of all, as her sorrowful story, and sad, grave manner won their sympathy. So three years glided away, until in an evil hour Jules de Coeurdefer came to visit his sister, who was the superior of this remarkable establishment.

"He saw Annette unveiled in the garden; her pale beauty, her exceeding gentleness, and her loneliness raised a passion in his breast. Impetuous in all things, he at once besought his sister to intercede for him with Annette; and after many objections to engage in a task so unsuited to the nature of her office, the abbess, inspired by a natural regard for her only brother, and a desire to obtain for him the object of his choice, whom she justly deemed a pearl among women, and one whom she loved dearly and highly esteemed, left nothing unsaid to urge his suit. M. Jules became a regular visitor at the convent parlour, and daily saw Annette in the presence of the abbess, who, believing that his conversation and gaiety (for he was fresh from Paris, and the camp of Maréchal d'Estrées) might amuse and interest the lonely girl, foresaw that in a second love affair she might gradually be drawn from the terrible memory of the first and of its fatal end.

"They soon became intimate, and all Remiremont rang with gossip; the old condemned the lax discipline of the abbess, and the young rejoiced that the pretty canoness Annette de Chateaunoir was to become the wife of the handsome chevalier.

"In submission to the stronger will of the lady superior, and to the energetic mind of Jules, and perhaps dazzled a little by the brilliance, the splendid uniform, handsome figure, and gay conversation of that redoubtable personage, she passively admitted his addresses. But this new lover's deep dark eye seemed to exercise some mysterious and magnetic influence over her; for, as the poor girl afterwards told me, there were times when his glance seemed full of a terrible fascination, and when she alternately loved and felt a strange coldness—almost an involuntary repugnance for him.

"She strove to conquer this emotion, the origin of which she failed to fathom, and anxious, perhaps, to forget the terrible sequel to her first love among the gaiety proffered by the second, she consented to receive the chevalier as her husband; and lest she might retract, the ceremony was hurried on with a haste on his part which the good-natured gossips of Remiremont averred to be somewhat indelicate at least.

"His sister perceived the strange waverings and misgivings that agitated the mind of poor Annette, and on the marriage morning she embraced and kissed her tenderly.

"'Beware what you do, dearest Annette,' said she, 'lest you repent the hour you leave us. In marriage the love of the mind and character must be blended with and united to the love of the person, or there can never be any duration of tenderness or of mutual confidence. Oh, I pray Heaven, I may not have acted wrong in this affair!'

"The misgivings of the good abbess came too late.

"Full of hope, the gentle Annette smiled through her tears; full of love and triumph, the exulting chevalier led her away, and they were married. Before leaving the convent, Jules placed in her hand a case containing a complete set of brilliants—a tiara for her head, a necklace, bracelets, and rings. Among these jewels was a cameo locket, studded with the purest diamonds.

"On perceiving this well-known trinket, Annette grew pale, and tottered to a chair. It seemed to come like a signal from the grave of Louis d'Herblay to reproach her! Her features became convulsed and her voice tremulous, for in a moment she recognised her own gift to Louis, previous to his last departure for Fontamousson, and there occurred to her a strange, but just and dreadful suspicion, that for a moment paralysed her and rendered her totally incapable of repelling the chevalier, who held her in his arms, and perceived at once, and with no little confusion, the misfortune or discovery which was impending.

"'Cursed fatality!' he exclaimed, through his clenched teeth.

"'Whence come this trinket, Jules? How came it into your possession? Speak!' she exclaimed, in accents of terror, and with the gestures of passion.

"'I do not understand you, dear Annette,' said he, finding that nothing but perfect confidence and a bold falsehood would carry him through this malheur. 'I had that locket made for me by a jeweller of the Rue St. Honoré, in Paris, many years ago, as a gift for my mother."

"'It is false all this; for, four years ago, I had it made here in Remiremont."

"'Annette!'

"'Has it any secret spring or clasp?' she asked.

"'No—none, I am assured,' he answered, boldly.

"'You are sure of this, Jules?'

"'I swear to you Annette,' he urged, becoming frightfully agitated, while the perspiration rolled like beads down his brow.

"'Swear not—you have lied enough already,' she exclaimed wildly. 'See, monsieur,' she added, pressing a spring and opening the locket by a secret hitherto unknown to Coeurdefer, 'it contains my miniature and a braid of my hair—mine, given in a happy, happy hour to Louis d'Herblay! O, Louis! look down on me from heaven, and see how fate has avenged thee! Away, chevalier—away; come not near me, and touch me not! If other proof were wanting that you were his murderer, it is here.'

"These words were rashly spoken, yet they stung Jules to the soul. She tore her bridal chaplet and veil from her brow, trampled on them with gestures of frenzy, and was borne away insensible in the arms of the canonesses.

"In one hour after that dénouement the exasperated chevalier had left Remiremont for the French camp—left it to return no more."

"And what of Annette?" asked some one.

"She took the black veil, and is now nun of the convent of St. Nicole, seven miles from Nancy. With that day's discovery began and ended the wedded life of Coeurdefer; and since then he has led a wild and reckless career, committing innumerable acts of daring, which by some strange fatality have passed as yet unpunished; but the assassination of D'Herblay—for that he did assassinate him, I have not the slightest doubt—is the blackest of his acts; unless, indeed, that other episode at Minden be a deeper and a darker one.

"The marriage prevented the Vicomte Henri alike from prosecuting him at common law as a felon, and from challenging him to a solemn duel, and so time passed on; but he hated my colonel—the handsome young Mousquetaire—with the hate of a tiger; hence I doubt not that by his hand, or the hands of some of his lawless troop at his behest, my leader perished on the field of Minden!

"France has not in all her army a more splendid soldier than that Mousquetaire Gris!

"After the junction of the French army under M. de Contades and M. de Broglio, as I have related, on their approach Prince Ferdinand retreated, first to Lippstadt, and afterwards to Ham, where he mustered all the forces in the Bishopric of Munster, and was joined by the soldiers of Imhoff, while we advanced and took possession of Cassel, Minden, and Beverungen.