.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 55527
   :PG.Title: Bothwell, Volume \I (of 3)
   :PG.Released: 2017-09-11
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: James Grant
   :DC.Title: Bothwell
              or, The Days of Mary Queen of Scots
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1851
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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BOTHWELL, VOLUME I
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      BOTHWELL:

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      OR,

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      THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

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      BY JAMES GRANT, ESQ.,

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      AUTHOR OF

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

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      IN THREE VOLUMES.

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      VOL. \I.

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

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

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   PREFACE.

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The leading event upon which the following
story hinges, will be found in the illustrative
notes at the end of the third volume,
which will show that the Magister Absalom
(so frequently referred to) was a real
personage, who, in the days of Earl Bothwell,
was a Protestant clergyman at Bergen, and
author of a Diary named *The Chapter Book*.

There is no style of reading more conducive
to a good or evil result, than the
historical romance, according to the manner
it is treated, by a judicious or injudicious
writer.  I have been studious in avoiding
any distortion of history, the tenor of which
is so often misconstructed wilfully by writers
of romance; for there are bounds beyond
which not even they are entitled to go.
The Scottish reader will find how closely I
have woven up the stirring events of 1567
with my own story, which, in reality,
contains much more that is veracious than
fictitious.

Thus, Bothwell's journey to Denmark—his
conflict with John of Park—the Queen's
visit to Hermitage—the assault on the house
of Alison Craig—the brawl and assistance
given the Earl (in mistake for Arran) by the
Abbot of Kilwinning—and many other
incidents, all occurred actually as related.

With one or two exceptions, every character
in the following pages was a *bona fide*
personage "of flesh and blood," who existed
at the time, and was an actor in the scenes
narrated.

In the general grouping, costume, and
other dramatic accessaries, I have
endeavoured (as closely as I could) to draw a
picture of the Scottish court and metropolis
in the year 1567, at a time when the
splendour of both was dimmed by the poverty
which followed the wars and tumults of the
Reformation; and with what success, I may
say with the old knights of Cumbernauld—"Let
the deed shaw!"

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EDINBURGH, *September*, 1851.

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   CONTENTS OF VOL. \I.

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CHAPTER 

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I. `The Castle of Bergen`_
II. `Erick Rosenkrantz`_
III. `The Strangers`_
IV. `A Norse Supper`_
V. `The Earl and Hob Discourse`_
VI. `Anna`_
VII. `Konrad`_
VIII. `The Cock-of-the-Woods`_
IX. `Lord Huntly's Letter`_
X. `The Hermit of Bergen`_
XI. `The Fleur-de-Lys`_
XII. `The Isle of Westeray`_
XIII. `Noltland`_
XIV. `The Separation`_
XV. `Doubt and Despair`_
XVI. `Blantyre Priory`_
XVII. `The Countess of Bothwell`_
XVIII. `The Rescue`_
XIX. `The Rejected and the Rival`_
XX. `Konrad and the Countess`_
XXI. `Disappointment`_
XXII. `The Countess Jane`_
XXIII. `The Pursuit`_
XXIV. `Mary, Queen of Scots`_





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.. _`THE CASTLE Of BERGEN`:

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   BOTHWELL;

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   OR,

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   THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

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   CHAPTER I.

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   THE CASTLE Of BERGEN.

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..

   |  The stern old shepherd of the air,
   |  The spirit of the whistling hair,
   |  The wind has risen drearily
   |  In the northern evening sea,
   |  And is piping long and loud
   |  From many a heavy up-coming cloud.
   |                          *Leigh Hunt.*

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It was the autumn of a bleak day in the
September of 1566.

Enveloped in murky clouds, through
which, at times, its red rays shot along the
crested waves, the Norwegian sun was
verging to the westward.  From the frozen
Baltic a cold wind swept down the Skager Rack,
and, urged by the whole force of the Atlantic
ocean, the sullen waves poured their foam
upon the rocky bluffs and fissured crags that
overhang the fiord of Christiana.

In those days, a vessel in the fiord proved
an object of the greatest interest to the
inhabitants of the hamlet; and it was with
growing fears that the anxious housewives
and weatherwise fishermen of Bergen, a
little wooden town situated on the bay of
Christiana, watched the exertions made by
the crew of a small crayer or brigantine, of
some eighty tons or so, that under bare
poles, or having at least only her great square
spritsail and jib set, endeavoured to weather
the rocky headland to the east, and gain
their little harbour, within which the water
lay smooth as a millpond, forming by its
placidity a strong contrast to the boiling and
heaving ocean without.

The last rays of the September sun had
died away on the pine-clad hills of
Christiana and the cathedral spire of Bergen.
Night came on sooner than usual, and the
sky was rendered opaque by sable clouds,
through which the red streaks of lightning
shot red and forklike; while the hollow thunder
reverberated afar off among the splintered
summits of the Silverbergen.

Then through the flying vapour, where,
parted by the levin brand, the misty rain
poured down in torrents on the pathless sea,
and the goodwives of Bergen told their beads,
and muttered a *Hail Mary!* or a prayer to
Saint Erick the Martyr for the souls of the
poor mariners, who, they were assured, would
find their graves at the bottom of the deep
Skager Rack ere morning brightened on the
waters of the Sound.

The royal castle of Bergen, a great square
tower of vast strength and unknown antiquity,
reared on a point of rock, still overlooks
the town that in the year of our story
was little more than a fisher hamlet.  Swung
in an iron grating on its battlement, a huge
beacon fire had been lighted by order of the
governor to direct the struggling ship; and
now the flames from the blazing mass of tarred
fagots and well-oiled flax streamed like a torn
banner on the stormy wind, and lit up the
weatherbeaten visages of a few Danish
soldiers who were grouped on the keep, glinting
on their steel caps and mail shirts, and on
the little brass minions and iron drakes that
peeped between the timeworn embrasures.

Another group, which since sunset had been
watching the strange ship, was crowded under
the sheltering arch of the castle gate,
watching for the dispersion of the clouds or the
rising of the moon to reveal her whereabouts.

"Hans Knuber," said a young man who
appeared at the wicket, and whose half
military attire showed that he was captain of
the king's crossbowmen at Bergen, "dost
thou think she will weather the Devil's Nose
on the next tack?"

"I doubt it much, Captain Konrad," replied
the fisherman, removing his right hand
from the pocket of his voluminous red breeches
to the front of his fur cap, "unless they steer
with the keep of Bergen and the spire of the
bishop's church in a line; which I saw they
did not do.  Ugh! yonder she looms! and
what a sea she shipped!  How heavily her
fore and after castles and all her top-hamper
make her heel to leeward!"

"They who man her seem to have but
small skill in pilot-craft," said one.

"By Saint Olaus!" cried another, "unless
some one boards and pilots her, another
quarter of an hour will see her run full
plump on the reef; and then God assoilzie
both master and mariner!"

"Luff—luff—timoneer!" exclaimed the
first seaman.  "Now keep her full!  Would
I had my hands on thy tiller!"

"Every moment the night groweth darker,"
said the young man whom they called
Konrad, and whom they treated with marked
respect: "as the clouds darken the lightning
brightens.  A foul shame it were to old
Norway, to have it said that so many of
us—stout fellows all—stood idly and saw
yonder struggling ship lost for lack of a little
pilot-craft: for as thou sayest, Hans, if she
runs so far again eastward on the next tack
she must strike on the sunken reefs."

"No boat could live in such a sea," muttered
the fishermen as they drew back, none
appearing solicitous of the selection which
they expected the young man would make.

"The mists are coming down from the
Arctic ocean—the west wind always brings
them," said Jans Thorson; "and we all know
'tis in these mists that the spirits of the
mountain and storm travel."

"Come hither, Hans Knuber," said the
captain, whose plumed cap and rich dress of
scarlet velvet, trimmed with white fur, and
braided with silver like a hussar pelisse,
were rapidly changing their hues under the
drenching rain that lashed the castle wall,
and hissed through the deep-mouthed
archway.  "Come hither, thou great seahorse!
Dost mean to tell me thou art afraid?"

"Sir captain, I fear neither the storm nor
the spirit of the mist; but Zernebok the
lord of evil may be abroad to-night, and he
and the Hermit of the Rock may chance to
remember how once in my cups, like an ass
as I was, I reviled and mocked them both."

"Bah!" retorted Konrad, whose superstition
did not go so far as that of the seaman;
"Jans Thorson, I will give thee this silver
chain to launch and put forth to yonder
ship.  Come, man—away, for the honour of
old Norway!"

"Not for all the silver in yonder hills, sir
captain, nor the copper in the mines of
Fahlun to boot, would I trust myself beyond the
Devil's Nose to-night," said the old fisherman
bluntly.  "I have just refused Master
Sueno, the chamberlain."

"Why, 'twas just in such a storm old
Christian Alborg, and his stout ship the
Biornen, were blown away into the wide
ocean," said another; "and I marvel much,
noble Konrad, that you would urge poor
fellows like us"——

"On a venture which I would not attempt
myself!" exclaimed the young man, whose
dark blue eyes flashed at his own suggestion.
"Now, Saint Olaus forefend thou shouldst
say so!"

"Nay, noble Konrad"——

"But thou dost think so?"

The fisherman was silent.

A flush crossed the handsome face of
Konrad of Saltzberg.  He looked seaward a
moment.  The wind was roaring fearfully
among the bare summits of the cliffs that
towered abruptly from the shore to the very
clouds—absolute mountains of rock rising
peak above peak; and when the blue lightning
flashed among them, their granite tops
were seen stretching away in the distance,
while the giant pines that flourished in their
clefts and gorges, were tossing like black
ostrich feathers in the storm.

At the harbour mouth the waves of snow-white
foam were visible through the gloom,
as they lashed, and hissed, and burst in
successive mountains on the rocks of worn
granite that fringed the entrance of the
haven.

Konrad cast a rapid glance around him,
and the appalling fury of the northern storm
made even his gallant heart waver for a
moment in its generous purpose; but a fair
female face, that with all its waving ringlets
appeared at a little casement overlooking the
portal, and a kiss wafted to him from "a
quick small hand," decided him.  His eyes
sparkled, and turning briskly round to the
fishermen, he said,—

"By my honour, Sirs, though knowing
less of pilot-craft than of handling the boll of
an arblast, I will prove to you that I require
nothing of any man that I dare not myself
attempt—so thus will I put forth alone—and
even if I perish shame you all."

And, throwing aside his sword and short
mantle, the young man rushed down the
steep pathway that led to the little pier, and
leaped on board one of the long light whaleboats
that lay there; but ere his ready hand
had quite cast off the rope that bound it to a
ringbolt on the mole, both Hans Knuber
and Jans Thorson, fired by his example,
sprang on board, and with more of the
action of elephants, in their wide fur boots
and mighty breeches, than the agility of
seamen, they seized each an oar, and pushed off.

In Denmark and Norway, there were and
are few titles of honour; but there has always
existed in the latter an untitled nobility,
like our Scottish lairds and English squires,
consisting of very old families, who are more
highly revered than those ennobled by
Norway's Danish rulers; and many of these
can trace their blood back to those terrible
vikingr or ocean kings, who were so long
the conquerors of the English Saxons, and
the scourge of the Scottish shores.

Konrad of the Saltzberg (for he had no
other name than that which he took from a
solitary and half-ruined tower overlooking
the fiord) was the representative of one of
those time-honoured races.

The fame his brave ancestors had won
under the enchanted banner of Regner
Lodbrog, Erick with the bloody axe, and
Sigwardis Ring, yet lived in the songs and
stories of the northern harpers; and Konrad
was revered for these old memories of
Norway's ancient days, while his own bravery,
affability, and handsome exterior, gained him
the love of the Norse burghers of Bergen,
the Danish bowmen he commanded, the
fishermen of the fiord, and the huntsmen of
the woods of Aggerhuis.

By the glare of the beacon on the castle
wall, his boat was briefly seen amid the
deepening gloom as it rose on the heaving
swell, and the broad-bladed oars of his lusty
companions flashed as they were dipped in
the sparkling water.  A moment, and a
moment only, they were visible; Konrad was
seen to move his plumed cap, and his
cheerful hallo was heard; the next, they had
vanished into obscurity.

The fishers gazed on the gloom with
intensity, but could discover nothing; and
there was no other sound came on the
bellowing wind, save the roar of the resounding
breakers as they broke on the impending
bluffs.





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.. _`ERICK ROSENKRANTZ`:

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   CHAPTER II.


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   ERICK ROSENKRANTZ.

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   |  Turn round, turn round, thou Scottish youth,
   |    Or loud thy sire shall mourn;
   |  For if thou touchest Norway's strand,
   |    Thou never shalt return.
   |                              *Vedder.*

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The hall of the castle of Bergen was a
spacious but rude apartment, spanned by a
stone arch, ribbed with massive groins, that
sprung from the ponderous walls.

Its floor was composed of oak planks, and
two clumsy stone columns, surmounted by
grotesque capitals, supported the round
archway of the fireplace, above which was
a rudely carved, and still more rudely painted,
shield, bearing the golden lion of ancient
Norway in a field gules.  Piled within the
arch lay a heap of roots and billets, blazing
and rumbling in the recesses of the great
stone chimney.  Eight tall candles, each
like a small flambeau, flared in an iron
candelabrum, and sputtered in the currents
of air that swept through the hall.

Various weapons hung on the rough walls
of red sandstone; there were heavy Danish
ghisannas or battle-axes of steel, iron mauls,
ponderous maces, and deadly morglays,
two-handed swords of enormous length, iron
bucklers, chain hauberks, and leathern
surcoats, all of uncouth fashion, and fully two
hundred years behind the arms then used
by the more southern nations of Europe.

The long table occupying the centre of the
hall was of wood that had grown in the
forests of Memel; it was black as ebony with
age, and the clumsy chairs and stools that
were ranged against the walls were all of the
same homely material.  Several deerskins
were spread before the hearth, and thereon
reposed a couple of shaggy wolf-hounds,
that ever and anon cocked their ears when
a louder gust than usual shook the hall
windows, or when the rain swept the feathery
soot down the wide chimney to hiss in the
sparkling fire.

Near the hearth stood a chair covered
with gilded leather, and studded with brass
nails; and so different was its aspect from
the rest of the unornamented furniture, that
there was no difficulty in recognising it as
the seat of state.  A long sword, the silver
hilt of which was covered with a curious
network of steel, hung by an embroidered
baldrick on one knob thereof, balanced by a
little velvet cap adorned with a long scarlet
feather, on the other.

The proprietor of these articles, a stout
old man, somewhere about sixty-five, whose
rotundity had been considerably increased
by good living, was standing in the arched
recess of a well-grated window, peering
earnestly out upon the blackness of the night,
in hope to discern some trace of that strange
vessel, concerning which all Bergen was
agog.  His complexion was fair and florid,
and though his head was bald and polished,
the long hair that hung from his temples and
mingled with his bushy beard and heavy
mustaches, was, like them, of a decided
yellow; but his round visage was of the
ruddiest and most weatherbeaten brown.
There was a bold and frank expression in
his keen blue eye, that with his air and
aspect forcibly realized the idea of those
Scandinavian vikingr who were once the
tyrants of Saxons, and the terror of the
Scots.

His flowing robe of scarlet cloth, trimmed
with black fur and laced with gold, his
Norwayn anlace or dagger, sheathed in
crimson leather sown with pearls, and the
large rowelled spurs that glittered on the
heels of his Muscovite leather boots,
announced him one of Norway's untitled
noblesse.  He was Erick Rosenkrantz of
Welsöö, governor of the province of Aggerhuis,
castellan of Bergen, and knight of the
Danish orders of the Elephant and Dannebrog.

"Sueno Throndson," said he to a little
old man who entered the hall, muffled in a
mantle of red deerskin, which was drenched
with rain, "dost thou think there is any
chance of yonder strange bark weathering
the storm, and getting under the lee of our
ramparts?"

"I know not, noble sir," replied Sueno,
casting his drenched cloak on the floor, and
displaying his under attire, which (saith the
Magister Absalom Beyer, whose minute
narrative we follow) consisted of a green cloth
gaberdine, trimmed with the fur of the black
fox, and girt at the waist by a broad belt,
sustaining a black bugle-horn and short
hunting sword.  "I have serious doubts; for the
waves of the fiord are combating with the
currents from the Skager Rack, and whirling
like a maelstrom.  I have been through
the whole town of Bergen; but neither offer
nor bribe—no, not even the bishop's blessing,
a hundred pieces of silver, and thrice as
many deer hides—will induce one of the
knavish fishermen or white-livered pilots to
put forth a boat to pick up any of these
strangers, who must all drown the moment
their ship strikes; and strike she must, if
the wind holds."

"The curse of Saint Olaus be on them!"
grumbled the governor, glancing at a rude
image of Norway's tutelary saint.

"Amen!" added Sueno, as he wrung the
wet tails of his gaberdine.

"Didst thou try threats, then?"

"By my soul, I did so; and with equal
success."

"Dost thou gibe me, Throndson?  This
to me, the governor of Aggerhuis, and
captain of the king's castle of Bergen!"
muttered the portly official, walking to and fro,
and swelling with importance as he spoke.

"The oldest of our fishermen are ready
to swear on the blessed gospels that there
has not been seen such a storm since
Christian Alborg, in the Biornen, was blown from
his moorings."

"Under the ramparts of this, the king's
castle, by foul sorcery; and on the vigil of
Saint Erick the king, and martyr too!  I
remember it well, Sueno.  But what! is the old
Norse spirit fallen so far, that these villains
have become so economical of their persons
that they shrink from a little salt water? and
that none will launch a shallop in such
to save these poor strangers, who,
unless they know the coast, will assuredly
run full tilt on the Devil's Nose at the haven
mouth?  By Saint Olaus!  I can see the
white surf curling over its terrible ridge,
through the gloom, even at this moment."

"I said all this, noble sir," replied Sueno,
brushing the rain from his fur bonnet; "but
none attended to me save young Konrad of
the Saltzberg, the captain of our Danish
crossbowmen, who cursed them for white-livered
coistrils, and launching a boat, with
Hans Knuber and Jans Thorson the pilot,
pushed off from the mole, like brave hearts
as they are, in the direction of the labouring
ship, which Konrad vowed to pilot round
the Devil's Nose or perish."

"Fool! and thou only tellest me of this
now!  Konrad—the boldest youth and the
best in all old Norway!" exclaimed the burly
governor.  "Hah! and hath the last of an
ancient and gallant race to peril his life on
such a night as this, when these baseborn
drawers of nets and fishers of seals hang back?"

"His boat vanished into the gloom in a
moment, and we heard but one gallant blast
from his bugle ring above the roar of the
waves that boil round that terrible promontory."

"The mother of God pray for him—brave
lad!  What the devil!  Sueno, I would not
for all the ships on the northern seas, a hair
of Konrad's head were injured; for though he
is no kin to me, I love the lad as if he were
mine own and only son.  See that my niece
Anna knoweth not of this wild adventure till
he returns safe.  She has seemed somewhat
cold to him of late; some lover's pique"——

"I pray he *may* return, Sir Erick."

"He must—he *shall* return!" rejoined the
impetuous old knight, stamping his foot.
"Yea, and in safety too, or I will sack
Bergen, and scourge every fisher in it.  From
whence thought these knaves the stranger came?"

"From Denmark."

"Malediction on Denmark!" said Rosenkrantz,
feeling his old Norse prejudices rising
in his breast.  "Assure me that she is Danish,
and I will extinguish the beacon and let them
all drown and be——!"

"Nay, nay, Sir Governor, they know her
to be a good ship of Scotland, commanded by
a certain great lord of that country, who is
on an embassy to Frederick of Denmark, and
hath been cruising in these seas."

"Then my double malediction on the Scots,
too!" said the governor, as he turned away
from the hall window.

"And so say I, noble Sir," chimed in the
obsequious chamberlain, as he raised the
skirts of his gaberdine, and warmed his
voluminous trunk hosen before the great fire.

"Right, Throndson! though eight of our
monarchs are buried in Iona, under the Ridge
of the Kings, the death of Coelus of Norway,
who is graved in the Scottish Kyles, still lives
in our songs; and the fatal field of Largs,
when aided by such a storm as this, the Scots
laid Haco's enchanted banner in the waves."

"And the wars of Erick with the bloody axe."

"And of Harold Graafeldt, his son."

"And Magnus with the Barefeet," continued
the old man, whose eyes gleamed at
the names of these savage kings of early Scandinavia.

"Enough, Sueno," said the governor, who
was again peering from the window into the
darkness; "enough, or thou wilt fire my old
Norse heart in such wise by these fierce
memories, that no remnant of Christian feeling will
remain in it.  After all, it matters not, Scots
or Danes, we ought to pray for the souls that
are now perhaps, from yonder dark abyss,
ascending to the throne of God unblessed and
unconfessed," added the old knight, with a
sudden burst of religious feeling.

"God assoil them!" added Sueno crossing
himself, and becoming pious too.

From the windows of the hall little else
was seen but the dark masses of cloud that
flew hither and thither on the stormy wind;
at times a red star shot a tremulous ray
through the openings, and was again hidden.
Far down, beneath the castle windows, boiled
the fierce ocean, and its white foam was
visible when the lofty waves reared up their
crested heads to lash the impending cliffs;
but we have said that the bosom of the
harbour was smooth as a summer lake when
compared with the tumult of the fiord of
Christiana.  Overhead, showers of red sparks
were swept away through the gloom, from
the beacon that blazed on the keep to direct
the waveworn ship.

"What led Hans Knuber and his brother
knave of the net, to deem the stranger was
a Scot?  By her lumbering leeboard I would
have sworn she was a Lubecker."

"Nay, Sir, her high fore and after castles
marked her Scottish build; and both Hans
Knuber and Jans Thorson, who have eyes
for these matters, and have traded to
Kirkwall—yea, and even to that Scottish sea the
fiord of Forth—averred she bore Saint
Andrew's saltire flying at her mizen-peak——I
see nothing of her now," continued Sueno.

"See! why, 'tis so dark, one cannot see
the length of one's own nose.  They must
have perished!"

At that moment the flash of a culverin
glared amid the obscurity far down below;
but its report was borne away on the wind
that roared down the narrow fiord to bury
its fury in the Skager Rack.

"God and St. Olaus be praised!" muttered
the old knight, rubbing his hands: "they
are almost within the haven mouth; another
moment, and they will be safe."

"Thou forgettest, noble sir," said the
chamberlain, "that the stranger's pilot may
be unacquainted with the nooks and crooks
of our harbour, the rocks and reefs that
fringe it, and that the water in some parts
is two hundred fathoms deep."

"Saidst thou not that Konrad and Hans
Knuber had put off in a boat?"

"True, true!  A ray of light is shining
on the water now."

"Whence comes it?"

"'Tis the hermit in the cavern under the
rocks, who hath lit a beacon on the beach
to direct the benighted ship."

"Saint Olaf bless him!  Hoh! there goeth
the culverin again.  We heard the report
this time.  They are saved!  'Tis Konrad
of Saltzberg hath done this gallant deed, and
heaven reward him! for many a poor fellow
had perished else.  Now that they are in
safe anchorage, away Sueno Throndson, take
thy chamberlain's staff and chain, man a
boat, board this seaworn ship, and invite
this Scottish lord to Bergen; for a foul
shame it were in a knight of the Elephant, to
permit the ambassador of a queen, to remain
on shipboard after such a storm, and within
a bowshot of his Danish majesty's castle:
we would be worse than Finns or Muscovites.
Away, Sueno! for now the storm is lulling,
and under the lee of its high hills the
harbour is smooth as a mirror."

Thus commanded, Sueno unwillingly
enveloped himself once more in the
before-mentioned fur mantle, and retired.

A blast of his horn was heard to ring in
the yard as he summoned certain followers,
who grumbled and swore in guttural Norse
as they scrambled after him down the steep
and winding pathway, that led from the
castle gate to the mole of Bergen.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE STRANGERS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE STRANGERS.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  To tell the terrors of deep untried,
   |  What toils we suffer'd, and what storms defied;
   |  What mountain surges, mountain surges lash'd,
   |  What sudden hurricanes the canvass dash'd;
   |  To tell each horror in the deep reveal'd,
   |  Would ask an iron throat with tenfold vigour steel'd.
   |                                      *Lusiad of Camoens.*

.. vspace:: 2

"How now, Anna! thou lookest as pale as
if all the gnomes of the Silverbergen, or
Nippen and Zernebok to boot, had been
about thee.  Art thou affrighted by the storm,
child?" asked Erick, pinching the soft cheek
of his niece, who at that moment had entered
the hall, and glided to his side in one
of the great windows.

Her only reply was to clasp her hands
upon his arm, and look up in his face with a
fond smile.

Anna Rosenkrantz was the only daughter of
Svend of Aggerhuis, the governor's younger
brother, who had fallen in battle with the
Holsteiners.  In stature she was rather
under the middle height; and so full and
round was her outline, that many might
have considered it too much so, but for the
exquisite fairness of her skin, the beauty of
her features, and the grace pervading every
motion.  Norway is famed for its fair beauties,
but the lustre of Anna's complexion was
dazzling; her neck and forehead were white
as the unmelting snows of the Dovrefeldt.
From under the lappets of a little velvet
cap, which was edged by a row of Onslo
pearls, her dark-brown ringlets flowed in
heavy profusion, and seemed almost black
when contrasted with the neck on which
they waved.  Her eyes were of a decided
grey, dark, but clear and sparkling.  The
curve of her mouth and chin were very
piquant and arch in expression; her smile
was ever one of surpassing sweetness, and
at times of coquetry.

A jacket of black velvet, fashioned like a
Bohemian vest, trimmed with narrow edgings
of white fur, and studded with seed pearls,
displayed the full contour of her beautiful
bust; but unhappily her skirt was one of
those enormous fardingales which were then
becoming the rage over all Europe.

"Have the roaring of the wind and the
screaming of the water-sprite scared thee,
Anna?" continued the old man, who, like a
true Nordlander, believed every element to
be peopled by unseen spirits and imps.  "By
the bones of Lodbrog!" he added, patting
her soft cheek with his huge bony hand,
"my mind misgave me much that this last
year's sojourn at the palace of Kiobenhafen
would fairly undo thee."

"How, good uncle?" said Anna, blushing
slightly.

"By tainting thine inbred hardiment of
soul, my little damsel, and making thee,
instead of a fearless Norse maiden, and a
dweller in the land of hills and cataracts,
like one of those sickly moppets whom I
have seen clustered round the tabouret of
Frederick's queen, when, for my sins, I
spent a summer at his court during the war
with Christian II., that tyrant and tool of
the Dutch harlot, Sigiberta."

"Indeed, uncle mine, you mistake me,"
replied Anna, "though I will own myself
somewhat terrified by this unwonted storm."

"There now! said I not so?  Three years
ago, would the screaming of the eagles, the
yelling of the wood-demon, the howl of the
wind, or the tumult of the ocean, when all
the spirits of the Skager Rack are rolling its
billows on the rocks, have affrighted thee?
Bah! what is there so terrible in all that?
Do not forget, my girl, that thou comest of a
race of sea-kings who trace their blood from
O'Ivarre—he who with Andd and Olaff ravaged
all the Scottish shores from Thurso to
the Clyde, and once even placed the red
lion of Norway on the double dun of
Alcluyd.[\*]  But I warrant thou art only
terrified for young Konrad, who, like a
gallant Norseman, hath run his life into such
deadly peril."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] A.D. 870 (Note by Mag. Absalom Beyer.)

.. vspace:: 2

"Konrad—tush!" said Anna pettishly.

"Ay, Konrad!" reiterated Erick testily;
"which way doth the wind blow now?  By
my soul, damosel, thou takest very quietly
the danger in which the finest young fellow
in all Norway has thrust himself—when even
the boldest of our fishers drew back.  He
departed in a poor shallop to guide yonder
devilish ship round the dangerous promontory,
and if the blessed saints have not
prevailed over the spirits of evil, who make
their bourne in the caverns of that dark
ocean—then I say, God help thee, Konrad
of Saltzberg!  But fear not, Anna,"
continued the old man kindly, perceiving that
she turned away as if to conceal tears;
"for thy lover is stout of heart and strong
of hand—and—there now!—the devil's in
my old gossiping tongue—pest upon it!—I
have made thee weep."

Anna's breast heaved very perceptibly, and
she covered her face, not to conceal her tears,
but the smile that spread over her features.

"Come, damosel—away to thy toilet; for
know there is in yonder ship which we have
watched the livelong day, and which has
escaped destruction so narrowly, a certain
great lord, who this night shall sup with us;
for I have sent Sueno with a courteous
message, inviting him to abide, so long as it
pleases him, in the king's castle of Bergen.
Be gay, Anna; for I doubt not thou wilt be
dying to hear tidings of what is astir in the
great world around Aggerhuis; for, during
the last month since thy return here, thou
hast moped like some melancholy oyster on
the frozen cape yonder."

"A great lord, saidst thou, uncle?" asked
Anna with sudden animation.

"Of Scotland—so said Sueno."

Anna blushed scarlet; but the momentary
expression of confusion was replaced by one
of pride and triumph.

"Did thou hear of any such at Frederick's
court, little one?"

"Yes—oh yes! there were two on an embassy
concerning the isles of Shetland."

"Ah! which that fool, Christian of Oldenburg,
gave to the Scottish king with his
daughter Margaret?  Their names?"

"I marked them not," replied Anna with
hesitation; "for thou knowest, uncle mine,
I bear no good-will unto these rough-footed
Scots."

"Keep all thy good-will for the lad who
loves thee so well," said the old man smiling,
as he pressed his wiry mustaches against
her white forehead.  "I see thou hast still
the old Norse spirit, Anna.  Though three
centuries have come and gone since the field
of Largs was lost by Haco and his host, we
have not forgotten it; and vengeance for
that day's slaughter and defeat still forms no
small item in our oaths of fealty and of
knighthood.  But hark! the horn of Sueno!  There
are torches flashing on the windows, and
strange voices echoing, in the court.  Away,
girl! and bring me my sword and collars of
knighthood from yonder cabinet; for I must
receive these guests as becomes the king's
representative at Aggerhuis, and captain of
his castle of Bergen."

Anna glided from his side, and in a minute
returned with a casket from the cabinet,
and the long heavy sword that lay on
the chair at the fireplace.  She clasped the
rich waistbelt round the old man's burly
figure, and drawing from the casket the
gold chain with the diamond *Elephant*, having
under its feet the enamelled motto,

.. class:: center

   "Trew is Wildbrat,"—

.. vspace:: 1

and the woven collar bearing the red cross
of the Dannebrog, she placed them round
Sir Brick's neck, and the jewels sparkled
brightly among the red hair of his bushy
beard.

She then glanced hurriedly at her own
figure in an opposite mirror; adjusted the
jaunty little cap before mentioned; ran her
slender fingers through her long dark
ringlets; smiled with satisfaction at her own
beauty; and took her seat on a low tabouret
near the great stuffed chair, between the
gilded arms of which the pompous old
governor wedged his rotund figure, with an
energy that made his visage flush scarlet to
the temples; and he had barely time to
assume his most imposing aspect of official
dignity, when the light of several flambeaux
flashed through the dark doorway at the
lower end of the hall, and the handsome
commander of his crossbowmen, Konrad of
Saltzberg, with his features pale from fatigue,
and his long locks, like his furred pelisse,
damp with salt water, and Sueno wearing
his gold chain and key, having his white
wand uplifted, and attended by several
torch-bearers in the king's livery, preceded
the strangers.

The first who approached was a tall and
handsome man, in whose strong figure there
was a certain jaunty air, that suited well the
peculiar daredevil expression of his deep
dark eye, which bespoke the confirmed man
of pleasure.  He seemed to be about thirty
years of age, and was clad in a shining
doublet of cloth of gold, over which he wore a
cuirass of the finest steel, attached to the
backplate by braces of burnished silver.  His
mantle was of purple velvet lined with white
satin; his trunk breeches were of the latter
material slashed with scarlet silk, and were
of that enormous fashion then so much in
vogue, being so preposterously stuffed with
tow, hair, or bombast, as to render even
greaves useless in battle.  He wore a long
sword and Scottish dagger.  His blue velvet
bonnet was adorned by a diamond aigrette,
from which sprung three tall white ostrich
feathers.  His eyes were keen, dark, and
proud, and their brows nearly met over his
nose, which was straight; he wore little beard,
but his mustaches were thick and pointed
upward.  His page, a saucy-looking lad of
sixteen, whom he jocularly called Nick (for
his name was Nicholas Hubert), came close
behind him; he was richly attired, and bore
a very handsome salade of polished steel.

His companion, who deferentially remained
a few paces behind, was also richly clad in
the same extravagant fashion.  His
complexion was swarthy and dark as that of a
Spanish Moor.  His peaked beard, his
enormous mustaches and short curly hair, were
of the deepest black, and his dark hazel eyes
were fierce, keen, and restless in expression.
In addition to his sword and dagger, which
were of unusual length, he carried at his
glittering baldrick a short wheelock caliver
or dague; and in lieu of a corselet wore a
pyne doublet, calculated to resist sword-cuts.
He had a gorget of fine steel under his thick
ruff; and we must not omit to add that his
bulk and stature were gigantic, for he stood
six foot eight in his boots.

"My lord, Sir Erick," began the chamberlain,
"allow me to introduce James Hepburn,
Earl of Bothwell, a noble peer, ambassador
from Mary, queen of the Scots, to his
Danish majesty."

The portly governor of Aggerhuis bowed
profoundly, each time reversing the hilt of
the long toledo that hung by his voluminous
trunk hose; while the graceful Earl, with a
courtesy that, to a close observer, might
have seemed a little overdone, swept the
hall floor with his ostrich plumes as he
bowed and shook the hand of the bluff old
Norwegian.

"Hark you, master chamberlain," said he,
"please to introduce my friend."

"My lord, Sir Erick," began Sueno.

"Cock and pie!  Bothwell! he can introduce
himself without the aid of chamberlain
or chambercheild," said the dark man
with a bravo air.  "My good lord governor,
thou seest in me Hob Ormiston of that Ilk,
otherwise Black Hob of Teviotdale, very
much at your service; and, by the holy
rood!"——

"Stuff!" interrupted the Earl; "know,
we swear by nought but the staff of John
Knox now."

"Foul fell thee, Bothwell!" said Black Hob
ironically; "art thou growing profane?"

"Art thou turning preacher?" whispered
the Earl with a laugh; "but prithee act
gravely before this old Norland bear, or ill
may come of it.  We thank you for your
gracious hospitality, fair Sir," he added
aloud; "and with gratitude will exchange for
this noble hall, the narrow cabin of my half
sinking galliot, and the black tumbling waves
of yonder devilish sea."

"The king's castle of Bergen is ever at
the service of the subjects of her fair Scottish
majesty; and, in the name of Frederick of
Zeeland, I bid you welcome to its poor accommodation."

"And now, brave youth! by whose valour
we have been saved, let me thank you," said
the Scottish earl, turning suddenly with
generous gratitude to Konrad of Saltzberg,
who had remained a little behind.  "Had
you not gained our ship at that desperate
crisis, and directed our wavering timoneer, it
had assuredly been dashed to pieces on
yonder promontory."

"Yes—noble sir—the Devil's Nose," said Sueno.

"To venture in that frail shallop through
the fierce surf of yonder boiling sea, was the
bravest deed I ever saw man do; and
remember I come from a land of brave hearts
and gallant deeds."

The Earl warmly shook the hand of Konrad,
who endeavoured to gain one glance
from Anna, but she was too intently
regarding the strangers.

In the dusky shadow formed by the
projecting mantelpiece, she had stood a little
apart, but now caught the eye of the Earl,
who, with an air in which exquisite grace
was curiously blended with assurance,
advanced and kissed her hand.

"'Tis my niece," said Rosenkrantz; but
the moment the light fell full upon her
blushing face and beautiful figure, Bothwell
started—his colour heightened, and his eyes
sparkled.

"Anna—Lady Anna!"—he exclaimed;
"art *thou* here?"

"Welcome, my lord, to Bergen," she
replied with a bright smile; "then you have
not forgotten me?"

"Forgotten thee!" exclaimed the Earl, as
half kneeling he again kissed her hand;
"ah! how could I ever forget?  This is joy indeed!
How little I dreamt of meeting thee here,
fair Anna; for when we parted at the palace
of King Frederick, I feared it was to meet no
more."

"Thou seest, my lord," she replied gaily;
"that Fate never meant to separate us altogether."

"Then I will rail at Fate no more."

"When I prayed the blessed Mary to intercede
for the poor ship, which all this live-long
day we saw tossing on the waves of the
Fiord, how little did I deem my prayers were
offered up for you!"

"A thousand thanks, dear lady!  I too
prayed, now and then; but I doubt not the
blessed Virgin hath rather hearkened to thee,
who in purity, beauty, and innocence may so
nearly approach herself."

"Cock and pie!" muttered Ormiston
through his black beard, as he yawned and
stretched his stalwart form before the blazing
fire; "he is at his old trade of love-making
again.  When a-God's name will he ever
learn sense!"

"What art thou grumbling at now, Hob
Ormiston?" said the Earl laughing, "when
our poor crayer went surging headlong down
into the dark trough of yonder angry sea, by
Saint Paul!  I could not choose but laugh, to
hear thee alternately praying like a devout
Christian, and swearing like a rascally
Pagan!"

"And all because of that enchanted rope
with its three damnable knots, which,
despite my warnings, your lordship purchased
for a rose-noble from that villanous
necromancer at Cronenborg.  S'death! were I
now within arm's length of him, I would tie
such a knot under his left ear as would cure
him of wizard wit for the future."

"How, fair sirs," asked the Castellan, whose
capacity for the marvellous was quite
Norwegian; "this is marvel upon marvel!  I
deemed ye strangers, and find that you my
Lord Earl of Bothwell, and Anna my niece
and ward, are quite old friends—of that I
will learn anon; but mean time would fein
hear more of this same enchanted cord, for
which it seems we are indebted for the honour
of this visit to the king's"——

"Why, Sir Governor, it brought on that
infernal storm, which nearly sent us all to
the bottom of the sea; and as for the base
minion who sold it"——

"Harkee, Hob of Ormiston," said the Earl
gaily while glancing at Anna; "I will hear
nothing disrespectful said of my master of
the black art, whose spells have driven me
within the circle of charms a thousand
degrees more powerful and enchanting."

"Cock and pie!" muttered Black Hob between
his teeth.

"My lords," said the Castellan, who was
bursting with impatience; "about this
rope"——

"At the castle of Cronenborg," replied
Bothwell, "despite the reiterated warnings
of my friend, our stout skipper ventured
ashore to bargain with a certain necromancer
who dwelleth at the promontory, and sells
fair winds to the passing ships.  For a
rose-noble, this knave gave him a rope three
Danish ells in length, whereon were three
knots, each of which he solemnly avowed
would produce a favourable breeze.  On the
first being untied, we certainly had one that
carried us out of the Sound; but thereafter it
died away.  Our skipper cursed the wizard
for his short measure, and untied the second
knot, when, lo! another friendly gale rippled
over the sea, and bore us to Helmstadt, off
which it again fell a dead calm."

"Three handsful of salt should have been
thrown into the sea," said Sueno.

"For what?" asked Bothwell with a smile.

"Sueno is right," said Rosenkrantz; "one
as an offering to Nippen, a second for the
water spirit, and a third for the demon of the
wind."

"Our skipper contented himself by
blaspheming like a Turk," continued the Earl,
"and untied the third knot, when, lo! there
blew a perfect storm.  The wind and the
waves rose—the rain fell, the lightning
flashed among the seething breakers, and—we
are here."

"I will write to the king," said the governor,
striking his long sword energetically
on the hall floor; "I will, by Saint Erick! and
learn whether this dark-dealing villain
is to be permitted to trifle with the lives of
nobles and ambassadors by selling charms of
evil under the windows of his very palace."

"By my soul!  Sir Governor, if I had him
in bonny Teviotdale, I would hang him on
my dule-tree, where many a better man hath
swung, and make my enquiries thereafter."

"'Tis the second time this false son of
darkness hath so tricked the mariner.  He
sold an enchanted cord to my kinsman,
Christian Alborg, captain of the Biornen, a
king's ship, which, on the untying of the
third knot, was blown right out into the
North Sea—yea, unto the very verge of those
dangerous currents that run downhill to
regions under the polar star, frozen and
desolate shores, from whence there can be no
return.  But enough of this matter.  Hark
you, Sueno Throndson—and thou, Van
Dribbel the butler—see what the larder and
cellar contain: order up supper for our
noble guests, and see that it be such as befits
well the king's castle of Bergen."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A NORSE SUPPER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A NORSE SUPPER.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  How goodly seems it ever to employ,
   |  Man's social days in union and in joy;
   |  The plenteous board high-heaped with oates divine,
   |  And o'er the foaming bowl the laughing wine.
   |                                      *Odyssey*, Book ix.

.. vspace:: 2

Bothwell surveyed the hall with a rapid
glance, and then his eyes met those of his
friend and vassal, Hob of Ormiston, who had
been making a similar scrutiny, and he
slightly shrugged his shoulders; for mentally
he had been reverting to his noble castle of
Crichton, that

   |  ——"rises on the steep
   |  Above the vale of Tyne;"

his lordly towers of Bothwell, that still,
magnificent in their ruins, overlook the beautiful
Clyde, and therefrom he drew comparisons
very disadvantageous to "the king's
castle of Bergen," as the old castellan thereof
was so fond of styling his residence.

"'Tis but a poor-looking hold this, my
lord," said Hob in French; "yet I dare
swear we may put over the night in it very well."

A shade crossed the brow of Lady Anna,
as with a gentle air of pique, and in the
same language, she said—

"I am grieved, noble sirs, that the accommodation
of our poor house displeases you."

"Cogsbones!" muttered Black Hob with
confusion, but the Earl laughed.

"Ah, you know French!" he exclaimed
with pleasure; "'tis delightful!  I will be
able to converse with you so much more
fluently than in the broken Norse of the
Shetlanders."

"You have been in France, doubtless?"
said Anna.

"Frequently, on embassies from our late
queen regent, Mary of Guise and Lorraine,
to the court of the magnificent Francis.
Ah! some of the happiest days of my life—yes,
and some of the saddest too—have been spent
in the palace of the Tournelles."

A momentary frown gathered on the Earl's
brow, but was immediately replaced by a
smile.

"And has your embassy from Mary of
Scotland to Frederick of Denmark been
accomplished happily?"

"Not as yet, fair Anna," replied Bothwell
hurriedly, while his brow flushed; "for
his Danish majesty lacks much the spirit of
his Scandinavian ancestors.  Yet, dear madam,
I cannot but deem my sojourn in this northern
clime a happy one, since it ends here,"
and he slightly touched her hand.

While with open mouth the old governor
of Bergen had been turning alternately from
his niece to the stranger, surprised to hear
them conversing so fluently in a language
quite unknown to him, several servants in
red gaberdines and voluminous trunk breeches
laid supper on the long central table; while
the warmth of the hall was increased by a
number of torches placed in grotesque stone
brackets, projecting from the walls, on the
red masonry of which they shed a ruddy glow.

The Earl courteously handed the young
lady to a seat, and placed himself beside
her.

Konrad had been in the act of advancing
to assume his usual chair by her side; but
finding himself anticipated, and feeling
instinctively and sadly that perhaps he was not
missed, he retired to the other end of the
table, and seated himself beside the strong
and swarthy knight of Ormiston.

"Twice hath he kissed her hand this night!"
thought the young man with a bitter sigh;
"that hand which I have scarcely dared to
touch—and twice she seemed pleased by the
attention; for her cheek flushed, and her eye
sparkled with the brightness of her joy."

The evening repast was somewhat plain
and coarse, as the governor made it his boast
and pride to have every thing after the ancient
Norwegian fashion, and would as readily have
permitted poison as any foreign luxury or
innovation to invade his board.

Reindeer meat, purchased from the
wandering Lapps, and a trencher of pickled
herrings, occupied one end of the table; a
venison pie the other.  There was a platter of
ryemeal pudding, another of sharke, or meat
cut into thin slices, sprinkled with spices, and
dried in the wind; there were rye-loaves
baked so hard that they would have required
King Erick's axe to split them, and crisped
pancakes and rolls made of meal, mixed with
bark of the pine, dried and ground.  There
were preserved wild-fruits and cloud-berries,
floating in thick cream; but the only liquors
were Norwegian ale, and the native dricka,
a decoction of barley and juniper-tree.

Bothwell, who, as we have said, had seated
himself beside the Lady Anna, and was wholly
occupied with her, scarcely remarked the
rudeness of the repast; but hungry Hob of
Ormiston, whose whole and undivided affections
were about to be lavished on the table,
looked exceedingly blank, and the aspect of
the venison pie, and trencher of purple
cloudberries, swimming in thick yellow cream,
alone prevented him from exhibiting some
very marked signs of disdain.

Supper proceeded, and was partaken of
with due Scandinavian voracity.  The portly
governor of Aggerhuis wedged himself in his
gilded chair at the head of the table; Sueno
the chamberlain seated himself at the foot.
Cornelius Van Dribbel, the bulbous-shaped
Dutch butler of Bergen, overlooked the cups
and tankards; and to the company already
mentioned who occupied seats above the salt,
were added a few Danish crossbowmen in the
scarlet livery of King Frederick, with Hans
Knuber, Jans Thorson, and the servants of
the fortress, who devoured vast quantities
of sharke and oatmeal bread, drenching their
red mustaches in the muddy ale, as deeply
as their ancestors, the fair-haired warriors of
Olaff and of Ivarre, could have done.

This motley company were assisted to
whatever they required by four pages, who
bore the king's cipher embossed on the
breasts of their crimson doublets, which had
those of Erick Rosenkrantz similarly wrought
on the back.

Bothwell, who had been accustomed to all
those continental luxuries, which the long
and close intercourse with France had
introduced among the Scottish noblesse,
exchanged but one furtive glance of scorn with
the tall knight of Teviotdale, and then
proceeded at once to gain the heart of the honest
and unsophisticated governor, by draining a
long horn of ale, to the standard toast of the
Nordlanders—"Old Norway!"

"*Gammle Norgé!*" cried the old governor,
and all present emptied their cups with
enthusiasm, not excepting the Danes; for the
keen eye of Rosenkrantz was fixed upon
them in particular.

Oblivious of the presence of the burly
governor, of young Konrad's changing cheek
and kindling eye, of bearded Ormiston's
louring visage, and all others around the
board, the Earl of Bothwell, with all the
nonchalance of a soldier united to the suavity
of a courtier, and the air of a man who
habitually pleased himself without valuing
a jot the ideas of others, was soon seen to
make himself quite at home, to lounge on the
stuffed chair, and to stoop his head so close
to Anna's, that at times his black locks
mingled with her glossier curls as they
conversed softly in French, but with a rapidity
and gaiety that astonished even themselves.

She was thus enabled to coquette, and he
to make love with impunity, under the very
eyes of Konrad and her uncle.  The former
was painfully watchful, but the latter divided
his attention between a dish of savoury sharke
and a great pewter flagon of dricka; for, like
a true old Norseman, he was capable of
eating any thing and in any quantity; and
he paused at times only to impress upon
Sueno Throndson the necessity of having the
necromancer of Cronenborg strung up in one
of his own cords.

"Holy Hansdag!" said he; "such things
cannot be permitted.  Vessels will never pass
the Sound, and the toll will go to the devil!
Konrad of Saltzberg, thou art a bold lad, and
hast done gallant things in these seas against
the Lubeckers, and to thee will I commit
the charge of conveying this knave in fetters
to King Frederick."

"If he sells fair winds, Sir Erick," began
Konrad.

"Ah! but the dark son of Zernebok selleth
foul as well."

"But only to strangers, and when he has
none other in hand, perhaps," said Konrad
with a smile; for he cordially wished that the
enchanted cord had blown the Scottish earl
to the Arctic regions.

"Tush, Konrad! dost thou deem my kinsman,
stout Christian Alborg of the Biornen,
a stranger?"

"We Scots have an old saw among us—That
'tis an ill wind that blows nobody gude,"
said Hob Ormiston, as he once more assailed
the crisp roof of the venison pie with his long
Scottish dagger; for it was not then the
fashion to furnish guests with knives, and
forks were the invention of a century later.
"By the mass!" thought he; "the rascal
Cupid will assuredly mar thy fortune, my
stout Lord Bothwell; for thou fallest in love
with every pretty woman, and art ever in
some infernal scrape.  Thy health, Sir
Governor," and bowing to Rosenkrantz, who
warmly accorded, Ormiston raised to his lips
a great flagon of ale, the creamy froth of
which whitened the thick bristles of his black
mustaches.

Bothwell and Anna still continued to
converse in French.

"And so monsieur grew tired of the court
of Denmark?" said Anna, with a pretty lisp
in her voice.

"When you left it I soon found that little
remained to detain me there.  For me the
sun had set—the glory had departed.  I was
*ennuyéed* to death, for there are no amusements
such as I have been accustomed to.  I marvel
that so warlike a prince as Frederick holds
not at times a passage of arms, or even a
grand hunting party, among his knights and
peers.  The greasy counts and ale-swilling
barons who wear the crosses of the Elephant
and Dannebrog, throng the chambers of his
great wooden palace; but never one among
them rouses a deer in the woods of Amack,
brings a boar to bay, or breaks a spear at the
barriers."

"You should have set them an example,
my lord," said Anna, with a half pout which
she assumed at times.

"These drunken Danes would have laughed
me to scorn, for they were much too wary
to trust their fools' costards under steel casques
for such a purpose.  They never in any age
knew much of chivalry; and now the new
doctrines of Luther and of Calvin, like a cold
blast, are laying it with other and holier
institutions in the dust.  I regret that I did not
hang on Frederick's palace gate, my red shield,
with the blue cheveron of Hepburn, as a bravado
to all comers," continued the flattering
Earl in his softest and most insinuating
French; while he took in his the white hand
of the blushing girl, "in maintenance that
Anna of Aggerhuis was the fairest flower in
Norway and in Denmark."

"By cock and pie! it might have hung
there 'till doomsday for aught that I would
have cared anent the matter," muttered Hob
Ormiston.

The eyes of Anna lighted up with that
vanity which the language of the Earl was so
well calculated to feed, as she laughed, and
said in a low and almost breathless voice—

"And would you indeed have maintained this?"

"At the point of this sword, which my good-sire
drew by Pinkie-burn, I would have upheld
it, madam—yea, to the last gasp!"

"I thank your courtesy, my Lord Bothwell;
but," she asked in a manner that seemed
perfectly artless, "what could inspire so
much bravery and enthusiasm in my behalf?"

"Ah, what but love!" whispered the
handsome Earl, while his dark eyes filled
with the softest languor.  Anna blushed
crimson, and a pause ensued.

A shade perceptibly crossed the brow of
Konrad.  He had picked up a smattering of
French while commanding his band of crossbowmen
in the Lubeck war, and knew enough
to perceive how dangerous to the love he had
so long borne Anna, was the tendency of this
discourse.

"My lord," said he, with an anger which
he could not entirely conceal, "with an intent
so foolish, I fear your red shield would have
hung on Frederick's gate like the wood-demon's
annual axe—till it rusted away, ere
any man would have touched it."

"Sir Konrad," replied the Earl haughtily,
"you may be right, for none will dare to
dispute the beauty of Lady Anna."

"Why not?" asked Konrad with blunt
honesty.  "Beauty exists often in the mind
of a lover alone; and all men cannot love
the same woman."

The Earl smiled, and twirled his mustaches.

"Noble Sir, though I can very well perceive
how you secretly scorn our northern
barbarism, there are those among us who
could achieve feats that the bravest and
gayest of the French and Scottish knights
would shrink from attempting."

Bothwell raised his eyebrows slightly, and
a very unmistakeable frown gathered on tall
Ormiston's swarthy brow; but here very
opportunely old Rosenkrantz, pausing in the
midst of some enthusiastic speech, shouted
*Gammle Norgé!* and struck his empty flagon
on the table.

"Ho!" said the Earl, "my brave friend,
thou seemest a tall fellow, and art used, I
doubt not, to mail and arms?"

"A little to the use of the salade, steel
hauberk, crossbow, and dagger."

"And art a good horseman, both at the
baresse and on the battle-field?" added
Bothwell, with a slight tinge of scorn in his
manner.

"He knows not what you mean by *baresse*,"
said Anna with a laugh, that stung Konrad
to the soul.  The Earl joined in it; and then,
fired by sudden anger and energy, the blood
mounted to Konrad's open brow, as he replied—

"Whatever a man will dare without the
aid of spell or charm, that will I dare, and
perhaps achieve; and though, Sir Scot, I
can perceive by thine undisguised hauteur
that thou scornest our rude Norse fashions
and primitive simplicity, I cannot forget that
there are spirits bred among these stupendous
cliffs and pine-clad valleys, these boiling
maelstroms and foaming torrents, second to
none in the world for bravery, for honour,
and for worth.  I, who am the least among
them in strength of heart and limb, can climb
a rock that hangs eight hundred feet above
the dashing surf, to win the down of the
eider-duck or the eggs of the owl and eagle.
With a handful of salt I can train a wild-deer
from the solitary dens of the Silverbergen, or
drag a white bear from its bourne on the
banks of the Agger.  With a single bolt from
my arblast, I can pierce the swiftest eagle in
full flight, and the fiercest boar with one
thrust of my hunting-spear.  On midsummer
eve, when Nippen and all the spirits of evil
are abroad, I have sought the Druid's circle
in the most savage depths of the Dovrefeldt,
to hang the wood-demon's yearly gift on the
great oak where our pagan ancestors
worshipped Thor of old, and offered up the blood
of captives taken in battle.  And, in pursuit
of the seal and the seahorse, I have dashed my
boat right through the mist of the Fiord,
even while the shriek of Uldra, the spirit of
the vapour, arose from its dusky bosom."

Though superstitious to a degree, Bothwell
could not repress a smile on hearing
what Konrad deemed a climax to the assertion
of his spirit and courage.  The eyes of
Anna sparkled with something of admiration
as he spoke; but the Earl laughed with
provoking good-nature as he replied—

"I doubt not thy courage, my friend,
since to it I owe my seat at this hospitable
board, instead of being, perhaps, at the
bottom of yonder deep fiord; but the white
bear—ha! ha!  I would give a score of gold
unicorns to see thee, Black Hob, engaging
such a denizen of old Norway."

"Nordland bear or boor, what the foul
fiend care I?" replied Ormiston, whose mouth
was still crammed with paste.  "God's
death! many a time and oft, in bonny Teviotdale
and Ettrickshaws, I have driven a tough
Scottish spear through a brave English
heart, piercing acton, jack, and corselet of
Milan, like a gossamer web.  But enow of
this pitiful boasting, which better beseemeth
schulebairns than bearded men."

Now the night waxed late, the great
wooden clock at the end of the hall had
struck the hour for retiring, and sliced
sweetcake and spiced ale were served round.

Then all the company, after the Norwegian
fashion, bowed to each other, and saying,
"Much good may the supper do you,"
prepared to separate.  The Earl and
Ormiston were conducted, by Sueno Throndson
and two torchbearers, to a chamber in the
upper part of the keep.

As Konrad turned to retire, he gave a
wistful glance at Anna Rosenkrantz, to
receive, as usual, her parting smile; but her
eyes were fixed on Bothwell's retreating
figure and waving plume, and slowly the
young man left the hall, with a heart full of
jealous and bitter thoughts.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE EARL AND HOB DISCOURSE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE EARL AND HOB DISCOURSE.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |        'Tis well for you, Sir,
   |  To make your love subservient to your pleasure;
   |  But I, who am an honourable man,
   |  Adore the sex too much to act so basely.
   |                                      *Old Play.*

.. vspace:: 2

The Scottish guests were escorted by the
chamberlain to an apartment in the
donjon-tower, immediately above the hall.

It was arched with red sandstone, and, as
frequently occurred in the sleeping chambers
of such edifices in that age, contained
two beds.  These were low four-posted and
heavily-canopied couches, covered with eider-down
quilts of elaborate pattern; while the
oak floor, according to the fashion of the
country, was thickly strewn with small
juniper branches, instead of straw, as in
England.  A dim cresset, on a long iron stalk,
lighted the chamber, on beholding the
primitive aspect of which the Earl and his
friend exchanged significant glances; while
Sueno, in courtesy to their rank, placed a
handsome sword on a low tabourette that stood
midway between the couches, and retired.

"'Tis a pretty knife this!" said Hob of
Ormiston, as he drew the shining blade from
its scabbard and surveyed it; "however, I
would rather have this berry-brown whinger,
that my father drew on Flodden Field," he
added, unbuckling the broad baldrick that
sustained his immense two-handed sword.
"Doth he not seem an honest soul, this old
Norwegian boor, I mean baron—craving
pardon—and his dumpy little daughter?"

"Niece, thou meanest," said Bothwell
suddenly, becoming all attention.

"One must speak cautiously of her, I suppose?"

"It would be wise of more than one;
but," said Bothwell, "is it not remarkable
that we should meet thus again?  What
seest thou in this?"

"In what?"

"Our unexpected meeting, after parting
as we thought for ever."

"See!" yawned Ormiston, untrussing his
points, "why—nothing!"

"Insensible! dost thou not see the hand
of Fate?"

"Nay," said Hob ironically: "my Lord of
Bothwell and of Hailes, I can perceive only
the finger of mischief."

"Anna is very beautiful."

"After the fat and languid dames of
Denmark, with their red locks and gaudy
dresses," said Ormiston, as he slipped into
bed, "there is, I own, something quite
refreshing to my refined taste"——

"Thy refined taste, ha! ha!" laughed the Earl.

"I say to my refined taste," continued
Hob testily, "in the grace and delicacy of
this northern nymph."

"And I own to thee, Hob of Ormiston,
my true vassal and most trusted friend,
that all my old passion is revived in full
force, and that I love her as I never
loved"——

"Even Jane of Huntly," said Black Hob,
maliciously closing the sentence.

"Under favour, as thou lovest me, Hob,"
said the noble with a frown, "say no more
of her, just now at least."

"Ha! ha! after seeing the beauties of the
Tournelles, of Versailles, and even our own
Holyrood, thou art seriously smitten by this
little Norwegian, eh?"

"My whole heart and soul are hers," said
the Earl in a voice that was low, but full of
passion.

"Now may the great devil burn me!" cried
Ormiston, as a horse-laugh convulsed his
bulky figure.  "I think 'tis the twentieth
time thy heart hath been disposed of in the
same fashion, and I do not think that any
damsel found herself much enriched by the
possession thereof.  As for thy soul, that
being as I believe gifted already"——

"Harkee, Hob, be not insolent, for our
swords are lying at hand....  Oh yes! from
the first moment I met this fair girl at
Copenhagen, a mysterious sympathy drew
my heart instinctively towards her; and not
until she left the court of Frederick did I
find the full depth of my passion."

"Substitute Holyrood for Copenhagen,"
continued Hob in the same gibing tone, "and
this will be almost word for word what I
once heard thee whisper to winsome Jeanie
Gordon in the long gallery."

"Damnation, varlet! thou wilt drive me
mad," cried the Earl, kicking his trunk-hose
to the farthest end of the chamber; for the
spiced ale of Van Dribbel was mounting fast
into his brain.  "How dared your curiosity
presume so far?  But I care not telling thee,
that I love her a thousand times more than
Huntly's sickly sister, whom perhaps I may
never see again."

"Very possibly; but, cock and pie! thou
canst not mean to marry her?"

"Perhaps not, if she would sail with me
on easier terms," said the libertine Earl in a
low voice.

"Please yourself," said Ormiston, who
had begun to tire of the conversation; "but
remember your solemn plight to the Lady
Jane Gordon."

"A rare fellow thou to give good advice!"

"And that, if your solemn vow be broken,
our doleful case would then be worse than
ever.  Ten thousand claymores would be
unsheathed in Badenoch, Auchindoune, and
Strathbolgie; we should have another
northern rebellion to welcome our return."

"That would be merry and gay."

"Another Corrichie to fight, and"——

"What more?"

"A Bothwell to fall."

"Sayest thou? forgetting that, like thee, I
am all but ruined, and the errand on which
I came hither?"

"To league with that red-haired fox,
Frederick of Zeeland, for placing the northern
isles in his possession, on condition that thou
art viceroy thereof—a notable project!"

Bothwell coloured deeply as he replied—

"How ill my own plans sound when
thus repeated to me!  Yet I cannot but laugh
when I imagine the expression the faces of
Moray, Morton, and Lethington will assume,
when those cold and calculating knaves, to
whom we owe our present forfeiture and
exile, hear of my Danish league.  'Twill be
a masterstroke in the game of intrigue; and
certes, under my circumstances, as Prince
of Orkney and Shetland, holding the isles
as a fief of Frederick, to wed the ward of
this Norwegian knight were better than, as
Bothwell, landless and penniless, to wed the
untochered Jane of Huntly, and live like a
trencherman or boy of the belt on the bounty
of the proud earl, her brother."

"Doubtless," said Ormiston with an
imperceptible sneer, "our vessel will require
certain refitting, which will detain her here
for some days?"

"Assuredly," replied the Earl.

"During which time we must continue
to fare on raw meat, sawdust, and sour ale,
by the rood!  Surely we will have plenty of
time to canvass our projects to-morrow;
but to-night let me sleep a-God's name! for
I am skinful of salt water, and wellnigh
talked to death."

Ormiston was soon fast asleep, and the
Earl, though of a happy and thoughtless
temperament, a reckless, and often (when
crossed in his pride and purposes) of a
ferocious disposition, envied his ease of mind.

He too courted sleep, but in vain; for a
thousand fancies and a thousand fears
intruded upon his mind.  The changing
expression of his fine features, when viewed by
the fitful light of the expiring cresset, would
have formed a noble study for a painter.
One moment they were all fire and animation,
as his heart expanded with hope and
energy; the next saw them clouded by chagrin
and bitterness, when he reflected on the
more than princely patrimony he had ruined
by a long career of private dissipation and
political intrigue—for violence, turbulence,
ambition, and reckless folly, had been the
leading features in the life of this headstrong
noble.

The career of Earl Bothwell had been one
tissue of inconsistencies.

Revolting at the ecclesiastical executions
which about the period of James V.'s death
so greatly disgusted the Scottish people,
the Earl with his father became a reformer
at an early period in life, and like all the
leaders in that great movement, which was
fated to convulse the land, accepted a secret
pension from the English court to maintain
his wild extravagance; but when blows were
struck and banners displayed, when the
army of the Protestants took the field against
Mary of Guise, young Bothwell, in 1559,
assumed the command of her French auxiliaries,
and acted with vigour and valour in her cause.

Afterwards he went on an embassy to
Paris; where, by the gallantry of his air, the
splendour of his retinue, and the versatility
of his talents for flattery, diplomacy, and
intrigue, together with his dutiful and graceful
demeanour, he particularly recommended
himself to Mary of Scotland, the young
queen of France.

Four years afterwards, when Mary was
seated on her father's throne, he had returned
to Scotland; but engaging in a desperate
conspiracy for the destruction of his mortal
foe, the Earl of Moray, then in the zenith of
his power and royal favour, he had been
indefinitely banished the court and kingdom.
Filled with rage against Moray, who wielded
the whole power at the court and council of
his too facile sister, Bothwell, finding his star
thus completely eclipsed by a rival to whom
he was fully equal in bravery and ambition,
though inferior in subtlety and guile—and
that his strong and stately castles, his fertile
provinces and rich domains, were gifted away
to feudal and political foemen—sought the
Danish court, where he had intrigued so far,
that, at the period when our story opens, a
conspiracy had been formed to place all the
fortresses of Orkney and Shetland in the
hands of Frederick, who, in return, was to
create Lord Bothwell Prince of the Northern
Isles.  This plot had gradually been developing;
and the Earl, in furtherance of his
daring and revengeful scheme, was now on
his way back to Orkney, where he possessed
various fiefs and adherents, especially one
powerful baron of the house of Balfour of
Monkquhanny.

To a face and form that were singularly
noble and prepossessing, the unfortunate
Earl of Bothwell united a bearing alike
gallant and courtly; while his known courage
and suavity of manner, in the noonday of
his fortune, made him the favourite equally
of the great and the humble.

Without being yet a confirmed profligate,
he had plunged deeply into all the excesses
and gaieties of the age, especially when in
France and Italy; for at home in Scotland,
when under the Draconian laws and iron rule
of the new regime, the arena of such follies,
even to a powerful baron, was very circumscribed.

His heart was naturally good, and its first
impulses were ever those of warmth,
generosity, and gratitude—and these principles,
under proper direction, when united to his
talent, courage, and ambition, might have
made him an ornament to his country.  His
early rectitude of purpose had led him to
trust others too indiscriminately; his warmth,
to sudden attachments and dangerous quarrels;
his generosity, to lavish extravagance.
Early in life he is said to have loved deeply
and unhappily, but with all the ardour of
which a first passion is capable of firing a
brave and generous heart.  Who the object
of his love had been was then unknown; one
report averred her to be a French princess,
and the Magister Absalom Beyer shrewdly
guesses, that this means no other than the
dauphiness, Mary Stuart—but of this more anon.

There was now a dash of the cynic in his
nature, and he was fast schooling himself to
consider women merely what he was, in his
gayer moments, habitually averring them to
be—the mere instruments of pleasure, and
tools of ambition.

The unhappy influence of that misplaced
or unrequited love, had thrown a long
shadow on the career of Bothwell; and as the
sun of his fortune set, that shadow grew
darker and deeper.  But there were times,
when his cooler reflection had tamed his wild
impulses, that a sudden act of generosity and
chivalry would evince the greatness of that
heart, which an unhappy combination of
circumstances, a prospect the most alluring that
ever opened to man, and the influence of
evil counsel, spurring on a restless ambition,
hurried into those dark and terrible schemes
of power and greatness, that blighted his
name and fame for ever!

The character of his friend and brother
exile, Hob Ormiston of that Ilk, had been
distinguished only for its pride, ferocity,
turbulence, and rapacity.  He was one of the
worst examples of those brutal barons who
flourished on the ruins of the Church of
Rome—the only power that ever held them
in check—who laughed to scorn the laws of
God and man—who recognised no will save
their own, and no law but that of the sword
and the strongest hand—who quoted Scripture
to rifle and overthrow the same church
which their fathers had quoted Scripture to
erect and endow; and who, in that really dark
age succeeding the Scottish Reformation,
embroiled their helpless and gentle sovereign
in a disastrous civil war, and drenched their
native land in blood!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ANNA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ANNA.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  And when the moon went down the sky,
   |    Still rose, in dreams, his native plain;
   |  And oft he thought his love was by,
   |    And charm'd him with some tender strain.
   |                                      *The Mermaid.*

.. vspace:: 2

The light of the rising sun was streaming
through the windows next morning when
the Earl awoke; and from dreams of a stormy
sea, with the din of flapping canvass and
rattling cordage in his ears, was agreeably
surprised by finding close to his the small fair
face and bright eyes of Anna Rosenkrantz—so
close, indeed, that her soft hair mingled
with his own, and the breath of her prying
little mouth came gently on his cheek,

.. class:: center

   "Like the sweet south, that breathes upon a bank of violets."

.. vspace:: 2

It was suddenly withdrawn, and Bothwell
started up.

The young lady, with Christina, her attendant,
arrayed in neat morning dresses, the
black fur of which contrasted with the snowy
whiteness of their necks and arms, stood by
his bedside with a warm posset of spiced ale,
according to that ancient custom, still
retained in Norway, where now a dish of warm
coffee is substituted for the mulled mead of
their jovial ancestors, and is presented by
the ladies of the house to each guest and
inmate about daybreak.

In pursuance of this primitive custom,
Lady Anna presented herself by the couch
of the Earl, whose dark eyes sparkled with
astonishment and pleasure; for various
episodes of love and intrigue flashed upon his
mind, when beholding the object of his
admiration standing in that half dishabille
at so early an hour, and a deep blush of
confusion suffused the face of the beautiful
girl, for the aspect of the Earl was
singularly prepossessing.

His black locks curled shortly over a pale
and noble forehead; his eyes were intensely
dark, and the hue of his thick mustaches
and short peaked beard formed a strong contrast
to the whiteness of his half bare chest,
which was pale as the marble of Paros.

"A good morning, my Lord!" said Anna
with a delightful smile, while Christina
addressed herself to Ormiston; "I hope your
dreams have been pleasant?"

"They were of thee, fair Anna"——

"Then they must have been delightful,"
she replied with gaiety, eluding the Earl,
who endeavoured to possess her hand.  "And
you have slept well?"

"On this downy couch I could not have
reposed otherwise than well, lady."

"I am glad you appreciate what is all the
work of my own fair hands; for know, sir,
that this quilt of eider-down was the last
essay of my perseverance and industry."

"Thine, fair Anna!"

"Thou seest I am not one to hide my
candle under a bushel."

"By the wheel of St. Catherine!" said the
Earl, smiling as he smoothed down the quilt,
which was entirely made of soft feathers
from the breast of the eider-duck, woven into
bright and beautiful patterns; "there is
something very adorable in the idea of
reposing under what your pretty fingers have
wrought!"

"Konrad scaled the highest cliffs that
overhang the fiord to bring me these
feathers.  Poor Konrad!  He has clambered
for me, where not even Jans Thorson or the
boldest man on the bay would dare to climb,
even to win his daily bread."

"And who is this Konrad?" asked Bothwell, suspiciously.

"He who—permit me to say—-saved you
from the ocean last night; and but for whom,
perhaps, you had now been in heaven."

"St. Mary forefend it had not been a
warmer place!"

"I have brought you our morning grace-cup,"
said Anna, placing it in his hand;
"drink to the prosperity of the Lords of
Welsöö, my lord, and let me begone, for I
have my uncle, Sir Erick, and others, to visit
with the same gift."

The Earl promptly kissed her hand, and
emptied the cup, thus displaying the
difference between his open nature and that of
Ormiston, who, being ever on the alert
against treachery and surprise, declined
tasting the ale, until, as a compliment, Christina
Slingbunder first put it to her rosy lips, after
which he drained the goblet at one gulp,
and clasping the buxom damsel in his arms
imprinted a kiss upon each of her cheeks,
for which she roundly boxed his ears; and,
when the ladies had withdrawn, both he
and the Earl lay back in their beds, bursting
with laughter, for Ormiston exercised his
wit in various jests on this unusual
visit—jests which the modest Magister Absalom
Beyer has failed or declined to record.

To his great satisfaction, the Earl found
that his vessel, the Fleur-de-lys, a stout little
brigantine, had been so much shattered by
the late storm, that by the solemnly
delivered verdict of David Wood his skipper,
Hans Knuber, and other seafaring men of
Bergen, the work of several days would be
required to refit her for sea—and these days,
with the recklessness of his nature, he
resolved to devote entirely to the prosecution
of an amour, the end of which he could not
entirely foresee.

Though solemnly betrothed to Lady Jane
Gordon, second daughter of George Earl of
Huntly, who had been slain at the battle of
Corrichie, the love he once felt and avowed
for her, had evaporated during his wandering
life and long absence from Scotland; and as
it happened that the heart of the amorous
Earl abhorred a vacuum, he gave way to all
the impulses of this new passion, which the
beauty and winning manner of Anna were
so well calculated to inspire and confirm,
and which he thought would prove a pleasing
variety and amusement in his exile.  A
month had elapsed since they separated at
Copenhagen, and that short separation had
served but to increase the flame which a
longer one would as surely have extinguished.

The morning meal was over; the castle
hall had been converted into a court of
justice, where, seated in his red leather chair,
with his orders on his breast, Erick
Rosenkrantz heard pleas and quarrels, and gave
those decisions which constituted him the
Solon of Aggerhuis and Lycurgus of Bergen.
The Earl had returned from the beach, where
the entire population of the little town had
crowded to witness the unusual sight of
hauling his vessel into a rude dock, constructed
in a creek of the rocks, where Hans Knuber
and all the fishermen on the fiord had been
lounging since daybreak, with their hands
stuffed into the pockets of their voluminous
red breeches, criticising with seaman-like
eyes, and commenting in most nautical Norse,
on the rig, mould, and aspect of the Scottish
ship.

As Bothwell, with his white plume dancing
above his lofty head, the embroidery of his
mantle, and the brilliants of his belt and
bonnet sparkling in the sunshine, ascended to a
terrace of the castle that overlooked the fiord,
the notes of a harp struck with great skill,
mingling with the voice of Anna, fell upon
his ear, and he paused.

She was singing an old Scandinavian air,
which, being chiefly remarkable for its melody
and simplicity, was admirably adapted to her
soft low voice.  Nothing could surpass the
grace of her figure, as she bent forward over
the rudely formed but classic instrument—her
face half shaded by her glossy hair, that
fell in profusion from under the little velvet
cap before mentioned, and glittered in the
sunshine, like the wiry strings among which
her small white hands were moving so swiftly.

The grass of the terrace was smooth as
velvet, and permitted the Earl to approach
so softly, that not even his gold spurs were
heard to jangle as he walked.  Though Anna
appeared not to perceive him, she was
perfectly aware of his approach.  Conscious of
her skill as a musician, and of her own beauty,
which she had that day taken every precaution
and care to enhance, and animated by a
coquettish desire to please one whom she well
knew to be her lover, she continued to sing
unheedingly, and the Earl was thus permitted
to approach (as he thought unobserved) until
he leant over the parapet close beside her.
He felt his heart stirred by the pathos of
her voice; for, animated by an intense desire
to please and to conquer, she sang exquisitely
an old song, with which, in her childhood, she
had heard the Wandering Lapps welcome the
approach of summer.

   |  I
   |
   |  "The snows are dissolving
   |    On Tornao's rude side;
   |  And the ice of Lulhea
   |    Flows down its dark tide.
   |  Thy stream, O Lulhea!
   |    Flows freely away;
   |  And the snowdrop unfolds
   |    Its pale leaves to the day.
   |
   |
   |  II
   |
   |  Far off thy keen terrors,
   |    O winter! retire;
   |  And the north's dancing streamers
   |    Relinquish their fire.
   |  The sun's warm rays
   |    Swell the buds on the tree;
   |  And Enna chants forth
   |    Her wild warblings with glee.
   |
   |
   |  III
   |
   |  Our reindeer unharness'd
   |    In freedom shall play,
   |  And safely by Odin's
   |    Steep precipice stray.
   |  The wolf to the forest's
   |    Recesses shall fly,
   |  And howl to the moon
   |    As she glides through the sky:
   |
   |
   |  IV
   |
   |  Then haste my fair Luah"——
   |

She paused, and gradually a blush deepened
on her cheek, for with all her graceful
coquetry and gaiety, there was at times a
dash of charming timidity in her manner;
so, suddenly becoming abashed, she raised
her mild eyes to those of the Earl, and
immediately cast them down again, for his
cheek had flushed in turn, increasing the
manly beauty of his dark features, which
the shadow of his blue velvet bonnet, and
the graceful droop of his white ostrich feather,
enhanced; and she knew that his eyes were
beaming upon her with the sentiment her
performance and her presence had inspired.

She had read it all in his burning glance,
and at the moment she cast down her eyes,
a new sensation of joy and triumph filled
her heart.  The experienced Earl was aware
that the fair citadel was tottering to its fall.

"Gentle Anna," said he, in his softest and
most dulcet French, "for my unseasonable
interruption I crave pardon, and beg that
you will continue, for every chord of my
heart is stirred when you sing."

"There is but one verse more," replied
Anna, as she bent her head with a graceful
inclination, and shaking back her long fair
tresses, continued—

   |  IV
   |
   |  "Then haste my fear Luah,
   |    O haste to the grove!
   |  To pass the sweet season
   |    Of summer in love.
   |  In youth let our bosoms
   |    With ecstasy glow;
   |  For the winter of life
   |    Ne'er a transport can know."
   |

"Sadly true it is, fair Anna," said the
amorous Earl, as he leaned against the
gothic parapet, and very nonchalantly played
with his fingers among her flowing ringlets;
"youth is indeed the only season for love
and joy—for due susceptibility of the
blooming and the beautiful."

"And for futile wishes and dreamy fancies,"
replied the young lady with a sad
smile.

"Dost thou moralize?" laughed the Earl;
"why, gentle one, I who am ten years thy
senior have never once dreamt of morality
yet—moralizing I would say—ha! ha! that
will suit when my years number sixty or so,
if some unlucky lance or sword-thrust does
not, ere that time, spoil me for being a doting
old monk; for, as the white-haired Earl
Douglas said, when he in old age assumed
the cowl, 'One who may no better be, must
be a monk.'  (By the mass I would make a
rare friar!)  To me there is something very
droll in hearing a pretty woman moralize.
And so thou considerest youth the season
for dreams and fancies?"

"O yes! for now I am ever full of them."

"'Tis well," replied Bothwell, glancing at
the rugged castle, and its still more rugged
scenery; "for there are times when the
realities of life are not very pleasant.  But
hath not old age its fancies too, and its
dreams?"

"True, my Lord, but dreams of the past."

"Nay, of the present.  Faith!  I remember
me when I was but a boy at Paris, old Anne,
Madame la Duchesse d'Estampes, who might
have been my grandmother, fell in love with
my slender limbs and beardless chin, and
wellnigh brought me to death's door with her
villanous love philtres.  From those days
upward, my own mind has been full of its
fancies, fair Anna, and I have had my
daydreams of power and ambition, of love and
grandeur, and wakened but to find them
dreams indeed!"

"Those of love, too," murmured Anna.

"Yes—yes," said the Earl, whose face was
crossed by a sudden shade, which Anna's
anxious eye soon perceived; "why should
I conceal that, like other boys, I have had
my vision of that land of light and roses—visions
that faded away, even as the sunlight
is now fading on yonder mountain tops—and
the hour came when I wondered how such
wild hopes had ever been cherished—how
such dreams had ever dawned—and I could
look back upon my boyish folly with a smile
of mingled sadness and of scorn."

"'Tis a bitter reflection that a time may
come when one may marvel that one ever
loved, my lord."

"And hoped and feared, and made one's-self
alternately the victim of misery or of
joy—raised to heaven by one glance, and sunk
into despair by another.  Yet, dear as a first
love is while it lasts—at least so say minstrel
and romancer—there are thousands who live
to thank Heaven that they were not wedded
to that first loved one."

"Dost thou really think so?" colouring
with something of pique at the tenor of this
conversation, which made her think of
Konrad.

"The experience of my friends in a thousand
instances hath taught me so," said the
politic Earl, who began to feel that the topic
was unfortunately chosen; "but," he added
adroitly, as sinking his voice he took her
hand in his, "dear Anna, never will the day
come when I shall thank Heaven that I was
not wedded to thee."

Again the quick blush rushed to Anna's
neck and temples; she bent over her harp,
and said in a low but laughing voice—

"Fie!  Lord Bothwell, surely I am not
your first love?"

"Thou art, indeed, dear Anna!"

"Go, go!  I will never believe it."

"My first, my last, my only one!" said the
Earl, encircling her gently with his arms, and
pressing her forehead against his cheek; and,
though this assertion was not strictly true,
in the ardour of the moment he almost
believed it so.  "Until the moment we parted
at Frederick's palace gate—parted as I
thought to meet no more—I knew not how
deep was my unavowed love for thee.  Hear
me, Anna, dear Anna!  I love thee with my
heart of hearts—my whole soul!  My name,
my coronet, all I possess, are at thy feet; say,
dear one, canst thou love me?"

Borne away by the ardour of his passion,
he brought out this avowal all at a breath—"for,"
sayeth the Magister Absalom, "he
had repeated it, on similar occasions, twenty
times"—and, pressing her to his heart, slipped
upon her finger a very valuable ring.

"Canst thou love me, Anna," he continued
in a broken voice, "as I love thee—as
my bride, my wife? and"——Anna replied
an inaudible something, as she hung
half-fainting with confusion on his breast.

Bothwell had almost paused as he spoke,
half scared by his own impetuosity, and
feeling, even in that moment of transport,
a pang, as the thoughts of ambition and the
world arose before him.

And the ring!

By the false Earl, the fond giver of that
little emblem of love was forgotten.  On
the inside was engraved—

   |  "The gift and the giver,
   |  Are thine for-ever."

It was the pledge of betrothal from Jane
Gordon of Huntly, and now it sparkled on
the hand of her rival!

"As this circlet is without end, so without
end will be my love for thee, Anna," said
the impassioned noble, forgetting that with
these very words, for that ring he had given
another, before the prelate of Dunblane.
Anna trembled violently; she felt his heart
beating against her own, and a new, rapid,
and consuming sensation thrilled like
lightning through every vein and fibre.  She
became giddy, faint; and, like a rose
surcharged with dew, reclined her head upon
the shoulder of the handsome Earl.

"And thou art mine, Anna—mine, for ever!"

"O, yes—for ever!" she whispered; and
passionately and repeatedly Bothwell's dark
and well mustached mouth was pressed on
her dewy lip.

Footsteps approached!

He started, and hurriedly led her to a seat;
placed her harp close by, raised her hands
to his lips with an air in which love and
tenderness were exquisitely blended with
courtesy and respect, and then hurried
away.

Overcome, and trembling with the excitement
of this brief interview, Anna bent
with closed eyes over her harp for a
moment; but becoming suddenly aware that
some one stood near her, she started, and the
pallor of death and guilt overspread her
flushed face when her eyes met those of—Konrad.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`KONRAD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   KONRAD.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  To lose thee!  O, to lose thee!  To live on
   |    To see the sun—not thee!  Will the sun shine,
   |  Will the birds sing, flowers bloom, when thou art gone?
   |    Desolate—desolate!  Thy right hand in mine.
   |                                          *King Arthur.*

.. vspace:: 2

Konrad's dark blue eyes were regarding
her with a peculiar expression, such as she
had never before seen them wear.  There
was an intense sadness in it, mingled with
pity and scorn.  It was searching and
reproachful, too; and, though Anna felt all
that single glance conveyed, she never quailed
beneath it; but the blood came and went in
her changing cheek as she surveyed her
indignant lover.

The appearance and bearing of young
Konrad were very prepossessing.

During the whole of that day he had been
out hunting, and was now returned laden
with the spoil of forest and fiord.  A
doublet of white cloth, trimmed with black fur,
slashed with scarlet sarcenet at the breast
and sleeves, and adorned with a profusion of
silver knobs, fitted tightly to his handsome
figure; his trunk hose were fashioned of the
same materials, and he wore rough leather
boots, and a smart velvet cap adorned by an
eagle feather, under which his long hair
descended in fair locks upon his shoulders.
He was equipped with a crossbow, hunting-knife,
and bugle-horn, and a sheaf of short
arrows bristled in his baldrick.  An immense
cock-of-the-wood and a bag of golden plover
were slung over one shoulder, balanced on
the other by a pouch of seabirds' eggs, taken
from their eyries in those impending cliffs
that overhang the bay, where, clinging as a
fly clings to a wall, he had scrambled and
swung fearlessly above the surf; and, chief
spoil of the day, he bore upon his shoulder a
black fox, which he had slain by a single
bolt from his crossbow.

His natural colour had been increased by
exercise; and he looked so handsome and
gallant as he sprang up the terrace steps
with his unwound arblast in his hand, that
Christina Slingbunder sighed as he kissed
her dimpled hand a moment before, when
enquiring for her mistress; but now the
mind of that fickle mistress was too full of
Bothwell's image to think much, if at all, on
her former lover.

Unwilling to admit to her those bitter
suspicions and jealousies that were harrowing
up his heart, Konrad addressed her as
usual, and with an air of affected gaiety laid
the spoil of his bow and spear at her feet.
She bowed in silence, and regarded them
dreamily.

"See how beautiful is the fur of this fox!
Will not its blackness contrast well with
your snowy skin, dear Anna?"

"Tush!" said she, a little pettishly;
"flatter not thyself, good Konrad, I will make
me trimmings of an odious fox-skin; away
with it!"

Konrad was piqued by this unusual reply,
but he still continued—

"Then behold this great woodcock; see
how broad, how dark and beautiful are its
pinions!"

"Truly, good Konrad, thou teazest me,"
replied Anna, stroking them with her white
hands, but thinking the while how much its
plumage resembled Bothwell's black locks.

"And where thinkest thou I winged him,
Anna, with a single bolt from my arblast?"

"I know not," she replied vacantly.

"Thou wilt never guess," continued Konrad,
resuming something of his tender and
playful manner, despite the palsy in his
heart.  "In the Wood Demon's *oak*."

"Then this bird may cost thee dear, for
the demon will avenge it some day!"

"Already he is avenged!" said Konrad,
with sudden bitterness.

Anna smiled, for she knew his meaning well.

"Oh, Anna!" said the young man, laying
his hand earnestly on hers; "how changed
thou art! what have I done to offend thee?"

"Nothing!"

"Then, by some accursed magic this ring
hath bewitched thee!"

"Ring!" she reiterated, changing colour.

Konrad dashed his crossbow on the earth.

"And is it so?" he exclaimed; "O
Anna!  Anna! like Zernebok, the spirit of
darkness and of evil, this Scottish Earl
hath crossed my path.  I saw him salute
thy cheek again and again, yet thou didst
not reprove him.  Even wert thou to love
me again as of old, the charm would be
broken; and O, my God! there is nothing
left me but to wish we had never met!"

Anna leaned upon the parapet, and averted
her face a little.  The accents of Konrad's
voice—that voice she had once loved so
well—sank deep in her heart; but Bothwell's
kiss, still glowed upon her cheek, and
her heart was steeled against remorse.

"Anna," continued her lover, in a tone of
sadness, "so completely was my life identified
with thine, that we seemed to have but one
being—one existence: the love of thee was
a part of myself.  I have often thought if
thou wert to die, I could never live without
thee; but I have lost thee now by a
separation more bitter than death.  Thou knowest,
Anna Rosenkrantz, how long, how well I
loved thee, ere thou went to Frederick's court;
and in truth I had many a bitter doubt if,
at thy return, I would find thee the same
artless and confiding girl that left me."

"And when I did return?" asked Anna,
with a smile.

"Thou hadst forgotten to love me," replied
Konrad clasping his hands.

"'Tis the way of the world," laughed Anna.

"The cruel and selfish world only."

"Be it so."

"Then thou lovest me no more?"

Anna played for a moment with the fringe
of her stomacher, and then replied "*No!*"

The young man turned away with an unsteady
step, and pressed his hand upon his
forehead, as if he would crush some
overpowering emotion.  Anna lifted her little
harp, and was about to retire.  Konrad took
her hand, but she abruptly withdrew it; a
pang shot through his heart, and something
of remorse ran through her own at the
unkindness of the action.

He caught her skirt, and besought her to
listen to him for the last time.

"Anna, dearest Anna!" he said in a breathless
voice; "oh, never was there a love more
pure or more devoted than mine!  Long,
long ago, I endeavoured to crush this passion
as it grew in my breast, for I knew the gulf
that lay between us—thou, the daughter of
Svend of Bergenhuis, the wealthy and ennobled
merchant, famous alike for his treasures
and his conquests over the Burghers of
Lubeck and the Dukes of Holstein—I, the
representative of a race that have decayed
and fallen with the pride of old Norway, even
as their old dwelling on yonder hill," and he
pointed to the ruined tower on the distant
Saltzberg; "even as it has fallen almost to
its foundations.  As these convictions came
home to my heart, I strove to crush the
expanding flower—to shun thee—to avoid thy
presence, as thou mayest remember; but still
thine image came ever before me with all its
witchery, and a thousand chances threw us
ever together.  Ah! why wert thou so affable,
so winning, when, knowing the secret that
preyed on my heart, thou mightest so much
more kindly have repulsed me? why
encourage me to hope—to love—when thou
wert to treat me thus?"

"Enough of this," faltered Anna; "permit
me to pass—I can hear no more."

"How cruel—how cold—how calculating!
It is very wicked to trifle thus with the best
affections of a poor human heart.  O Anna! in
all the time I have loved you so truly and
so well, it was long ere I had even the courage
to kiss your hand."

"Because thou wert ever so timid," said
Anna, with a half smile.

"Timid only because my love was a deep
and a sincere one.  But what were my
sensations," and he grasped his dagger as he
spoke; "what agony I endured, on seeing
this accursed stranger kiss your cheek?"

Anna's colour deepened, and again she
endeavoured to retire.

"Oh, tarry one moment, Anna!" continued
the poor lover in a touching voice, and kneeling
down while his eyes filled alternately with
the languor of love and the fire of anger.
"In memory of those pleasant hours that
are gone for ever, permit me once again to
kiss this hand—and never more will I address
you.  Refuse me not, Anna!"

"Thou tirest me!" she replied, stretching
out her hand, but averting her face; for the
beautiful coquette had "a smile on her lip and
a tear in her eye"—a smile, for she could not
repress her triumph in exciting so much love—and
a tear, for she could not stifle her pity.

Konrad kissed her hand with the utmost
tenderness.  It lingered a moment in his,
but was suddenly withdrawn.  The light left
his eyes; a curtain seemed to have fallen
between him and the world—and he was alone.

On the terrace which had been the scene
of this sad interview, he lingered long, with
his heart crushed beneath a load of conflicting
emotions.  The love he had so long
borne Anna now began to struggle with
emotions of wounded self-esteem and anger
at her cold desertion.  Jealousy prompted
him to seek some deadly vengeance, and
from time to time he cast furtive glances at
his steel arblast, with its sheaf of winged
bolts, that lay among the spoil he had
brought from the forest.  Had the Earl of
Bothwell appeared within bowshot while
these evil thoughts floated through the brain
of Konrad, our history had ended, perhaps,
with the present chapter; but, luckily, he
was at that moment engaged at the old game
of Troy with Sir Erick in the hall.

"I could not slay him!" thought the
young man, generously, as other emotions
rose within him; "no, not even if he smote
me with his clenched hand.  She seems to
love him so much, that his death would be
alike a source of misery to her and deep
remorse to me.  Dear Anna! thy happiness
will still be as much my aim as if I had
wedded thee; but I pray God thou mayest
not be deceived, and endure—what I am
now enduring!"

These generous thoughts soothed not
his agony; and bitter was the sense of
loneliness, of misery, and desolation, that closed
over his heart in unison with the shadows
of evening that were then setting over the
wide landscape below.

"And she coldly saw me weep!" he exclaimed.

He felt that he must leave Bergen and the
presence of Anna—but for whence?  Whether
for the desolate settlements of the
half-barbarian Lapps, or the wars of the Lubeckers
and Holsteiners, he could not decide.  His
love of the chase inclined him to the first;
his weariness of life, to the last.

Such were his thoughts; but at two-and-twenty
one seldom tires of existence, whatever
its disappointments and bitterness may
have been.

The sun had set on the distant sea, and
the long line of saffron light it shed across
the dark blue water died away; the gloomy
shadows of the rocks and keep of Bergen
faded from the bosom of the harbour, and
red lights began to twinkle one by one, in
the little windows of the wooden fisher-huts,
that nestled on the shelving rocks far down
below, among a wilderness of nets, and
boats, and anchors.

From the terrace of the castle, miles
beyond miles of rocky mountains were seen
stretching afar off in blue perspective
towards the surf-beaten Isles of Lofoden; and,
tipped by the last red light of the sun that
had set, their splintered and rifted peaks
shot up in fantastic cones from those endless
forests, so deep, and dark, and solemn—so
voiceless, and so still.  Konrad's melancholy
meditations were uninterrupted by a
sound; no living thing seemed near, save a
red-eyed hawk that sat on a fragment of rock.

He could hear his own heart beating.

Though his mind was a prey to bitterness
the most intense, he watched the
sunset, and the changing features of the
landscape, with all the attention that trifles
often receive, even in moments of the deepest anguish.

Gradually the shadows crept upward from
the low places to the mountain tops.  Each
long promontory that jutted into the far
perspective of the narrow fiord, was a steep
mountain that towered from its glassy bosom
in waveworn precipices; between these lay
the smaller inlets, long and narrow valleys
full of deep and dark blue water, that
reflected the solemn pines by day, and the
diamond stars by night.  Some were dark
and sunless, but others glittered still in
purple, gold, and green, where the eider-duck
floated in the last light of the west;
and all was still as death along the margin
of that beautiful bay, save the roar of a
distant cataract, where a river poured over the chasmed rock,
and sought the ocean in a column of foam.

Night drew on; the bleating of the home-driven kids, the
flap of the owlet's wing, and faint howl of a wandering wolf,
broke the stillness of the balmy northern eve; while the wiry
foliage of the vast pine-forests, that flourished almost to the
castle gates, vibrated in the rising wind, and seemed to fill the
dewy air with the hum of a thousand fairy harps.

Konrad, who, with his face buried in his hands, had long
reclined against the rampart of the terrace, was startled to find
close beside him a tall dark man, whose proportions, when
looming in the twilight, seemed almost herculean, intently
examining the great wood-cock, in the bosom of which a
cross-bow bolt was firmly barbed.

Filled with that inborn superstition which is still common to
all Scandinavia, his first thought was of the terrible *Wood
Demon*, in whose venerated oak he had so heedlessly and
daringly shot the bird.  Animated by terror, such as he had
never known before, a prickly sensation spread over his whole
frame, and even Anna was partially forgotten in the sudden
horror that thrilled through him, as, with an invocation to God,
he sprang upon the battlement of the terrace.

The dark stranger uttered a shout, and sprang forward.
Konrad's terror was completed.

He toppled over, made one palsied and fruitless effort to
clutch the grass that grew in the clefts of the ancient wall, and
failing, launched out into the air; down, down, he went,
disappearing headlong into that dark abyss, at the bottom of which
rolled the ocean.

"Cock and pie!" muttered Black Hob, with astonishment;
(for it was no other than he,) as he peered over the rampart,
"was it a madman or a bogle that vanished over the wall like
the blink of a sunbeam?"

He stretched over, cast down one hasty glance, and
instinctively drew back; for far down at the base of the beetling
crags, he saw the ocean boiling, white and frothy, through the
obscurity below.

A wild and unearthly cry ascended to his ear.

"By the blessed mass, a water-kelpie!" muttered Ormiston,
as he hurried away in great disorder.

Konrad escaped a death on the rocks, but,
falling into the ocean, arose to the surface at
some distance from the shore.  Breathless
and faint by his descent from such a height,
he could scarcely (though an excellent
swimmer) make one stroke to save his life.  A
strong current running seaward round the
promontory, drove a piece of drift-wood—a
pine log—past him.  He clutched it with all
the despair of the drowning, and, twining
himself among its branches, was thus swiftly,
by the currents of the fiord, borne out into
the wide waste of the Skager Rack.





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.. _`THE COCK-OF-THE-WOODS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE COCK-OF-THE-WOODS.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  In woman thou'rt deceived; but that we
   |  Had mothers, I could say how women are,
   |  In their own natures, models of mere change;
   |  Of change from what is nought, to what is worse.
   |                                    *The Lady's Trial.*

.. vspace:: 2

In Norway there existed (and exists even
unto this day) a certain malicious spirit, who
is ever on the alert to poke a finger in every
body's affairs, and to put every thing wrong
that ought to be right.  He hides whatever
is missing, and brings about every mischance
that happens to man, woman, or child—to
horse and to dog—to the huntsman in the
woods—to the fisher on the fiord.  The
blame of every ill is laid on the shoulders of
this unfortunate and omnipresent sprite—NIPPEN;
who, though secretly blamed, cursed,
and feared, must outwardly be spoken of
with reverence and respect, or his unremitting
vengeance and malevolence are certain and sure.

Always after nightfall, to obtain his good-will,
a can of spiced ale is deposited in a
certain nook of every household for the
especial behoof of the thirsty imp; who, if he
cannot find time to empty all the cans so
liberally bestowed, generally permits some of
the wandering Lapps, the houseless dogs or
questing foxes, that are ever wandering after
nightfall, to have that pleasure; so that next
morning Nippen's ale-can is usually found
empty in its place.

In the castle of Bergen it was the morning
occupation of Anna to spice a cup of ale until
it was exquisitely flavoured, and then, in
accordance with the still existing superstition,
Christina Slingbunder placed it in a solitary
nook of the terrace, for the prowling spirit
of mischief, who nightly found it there; but
Sueno Throndson frequently and somewhat
suspiciously averred, that Nippen came in the
shape of a Danish crossbowman to drink it.

On the evening mentioned in the preceding
chapter, Ormiston, chancing to pass that way,
observed the bright flagon standing in its
sequestered niche, and drew it forth.  He
surveyed it with great interest in various
ways—and then tasted it.  The flavour was
delicious, and he drained it to the bottom.

The spiced liquor mounting at once to the
brain of Hob, threw a sudden cloud over all
his faculties, which were never very bright
at any time; and thus next morning he had
no remembrance of his adventure with Konrad
on the terrace, on the preceding evening.
At the same hour, however, he failed not
to examine the same place; and finding there
another mug of that divinely flavoured
beverage, without hesitation transferred the
contents to his stomach, much to the
disappointment of a certain Danish soldier, who,
finding himself anticipated a second and
third time, began with some terror to
imagine that Nippen was at last beginning to
look after his property in person.

The fumes mounted to the Knight of Ormiston's
brain; and carolling the merry old
ditty of "The Frog that came to the Mill
Door," he danced round the terrace, kicking
before him the cock-of-the-woods, that was
still lying where Konrad had left it.  As he
was about to descend, Bothwell, gaily
attired, with his eyes and countenance radiant
with pleasure, sprang up the stair, taking
three steps at a time.

"Good-morrow, noble Bothwell!" said Ormiston,
balancing himself on each leg alternately.

"What the devil art thou following now,
eh?" asked the Earl.

"My nose, for lack of something better!"

"Thou seemest very drunk!  Surely the
ale at dinner to-day was not over strong for
thee.  But, harkee, I have triumphed!"

"Indeed! but the fact is, I am too drunk
at the present moment to see exactly how!"

"Guzzler! thou understandest me very
well!"

"A notable triumph for one who, if rumour
sayeth true, broke many a sconce and
many a spear at the Tournelles for the love
of a French princess!"

Bothwell coloured deeply; a dark frown
gathered on his broad brow, and his dark,
expressive eyes filled with light; but the
expression and the momentary emotion
passed away together.

"I value thy gibes not a rush.  To me all
the world is now concentrated in this rude
Norwegian castle!"

"What a difference between a man who is
in love like thee, and one who is not, like me!"

"My stout Hob, thou knowest more of
foraying by Cheviot side, and harrying the
beeves of Westmoreland, than of making
love!"

"Heaven be praised, for I have known
this same love turn many a bearded man
into a puling boy."

"It can exalt the heart of a coward into
that of a hero.  It can expand the bosom
of the austere hermit into that of a jovial
toper"——

"And endow Bothwell, the hellicate rake,
with all the virtues of Bothan, the saint and
confessor."

"I wish all the imps in hell had thee!"
said the Earl, turning away.

"I thank thee for thy good wishes," replied
his friend, reeling a little; "and so thou
hast really and irrevocably given thy heart
to this grey-eyed Norwegian."

"Grey-eyed, thou blind mole!  Her eyes
are of the brightest and purest blue."

"I say *grey*, by all the furies! and I
protest, that I love neither grey-eyes nor the
name of Anna."

"Wherefore, most sapient Hob?"

"Because I never knew an Anne that
was not cold-hearted, or a grey-eyed woman
that was not cunning as a red tod."

"Marry! a proper squire to judge of
beauty," said the Earl laughing; but,
nevertheless, feeling very much provoked.  "But
thou wilt know how to shape thy discourse,
when I say that I am about to ask her
hand of Erick Rosenkrantz."

"By St. Christopher the giant, thou art
mad!" said Ormiston, with a gravity that
shewed the assertion had sobered him;
"be wary, be prudent.  Should the Lord
Huntly"——

"My malediction on Huntly!  He shall
never see my face again; so it matters not.
He may bestow his pale sister, the Lady
Jane, on some ruffling minion of the bastard
Moray, the crafty Morton, the craftier
Maitland, or of the thundering Knox, who now
have all the sway in that court, where the
outlawed Bothwell shall never more be
seen."  And with one hand twisting his
mustaches, and the other playing with the
pommel of his dagger, the Earl strode away,
and left his friend and vassal to his own
confused reflections.

Bothwell, who had ever been the creature
of impulse, without delay sought old Sir
Erick of Welsöö, whom he found seated in
a nook of the ramparts, basking in the long
lingering sunshine, and sheltered from the
evening wind by the angle of the turret.
His long sword rested against one arm of
his chair, a pewter mug of dricka was placed
on the other, and before him stood Sueno,
cap in hand, receiving certain orders with all
due reverence.

"What the devil is this Van Dribbel tells
me?" he was saying as Bothwell approached.
"All the beer soured by the thunder-storm!
I marvel that it hath not soured my temper
too, for there never was a man so crossed, I
tell thee, Sueno.  It was my wish that
Konrad should have undertaken the capture
of this necromancer, and seen him hanged
in one of his own devilish cords; and now
Konrad is nowhere to be found.  How dares
he leave the precincts of Bergen without my
permission?"

"His Danish archers have searched every
where," said Sueno, "even to the base of the
Silverbergen, sounding their horns through
the forest, along the shores of the fiord, and
the margin of the bay; and I would venture
my better hand to a boar's claw, that the
Captain Konrad is not within the province
of Aggerhuis."

"Sayest thou so!" exclaimed the Knight
Rosenkrantz, who, between the attention
required by his offices of castellan and
governor,—the machinations of a water-sprite
who dwelt in the harbour of Bergen,
where he daily wrought all manner of evil
to the fishermen,—Nippen, who made himself
so busy in the affairs of all honest people
on the land,—the gnomes of the Silverbergen,
who stole his poultry,—and the cantrips
of a certain mischievous demon inhabiting the
adjacent wood, and had thrice turned three
fair flocks of Sir Erick's sheep into field
mice, in which shape he had seen them
vanishing into mole-tracks in the turf, where
a moment before they had been browsing,—the
old governor, we say, who, with all
these things to divert his attention, never
found time hang heavy on his hands, made a
gesture of anger and impatience, and he swore
a Norse oath, which the Magister Absalom
Beyer has written so hurriedly that our
powers of translation fail us; but he added—

"My mind misgiveth me that something
is wrong.  Away, Sueno, take a band of
archers, and once more beat the woods with
shout and bugle, and if Konrad appears not
by sunrise to-morrow, by the holy Hansdag
I will—not know what to think."

The threat evaporated; for honest Rosenkrantz
loved the youth as if he had been
his own son.

Though Bothwell had a grace, effrontery,
or assurance (which you will) that usually
carried him well through almost every thing
he undertook, and which won every one to
his purpose, he could not have chosen a more
unfortunate crisis for the startling proposal,
which he made with admirable deliberation
and nonchalance to the portly Rosenkrantz;
who no sooner heard the conclusion, than
he said with a hauteur, to which Bothwell,
at all times proud and fiery, was totally
unaccustomed, and which he did not think
this plain unvarnished Nordlander could
assume—

"Excuse me, I pray thee, my Lord Earl
of Bothwell.  Though I venerate your rank
and mission, as ambassador from the Queen
of the Scots (here the Earl's cheek glowed
crimson), I cannot give my niece to you,
even were I willing to bestow her.  She is
the first and only love of my young friend,
Konrad of Saltzberg, as gallant a heart as
Norway owns; he to whose daring you and
your friends owed preservation on the night
of the storm.  From childhood they have
known and loved each other, yea, since they
were no higher than *that*," holding his hand
about six inches from the ground; "growing
up, as it were, like two little birds in the
same nest, twining into each other like two
tendrils from the same tree; and a foul stain
it would be on me to part them now, even
though King Frederick came in person to
sue for the hand of Anna."

"Hear me, Lord Erick," began Bothwell,
alike astonished and offended at the rejection
of a suit, which he secretly thought was
somewhat degrading to himself.

"I know all thou wouldst urge," said Erick,
shaking his hand; "but this may not, cannot
be; for thou art a man too gay and gallant
to mate with one of our timid Norwegian
maidens."

The inexplicable smile that spread over the
Earl's face, shewed there was more in his
mind than the honest Norseman could read.
He was about to speak, when Sueno
approached bearing in his hand a dead bird, and
having great alarm powerfully depicted in
his usually unmeaning face.

"Oh, Sir Erick—Sir Erick—what think
you? last night Konrad of Saltzburg shot
this cock in the Wood Demon's oak!"

"Now, heaven forefend!" exclaimed the
Castellan, sinking back in grief and alarm.
"Then, Sueno, thou needst search no more.
God save thee, poor Konrad!"

"How—how, wherefore?" asked Bothwell;
"what has happened?"

"We shall never behold him more.  He
hath assuredly been spirited away," replied
Rosenkrantz in great tribulation; for in the
existence of all those elementary beings
incident to Norse superstition, he believed
devoutly as in the gospel; "he hath been spirited
away, and enclosed Heaven alone knoweth
where—perhaps in a rock or tree close
beside us here—perhaps in an iceberg at the
pole"——

"Amen!" thought Bothwell, who would
have laughed had he dared; "I would that
the Captain of Bergen were keeping him
company!"

"O Sueno! thou rememberest how it fared
with thy brother Rolf, when he stole acorns
from that very tree?"

"Yes—yes—as he crossed the Fiord in
the moonlight, a great hand arose from the
water, and drew down his boat to the
bottom—and so he perished.  Poor Rolf!"

"And with the father of Hans Knuber,
who left his axe resting against it one evening,
in the summer of 1540?"

"An invisible hand hurled it after him,
and broke both his legs."

"And Gustaf Slingbunder, who pursued
a fox into its branches, was bewitched by
the demon in such wise, that he ran in a
circle round the tree for six days and nights,
till his bones dropped asunder."

"Saint Olaus be with us!"

Erick Rosenkrantz and Sueno continued
to gaze at each other in great consternation,
while Bothwell looked at them alternately
with astonishment, till the blast of a horn at
the gate arrested their attention, and a Danish
archer approached, to inform his excellency
the Governor of Aggerhuis, that a royal
messenger from Copenhagen required an
audience.

"So this unmannerly boor hath rejected
my suit!" muttered the haughty Earl, as he
turned away; "mine—by St. Paul!  I can
scarcely believe my senses.  If my *roué* friends
d'Elboeuff or Coldinghame heard of it, they
would cast a die to decide which was the
greater fool—Bothwell or Rosenkrantz.
Rejected!  Be it so; but to have this damsel on
my own terms shall now be my future care."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LORD HUNTLY'S LETTER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   LORD HUNTLY'S LETTER.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  All self-command is now gone by,
   |    E'er since the luckless hour when she
   |  Became a mirror to my eye,
   |    Whereon I gazed complacently.
   |  Thou, fatal mirror! where I spy
   |    Love's image.
   |                          *Bernard de Pentadour.*

.. vspace:: 2

Anna, who might have formed some
excuse for Konrad, (whom she supposed to
have voluntarily expatriated himself, as he
threatened,) maintained a silence on the
subject of their last interview, and, wholly
occupied with her new and glittering lover,
troubled herself no more about the old one.

She was teaching the Earl the polsk, the
national dance of the Norse, and to which
they are enthusiastically attached.  Christina
and three other attendants played on
the ghittern, harp, and tabor, taking at times
a part in the figures of the dance.

While the Earl, with his cloak and rapier
flung aside, and having one arm round the
waist of Anna, was performing with her a
succession of those rapid whirls which make
this dance so closely to resemble the modern
waltz, Black Hob of Ormiston entered the
hall, and beckoned him with impatience in
his gestures.

"How now!" said the Earl, pausing;
"is the devil in the bush again?  Thou
hast a face of vast importance, Hob.  By
Jove! it seems to swell out even that
voluminous ruff of thine!"

"Peradventure there be reason.  Behold! here
are letters from Copenhagen."

"Hah! say you so?"——

"Sent by that king's messenger who came
hither but an hour ago!"

"Pardon me, Lady Anna," said the Earl
with sudden confusion; "I must speak with
my friend, but will rejoin you in a few
minutes.  Whose seals are these, Hob?" he
asked, as they descended to the terrace,
hurriedly by the way, examining the square
packets, which were tied with ribbons, and
sealed with wax at the crossing.  "By the
Holy Paul! 'tis from Frederick of Denmark
this!"

"And this from the Earl of Huntly; see! it
bears the boar-heads of Gordon and the
lions of Badenoch!"

"O, death and fury! it will be but one
tissue of reproaches and upbraidings from
the Lady Jane.  Throw it into the sea!"

"What! wilt thou not read it before?"

"I could scarcely do so *after*.  Read it
thyself!" replied Bothwell; "for Huntly
and I have nothing now in common!"

Each tore open a letter, and began slowly
and laboriously to decipher the cramped
and contracted hand-writing so common
to the sixteenth century.  The effect of
these communications was very different
on the readers.  A bright smile spread
over the broad visage of the Knight of
Ormiston; while a frown, black as a
thunder-cloud, gathered on the dark brow of
Bothwell.

"Fury!" he exclaimed, crushing up the
letter.  "God's fury, and his malison to
boot! be on this white-livered dog—this foul
traitor"——

"Who—who?"

"Frederick"——

"How—the King of Denmark and Norway!
These are hard names for his majesty
to receive within his own fortress of Bergen.
What tidings?"

"He declines all further correspondence
with me concerning the Shetland Isles, and
threatens, that if by the vigil of Saint
Denis—now but three days hence—we are found
within the Danish seas, to send me captive
to Queen Mary, with a full account of my
mock embassy.  'Tis some machination of
my foeman, Murray."

"Devil burn him!" said Hob.  "Well, is
it not better, after all, to be Lord of
Bothwell and Hailes, at home in puir auld
Scotland, than Prince of Orkney and Lord
of Hialtland, branded as a traitor till the
very name of Hepburn becomes (like that of
Menteath of old) a byword and a scoff in
every Scottish mouth—banned alike in the
baron's hall and at the peasant's hearth—while
thou wouldst writhe hourly to free thy
head from under the sure claws of the
Danish lion."

"Right, Hob!  Throw his letter into the
sea, and, if thou art clerk enough, let us hear
what our noble friend, the Lord Huntly,
sayeth."

Ormiston read as follows:—

"To the Right Honorable my very good
Lord and especial friend, James Earl of
Bothwell, Lord of Hailes, Liddesdale, and
Shetland, High Admiral, Sheriff of Haddington,
and Bailie of Lauderdale, *Give this
in haste—haste—haste*.

"We write to hasten your return, as the
Queen's Majesty hath relaxit your Lordship
and the worshipful Laird of Ormiston from
the horn, and hath banished the Lords
Moray, Morton, and others, your enemies,
into England, quhere they are now residing
and resett at the frontier town of Berwick,
for the slaughter of umquhile David Rizzio,
her Grace's Italian secretary.  Her Majesty
desireth me to recal you to her presence,
with solemn assurance that your sentence of
forfeiture is reversed, your fiefs and honours
restored.  My dearest sister, the Lady Jane,
and my bedfellow, the Lady Anne, send
their devoted love to your Lordship.

"So the blessing of our Lady be with
you, and grant you long life and great
commoditie!

"Done at our castle of Strathbolgie in the
Garioch, on the vigil of St. Cuthbert the
Confessor, 1565.

.. vspace:: 1

"HUNTLIE."

.. vspace:: 2

Ormiston threw up his bonnet, his black
eyes flashed and filled with tears, as he
exclaimed—

"Now, God's blessing on her Grace! from
this hour I am her leal man and true.  Now
man, Bothwell, I am sick to death of this
grim Norwayn castle, and its old ale-drinking,
chess-playing, and pudding-pated castellan,
who is part woodman, part fisherman—half
knight, half bear—and I long to see the
yellow corn waving on my ain rigs of Ormiston,
with the grey turrets of my auld peel-tower,
looking down on bonny Teviotdale.  Would
I were there now, and three hundred of my
tall troopers with lance, and horse, and
bonnets of steel, all trotting by my side.
Benedicite!"

"Three hundred devils! thy wits have
gone woolgathering.  I have promised love
and troth to Anna; and if I return with her
as my bride, Huntly and Aboyne, Black
Arthur and Auchindoune, will all come down
like roaring lions from the hills of Badenoch
and the wilds of Strathbolgie—so that I may
as well stay here and face Frederick."

"What! dost thou fear a feud with the gay
Gordons?"

"Thou knowest," replied the Earl haughtily,
"that I fear nothing, as I shall show
thee.  I love this girl with my whole heart,
Ormiston; yet now, when the first fierce
burst of love is past, I see the folly of a man
like me being tied like a love-knot to a
woman's kirtle."

"Leave her behind thee here."

"I cannot—I cannot!  What a moment
of imbecility was that, when I betrothed
myself to Jane of Huntly!"

"A cursed coil! women on both hands;
danger in returning and danger in remaining.
Our Lady direct us!"

"Dost think she will interest herself in the
affairs of such a couple of rascals as we are?"

"Thou speakest for thyself."

"Nay, I speak for thee in particular."

"Thou gettest angry," said Ormiston;
"remember the old saw—'He that is angry
is seldom at ease.'"

"Tush! .... True it is," said Bothwell
musingly, after a long pause—"I love Anna
better than my own life, and, because winning
her may cost me some trouble and danger;
yet I feel that to wed her is to wreck my ship
on a dangerous shore.  I am grown indifferent
to Lady Jane, because I may have her for
the asking—besides, I am sick of dark eyes."

"Especially Parisian!"

The Earl's brow knit, but he continued
gently—

"I have promised marriage to both; and
to one my plight must be broken.  What
matters it?  'Tis only to a woman; and did
not one whom I loved with all the depth and
holiness of a first love, slight that passion as
valueless, and laugh me to scorn when she
chose another?"

"Remain here, and we shall be sent
captives to Scotland, where all the particulars
of our pretended embassy to Denmark
will be discovered."

"And if I return with this little
Norwegian by my side, St Paul! but I must
keep my best sword buckled there too."

"Any thing thou likest, but let us leave
this desolate land.  Let us once more have
our feet on Scottish ground, and our hands
on our bridles; we shall then make our own
terms with Huntly and the Queen.  If this
dame Anna will go"——

"Go! oh, thou knowest not how the little
creature loves me!  Ardent and impulsive
to excess, she will follow me wherever I
list."

"While the fit lasts," rejoined Ormiston
drily.  "Take her with thee, but leave her
with some of thy friends in Orkney till we
hear how matters go at Holyrood.  There
is old Sir Gilbert Balfour of Westeray, will
keep her close enough in his strong castle of
Noltland, where, when once thou seest the
queen again, she may chance to remain for
the term of her natural life."

Hob paused, and scratched his rough
beard with a knowing expression; for he
knew enough of his friend to foresee how
matters would be in a month.

"Out upon thee, Hob!" said he; "thou
art ever prompting me to some knavery."

"But this letter of Huntly"——

"Thank heaven it came!"

"Thou wert about to throw it into the sea."

"St. Mary! but for its contents we must
have sailed on a hopeless quest to France, to
Italy, or to heaven knows where; for I am
already too well known by evil repute
throughout the most of Europe.  But away,
Ormiston, to the harbour.  Seek David
Wood, our wight skipper, and that
red-breeched knave, Hans Knuber, who assists
him.  Let them have our *Fleur-de-lys* ready
to sail.  I will hie me to Anna, and 'tis not
unlikely we may put to sea about dusk."

A smile was exchanged.

"Gramercy!" said the knight, "I hope
she will not forget to bring her maid, who
views my outward man with a favourable
eye, so that we may all sail merrily together.
Hey for hame!  By cock and pie!  I almost
fancy myself at my ain tower-yett, with my
broad banner displayed, and my stout
horsemen behind me.  Ho! for one headlong
gallop by Ettrickshaws or Teviotside—*Te
Deum laudamus*!  God's blessing on our own
land, that lies beyond sea, for it is like no
other!" and whirling his bonnet round his
head, more like a great schoolboy than a strong
man of six feet eight inches, Ormiston with
one bound sprang down the steep steps
leading from the terrace to the shore; while
the Earl, somewhat slowly and thoughtfully
for so ardent a lover, returned to the
presence of Anna, who, piqued by his long and
unceremonious absence, was pleased to
receive him with a pouting lip and a clouded
brow, which his caresses soon dispelled.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HERMIT OF BERGEN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HERMIT OF BERGEN.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  When fortune makes the match, she rages,
   |    And forsakes the unequal pair;
   |  But when love two hearts engages,
   |    The kind god is ever there.
   |  Regard not, then, high blood nor riches,
   |    You that would his blessings have;
   |  Let love, untaught, guide all your wishes.
   |    Hymen should be Cupid's slave.
   |                                *Sir Charles Sedley.*

.. vspace:: 2

The Reformation had been accomplished
in Denmark and Norway, during the reign
of Frederick I., about thirty years before the
period of which we write.  It had made
great progress among the simple and half
barbarian Norse, who, though they had laid
the ancient hierarchy in the dust, received
nothing equal in exchange; and consequently
the codes of religion and morality lay lightly
on the necks of the people.

A Catholic church was still permitted at
Gluckstadt; the title of bishop, the auricular
confessional, the crucifix, and other Romish
rites and ceremonies, were still retained,
though the government was avowedly and
essentially Lutheran.  Some persons adhered
rigidly to the ancient form of worship, others
to the new; but many more took a middle
and very convenient course, and for a time
believed in—nothing.

It was while matters were in this state,
particularly in the province of Aggerhuis—that
a half-crazed monk, who had belonged
to a suppressed monastery in Fuhnen, and
whose brain was said to have been turned
by the severities to which he had been
subjected, by the ecclesiastical superintendent of
the reformed church in that diocese, became
an anchorite, and undisputed occupant of a
cavern on the fiord, near the castle of Bergen.
The fame of his austerity, the severity of his
penances, and the circumstance of his having
made his dwelling in a cavern which for ages
had been the reputed habitation of Zernebok,
an evil demon, whose name is familiar
to the Norse, had been quite enough to
procure him a fame beyond the province of
Aggerhuis.  By night the fishermen shuddered,
crossed themselves, and sedulously avoided
the long ray of light that streamed from the
mouth of his deep cavern upon the glassy
waters of the bay; for, notwithstanding his
reputation for sanctity and holiness on the
one hand, he was dreaded for possessing
various supernatural and unpriestly
attributes on the other.

But to return from this digression, which
was necessary, as the hermit is about to be
introduced with due formality to the reader,
we may briefly state that the gay Earl,
notwithstanding all his eloquence and powers of
persuasion, which were very great, failed to
prevail on Anna Rosenkrantz to make an
unconditional elopement with him; nor would
her pride and self-esteem permit her to trust
implicitly to one whom she knew to have
earned at Copenhagen the dubious reputation
of a finished gallant and accomplished courtier.

Much as she loved him, and—notwithstanding
her inconstancy to Konrad, she loved
him well—Anna could not so utterly sacrifice
the name and honour of her family, or be so
oblivious of that delicacy which a Norwegian
maiden so seldom forgets; and thus, though
Bothwell urged with all the oily eloquence
that love, ardour, and gallantry lent him, the
danger of that delay which would sacrifice
him to Rosenkrantz, who in three days, by
the king's mandate, would be compelled to
make him a prisoner, Anna only wept, and
would not—could not—consent to accompany
him, unless—

"Unless we are wedded; is it not so, dearest
Anna?" said the handsome noble, as she
reclined helplessly and in tears on his bosom,
within an alcove of the terrace that overlooked
the bay.

Anna made no reply.

"Decide, dearest, decide!" urged the Earl,
pointing to his ship that was now gallantly
riding in the fiord, with her white canvass
half unloosed, and glimmering white in the
faint twilight of the northern evening.
"Decide! for by the express command of the
governor, your uncle, I must be far beyond yon
blue horizon ere the sun rises; and then thou
wilt see me no more!"

Anna sobbed bitterly, and she thought of
the triumph the rejected Konrad might feel
and display, if the Earl sailed without her.
Proud, and perhaps not a little artful, her
heart was torn by love, doubt, and anguish;
and her answers were very incoherent.

"Oh! what would my uncle Rosenkrantz
say, if"——

"I have bade adieu to Rosenkrantz, and
he deems me already on board.  Since the
arrival of King Frederick's mandate, he has
been so full of vapour and dignity, that though
I cannot but laugh at it, we can hold no
further communication; and if, after my late
proposal, which he so scornfully rejected, he
knew I was here—and with thee"——

"True, true, we would be separated."

"And for ever!  I know your scruples,
dearest Anna," said the Earl tenderly; for,
moved by her tears, and the utter abandonment
in which she reclined on his breast,
with her face half hidden by the bright
masses of her hair, and by her position
permitting soft glimpses of a full and beautiful
bosom, he felt that he loved her with his
whole heart; and that the troth he had
plighted to Lady Gordon, the vengeance of
the fierce Highland noble her brother, and
the wrath or favour of the Scottish court,
were all alike to be committed to oblivion.
Love bore all before him victoriously for the
time; and Bothwell, ever the creature of
impulses, yielded to that of the moment.

"Hear me for the last time," he urged.
"The good hermit, of whom I have heard
you speak so often, and whose abode is in
the cavern among yonder rocks, from which
we now see a ray of light that trembles on
the water, will unite us, and in my own
land will I wed thee again, with such
magnificence as becomes a bride of the house of
Hailes.  Consent, dearest Anna! and one
blast on my horn will bring a barge to the
beach; refuse, and we must part, Anna,
never to meet again."

She could make no reply, but drew closer
to her winning lover, and exchanged with
him one long and passionate kiss, and
Bothwell knew that he had triumphed.

"My beloved Anna!" he murmured, as
he raised her in his arms, and felt at the
moment that ever to love another than this
fair being, who trusted to him so implicitly,
would be sacrilege, and an impossibility.

"Christina—call Christina Slingbunder!
Oh!  I cannot go alone," she sobbed.

Bothwell, aware that there was not a
moment to lose, beckoned to the waiting-woman,
who had been lingering at the corner
of the terrace; and who, without knowing
what was to ensue, followed him, while
he half led and half bore her mistress down
the steep and devious pathway that led to
the beach.

Darkness had almost set in; the long
Norwegian twilight had given place to starry
night, and they were unseen by the Danish
sentinels, who lounged dreamily on the
summit of the keep, and at the castle gate of
Bergen.  As he descended, Bothwell drew
from his embroidered belt a small but
exquisitely carved bugle-horn, accoutred with
a silver mouthpiece, on which he blew one
short and sharp blast of peculiar cadence,
that drew an echo from every rock and
indentation of the harbour.  Ere the last
had died away, the sound of oars was
heard, the water was seen to flash in the
starlight, and a boat glided into the dark
shadow thrown by the castle rocks upon
the deep water of the fiord; it jarred against
the landing-place, and Christina Slingbunder,
who was about to make some violent
protestations against proceeding, had the
strong arm of Ormiston thrown around her.

"Welcome, Bothwell!" said he; "never
heard I sound more joyous than thy bugle;
for the last hour our wight skipper hath been
swearing like a pagan."

"Wherefore?"

"At thy delay."

"Then the knave most e'en solace himself
by swearing on."

"He says, if this breeze continues, we will
be past Frederick's-vaern by sunrise."

"All the better, Hob," replied the Earl, as
he lifted Anna on board; "but I hope he
hath our demi-culverins cast loose, and a
few yeomen in their armour, in case of surprisal."

"Right—dost thou not see I am in harness?"
said Ormiston, making his steel glove
clatter on his corselet; for, save the head, his
whole bulky frame was completely armed.
The eight seamen who pulled the boat were
all clad in pyne doublets, and armed with
swords and daggers, and they wore the
national head-dress, the broad bonnet of blue
worsted, adorned with a silver coronet and
horse's head—the Earl's crest.

"Now, my stout varlets," said their lord,
"dip, and away!"

"Away for the ship!" added Ormiston.

"Nay, for the hermit's grotto under yonder
rocks, where thou seest a light now gleaming
on the water.  Away, and a golden angel
on the best oar!"

Ormiston gave a low whistle, expressive
of surprise and pity at the folly of his friend,
and endeavoured, by a series of somewhat
unceremonious caresses, to console the
sobbing and half-frightened Christina, who had
begun to weep most obstreperously; but he
knew enough of the Earl's temperament to
be aware that any remark was now futile;
and in reality, as he cared not a rush whether
he married the Norwegian or not, he resolved
to let matters run their course.

All sat silent, and nothing was heard but
the interjections of the waiting-woman, and
the suppressed breathing of the stout
oarsmen, as the boat strained and creaked when
their sinewy efforts shot her out into
midstream.  Anna reclined against the shoulder
of the Earl, with her face hidden in a satin
hood, and his mantle of crimson velvet
rolled around her.

Now rising in her silvery glory from the
sea, the broad round moon, with a splendour
impossible to describe, aided the brightness
of the northern night.  One broad gleam of
steady radiance extended up the fiord from
the horizon to the shore; and when, like a
black speck, the boat shot across it, the
breakers of the distant ocean, like wavelets
of silver, were seen rising and falling afar
off, amid the liquid light.

The summit of the rocks of Bergen, and
the square tower that crowned them, were
shining snow-white in its splendour, but
their base was hidden in more than Cimmerian
gloom; for though the bright moonlight
tipped the eminences and peaks of the far
off mountain, the darkness of midnight
rested on the bosom of the still fiords and
bays that rolled in shadow a thousand feet
below them.

From the murky obscurity of a mass of
granite, that overhung the deepest part of
the fiord, where the rocks descended like a
wall abruptly to their foundations, many
fathoms under the surface of the water, a
faint and flickering light, that gleamed redly
and fitfully, directed the steersman to the
uncouth dwelling of this hermit of the sea.
A sudden angle of the rocks revealed it, and
the oarsmen found themselves close to a
low-browed cavern, that receded away into the
heart of the granite cliffs that overhung the
surf.

A seaman made fast the boat, by looping
a rope round a pinnacle of rock near the
narrow ledge, where the fishermen of Bergen
usually left such alms and offerings as fear
or piety impelled them to bestow on the
hermit, whom they alike dreaded and
respected.  On these rocks the sea-dogs basked
in summer, and shared the hermit's food in
winter, when they crawled through the
crevices in the ice, that for six months of the
year covered the water of the bay.

The Scottish mariners, who did not
altogether like their vicinity to the abode of
this mysterious personage, cowered together,
conversing in low whispers; and their
swarthy visages seemed to vary from brown
to crimson, in the red smoky light that
gushed at times from the mouth of the
rugged cavern, as the ocean wind blew
through it.  Bothwell, who could not for a
moment quit the trembling Anna, requested
Hob of Ormiston to acquaint the recluse
with the nature of the boon they had come
to crave of him.

Participating in the fears of the mariners,
Hob evidently did not admire venturing on
this mission alone.  On one hand, a powerful
curiosity prompted him; on the other, a
childish superstition, incident to the age,
withheld him: but he was a bold fellow,
whose scruples of any kind never lasted long,
and in a minute he had loosened his long
sword in its sheath, looked to the wheel-lock
of his dague, and sprung up the rocks.  His
tall feather was seen to stoop for a moment
as he entered the cavern, and made signs of
the cross as he advanced; for though the
Laird of Ormiston, like most of the lesser
barons in Scotland for a generation or two
after 1540, professed no particular creed,
any ideas he had of religion appertained to
the Church of Rome—therefore the aspect of
the cavern, as he penetrated, was singularly
adapted to make a deep impression on his mind.

A pile of drift-wood blazing in a cleft of
the rock, through which its smoke ascended,
filled the cavern with warmth; and a red
glow, that lit up the rugged surface of its
rocky walls and arched roof, displaying the
wild lichens that spotted them, and the
green tufts of weed that grew in the crannies.

A myriad of metallic particles, green
schorl, blue quartz, rock crystal, and basaltic
prisms, glittered in the blaze of the hermit's
fire.  It revealed also the strange and ghastly
fissures of the cavern, which had been formed
by some vast subterranean throe of nature, that
had rent asunder the solid mountains; and,
by hurling one gigantic mass of rock against
another, formed this deep retreat, into which
Hob of Ormiston penetrated with a resolute
aspect but a hesitating heart.

The roar of a subterranean cataract, that
poured down white and foaming behind one
of these ghastly seams, lent additional effect
to the aspect of the cavern—at the upper
end of which stood an altar of stone, having
on it a skull polished like ivory by long use,
a rude crucifix, and the words—

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   Sancte Olaf ora pro nobis,

.. vspace:: 1

painted above it on the wall in large and
uncouth characters.  At the approach of
Ormiston, the hermit arose from his lair or bed
of dried seaweed, and a more wild and
unearthly object had never greeted the eyes of
his visitor.

His years might number sixty; he was
perfectly bald, and his scalp shone like that
of the skull, to which his visage, hollow-eyed
and attenuated to the last degree, would have
borne no distant resemblance but for the
long white beard of thin and silvery hair that
flowed to his waist.  He was clad in the skin
of the sea-dog, and his bare legs and arms
were so lean that they resembled the bones
of a skeleton, with veins and fibres twisted
over them.  As the hermit arose, Ormiston
paused; and while he gazed with irresolution,
the wild man did so with wonder; for the
Scottish knight was richly accoutred in a
suit of plate armour; his hose were of scarlet
cloth twined with gold, and the band of his
blue velvet bonnet, like the hilt of his dagger,
sparkled with precious stones.

"Heaven save you, father!" said he, uncovering
his head, and speaking in that broken
Norwegian dialect which he had acquired
among the Shetlanders.

"And what, may I ask, hath procured me
a visit from a son of vanity and trumpery
like thee?" asked the old man of the rock,
surveying Ormiston with a glance approaching
to disdain.

"An errand of friendship, good father,"
replied the other, whose uneasiness was in no
way soothed when he saw, by the restless and
unearthly aspect of the hermit's eyes, that he
was evidently insane; "from one who hath
a boon to crave of thee."

"Of me—Ha! ha!" laughed the hermit,
and the reverberations of his laughter, that
echoed a hundredfold through the fissures of
the cavern, seemed to the imaginative ear of
Ormiston like that of fiends ringing from an
abyss, and, signing the cross, he involuntarily
drew back.  The wild hermit seemed to
enjoy his terror, and laughed louder still.

"What wouldst thou have? a blessing
implored upon thy vessel, that neither the
mermaids of the moskenstrom nor the
water-spirit may bewitch it; nor that Nippen may
come in the night and turn thy compass
round from north to south, and so lead thee
within the folds of the mighty Jormagundr,
that great ocean snake which lieth coiled up
under the frozen regions of the pole, and one
dash of whose tail makes the great whirlpool
to boil for a century?  Hah!"

"Nay, good father," said Ormiston; "for
none of these things have I sought thee, but
to crave a blessing and the bands of wedlock
for a knight and lady, who choose rather to
receive their nuptial benediction from thee,
who art a remnant of our ancient faith,
(Heaven forgive me this vile blasphemy!)
than from one of these newfangled parsons
whom King Frederick hath planted in Norway."

"Good," replied the hermit, as a smile
spread over his ghastly visage; "and what
return will be made me if I concede to
your request?"

"Return!" stammered Ormiston, taking a
silver chain from his neck, but immediately
replacing it, for he saw that he had not to
deal with an ordinary man.  "Holy father! though
the lady is noble, and the knight is
both noble and wealthy, they can make no
other return than a promise to hold thy
name in kind remembrance, and pray for
thee daily, in memory of the blessing thou
wilt bestow."

"Good again—thou pleasest me; let these
strangers approach."

"By what name art thou known, father?"

"The fishermen call me the Hermit of the
Rock.  When I lived in the world I had
another name.  I was Saint Olaf of Norway."

"Now, God keep the poor hermit!" said
Ormiston; "five hundred years have come
and gone since that blessed preacher and
converter of these wild lands from paganrie
to the true faith, rested from his holy
labours."

"Five hundred years!—thou sayest right
well.  All that time have I dwelt in this
cavern, where I shall perhaps dwell five
hundred more; but lead forward thy friends."

"Blessed Jupiter!" muttered Ormiston,
as he hurried away, "methought the tying
of this pretended nuptial knot was likely
to cost more trouble than the untying of
those on the enchanted cord.  What, ho! my
Lord of Bothwell."

"Odsbody!" exclaimed the Earl, "thou
hast tarried long enough in all conscience.
Is the occupant of this place man or
woman?"

"Neither, by Jove!  I think him half
saint, half Satan, and wholly intolerable."

Anna trembled, and her attendant shrieked
with terror, when they were lifted on the
ledge of the rock that led to this uncouth
dwelling.  The seamen, whom the Earl had
no wish should witness a ceremony which
he might one day prefer to have forgotten,
he desired imperatively to remain by their
oars, and, as they were all his own vassals,
they dared not to disobey.

"You will not follow me unless you hear
my bugle blown, in sign that we are in some
peril; and, by St. Andrew, the place looks
perilous enough!  But take courage, dearest
Anna!" he whispered, "for I am with
thee!"

Anna answered only by tears, and kept
her face hidden within her hood.  Her fears,
and those of Christina Slingbunder, were no
way allayed by the appalling aspect of Saint
Olaf—the hermit of whom they had heard
so many tremendous tales; and even Bothwell,
as thorough a daredevil as ever drew
sword, was startled for a moment; but,
pressing Anna closer to him, he advanced at once
to the hermit—and, in virtue of the vows
he had once pronounced, requested him to
unite them in marriage, and bestow his
benediction upon them.

Tall Ormiston held his bonnet before his
mouth; for a broad laugh spread over his
dark and burly visage when he saw the Earl
kneeling before this uncouth priest, whose
insanity was so evident that even he, a
border baron, felt some shame and reluctance at
the profanity and folly of the adventure.
When viewed by the light of the pine fire,
that at times died away and anon shot up
redly and fitfully, the aspect of this wild man
of the rock, with his attenuated legs and
arms clad in a gaberdine of seal-skin, his
long and bushy beard glistening tremulously
in the flame like streaming silver, his deeply
sunk yet sparkling eyes of most unearthly
blue—gave him all the appearance of a half
crazed scald or saga from the frozen caves
of Iceland—he seemed so spectral, so
shadowy, and so like the wavering vision of a
dreamer.

Sinking with terror and confusion, Anna
had but a faint idea of all that passed around
her, until she found herself once more in the
bright moonlight with another ring on her
finger, Bothwell's arm around her, and her
burning cheek resting against his; while the
diamond-like water flashed around them as
it fell from the broad-bladed oars, and the
seamen pulled hard and silently away from
the cavern.  The appearance of the hermit,
who stood on a pinnacle of rock holding
aloft a blazing pine branch with one hand,
while he bestowed benedictions with the
other, adding not a little to the energy with
which they increased the distance between
them and the shore.  The Earl saw that
the poor recluse was perfectly insane, yet
there was something singularly wild and
sublime in his aspect; he seemed so like an
inspired prophet, or seer, or one of those
strange demons with whom Norse superstition
peoples every element, every wood, and
rock, and hill.

Cheerfully pulled the stout rowers, and
again the towers of Bergen rose above them,
shining snow-white in the light of the
autumnal moon.  As they neared the ship, the
startled Ormiston mattered a curse and a
*Hail Mary!* in the same breath, when a long
line of fire suddenly gleamed across the
bosom of the water, and there shot past their
bows a swift boat, in which stood a tall
figure brandishing a spear; his whole
outline was dark and opaque, while a blaze of
light shone behind him.

"'Tis only a night-fisher!" said Anna, with
a smile; and now one more stroke of the oars
brought them alongside of the Earl's ship,
from the mizen-peak of which his own
banner, bearing the chevronels of Hepburn and
the azure bend of Dirleton, waved heavily in
the night wind.

The *Fleur-de-lys* was gaudily painted and
gilded, low in the waist, but high in the
bows and poop, where two great wooden
castles, bristling with falcons and
arquebuses, towered above the water.  Each mast
was composed of two taper spars, fidded at
the topcastles.  The Earl's crest—a white
horse's head—reared up at the prow,
balanced by a mighty lantern at the stern.  Her
sails were loose, and glimmered in the
moonlight as they flapped heavily against the
yellow masts and spars.

The Earl was welcomed by a shout from
the sailors, who, with the master and his
mates, crowded, bonnet in hand, around him.

Giving orders to sail immediately for the
Isles of Orkney, he bore Anna to the little
cabin, that, during his wanderings by the
Adriatic and Italian shores, had received
many a similar tenant.  Like a boudoir, it
was hung with the richest arras, lighted by
silver lamps that were redolent with
perfume, as they swung from the deck above,
and from globes of rose-coloured glass shed
a warm and voluptuous glow around the
lovers.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FLEUR-DE-LYS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FLEUR-DE-LYS.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  I'll lo'e thee, Annie, while the dew
   |    In siller bells hangs on the tree;
   |  Or while the burnie's waves o' blue,
   |    Run wimplin to the rowin' sea.
   |                              *Scott Song.*

.. vspace:: 2

It is difficult, says the Magister Absalom,
to analyse the nature of the Earl's love for
this fair but fickle Norwegian.

His conscience and his interest led him to
remember, that adherence to those vows so
solemnly exchanged with Lady Jane Gordon,
was the most honourable and prudent
course; but this sudden passion, conceived
by him for Anna Rosenkrantz at the Court
of Copenhagen, and pursued in that rash
and obstinate spirit with which he plunged
into every new amour and vagary, soon
made him commit to oblivion those vows
which one yet fondly and sadly brooded
over.  A temporary separation, an unexpected
meeting, as shown in the beginning of
our story, had fully developed his sentiments
for Anna, and in this mock marriage brought
them to a crisis.

Having been frequently abroad, under
every variety of fortune—at one time
commanding a French army during a desperate
civil war; at another, charged with an
important embassy; and often an exile
desperate in circumstances—in the wandering
life he had led for many a year, his career
had been one of such wild adventure and
danger, that his code of morality fitted him
loosely as his gauntlet; thus, with all the
love he bore Anna, though as yet he shrank
from wedding her before the altar of that
church where he had knelt in childhood,
this espousal of her, before a half-witted
Norwegian hermit, exactly suited the
wildness of his fancy and the romance of his
temperament.

His trusty friend and libertine follower,
Hob of Ormiston, whose fate and fortune
were so completely identified with his own,
knew, from old experience, that the flame
of his lord had expanded too suddenly to
burn long; and as the love fit and the
voyage would in all probability end together,
he would not have objected to wedding
Christina Slingbunder in the same easy and
fantastic fashion, although he was already
handfasted, as the phrase was, to a lady of
gentle blood at home.

Though she saw not the clouds that overhung
her future career, Anna was very much
dejected, when next morning she lay with her
head reclining on the shoulder of that lover
to whom she had sacrificed herself, and the
love of Konrad; and into whose hands she
had committed the honour of her family
and her future fate.

Bright rose the sun from the waters of
the Skager Rack; the hills of Denmark were
on their lee, and those of Norway, with all
their pouring waterfalls and echoing woods,
were lessening far astern.  A gentle breeze
was blowing from the westward; and as the
heavily-pooped ship careened over, her great
white lateen sails bellied before it, and the
bright green water flashed from her sharp
prows to bubble in snowy showers under
the head of the white steed that, with blood-red
nostrils and arching neck, reared beneath
the gallant bowsprit.

The sailors, with Nicholas Hubert and
the Earl's other pages and servants, were
grouped in the forecastle and in the deep
waist, over which peered the brass
arquebuses of the poop.  The skipper, Master
David Wood of Bonyngtoun, in Angus, with
a great gaudy chart (such as was then
prepared in the Hanseatic towns for the use of
mariners) spread on the capstan, was intently
measuring the distance from the Naze
of Norway to the Oysterhead of Denmark;
from thence to Thorsmynde, and so on.

He was a short, squat man, with a thick
scrubby beard and heavy eyebrows; he
wore his blue bonnet drawn well over his
forehead, to keep the sun from his eyes, and
had a gaberdine of blue broadcloth, with
immense pockets at the sides, red trunk breeches,
which met a pair of black funnel boots about
three inches below the knee.  He carried a
pocket-dial and a long dagger at his girdle.

Hob of Ormiston, minus weapons and
armour, without which he was never seen
on shore, was yawning with ennui, wishing,
as he often said, "sea-voyaging at the
devil," and (in absence of Christina, who
was very sick a-bed) endeavouring to wile
away the time by watching for an occasional
shot at the passing birds with his
wheel-lock caliver, and whistling the old air then
so much in vogue—

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   "The Frog cam to the Myll doore."

.. vspace:: 2

Anna and the Earl were seated under a
small tapestry awning, which screened them
from the view of the groups in the waist on
one hand, and from the watch and timoneer
on the other.  Her eyes were full of tears.

"Anna, dearest, why so sad?" said the
Earl, pressing his dark mustaches against her
white forehead.  "Do you regret the step
you have taken for my sake?"

"Oh no!" she whispered in a soft low
tone; "but I sorrow when I think of the
knight Rosenkrantz, my poor old uncle, who
since infancy has been so kind to me; my
dear and only kinsman, when worn out by
years and their infirmities, to be left alone
by me in his old age—by me whom he loves
so well!  Who now will soothe him in
sickness as I have done, and cheer him in the
long nights of winter when I am far away?
My place will be vacant at the board to-day,
my chair by the fire to-night.  My harp
stands there beside it, but he will hear my
voice no more.  Oh! he will be very
lonely—desolate!"  Her tears fell fast and bitterly.

"Speak not thus, dear Anna!" said the
Earl, kissing her again; and, glad to say any
thing that might soothe her, he added, "We
will return to him again, and together will
we cheer his declining years."

"But he never will forgive me, nor love
me as of old."

"He will!  We shall kneel at his feet
and implore his forgiveness, (Ormiston
whistled very loud); and, if he loves you so
well, he could never resist your supplications."

He kissed her with ardour, and the girl
was soothed.

Fondly and trustfully she looked in his
face.  There was a light in her clear eyes, a
flush on her soft cheek, and an infantile
smile on her cherry lips, that made her
quite bewitching, as she lay half fainting on
Bothwell's breast and half embraced by him,
listening to his oft-repeated, and perhaps too
voluble, vows of constancy and love.

"Farewell, dear Norway—a long farewell!"
she exclaimed, kissing her hand with
playful sadness to the distant stripe of blue
that shewed where her native hills were
fading far astern.  "I may no more hear
the rush of thy waterfalls, or see thy
pine-clad hills, and deep salt fiords, overhung by
the sweetbrier and purple lilac that scent
their waters in summer, or the silver birch
and dark-green pine that shadow them in
autumn and in whiter; but oh! *Gammle
Norgé*, I never will forget thee!"

"Anna," said the Earl, "from the ramparts
of my castle of Bothwell, I will shew
thee a valley of the Clyde, and such a
territory as no lord in all Scandinavia could
shew his bride; and bethink thee, that hold
of Bothwell is thrice more magnificent than
Frederick's castle of Elsineur.  I have eight
stately fortresses, the least of which would
make four of yonder castle of Bergen; I have
four lordships, each of which is richer than
your native province of Aggerhuis; and I
have four sheriffdoms, each of which is worth
three of it—and thou shalt be lady of them
all!  When I wind this horn from Bothwell
castle gate, it finds so ready an echo at the
tower of Lawhope, the house of Clelland,
the keep of Orbiestoun, and the place of
Calder, that five thousand men, all dight for
battle, are in their stirrups, and a hundred
knights, the best in Scotland, are proud to
unfurl their pennons beneath the banner of
James Hepburn of Hailes!"

The Earl's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm,
and those of Anna lit up with delight and
pride; while Ormiston, who considered himself
the representative of these hundred good
palladia, adjusted his ruff complacently, and
drew himself to the full extent of his six feet
odd inches.

"And," whispered Anna, "and will you
always love me as you do now?"

"O yes—ever and always!" replied the
impassioned lover.

Ormiston whistled dubiously, and then
continued his ditty—

   |  "The Frog cam to the Myll doore,
   |    And a low bow made he, O!
   |  Saying, 'Gie, Sir Miller, a scrap o' thy store
   |    To a Frog of gentle degree, O!'"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE ISLE OF WESTERAY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE ISLE OF WESTERAY.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  'Tis evening quick;——'tis night:——the rain
   |  Is towing wide the fruitless main;
   |  Thick, thick;—no sight remains the while
   |  From the farthest Orkeny Isle,
   |  No sight to seahorse or to seer,
   |  But of a little pallid sail
   |  That seems as if 'twould straggle near.
   |                                      *Leigh Hunt.*

.. vspace:: 2

The course of the Earl's ship lay westward;
but heavy gales blew her far to the
north, and for many days she beat about in
that tempestuous ocean which roars around
the hundred Isles of Shetland, pouring its
foam upon their bluff precipices and into
the vast and resounding caverns that
perforate their stern shores, many of which have
never seen other inhabitants than the gigantic
erne that built its nest in the cliffs, the
wild horse that browsed on the moor, and
the whiskered walrus that basked on the
beach below.

On others lie the rude towers and dwellings
of the hardy Udallers, the ruined forts
and runic tombs of those old ocean kings,
who were so long the terror of Britain, of
Belgium, and of Gaul—the temples of the
Druids, the uncouth crosses and gothic
chapels of that later creed which Columba
preached, and for which Saint Erick died—and
the obelisks that mark the lonely graves
of the old Kuldei overlook the reedy moors,
the foaming maelstroms, and the rushing
surges of the Ultima Thule.

For fourteen days dark grey clouds had
overhung that struggling ship.  The sullenness
of the sailors at the continuance of an
adverse wind was communicated to the Earl,
who became petulant; for Anna and her
attendant were very unwell, and nothing
cures love so much as a dose of sea-sickness.
On the fifteenth day the sun rose brightly
from the ocean, and tipped with light the
dreary hills of Unst; the clouds dispersed,
a fair wind swept over the water, and the
*Fleur-de-lys* bore away merrily for Westeray,
an isle of Innistore, where stood the
stronghold of Noltland, possessed by one of
Bothwell's chief friends and adherents, Sir
Gilbert Balfour, a powerful baron, and cadet
of the house of Monkquhanny, in Fifeshire.

Anna, we have said, was very sick and
sorrowful.  The Earl scarcely left the side
of her couch in the little tapestried cabin;
and though in her pallor and helplessness
she was as beautiful as ever, the Magister
Absalom records, in his stiff, dry way, that
Bothwell could not resist the bitter and
obtruding reflection, that it might have been
better (considering the turn of fortune in
his favour at home) if his vessel had not
been driven into the harbour of Bergen, on
the night in which this history opened.

In their bud he endeavoured to crush
these ungenerous and ungrateful thoughts;
but they recurred to him again and again,
till one glance of Anna's pleading eyes, one
smile of her pretty mouth, would put them
all to flight, and he felt that he could brave
both Huntly and the queen for her sake.
Yet whenever he was alone, or beyond the
immediate influence of her charms, ambition,
as of old, began to whisper in his ear and
to gnaw at his heart; pride and self-interest
were on one hand—love and generosity on
the other.

The first flush of love was over.

Though he did not as yet entirely repent
his strange espousal of this fair northern
girl, he foresaw that it would prove a
formidable barrier to his gaining any permanent
ascendency over the faction of Moray and
Morton, as the principal strength of the
Catholic lords consisted in their unanimity,
which was certain of being at an end,
whenever Huntly learned how Bothwell had
broken his promise to his sister, Lady Jane
Gordon.

Ormiston had mentally been making
similar reflections; and when a dark cloud
gathered on the broad and noble brow of
Bothwell, or an expression of deep meditation
veiled the brightness of his fine dark eyes,
he knew well what visions were struggling
for mastery in his bold and ambitious heart.
But the knight never intruded a remark of
his own; and remembering how often, when
in the full glow of his new amour, the Earl
had so scornfully rejected his more sage
advice, he resolved quietly to let fate have
its own way.

At the close of a stormy day, the isle of
Westeray, like a dark blue cloud, arose from
ocean on their lee.  Dark and louring, the
sky communicated its inky hue to the sea,
which was flecked by spots of white, that
marked the crests of the waves.  Like snow,
their surf was poured upon the jutting rocks
and hidden reefs that fringe the island; and
thus, when night closed in, a white line of
breakers alone indicated where it lay.

As the sun set, his sickly rays poured a
yellow light along the waste of waters, and
lit up with a parting gleam the gigantic
façade of the castle of Noltland, which
towered above the rocks of Westeray, with
its heavy battlements and tourelles at the
angles, its broad chimneys and stone-flagged
tophouses gleaming redly and duskily against
the murky sky beyond.  The light faded
away from its casements, one by one they
grew dark, and an hour after the sun had
set, the *Fleur-de-lys* anchored on that side
of the isle which is sheltered from the waves
of the Atlantic.

Joyously the Earl and his companions
sprang upon the rude pier, alongside of
which their vessel was hauled after great
labour, and much swearing and vociferation
by the seamen.  The night was now intensely
black, but the darkness of the beach
was partially dispelled by the blaze of ten
or twelve torches, which were upheld by the
retainers of the Baron of Noltland, who
hastened to the pier to receive the Earl.

Sir Gilbert Balfour of Westeray, who,
to the office of master of the household to
Queen Mary, united the captaincy of the
royal castle of Kirkwall, was a man above
the middle height, strongly made, powerfully
limbed, and well browned by constant
exposure to the weather.  His hair and beard,
which were trimmed very short, were of the
deepest black.  He was richly attired in a
doublet of yellow satin, embroidered with
Venetian gold; a scarlet mantle lined with
white silk hung from his left shoulder, and
a small ruff fringed the top of a bright steel
gorget that encircled his neck.  His bonnet
and trunk-hose were of black velvet.  He
carried a walking-cane, but was without
other arms than one of those long daggers
such as were then made at the Bowhead of
Edinburgh.  The magnificence of his attire,
which glittered in the torchlight, contrasted
forcibly with that of his islesmen who crowded
about him.

Four or five, who seemed to act as a
bodyguard, wore iron helmets adorned with
eagles' feathers, coats-of-mail composed of
minute rings of steel linked together, and
reaching nearly to their ankles.  They
carried battle-axes and short but powerful
handbows slung on their backs, and crossed
saltirewise by sheafs of barbed arrows.
Others were clad in sealskin doublets, with
plaids of purple and blue check, and kilts of
dark-brown stuff; but all were barefooted,
barelegged, and barearmed—strong, muscular,
red-haired, and savage-looking men—whose
hazel eyes glistened through their matted
locks in the light of the streaming torches.

"Noble Bothwell—welcome to Westeray!"
exclaimed Sir Gilbert, vailing his bonnet.
"I knew thy banner at a mile distant, when
it glittered in that brief blink of sunshine.
Ha! stout Ormiston, I have not seen thee
since the day we fought side by side at the
battle of Corrichie!  Welcome home!"

"Balfour, I thank thee!" said Ormiston;
"but dost thou call this home?  By Jove!
I deem that we have many a long Scottish
mile to travel yet, ere we find ourselves under
our own rafters."

"And if the same mischances attend me,"
said Bothwell, "I may cruise about in these
northern seas like another Ulysses, but
without acquiring his wisdom.  However,
I have brought my Calypso with me.
Ha! ha! now I warrant, my trusty Gib Balfour,
thou hast never read of this same Sir
Ulysses!"

"Read!  St. Mary forefend! though my
brother, the Lord President, hath compiled a
notable book of 'Practiques,' I never could
read nor write either, praise God! and by his
aid never shall.  I can bite the pen and make
my mark, in sign of the blessed cross, like
my father, the stout knight of Monkquhanny,
before me.  Of what service are booklear or
scholar-craft to a knight or gentleman of
coat-armour?  Nay, pshaw!  I leave all such to
monks and scribes—to knaves and notaries—and
content me with the knowledge of arms,
stable-craft, and falconrie, siclike as becometh
me; but this Sir Ulysses—what manner of
knight was he? came he from the Mearns or
the west country?"

"A wise warrior he was, who fought valiantly
at Troy, and he loved an enchantress
such as I have with me now."

"Thou, my lord!"

"Ay, in yonder vessel."

"A sorceress—God forebode!" said Balfour,
stepping back a pace; "we must have
her burnt!  The sheriff court of Kirkwall
meets at Lammas-tide.  'Tis well!"  Bothwell
laughed.

"Thou mistakest me, honest Balfour!  The
enchantress I mean, is a fair girl whom I
have brought with me from Norway, and
who deals in no spells save such as win the
heart.  She is a lady of high birth and rare
beauty too; so brush up thy rusty chivalry,
Sir Gilbert, and let me have a litter forthwith
for her conveyance."

"A lady! forsooth such brittle ware will
find but rough accommodation among us
isles-men here at Noltland, where a silken kirtle
hath not been seen these ten good years, ha! ha!"

At that moment, Anna, supported by Ormiston
and Christina her attendant, appeared
at the side of the vessel, about to cross a
broad plank that extended to the rough
wooden pier, overlooked by the great
donjon tower of Noltland.  She was very pale;
but the torchlight shed a tinge of red
on her cheek, and caused her heavy locks
to glitter as the night wind waved them to
and fro.

The plank shook, and a half-stifled cry of
fear escaped from Anna.  Bothwell advanced
to her assistance, but at the instant a young
man sprang from the crowd of islesmen behind
Sir Gilbert Balfour, dropped into the
water, seized the plank with both hands to
steady it, while presenting his shoulder for
the lady to lean on.

She touched it lightly with her hand,
and murmured her thanks as she passed.

A low sigh fell upon her ear; and, with
that quick apprehension of sorrow and
interest which is so characteristic of women,
Anna turned to her supporter, but his face
was bent down and concealed, and she felt
agitated—she knew not why.

The young man trembled so much that
he almost sank when she touched him.  He
looked up once; there was a rustling of
satin—a dreamy sense of perfume and starched
lace, and the vision passed away.  He was
Konrad!

Ah! had Anna seen the deep and earnest,
the sorrowful and affectionate expression
that lit his soft and upturned eyes,
her heart would assuredly have smote
her; but the splendid Earl of Bothwell
seized her hand, and led her towards Sir
Gilbert Balfour, by whom she was hurried
away.

Lighted by torches that streamed and
sputtered in the night wind, and flared on
the rugged rocks that reared from the frothy
ocean, the group ascended the narrow and
winding pathway that led to the castle.
Konrad gazed wistfully after them, with his
hands pressed upon his forehead, and with
the air of one who struggles to preserve his
senses.

When drifting about at the sport of the
waves of the Christiana fiord, and almost
insensible from cold and misery, he had
been picked up by a small galliot bound
for Kirkwall, and the crew had landed him
in Westeray a week before the arrival of
Bothwell.

He had been protected by Balfour, who,
being kind-hearted and hospitable, felt
interested in the young man on witnessing
the dejection and utter prostration of spirit
under which he laboured.

The despair of a heart that has loved
truly, and been deceived, is sometimes so
deep that no one can imagine its intensity.
So it was with Konrad.

The deep, dark consciousness of desolation
that had been settling over him, might
have become in time a more subdued and
morbid feeling of regret; but now this
sudden meeting brought back all his first
hopes and emotions to their starting-place,
and renewed in poignancy all the agony of
that hour, in which he learned that he had
lost her for ever.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NOLTLAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   NOLTLAND.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  The nicht followis, and every weary wicht
   |  Throwout the Erde has caucht anone richt,
   |  The sound pesund slepe them liket beat
   |  Woddis and rayeand sels war at rest.
   |  And the Sterne, thair myd coursis rollis doun,
   |  All the fieldis still othir, but noyis or soun.
   |                              *The Æneid of Douglas*, 1518.

.. vspace:: 2

The long twilight of the northern eve
had passed away, and the darkness of an
October night had closed over Westeray.

Tall and grim and dark, save where lit
by an occasional ray from a window, the
Keep of Noltland towered in massive
outline above the rocky isle.

This magnificent castle was built by
Thomas de Tulloch, bishop and governor of
Orkney under Erick king of Denmark,
about 1422.  It was surrounded by massive
walls and outworks; the sides of the
great keep were perforated by a series of
loopholes for quarrelles or cannon, rising
tier above tier like the gun-ports of a
line-of-battle ship.  Many parts of this vast
baronial hold are richly decorated by the
skill and fancy of the architect, whom
tradition avers to have found his grave within
its walls, and a large stone, shaped like a
coffin, is still pointed out at the foot of the
great staircase, as covering the place of his
last repose.

The stately hall of the Bishop's castle
glowed cheerfully in the blaze of the fire
that crackled in the arched fireplace, where
a pile of driftwood blazed, the fragments of old
wrecks that, could they have spoken, might
have told many a tale of suffering and of war,
with logs of resinous pine brought from
Norway, or washed on the beach from the
savage and then unknown coasts of the
Labrador.

From the roof hung a large brazen
chandelier, in which the flames of twelve tall
candles were streaming in the currents of
air that swept through the vast apartment.
The floor was paved with stone, which,
though originally of red rock like the walls,
was carefully whitened and sanded.  The
great oak girnels and cabinets, the tables
and chairs, were all of the fashion of James
III.; and behind them, on rusty tenterhooks,
hung long pieces of rude and carpet-like
tapestry, representing, in dark and
gigantic figures, the voyage of Æneas, and
other passages from Virgil.  As the wind
moved the arras, the great mishapen figure
of the pious Trojan, his long-haired Creusa
and chubby Ascanius, seemed at times as
if starting into life.  At the lower end of
the hall, and almost lost in the shadow of
its vast vacuity, were several retainers of
Westeray, clad in their mail shirts and brown
kilts, lolling on hard wooden settles,
conversing in guttural whispers, or sleeping
under the side tables rolled up in their
plaids, looking like bundles of tartan with a
mop stick through them—the latter being
represented by their shock heads of hair.

A trivet table, marked with a diagram for
playing the old chivalric game of Troy, was
placed near the fire, and thereon lay cards
and dice, and a tall pewter tankard of
malmsey wine, from which the silver-mounted
horns were incessantly replenished by
Bothwell, Ormiston, and the Knight of Noltland,
who, with their doublets unbuttoned and
their gorgets and swordbelts flung aside
were lounging by the ruddy fire and
conversing with animation, but marked by a
gravity rather unusual for the two
first-named personages.

Anna, who, with her attendant, had been
conducted to suitable apartments, had
retired for the night, leaving Bothwell and his
friends to pursue their political conversation,
and to drink their wine undisturbed, which
they did with the devotion of three Germans
quaffing for a wager.

"And this is all thou knowest of the
machinations of Moray?  Ah! false bastard,
I shall live to mar thee yet!" exclaimed the
Earl, with kindling eyes, on hearing Balfour
unfold the web of intrigue that surrounded
the young Queen Mary.  "And my barony
of Crichtoun too! saidst thou, Sir Gilbert, that
Morton had cast his gloating eyes on that?"

"Yea, and but for this late raid at Holyrood,
had added it to his adjacent fiefs of
Dalkeith and Vogrie."

"And so they have slain this Rizzio!  I
remember him well—a smooth-tongued old
Italian, somewhat gay in his garb, but
crooked in form, and weasoned in visage.
Did he not succeed Monsieur Raulet as
foreign secretary?"

"The same."

"And they slew him, poor knave!"

"It was on the evening of the 9th of
March last, when the Queen's Grace sat at
supper with her sister, the Countess Jane of
Argyle, and Rizzio seated between their
tabourettes twangling on his ghittern, when
the High Chancellor seized the palace gates
at the head of a hundred and fifty tall
spearmen, in corselets and steel bonnets, while
my Lords of Lindesay and Ruthven, with
King Henry and a hundred more, in their
armour, ascended by the secret stair to the
turret chamber in James V.'s tower.  The
poor Italian skipped about like a maukin,
and cried aloud in his native gibberish for
mercy; but, by the mass! he found little of
that, for they dragged him from the skirt of
the shrieking Queen, and slew him within
earshot of her Majesty, whom Andrew
Kerr"——

"Of Fawdounside?" said Ormiston; "a
stout man, and a bold—I know tall Andrew
well."

"Is said to have handled somewhat
roughly, for he bent a cocked pistolette
against her breast."

"Of Mary?—of a woman about to become
a mother!" said the Earl, grasping his
poniard.  "Would to St. Paul I had been
within arm's length of him! but what hath
drawn the ire of his most sapient Majesty
and the Protestant Lords upon this poor
Italian?"

"Heaven alone knoweth,[\*] unless it be that
her Majesty favoured him greatly for his
superior scholarcraft; which, like witchcraft
and every other craft, is often like unto a
sharp sword that cutteth its own scabbard.
Royal favour, as thou well knowest,
Bothwell, will soon make a man hated by his
compeers; and thus Rizzio was hated, and
so slain, for they left him in the adjoining
chamber, gashed by six-and-fifty sword and
dagger wounds, with the King's poniard
driven to the hilt in his brisket, to show by
whose mandate the deed was done."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] At this date, the calumnies recorded
by Buchanan were yet
uncirculated.  H. le Guyon and *Blackwood*
expressly state David Rizzio
to have been an *old man*.

.. vspace:: 2

"'Twas right Venetian that."

"And further, knowest thou that Master
Craig, the minister of St. Giles, that Master
Knox, and the father of that buxom bride
whom he won by his damnable sorceries—even
the pious and godly lord of Ochiltree—are
all art and part in the assassination of
this poor stranger, whom they deemed their
only barrier to the ear and eye of her Majesty?"

"How!" said Bothwell ironically, "darest
thou thus malign our Scottish apostles?"

"Nay, I malign none; but this is well
known to my brother the President, who, as
thou art aware, is ever fishing in troubled
waters, that they were in the conspiracy.  Ha!"
he added, with a dark frown, "thinkest thou
that this knave Knox, who leagued with
the sacrilegious murderers of my kinsman,
the great Cardinal of St. Stephen, would
quail at crushing this harmless bookworm—this
poor Italian violer?  I trow not!"

"'Tis nothing to me," replied the Earl;
"for Master Knox was never friend of mine."

"Nor mine!" added Ormiston, with a
furious oath; "he ever gave me the breadth
of the causeway, as if there was contamination
in the touch of my cloak; and so he, too,
can league with murderers—with jackmen,
and men-at-arms, eh?"

"Doubtless," replied Balfour with a sneer,
"when, as he hath it, 'God raiseth them up
to slay those whom the kirk hateth;' since
Rizzio's death, Morton, Lindesay, Ochiltree,
Fawdounside, and others, have been exiles in
England; the Catholic lords are again in the
ascendant, and want but the appearance of
Huntly and yourself at court (united by
other ties, as I have no doubt you soon will
be,) to crush by the strong hand, and
perhaps for ever, those dark and dour-visaged
Protestants.  God's murrain on their long
prayers and Geneva cloaks! for the sound of
one and sight of the other, gives me a fit of
the spleen.  But we have had enough of
these matters—fill thy wine-bicker, noble
Bothwell; here's to black-eyed Jane of
Huntly—drink, Ormiston, a fair carouse to the Lady
of Hailes and Bothwell-hall!"

The Earl drank his wine in silence, and
black Hob did so too, twirling his mustache
the while, with his eyes half-closed by a
leer.

"Odsbody! thou receivest this sentiment
rather coldly!" said Sir Gilbert, setting
down his horn with surprise.

"Thou forgettest there is this lady of
Norway," said the Earl.

"By St. Magnus! dost thou speak of
letting thy gay lemane stand in the way of
thine advancement, to an eminence more
glorious than ever Scottish subject (save
this lordling of Lennox) attained to; for
thou and Huntly shall govern the realm,
and the King and Queen will be but as
painted puppets in thy hands; for the
memory of Rizzio's bloody corpse, and that
night of horror in the turret-chamber, will
ever rise in Mary's mind as a barrier
between thee and the exiles.  Bethink thee!
Thou hast many a wrong to revenge on the
tribe that have triumphed in thine absence."

"True, true," replied Bothwell, with a
louring eye; "but I have promised to this
girl"——

"Not marriage! thou wouldst not say
that," laughed Sir Gilbert.  "No, no; thou
wouldst not be such a jack-a-lent (the blood
rushed to the Earl's brow).  But if thou
fearest that Jane Gordon should hear of
thy wandering fancies, why, bethink thee
that Noltland is a strong castle, and that
the rocks of this islet are washed by the
deep salt sea.  It would form a prison for
the giants of Amadis, then how much more
for one poor fragile girl?"

Whatever Bothwell thought of this
insidious advice, or how much it coincided
with the ideas that were then beginning to
obtrude on his mind, we shall not say, but
now return to Konrad.

He sat by the lonely shore, and its waves
rolled up the shelving rock to his feet.  He
was in a waking dream, and felt neither the
cold night wind or the misty spray of the
sea as they blew on his fevered cheek.  A
sense of desolation pressed heavily on his
heart, and it was not unmingled with a
desire of vengeance on Bothwell.  But Konrad
was alike brave and generous, and the
sentiments of jealousy and rage, that made him
at one time grip the haft of his Norwegian
knife, were almost immediately stilled by
those of a gentler nature—pity and commiseration.

He now felt both for Anna, and felt acutely,
though she had so heedlessly and ruthlessly
cast him from her heart and remembrance.
Chance had thrown them together on a foreign
shore, and feeling, he knew not why, an intense
distrust of the sincerity of that gay and
glittering noble, whom she had preferred to
an earlier and better lover, he resolved to
watch over her safety and interests in secresy,
and with the affection of a friend; for he now
deemed her no longer worthy of a deeper
sentiment of regard—and yet withal he felt
that he loved her still—yea passionately, as
of old, though hope was dead for ever.

The moon arose at the distant horizon, and
cold and pale its light fell on the restless
ocean; clearly and brightly the stars sparkled
in the dark blue sky, and at times the red
wavering streamers of the north shot across it.

High and grim in all its baronial pride and
feudal strength, the embattled keep of the
Scottish stronghold towered above the slimy
rocks—slimy with drifting spray and drenched
seaweed.  Three long flakes of yellow lustre
streamed out into the night from the grated
windows of the hall.  One starlike ray shone
from a chamber in the guest-row, and long
and wistfully Konrad gazed at it, for he
believed it was the apartment of Anna, and his
conjecture was right.

Young and enthusiastic, he felt that many
a vision of future fame and happiness had
perished now, and passed away for ever, with
the passion that had cherished such dreams—dreams
that arise only in the noon of life and love.

The moon went down into the dark blue
ocean; the diamond stars faded one by one,
and the first rays of the early morning began
to play upon the floating clouds, to tinge the
east with orange hues, and tip the turrets of
Noltland with warm light; but Konrad was
still seated by the murmuring sea.

All sense of time and place had been
forgotten, or were merged in one idea.

And that idea was Anna.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SEPARATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SEPARATION.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Why no tender word at parting——
   |    Why no kiss, no farewell take?
   |  Would that I could but forget thee—
   |    Would this throbbing heart might break!
   |  Is my face no longer blooming?
   |    Are my eyes no longer bright?
   |  Ah! my tears have made them dimmer,
   |    And my cheeks are pale and white.
   |                            *Edmonstoune-Aytoun.*

.. vspace:: 2

"I have resolved!" exclaimed the Earl,
breaking a long silence, as he walked to and
fro with Ormiston on the bartisan of Noltland
next morning.  "With a prospect before
me so magnificent—the attainment of
the administration, the civil and military
power on one hand, the sweets of successful
rivalry and vengeance on the other!  Oh!  I
would be worse than mad to forego it, by
marring my union with the sister of Huntly,
and for what?  This love so suddenly
conceived, and for a foreign girl!"

"Cocknails! but now thou speakest like a
man of mettle!" growled Hob through his
coal-black beard.

"If," said the Earl musingly; "if I could
love her as I once loved one who—pshaw! why
these old thoughts?  Anna is not my
first love; and have I not felt how feeble,
how falling, how sickly, have been the
sentiments entertained for all who have
succeeded *her*?"

"Then thou wilt sail"——

"From Westeray; and, like Æneas, leaving
my Dido behind me."

"Right!  Sir Gilbert shewed me letters
from Lethington the secretary, and his
brother Sir James of Pittendriech, wherein
they state that her Majesty is most anxious
for your return, and daily groweth more
weary of her husband; that Huntly (the
moment thou art fairly espoused to his
sister) will strike some vigorous blow to lay
for ever prostrate the adherents of Morton
and of Moray."

"What a jack-a-lent! what a blockhead I
have been, to give way thus to my passion
for the niece of Rosenkrantz!  I have
done myself, and so may mar a thousand
giant schemes of triumph and ambition."

"I thought that sense would return when
perhaps too late; but the affair is not
irredeemable."

"Ha!—how?"

"A marriage tie blessed by yon mad
priest cannot be very indissoluble, and the
damsel may easily be got rid of."

"Dog of hell!" exclaimed the Earl furiously,
"wouldst thou counsel me to murder her?"

"Nay," replied Hob sternly; "may God
forgive thee the thought, so freely as I do
this foul offence; but as Sir Gilbert offers to
keep thy troublesome lemane, let him do so
a-God's name.  He is a gay man and a
gallant, this old Balfour—we know him well;
and, cock and pie!  I warrant he will soon
find means to turn this damsel's sorrow into
joy."

At this probability a darker frown gathered
on the brow of Bothwell; for, though half
tired of Anna, and wholly repenting of his
intrigue with her, he felt a pang at the idea
of another supplanting his image in her
heart.

"Thou art but a cold-blooded and iron-hearted
mosstrooper, Hob," said he; "one
inured to rapine and cruelty; nursled and
nurtured among wilds and morasses, and
thirty years of incessant feud and foray,
stouthrief and bloodshed, and cannot judge
of my feelings in this matter.  I will
myself see Anna, and break the matter to her—bid
her adieu, and will meet thee here, if thou
tarriest for me."

"See her, and be lost! one smile—one
tender word—a few tears—will seal thy fate;
and while thou playest the lover and the
laggard here at Westeray, Morton, Lindesay,
and their allies, aided by the English Queen,
regain place and power, and reverse thy
pardon and recall.  Yonder lieth the
*Fleur-de-lys*, with her canvass flapping in the
friendly gale, that streams her pennons
towards the Caithness coast.  Be wise—be
wary; away, and see not Anna again!"

"Trust me, Ormiston.  In my youth I
was the plaything of a proud, a cold, and
calculating beauty; the slave of her charms
and caprice in hall and bower—the upholder
of her name and loveliness amid the dust
and blood of the battle and tiltyard; but
these follies have passed with the years and
the passion that produced them; and now
thou shalt see, that, like that woman, I can
be cold as ice, and impassible as marble,
when my interest jars with my love.  In
half an hour I will meet thee here; till then,
adieu!"

One of the numerous boys, who fed like
the dogs on the offals at the hall-table of
the great island baron, conducted the Earl
to the chamber of Anna.  He was little, but
strong and active as a deer.  His whole
attire was a kilt of brown stuff belted about
him, a sealskin vest, and the leathern fillet
confining the masses of his thick red hair,
which, from the hour of his birth, a comb
had never touched.  Leading the way, he
sprang like a squirrel up the steps of the
great stair, his bare and sinewy legs taking
three steps at a time.

The space and magnificence of the
staircase made the Earl pause as he ascended,
notwithstanding the bitter thoughts that
oppressed him.  The great stone column
upon which the steps turn, is a yard in
diameter, and has a capital decorated with a statue
of the Bishop of Orkney, Thomas de Tulloch.
The nature of the times of which we
write, was evinced by the architecture of
this grand stair; for, at every turn of the
ascent, there are concealed loopholes
pointing inwards, to gall the foe who might
penetrate thus far; while, at the summit,
there is still remaining the guard-room,
where five or six islesmen, who formed the
body-guard of Balfour, clad in their shirts
of mail, and armed with bow and battle-axe,
lay stretched on the stone benches dozing
listlessly, like sleepy dogs.

The Earl stood within the apartment
where Anna had passed the night; it was
wainscoted with fir-wood, and on the centre
of each pannel was carved a quaint device,
the design of some rude genius of the
Orcadian Isles.  These were principally of a
religious nature, and the hands and feet of
our Saviour, pierced by the nail-holes and
encircled by a crown of thorns, appeared
alternately with the *otter-head* of Balfour,
and satyr-like visages that grinned from
bunches of gothic leaves.  The stone
fireplace was surmounted by a bishop's mitre,
and a fire of driftwood was still smouldering
on the hearth.

Christina, who had been watching her
mistress, retired on the entrance of the Earl.

He approached the bed where Anna, still
oppressed by the illness and lassitude
consequent to her voyage, was reposing and
slumbering soundly, unaware that her lover
was bending over her.

Raised upon a dais, and having a heavy
wooden canopy supported by four grotesque
columns, the bed resembled a gothic tomb
rather than a couch, and Anna might have
passed for a statue, as her face and bosom
were white as Parian marble.  On each
cheek her hair fell in heavy braids, which
glowed like bars of gold when the rays of
the morning sun streamed through the
embrasured casement on her placid face.

More than usual was revealed of a bosom
that, in its whiteness and roundness, was,
like that face, surpassing beautiful.  The
colour came and went in the cheek of the
Earl, and he became irresolute as he gazed
upon her.  He sighed deeply, and, animated
by a sudden tenderness, pressed his lip to
her cheek; she awoke, and twined her arms
around him.

"My dear Lord!" said she, in a faint voice,
"so thou art come to me again!"

"I have come, Anna, but to bid thee
farewell."  Her large eyes dilated with sudden
alarm and grief.

"I told thee, Anna, that in Orkney we
might have to separate for a time, ere I could
convey thee to my household and my home.
The wind is blowing right across the stormy
Frith toward the mainland of Scotland, and
though love cries ho! my skipper is urgent,
and still more so is stern necessity.  Farewell
for a time—for a brief time, sweet Anna,
I must leave thee," continued the Earl kissing
her repeatedly to pacify her.

Her beauty was very alluring, and until
that moment he knew not how deep was his
passion for her.

"In that busy world of turmoil and intrigue
on which thou art about to re-enter—I will
be forgotten.  Thou mayest not return to
me, and I—I will"——

"What?"

"Die!"

"Speak not, think not thus, dearest Anna!"
replied Bothwell, who felt his resolution
wavering, though the thoughts of ambition and
the taunts of Ormiston urged him on the
path he had commenced.  "We must
separate—but we must meet again."

"Well, be it so!" she said, bending her eyes
that were blinded with tears upon him; "but
O, Bothwell! thou art dearer to me than
life, and knowest all that I have sacrificed
for thee,—home—friends—myself—every
thing"——

"True—true, Anna;" he was touched to
the soul by her manner and accent.

"Then leave me not—but take me with
thee.  I will go happily in the meanest
disguise thou mayest assign me—O, I will never
be discovered!"

"It may not be, Anna; it is impossible.
By St. Paul!  I tell thee it is impossible at
present."

"In the confidence of thy love I have
been dreaming a pleasant dream, and now
perhaps am waking from it.  Wilt thou love
me in thine absence as thou dost now?"

"After my solemn espousal of thee before
that holy hermit—canst thou doubt it?"
rejoined the Earl, in a voice that faltered with
very shame, though to Anna it seemed that
grief had rendered it tremulous in tone.
The supposed emotion inspired her with
sudden confidence in him, and she said—

"Go—and never again will I suspect thy
love; but oh! when wilt thou return to me?"

"By Yule-tide, dear Anna, if I am in life;"
and, kissing her once again, he hurried from
her presence like one who had been guilty of
a crime, and—returned no more!

"Oh! how base, how ignoble is this
duplicity!" he exclaimed on rejoining Hob
Ormiston, who with folded arms had been
leaning on the parapet, whistling the "Hunts
of Cheviot" to wile away the time.  "She
weeps so bitterly at my departure, and speaks
so trustingly of my return, that my heart is
wrung with the misery my damnable deceit
and criminal ambition will bring upon her."

"Whew! yet she cared not to deceive one
who loved her earlier, longer, and better than
thee."

"True," replied the Earl; he became silent
for a moment, and while the idea of her ever
having loved another caused a pang of
mortification in his breast, it was mingled with
a coldness from which he drew a consolation
for the part he was about to act.

"By cock and pie!" continued Hob, pursuing
the advantage his sophistry had gained;
"ten thousand women should never stand in
my path.  I never pursued love so fast as to
lose a stirrup by the way; and what the foul
fiend matters it whether thou weddest Jane
Gordon or not?  Thou canst still come and
see thy Norwegian sometimes, and I warrant
ye Sir Gilbert will prevent her from feeling
thine absence much.  He is a courtier of
jolly King James the Fifth; and he, as thou
knowest, kept a dame at every hunting lodge
to manage the household.  Ha! nay, nay, do
not chafe; 'tis but marrying the Lady Jane,
and handfasting the Lady Anna; and methinks
I need not cite examples among our
nobility and knighthood."

"In the days when I was young, generous,
and unspotted in honour and faith, I was
alternately the tool and the plaything of
a woman, of that female fiend, Catherine of
Medicis, who saw my love for—pshaw! since
then I have grown wiser.  I have, as
we say at chess, turned the tables upon the
sex, and view them merely as the objects of
my pleasure—the tools of my ambition.
Yet I feel that I am on the eve of taking a
step, that, however cruel, must make or mar
my fortune."

"Fortune! defy her, and the fickle jade
will favour thee.  I love a bold fellow, who,
with his helmet on his brow and a whinger
by his side, becomes the artificer of his own
fortune."

"Ah! could we but have a glimpse
through that thick veil that ever involves
the future.  Hast thou ever read Cicero?"

"Nay, thank God!  I never could read
aught save my missal, and, without spelling,
very little of that; but since 1560, when
missal and mass went out of fashion together,
I have done nothing in that way.  But this
book"——

"'Tis a man, Marcus Tullius Cicero, an
illustrious Roman."

"A sorcerer, by his name, I doubt not;
well, and what said he?"

"There is a fine passage in his works,
wherein he speaks of the capability of seeing
effects in their *causes*; and supposes that
Priam, and Pompey, and Cæsar, had each
laid before them their pages in the great
book of fate, in the noonday of their
prosperity—ere the first fell with his Troy, ere
the second was defeated at Pharsalia, and
the third perished by the dagger of Brutus.
But I warrant thou canst not fathom this."

"No—an it had been a winepot I might;
but, cock and pie! 'tis all Greek to me.
See! yonder cometh Sir Gilbert from the
shore to announce that our ship is ready;
and so, once more, my Lord, let us seaward, ho!"

The sun was setting that evening on the
Firth of Westeray.  Its impetuous waves,
that rolled in saffron and purple, broke in
golden breakers crested with silver surf upon
the shining rocks.  The distant peaks of
Rousay were bathed in yellow light, but,
mellowed by distance, the sea lay cold and
blue around their bases.  The sky was clear
and cloudless, and the purity of the
atmosphere imparted many beautiful tints to the
ocean, that rolled its restless tides around
these lonely isles.  Like a white bird
floating on the distant azure, afar off at the
horizon's verge, a sail was visible from the
keep of Noltland about sunset.  It was the
*Fleur-de-lys*, that had borne Bothwell away
from the arms of Anna Rosenkrantz.  The
whole day, with tear-swollen eyes, she had
watched its course through the Firth of
Westeray; now it had diminished to a speck
in the distance, and ere the sun dipped into
the Atlantic, had disappeared behind the
fertile Isle of Eglise-oy, where then, as now,
the pyramidal spire of the chapel of Saint
Magnus rose above the verdant holms, as
a landmark to the fishers of the isles.

As slowly the sail vanished round that dim
and distant promontory, a low cry almost of
despair burst from Anna, and she clung to
the weeping Christina.  The waiting-woman
wept from mere sympathy; but the grief of
her mistress (sudden, like all her impulses)
was of that violent kind which can only find
relief in tears and loud ejaculations.

Near her stood one of Sir Gilbert's retainers,
clad in a long shirt of mail, such as was then
common in the Orcades; he was leaning on
his long axe, and regarding her attentively
through the horizontal slit in his salade, a
species of helmet with an immovable visor
which completely concealed the face; but
beneath the impassible front of that iron
casque, were features distorted by the grief
and anguish that wrung the wearer's generous
heart.  He was Konrad, who, thus disguised,
had the mortification of beholding the
wildness of her grief for another.

Often he made a motion, as if to approach
her, and as often retired; for though on one
hand the most sincere pity urged him to
comfort her, the invidious whispers of anger
and disdain on the other, together with the
necessity of preserving his incognito,
withheld him.  And there, scarcely a lance's
length apart, were the lover and his idol, with
the night descending on their sorrows.

From Rousay's hills, and on the distant
sea, the sunlight died away.  The Firth of
Westeray turned from saffron to purple, and
from purple to the darkest blue, in whose
vast depths were reflected the star-studded
firmament, till the moon arose, and then once
more its waters rolled in light of the purest
silver; and each breaker, as its impetuous
wrath was poured upon the bluffs of basalt,
fell back into the ocean a shower of brilliants.





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.. _`DOUBT AND DESPAIR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   DOUBT AND DESPAIR.

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..

   |    *Antony* ——————— How I loved,
   |  Witness ye nights and days, and all ye hours
   |  That danced away with down upon your feet,
   |  As all your business were to count my passion.
   |                  *All for Love, or the World well lost.*

.. vspace:: 2

Yule-tide came—and passed away.

Three months rolled on, and in that time
Anna heard no tidings of Bothwell.

Those who, like her, have waited in all
the agony of anxiety and love, degenerating
into fear and doubt, can alone know how
long those weary months appeared.

In that lonely island her amusements
were few.  Kind-hearted, honest, and bluff
in manner, Sir Gilbert Balfour, though
having been something of a courtier in his
youth, had gradually acquired much of
that rude austerity, with which the
Reformation had impressed the manners of the
Scottish people, and, being unable to
converse with his fair prisoner either in French
or Norse, he soon abandoned in despair any
attempts to soothe her melancholy, either by
signs or condolences offered in the Scottish
tongue, which was quite unknown to her.

She soon grew tired of watching the sails
that now and then appeared in the narrow
strait between Rousay and Westeray.  At
first she had been wont to hail them with
delight, and to watch their approach with a
beating heart, full of hope that each
successive one might be his returning to her; but
hope and exultation died away together,
when the ship passed on towards her
Scandinavian home; and then she thought of
old Sir Erick Rosenkrantz, sitting lonely in
his hall at Bergen; and bitter were the tears
she wept, at the memory of that kind old
face she might never behold again.

The walrus and the sea-dog, that at times
arose in droves from the waves, with their
round heads breasting the foam; the vast
whale that floundered in the shallows, and
blew clouds of water in the air; the shoals
of finless porpoises, that rushed through the
surge like a flock of ocean devils, failed,
after a time, to interest or amuse her.  Week
succeeded week;—there were days of storm,
when the grey clouds and the white mists
came down from the Arctic circle; when
the waves roared and foamed through the
narrow strait, and the lightning flashed
afar off among the heath-clad hills of
Rousay—days of cloudless sunshine, or of
listless calm, succeeded each other; and
nothing marked the time, which passed by
unmarked, even as the wind that swept over the
pathless ocean,—but there came no word of
Bothwell.  The spring of 1566 approached,
and all hope in the bosom of Anna began
to die away.

Konrad still preserved his incognito most
rigidly; but though life seemed to stagnate
on the little Isle of Westeray, and in its
great but dreary baronial castle, the world
beyond it was busy as ever.  One night
a messenger arrived from the lieutenant-governor
of Kirkwall, bearing despatches
for Sir Gilbert, who, without taking leave
of Anna, but merely giving strict orders to
his bailie, that "she was to be kept in sure
ward, and treated with every respect," had
thrown himself on board a small crayer, and
sailed for the mainland of Orkney.

Then passing fishermen brought rumours
of civil war and bloodshed—of battles fought
and castles stormed; and Anna, when she
heard the name of Bothwell, looked anxiously
in the faces of those around her, to read
in their expression those tidings she was
dying with eagerness to learn, but which it
was impossible for her to gather from the
barbarous, and half Gaelic half Pictish,
jargon of the speakers.

The festival of Easter passed away—summer
drew on; yet Bothwell did not come, and
then the heart of poor Anna began to sicken
within her.

The evening was declining drearily, as
many others had declined, on Westeray.

A prey to the deepest dejection, Anna
reclined on a stone seat in an angle of the
battlement, through an embrasure of which
she was watching the setting sun.  Christina
sat near her on the steps of this stone sofa,
and her eyes were anxiously fixed on the
pallid face of her mistress, whose fine but
humid eyes were bent on the distant horizon;
but their expression was dreamy, sad, and
vacant.  The eyes of another were fixed on
her, with an intensity of which she was
unaware; and indeed she knew not that any one
was near save her female attendant.

Leaning against the battlement, and but a
few paces distant, stood Konrad of Saltzberg,
clad in the same long shirt of mail, and
wearing the same salade that have already been
described.  For more than an hour he had been
regarding Anna as a lover alone could have
regarded her; but she was thinking only of
her absent Earl, and watching the passing
ships.

Many had been visible that day; for the
vessels of Elizabeth, the English queen, were
then sailing to the shores of Iceland, where
her people had been permitted by the Danish
king to fish for cod.  The sun was dipping
into the Atlantic, and, when half his circle
was hidden by the horizon, the crimsoned
waves became as an ocean of blushing wine,
but their breakers were glittering in green
and gold where they burst on the rocky beach
of the isle.

The sun set; his rays died away from land
and sea; the pink that edged the changing
clouds, and the flush that reddened the water,
grew paler and yet more pale, and the stars
began to twinkle in the yet sunny blue of the
sky.  The last white sail, diminished to the
size of a nautilus, had faded away in the
distance, and Anna covered her face with her
hands, and wept; from beneath the lappets
of her little velvet cap, her bright hair fell
forward in masses, and Konrad, though he
saw not her tears, felt all his sympathy and
his old love glow within him.

Resolving at all risks to discover himself,
he removed his salade and advanced towards
her.  Anna raised her head at the clink of
the shirt of mail, and, starting up, gazed upon
him with astonishment while clinging to the
parapet, for her strength almost left her.
She would have become paler were it possible;
but she was already so colourless, that death
could not have made her more so.

Konrad expected a greater ebullition of
fear, or joy, or astonishment, at his presence
and safety; but Anna, who imagined he had
merely expatriated himself from Aggerhuis,
according to his threat at their last interview,
expressed only the latter emotion in her
features; and Konrad could not help feeling
a little piqued, at her supposed indifference to
the dangers he had run, and the watery
grave he had so miraculously escaped.

"Konrad," she faltered—"thou here!"

"Anna, dear Anna!" exclaimed the
unhappy young man, deeply moved by the
sound of her voice, which, like an old and
beloved air, stirred the inmost chords of his
heart.  "I did not expect to hear your lips
again utter my name so tenderly."

He covered his eyes with his hand, and
then the girl in turn was moved; she laid
her hand gently on his arm, but he trembled
so much that she withdrew it.

"Poor Konrad! you seem indeed changed;
your eyes are hollow, and your cheek—it is
very pale!"

"I have endured great grief; God alone
knoweth how much agony has been concentrated
in a heart that felt too narrow to contain it."

"I do pity thee, Konrad!"

"It is too late now.  Thou didst love me
once, Anna, and I feel bitterly how cold a
substitute is pity.  Oh! thou alone wert the
link that bound me to the world; the link is
snapped, and I am very desolate now!"

Anna sighed.  She would have said *forgive
me*; but her pride forbade it.

"The memory of hopes that are blighted,
and wishes that were futile, presses heavily
on me now," continued Konrad, whose brave
spirit seemed to be completely broken; "and,
at times, I feel nothing but despair."

"Ah, Konrad!" she replied, with a sickly
attempt to smile, "in a few years we learn
to laugh at the love of our youth, just as we
do at an old-fashioned dress."

"With some it may be so, and 'tis a sad
reflection; but, oh Anna! (pardon me
repeating that well-loved name as of old,) in
all my dreams of the future, I had so
entwined our lives, and thoughts, and feelings,
into one—I had so long viewed thee as
my—my wife—that"——

"I must listen no more to this," said
Anna, turning away with a reddening cheek.

"Thou art angry with me; but there was
a time—and hast thou forgotten it quite?—when
that word *wife* fell otherwise on thine
ear.  I trifle, lady.  I have tidings to tell
thee."

"I will not—I cannot—listen."

"For Heaven sake and your own, hear me!"

"This is alike sinful and insulting—this
from the captain of my uncle's archers!
Leave me, Konrad of Saltzberg!"

"By my past grief, by my blighted hope
and present sorrow, I conjure thee, Anna, to
hear me!  I would speak to you of this
man"——

"My husband?"

"The Lord of Bothwell," said Konrad, with
a smile of scorn.

"Hah—well!" continued Anna in a breathless
voice, while all her pride and petulance
became immediately merged in intense eagerness.

"Thou hast not heard from him since his
departure for the court of Scotland?"

"No—not one message hath come to Noltland,
at least so sayeth the castellan."

"The castellan hath lied!" replied Konrad,
with sparkling eyes; "he hath heard daily,
and knows that this false Earl, whom he is
now going to join and assist, hath been
espoused, with every magnificence, to the
sister of the Lord Huntly."

"And I—I"—gasped Anna.

"Thou art a captive for life in this island
castle."

Anna clasped her hands passionately above
her head, and would have fallen backward had
not Konrad sprung to her assistance; but,
unable to trust himself with the part of
upholding her almost inanimate form, he seated
her gently, and hung over her with the
utmost tenderness.

"Konrad," she said, with pale and quivering
lips, but firm and tearless earnestness;
"thou, thou didst never deceive me in word,
in deed, or thought—say, how didst thou
learn this?"

"How, matters not—'tis the sad verity."

"Thou triflest!" she said, with sudden
passion and stamping her foot, while her eyes
filled with tears, and she endeavoured to
control the unutterable anguish that was
expressed in every feature.  "From whom, I
demand, heardst thou these evil tidings?"

"From Hans Knuber, Lady Anna," replied
Konrad, lowering his voice.  "He trades, as
thou knowest, with certain udallers of
Shetland and Orkney, and this night his little
crayer, the Skottefruin, (for so has he named
her to please the Scots,) is about to sail for the
river Clyde.  The night is closing—if thou
wouldst escape, an hour will set thee free."

"I do not—O no!  I cannot—believe this
tale; yet I will go with Hans—and whither?
Is not anywhere better than this island prison?
Yes—land me once in Scotland, and I will
soon make my way to Bothwell."

"Thou art perhaps without money, and
knowest not the Scottish tongue."

"Love and despair will sustain me without
the first, and I shall soon acquire the second.
How I will upbraid, how I will implore
him; but he cannot have deceived me—Hans
must be mistaken."

"But if he is not," said Konrad, piqued
at the excess of her regard for another.

"Then I will throw myself at the feet of
his sovereign; she is a woman, and, feeling
as a woman, will do me justice."

"Wherever thou goest, Anna, permit me
to be thy protector; and I will go, for am I
not wedded to thee in spirit—thy brother,
thy friend, if I cannot be thy lover?
Unhappy one! thou dost now experience for
another, the pangs that I endured for thee;
thou who didst betray me, art now in thy
turn betrayed.  But think not, gentle one,
that I upbraid thee," he continued, on seeing
that she wept bitterly, "for now I am thy
brother, Anna, since God denies me to be
more; and by his blessed name I swear that
I will lead, protect, and avenge thee!
Come—be once again the daughter of stout old
Svend of Aggerhuis, the conqueror of
Lubeck—be once again a Norwegian!"

Like a ray of sunlight across a cold sky,
a faint and sickly smile spread over Anna's
face, and she kissed the hand of Konrad,
who was deeply moved by the humility of
the action.

"In an hour the night will be dark; have
all prepared for flight, and then I will meet
thee here.  Meanwhile I go to Hans."

"Ah! if Hans should be mistaken, and
Bothwell returning find me gone."

"Honest Hans is not mistaken; for
Bothwell's marriage is known throughout all
Scotland and the isles.  Bethink thee, Anna!
Hans' ship is bound for the Clyde, a river of
that country, and he tells me that Bothwell's
princely dwelling overlooks that very water;
thus, with him, thou goest direct to the
castle gates of thy deceiver."

"Enough! enough!  Come triumph or
death, despair or joy, I will go with thee.
Away to Hans; bid him hasten our departure;
he knows how well I can reward him
when we are at home in dear Norway.  In
an hour from this time, Konrad, I will meet
thee here."

As she hurried away, accompanied by her
attendant, who had withdrawn during this
painful interview, Konrad gazed wistfully
after her, and, clasping his hands,
convulsively muttered—

"O Anna! by what fatality did I ever
love thee?".......

That night the moon shone brightly upon
the strait of Westeray, and the snow-white
sails of the Norwegian ship were bellying in
the breeze that curled the impetuous waves.
Above, was the blue and star-studded sky;
below, was the shining sea.  Afar off, the
full-orbed moon was rising like a silver
shield from the ocean, and between lay a
black speck—it was the Keep of Noltland.

On their lee lay the isle of Eglise-oy, with
its green holms and yellow sands shining in
the merry light of the summer moon, that
turned to silver and emerald the waves that
murmured on its pebbled shore.

A bell was heard to toll in the distance; its
tone was deep and solemn, as it swung in the
vaulted spire of old St. Magnus' church, that
crowned a rocky headland.  It was the signal
of nocturnal prayer; for in those remote isles
God was still worshipped as of old—the new
creed of the Reformers, the clang of their
hammers and levers, had been as yet unheard.

The outline of the old gothic church, with
its solid tower and pointed spire, stood darkly
out in bold relief upon the sea-beat promontory;
the stars gleamed through the painted
windows of its vaulted aisles; beneath, the
waves were rolling in light, and the deep
tones of the nocturnal bell were mingled with
their hollow murmur.

Hans doffed his Elsinore cap, and prayed
for the intercession of the friend and patron
of the Orcadian mariner, Saint Tradewell of
Papay; while Anna, in attendance to the
distant call to prayer, knelt down on the deck
with her crucifix and rosary.

Konrad was beside her.

She prayed intently for herself and for
Bothwell, but Konrad offered up his orisons
for her alone.





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.. _`BLANTYRE PRIORY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   BLANTYRE PRIORY.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  I fain would sing, but will be silent now,
   |  For pain is sitting on my Lover's brow;
   |  And he would hear me, and though silent, deem
   |  I pleased myself, but little thought of him,
   |  While of nought else I think; to him I give
   |  My spirit, and for him alone I live.
   |                               *Pop. Poetry of Servia.*

.. vspace:: 2

An evening of June was closing upon the
"apple-bowers" of Clydesdale and the woods
of Bothwellhaugh, when two pedestrians, a
male and a female, pursued the ancient
Roman way, that by a high and narrow bridge
of one arch, which had been constructed by
the warriors of Agricola, spanned the stream
named the South Calder, a tributary of the
Clyde.  Fair in complexion and athletic in
figure, the young man was attired somewhat
like a lowland yeoman.  He wore a plain
black breastplate and headpiece, for at that
time in Scotland, no man ever ventured
beyond his own door without armour; he
carried a sealskin wallet and pouch, and was
armed with a sword, dagger, and quarterstaff.
His breeches and hose were of coarse
red sarcenet, his gloves and boots of yellow
buff.

He partly led and partly supported the
companion of his journey, a young lady, whose
unusually pale complexion had been rendered
yet more pallid by fatigue; but her velvet
hood being well drawn forward, almost
concealed her features.  Though light and
graceful, her figure was veiled in one of those
ample plaids of purple and blue check which
were then (and for two hundred years after)
so common in the Lowlands of Scotland.
She wore it over her head, and pinned under
the chin, from whence it fell over her
shoulders and enveloped her whole form.  Her
white gloves were fringed with black lace,
and her wrists and arms, where visible, were
remarkably white and delicate.

Konrad and Anna—for doubtless the
reader has recognised them—were wearied
and covered with dust, having travelled on
foot from the old Stockwell bridge of Glasgow.
The commercial capital of the West was then
but a small trading town, clustered round the
great church, which, four hundred years
before, the pious David had founded on the
bank of the Molendinar burn.

There the crayer of Hans Knuber had
anchored, and was discharging her cargo of
tar and stockfish, for which Hans received
in exchange cottons, and silks, and tanned
leather, which he sold to the best advantage
in the cities on the Baltic; and there Anna
heard the sequel of Konrad's tidings, and the
confirmation of Bothwell's falsehood beyond
a doubt.

They found themselves in Clydesdale
almost penniless; but, rough and turbulent
though the times were, neither in baron's
hall nor peasant's cottage were food, fire,
and shelter, refused to the wayfarer or the
unfortunate; and in the assumed character
of French travellers on their way to court,
to seek the patronage of Le Crocque, the
ambassador of Charles IX., or the Marquis
d'Elboeuff, they had reached the district of
Bothwell with comparative ease and safety.
Though the mass of the people, under terror
of the act of 1555, "Anent speaking evill of
the Maist Christian Kingis subjectis," and
that of the following year, which defined the
naturalization of the French in Scotland,
treated all strangers with respect, Anna and
Konrad were frequently reviled at wayside
hostels as "massmongers and idolaters,
worshippers of Baal, and followers of the
shavelings of hell!" for Anna had the
temerity and enthusiasm to wear openly on
her bosom, that emblem against which, by
word and deed, the preachers of the
Reformation had poured forth their wrath and
fury—a crucifix.

Evening was closing, and the woods of
Bothwellhaugh were throwing their darkening
shadows on the winding Calder.  The
foliage was in all the vivid green of July,
and the perfume of the summer blossoms
from the groves of apple-trees loaded the
balmy air.  The day had been one of intense
heat; there was not a breath of wind upon
the uplands, every leaf was still, and nothing
was stirring save the busy gnats, that
revolved in swarms where the sunlight pierced
the leafy vistas.

So still was the atmosphere, that nothing
was heard save the gurgle of the glittering
stream, or the hum of the mountain bees as
they floated over the grass, and sought the
wild violets and pansies that grew in the
dewy shades.

The sunlight died away along the deep
glen sides, that were fringed with leafy
woodlands; on trees bending with foliage
and fruit, on the white-walled and moss-roofed
cottages, with their light smoke curling
through the coppice, on the river that
glided past, placidly in one part, hoarse and
brawling between its scaured banks in another,
on rocks tufted with purple heather, or yellow
with ripening corn, fell the dying sunlight,
blending all with hazy softness, till the last
rays faded from the tree-tops and the castle
turrets, that overlooked them; and then, as
the blue sky became veiled by dun clouds,
which the set sun edged with the most
brilliant golden light, the air became dense
and oppressive, and a dusky crimson tinged
the whole woodland scenery with the hue of
blood.  Perched on its rifted rock, the old
square tower of Clelland turned to brick red;
the Calder flowed below like a stream of
purple wine, and the beechwood copse became
like a grove of the red-leaved ilex.

The atmosphere soon became darker; a
few heavy drops of rain plashed on the dusty
causeway of the Roman road, and spread
wide circles on the wooded stream that
flowed beneath the bridge; the tops of the
lofty trees were tossed, as the wind arose,
and the summer thunder rumbled among
the green and russet hills that overlook the
fruitful valley of the Clyde.

"A storm is gathering, Anna!" said Konrad,
gazing tenderly on her pale features;
"and thou art growing faint and weary.
Overtasked as it has been, thy little strength
is completely exhausted; let me beseech
thee once again to pause.  There is a
tower yonder that overhangs the river;
and there, I doubt not, due hospitality will
be gladly extended to two poor and
unfriended foreigners!"

"No—no!  On—on!" muttered Anna.

"We are, I believe, yet far from our
destination; and, ere it is reached, thou wilt
assuredly die of fatigue!"

"Then, O God! grant that it may be at
Bothwell's castle gate!" said Anna, bursting
into a passion of tears; "that the sight of
my silent corpse might upbraid him with
his perfidy.  Assure me that he will behold
me lying dead upon his threshold, and I will
yield up my soul without a sigh.  Life hath
no longer any charm for me!"

"Nor for me!" murmured Konrad; but
how different was the tone!  The girl spoke
in all the bitterness of rage; the young man
with the accents of desolation.  Anna read
the emotion in his eyes, as she glanced
hurriedly and pityingly upon him; and,
repressing her own grief, still continued to totter
forward.  The feebleness of her steps became
more and more apparent; but her spirit was
strong and indomitable.

As they descended into the bosky woodlands,
the red lightning began to gleam
behind the trunks of the distant trees, and
the Calder, as it jarred between ledges of
rock, became covered with white foam.
These signs of a coming tempest caused
them to hasten on, and with both hands the
trembling Anna clung to Konrad's arm.
The woods grew dark as the plumes of a
hearse, and the starless sky was crowded
with masses of inky vapour;—but there was
one dense cloud that came up from the
westward, and in it the whole fury of the storm
seemed to be concentrated.  Onward it
came, laying the corn flat to the earth, while
the strong trees bent like willows beneath
its sulphureous breath; for it was charged
with all the electric fluid of the summer
storm.

Konrad paused, and looked upward.

For a moment the aspect of the heavens
was magnificent!

Forth from the bosom of that dark cloud
broke one broad flash of forky lightning,
resplendent, green, and lurid.  For an
instant it lit the whole firmament, and the
earth beneath it, revealing the tossing forests
and deep broad waters of Clyde, which was
covered with snow-white foam, and poured
on between its steep and wooded banks,
making one bold sweep round Bothwell's
dark red towers, that rose above them in
massive magnificence.

In strong outline, tower and turret stood
forth against the flaming sky, the lightning
seeming to play among their summits, and
all the leaves of Bothwell's blooming bank
gleamed like filigree-work—but for an
instant, and then all became darkness.

Another flash, brighter than the first,
revealed the opposite bank of the stream, and
the ruins of Blantyre Priory.  Brightly, for
a moment, pinnacle and pointed window,
buttress and battlement, gleamed in the
phosphorescent light—but to fade away;
and then terrifically the thunder rolled along
the beautiful and winding valley of the
Clyde.

All became still—and though the foliage
was agitated, the wind had passed away.
Nothing was heard save the rush of the
river, and the ceaseless hiss of the drenching
rain, as noisily and heavily it poured down
on the broad summer leaves.

Stunned for a moment by the thunder-peal,
Konrad, in the confusion of the time,
had thrown an arm round Anna as if to
protect her, while she in turn clung to him
convulsively for support; and even in that
moment of consternation, the warm embrace
of that loved bosom sent through his a thrill
of pain and delight.

The thick foliage still protected them from
the rain; but the necessity of seeking other
shelter became immediately apparent, for
Anna, exhausted by terror and fatigue, was
almost speechless.  Konrad supported her
up the ascent, which is crowned by the ruins
of Blantyre Priory; and there, in that
desolate place, which the lightning had revealed
to them, he found a place of shelter, under
the arch of a vault, where the ivy clung and
the wallflower flourished, for the place was
utterly ruined.  Seven years had elapsed
since the sons of rapine and reformation had
been there.

The gloom of the ruins impressed Konrad
with a horror that he could scarcely repress;
for thick and fast on his glowing fancy, came
many a dark and terrible legend of the wild
and frozen north—but the danger of Anna
compelled him to think of other things.

The rain and the wind were over; the
thunder had died away on the distant hills,
and nothing was heard now but the rush of
the adjacent stream, and the patter of the
heavy drops as they fell from the overcharged
foliage on the flattened grass.  Occasional
stars gleamed through the pointed windows
and shattered walls of the Priory, and the
long creeping ivy waved mournfully to and
fro.  The edifice was much dilapidated; for
the sacrilegious builders of many a barn and
cottage, had torn the best stones from the
places where they had rested for ages, and
where, doubtless, the pious Alexander
II. deemed they would remain for ever; now the
wild-rose, the sweetbrier, and the mountain
ash grew thickly in the hospitium, where of
old the sick were tended and the poor were
fed—in the chapel aisles where the good had
prayed, and the dead of ages lay.

Anna had become almost insensible; and,
from being animated by activity and energy,
had become passive in spirit and supine in
body.  The change had affrighted Konrad; her
pulses beat like lightning, and her hands and
brow were burning.  Gently, as if she had been
a sick child, he laid her in a corner of that
vaulted apartment, which appeared to have
been a cellar of the Priory.  There the strewn
and crisped leaves of the last autumn lay thick
and soft, and thinking only of death, in her
utter exhaustion of mind and body, she made
no reply to his tender and reiterated inquiries.

Konrad adjusted her damp dress over her
beautiful person, and, full of solicitude and
anxiety, seated himself near her.  He
listened—her breath was becoming fainter and more
rapid; excessive fatigue and over-excitement
had evidently done their worst upon her
tender frame.

"Oh, how thy hands burn!" said Konrad,
as he took them in his with the fondness of
other days.  "Speak, Anna—for the love of
mercy speak to me!"

"I am very pettish and ungracious," she
said faintly; "but forgive me, Konrad.  I
deserve not thy care—leave me to die; for God,
I think, has deserted me!"

"Ah, speak not thus, Anna!  God will never
desert one so good—so gentle as thee.  Hath
he not led us to this chamber, where we are
safe from the wind, and the rain, and the chill
night-dew? but here thou canst not pass a
night.  The storm hath died away—one
effort more"——

"I cannot rise, Konrad," said Anna, in a
breathless voice.

"Then I must fly for succour!"

"No—no—O, do not leave me!  I will die
of terror; there may be demons, and wolves,
and bears in these Scottish woods, as in those
at home."

"But thou hast thy piece of the blessed
cross, Anna.  I go but to wind my bugle for
succour at the foot of the hill, and surely
some one in yonder castle by the river, will
hear and attend to me."

"Then hasten, for my heart is sickening,
and my strength is failing fast with the fever
that burns within me."

Konrad sprang to his feet in an agony of
anxiety.

"Oh Bothwell, Bothwell!" said Anna;
"my dear lord—may heaven forgive thee,
freely as I do, all the misery and suffering
thou hast caused to this poor heart!"

These words fell like ice on the young
man's heart, and he said hurriedly—

"Be of good cheer, and pray to thy patron,
the mother of the virgin—I will bring
thee succour anon."

"Konrad," said Anna, in her low, soft
voice, "my words have stung thee, for thine
accent is changed.  Pardon me!" she added
tremulously, "and remember that I, too, am
desolate now.  Dost thou cease to love me?
Am not I thy sister, Konrad?"

"Thou art, indeed!" replied her lover,
whose heart was crushed by his emotion;
"and I regard thee with a love more pure
and pitying than ever.  I am thy friend,
Anna—a lover no longer."

"Then, Konrad, kiss and forgive me—for
I may die ere thou returnest."

Konrad trembled.  A gush that cannot
be described—sorrow, love, agony, and
despair, swelled up in his breast on hearing
this singular and artless request, and,
stooping down, he pressed his lips to hers long
and passionately.

It was the first time he had ever kissed
her, and it was a strange salute.

Anna's lips were burning and parched—Konrad's
were cold and quivering, while a
palsy seemed to possess his heart; but he
sprang from her side, vaulted over the
ruined wall, and, giddy with the whirl of
his thoughts, rushed down the hill to the
margin of the river, and wound his bugle
furiously.

Deep, broad, and rapid, between its steep
and beautifully wooded banks, the noble
Clyde was flowing at his feet, and the bright
stars were twinkling in its depth.  Afar off,
at one end of the silvan dell, the moon was
rising red and fiery after the recent storm,
and full on the imposing façade of the
neighbouring castle fell its fitful gleam.

Flanked by two enormous circular towers
of massive dark red stone, it presented a
bold front to the south, and overlooked the
wooded declivity so famed in song, as—

   |  "Bothwell'e bank that bloom'd so fair."

around which, like a great moat, the
girdling Clyde made one bold sweep.

The area of this vast and princely fortress,
where, in other years, the Norman knights
of Aymer of Valence, and the bonneted
vassals of Archibald the Grim, kept watch
and wassail, occupies a space of two hundred
and thirty feet; towering with its magnificent
battlements above the river on one
side, and overlooking a beautiful lawn on
the other.  It occupies the most prominent
and picturesque locality amid all the scenery
traversed by the Clyde.

Darkly in the fitful light loomed the
tourelles of the keep, and the ramparts of
the Valence and Wallace towers, and darkly
fell their giant shadows on the bosom of
the starlit river.  Amid its gloomy mass
Konrad saw lights twinkling from windows
strongly grated and deeply recessed in the
thick walk; but the gates were closed, and
the bridges up.  *Now*—how different from
then—

   |  "The tufted grass lines Bothwell's ancient hall,
   |  The fox peeps cautious from the ruin'd wall;
   |  Where once proud Moray, Clydesdale's ancient lord,
   |  A mimic sovereign, held the festive board."

Ignorant that the stately castle before him
was the stronghold of his rival, again and
again Konrad poured the shrill blasts of his
ivory bugle to the gusty wind; and, finding
that he was unheard or unheeded by the
inmates, his anxiety to procure aid for Anna
would admit of no longer delay, and heavily
encumbered as he was with half armour, he
threw himself into the river, and, with his
sword in his teeth, endeavoured to swim over.
Though a strong, active, and practised
swimmer, he no sooner found himself
buffeting the fierce current of that rapid river,
than an invocation to God burst from his
lips; for he was swept away like a reed
by the violence and impetuosity of the
summer *speat*.





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.. _`THE COUNTESS OF BOTHWELL`:

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   CHAPTER XVII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE COUNTESS OF BOTHWELL.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Load roars the north round Bothwell hall,
   |    And fast descends the pattering rain;
   |  But streams of tears yet faster fall,
   |    From thy blue eyes, O bonny Jane!
   |  Hark! hark!  I hear the mournful yell,
   |    The wraiths of angry Clyde complain;
   |  But sorrow bursts with louder swell.
   |    From thy toft heart, O bonny Jane!
   |                              *M. G. Lewis.*

.. vspace:: 2

Within the stateliest chamber of that
stately castle sat James, Earl of Bothwell,
and his countess Jane, the bride of a few
months.  The apartment was long and lofty;
in the daytime it was lighted by six grated
windows that overlooked Bothwell bank,
but now it was lit by two gigantic
gilded chandeliers of wax candles.  The
ceiling was of panelled oak, and the floor
was of the same material, but lozenged, and
minutely jointed.  The walls were completely
hung with tapestry (made by the Countess
of old Earl Adam, who fell at Flodden), and
represented on one side the "*Hunts of Cheviot*,"
so famed in ancient song; and on the other,
the miracles of the blessed St. Bothan, the
cousin and successor of St. Colme of Iona.
The spaces between were filled up by gorgeous
flower-pieces, and the armorial coats
of the Earl's alliances on trees covered with
shields; but chief of all appeared the blazon
of the house of Hailes.  Now little known,
the arms of Bothwell are worth recording,
as they appeared above the stone chimney
of that apartment.  *Gules* on a cheveron
argent, two Scottish lions rending an English
rose, (which had been the characteristic
cognisance of Patrick Hepburn of Hailes at
the great battle of Otterburn,) quartered
azure with a golden ship; three cheveronels
on a field ermine for the lordship of Soulis,
with a bend azure for Vauss, lord of Dirltoun.
His shield was supported by two lions
gardant, crested by a horse's head bridled,
and bearing on an escroll the motto—

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   Keepe Tryste.

.. vspace:: 1

The whole of this gorgeous armorial blazon
was upborne by a gilded anchor, significant
of Bothwell's office as Lord High Admiral
of Scotland and the Isles.

Though the season was summer, a fire
burned on the marble hearth; for the stone
chambers of those ancient dwellings were
often cold and chilly.  Two silver lamps,
lighted with perfumed oil, and having each
a golden tassel appended to them, hung on
each side of the mantelpiece, by the same
chains that, ten years before, had swung
them before St. Bothan's shrine, in
Blantyre Priory.  Their odour was mingled
with that of the fresh flowers that, in vases
of Italian glass, were piled upon the
cabinets, and diffused a delightful fragrance
through that noble apartment.

A wine vase, or flask of Venetian crystal,
grained with gold, and of that peculiar
fashion then very common in the dwellings
of the Scottish noblesse, (so common, indeed,
that the Regent Moray was wont to have
them broken before visiters in a spirit of
pure vanity,) stood upon the table, and the
glow of its purple contents was thrown on
the silver cups, the grapes, that were piled
in baskets of mother-of-pearl, and the
embossed salvers of confections that stood
around it.

The Earl, richly attired, as when we last
saw him, in a suit that admirably displayed
the strength and symmetry of his limbs, was
lounging on an ottoman, or low-cushioned
settle, with his feet on a deer's skin, and
seemed wholly occupied in caressing a large
wiry hound of the Scottish breed, while the
Countess had played to him on her ghittern,
and sung that song so common at the court
of Mary, but of which the title alone is
known to us now—

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   "My love is layed upone ane knycht."

.. vspace:: 1

The old game of Troy had succeeded; and
then they paused a while to listen to the
fury of the storm that has been described hi
the preceding chapter; and, during the pause,
we will take a view of this fair and unfortunate
lady, who was sacrificed by her lover
and brother to the evil spirit of statecraft
and ambition.  But when Bothwell gazed on
her, which he did from time to time, his dark
eyes filled with softness, as hers did with
love and languor.

The outline of her little figure (for she
was of low stature) was singularly graceful,
as she half reclined on the seat of crimson
velvet, with the deep colour of which her
neck and arms contrasted so admirably.
Her eyes were of the deepest and most
sparkling black; and when they dilated at
times, seemed almost larger than her cherry
mouth.

She was a gentle and excitable creature.

The fineness of her nervous temperament,
might have been read in the thinness and
exquisite fairness of her skin, in the slender
blue veins of her snowy temples, and the
lustre of her large dark orbs, which, with
every emotion of joy, tenderness, or grief,
seemed to swim in tears.  Her very laughter
had something strangely clear, ringing, and
hysterical in it.  Her small white hand, at
which the Earl almost unconsciously gazed
more than at the diagram of the game, from
its thinness and delicacy, was alike
indicative of her nature and disposition.

Jane of Huntly was every way the *belle*-ideal
of that description of high-born beauty,
upon whose soft cheek not even the wind of
heaven had been permitted to blow "too
roughly."

She was richly attired in black velvet,
flowered with silver thread; her raven hair was
braided with a string of pearls, and wreathed
in a coronal round her head; while a necklace
of Scottish topazes and Arran stones, set in
gold, sparkled on her bosom and sustained a
silver crucifix, the dying gift of the stout
Earl her father, who, four years before, had
fallen in his armour on the battle-field of
Corrichie.

When Bothwell gazed upon his countess,
there was more of admiration, perhaps, than
love in his expression.  He loved her well
enough after the fashion of the world, but not
so devotedly and well as that gentle being
deserved.  Anna had almost been forgotten;
his flexible heart had been so frittered away
among his innumerable loves, that he seemed
to have become incapable of any lasting
impression.  However, he loved his bride better
than he expected; for, as we have before stated,
this marriage had, on his part, been strictly
one of policy.

At times when Jane's dark eyes met his
with their clear full gaze, there was a keen
and searching expression in their starlike
depth, that made the reckless noble quail, he
knew not why; but her whole soul seemed
to light them up with a vivid expression that
troubled him.

"Another flash—and another!" she exclaimed,
watching the lightning and clasping
her hands, while her swimming eyes glittered
with childlike joy.  "Oh, mother of God!—how
beautiful—how brilliant!  Ah, that I
were among the woods where the lightning
is flashing, or at the linn where the Clyde is
pouring in foam from the rocks!"

"By the Holy Rood!" replied the Earl,
with surprise, "I think thou art better here,
my bonnibel.  None but a water-kelpie could
live abroad to-night, and one half hour of
such a storm would send thee to the
company of the saints."

"And again thou wouldst be free to woo
and win another," rejoined the Countess,
laughing.

"I never wooed, and shall not win another,
my bonny Jane!" said the lying Earl; while
lounging on the velvet cushions he caressed
his little countess, and played with her dark
glossy hair, thinking as he did so, "Ah, how
could I ever love any woman but a dark one!"

"And wilt thou always love me as thou
dost now?" asked the Countess with the most
engaging playfulness.

"Love thee!" stammered the Earl,
perplexed by a question so pertinent to his
thoughts.  "My ladybird, why that thought?"

"Because," replied Jane, in a voice that
was tremulous from the excess of her
emotion; "if thou didst cease to love, O my
dear lord!  I would"——

"What?"

"Die!" and her beautiful head drooped on
his shoulder.

"Anna's very words!" thought the
conscience-stricken Earl, as he gazed upon her
with anxiety and astonishment.  Her expression
startled him; but he knew not that it was
the wild animation and over-excitement that
in a little time would be developed in a
terrible malady, which was already preying
upon the fragile form and ardent mind of the
Countess—madness!

"Why dost thou doubt my love, Jane?"
said the Earl; "it is four years since the
Bishop of Dunblane betrothed thee unto me,
and in that time my heart hath never
wandered from thee."

"Ah!  I don't doubt it—mother of God
forefend that I should!" exclaimed the little
Countess, while her eyes filled with tears,
and she clung closer to her husband, "for
thou wert the first love and the idol of me."

Bothwell's heart was touched; a pang shot
through it when contemplating the deceit he
had practised towards this loving and
trusting creature, in winning her young heart
and still retaining his own, and he kissed
her tenderly.

"And thou, too, art mine idol, Jane; for
since I first met thee, the fairest faces in the
halls of Holyrood and Linlithgow have been
without one attraction for me."

"And yet, dost thou know, there was one
of whom, until her marriage, I was wont to
be jealous; for thou wert ever engaged with
her in conversations full of wit and laughter
and repartee."

"Hah!" said Bothwell, colouring
perceptibly.—"Thou meanest Mary Beaton, I
warrant."

"Nay!  Nay!" laughed the Countess;
"naughty varlet! thou knowest well whom
I mean."

"Mary Fleming, then, whose father fell
at Pinkie-cleugh."

"Nay, God forbid! she is the wife of thy
friend, the secretary; another, and a fairer
Mary, still."

"By St. Abb on the Nab! little fairy,
thou meanest the Queen herself!" exclaimed
Bothwell with a loud laugh, as if he had no
previous idea of who was meant.  "This
would be to make me a rival of Henry
Darnley—a proper squire, and a tall fellow,
too—Ha! ha! thou art a merry wag, my
bonnibel," added the Earl, as he turned to
the grape basket, for the purpose of hiding
the deep colour that crimsoned his face from
beard to temple.  "Thou mistakest, dear
Jane; my thoughts never soared so high,
and it may prove dangerous to—hark! is
not that the blast of a hunting-horn?"

"And by the river-side?"

"Some belated wayfarer."

"I see no one," said the Countess, who
had run to a window.

"It may be Lauchope and his jackmen—there
was some whisper abroad of their
riding tonight, anent his feud with the
Laird of Clelland concerning their meithes
and marches.  Seest thou aught like lances
or steel caps glittering in the moonlight, for
now the storm has died away?"

"There is a man by the river-side.  Hark! he
winds his bugle again and again; the
poor soul seemeth in some sad jeopardy."

"Ho! Calder—Bertram—French Paris—ho
there, without!" cried the Earl; and
two pages, the younger sons of the
neighbouring lairds of Southcalder and
Bertram-shotts appeared, rubbing their eyes, for
they had both fallen asleep in the antechamber
over tric-trac and Rochelle.  "Quick! ye
little guzzling varlets—summon the Gate-ward
and his yeoman—away to the river,
and see what aileth yonder fellow that he
winds his horn so dolorously!"

"Mother Mary!" cried the Countess,
clinging to the Earl; "see—see! he is about
to plunge into that rapid stream—he is in!
God—now—now! see how he buffets with
the current!  Oh, how small, how feeble, he
seems amid that hoarse and foaming river!
Oh, save him! for the love of Heaven and of
heavenly mercy: away, my lord, away!"

"'Tis more than likely this fellow is some
rascally Egyptian.  There hath been a band
of such knaves on Bothwellmuir for this
month past; but should it be Johnnie Faa
himself—hurry the Gate-ward—and his
grooms"——

"Now—now he is gone—he is down! how
fast the current sweeps him on!  I can
look no more!" and, burying her face in her
hands, the excitable little Countess fell on
her knees, exclaiming passionately, "Fie on
thy boasted valour, Lord of Bothwell! for
thou hast stood idly by and seen this poor
man drowned!"

"By cross and buckler! since thou art
so free with thy husband's life, Lady Jane,"
said the Earl angrily, "'tis alike at the
service of thee and this knave-errant.  Follow
me, Calder and French Paris!" and, raising
the arras that concealed a door which
communicated with a staircase and postern
leading to Bothwellbank, the Earl rushed away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE RESCUE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE RESCUE.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Then on they hurried, and on they hied,
   |    Down Bothwell's slope, so steep and green;
   |  And soon they reach'd the river Clyde,
   |    Alas! no Edgar still is seen.
   |                                *M. G. Lewis.*

.. vspace:: 2

Attended only by two of his pages, Bothwell
left the postern door at the foot of the
Valence Tower, and hurried down the *bank*,
or wooded declivity, at the base of which
the Clyde, swollen by the recent rains, was
foaming past with a hoarse and ceaseless
roar, rending the rough whin boulders and
red earth from its scaured banks, and
hurrying trees, and turf, and bushes—the debris
of its hundred tributaries—to the waves of
the western sea.

"Use thine eyes, Calder!  Dost thou see
him, Paris?" said the Earl, stooping low to
pierce the gloomy shade thrown by the
copse-wood upon the river.

"He struggles yonder, my lord!" cried
Nicholas Hubert, or French Paris, as he was
usually named.

"Nay, thou glaiket mole!" said little
Calder; "'tis a tree.  Seest thou not that he
buffets the water a furlong further down?"

"Right, my little fellow! thou hast the
very eyes of a true huntsman!" said the
Earl; "'tis a man's head; I see him; he
floats like a cork on the strong current.
Shout, boys, while I wind my bugle, to let
him know that aid is nigh!"

The pages placed their hands to their
mouths, and uttered a loud hunting holloa,
while Bothwell repeatedly wound his silver
bugle.  Then a faint cry came from the
hissing water, and the drowning man waved
an arm with the action of despair.

"He points to the Priory," said Paris;
"now, what may that import?"

"By Saint Paul! he is in harness!"
exclaimed the Earl; "and the weight of it
is sinking him fast.  Shall we stand here,
like base runnions, and see him perish?
Never!"

"Good, my lord—be wary!" urged Calder.

"Sweet, my noble master—have a care!"
said Paris; "he may only be some drunken
trooper of Lauchope or Clelland's, whom his
comrades have lost when fording the river!"

"But to die, and unaided, under my hall
windows!  No! no! that would be a blight
upon my name for ever," cried the Earl as
he unbuckled his belt, and throwing down
his mantle, bugle, and poniard, leaped
without a moment's hesitation into the watery
tumult, exclaiming as he did so, "Saint
Bothan of Bothwell for me!"

He plunged in a few yards above where
the man was struggling with the current, that
was foaming past him with the speed of a
swollen mill-race.

Exhausted with his efforts, the unfortunate
swimmer clung to an ash-tree that had sunk
into the stream by having the soil partly
washed away from its root, and the foam-bells
were dancing white and frothy around it.
The current bore the Earl close to him; he
grasped him by the scarf, and then, both
yielding a little to the impetuous current,
swam together to a point of rock close by,
where the Earl, strong, active, and fresh,
dragged the rescued man ashore, and he was
immediately supported by the pages, who
were very vociferous in praise of their lord's
courage and address.

"Praise God, and not me!" he replied; "for
a moment more had seen the poor man
perish.  Behold the tree to which he clung!"

At the moment he spoke, the tough ash
was rent from its tenacious rooting, and
swept by the swollen stream like a withered
reed round the wooded promontory, which
is crowned by the castle of Bothwell.

"'Twas a brave feat and a perilous!" said
Paris.

"A gallant deed and a godly!" chorused
young Calder, though both were laughing in
secret to see their lord shaking himself like
a water-spaniel.

"Enough," said he, "from both, and thou
in especial, Master Calder, for thou hast the
very snuffle of a preacher in thy nostrils.
Remove this man's steel bonnet—faith! he
seems quite speechless; but lead him by the
postern to the hall, while I don me another
doublet and shirt, for I am wet as a water-dog."

A few minutes sufficed to change the Earl's
attire, and to find him lounging on the
crimson settle in that luxurious chamber, toying
with the countess's raven ringlets, and listening
to her praises of his strength and courage,
and her regrets and agonies, &c., for the
danger on which her taunts had hurried him.

Her dark eyes were again sparkling with
light and love; but the tenderness and
engaging fondness of her manner failed as
before to enliven or win the attention of her
husband.

In his mind there was, he knew not why,
a sad presentiment of impending evil; his
heart was oppressed by that kind of dead
calm that in some men precedes a tempest
of passion.  The childlike fondling of the
beautiful countess was now lavished in vain.
Ceasing to address him, she sighed and
drooped her head; while her fairy fingers
patted and played with the strong hand and
arm, that more from habit than from love
had almost unconsciously encircled her.

French Paris, the Earl's favourite and
most trusted page, now raised the arras and
presented his saucy and ruddy face.

"Well," asked the Earl, "how fares it
with the person whom I fished out of the
river?"

"He will be well, and with you anon, my Lord."

"What manner of man is he?"

"French, my lord, I think; but he has
not yet spoken."

"Good! by his sleeves of fluted plate I
deemed him a gentleman.  He will be one
of d'Elboeuff's retinue."

"Monsieur le Marquess has been hunting
with the Hamiltons in the wood of Orbiestoun,
so 'tis very likely."

"Well, bring the stranger hither with all
speed."

"We have hung him heels uppermost to
run the water out of him; and when we
have reversed him, and replaced the said
water by a bicker of wine, we will present
him to your lordship."

"A forward March chick!" said the Earl,
as the page disappeared.  "By the mass! when
I carried the helmet of old John of
Albany, I dared not have spoken so flippantly
even to a simple squire or archer as this saucy
imp doth to me, who am a belted Earl."

"'Tis the influence of Calvinism," said
the Countess; "but Heaven be praised that
thou, my dear lord, and my gallant brother,
with Arran, Errol, and Herries, shall again
raise up those blessed altars which the
frenzy and fanaticism of an hour hath
destroyed!"

"That is just as may suit my ambition,"
thought the Earl; "but hush, my ladybird,"
he added aloud; "talk not thus in the
hearing of our people, for knowest thou——How
now!" he exclaimed, as the arras was shaken
and raised; "Paris, is it thee?"

"Yes, my lord.  The stranger is a
gentleman of Norway, and he earnestly
craves a brief audience."

The Earl started and arose; he grew pale,
and his eyes sparkled with anger and
confusion; but he had still sufficient tact to
avert his face, that the countess might not
perceive his emotion.

"Saidst thou a gentleman of Norway?"
he stammered; "now, what in the fiend's
name brought him to swim in the Clyde at
midnight?"

"I know not, my lord."

"The fool—in armour, too!"

"That was the only wise part of his
proceedings; for no man ventures abroad in
these days without his iron case."

"Silence, sirrah!  Norway," muttered
Bothwell, in great confusion; "ass and
jolt-head that I have been!  Had I known he
was of Norway, he had been tossing over
the steepest falls of Clyde by this time for
aught that I had cared.  'Tis some demon
from the north I suppose—some devil of the
wood, or the rocks, or the ice—some kinsman
of Anna—(Nippen himself, perhaps,)—ha! ha! come
to beard Bothwell in his own hall.
God's blood!" he muttered, setting his teeth
on edge, while his eyes glared with a fury
suitable to his terrible oath; "he must be a
stout fellow, and a rare one, who, knowing
me, will bruit abroad my dangerous *secret*."

He trod hastily to and fro, while, alarmed
and filled with curiosity, the countess
approached, and, taking his hands in hers, said—-

"My sweet lord—my dear lord—now
prithee tell me what is all this about?"

"What thou hadst better not hear, my
bonnibel," replied the Earl, turning abruptly
from her; but on seeing that her dark eyes
filled with tears, he added gently—"'Tis the
stranger, Jane—a man-at-arms—one of Hob
Ormiston's vassals, who would speak with
me on matters unbefitting a lady's ear; so,
I pray thee to retire!"

"Hast thou any secrets from me—from
me, who loves thee so well—whose life is
thy love?"

"I keep nothing secret that thou shouldst
hear; but this"——

"Concerneth a woman, doth it not?" said
the Countess, growing pale, while her dark
eyes filled with a strange and dusky fire.

"A woman, sayest thou?" stammered the
Earl, grasping her arm; "who can have told
thee that?"

"Thine own lips did so!  Did I not hear
thee speak of one called *Anna*?"

"Confusion! no!—go! go! thou art mistaken;
I swear to thee, thou art; and anon
I will explain how.  Retire, lady, for this
man would speak with me alone, on matters
which concern the state.  Paris! raise the
arras, and lead him in; but, on peril of thy
neck, see that thou keepest beyond earshot!"

The Countess retired, with an expression
of face in which surprise and chagrin were
blended with the hauteur that seemed to
dilate her little figure, as she swept out of
the apartment, and the heavy tapestry fell
behind her.

"Jealous, by St. Paul!" said the Earl;
"but how can she have divined my secret,
or learned the name of Anna?  Poor Anna!
I dream much of her!  Now, Heaven forefend
I should mutter of her in my sleep, and thus
reveal my heart's most deadly secret!  But
there was jealousy in the eye of Jane, or I
am immensely mistaken.  There can be none
without love, say the casuists.  Well! but
this maudlin love of hers becomes at times
excessively tiresome; and yet I cannot help
liking the little dame.  Her eyes, St. Mary! how
they shone!  Ho, there, Calder! lead in
this merman—this water-kelpie—and let us
know what he would have of James Hepburn!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE REJECTED AND THE RIVAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE REJECTED AND THE RIVAL.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  When fix'd to one, Love safe at anchor rides,
   |  And dares the fury of the winds and tides;
   |  But losing once that hold, to the wide ocean borne,
   |  It drives at will, to every wave a scorn.
   |                                            *Dryden.*

.. vspace:: 2

Though the Earl spoke aloud with an air
of careless bravado, he was not without
sincere apprehension for the issue of this visit;
and when contemplating what might ensue,
if his rash and foolish espousal of the
Norwegian lady became known to Lord Huntly,
various dark ideas of threats, of dule-tree
and dungeon, were suggested as the surest
means of procuring silence.  The malice and
gibing of his highborn enemies at court—the
queen's indignation—the countess' grief and
anger—Huntly's pride and scorn!

"Devil!" muttered Bothwell, playing with
his Parmese dagger; "it may be old
Rosenkrantz himself!  Would that Black Ormiston
were here to advise me!"

His heart beat like lightning as footsteps
crossed the antechamber; they came nearer;
a hand grasped the arras, and the stranger
(whom the pages had attired in one of Bothwell's
own suits, but who still had his sword,
dagger, and corselet) stooped as he entered,
and stood erect before him, with head drawn
back, his breast heaving, his eyes kindling,
and his cheek flushing.

Save a fierce glance, no other greeting
was exchanged between them.

"I see that the gay Lord of Bothwell has
not forgotten me," said Konrad in French.

"The lover of Anna Rosenkrantz—Konrad
of Saltzberg—here, within the walls of
Bothwell!"

"Ay, proud noble, here!—beard to beard
with thee; yet, believe me, had I known
that the fortress, whose round towers rose
so grimly above the river, were those of my
greatest foe, I had rather have perished
among its foaming waters than, given one
cry for succour, save to God!"

"I disclaim all enmity, Sir Konrad—but,
if this be thy spirit, why seek my presence?
My gates are open, and thy course is free."

"I come but to thank thee for having
saved a life which, though worthless now to
me, I have for a time dedicated to the
service of another."

"Thou didst save mine from the waves of
the Skager Rack," said the Earl.

"Would to Heaven I had left thee to
perish!" muttered Konrad, in a burst of anguish.

"Thou didst then establish a claim to my
eternal gratitude, and I thank God that he
hath this night enabled me to repay my
debt.  We are now equal."

"'Tis well!  I would not be *thy* debtor for
all the silver in the mines of Bergen; thou
art alike faithless and base—yea, Lord of
Bothwell, I tell thee in thine own hall, that
thou art a dishonoured villain."

The Earl started as if a serpent had stung
him, and made a movement as if to sound
his bugle.

"I am here beneath thy roof," continued
Konrad; "within thy lofty towers and gates
of strength, and I fearlessly repeat, that thou
art the villain this sword shall one day
proclaim thee, in the midst of assembled thousands."

"Thou art stark mad, young fellow!" said
the Earl, making an effort to restrain his
passion, from a sense of the injury he had
done the speaker, and the deceit practised
towards Anna, of whose escape and immediate
vicinity he had not the most remote
idea.  "Konrad, I am aware that I have
wronged thee deeply, for I have acted most
unwittingly to thee, the part another acted
once to me; for in my hot and ardent youth,
I loved one who neglected me with a
coquetry and a cruelty that, to this hour, have
cast a shadow over my fortune and my days,
I have loved many since then; but, as God
knoweth, none with the ardour and passion
that welled up in my boyish bosom for that
young girl, my first and earliest love.  Since
then, a morbid and mischievous spirit has
led me—in vengeance, as it were—to make
women my playthings and my toys, each
after each to be won, thrown aside, and
forgotten, when I tired of them—yea, thrown
aside like flowers whose perfume is gone."

Touched by the Earl's gentleness, the eyes
of Konrad filled with tears; and, clasping
his hands, he said with great bitterness—

"Oh!  Lord of Bothwell, in pursuit of this
ideal vengeance thou hast destroyed me."

"Forgive me," said the Earl, laying a hand
kindly upon his shoulder; "forgive one who
has endured all that you now feel; but, mark
me, a time will come when thou wilt despise
the woman who could so coldly desert thee
for another."

"Oh, never!" said the young man earnestly—"never!"

"Remember the old saw that sayeth, 'There
are as good fish in the sea as ever came out
of it.'  Thou art still young, Konrad; thy
years"——

"Have scarcely numbered two-and-twenty,
and already I am tired of life."

"Thou art mistaken; the old man may
weary of existence, but the young man never.
The ardour of thy love will die"——

"Never, my lord—I tell thee, never!"

"Ha! ha!—how, dost thou love her still?"

"God alone knows how deeply and how dearly."

"Jesu! after she hath so misused thee?
This is indeed the love of romance," said the
Earl, who thought he now saw some hope of
ridding himself of Anna, and so doing both
himself and her lover a service.  "Well,
Konrad, if thy passion is the same, and if
Anna might be restored to thee"——

"What! now—when in heart and soul she
is the wife of another?  Never!  Much as I
love her still, though on her bended knees
she implored that love, I swear to thee, Sir
Earl, by God and St. Mary, I would withhold
it!  I love her, 'tis true—but oh! not with
the same passion as of old.  Thou hast rifled
my flower of its perfume, and broken the
chain that love and innocence cast around it.
Though Anna still, she is no longer the Anna
who was the idol of my first day-dreams.
No, my lord, to me her love would now be
but a mockery and an insult."

"By the mass! but I love thy spirit, and
if I could be thy friend"——

"Friend!" reiterated Konrad with a bitter
smile; "no, my lord—that thou never canst be!"

"Then what devilish errand brings thee
now to Scotland?"

Konrad hesitated in replying, for he was
so much in the Earl's power that some
subterfuge was necessary.

"Is it to seek vengeance on me, or to
compel me to do some manner of justice to thy
false lemane?" asked Bothwell, haughtily.

"Justice? hast thou not wedded another
after thy deliberate espousal of her?"

"Dost thou deem the mock blessing of
yon mad hermit a spousal rite?" exclaimed
the Earl, laughing; "what passed well enow
for a marriage on the half-barbarian shores
of thy native fiord, will scarcely be deemed
one in this reformed land of stern superintendents,
ruling elders, and wrathful ministers—ha! ha!"

Konrad repressed his rising passion, and
his hand involuntarily sought the pommel of
his dagger; but the recollection of Anna,
lying helpless and faint among the ruins of
the desolate Priory, made him adopt the less
hostile course.

"I go to push my fortune under the banner
of some of your border chiefs and turbulent
nobles, for thou hast made me loathe the
land of my birth, though there I have
garnered up my heart; and sadly the memory
of its dark blue hills and waving woods cometh
ever to my mind; and if, Lord of Bothwell,
in the strife that all men say will soon
convulse this land, thou meetest Konrad of
Saltzberg in his helmet—look well to thyself; for
by the bones of Olaus! in that hour thou
mayest need the best of thy mail and thy
manhood to boot."

"Be it so!" replied the Earl with bold
frankness.  "If that time ever comes, Sir
Konrad, the memory that I have wronged
thee deeply will alone make me blench.  But
go thy way, and God be with thee! for Bothwell
hall hath scarcely space enow to contain
two such spirits as thou and I, even for one
night.  Ho, there!—French Paris, lead this
gentleman to the gates.  He is the first who
hath rejected with scorn the proffered
friendship of the house of Hepburn, and bent a
dark brow on a lord of Bothwell under his
own rooftree!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`KONRAD AND THE COUNTESS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   KONRAD AND THE COUNTESS.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Oh, Bothwell bank! that blooms so bright
   |    Beneath the sun of May;
   |  The heaviest cloud that ever blew,
   |    Is bound for you this day.
   |                            *Aytoune's Lays.*

.. vspace:: 2

Konrad was now doubly anxious to return
to Anna, on learning the dangerous nature
of the predicament in which she was placed,
and the sad truth that, beyond a doubt, the
faithless Earl had really cast her off for ever,
by his marriage with the Lady Jane Gordon.
Under these circumstances, the young man
knew how much there was to dread should
she rashly seek the presence of the Earl, who
might be compelled to adopt some dark and
desperate course to silence her for ever, in
dread of her accusations and clamour, which
might so seriously injure his public character
and domestic peace.

While the interview recorded in the last
chapter was taking place, the Countess of
Bothwell was sitting in her bower, with her
dark eyes full of tears; for the manner of the
stranger, and certain expressions uttered by
the Earl, had roused her jealousy, and
wounded her self-esteem.  Old stories of
Bothwell's innumerable intrigues and
gallantries floated dimly and painfully through
her mind, and her vivid imagination filled
up a dark tableau of—she knew not what—but
which her wilful and impetuous nature
prompted her, at all risks, to fathom.

"Come hither, French Paris," she said to
the youngest page, a pretty lad, who had
been presented to the Earl by the young
Queen Mary; "come hither," she continued,
with one of her most engaging smiles.  "Lead
that strange man to my presence on the first
opportunity; for I must see him before he
leaves the castle!"

"Lady—the stranger?" stammered the lad.

"I said the stranger, sirrah!  Didst thou
not hear me?" she replied, pettishly.

"I dare not, lady; for it seemeth to my
poor comprehension that there lurketh some
mystery"——

"For that very reason, thou prevaricating
little varlet, I wish to converse with him."

"I dare not, madam; for well thou knowest
that our lord, the Earl, is not to be trifled
with."

"'Tis mighty well, this, Master Paris! can
I neither tempt nor oblige thee to obey me,
and keep my secret?"

"Thou canst well do both, sweet madam,"
replied the gallant page, with a coy glance.

"Then here, thou little miser, are ten
golden unicorns," said the Countess, taking
her purse from her girdle; but the pert boy
drew back, saying—

"How, Lady Bothwell! wouldst thou think
to bribe the son of a French knight like the
spawn of a rascally clown?  If I am paid for
keeping a secret, St Mary! 'twill be with no
other coin than Cupid's."

The Countess reddened; but finding it
necessary to humour the lad, who had her
so completely in his power,—

"Thou forward imp!" she replied; "one
may easily discern thy court education.  I
will give thee one kiss now, and another
after I have seen this stranger.  But see to
it, sirrah, that thou art secret and sincere,
or the kiss may be more fatal than that of
Judas."

"Sweet lady!" replied the saucy boy,
blushing with pleasure as the lip of the
beautiful Countess touched his blooming
cheek, "at the risk of my life will I serve
thee; and in the hour I fail, may Heaven
fail me!"

He sprang away, and, coiling himself up
in his mantle, watched near the door of the
Earl's chamber till he was summoned to
lead forth the unwelcome visiter.

"Boy," said Konrad, "I will give thee a
silver crown, if thou wilt lead to the first
and nearest bridge that crosses yonder
river."

"Fair sir, follow me!" said the page; and,
cap in hand, by a narrow spiral stair, which
ascended to the second story of the Valence
tower, he led Konrad straight to the bower
of the countess.

"Where art thou leading me, boy?" asked
Konrad suspiciously; while keeping one hand
on his dagger, and the other on the page's
mantle, as they stumbled up the dark stair,
through the slits of which the night wind
blew on their faces, and they heard the
endless rush of the adjacent Clyde.

"I lead thee where silence is best, else
thou mayest come down with the aid of
other legs than thine own."

"How, varlet! what jade trick is this?"
exclaimed the young man with surprise,
on being suddenly ushered into a magnificent
little boudoir, where he found himself
in presence of a lady.

"'Tis the Countess of Bothwell," whispered
French Paris, "who would learn from
thee"——

"What thou art not to hear," interrupted
the Countess; "so, begone! and if thou wouldst
keep that head on thy shoulders, retire
behind the arras, and muffle it well in thy
mantle."

French Paris immediately retired; and
Konrad, whose anxiety for the safety of
Anna (when he remembered the half-dying
state in which he left her,) amounted now to
agony, stood silent and confused, gazing
with irresolution on the Countess.  He
bowed with the deepest respect; for her
beauty and dignity, notwithstanding her
diminutive stature, were very striking.

The position she occupied, and the splendour
by which she was surrounded, contrasted
forcibly, in his mind, with the forlorn
condition of Anna Rosenkrantz, stretched on
the couch of leaves among the ruins like a
homeless outcast; and he felt, he scarcely
knew why, a sentiment of hostility struggling
with pity for the Countess.

Her large and oriental-like eyes dilated as
she asked—

"Art thou the man whom my husband
saved from the river?"

"I am, lady; but, had he known me, I
had been left to perish amid its waters."

"Thou art quite a youth, and a handsome
one, too—a Frenchman, I think?"

"Nay, noble lady, I am of old Norway in
the distant north; but a good Catholic, as I
see thou art by thy crucifix."

"Our religion is a bond of friendship in
these dangerous days of obdurate heresy,"
said the Countess, whose eyes lighted up;
"but wherefore sayest thou my lord would
rather thou hadst perished, though he risked
his life to save thee?"

"Because," replied the other with a lowering
brow, "I am the bearer of a secret that
if, unfolded to thee, would make the Lord
Bothwell slay me, even if I stood with the
grace-cup on his own hearthstone."

"And what is this secret?" she asked with
a hauteur that was assumed to hide her
trembling curiosity.

"Excuse my revealing it, lady, and let me
begone, I pray you, for an agony of anxiety
oppresses me.  One day, perhaps, you
may—you must know all!"

"Now—tell me now, I implore thee?
Behold this ring; it contains four diamonds,
each worth I know not how many angels"—

"I am a gentleman, and a captain of
arblastiers under Frederick of Denmark, and
to me your bribe is proffered in vain.  I
repeat, madam, that I must decline to reveal
the secret."

"This is alike insolent and cruel!" said the
Countess, raising her voice, while her dark
eyes flashed, and her little hands were
clenched.  "Tell me this instant all thou knowest,
or I will summon those who will make thee.
I have a proud lord, and a jealous.  Beware!
Think what he may do if thou art found in
my chamber at this hour.  Now, the secret—the
secret!  Man, thy life is in my hands!"  She
seized a silver whistle that lay on the
table—hand-bells were not then in use—and
there was something so malevolent in
the threat, and so serpent-like in the
expression of her wild dark eyes, that Konrad
was both startled and provoked.  "The
secret"——

"Is—That *thou art not* Countess of Bothwell!"
he replied, with quiet scorn.

"What hast thou dared to say?" she
asked, in a breathless voice, and grew paler
than marble.

"That thy husband is a villain, lady—a
villain who hath deceived thee cruelly!  He
has another Countess, who shall one day claim
him, and compel him to acknowledge her as
such before the assembled peers of Scotland;
for she is of noble birth in her own country,
and the warlike King Frederick will not permit
the honour of her house to be trifled with."

"Man, thou hast lied—oh, say thou hast
lied!  Oh, say that thou art mistaken!" said
the Countess, in a low and broken voice, as
she sank upon a settle with a ghastliness of
face, which the darkness of her eyes and hair
increased.

"I am not mistaken, lady.  I swear to
thee by every saint who is blessed in heaven,
and by their shrines that are revered on earth,
that I am *not*!  He is solemnly espoused to
Anna"——

"*Anna!* 'tis the name he has muttered
thrice in his sleep."

"Anna Rosenkrantz, a lady of Norway,
who at this hour wears on her marriage
finger the emerald ring which the hermit of
Bergen blessed, and with which she was
solemnly espoused."

"Sayest thou an emerald ring?" demanded
the Countess, a sudden light flashing in her
eyes, while her lips became more white and
parched.

"Yea, lady, wherein the traitor had inscribed
a legend, purporting that 'the gift and
the giver were hers for ever.'"

The Countess uttered a wild cry, and threw
her clasped hands above her head.

"Holy Mother look upon me, that my
senses may be preserved!  That ring was
mine—my betrothal gift to him.  He said
'twas lost during his exile; and with that
gift (which my good and pious kinsman, the
Bishop of Dunblane, blessed on our plighting
day) he hath espoused another!  But I will
be avenged! and by the soul of my murdered
father, who with his sword in his hand and
the cross on his brow, fell on the field of
Corrichie, I will raise through all Strathbolgie
and Aboyne a cry for vengeance, that Scotland
will long remember!"

"Against whom, lady?" asked Konrad,
who had now a dash of the cynic in his
manner.  "The man thou lovest?"

But there was no reply.  Exhausted by
the fury of that tempest of passion, which
convulsed a frame at all times too excitable
and nervous, the Countess had become
insensible; and then Konrad, full of the
tenderest concern, was approaching, when
French Paris, who had been listening
intently to the whole interview, and now
began to tremble for his own bones, raised
the arras, and, plucking him by the sword,
said—

"If thou valuest thy life, follow me and
begone!  Her cries have reached the hall,
and already I hear the voice of the Earl."

They rushed down the secret stair to the
postern, the arras barely closing over
Konrad at one end of the bower chamber, when
the astonished Earl raised it at the other.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DISAPPOINTMENT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   DISAPPOINTMENT.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Once more the gate behind me falls;
   |    Once more before my face
   |  I see the moulder'd abbey walls
   |    That stand within the chase.
   |                          *Tennyson.*

.. vspace:: 2

Konrad stood on Bothwell bank, the
wooded declivity that sloped abruptly to the
margin of the Clyde, in whose deep bosom
the stars were now reflected; for all traces of
the storm had died away, and the wet foliage
of the woodlands was rustling in the soft west
wind that blew from the darkened hills of
Lanark.

High and sombre in its feudal strength
and architectural pride, towered up the keep
of Bothwell, and its grass-tufted barbican
wall.  Lights flashed through the casements
of turret and corridor, and loud voices were
heard calling clamorously in the echoing
court.

"There lies thy path," said the page,
pointing towards the river; "traverse its
banks for about a mile till thou reachest the
bridge of Bothwell.  The hamlet of the same
name is near it, and there thou canst pass
the night."

"Is there no place nearer? consider again,
good lad," said Konrad, thinking more for
Anna than himself, as he slipped the promised
crown into the page's hand.

"The warder of the bridge resides in a
house above the archway, which is closed
after nightfall.  He keeps an hostelry which
affordeth good up-putting both for men and
horses; but mark me, fair sir! seek neither
hamlet nor hostel to-night, for we know not
what evil may come of thy plaguy interview
with the countess.  Keep in the woods, and
lie *en perdu* till daybreak, and then God
speed thee!"

The postern closed, and Konrad stood alone.

A vague sense of danger impelled him to
hurry from the vicinity of the castle; but he
was less actuated by that motive than by
his anxiety to rejoin Anna, from whom
he had now been two hours absent, without
procuring the succour she required so
much.

He found the passage of the river open,
for the warder had partaken somewhat freely
of the potations of a traveller who had tarried
there about curfew-time, and consequently he
had forgotten to secure the barrier-gate that
closed the roadway after dark, and which
none could pass without paying toll, or
drinking a can of ale at his hostel.  Konrad
passed on; and just as day was brightening
in purple and orange on the distant hills, he
began to ascend the eminence which was
crowned by the ruined priory of the Augustines
of Blantyre.

As day broke on the green woods of Bothwell,
and the magnificent river, a hundred
yards in breadth, that flowed in blue and
silver light between them, no other silvan
scene could surpass that landscape in beauty
and romance.  Contrasting strongly with
the bright green of the summer forest, which
was seen at intervals between the ivied
buttresses and shattered windows of the gothic
priory, rose Bothwell's broad round towers
and ponderous ramparts, shining almost
blood-red in the rising sun, being all built of
ruddy-coloured stone.  White and silvery,
from the margin of the deep and crystal
river, the morning mist curled up through
the heavy foliage in a thousand fantastic
shapes, and melted away in the thin air of
the blue and balmy sky.

Hurrying among the grass-grown masses
of the broken tombs and fallen walls, Konrad
entered the vault where he had left Anna,
and a pang shot through his bosom on
beholding her lying at full length, still and
motionless, on her bed of leaves.  Her face
seemed pale as death when viewed by the
dim light that struggled through the arched
chamber, from a little pointed window in
the massive wall.

"If she should be dead!" he thought,
as he stooped tenderly over her.  "Ah! Heaven
be thanked, she only sleeps!"

The contour and pallor of her beautiful
fece, then attenuated by mental suffering
and bodily fatigue, seemed almost sublime in
the placidity of its aspect.  Tears were
oozing heavily from her long lashes, and her
respirations were short and quick as her
lover bent over her, and, taking one of her
passive hands in his, pressed it gently to his
lips.

Anna awoke, and started on beholding
Konrad, whose attire had been changed; for
the pages of the Earl had given him a
sombre suit of black sarcenet in lieu of his
wet garments.

"Konrad," she said faintly, "thou hast
tarried long."

"Not one moment longer than I could
avoid, dearest Anna!  Thou canst not guess
where I have been, and whom I have seen."

"Thou hast seen *him*," she replied, with a
radiant face; "whom else couldst thou see
that I care for?"

"I *have* seen him, lady," said Konrad,
over whose countenance there fell a deeper
shade of melancholy.  "I have seen him,
and stood with him face to face in his own
castle hall."

"Oh!" exclaimed Anna; and, half-clinging
to Konrad's neck, she turned upon him a
face and eyes that were radiant with
eagerness and joy; "and what said he? what
message sent he to me—to his well-loved
Anna? why came he not himself?"

"Thou hast forgotten, Anna"——

"Ah! my God! yes—the story.  He is
still faithful to me—say that he is, dear
Konrad!"

"Six months ago, with all formality and
magnificence, he was married to another, and
thou art no more remembered than the last
year's snow."

"This must—must be some dreadful
dream or fantasy!" said Anna, pressing
her hands upon her temples.

"I have seen his bride."

"Is she beautiful?"

"Yes, singularly beautiful, and gentle,
and winning."

"Hah!" muttered Anna sharply through
the teeth, which were set like a vice.

Her face was pale and colourless.  An
expression of jealous bitterness, of anger,
and reproach, were on her forehead, and
sparkling in her eyes, which were almost
white with an aspect of passion, such as
Konrad had never before witnessed in her
usually calm features; and, taking her hands
in his, he said tenderly—

"Be composed, dearest Anna! for I never
will forsake thee while hie remains; and even
were I to die, my spirit, I am assured, will
hover near thee still."

"*Thou!*" said she bitterly, as she snatched
away her hands; "what art thou to me?"

The young man trembled, for at these
cruel words a heavy palsy seemed to fall upon
his heart.

"And where is his castle, Konrad?" she
demanded abruptly.

"Behold!" he replied; and, drawing back
a mass of the pendant ivy and wild-roses
that overhung the entrance of the vault,
he displayed the beautiful valley or dell,
through which the noble Clyde, so broad,
blue, and crystalline, was winding between
its banks of lofty wood, and overlooked by
the dark façade of Bothwell's princely
stronghold.

Full on the long line of its crenelated
rampart, on the strong round towers that the
patriot Wallace, and "proud Pembroke's
haughty Earl," had built, on its shining
casements and lofty keep, overtopping the
summer foliage and the morning mist, shone the
warm splendour of the early sun.  Anna
gave one fixed and fierce glance at the
edifice, and then arose with tottering steps, and
wildness in her air and eyes.

"Whither wouldst thou, Anna?" said
Konrad imploringly, retaining her hand.

"I am going to him"——

"To Bothwell?"

"I will—I shall see him once again, though
only to expire at his feet.  One interview
may"——

"Dear Anna," said Konrad, who never for
an instant, under all her petulance and
neglect, altered his gentle and loverlike tone;
"thou forgettest that he is wedded to
another—a great lady of the land—and that
thou art now but as a weed, a bramble in
his path, to be crushed or thrown aside."

"Go to!  Konrad—'tis but jealousy that
makes thee speak thus."

"Thou wrongest me, Lady Anna; 'tis long
since jealousy died within me.  Oh! *that* was
an agony that could not last with life.  Tarry
but one hour, I implore—thou art so faint,
Anna"——

"Dare you detain me, sir?"

"Go, then; and Bothwell's boorish warders
and flippant pages will drive thee like
some poor wanton from his gates; and think
then—when with insult and opprobrium
they are closed upon thee—what thy father,
the brave old knight of Aggerhuis, who
died with one hand on his sword and the
other on the standard of the Lubeckers,
would have felt, could he have thought
that such an hour was reserved for the
only daughter of that wife he loved so
dearly."

"True—true!" replied Anna, giving way
to a passionate burst of tears; for the
mention of her parents subdued her.  "O
Mary! blessed mother of compassion, intercede
for me!  Inspire me with resignation and
strength to endure my fate.  Ah, pardon me,
kind and good Konrad! for my heart is so
torn by love and shame and indignation, that
at times I know not what I say.  From what
I was in Frederick's court, to become what I
am—a poor outcast on a foreign shore—an
object of scorn to the proud, and pity to the
good!  Oh, how frightful!  Be still kind to
me, Konrad—and end my misery by putting
thy poniard into the heart that so cruelly
deceived thee."

Konrad was deeply moved by this passionate
burst of grief; he leaned against a
fragment of the ruin, and covered his face
with his hands.

"Anna!" said he, after a pause; "bethink
thee that Scotland hath a queen whose
goodness of heart and gentleness of spirit
are revered in every land save her own?"

"True! and at her feet will I pour forth
my sorrow and my tears together.  As a
woman she will sympathize with me, and
lend a kind ear to the story of my wrongs,
Thou wilt go with me, Konrad?"

He kissed her hand again, and led her to
the arch of the vault, and then they
paused—for at that moment the blast of a bugle,
clear and ringing, ascended from the bosky
dell below the ruined Priory.  Then the
flash of steel was seen among the foliage,
and a band of between forty and fifty
men-at-arms on horseback, three abreast, having
two swallow-tailed pennons displayed, and
with their steel caps and tall uplifted lances
glittering in the morning sun, swept at full
gallop round the steep knoll on which the
castle stood.

For a few minutes the reflection of their
passing files was seen to glitter in the
mirror-like bosom of the river, as horse and rider,
spear and pennon, vanished among the
apple bowers and birchen glades that clothed
the braes of Bothwell.

Konrad felt instinctively that they were
in pursuit of him; and, with a sadness
and anxiety caused only by the reflection
that, if he were slain, Anna would be friendless
and desolate, he led her slowly from
the ruins, and, hand in hand, the forlorn
pair traversed the thickets of old and gnarled
oak surrounding Blantyre Priory, and
reached the rough and dusty highway which
was to lead them—but how they knew not—to
the court and palace of the Queen of
Scotland.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE COUNTESS JANE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE COUNTESS JANE.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  What was once a source of pleasure,
   |    Now becomes the cause of pain;
   |  Day no more displays its treasure,
   |    Endless night o'erspreads the plain:
   |  The powers of nature and of art
   |  Cease to charm the wounded heart.
   |                          *Sonnet by Queen Mary.*

.. vspace:: 2

The Earl of Bothwell was more astonished
than alarmed on finding his Countess
insensible; but hastening forward with proper
solicitude, he raised her from the ground,
and the moment he did so she partially recovered.

Her deep dark eyes gave him one full,
bright, sickening glance of sorrow and
reproach, then she closed them again, and her
head drooped over his shoulder.

Again she recovered suddenly, and, trembling
in every limb, withdrew from the Earl's
encircling arm, and cold, passionless, and
rigid in feature as a statue, gazed steadily
upon him for a moment, and, removing her
wedding ring from the marriage finger, laid
it on a little marble table that stood near her.

"Now, my Lord," said she, in a voice that
struggled to be firm, "now, I have done with
thee.  Give this ring to *her* who now wears
my betrothal gift, and may she be happier
than I have been!  Oh!  Bothwell, Bothwell! if
ever"——

"Woman, art thou mad?" exclaimed the
astonished noble, growing pale with surprise
and increasing anger.

The Countess laughed bitterly.

"Mad!" she repeated, and pressed her
little hands upon her throbbing temples.  A
strange light blazed in her dark eyes, that
were liquid and swimming, though not one of
the hot salt tears that trembled in them
rolled over her pallid cheek.  "Yes—I am
mad! ha, ha!"

A shudder crept over Bothwell on hearing
that ghastly laugh, and he said—

"Take up thy ring, Jane, for thy manner
makes me tremble."

"Hah! doth it so?  Oh, Bothwell! did I
not love thee almost to adoration, I should
spit upon thee!  Thy ring—oh! never more
shall ring of thine disgrace the hand of Lord
Huntly's daughter.  Where is the ring that
I gave thee in exchange for *this* on the day
of our betrothal, when together we knelt
before the Bishop of Dunblane, and the old
man blessed us both?  Oh, false and
faithless! dishonourable and base!"——

"Speak louder, lady!" said the Earl, whose
brow darkened with suppressed passion,—"speak
louder, I pray thee!  Let every groom
and gossiping page hear how Bothwell and
his Countess can bandy hard words in their
quarrels, like two tavern brawlers.  What a
plague have I to do with thy quips and
quirks?—thy freaks and wild fancies?  Thou
hast found thy tongue, (a wanion upon it!)
pray, endeavour to recover thy temper also.
Lady—by St. Paul thy best wits have gone
woolgathering!"

"Oh! why didst thou wed me, Bothwell?"
she exclaimed, in a passionate burst of grief,
as she threw herself upon a cushioned settle,
and covered her face with her hands.  The
Earl was touched; he approached, and bent
over her.

"Jane, Jane!" he began, in a faltering voice.

"Why didst thou take me from hearts
that loved me so well?"

Scorn curled the Earl's lip at this question,
for he thought it referred regretfully to Lord
Sutherland, who, in her girlish days, had been
an assiduous admirer of the Countess.  He
replied coldly—

"I doubt not there are still hearts who
love thee in Strathbolgie—and *Strathnaver*,
too."

"Begone!" she exclaimed, in a voice that
thrilled through him; for her terrible malady
was then fast stealing upon her senses and
energies.  "Begone to thine Anna, and leave
Jane of Gordon to die!  Away—begone!—dost
thou hear?"  And, in the childish bitterness
of her passion, she spat upon him.

The Earl withdrew a pace or two; rage
crimsoned his features, and he rolled his
eyes about for some object to vent his fury
upon.

"Oh! why didst thou teach me to love
thee?" continued the Countess in her piercing
voice.  "What led thee to woo and to wed me?"

"*Fatality!*" replied the Earl, with a cold
and haughty smile.  "Fatality!  O woman! knowest
thou not that every action of my
life has been impelled by an overruling
principle, which I could neither see, nor
avert, nor avoid? and I know not on what
other shoals and rocks of danger and intrigue,
this current of my inevitable fete may hurry
me.  But I feel within me a solemn presentiment
that this right hand shall yet do deeds
at which the boldest hearts—and my own,
too—shall be startled and dismayed."

"Away from me further; for now I see
thou art tainted with the cursed heresies of
Calvin.  Fatality!  This is not the Catholic
doctrine thy pious mother, Agnes of Sinclair,
instilled into thy mind.  Now I no
longer need to marvel at thy duplicity.  Thou
who art false to thy God, may well be false
to me; or art thou growing mad, too?  Away
to Anna, and leave me!"

"Anna?"

"Yes, Anna—'tis the name thou hast often
muttered in thy sleep, when, with a heart
full of love, I lay waking and watching by
thy side, and these evil dreams were my
meed.  Hence to thy Norwegian!"

"By St. Paul! this fellow, Konrad, hath
been with thee!  Ah, villain and traitor! beware
how thou comest again within the
reach of Bothwell's dagger.  Ho, Hob of
Ormiston!—John of Bolton!—Calder!—Paris!—ho
there!  What a blockhead, what a
jack-a-lent I have been!"

The page appeared, and too frightened to
remember his fee now, trembled in every
limb at the domestic storm he had been
partly the means of raising.

"Has any one had access to the Countess?"
asked the Earl, with a terrible frown.

"None—none, my lord, that I know
aught of."

"French Paris, thou art a subtle little
villain, and hadst thou not been gifted to me,
like a marmozet, by the Queen, I would
have cracked thy head, as thy likeness would
a nut, to obtain the truth!  Have the lairds
of Ormiston or Bolton returned yet?"

"This moment only, my lord.  They are
in the hall, and in their armour yet."

"Let their stout jackmen hie to horse
again, and bid them look well to girth and
spur-leather; so, while I arm me, boy, send
the knights hither."

While Bothwell hurriedly buckled on a
suit of armour that was lying near—for, as we
said elsewhere, no man could with safety
venture a yard from his own door unarmed—the
Countess lay on the crimson settle, with
her face covered by her hands, over which
her long black hair was flowing in disorder.

The clank of armed heels and steel
scabbards in the antechamber, heralded the
approach of the knights, and their mail flashed
as the heavy arras was drawn aside, and
they stood before the Earl.

"The Norwegian hath been here!" whispered
the latter to Ormiston.

"How—who?"

"Konrad of Saltzberg—thou rememberest
him," he added aloud; "and he hath
bewitched the Countess—a French sorcerer,
Bolton, anent whom I will tell thee another
time.  Horse and spear!  Thou, Ormiston,
and I, must ride, scour the woods, and slay
without reservation or remede if we find
him.  Nay, that were too cruel, perhaps; let
us capture him, at all events.  Tell your
people, sirs, he is a tall fellow, with a long
sword, a corselet, breeches and hosen of sable
sarcenet.  Twenty unicorns to the finder and
capturer!"

"We must breathe our steeds first," said
Ormiston, as he drew the clasps and buckles
of the Earl's armour; "we have had a tough
night's work with Clelland and Lauchope.
They stood it stoutly, with a hundred lances
and fifty archers a-side.  We have had a
raid on Bothwell-muir that will make a noise
among the justiciary lords at Edinburgh."

"And how came these knaves to quarrel?"

"Because, at Candlemas last, one took precedence
of the other in crossing Calder brig."

"A just cause and a proper for three
hundred blockheads to tilt at each other's
throats!  And how comest thou, Hob, to lift
lance in this wise feud?"

"Because I count kindred with Clelland."

"And thou, Bolton, why wentest thou
with thy fifty lances?"

"Because I claim kindred with Ormiston."

"So may ye all *hang* together in the end!"
said the Earl, angrily; "while I, your lord
and feudal superior, want you, ye are fighting
under other banners.  Now, Paris, my sword
and salade.  Summon my grooms, and let
us to horse—the fellow cannot be far off yet."

Hob of Ormiston was sheathed in a favourite
suit of black armour, which he usually
wore to render his sobriquet more complete;
but Bothwell's particular friend and
ally, Hepburn of Bolton, who was captain of
his castle of Hermitage, and lieutenant of
Queen Mary's Archer Guard, wore a magnificent
suit of polished steel, the gorget and
shoulder-plates of which were riveted with
rows of golded-headed nails.  He was a
young and handsome man, and his bright
blue eyes sparkled with merriment and good
humour under the uplifted visor of his
helmet.

Both these gentlemen helped themselves,
unasked, to wine, from a red vase of gilded
crystal that stood on a buffet, and both
laughed somewhat unceremoniously at the
unseemly conjugal feud that had evidently
taken place, and each made his remarks
thereon with a blunt carelessness peculiar
rather to the men than to the age.

"The Lady Bothwell seemeth ill at ease,"
said Ormiston, winking to Hepburn over
his wine horn.

"Fore heaven! he must have been a marvellous
sorcerer, this Konrad," laughed the
young knight, showing all his teeth under a
brown mustache; "and if I come within a
lance length of him, he will have reason to
remember Jock of Bolton for the short
remainder of his days."

"Adieu, my bonnibel!" said the Earl, in
a low voice, as he laid his hand caressingly
on the shoulder of the countess, who never
raised her drooping head.

"Adieu!" she sobbed; "and may it be for ever."

"Ah! my jo, Jean—these are severe
words," said the Earl, with a faint attempt
to laugh; for at times he really felt a sincere
tenderness for his little wife.

"Would to God, thou false lord, that I had
never met—never married thee!"

"Well, ladybird," said he, with a sudden
hauteur that was almost cruel, "thou mayest
thank thy kinsman, the politic Earl of Huntly,
whose intrigues to procure a rich husband
for his tocherless sister brought that bridal
about.  By our lady!  I never sought
thee, save in the mere spirit of pastime
and gallantry, and in that spirit, Lady Jane,
I own that I loved thee well enough for a
time."

"A time!" reiterated the Countess.

"Yes—what more wouldest thou have,
thou exacting little fairy?"

"A time!" she repeated, and bent her
bright but humid eyes upon him, while pressing
her white hands tightly together, "Oh,
'twas a pity that love so tender should ever
have been spoiled by marriage!"

"Thou growest sarcastic," said the Earl,
as he nodded to her jocosely, adjusted his
helmet, and began to whistle "*My Jollie
Lemane*"—then after a time, he added, "we
were never quite suited for each other, my
bonnibel.  Thou wert too exacting—I too gay."

The poor young Countess wrung her hands,
and uttered that low laugh which thrilled
through Bothwell's heart.  His countenance
changed; he drew back, and regarded her
anxiously through his closed visor.

"Thou makest a devil of a fuss about this
escapade, Lady Bothwell!" said Hob of
Ormiston, in his deep bass voice; he had been
intently polishing his cuirass with the lining
of his gauntlet, and endeavouring to repress
his disdain for the Earl's quietness, this fierce
baron being in his own household despotic
and terrible as a Tartar king or a Bedouin
chief,  "Why should not thy husband, the
Earl, have a gay lemane as well as the godly
Arran, the pious Morton, and other nobles,
who hold natheless a fair repute in kirk and
state?"

"True," said Hepburn, laughing heartily
at this coarse remark, "even Master Knox,
too!  Is there not a story abroad in the
Luckenbooths, of his having been found gamboling
with a wight-wapping lass in a covered
killogie?"[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] See Life of Knox.

.. vspace:: 2

"Mother Mary!" exclaimed the Countess
wildly, as she rose to her full height, and
turned her eyes of fire upon the speaker;
"have I fallen so low, that I have become
the sport of ruffians such as you?  Begone
from my bower ere I die!  Is this a place,
Lord Earl, for thy cut-throats and
swashbucklers to bully and swagger in?"

Black Ormiston uttered a loud laugh.

"Sweet Madam," began Hepburn—

"And thou, too, John of Bolton; begone,
for an officious fool!"

"By St. Paul!" said the Earl angrily,
"when thou insultest my friends thus, the
atmosphere of the house must be too hot to
suit me.  Paris—ho! attend to thy mistress;
and now, sirs, to horse and away, for by
the honour of Hepburn, the rascally Norseman
who hath brought all this mischief
about, shall dree his reward ere the sun goes
down."

As they descended to the castle-yard, a
wild hyena-like cry came from the
Countess's bower, but instead of pausing they
hastened their steps.

Horribly it rang in the hollow of Bothwell's
helmet, and by it he knew that what
he had dreaded was now come to pass—

That his Countess was mad!





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.. _`THE PURSUIT`:

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   CHAPTER XXIII.


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   THE PURSUIT.

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..

   |  The drawbridge falls, they hurry out—
   |    Clatters each plank and swinging chain,
   |  At, dashing o'er, the jovial route
   |    Urge the shy steed, and slack rein.
   |                                    *Scott.*

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The morning sun rose brightly upon the
windings of the azure Clyde, and on the
green woodlands whose foliage was reflected
on its surface, as Bothwell and his two friends,
at the head of about fifty jackmen, mounted
on strong and fleet horses, of border training,
and armed with steel caps, shirts of mail,
two-handed swords and long lances, dashed
at full gallop from the archway of the castle,
rumbled over the sounding drawbridge, and
descending from the height through the
barbican gate, plunged into the bosky coppice
below, where their bright armour and weapons
were seen flashing and glinting among
the green foliage, as they spurred towards
the bridge and village of Bothwell.

"We must have this Norwegian either killed
or captured," said Bothwell emphatically
to Ormiston, as they galloped at the head of
their train.  "To have him at large with
such a story on his tongue, would be
submitting to my own destruction."

"True, my lord!" replied the unscrupulous
retainer; "suppose he fell in the way of
Moray or of Morton—what a notable discovery!
Thou sayest aright; to leave him
at liberty on Scottish ground, with this secret
in his fool's noddle, would but serve to ruin
thee at Holyrood, and injure all who follow
thy banner."

"He has, as we know, wrongs to avenge;
and men, in these brisk days of ours, are not
wont to follow those precepts of scripture,
which Knox and Wishart have dinned into
our ears—by turning one cheek to the foe
who smites us on the other—and these wrongs
may lead him straight to the ears of Huntly.
Fool that I was, when he stood on my own
hall floor"——

"Where was then thy dagger?" asked
black Hob, with a ferocious look.

"May God forbid—and forefend its use in
such a place!" replied the Earl.  "Such a trick
were worse than that old Douglas played the
Knight of Bombie at the Castle of Threave,
and a deed deserving such meed as I pray
Heaven may mete to me, in that hour when
I fall so far in guilt.  Nay—nay! under my
own roof to take the life of a trusting guest!
Go to, Ormiston! thou art stark mad, or
stark bad!"

"Cock and pie! what a fuss thou makest!
Then thou hadst the dungeon, and it might
have spared us this ride, which to say truth,
after our last night's hard work in plate and
mail, with lance and maul, I could very well
have spared.  I have been cheated of
breakfast, too!  But mayhap the warder at the
bridge hath a bowie of porridge, or a slice
of beef and a can of ale, to spare."

"Hob, do thou take the bridle-path that
leads to the tower of Clelland; after the
drubbing thou gavest him overnight, the
laird will not likely molest thy pennon.
Scatter twenty lances to prick among the
woodlands.  Bolton, thou wilt ride with ten
men by Calderside, and do likewise; while I
cross the Clyde, and search by Blantyre
Priory.  *Keep tryste* on Bothwell-muir!  So
now adieu, sirs!—Forward, my stout prickers,
and remember, my merry men all—twenty
unicorns of gold to the finder of this knave!
He is a tall fellow, with a fair curly head, a
corselet, and black hosen."

Dividing into three, at a wave of his hand
the horsemen separated, and galloped off on
their different routes.

Leaving the Knight of Ormiston and the
Lieutenant of the Archers to pursue their
various roads, which happily they did
without success, we will accompany the Earl,
who, with twenty prickers, or light-armed
horsemen, rode towards the bridge of
Bothwell, pursuing the ancient Roman way.

It was a glorious summer morning; the
air was balmy, and all nature wore its
brightest hue; the green fields and the
waving foliage were rich and verdant, and
glittered in the silver dew, which the sun
was exhaling in gauzy mist.  Bothwell, full
of anxiety to recapture Konrad, and
thereafter to find some means necessary for
stifling the dangerous secret he possessed,
rode furiously on, despatching his riders by
couples along the various narrow paths that
led from the ancient way, to the different
baronial towers and hamlets whose smoke
was seen curling from the woods on each side.

With their mossy roofs and clay-built
lums, the latter were generally nestling in
the wooded dingles which were overlooked
by the battlemented peels, that stood in
bold outline against the sky, with their red
walls glancing, and dark smoke ascending
in the sunshine.  From their summits many
a watchman looked sharply and keenly at
the distant horsemen as they rode through
the thickets below, appearing at times on
the dusty highway, or spurring along the
steep Hill-sides, with their lance-heads flashing
like silver stars among the bright green leaves.

With all the impetuosity of his nature,
Bothwell rode fast and furiously on, and till
he reached the muir never drew bridle, save
once, to cross himself and mutter an *ave* on
passing one of those little chapels or
roadside shrines, which are still so common in
Spain and Italy, and which the pious spirit
of the olden time erected by the wayside to
remind the passers of their religious duties.
It was rudely formed, and had been erected
by his pious ancestress, Agnes Stewart of
Buchan, that the wayfarer might say one
prayer for the soul of her husband, Adam
Earl of Bothwell, who had fallen fighting
for Scotland on Flodden field.

And here the Earl, even in his path of
vengeance, paused to offer up a prayer.

The little chapel was formed by a single
gothic arch, containing an altar, a niche, and
pedestal graven with the words, *Saint Mary,
pray for me!* but the hands of the Reformers
had been there; the shrine was empty,
the altar mutilated, the weeds and wallflower
were growing in luxuriance about it, and
the fountain, that once had flowed from a
carved face into a stone basin below, in
consequence of the wanton and fanatical
destruction of the latter, was running across
the roadway, where it had long since made
for itself a little channel.

The extensive muir of Bothwell, which is
now so beautiful in its modern state of
cultivation and fertility, was then a wide
sequestered waste of purple heather, dotted
by grey rocks, tufts of golden broom, and
masses of dark green whin.

Traces of that recent feudal conflict, in
which Ormiston and Bolton had been handling
their swords, were met at every rood of
the way, by the Earl and six horsemen who
now accompanied him.  Broken swords and
splintered lances were lying by the roadside,
and parties of peasantry were passed, bearing
away the dead and wounded in grey
plaids, on biers of pikes or branches of
trees; the women tearing their hair and
lamenting aloud; the men, with their
bonnets drawn over their knitted brows,
brooding on that future vengeance which, in those
days of feudalism, and of bold hearts and
ready hands, was never far distant.

A ride of a mile and a half from his castle
gate brought the Earl to the village of
Bothwell, which bordered the ancient way
known as the Watling street.  Then it was
but a little thatched hamlet, clustered with
gable ends and clay lums, near the venerable
church founded by Archibald the Grim,
Lord of Galloway.  Beyond, lay the mains
and groves of Bothwellhaugh, possessed by
a lesser baron of the house of Hamilton.

Here the vassal villagers came crowding,
bonnet in hand, around the Earl, and in
courtesy he was compelled to touch his helmet
and rein up; while the parish beadle, after
tinkling the skelloche bell, issued, according
to an ancient custom now obsolete in Scotland,
the following burial proclamation:—

"All brethren and sisters!  I let you to
wit, there is a brother, Ninian Liddal of the
Nettlestanebrae, hath been slain by the Laird
of Lauchope's riders, in a raid yestreen, on
Bothwell-muir, as was the will and pleasure
of Almighty God (lifting his bonnet).  The
burying will be at twelve o'clock the morn,
and the corpse is streekit and kistit at the
change-house, up by the townhead!"

And he departed, ringing his bell in the
same slow fashion with which he usually preceded
funerals, to the collegiate kirk of Bothwell.

On the purple muirland many unclaimed
bodies were lying stark and rigid—

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   "With the dew on their brow, and the rust on their mail;"

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while the black corbies and ravenous gleds
were wheeling in circles above them, in that
blue sky on which the eyes of the dead had
closed for ever.

"Gramercy!" said Hay of Tallo, a follower
of the Earl, as a man, whose beard was white
as snow, and whose loose grey gown was torn
in many places, hurried out of their path;
"is not yonder fellow some mass-monging
priest?"

"Gif I thought so," growled a jackman,
lifting his lance, "I would cleave his croon!
He hath been searching the scrips and pouches
of the dead."

"Shriving the dying, more likely, thou
knave!" said the Earl; "'tis Father Tarbet,
a poor monk of a Reformed monastery, and
I dare thee to offer him insult under peril of
pit and gyves."

A powerful horse, bearing its steel-bowed
military saddle, accoutred with caliver and
jedwood axe, lay rolling in the last agonies
of death, with a broken lance thrust far into
its broad bosom.

Such sights and incidents were rather too
common in that age to attract much attention;
so the Earl and his followers, without
even remarking them, rode on to the end of
the extensive muir, and there wound their
horns to call together such of their
companions as might be within hearing.

One by one the wearied riders came in,
but brought no tidings of the fugitive.

Every sheeptrack and pathway through all
the extensive barony had been searched—by
Woodhall and Sweethope; by the old
tower of Lauchope on its steep rock; by the
banks of the Calder that flowed beneath it,
and in that great cavern where Wight
Wallace found a refuge in the days of old; by
Bothwell brig, and muir, and haugh; by the
old gothic kirk and the Prebend's Yards;
but without finding a trace of Konrad.

Hob of Ormiston, and Hepburn, the captain
of Hermitage, came in last, with the same
tidings; and, with uplifted hand, the wrathful
Earl made a vow of vengeance upon the
fugitive.

The armour of the whole troop was covered
with summer dust, and their horses were
jaded by hard and devious riding.

"And now, my lord," said Hepburn of
Bolton, "whither wend we?"

"To court—to court!  As warden of the
three marches, I have received a summons
to attend the queen, who holds her court at
Linlithgow; and I will return to Bothwell
no more—not to night at least," added the
Earl; "are all our knaves come up?"

"Every lance, my lord," replied young
Hepburn, counting the files with his spear.

"Then set forward, sirs—and, John of Bolton,
do thou lead the van," and at the head
of his numerous train the Earl departed
from Clydesdale.

A band of so many armed retainers, attending
a great baron to court, excited no
surprise in that age.  A feudal landholder's
influence being exactly measured, not by the
number of merks Scots he drew per annum,
but by the number of men he could lead to
battle on behalf of the King or himself.
Godscroft informs us that the great Earl of
Douglas, who was slain at Edinburgh about
a hundred years before the days of Bothwell,
never rode abroad with less than two
thousand mailed horsemen under his banner.





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.. _`MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV.


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   MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

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..

   |  O king! in an evil day was I beloved by you,
   |  Since that, love has cost me dear!
   |                                  *Amadis de Gaul.*

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It was in the month of June, and in the
meridian of one of June's most beautiful
days.  The sun shone joyously on old
Linlithgow's wooded loch and magnificent palace;
on its carved towers, the clustered gables
of its grand façade; and on the belfry of
St. Michael, the friend of strangers; on the
venerable oaks and graceful ashes that fringed
its azure lake, where the snow-white swans
were floating in crystal and light; on the steep
and narrow streets of the town, with their
high-peaked roofs and crow-stepped gables,
encrusted with coats-of-arms and quaint
devices—on all its varied scenery, fell the
bright radiance of a cloudless noon.

The sky was of the purest blue, and the
lake gleamed like a vast mirror of polished
crystal, reflecting in its depths the banks of
emerald green, the beautiful palace, with all
its mullioned windows and long perspective
of crenelated battlements, the summer
woodlands, and the floating swans.

Though the poverty and gloom that
spread over Scotland with the Reformation,
had dimmed the splendour of her court, and
depressed the spirit of her people, turning
their gaiety into stolid gravity and moroseness,
the palace then bore an aspect very
different from that it bears to-day.

In many a hall and chamber, where now
the long reedy grass, the tenacious ivy, the
scented wallflower, and the wild docken,
flourish in luxuriance, the well-brushed
tapestries of silk and cloth of gold hung on
tenterhooks of polished steel; and casements
of stained glass, rich with the armorial
bearings of Bourbon, Lorraine, Guise, England,
and other alliances of the house of Stuart,
filled up those mullioned windows, where
now the owl and the ravenous gled build
their nests; for now the velvet moss and the
long grass, are growing green on the floors
of Queen Margaret's crumbling bower, and
Mary's roofless birthplace—in the stately
hall where Scotland's peers, in parliament
assembled, gave laws to her lawless clans;
and the beautiful chapel, where, for many
an age, the most solemn sacraments of the
first church were dispensed to her gallant
rulers.

In the June of the year of God 1567, its
aspect was the same as when King James, of
gallant memory, had left it for Flodden
field.

The leaves were as green and the grass
as verdant, the lake was as blue and the sun
as bright, as they are to-day, and may be a
thousand years after the last stone of
Linlithgow shall have fallen from its place.

Its casements were glittering in the
sunshine; the royal standard of Scotland, the
yellow banner with the lion gules, was
waving from one of the great towers; steel
was flashing on parapet and tourelle, as
the polished basinets and pikeheads of the
soldiers of the guard appeared at intervals
on the stone bartisans, from which a number
of those little brass cannon known as drakes
and moyennes peeped between the massive
embrasures.  And in that deep archway,
which is guarded by two strong octagon
towers, perforated with numerous arrow-holes,
and surmounted by a gorgeous battlement,
representing in four carved compartments
the orders of knighthood borne by
James V.—the Saint Andrew, Saint George,
Saint Michael, and the Golden Fleece—were
crowding a group of liverymen and swashbucklers
in half-armour, with sword, target,
and dagger, their arrogance and pride of
clanship being displayed by their bearing
and ferocity of aspect, their cocked bonnets,
and embroidered sleeve-badges.  Mingling
with them were gaily attired pages, grooms,
falconers, and archers of the queen's body
guard, clad in green gaberdines with gorgets
and caps of steel, each bearing his unstrung
bow, and having a sheaf of arrows bristling
in the same belt that sustained his short
cross-hilted sword and long double-edged
dagger.

The bustle about the palace gates was
unusual, for the Lords of the Privy Council
were assembled in the Parliament hall, and
Mary was seated on the throne.

Into that magnificent apartment, which
measures a hundred feet in length by thirty
in breadth, and which had a roof nearly
forty feet in height, light was admitted by
two rows of arched windows, between each
of which projected a double tier of beautiful
corbels, the lower upholding a line of statues—the
upper sustaining the ceiling of elaborate
oak, which sprung away aloft into
intricacy and brown obscurity.  A vast
fireplace yawned at one end; it was supported
by four gothic columns, clustered and
capitalled with the richest embossage.

The young King Henry, a tall and handsome,
but pale and beardless youth, whose
effeminate aspect contrasted strongly with
those of the mustached and sunburned lords
of the council, sat on the Queen's left hand.
His face was a perfect oval, and his eyes
were dark like his hair, which was short and
curly.  His attire was fashioned in the
extreme of gorgeous extravagance; the sleeves
and breast of his blue satin doublet being
loaded with lace and precious stones.  He
had nothing military about him save a small
walking-sword, for arms were not King
Henry's forte, which was quite enough to
make the Scots heartily despise him.

A long career of debauchery, drinking, and
excess, had ruined his constitution, and now
a pallor like unto that of death was visible in
his hollow cheek and lustreless eye; and as
he lounged back in his cushioned seat, much
more interested in flirting with the maids of
honour than listening to affairs debated by
the council, he had all the aspect of the
prematurely worn out man of pleasure—the
satiated *roué*—the *ennuyée*, whom the slightest
exertion of mind or body was sufficient
to bore to death.  Mary, disgusted by his
daily excesses, which shocked her delicacy
and wounded her pride, had long since ceased
to love him, and had learned to deplore that
alliance which youthful inclination, and the
ardour of her impulsive nature, rather than
the dictates of prudence, had led her to form;
when from among all her suitors, many of
whom were the sons of kings—the Archduke
of Austria, Don Carlos of Spain, and
others—she, the most beautiful woman in Europe,
she, whose genius equalled her beauty, and
whose piety equalled her genius, preferred
the worthless heir of the exiled house of
Lennox!  This ill-fated marriage began the long
series of those disastrous events which ended
in the towers of Fotheringay; but who then,
when Mary was seated on the throne of a
hundred kings, in the palace of her fathers,
with the crown of Bruce, the sceptre of James
V., and the consecrated sword of Pope Julius
before her, could have foreseen that dark
hour of humiliation and of death?

The beauty of Darnley's person was his
only merit.  He was alike destitute of honour,
religion, and morality—in all, the reverse of
Mary.  Vain and imperious, fierce, jealous,
and capricious, his temper soon excited
disgust in her sensitive mind; and the ruthless
murder of her poor Italian secretary, had
converted her rash and youthful love into
contempt and hatred—for such at times is
the transition; such is the fickleness of the
human heart; and "the vivacity of Mary's
spirit," says an historian, "not being
sufficiently tempered with sound judgment, and
the warmth of her heart, which was not at all
times under the restraint of discretion,
betrayed her into errors."

At this very time, when the council were
most intent upon some knotty points of state
policy, the king, oblivious of all, or affecting
to be so, was alternately playing with the
gold tassels of his embroidered mantle, and
coquetting with Mariette Hubert, a young
French lady, by conversing in the symbolical
language of flowers; for each had taken a
bouquet from a row of Venetian vases that
decorated the hall windows, and filled its vast
space with delightful perfume.  When
addressed by the Queen, he replied with a
hauteur and brevity that she could ill brook; for,
although he had acquired the title of King,
and been admitted to share her councils, he
was dissatisfied that she did not invest him
with greater power, and content herself with
the rank of mere queen-consort.  To this
measure, Mary, aware of his utter incapacity
for governing, and the aversion of the fierce
noblesse, wisely declined an assent; and
Darnley's haughty spirit never forgave the
affront, which he attributed to the influence
of Rizzio; hence his leaguing with Moray
and Morton; and hence the murder in the
queen's chamber at Holyrood, fifteen months
before.

A succession of strong flakes of light fell
through the lozenged casements of the stained
windows on one side of the hall, and threw
their prismatic hues on the long table which
was covered with green cloth, and on the
bearded peers who sat around it.  All were
richly attired in satin and velvet, slashed and
furred with miniver; all were well armed,
some having corselets and plate sleeves, others
pyne doublets, calculated to resist the points
and edges of the best-tempered weapons.

There were present the Earl of Morton,
lord high chancellor, whose fine countenance
compensated in some degree for the
shortness of his stature.  His face was dark
and swarthy; his beard long and sweeping,
but its blackness was now beginning to be
touched with grey; his eyes, quick and
cunning, keen and penetrating, watched every
visage, but chiefly that of his colleague and
compatriot—his partner in many a deep
intrigue and desperate counter-plot, James
Stuart, the still more famous Earl of Moray,
who seemed the living image of his handsome
father, James V.  He had the same dark
oval face, so melancholy and dignified in its
contour, the same short beard and close
shorn chin, the same thick brown mustache,
and deep dark hazel-eye.  But under that calm
exterior were a heart and mind unequalled
in ambition, and unsurpassed in state-craft—a
wisdom that bordered on cunning—a caution
that (at times) bordered on cowardice—a
bravery that bordered on rashness; yet
never for an instant did he lose sight of that
object which every secret energy had for
years been bent to attain, and for which his
life was staked—POWER!

And there were Cassilis, Lindesay, and
Olencairn, dark-browed, savage, brutal, and
illiterate as any barons that ever figured in the
pages of romance—each the beau-ideal of a
feudal tyrant; morose by fanaticism, and
inflated by power; for a few short years had seen
them and their compatriots gorged to their
full with the plundered temporalities of the
fallen hierarchy.  And there, too, were the
venerable Le Crocq, the good and wise
ambassador of Charles IX., wearing the silver
shells of St. Michael glittering on his plain
doublet of black taffeta; and Monsieur le
Marquis d'Elboeuff, brother of the late Queen
Regent, Mary of Lorraine.

This gay and thoughtless, but handsome
noble, was dressed in the extremity of Parisian
foppery.  His doublet was cloth of gold;
his breeches, of crimson velvet, reached to
within six inches of his knees, from whence
he had long hose of white silk.  He wore a
very high ruff, with the Golden Fleece of
Burgundy, and the Thistle of the order of
Bourbon under it.  A yellow satin mantle
dangled from his left shoulder; his gloves
were perfumed to excess; his hat was
conical and broad-brimmed, but he carried it
tinder his left arm.  His short Parmese
poniard and long Toledo sword were covered
with precious stones, and in imitation of the
great English beau, the effeminate Earl of
Pembroke, in addition to ear-rings, he had
dangling at his right ear a flower—presumed
to be the gift of some enamoured belle—while
from the left depended a long love-lock.

Contrasting strongly with all this frippery,
in the dignity of his aspect and bearing, and
the plainness of his dress, Sir William Maitland
of Lethington, secretary of the kingdom—the
Scottish Machiavel, the greatest and
most vacillating statesman Scotland ever
produced—stood at the foot of the green
table.

Attired in simple black velvet, but having
a long stomacher dotted with seed pearls,
an enormous fardingale, and a little ruff
round her delicate neck, Mary, having little
other adornment than those which nature had
given her, sat under the purple canopy of
her grandsire, James IV.  From a brow that
bore the impress of intelligence and candour,
her auburn hair that gleamed like gold (when,
from a lofty casement above, the sunlight
fell upon it), was drawn back from her
snowy temples, and, by being puffed out on
each side, while her little velvet cap was
depressed in the centre by a gold drop,
increased the dignified contour of a face that
was never beheld without exciting admiration
and love.  The steady brilliance of her
splendid dark eyes, the form of her nostrils,
together with the exquisite curve of her short
upper lip, and dimpled chin, all expressed
in an eminent degree the various emotions
of her acute and sensitive mind; while they
were ever full of a sweetness and beauty that
were no less singular in their character than
remarkable in their degree.

Every turn of her beautiful head, every
motion of her rounded arms and dimpled
hands, were full of grace; so that even
"dark Morton," the ferocious Lindesay, and
subtle Moray, while at that moment plotting
her downfall and destruction, could not but
in their secret souls acknowledge how noble
and bewitching was that being whom they
were seeking to hurl from the Scottish throne.

She carried at her waist a little amber
rosary, or Saviour's chaplet, of thirty-three
beads, being one for each year that Christ
dwelt among us on earth; and, true to that
religion which formed her last and best
consolation in that terrible hour which none
could then foresee, she wore on her bosom a
little crucifix of gold.

Behind her state chair were several ladies of
the court, wearing enormous fardingales and
high ruffs, and some of them—particularly
the Countesses of Argyle and Huntly—having
their heads loaded with ornaments.

The captain of the archer guard, Arthur
Erskine, a handsome young cadet of the
house of Mar, clad in half armour of the
richest steel, and having his helmet borne
by a page, stood near the doorway of the
hall, about thirty yards from the green
table, and quite beyond earshot.  Close by
the door stood his lieutenant, the knight of
Bolton, leaning on his drawn sword, and dividing
his time between watching the ladies of
the court, tracing diagrams on the oak floor
with the point of his weapon, and complacently
viewing his own handsome person in
a large mirror that hung opposite.

Mary's pleading eyes were full of tears; for
the rudeness and rebellious spirit of her
council stung her pride and wounded her
delicacy.

The principal matter in debate had been
the muster of troops and commissioning of
a noble to lead them to the borders, where
a court of justice was to be held for the
repression of turbulence among the moss-trooping
lairds of Teviotdale; but the proceedings
had been constantly interrupted by the
boisterous Patrick Lord Lindesay, and William
Earl of Glencairn, who in harsh and
scandalous terms urged upon their compeers
the necessity of enforcing stringent laws
against the church of Rome, as a just meed
for its tyranny in the noon of pride and
power.

"Yea, my lords," continued the latter,
pursuing with kindling eyes and furious
gesture the train of his address; "methinks I
need not inform you, that there have been
divers and sundry acts of estate passed in the
days of the James's, her majesty's royal
predecessors, yea, and in our sovereign lady's
time, quhilk aggreith not with the holy word
of God—acts tending to the maintenance and
upholding of idolatory and the mass, the
superstition and the mummery of the Church
of Rome"——

"*Ma chere, Madame!*" began the Marquis
d'Elboeuff, rising with his hand on his sword,
and his kindling eyes fixed on Mary.

"My lord—my lord!" exclaimed Lethington
and the politic Moray together, on seeing
that the queen's eyes were flashing through
their tears.

"He speaketh like a stout man and true,"
said old Lord Lindesay, starting up on the
opposite side of the table, and leaning on his
long and well-rusted Flemish sword.  "He
sayeth the truth, quhilk I will maintain
against all gainsayers with this gude whinger,
body for body, on foot or on horseback.  For
what, my lords, was the mumming of the
mass but ane superstition devisit of auld by
the devil, and his godson, the Bishop of
Rome—callit the Paip; and I swear, and avow, and
aver, that no man should, or shall, be
permitted to uphold him or them, in thought,
or word, or deed, from this time forward,
within the realm and isles of Scotland, under
pain of proscription, banishment, barratrie—yea,
and death!"

"Stout Lindesay, thou sayest well!"
responded Glencairn; "and a bright day was it
for Scotland, when the bellygods and shavelings
of Rome lay grovelling in the dust of
their gilded altars and painted blasphemies."

"Gramercy! my lords," said Mary,
sarcastically.  "I think that few men should
be more merciful to our fallen church than
you.  Fie!  Lord Lindsay: is not thy daughter
Margaret wedded to David Beatoun of
Creich, a son of the great cardinal who was
the very emperor of those Roman bellygods;
while thou, my Lord Glencairn, brookest all the
broad lands and rich livings, chapelries and
altarages, of the noble Abbey of Kilwinning?"

Lindesay's swarthy cheek glowed brick-red,
and Glencairn's brow was darkened by a
deeper frown.

"*Ah, ma bonne!*" said Mary, turning to
her sister, the Countess of Argyle, and
whispering something in French, at which
they both laughed; while the two pillars of
the Reformation, who knew as much of
French as they did of Choctaw or Cherokee,
exchanged mutual glances expressive of
unutterable ferocity.  Moray and Morton also
exchanged two of those deep smiles which
their faces always assumed when any thing
like a storm was brewing at the council board.

"My lords," said the poor Queen, in her
most persuasive voice, "let us again return
to the matter in debate, which is of more
importance than framing acts for the further
oppression of a fallen church, the prosecution
of sorcerers, or enforcing sombre attire and
scanty fere upon our poor lieges."

"Matter, madam!" growled Lindesay.

"I mean the bearing of the royal banner
to the borders.  Lord Lindesay, what sayest
thou to assume the baton?"

"I thank your Majesty, but may the
devil break my bones gif I will."

"Wherefore, thou silly carle?" asked
Morton in a low voice.

"Because the papists of the house of
Lennox are ranked under the Queen's
banner," replied the rough baron, bluntly.

"By the holy Paul!" said Darnley yawning;
"but I deem thee Lindesay the most obdurate,
as well as insolent heretic in all
broad Scotland."

Lindesay was almost choking with passion
at what he deemed the petulance of
a pampered boy; but the storm that might
have broken forth was allayed for a time, by
the Queen saying hastily to the secretary of
state—

"Sir William Maitland, will it please you
to read the last letter of *ma bonne soeur*
Elizabeth, concerning the broken men of
Tarras moss and Teviotdale?"

That most subtle of secretaries bowed
very low, and while the lords of the council
courteously arose to hear the Queen of
England's letter read, he carefully unfastened
the white ribbon and red seal bearing three
lions, and unfolded the missive of the cold
and crafty Tudor.

He read as follows:—

"Right high, right excellent, and mighty
Princess, our dearest good-sister and cousin,
to you be our most hearty commendations.

"It is well known unto you, that the
inobedience of certain of your subjects, and
their turbulent inroads and forays with
displayed banners and uplifted lances among
our baronies and beeves of Northumberland,
have bred great misery to our people, who
desire to live in all tender love with the
Scots on the north side of the debatable land.
We may mention particularly the prickers
of John Elliot of Park, Kerr of Cessford,
Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, and other
notorious thieves and outlaws; and we
lament that, for the wrongs sustained by
our lieges at their hands, this our loving
message may be followed by the garter king
with our glove, if peace be not kept, and
restitution made; and so, right high, right
excellent, and mighty Princess, our dearest
good-sister and cousin, we pray God to send
you a long and prosperous reign.

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"ELIZABETH R.

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"Done at our castle of Greenwich, the 1st
May, 1567."

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"God send that glove comes soon!" said
Glencairn with stern joy; "my father fell
at Pinkie, and my grandsire fell at Flodden,
so I have a debt of blood as yet unsettled
with those Englishmen."

"Our dearest sister's letter contains a
most unsisterly threat," said the Queen with
one of her arch smiles; "but this, her
reiterated remonstrance, deserves attention.
Sir Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch"——

"I will be his surety, please your grace,"
said Morton, whose niece Buccleuch had
married; "I will be warranty to the amount
of ten thousand merks."

"And I for my kinsman Cessford in the
same," added Lord Crichton of Sanquhar,
a tall and fair-haired peer, wearing a shirt of
mail and velvet mantle.

"Ten thousand merks—um—um—that
the lairds of Cessford and Buccleuch will
underly the law," muttered the secretary,
making a minute in his books.

"Poor John of Park! and will no one
become surety for thee?" said the Queen.

"Nay, your grace," replied Sir William
Maitland; "no one would be so foolhardy
with his merks.  He is the strongest thief
between the Lammermuir and the Rere cross
of Stanmore; he never rides abroad with less
than four hundred lances in his train, all
broken men, and masterful thieves."

"All daredevils!" said the Earl of Moray;
"troopers with scarred visages, and hearts
as tough and impenetrable as their armour.
Ah!  Park loves the bright moonlight well."

"So do I," added the Queen, artlessly;
"how droll!"

"But not in John o' Park's fashion, sweet
sister," replied the swarthy Earl.  "He loves
it as a lamp to light him into Northumberland,
when he thinks little of riding some
forty miles between midnight and cockcrow—laying
a dozen of villages in ashes, sacking
as many peelhouses, overthrowing a score
of homesteads, and so returning on the spur
with all the cattle of a countryside, goaded
by the lances of his troopers, who usually
have them all safe in Ettrick wood or Tarras
moss, long ere the old bandsmen of Berwick,
or the riders of the English wardenrie, are in
their stirrups."

"We will bridle his vivacity," said Mary.
"Earl Marischal, how many of our vassals
have repaired to the royal standard, in
conformity to the proclamation?"

"Three thousand, please your majesty,"
replied the veteran head of the house of
Keith.

"Then who will lead them to the field?"

There was a half simultaneous motion among
the peers—but the Reformed lords drew
back, because the Catholic vassals of Lennox
were said to be under the royal standard;
and the Catholic lords exhibited a similar
coldness from a dislike to lead the Protestant
vassals of the crown.  There was a pause,
and all turned towards King Henry as the
most fitting person to uphold the authority
of his royal consort; but he was still
engaged coquetting with Mariette Hubert, and
a blush of shame and anger crossed the
cheek of Mary.

At that moment the great chamberlain,
John Lord Fleming, raised his wand, and
cried with a loud voice—

"Place for the noble lord, James Earl of
Bothwell, Lord of Hailes, Crichton, and
Dirleton!" and the lieutenant of the Royal
Archers hastily drew aside the tapestry
concealing the doorway of the hall.

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END OF VOLUME FIRST.

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M'CORQUODALE & CO., 24, CARDINGTON STREET, LONDON.
WORKS—NEWTON.

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