Philip Rollo; or, the Scottish Musketeers, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by James Grant

Book the Tenth

CHAPTER XX.
THE HIGHLAND OUTPOST.

Through tracts of level land, as yet unscathed by war; along bridle-roads, bordered by rich meadows and comfortable farmhouses; and through little towns, that were as picturesque and as pretty as bright red bricks, spotless plaster, and paint could make them, we rode back by the way we had come. On one side lay the gulf; on the other, occasional tarns and groves of wood, covering the gentle slopes that rose almost imperceptibly from the margin of the dark blue sea. Yet the denizens of those pleasant places were all bondsmen; and, without consent of the lord from whom they held their hufe by tenure, could neither marry nor give in marriage, become craftsmen, or engage in service elsewhere than in the land on which they were born.

All those places, too, swarmed with supernatural inhabitants, who were a source of terror to the poor peasantry. The little hillocks were inhabited by wicked and avaricious but industrious Trolds; the moors, by tall, pale, and beautiful Elle women, who attracted young men by their winning gestures, and then breathed on their faces to make them sicken and die. All the wells and lakes were enchanted—here a fiery dragon watched the ransom of a king; there the wild huntsman kennelled his black hounds;—here dwelt a witch who sold fair winds; there a devil who wrought all manner of mischief. But at that time our minds were full of other things; and we rode round the margin of the Kielerfiörd, accompanied by the tall priest, whose long legs, as he bestrode his mule, almost reached to the ground on each side.

"I have heard that Carlstein freed you without ransom, after being taken prisoner in Luneburg," said Kœningheim.

"Without ransom!—I need scarcely thank him for that, being so poor that I might have remained captive until the day of doom. I could only give the good count my thanks, and leave him my best wishes."

"And your heart, too—is it not so? Well, I must not be less generous; besides, the Emperor has more prisoners at Vienna than he knows what to do with. Your comrades have landed, as I mentioned, some twenty miles down the gulf, and are there forming a sconce, with what object, and for what service, the brave King Christian only knows; but, before returning to Kiel, I shall see you safe within pistol-shot of his outposts."

"Count," said I, "you shall ever be remembered among my dearest friends."

"Among soldiers friendship soon ripens, and a short acquaintance goes a long way. Is it not so, Father Ignatius?"

The Jesuit was too much occupied by his own thoughts to make any reply.

"Do not omit to impress upon poor Ernestine, that before another week is past, if her sister is between the Elbe and the Limfiörd, she shall be free, and the insults she has suffered will be dearly avenged; for the old count is coming, and Merodé cannot escape us both."

"Have you no kinder message than this?"

"I know of none that would be more welcome—from me, at least. Besides," said he, turning with a bitter curl on his fine lip; "what other message would you have me send by you to the woman you love? There is somewhat of a sneer in the question, Captain Rollo, and you might have spared me that. Suppose, now, that I had committed to your charge the most warm and ardent messages of love, fidelity, and so forth; would they have been welcome to your ears? would they have been pleasant to your memory? would they have been faithfully, and without diminution, conveyed to Ernestine?"

"They would have been pleasant neither to my ear nor to my memory," I replied; "yet, on my honour, I would have conveyed them faithfully to her."

"Acknowledge, however, that you asked for what you had no wish to hear."

"I confess that I did."

"Then, be assured, I have no such messages to send to Ernestine. For her I have indeed a true and tender love; but only such as I have for her sister—or as a father or brother might have for them both. Count Rupert is one of my oldest and earliest friends. He was my tutor and patron under Mansfeldt and Sir John Hepburn in the Flemish war. He would gladly see us more nearly and clearly connected than by the mere ties of comraderie, but that can never be; and Ernestine, with whom rumour has so often done me the honour to link my name, knows that well—though she knows not the reason why."

These words filled me with joy; for Kœningheim had so much that was brilliant and fascinating about him, that, had we both assailed the heart of Ernestine at the same time, I fear me much that the poor captain of Scottish musketeers, might have had but a poor chance of success when competing with the accomplished noble of the German empire.

"The reason—the reason," he continued, muttering under his thick mustaches: "Ah—Christi Creutz be about me!—if she, or thou, or he knew it, how you would all shrink from me!"

This was scarcely spoken—yet we heard it; and the priest bent his keen grey eyes on the count, whose gaze was lowered on the mane of his horse; for the memory of years long past was rising before him, and his thoughts were turned inward.

"Let us change the subject," said the Jesuit, bending over his mule towards me; "the gloomy fiend is uppermost, and his dark thoughts are upon him."

Amid Kœningheim's forced gaiety, I had frequently perceived a melancholy enthusiasm; at times, his laugh would cease abruptly, and his brow would knit; then his eye became clouded, and his voice sad. What secret thought was this that preyed upon the soul of the naturally gay and gallant soldier, souring his manner, and prematurely silvering his dark and curly hair? I was perplexed and interested; but courtesy compelled me to conceal what I observed. Animated by the same feeling, and to change the conversation, the Jesuit told us a legend concerning St. Knud, which he had lately learned from the MSS. of an old brother of his order. It related to the adventures of his saint, when first he came thither to preach among the Sclavi, who of old inhabited all Holstein, which derives its name from holt, an ancient word for a forest, the whole promontory of Chersonesus Cimbrica being then covered by dense woods of pine and beech, extending from the Baltic to the Western Sea.

Marvelling sorely at the wildness of the country and its inhabitants, St. Knud came to a place where there was a little green valley between two hills, which were covered to their summits by foliage, and there a little figure suddenly approached him.

Unlike the painted Sclavi, who were naked, or clad only in the skins of bears, and armed with bows and spears of flint, the mannikin wore a grey doublet with large horn buttons, and an enormous red cap, which was nearly three feet in diameter, though he was barely two feet in height. He had a large and solemn visage, a long hooked nose, a back with a prodigious hump, and a heavy paunch; he carried a flute about twice the length of himself, whereon he began to play melodiously at the approach of the saint, who, on hearing the music, felt his feet beginning to trip; and had he not signed the cross in time, nathless his sacred character, his palmer's gown, which had lain for a time in the holy sepulchre, his staff, which had been cut on Mount Calvary, and his escallop from the shores of Galilee (for St. Knud had just returned from Jerusalem), he would have been compelled to dance like all who heard the fairy music of this grotesque little gnome, who was king and liege lord of all the Trolds in Denmark.

On beholding the sign of the cross, the Trold stamped his little foot with rage, and broke his immense flute into a hundred pieces, all of which vanished with a shrill sound.

"By that sign, I know thou shalt conquer!" said the imp, passionately.

"Who art thou that knowest this?" asked St. Knud.

"I am called Skynde, king of the Trolds," said the mannikin, under his enormous mustaches, which, with his beard, resembled a frozen waterfall, "and I am come to meet thee in the name of all the underground people, whom thy coming hath alarmed; and we hope to sign a peace or truce with thee, that we may not be driven out of this pleasant land, where we have dwelt since the waters of the flood subsided, and permitted us to crawl out of the crannies of the great ark—yea, ages before the days of Dan, son of Humble—ages before the Cimbri, the Goths, or the Jutes had a name, or came beyond the green rampart of the Danesvark. We are kind and benevolent to all who do not molest us; but savage and revengeful to those who do. Your Maker is also ours, for when he created men, he also made the happier little Trolds, and a thousand other spirits which such gross eyes as thine cannot see; but if thou wilt pray to this good Master for us—but not against us—we will never molest thee, nor thy servants, nor followers, even unto the end of time."

Then the saint promised that he would pray every day for the little Trolds of the land; and thereupon King Skynde threw up his red cap with joy, and again stamped with his feet. Then two little imps, each about a foot in height, bare-armed and bare-legged, with leather aprons, and beards descending to their knees, and all begrimmed with smoke and dust (for they had just ascended from some fairy forge far down in the bowels of the earth), appeared, bearing between them a large goblet of gold, and, staggering under its weight, with their leather aprons they gave a last polish to the magnificent chasings which adorned it, and, scrambling down a mole-track, disappeared.

"Brother Knud," said the elfin king, with grave majesty, as he placed his hand upon the edge of the cup, which was higher than his girdle, "take this goblet; it is one of thousands made by my smiths; keep it for the first church you build in Holstein; and rest assured, while it remains in the land of the Sclavi, thy good people shall never be molested by the Trolds."

"This cup," continued the priest, "or one said to be it, is still shown in the convent of St. Knud at Eckernfiörd; and, whether it be the fairy goblet or not, we must acknowledge that never did mortal hands frame a more magnificent chalice."

Father Ignatius had just reached this point in his story, when, as we passed Kiel on our left, his eye observed the human figure still dangling from the lofty spire, with the crows flying in circles round it. With some asperity, he asked the count what this display meant; and Kœningheim, who long before this had recovered his equanimity of mind and calm, intrepidity of manner, replied briefly—

"A Dane, whom we strung up as you see, for guiding a night attack."

The priest expressed great indignation at this unnecessary barbarity.

"Count, count!" said he; "I could have expected better things from you."

"Nay, good father," he replied, "do not chide me for this. Condemned by a court-martial, the man was hanged by our provost, who may have exceeded his duty by hanging him higher than usual. But you may order him to be interred the moment you enter Kiel."

Saying that such ferocities disgraced the armies of the Empire, the priest bade us adieu, and, whipping up his mule, turned off towards Kiel, and his tall figure was long visible as he threaded his way between the neglected fields; for the poor Holsteiners being doubtful who might reap, were omitting to till or sow their fertile land in many places.

Had he continued with us, the priest would have had fresh cause for indignation; for when with our four dragoons we entered Lytjenbürg, which a regiment of Imperialists had just quitted, we found one of the magistrates hanging by the neck in the market-place. Here, as elsewhere in Holstein, there stood a bronze figure of Justice, having a sword in one hand, with a rod in the other; and, to a hand of this figure, a lieutenant-colonel of Tilly's Croatian horse had appended the burgomaster for some real or imaginary insult.

Notwithstanding the rage and horror this had excited among the people, Kœningheim, who was a daring and reckless fellow, rode right through the town (which is one of the most ancient in the duchy), and halted at the door of an inn which bore the sign of Wildbrat, the famous dog of Christian I., which proved more faithful than all the king's courtiers, and thus gave a name and motto to the noblest of Danish orders. Dinner was ordered, and promptly served up, with the best of Rhenish, Neckar, and Moselle, the former being nearly ninety years old at least, so it was averred by the host, who had not the least idea that he was ever to be paid for the good cheer he was providing. In that, however, he was mistaken, for Kœningheim—an honourable soldier of fortune—paid like a prince; and, after giving refreshments to the four dragoons who had kept guard at the door, we again set forth, and, just as darkness was closing, came in sight of King Christian's outposts by the Kielerfiörd.

The sun had set, enveloped in clouds; there was no moon visible; the cold grey sky had gradually become an inky black one, and the level shore with its bordering woods was shrouded in dusky obscurity; but within cannon-shot of it the Danish fleet were lying at anchor. One mile from the shore, on advantageous ground, the king had formed a strong redoubt, banked up with earth and palisades, mounted with cannon, and garrisoned by a thousand men under his own immediate orders. These men consisted of my own regiment and three companies of Dutch. His fleet protected them on the seaward, and their cannon and situation on a hillock rendered it inacessible from the landward. On the road to Kiel, and in other directions, he had posted out-guards, and perdues were scattered beyond them.*

* Out-picquets with advanced sentinels.

From the summit of a knoll over which the roadway wound, and between two thickets of trees, which, together with the darkness of the night, completely concealed us, we could distinctly perceive, far down in the hollow, between us and the redoubt, a guard of soldiers bivouacked round a watch-fire.

Thanking Kœningheim for his kind escort, and expressing regret that I did not possess even a tester to give his dragoons, that thev might have a can of Rostock beer on their return, I now begged that he would leave me, being so near my comrades that I could reach them in perfect safety, while to him the vicinity was full of peril. He assented to this, and, after looking at the outpost through his Galileo glass, handed it to me, and I was glad to perceive by it that the soldiers around the watch-fire belonged to my own regiment.

By the red glow which the blazing fire shed on the green trees of an adjacent wood, and the grassy meadow beyond, I could perceive my brave comrades standing in groups, with their steel accoutrements glittering, or rolled in their tartan plaids, and resting on the sward between their piles of arms; while far in front, upon the roadway, were two advanced sentinels, standing motionless and still as they leaned against their pikes, the points of which glittered like red stars in the light of the wavering fire.

"Now, farewell, Kœningheim," said I, dismounting, and handing the bridle of the horse I had ridden to one of the dragoons (for it belonged to the German cavalry), "on foot I can reach the outpost. Remember to perform all you have promised for the rescue of our poor Gabrielle, and thus complete the kindness of a day which I shall never forget."

"By the way," said he, "did you not tell me that you were without money? My purse is at your service. Take it, Captain Rollo, for one cannot have too much of that ware."

I was about to decline, when a sound that came from the thick underwood which surrounded the knoll, made us pause. Kœningheim stooped his head to listen, and the four German troopers blew the fuses of their musketoons.

"A passing wind has rustled the branches," said Kœningheim, shortening his reins.

"Nay," said I, whose Highland ear had been practised in my native forests to every casual sound; "it was the footsteps of men—for I heard the crackle of decayed wood and withered leaves."

"Then we are too long here," replied Kœningheim, wringing my hand with honest warmth; "farewell!—I will remember all you have said, and all you wish."

"Ready!" cried a voice among the trees; "guard pans—present—give fire!"

"Christi Creutz!" cried Kœningheim, as a volley of six muskets streaked with red fire the dark bosom of the coppice, and, struck by six deadly shots, the count and his four German dragoons fell heavily on the turf, while their affrighted horses dashed down the knoll and disappeared. One dragged his rider a considerable way. Then I heard a wild Highland scraigh, and Sergeant Diarmed Macgillvray of Drumnaglas, with a patrol of six musketeers, surrounded me.

I cannot express the grief and indignation this occurrence excited within me. With my own hand I could have slain Drumnaglas, had he not given me a warm embrace, and welcome back—as he said—to life and liberty; and had I not been aware that he mistook the count's escort for a reconnoitring party or patrol of the Imperialists, with a Scottish prisoner whom it was his duty to free; and, with the most perfect Highland sang froid, he turned over the slain, one after the other, and shook them, saying—

"Tead—tead as a herring, too—Got pless us!"

The count still breathed, but a ball had passed through his breast, beating into the wound a portion of his cuirass and buff coat; thus he suffered the most excruciating agony. But as I still hoped he might live, I desired the Highlanders to cross their fatal muskets, and with their plaids laid over the barrels, to form a temporary bier, on which we conveyed him, groaning heavily and bleeding profusely, to the out-guard, where M'Coll of that Ilk commanded, and from thence to the sconce, where the regiment received me as one who had indeed returned from the dead; for Ian and all the officers had most respectable knots of black crape on their sword-hilts and left arms, in honour of my memory. Even the standard poles had the same grim livery, which was very gratifying to me; as men have seldom an opportunity of beholding the respect paid to their memory when defunct.

"Tell me, Ian," said I, when the congratulations had a little subsided; "has Ernestine heard the rumour of my death?"

"She believes you to be a prisoner in Kiel."

"And these confounded badges of crape—for whom does she believe they are worn?"

"For the Duke of Pomerania, as I told her."

"But old Bagislaus IV. is not dead."

"It matters not—his name was the first that occurred to me."

"Ah! pray, Ian, go—or send some one to say that I am safe—that I am here, and in a few minutes will be by her side."

"Dioul! why not go yourself?"

"I dread the excess of joy——"

"Excess of joy never killed any one, whatever excess of grief may do. Ah! if you only loved yourself half so well as you love this dark-eyed woman——"

"Or as you love Moina," retorted I; for Ian, though he really admired Ernestine, and considered it a duty to love her as his own kinswoman, had never been altogether able to overcome his first prejudices against her foreign taint, as he called her German accent and her Spanish blood.

"Moina dwells by Kilchiuman," said he, "and her eyes have never looked on other hills than those whose shadows darken the waters of the Oich and Garry. Moina is a daughter of the old race; she has no foreign blood in her veins, or strange accents on her tongue."

"But Ernestine is your natural-born kinswoman, and Moina is not."

"My kinswoman!—well, so she is—blood is warmer than water, and by the Cairn na cuimihne!" said he, tossing up his bonnet, "I would march to the cannon's mouth for her; but it is a devil of a pity her mother was a stranger—a Spaniard."

"Nay, I think it has been a great improvement on the old Rollo blood; for I am sure that two such beautiful dark eyes were never seen in the old Tower at Cromartie; but while we chatter here like a couple of pyets, poor Kœningheim is enduring, I fear me, the agonies of death."

CHAPTER XXI.
THE DYING SOLDIER.

The count had been conveyed on board of the Anna Catharina, where Dr. Pennicuik examined his wound, and at once declared him to be past all recovery.

As I have much to relate, instead of impertinently thrusting any more love scenes before the reader, I must beseech him or her to imagine all my meeting with Ernestine, and to believe that the keen sense of joy which the poor girl experienced on beholding me again, was considerably abated and tempered by the terrible plight in which her father's oldest and best friend was brought on board of the king's ship.

Phadrig knocked at the cabin door, and with the most soldier-like unconcern announced that the count was dying, and required my presence. Ernestine burst into tears, and threw herself upon her knees to pray, while I hurried along the lower deck (breaking my shins against stray shot, coils of rope, and buckets of wadding) to reach the poor and comfortless berth, in which one of the bravest spirits that ever endued with life a Scottish breast was hovering between Eternity and Time.

As I went into the little cabin, the doctor was coming softly and slowly out, with the air of a man who could do no more. His sleeves were tucked up, and his hands were covered with blood.

"Doctor!" said I; he shook his head, and passed on.

Swinging by a rusty chain from a beam of the main deck, an iron lamp lighted the scene I am about to describe. Its smoky and sickly radiance shed a wavering and yellow gloom on the sloping walls of dark Memel wood, the strong transverse beams, the knotty planks, and iron bolts of the ship; on the brass culverins, which were laid alongside the closed parts, the rammers, spunges, and other et cetera, beside them; and on the poor pallet spread on the cabin floor, whereon lay Kœningheim, breathing heavily; his features ghastly, and sharpened by pain and loss of blood, and contrasting by their pallor with the blackness of his mustaches and hair, the long cavalier locks of which were scattered over the pillow like those of a girl. His eyes were closed. His fine manly neck and breast were bare, save where the latter was crossed by a bandage, from beneath which the blood was oozing.

Several officers were standing near; Danes in red dresses; Dutchmen in yellow; and two of ours—these were Kildon and Culcraigie, who were as soldier-like as their weatherbeaten visages, grizzled beards, and picturesque costume—steel cuirasses and buff coats laced with silver—could make them. They stood placidly waiting until the poor Scoto-Imperialist should die.

Though I trod lightly, his ear detected the sound as I entered, and knelt down by his side.

"Ah!" said he, opening his eyes; "it is you—I had almost forgotten; but for this exquisite agony I could imagine that a sleep was coming over me. It is the sleep, Rollo—the drowsy sleep—of death!"

I took his hand in mine; alas! it was cold and clammy. "Count Kœningheim, you wished to speak with me."

"I have something to tell you," said he; "something which I do not wish others to hear."

I looked at Kildon and the group who stood with him; they immediately retired on tiptoe, and closed the cabin door. I was left alone with the dying man, who seemed to be considerably relieved by their absence, and said—

"I will see them all once more; but give me that cup again—the wine-and-water—thank you."

The draught revived him, and he said with a bitter smile—

"After all my fighting and all my battles, I die in my bed, like other people."

"Scarcely, Kœningheim, with that frightful wound."

"I was not always, as you may suppose, Albert Count of Kœningheim," said he with an effort, and a voice that trembled. "At home, in that dear land I never more shall see, I was but Habbie Cunninghame of the Boortree-haugh, a name which many in the north of Scotland must remember—but, alas! with abhorrence and reprobation. Yet, if you knew all—you would pity me."

He paused, and seemed to be gathering his thoughts; and, as he did so, an expression of dark despair and agony stole over his beautiful face—for it was beautiful in its supreme manliness.

"You may know what it is to feel love, and I have felt it too—and rage and hatred; but you can never have known what it is to feel, as I now do, the horrors of remorse. Oh, may you never, never know it!" He grasped my hand convulsively, and fixed upon me his dark and agonized eyes. "I would rather wish that even my worst enemy should die, than do as I have done—and endure what I have endured!..... Never until this hour have I told my secret to any one; it has been locked in my own breast. I have had none to whom I could confide it, or in whose presence I might without shame shed a tear. Laughter, sleep, drunkenness, the bottle, any thing was welcome, that would make me forget myself; for to be in solitude—to be left for one moment to reflection—was to be in—horror! and thus for thirty years I have borne grief, rankling like a poisoned arrow in my heart."

"Can this be the lion-hearted soldier of the Empire!" thought I.

"I am a murderer—I have been an assassin!" said he, in a low and terrible whisper; "do you not shrink from me?" His eyes closed, for they were full of tears, and thus he did not see the startled expression of my face. "Tears—tears! oh, that they fell on her grave! but do not shrink from me," he continued. "(I feel your hand relaxing.) I deserve your pity—rather than your scorn. Ah, yes!—if you knew all—if you only knew all! I have been bad—I have been passionate—wilful—obstinate—imperious! but not for many a long, long year."

"Do not, I beseech you, add to the agonies of the present, by recalling the bitterness of the past."

He was sinking rapidly; the slow, heavy, and painful effort of respiration increased; his lower jaw quivered at times, and then his eye remained fixed, even when he was addressing me. Never, but in the eyes of the dying, is that wild, imploring, and unearthly glance visible. They seemed larger than usual; brighter and more glistening. On closer examination, I was surprised to find that, since the shot had struck him, he looked much older. Since yesterday his hair had actually become grizzled, and his whole aspect was that of a man bordering on fifty years of age.

"Is it not strange," said he, "that all the old Scottish prayers my poor mother taught me when a child—prayers which I have never remembered since—are crowding on my mind to-night, and hovering on my tongue, with many of her pious and simple thoughts, just as if her voice had uttered them yesterday, though the flowers of thirty summers have bloomed upon her grave? Those prayers, to me so meaningless when I was a wee an' wilfu' tot, find a terrible echo in my heart to-night——"

"Sensibility," said he, after a long pause, "is often a source of the deepest unhappiness. I have eaten and drunken; I have sung and roistered among my comrades—and that passed for mirth, for they knew not my inner heart, and the source of secret sorrow within me. I have often been glad to escape from present thought by rushing into revelry, leaving to the future those mental reproaches that revel was sure to cost me...... I can now look back with pity and contempt on that devil-may-care exterior, which threw a thin veil over my remorse."

He paused frequently, and his voice sometimes died away; but the night wind, which blew through a chink of an adjacent gunport, re-animated him from time to time.

"Oh! in an hour like this, how awful it seems to see behind me the remembrance of a life misspent, and before me the dim and shadowy future—the horrors—the ages—the uncounted ages of eternity! Oh, yes!" he continued in a voice that was weaker, and broken by many a convulsive sob; "the assumption of a reckless military character humiliated me. Ernestine—poor Ernestine! when I am no more, and she has read these papers, will see how unworthy I have been of the honour her good father intended for me."

With hands that trembled, and frequently failed in their office, he drew from his breast a small horn case about three inches square. It was suspended to his neck by a slender chain of steel; and, opening it, he showed me that it was a book, containing some thirty-five or forty pages, closely filled with writing in a small and distinct hand.

"Take this," said he; "it is the story—the sad secret—of my life. It is, moreover, a memorandum of all I possess, which I leave equally between Ernestine and Gabrielle. I have three estates, two in poor old Scotland, (the best blessings of God and Saint Andrew be on it!) I have a third at Vienna; but I am the last of my race, and have left these girls, whom I have loved as sisters—all—every thing!"

He gave me the volume, which was stained with his blood, (and had been bruised by the death-shot in its passage through his breast,) and then sank back exhausted. A violent shivering passed over his features; I thought he was about to expire, and was hurrying to summon aid, when he rallied, and again begged (what he had thrice before implored) that a Catholic clergyman might be brought to him; but there was no such person to be found either on board the Anna Catharina, or within cannon-shot of the Danish posts. This was a source of terrible affliction to poor Kœningheim, who belonged to the ancient faith; and his moans of mental agony were greater than those conduced by the pain of his wound.

After being informed by the weeping Ernestine that all hope of obtaining a priest was over, he never spoke again, but expired just as the ship's bell uttered the first stroke of midnight.

It was a scene that I shall long remember. The yellow gleam of the murky lamp that swung from the deck above; the grim and comfortless cabin, with its starboard cannon; the blood-stained pallet, and the grim corpse that lay upon it, stiffening into the cold, white, and marble rigidity of death. No near or dear hand was there to do the last act of kindness, so his eyes were closed by me. On her knees near the pallet was Ernestine, in tears and prayer—young, beautiful, and with many years before her; while the remains of that gallant and noble, but unhappy and remorse-stricken man, were now only a breathless piece of clay.

To draw Ernestine away from this sad scene; to occupy her mind; to gratify my own anxiety and curiosity to learn the story of poor Kœningheim, that crime—the terrible memory of which had haunted him through life, which had clouded the brilliancy of his achievements and the splendour of his rank, shedding a horror and a bitterness over his dying hour—I led her into the great cabin, which the royal kindness of Christian had surrendered to her use; and there—after the pause of an hour or so—we examined together the little manuscript book, and read it by turns; for I had but a short time to tarry, as honour and duty required that I should repair to my colours, and command my company in the redoubt upon the shore.

Written as sudden impulses of thought inspired, and in detached pieces, but written with the faint hope that it might fall into the hands of some kind comrade or pitying friend, the little secret manuscript of Kœningheim (or Halbert Cunninghame) was a very remarkable—and to me interesting—production; but as the story might seem incoherent as he narrated it, I have told it here partly in my own way, and have used the second person, whereas he wrote in the first. The chances that it would never have met a human eye, were as a hundred to one; for it might have been plundered from him on some field of battle by a dead-stripper, or have been buried with him there; and then the secret of his life would have been hidden with him in his bloody and unknown grave.

Much that he relates is part of our Scottish history.

His account of the battle of Glenlivat is among the most succinct and correct I have seen; and, to preserve the unity of the whole, I have placed the secret history of the Count in the Tenth Book of my narrative, instead of an appendix, as I first intended. It shews the terrible circumstances by which he was forced to fly his native country, and seek service and shelter in foreign armies—and, as an outlaw and outcast, to change even his name, lest some of the many Scotsmen who, as soldiers of Fortune, followed the great princes of the German war, might discover him, and remember the dark blot by which, in a fatal moment of recklessness and passion, he had brought ruin and dishonour upon an ancient race and venerated name.

CHAPTER XXII.
COUNT KŒNINGHEIM'S STORY—THE LILY OF CULBLEINE.

Few kirkyards in Scotland are more solemn or pleasing in aspect, or more romantically situated, than that of Logie, which lies four miles from the river Dee, in the parish of Logie-colstaine, in Aberdeenshire. It once surrounded the kirk of St. Woloc, the bishop and confessor; but every vestige of that ancient fane has now disappeared from the little mound of rich holm land, that rises above the small hills and broad muirs of the district, and from the bosom of which flows a miraculous spring called the Poldow, which yet enjoys a high reputation among the peasantry, for the cures it has wrought since the days when the good bishop blessed it, and rested from his pious labours in Strathdon, Balvenie, and Mar.

On the holm of Logie Kirk, the mouldering tombs, the old headstones—green with moss, or half sunk among the long dog-grass and broad-leaved dockens—the hedges that in summer are white with blossoms of the fragrant hawthorn, and one old gnarled yew, are all indicative of its being an ancient burial-ground. Here and there a broad throchstone, resting on four stunted balusters, spotted by grey lichens, and covered with letters half defaced by mischief or by time, yet remain to indicate where some valiant Knight of Cromar or Laird of the Garioch are lying; while the almost flattened mounds, the small round headstones with unpretending and unlettered fronts, taken perhaps from the bed of the adjacent burn, remain to shew where many a shepherd, patient, poor and God-fearing, and many a brave forester of Culbleine, who hacked and hewed, burned and shot as his laird or leader commanded him; harrying the lands of the Gordons to-day, and besieging the towers of the Leslies to-morrow—with many a bien bonnet laird, stern in purpose, unflinching as Brutus, and true to Scotland's kirk and king—yea, true as the steel of his good broadsword—are mouldering, or have mouldered into dust.

Rest them, God!

On the green velvet bank which slopes up from a little tributary of the Davinloch—a place where the winter grass grows rank, but where the white daisies spot the summer turf—are two long gravestones lying side by side, and somewhat apart from all the rest.

They cover the graves of two lovers.

Every person who passes through Cromar (as that part of Aberdeenshire is named) is taken to see them, for there is a sad story connected with them—a story which, to this hour, throws an occasional dash of sentimentality over the village girls and bonneted ploughmen, and which was long the theme of many a sad and many a dirge-like song. One of those stones was inscribed with a legend which I cannot give here, as Kœningheim's handwriting became so tremulous as to be illegible. On the other is carved a Scottish sword, with the words:

Heir Lyis Kenneth Logie—ane honorabill man.

The history of these sequestered tombs, is the history of Kœningheim's misfortunes and his crime.

————

In the sixteenth century, nearly the whole property of the now suppressed parish of Logie, in Mar, belonged to two families, the Gordons of Colstaine, and the Donaldsons of Culbleine—a vast forest. The dwelling of the former, named the Moat of Colstaine, was a strong square fortalice, surrounded by a barbican wall, which stood in the midst of a morass, not far from the little kirkyard holm which I have just described. A river (now shrunk to a runnel) washed this barbican on one side; a wet ditch defended it on the other.

The residence of the Donaldsons was an old Scottish manor-house or Place, having grated windows with loopholed-sills, vaulted apartments, and turrets at the angles. It stood among some fine old sycamores and oaks, on the moorland; and now my reader's eye may rest on the three leading features of the parish of Logie, as they appeared in the year of grace 1594; the grey old kirk of St. Woloc, with its graves dotting the green holm, its buttressed wall begirt with hawthorn hedges, and shaded by dark yew-trees, where the gled croaked by day and the owl screamed by night; lower down on the waterside, the strong tower with its broad chimneys and stone roofs, its grated casements and corbelled rampart; the great dule-tree before its gate—an ash that was seldom without its "tassel," in the shape of a thief from the south, or a Forbes hung in his boots, as the good people phrased it then; the old baronial manor on the lea, half hidden among dark green copsewood, with the smoke of its hall and spence, kitchen, bake and brewhouses ascending into the air.

In those days, the minister of the Kirk, the gudeman of the Place, and the laird of the Tower, were the three undoubted dignitaries of the parish; and when we remember that it was an age when the minister was (in his own estimation) a greater man than ever Cardinal Beaton dared to be; when the gudeman brought four-and-eighty horsemen, "weel boden in effeir of war," to the sheriff's quarterly Weaponshow; and that the laird marched thrice that number, and had moreover the power of sending half the country-side to pit or gallows, it must be allowed that the power of these three potentates in 1594, was infinitely greater than that enjoyed now by the Premier Duke of Scotland.

Let us go back twenty years.

In the year 1574, when our story opens, the family at the Tower consisted of the Lady Marjorie and her son, a boy of five or six years of age. His father had been seized by one of those fits of wandering, which so frequently possessed the Scottish noblesse of that and after times; and, with two hundred stout pikemen, he had joined the Border legion of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh, and died in his armour fighting—not for religion, as the laird, honest man! cared very little about that—but for honour and glory, on the walls of Namur. Some domestic quarrel—a sudden fit of spleen at his lady—was urged in the parish as the reason of his departing from his quiet little tower among the moors of Cromar, to fight the ferocious Spaniards under Ferdinand of Toledo; for though Dame Marjorie was a stanch Catholic (being a daughter of Halbert Cunninghame of the Boortree-haugh in Glencairn), the laird had heard Knox preach in his youth, and thought he was a Calvinist. Thus it was a dreich and doleful day, when a startled servitor of the Tower announced in the morning that a branch had been found at the foot of the dule-tree which overshadowed the gate.

Whenever a Gordon of Colstaine died, this old tree, like the oak of Dalhousie, dropped one of its loftiest branches.

There was sore mourning in the solitary tower, for by that mysterious warning the lady knew she was a widow, and that the father of her little boy had fallen, fighting against her faith and the creed of his ancestors; but for many a month no certain tidings came from that land, which has been so often the grave of the Scottish soldier, until Jock of the Cleugh, a pikeman who had followed the laird, came limping up to the barbican gate, with a light purse and heavy heart, and a tattered doublet, to tell Lady Marjorie how he had been one of that brave Border band, who had laid her husband in his narrow bed before the gate of Sainte Alban.

Old Jock of the Cleugh went no further than the Moat of Colstaine; for he deposited his crutches by the hall fire, and from thenceforward became one of the principal personages in the household, though he spent his whole time in drinking usquebaugh, flourishing his staff, and rehearsing tales of the laird's prowess and his own, and the valiant deeds of the Scottish Borderers, the bulwark of Flanders, and terror of the Spaniards. He taught the stable-boys many a point of farriery they had never known before, and the trenchermen many a trick with the dice, by which, however, they always lost, and he always won; but he shewed them how to pick the lock of the butler's pantry, to broach wine-casks without drawing the spigot; to train hawks, and to tell fortunes on cards; but his principal pupil was young Halbert Gordon, the son and heir of his umquhile leader. Partaking less of his mother's gentle nature, than his father's lofty spirit, the boy was froward, passionate, and bold; and thus, by the time he was ten years of age, Jock of the Cleugh, who found him an apt scholar, had quite unfitted the little fellow for living a quiet life, or adopting a peaceable avocation.

He had taught him to ride the wildest horses in the barony without bridle or saddle, and at full speed; he had taught him to handle a sword twice the length of himself, and to discharge a deadly shot, with arblast or arquebuse—to scour armour, sharpen blades, cast bullets, and make up bandoliers of powder. But there were many other features in the education acquired from this wooden-legged preceptor, which were more exceptionable; for he learned to drink "to a bluidy war," in a tass of raw usquebaugh, without once winking; to make faces at Mr. Jowlar during sermon, to steal his apples, and shoot his hens; to "cock his eye" at the dairymaid, and swear a few round oaths in High Dutch or Low Country Spanish, which had the double advantage of being more expressive than our plain Scottish, and less expensive, being evasions of the act by which swearers and banners come under the claws of the kirk-session; in short, under the tutelage of this old, one-legged and one-eyed, red-visaged, hard-drinking, swearing and storming veteran of the Flemish wars, young Halbert Gordon grew up a little desperado; and, as he increased in years, his ferocious disposition, and dangerous skill in using his hands, made him the aversion of all the young lairds, his companions, and a source of secret fear to all the little ladies in the neighbourhood.

The family of Donaldson at the Forest, consisted also of a widow, whose husband had left her with one daughter, the heiress of the old manor and all its pertinents. With her there also dwelt the son of a deceased sister, little Kenneth Logie, a poor and penniless orphan, who had no home save that which his kind aunt offered him; for his father, a ruined laird of Cromar, had fallen in a raid between the Earl of Mar and the Forbeses.

Isolated as those widows were in that sequestered district, there was no intercourse between them, and no community of feeling. The lady of the Moat was a strict Catholic, though her husband had fought against the gory banner of the Castiyador of Flanders. In her girlhood, she had heard Abbot Quentin Kennedy preach; and her father had seen the body of the great cardinal, hung naked and bleeding from the battlements of St. Andrews.

The lady of the Forest, the widow of umquhile John Donaldson, was a rigid Calvinist, and looking upon all Catholics with due aversion, gave the lady of the moated tower the utmost possible space when they met at the weaponshows, the burrow-town market, or on the horse way, lest their fardingales should touch; for each thought there was more than mortal contamination in the person of the other. The Calvinist was "a heretic;" the Catholic "an idolater;" and yet the poor for thirty miles round were wont to aver, that two women more beneficent, gentle-hearted, and amiable, within their own domestic circles, than the ladies of the Tower and Forest, could not be found in the kingdom of Scotland. The mischievous fulminations of the Reverend Maister Jowlar, the parish pastor, on one hand, and those of Father Ogilvie (a wandering priest of the Scottish mission), on the other, had left nothing undone to foster this unhappy state of local politics, and their adverse advices fanned the flames of discord, till the aversion and jealousy of the two brocaded and high-heeled dames extended downward through all their dependants. Thus we can compare the two estates of Colstaine and Culbleine only to two countries—a Catholic and a Protestant—in a state of watchfulness, and prepared for instant war. Very little would have brought the "heretics and idolaters" to blows; for if old Jock of the Cleugh with his wooden-leg, was ready to advance at the head of the Catholics, from the mosses and moorlands, on one side; the aged butler of Culbleine, who had shouldered a pike in 1559, and lost an eye at the memorable siege of Leith (fighting against M. d'Essé Epainvilliers, colonel-general of the French infantry in the service of the Scottish queen), was ready, on the other, to march at the head of the Calvinists; thus it required all the terror of the sheriff and his deputies to keep peace in the parish between the rival powers. But there were three little personages in this community, who, for a time at least, had no share in those religious heartburnings.

These were the little heiress of the Forest, her cousin, Kenneth Logie, and Halbert Gordon of the Tower. When Lily Donaldson was ten, and the boys two years older, they had frequently met in their rambles, and by meeting became playmates. Little Lily had bright blue eyes, and fair hair; she was light, happy, smiling, and seemed like a beautiful fairy—though there never was a fairy, so round, so noisy, and so full of fun and laughter; but Kenneth was a grave and quiet boy, with a mild eye and gentle voice, a pale and thoughtful brow.

Old people were wont to tap him on the head, and say he was like his mother.

Then Kenneth would bend his calm inquiring eyes on theirs, and wonder what like this mother was; for he had never known any other parent than the mother of Lily. Though their chance companion, Halbert Gordon (a dark-eyed and black-haired boy), was a model of strength and health, he was neither stronger nor healthier than Kenneth, but was more rash, proud, passionate and resentful, than any boy in Croinar; and, as he rose in years, those troublesome propensities waxed strong within him, and grew with his growth. When his haughty mother, or Jock of the Cleugh, desired him to finish his prayers by a malediction on "all obstinate heretics," he always made a mental reservation in favour of his secret friends at the Forest—fair Lily Donaldson, and her quiet cousin, Kenneth Logie.

Now it happens that the little people of this world will have their little love dreams, as well as those who consider themselves men and women, but are only grown children after all; and thus a secret sympathy expanded in the hearts of little Kenneth and his pretty cousin—a sympathy which Lily's mother (who loved her dead sister's son as if he were her own) left nothing undone to fasten: and it strengthened fast this charming and childish love.

They were ever together, and were never known to quarrel. In that lonely pastoral district, all their amusements and objects were centred in each other; for save the dark, sullen boy of the moated Tower, they knew no other companion, and even he was known to them only by stealth.

Kenneth had no secrets from Lily, and Lily knew neither wish nor hope, a sorrow or a joy, in which "cousin Kenneth" did not participate. They seemed to have but one heart between them. The garden of the Place, with its closely clipped and gigantic yew hedges bordering grass walks (in the Scoto-French fashion), the fish-pond and the terraces, were the boundaries of the Eden they inhabited.

They knew of no land that lay beyond the blue hills of Strathdon, which seemed to them the verge of the habitable world. They indulged in visions, and what little people do not? Lily saw herself a great lady riding on a white palfrey, whose footcloth swept the ground; Kenneth saw himself the provost of a city—the general of an army—the laird of a noble barony—a belted earl, addressing the three estates in defence of the church, the laws, and liberties of Scotland. These airy castles faded away at nightfall, but were as brilliantly rebuilt in a thousand happy forms at their meetings next day. They were ever together, as we have said, and year after year, as it passed over their fair young brows, found them still wreathed with smiles.

The old lady of the Forest and the Lea, when she saw their curly heads nestling in the same plaid, would often bless them, and say,—

"My puir bairns, ye were just made for ilk ither!"

And the old servitors of the Place loved to call them their "young laird and leddy—man and wife," and were wont to foretell that one day they would become so.

Then the little pair looked with wonder into each other's bright eyes, marvelling what "man and wife" meant, but resolving that, whatever it did mean, they would not and could not love each other the less, or be less happy than they were; but would still hunt bees and butterflies, gather hare and heather bells, and make little chapels and houses in the green haughs, when the hawthorn bloomed in summer.

The round of their pleasures was small, and the little chapel—nathless the Reformation—was still a favourite amusement with the children of Scotland, as it is now with those of continental countries. Thus, a mimic altar was set up, with a cross and candles thereon; a circle of stones formed its precinct; Halbert Gordon was the officiating priest, and little Lily his whole congregation, and very devout she was; but without the circle of this baby chapel Kenneth Logie would stand doubtfully aloof, for his aunt and grim Master Jowlar had taught him to abhor such things, and, less compliant than the gentle Lily, he dreaded Catholicism as burned children dread the fire.

The banks of the kirk-burn, whose ceaseless waters came out of the distant woods, and whose far off source was one of wonder to their infant minds, reflected every day their smiling faces as they wove fairy caps among the rushes, or set fleets of bluebells floating down its current; but the bold young baron of the moated Tower led them elsewhere, for he shewed Kenneth where the golden eagle and the dark osprey built their nests in the perpendicular rocks of Baud-kroskie; and where the fierce fiumart nursed its red cubs among the ivy-covered holes, daring him to climb with his dagger in his teeth, to rob the former and slay the latter.

Then, when Kenneth modestly declined, the reckless Gordon, with a triumphant glance at the little lady, and a laugh of scorn and derision, would clench his poniard in his strong white teeth, and grasping the weeds, the ivy, the rocks, or bushes, would ascend the steep cliffs like a squirrel, with the clouds and mist above, and the waters of the Dee flowing deep and dark below, while the two cousins held their breath with terror, as they watched him. Then the eagle would be seen to fly from its eyry with a shriek, and, torn from its bed, the nest would fall at the feet of Lily; or at times she was still more terrified by a fox or a fiumart rolling down the rocks, drenched in its blood. Then came Halbert Gordon, descending with the rapidity of an evil spirit, with his cheek flushed and his eyes on fire, to laugh at Lily's terror and Kenneth's timidity; to exult in his own superior daring—to exhibit his bloody poniard, and say tauntingly—

"I will be a brave leal knight, even as my father was; but you, Master Kenneth, may weel become a monk, and snuffle Latin in Logie-Kirk."

Though less rash and vindictive, Kenneth was a brave boy, too; and his heart swelled with secret passion at these open taunts. Thus, by degrees, the fierce little chieftain of the Tower learned to despise him, and, as their years increased, he took every opportunity of endeavouring to lessen Kenneth in the estimation of his cousin. The boys often quarrelled; but, boy like, they just as often became apparent friends again. Kenneth Logie respected and even loved Gordon for his bravery; but feared his proud and passionate temper. Gordon admired Kenneth's skill as a deadly shot with the arquebuse and pistolette, but despised his caution; while Lily instinctively loved her cousin, and feared their companion, though he loved her well, for her exceeding gentleness, her obliging disposition, and the grace with which she said and did all those pretty nothings, which are as pleasing in the artless little girl as in the winning and well-bred woman.

Time passed on.

The boys became youths, both tall and strong; while the fair wild-bud that blossomed in the Forest of Culbleine, was daily unfolding some new charm as it expanded into beauty and bloom.

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE COUSINS.—THE STORY CONTINUED.

Many years had glided thus away.

The summer of 1594 was at hand. Kenneth Logie was then twenty years of age, and his cousin was two years younger. Kenneth, a handsome and athletic lad, excelled in all the manly sports and exercises necessary to complete the education of a Scottish gentleman. But Lily! The bud had become a rose, the pretty child a beautiful woman; mild and happy, merry or pensive, by turns. Lily, in her eighteenth year, had indeed become the Lily of Logie—the Lily of the many songs in which her memory has been embalmed. Heaven never created a being more beautiful!

There are some women whom we admire for their dazzling skin; for their fine hair, or their sparkling eyes; for their dimpled hands, their handsome ankles, or their necks of snow; but in every point of form and feature fair Lily was admirable. She was one of those magnificent beings that appear but once in a century. She was then the wonder, as she is still the boast, of all Cromar and the Garioch.

Her violet-coloured eyes were soft and brilliant, but their lashes were of the darkest brown; and her hair was of that bright hue which alternates between auburn and gold, like the tresses attributed to Venus, or to Scotland's martyred Mary. Her feet and hands were small, but beautifully proportioned, and nothing could be more alluring than the sound of her sweet voice; nothing more attractive than the happy vivacity and brilliance of her manner, which was full of pretty retort and merry repartee.

Cousin Kenneth felt conscious that she was more than beautiful—that she was supremely innocent and good; and he loved her with a quiet depth of passion, which, as it was based on the most perfect feeling of security, knew no warp or interruption in its current. Though he still called her his "dear little wifie," a change had, of course, come over them since he had first been taught to say so; for now the time approached when she was to become—as he said—"his dear little bride in earnest."

Kenneth Logie was, more than ever, all the world to Lily! Save Halbert Gordon, she had never been intimately acquainted with any other man; and, though he was eminently handsome, there was a something in his air and in his aspect, that made her shrink from the man still more than she had shrunk from the boy. Yet Halbert was not without many external graces; he had a swarthy cheek and a dark fierce eye, with a strong and well knit figure. He carried a sword, which he used as if he had been born with it; he could ride the wildest horses, break the strongest lances, throw the heaviest hammers, and hit the most distant targets with the arrow or bullet; but there was a certain air about him, somewhat between the soldier and the bravo, that Kenneth never cared to imitate. Being laird of the moated Tower he was a lesser baron, and head of a branch of the house of Huntly, while poor Kenneth was but a penniless orphan, and in right of his future wife was destined to be merely the gudeman of Culbleine.

At county meetings, at weaponshows, at kirk or market, wherever Halbert presented himself, with a falcon on his dexter thumb, a sword and dagger in his belt, a velvet mantle dangling on his left shoulder; his doublet covered with lace, his bombasted trunk breeches and gold spurs, his bonnet slouched over his fierce and devil-may-care dark eyes—he enforced respect, and completely overshadowed the less assuming, but assuredly not less brave, Kenneth Logie, who was inoffensive and quiet, as the other was offensive and quarrelsome. Gordon was rakish and libertine; so old Jock of the Cleugh had every reason to be satisfied with his pupil, whom he had trained up in the path which he thought most proper for a gentleman and soldier to pursue. Thus, in his twentieth year, Gordon's stormy and licentious manners, together with his fierce disposition, made him a terror and a proverb in the quiet and pastoral district of Cromar.

Save in occasional rides or chance walks, he never now saw the Lily of Culbleine; for, although the chimneys of their dwellings were visible from each other's windows, difference of faith, and certain dark rumours, political and religious, which were then floating through Scotland, made still wider that gulf between "Catholic and Presbyterian" which had always separated their mothers as aliens and enemies. In short, an armed insurrection of the Scottish Catholics, to co-operate with a Spanish invasion of England, and to avenge the murder of Queen Mary, was hourly expected; and James VI., with the Calvinists of the kingdom, were watchful and on the alert. Thus, Gordon, though he cared not a rush for religion or any thing else when a pretty woman was concerned, was restrained from visiting as a man, the scenes where he had played as a boy, for his haughty soul could not brook the idea of being an intruder. In a word, this wild gallant loved Lily as he hated Kenneth, with his whole heart and his whole soul.

A region of fierce and sudden impulses, his breast knew but two sentiments; for one cousin, love—for the other, hatred; and both these sentiments were the offspring of an indomitable pride. The jealousy of the sullen boy had become the settled hatred of the haughty man; and the age was one when the bold Scot owned no laws save those which the heart dictated and the sword enforced.

In the gloomy solitude of his mother's Tower he brooded over these things, and envied Kenneth the society of a being so beautiful and so winning; for he knew—to his agony—that the cousins were ever together, where whilome they had played in childhood—that they read the same books—that they had still but one heart and one soul between them. The children had grown up into lovers, and he knew that, to them, a third companion would be intolerable.

Full of bitterness as these thoughts swelled up in his fiery and resentful heart, he would leap on horseback and gallop towards the Forest or the Lea, in the hope of obtaining a glimpse of Lily; and when he did see her—

"A thousand furies!" he would exclaim, and abruptly turn horse; "that puling ass is ever by her side!" Once he reined in his horse by the margin of the Dee, that it might drink of the gurgling stream. The place was beautiful. Cool and dark, deep and still, the river glided over its brown pebbles, and scarcely a sunbeam reached it through the thick foliage of that leafy glen, for overhead the trees entwined their branches like the arches of a vast cathedral; and the coo of the cushat-dove, or the voice of the mavis alone woke the echoing dingles. From gazing dreamily at the trout darting in the calm depth of the summer pool, the sound of voices made Gordon raise his head, and lo!

Kenneth Logie and his cousin Lily approached.

So full were they of themselves, and their own sweet conversation, that they never perceived Halbert, who, motionless as an equestrian statue, remained gazing at them with eyes that, like his heart, were full of fire. Fair Lily wore a dress of light blue silk, that charmingly became her bright and pure complexion; it had little white slashes, inlet at the shoulders; the wide and hanging sleeves displayed her dimpled elbows, and the snowy whiteness of her arms; she carried her hood in one hand, the other rested on the arm of Kenneth; and her hair, which fell like a shower of gold upon her neck and bosom, swept over his shoulder, when at times their heads were bent together. The sunbeams, as they darted through the summer foliage, gave an additional lustre to her hair and eyes; and, when she spoke or smiled, her mouth, from time to time, revealed the whiteness of her close and well set teeth.

The handsome youth who walked by her side seemed fully worthy of this alluring girl, for his tall strong figure appeared to the utmost advantage in a suit of green velvet, laced with Venetian gold; a black feather drooped from his bonnet; he had a rapier in his belt and a falcon on his wrist. Another sat on the hand of Lily, and the lovers were laughing merrily as they flirted their birds, making them peck at each other, scream, and flap their wings; for an old chronicler tells us, that at the Scottish court he was considered the most finished gallant who could make his falcon play most tricks with the falcon of a lady.

Their thoughts were wholly of that nearer and dearer relationship which they were soon to bear unto each other; and as Lily bent her pure white brow towards Kenneth's sunburnt cheek, she said more than once—

"Oh, cousin Kenneth! are we not the happiest beings in the world?"

"In our love for each other, we are, dearest Lily!"

"In every thing," and Kenneth assented by a kiss.

Their conversation was made up of those little nothings which are so charming to lovers, but which will neither bear to be written nor rehearsed.

These were as molten lead to the heart of the unhappy Gordon; and when he saw Lily smiling with joyous confidence as her favoured lover painted many a vision of happiness to come, he felt that with all his love—a love the stronger by its very hopelessness—he could have cursed her.

Like a vision they passed before him, and disappeared down a vista of the wood. His horse, which had raised its head as they passed, was again drinking placidly; the river was running on; the trees were rustling their green leaves overhead; but the miserable man remained as one entranced, and the sound of their voices—one so charming, the other so hateful—seemed to linger in his ear long after they were gone.

So much were they absorbed in each other, that they had never once observed him; and his suit, which was of scarlet laced with silver, was, he thought, assuredly conspicuous enough. Rage and fury filled his heart! But he had learned something of importance from their conversation as they passed, and on that information he resolved to act.

At six o'clock that evening, Lily Donaldson was to visit the miln of Newtoun on a mission of kindness to the miller's wife, who was suffering under a grievous illness; Kenneth was to meet her at the haugh by Deeside as she returned. Full of desperate and despairing thoughts, Gordon resolved to anticipate the lover, and, forcing his horse across the stream, he urged it up the steep and wooded bank, where never horse or man had ascended before, and rode straight back to his Tower among the morasses.

The bridge was up and the gates were shut, and such were the precautions taken to prevent ingress and surprise, that even he had some trouble in gaining admittance.

"What the devil is astir now—an English invasion? speak—thou—Jock of the Cleugh!" he said angrily, on seeing that the whole place was in the hurry of warlike preparation; that the barbican was strewn with swords and lances; that twenty horses showed their barbed heads at their stable doors, as if chiding his delay; that every man in the tower was busy in the furbishment of steel bonnets and corslets, or grinding pike-heads, sword-blades, and daggers.

"The Lords Argyle and Huntly are in arms," said Jock in a low whisper, as he limped close to his master, "and sae the Grole o' the Garioch maun mount and ride, ye ken."

"Right, Jock! God's heavy malison be on him who lingers in joining the gay Gordons!"

"The cock o' the north for ever!" added Jock, flourishing his wooden leg.

The fierce heart of young Gordon leaped with joy at these tidings. He had long looked for them; "and now the hour had come when he hoped," as he said, "to ride above his bridle in the blood of the accursed Calvinists," all of whom he embodied in the idea of Kenneth Logie. Ascending to the hall, which formed the first floor of the Tower, he found his stern and enthusiastic mother, excited by vengeful and religious hopes, in close council with Father Ogilvie, an itinerant priest of the Scottish mission, who, while encountering innumerable perils and the most severe poverty, travelled in disguise from one Catholic family to another. Garbed as a peasant, and looking like a buirdly farmer from the braes of Angus, in a canvass doublet and grey plaid, the priest was covered with dust, and, by the mud on his gambadoes, seemed to have ridden both fast and far that day.

"Joy, my son, Halbert—joy!" said his mother, while her eyes flashed fire.

"Welcome, my bairn," said the priest affectionately.

"So Huntly is in arms," said the young chieftain, with a kindling eye; "and is ready to sweep from Scottish ground the accursed brood of Knox and Calvin."

"Nay, my bairn," replied the old priest; "'tis Argyle who is in arms, with the Campbells, the Grants, and McGregors, 12,000 strong, and these are about to pour like a torrent down upon the Catholic lords. Thus, if all to whom the cross and the cause of Heaven are dear, delay to join Lord Huntly, the church of our fathers will sink even lower than Knox and Wishart levelled it."

"Halbert," said his mother, whose fierce spirit—for she was a Borderer—snuffed blood from afar; "in three hours ye will have twenty horsemen in their harness, and prepared to march."

"'Tis well," he replied through his clenched teeth, as he selected a sword and carbine from among the many that hung upon the wall; "but one word, good Father Ogilvie, where is the Lord Huntly's trysting-place?"

"His castle of Strathbogie, in the Garioch."

"In three hours then, mother, I will ride, to conquer or die with our chief and our kinsmen."

There was a ghastly smile on Halbert's lips, and a deep and dire intent was visible in his dark eyes, as he proceeded with the utmost care to fix a match in his carbine, and hummed the while a surly song—

"'When the Grole o' the Garioch
Meet the bowmen of Lord Mar;
Upon the hill of Bennochie,
The Grole shall win the war!'

Ha—ha! mother, does not the old song say so?"

"My brave boy, I see there is determination on your brow," said the stern matron, as she kissed her haughty son.

"Yea, madam," said he, grinding his teeth, and with a voice that made even her start; "victory, vengeance, and death are in my heart." .........

The trysting-place beside the Dee was a most sequestered spot. In all the windings of that beautiful river, by haugh and strath, there was not a lonelier. Among the dense summer foliage of the old beech-trees, around whose gnarled trunks the thick dark ivy clambered, the cushat-doves were still cooing, while the black mavis and the merry merle sang on their topmost boughs. Among rocks overhung by the clustering Gueldre-roses, the sweet brier and the fragrant honeysuckle, the deep blue Dee was jarring in tiny waves, that every rock and pebble fretted into little bells of foam; while, numerous as the stars of the sky, the yellow buttercups, the wild violets, and white gowans spangled the bright green grass on which the dew was falling thick and fast; for it was evening now, and the last rays of the sun were giving a farewell gleam on the clustered chimneys of the old mansion of Culbleine, and the older spire of Logie kirk. The murmur of the gliding water, and the rustle of the shady branches, the perfume of the summer flowers, the voices of the happy birds, and the partial glimpses of the evening sun, all combined to make beautiful the trysting-place where fair Lily was to meet her lover-cousin, as she returned from the miln of Newtoun.

On her arm hung a little basket, in which she had conveyed to the sick wife of the miller the various comfits and medicaments the good old lady her mother had so carefully prepared. Her plaid, though fastened under her chin by a silver brooch, had fallen from her head, and permitted a shower of curls to fall over her shoulders—those golden curls, such as the early painters would have adored. There was a bloom on her rounded cheek, for exercise had imparted a rosy tinge to it, and a rich red to her smiling lip; while a clear light sparkled in her deep violet eyes, as she reached the place of tryst, and looked anxiously round for her lover.

"Kenneth!" she exclaimed, on seeing a tall cavalier leaning against the well-known tree, with a feather drooping over his eyes, and a mantle dangling over his left arm, which rested on the muzzle of a carbine; "dear Kenneth!"

He turned abruptly, and she beheld the olive face and dark glittering eyes of Halbert of the Tower.

"I am not Kenneth Logie," said he courteously, raising his bonnet as he slightly kissed her hand; "may I hope that I am not the less welcome to fair Lily of the Forest?"

"Oh, no!" said she, concealing the terror with which his presence inspired her; "why should you be unwelcome? Are you not my old playmate, and, save Kenneth, the oldest friend I have known!"

Gordon stamped his foot at the name of his rival.

"And as your playmate in older and happier times, fair Lily, I now come to bid you adieu; for I am going far from the woods of Logie and Culbleine, and all those scenes around which your presence casts a charm."

"For Flanders, where your poor father went before you?" she asked, with a mixed feeling between sorrowful interest and joy at this good riddance to the district; "to the wars of Low Germanie?"

"Nay—to wars certainly, but not so far off," he replied, with a deep smile.

"And you came to bid me adieu, my poor old friend! It is so kind of you, Master Halbert; but," she added suspiciously, "how knew you that I should be here at this hour?"

"Surely it was intuition, Lily—some happy, some divine presentiment!" He paused with something like confusion, and she glanced anxiously along the shady forest vista by which she expected Kenneth Logie to approach. Gordon drew off his long leather gauntlet, and took her soft small hand in his.

"He is going far away," she thought, and did not withdraw it.

"Lily," said he, "where I am going, and on what errand, matters not at present, for anon you will know all; but it is a mission of secresy, of danger, and of death—one from which I may never return; and I could not leave these, our native woods and glen, the hawthorn birks, and the bonnie brae of Logie, without saying how long, how well, and how deeply I have loved you—yea, loved you, Lily, from my boyhood upward. I cannot go forth, to die perhaps, with this long-treasured secret in my heart. I could not fall in battle happily, and have it buried with me, unconfessed, untold, and unheard. I know all you would urge," he added, sighing deeply, and speaking hurriedly; "Kenneth, your cousin—yes, yes—all say you love him; but such attachments should not be—they are within degrees forbidden by the church; moreover, I cannot believe it! Oh! think well of the love I have to offer. Kenneth is the penniless orphan of a dowerless bride, and a poor younger son. In this world he possesses nothing; I am a lesser baron, with an estate here and another in Glencairn—my mother's inheritance. I can summon a hundred horsemen in time of need. The Lords of Badenoch, the Earls of Huntly and of Mar, have quartered their shields with mine; and in the storm which is at hand, when a sword may be in every Catholic hand, with its point at every Galvinist throat, you may find a worse protector than Halbert of the Tower; but nowhere in broad Scotland will ye find a better. Ponder, dearest Lily, over all I have said, for I must soon be gone, as time and tide will wait for no man."

Lily trembled excessively; she became pale, and endeavoured to release her hand from Gordon's, but his grasp tightened, and she struggled in vain.

"Think, think!" he continued; "think, Lily, from being the daughter of a bonnet-laird, a mere Gudenian of the Wood, I can make you a lady of that Ilk, and on the nameless bestow one of the best names in all the brave north countrie."

"Halbert Gordon," replied Lily with some asperity, "my father's name is as good as yours; and the wise Regent called him ever his leal man and true in the Douglas' wars."

"James Stuart—pho! a heretic and regicide!"

"He who speaks slightingly of my father's friends involves my father's honour, and cannot love me," replied Lily, endeavouring to free her hand.

"Thou wrongest me, and art unnecessarily angry, dearest Lily. I mean not to slight the gudeman, thy father's memory; but thou hast not yet answered me."

"Sir, I cannot answer while you detain me thus."

Gordon's dark eyes began to sparkle.

"You scorn me then—-you?"

"Nay, nay, Heaven forbid! but remember, that even if I could love you—which is impossible—our religion—our religion! thou a Catholic—I a Calvinist!"

Gordon uttered a bitter laugh.

"Fair Lily," said he; "a time is coming (yea, it is at hand!) when such marriages will be as a boon from God to the accursed brood of Knox and Calvin—of Rough and Wishart; but once more, dearest Lily, hear me——"

"Impossible—impossible!"

"I am going far away from these green woods, from Strathdon and Strathdee, and I will have nothing of thee—of thee, I have loved so long to look upon. Give me but a tress, a ringlet, however small; a riband, a glove—a rag, a shred—oh Lily, Lily!—if you knew how I have loved you!"

"Halbert Gordon, it is improper to give such a gift—and impossible, too——"

"And why is it either improper or impossible?" he asked suddenly, confronting her with a cold and imperious aspect.

"Because," replied Lily, who trembled while she resented this lofty bearing; "because my heart is no longer my own, and oh, Halbert! you know that well."

Though this was quite the answer he expected, anguish distorted the brow, and fury glared in the eyes of Gordon; for there was something intensely exasperating in hearing such an avowal from her own beautiful lips. His mouth was compressed, and his dark eyes regarded her fixedly with a gloomy scrutiny.

Footsteps were heard approaching, and the clear clank of Rippon spurs, that jangled as the wearer strode through the echoing glade. A joyful expression spread over the face of fair Lily; but a spasm shot through the heart of Gordon, for he knew that he was no longer wanted there, and that Kenneth Logie approached.

Unable to confront this young man otherwise than as an enemy, and still more unable to endure his meeting with Lily, Gordon bestowed upon her a deep and inexplicable smile; threw his carbine into the hollow of his left arm, and, crossing the Dee, though its waters came up to his waist-belt, sprang up the opposite bank, and disappeared among the thick coppice that covered it.

"Fie, cousin Kenneth!" said Lily playfully, as she tapped him on the cheek with her pretty hand; "is it thus ye keep tryst?"

Kenneth had been late in meeting her, and, as he had not seen Gordon when approaching, he proposed that they should seat themselves by the bank of the stream to converse a little; and, agitated as she had been by her lucent painful interview, fair Lily gladly consented.

On the grassy brae, with the still water flowing at their feet, and the hawthorn spreading its white and fragrant branches above them, they conversed in low tones, with long pauses, for they were wrapped in the purest and dearest of dreaming. Lily soon forgot the terrible, the fixed regards of Halbert Gordon.

They knew not—those happy lovers—that from the opposite bank, and scarcely a pistol-shot distant, two fierce eyes were watching them.

I have said that Kenneth Logie was handsome, strong, and active; the bloom of twenty years was on his cheek, and his fine figure was displayed to advantage by the Scoto-French costume of the Lowlands. His blue velvet bonnet lay beside him, and his high white forehead, around which the dark hair curled in heavy locks, was bare. He was all that a young girl dreams of in her future lover; and his eyes, by turns expressive of pride, tenderness, and impetuosity, were bent fondly on the golden-haired fairy that sat by his side—she, whose ringlets poured like a shower upon his breast, and whose soft violet eyes were raised to his, from, time to time, with appeals of confiding tenderness; for he was the friend of her earliest memory, and all her affections, and all her thoughts and hopes, were entwined with his idea and his name.

And so it was with Kenneth; for the opinions, the feelings, the sentiments of Lily, had ever been but the mirror of his own; and again and again, by those glances which never pencil drew nor pen portrayed, he told her that she was dearer to him than all the world beside.

So they dreamed on, this pure and happy pair of loving hearts; the old oaks shook their rustling leaves above them; the hawthorn put forth its sweet perfume, and the Dee murmured complacently by.

Oh, they were so happy! so united—so one in thought, in heart, and impulse!

Reclined on Kenneth's breast, Lily lay half embraced and half entranced, with her eyes fixed on the still waters of the flowing stream, and the thick green coppice, which cast a shadow on its surface. Suddenly her eyes dilated with terror; her breast heaved; a voiceless cry arose to her lips, and died there.

The brass muzzle of a carbine glittered among the thick alders opposite; and a fierce eye glared along the polished barrel. She had only time to utter a shriek, and throw herself as a shield before Kenneth, when a red flash broke from among the green leaves; the report rang with a hundred reverberations in the copsewood glen, and the beautiful Lily Donaldson fell on the bosom of her lover, a corpse, with blood flowing in a torrent from her lips.

Who could paint the terror, the despair, of Kenneth?

With glaring eyes and outstretched arms, he stood for a moment like a statue of horror. His first impulse was to dash across the stream; to pierce the thicket, and reach the heart of her destroyer; his second to fling himself by her side, and endeavour to recall the life which had too surely fled for ever.

Entering her left shoulder, the ball intended for his heart had pierced that of Lily, and her pure spirit had departed to its Creator.

* * * *

From that hour poor Kenneth was a sad and silent mourner.

* * * *

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE RAID OF MACALLUM MHOR.

The scarlet mantle and the blue bonnet of the murderer, with his crest thereon, were found in the thicket, and left no doubt as to who was the perpetrator of this terrible deed, which cast a gloom over all the fair north countrie. His carbine was also found; for, though full of deadly hate against his rival, Gordon had not the most remote intention of injuring Lily. The moment he saw the frightful result of his fury, he had thrown down his weapon in dismay, and fled like a madman to his Tower among the morasses. In one hour from that time he had come forth again, sheathed in full armour, and crossed the hills at the head of twenty mounted spearmen, journeying no one knew whither.

Kenneth buried his Lily in the old kirkyard of Logie-colstaine, on the grassy holme where, when the sun was in the west, the cross of St. Woloc's spire might fall upon her grave; for those charming old superstitions which cast a halo round the ancient faith, were yet lingering in the hearts of the Scottish people; and thus, though rigid Calvinists, they laid Lily with her feet to the east, and her fair head towards the setting sun, that, according to the tradition of the early Christians, she might, at the day of doom, see our Saviour when he comes from the east in his glory.

And there by her open grave, Kenneth Logie, with his head bare and his sword drawn, knelt down among the damp mould—that hideous earth, impregnated with the bones of other times; and on his blade and on his Bible made a sad, a stern, but solemn vow of vengeance, which he called on his Lily to hear, and their Maker to register in heaven. He was the last to leave her grave; and, long after all others had departed, the lonely youth—for he was but a youth—was seen to linger there.

Long, long and bitterly, he wept, even as a child weeps, and, embracing the newly laid turf, kissed it many times; and the sun had set before he tore himself away. But the thought of Halbert Gordon, and the reflection that already four days had elapsed, nerved him anew; and, with lingering steps and many a backward glance, he left the place where the Lily of the Forest lay.

It was now generally known that the Protestant lords were in arms against their Catholic fellow-subjects. Kenneth learned that Gordon had ridden towards the north, and knew that, if he was to be found within the kingdom of Scotland, it would be with his clansmen, the Gordons, beneath the banner of Lord Huntly.

On the night after the funeral, a single horseman well mounted, and armed after the fashion of a Lowland gentleman, with a close morion, corslet and arm-pieces, gorget and steel gloves, with petronel, Glasgow axe, and two-handed sword, rode forth alone from the old Place and oak-woods of Culbleine. He crossed the Dee, and, leaving the glen, diverged upon the open moorlands, which were then covered with heath and furze, and watered by deep rivulets and swampy hollows; and, striking at once into the road which led towards the west, never halted until he reached a place where it dipped over a hill, and then he checked his horse and looked back.

Like a broad round silver shield, the summer moon was rising behind the oak-woods he had left, and its beams glinted brightly on the spire of the old ruined church, at the foot of which lay Lily's lonely grave. Its shadow was falling full upon the spot where he knew she was lying.

This was her first night in the tomb—in that old and desolate burying-ground, among the weedy graves, the mossy headstones, and remains of the mouldering dead.

It seemed to Kenneth that she must be very cold and very lonely there. The conviction was a bitter one, that she, so young, so beautiful, so golden-haired—who had yet so much of this world about her—should be lying there abandoned to decay, with no one beside her—among the ghastly dead, and not as usual in her bed, in the little tapestried room which her own dear hands had industriously decorated, and which Kenneth knew so well. The idea had something in it frightful and unnatural.

It seemed as if she must still be living! Kenneth could not realise her death. But there was an appalling recollection of a convulsed face, a mouth flowing with blood, a grave, a coffin, a shovelling of earth, a batting down of sods, a trampling of feet, and a sound of lamentation.

She was in her cold and sequestered grave for the first time, with the midnight dew descending upon the grass that covered her.

The pale trooper shuddered, and, turning his horse, galloped furiously down the opposite side of the hill, on his mission of vengeance.

* * * *

At this time the hereditary commissary of the Isles under James VI., Archibald seventh Earl of Argyle, and nineteenth chief of his race, a youth only twenty years of age, with the royal standard displayed, and half authorised by the king, was levying war against the Catholics of Scotland; but principally against his own enemies, the Earls of Huntly and Errol, who were the heads of the Roman faction. As the old ballad says—

"Macallum Mhor came frae the west, with many a bow and brand,
To waste the Rinnes he thought it best, the Earl of Huntly's land."

Suddenly assembling 12,000 men, a force which included the hardy islesmen of Sir Lauchlan M'Lean, the M'Intoshes under their chief, the Grants of Urquhart under Gartenbeg, a lesser baron of the clan; the M'Gregors and M'Neils under Barra, and the whole tribe of Campbell, whose fighting force was never under 5000 claymores, together with all whom a thirst for plunder, or feudal malice against the clan Gordon, could induce to join him, Argyle marched through Badenoch in hostile array, with pipes sounding and banners displayed. Repulsed by the MacPhersons, a brave and military tribe who had thrown themselves into the strong fortress of Ruthven, he poured down between the dark pine-woods of Strathspey, in the territory of the Grants, and encamping at Drimnin, upon the beautiful banks of the Avon—the winding river—summoned the Forbeses, the Frazers, the Dunbars, and the M'Kenzies to his standard; but there one solitary horseman alone joined him—Kenneth Logie of Culbleine.

George Earl of Huntly, and Francis Earl of Errol, great constable of Scotland, and hereditary leader of the feudal cavalry, the two nobles on whom this warlike torrent had burst from the northern and western hills, were in no way dismayed; for though steady and unflinching Catholics (and as such suspected of having corresponded with the Spaniards, when their Armada was fitted out against our old hereditary enemies), they knew that James VI., far from being inimical to the Romish cause, was only constrained by popular clamour, and the Reformed clergy, to levy war against them. They knew well that in secret he was friendly to the faith for which his mother—the poor victim of accumulated treasons—perished; and that though he had sent Argyle, an impetuous and inexperienced youth, against them, he would by no means take the field in person. They also knew that the Grants of Gartenbeg, the Campbells of Lochnell, and other Catholic families, who followed the banner of Argyle, with whom they reckoned blood, could not feel warmly in his cause; and thus, never doubting that God would give the victory to the cross which they carried on their ensigns, those brave Lords of Huntly and of Errol took the field with confidence.

At the head of a hundred horsemen, sheathed in complete armour, and magnificently mounted, the very flower of his numerous vassalage, the chief of the Hays left his house of Errol, and attended by the heir of Bonnitoun, Crichton of Invernytie, and Innes of that Ilk, with all his clan, who bore with them the skull of their patron St. Marnan, marched to the castle of Strathbogie, the muster-place of the Gordons, in their pastoral district, the Garioch.

On the way he was joined by Halbert Gordon of the moated Tower, with his twenty horsemen.

To Strathbogie also came Allan M'Ildhui, chief of the clan Cameron, and, after this junction, Huntly, whose forces amounted to only 1500 men, marched towards the Calvinists, after each soldier had made his confession, received communion, and sworn a solemn oath on the Holy Iron, to conquer or to die.

Full of enthusiasm for battle, this little troop marched down by the Bogie, and, as they defiled past the castle of Huntly, it is related that his countess—the fair Henrietta of Lennox—held up her youngest son to see the martial array. Pleased with the flash of steel, the note of the trumpet, and patter of the kettledrum, he clapped his little hands and cried—

"Lord Daddy shall conquer and beat the Campbells!"

This was considered an omen of victory.

Crossing the dun mountains of the Garioch, they halted at Auchindoune, on the same day that the overwhelming force of Argyle encamped at Drimnin.

Passionate indeed was the eagerness, and fierce the joy, with which young Kenneth Logie heard that the troops of Lord Huntly were in the neighbourhood of the camp, and would soon be in view.

Young, brave, and enthusiastic, the valiant Argyle, the boy warrior—unlike the traitors who succeeded him, and in after years betrayed their country, and their king—sent forward a few horsemen under the Earl of Athole, and with these went Kenneth Logie; for, being a gentleman volunteer, without vassalage or attendants, his post was among the cavalry, and wherever there was most danger.

The evening of Wednesday, the 2nd October, had closed on the vast purple mountains and woods of sombre pine and silver birch that look down on the glens of the Livat and Fiddich, when these reconnoitring troopers, with their armour glittering in the starlight of the dying gloaming, rode softly and silently in extended order, with swords drawn and matches lighted, towards that part of the hills where they expected to see the forces of Huntly appear.

A line of red fires, dotting the dark brow of a distant hill, marked the bivouac of the Catholics. The smallness of its extent indicated their numerical inferiority, and the hearts of the Calvinists swelled with joy. At that moment a shot was heard; a horseman fell, and before Lord Athole's trumpeter could sound a rally, Captain—afterwards Sir Thomas—Kerr, with a troop of Huntly's cuirassiers, were upon them, shouting the Cathghairm of their leader—

"A Gordon! a Gordon! down with the heretics!—God and St. Mary for Scotland!"

A confused discharge of carbines and pistolettes took place; a few horsemen fell on each side; then a short but furious encounter ensued with the sword, till, overborne by the number of Captain Kerr's men, those of Athole gave way, and retired towards the camp of Argyle.

Kenneth Logie was a man of one thought: that thought was vengeance! In this were merged and lost his Protestant sympathies and every other sentiment; but it was not without a sensation of shame that he found himself retiring before the victorious Catholics. Again and again he brandished his sword, and called on his comrades to "stand, and face about for Scotland and her Kirk!" but on they spurred in headlong panic, while shot after shot followed them, and many fell to rise no more from among the thick broom, and brushwood, or the deep moss-haggs, over which they were galloping in the dark.

"A Gordon! a Gordon!" cried a voice behind Kenneth. He turned, for that voice smote his ear like the shot of a pistol, and in another moment he found himself engaged hand to hand with Halbert of the Tower—the destroyer of Lily, fair Lily of Culbleine. A savage ardour filled his heart; he felt a blindness coming over him in his passionate longing to avenge her.

"Do Thou nerve my hand!" he exclaimed, looking upward to heaven; "do Thou nerve it, and temper my sword, that the blood of the slayer may be shed!"

By this time his retreating comrades had left him far behind.

"Hold all your weapons, gentlemen," exclaimed Kenneth, as the foemen closed around him; "hold back, I charge you on your honours—it is a single combat;" and he pressed on Gordon, who, being a first-rate swordsman, parried every cut and thrust admirably, for Jock of the Cleugh had spared no pains on his military education. The traitor, however, cared not to encounter Kenneth alone if he could avoid him, and exclaimed—

"A Hay! a Gordon!—Slay, slay!—A thousand merks for his head; 'tis the great Macallum Mhor himself!—Slay—slay!"

On hearing this announcement, a hundred swords were levelled at Kenneth, who was thus compelled to turn his horse and escape, with more than one severe wound, while the shot of many a carbine and pistol followed him, as with a scornful and indignant heart he galloped towards the camp of the King of the West.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE BATTLE OF GLENLIVAT—CONCLUSION OF THE COUNT'S STORY.

The result of this skirmish was deemed a sure prognostic of victory by the Catholic band, and so far encouraged the Lord Huntly, that, after knighting Captain Kerr on the field, he resolved to attack Argyle before that noble could be joined by his ally, John Lord Forbes, who, with a considerable force, was hovering on the Lowland frontier. At this very time Argyle was already on the march, and his 12,000 followers had poured through Glenlivat, whose mountains gave back with countless reverberations the wild notes of the Highland pipe, the Almayne fife, and Lowland drum, until he reached the rugged banks of a small brook named by the Celts of the district Altconlachan, when he could not conceal his astonishment on beholding Huntly's little band of only 1500 men, advancing resolutely through the lower grounds to attack him. These were chiefly horsemen, well armed on all points; their lances and helmets shone in the rising sun, and above their squadrons two great banners floated.

On the right was the azure standard of Huntly, charged with the three boars'-heads of Gordon; on the left waved a pennon argent, with the three escutcheons gules, the cognisance of the Hays, gained at Luncarty under Kenneth III. In the full blaze of light, poured over the dun mountains by the sun of a clear October morning, they were advancing, with horses neighing, kettle-drums beating, and all their burnished iron gleaming, Argyle became apprehensive that his numerical superiority in infantry might not avail him against so brilliant a band of mounted lairds and gentlemen.

The scene of these operations was a wild and pastoral glen; here and there a few tall Scottish firs reared their solemn outlines against the cloudless sky, with their dark and prickly foliage, and red trunks glittering in dew, as the sun shone on them.

Halting by the margin of the brook, Argyle held a council of war, to deliberate whether he should at once attack the Catholics, or keep upon the mountains, which were inaccessible to Huntly's horse, and remain there until Lord Forbes came up with his Lowland cavalry. John Stuart, Earl of Athole, a brave and upright peer, a privy councillor of James VI., and a lineal descendant of the high steward of Scotland, now said—

"I would advise your lordships to wait the arrival of his Majesty, who hath promised to join us with a large force; or at all events to tarry until we are joined by the Frazers and M'Kenzies from the north, and my Lord Forbes with the Forbeses, the Irvines, the Leslies, and other horsemen from the Lowlands. We shall then be certain of an almost bloodless victory."

This opinion, which was considered the most wise and judicious by the more experienced chiefs of Argyle's army, was overborne by the impetuosity of the young earl himself, and by old John Grant of Gartenbeg, a fierce and treacherous baron, who led a thousand Grants from Urquhart and the baronies of Corrimonie and Glenmorriston; and who, in a furious and ferocious speech, urged an immediate attack. The aspect of this venerable chieftain, in his shirt of mail and scarlet tartan, with long white hair flowing under his cap of steel, which had no other ornament than an eagle's feather and bunch of brambles, together with that energetic harangue which he delivered, with sword unsheathed and shield uplifted, bore all before it, and Argyle prepared to engage, by disposing his army in order of battle in two parallel columns, on the acclivity of a hill between Glenlivat and Glenrinnes.

The right wing was composed of the M'Intoshes and M'Leans, under M'Intosh and Sir Lauchlan M'Lean of Duairt.

The left was formed by the Grants, M'Neils, and M'Gregors, under Grant of Gartenbeg, near whom rode Kenneth Logie as an aid, or esquire. He contemplated the coming strife with gloomy joy, for his dreams of death and revenge were about to be fulfilled.

"My heart is empty now," thought he; "and the sooner it is cold the better." He had no desire to live, and, after seeking and slaying Gordon, had resolved to perish on the battle-field. The centre and vanguard was composed of 4000 Campbells, under Argyle's kinsman, the Laird of Auchinbreck. They carried the earl's banner, and his badges as Great Master of the Household and High Justiciar of the kingdom. Half of these Campbells carried arquebusses; the remainder carried bows, targets, and two-handed claymores.

Argyle in person led the reserve, which consisted of 5000 warriors of the Ebudæ and western tribes of Lorn, all clad in their native tartans, with targets of burnished brass, battle-axes of steel, and short Highland bows. More than a hundred war-pipes were pouring the wild piobrachds of the various clans from flank to flank, as Huntly's little band approached them.

His vanguard consisted of 300 gentlemen on horseback, clad in bright armour, led by the Earl of Errol, Sir Patrick Gordon of Auchindoune, the Lairds of Gicht and Bonnitoun, Sir Thomas Kerr, and Halbert Gordon of the Moated Tower. In front of this small column were three fieldpieces under Sir Andrew Gray, afterwards colonel of the Scottish troops in Bohemia.

Gordon of Cluny led the right wing, Gordon of Abergeldie the left, and Huntly the main body. He had no reserve. In full armour, with a scarf of the Gordon tartan over his cuirass, with his visor up and his sword brandished, he rode along the line.

"My brave clansmen," he exclaimed, "and you, my comrades and most illustrious allies of the house of Errol, remember that this day no alternative is left us but victory or death—glory or extermination! We are not here to fight for our lives only, but for the existence of our families, our estates, our honour, and what is dearer than all beside, the church of our forefathers, and, with that church, the souls of our children, and the souls of all their posterity. In the name of God and the blessed Virgin, charge! a Gordon! a Gordon!"

Led on by the Lord High Constable (though galled by an ill-directed fire from the arquebussiers of Argyle), Huntly's vanguard of knights rushed with uplifted swords upon the first column of the Calvinists, who received them on their targets, and a furious combat took place. These gentlemen were in full armour, while the poor clansmen were only in their homespun tartan, and thus fought at great disadvantage; but their tremendous claymores cut through many a head and helmet, while every thrust pierced a coat-of-mail, or sliced away a yard of good horseflesh; thus many a steed recoiled frantically on the main body, bleeding and riderless.

Over the heads of these combatants, the cannoniers of Sir Andrew Gray fired briskly on the yellow standard, according to a treacherous arrangement made secretly between Huntly and Campbell of Lochnell, who bore a mortal enmity to Argyle, for having slain his brother Campbell of Calder in 1592; and, being next heir to the earldom, he saw with ambitious hope and joy the ordnance fire on that peculiar banner which marked the post of his chief; but, lo! a misdirected shot raked the ranks of Lochnell himself, and that deep-witted duinewassal was the first whom it cut in two. The next ball killed M'Neil of Barra, and the third wounded John Grant of Corriemonie.

From the brow of a steep eminence, the M'Leans poured volley after volley with their arquebusses on Huntly's desperate troop, until Sir Patrick Gordon of Auchindoune dashed up, and fell amongst them with a few horsemen; but then the M'Leans slung their fire-arms behind them, and repelled the troopers by the claymore, embowelling the horses by dirk and skene-dhu, and slaying the riders as they were tumbled prone to the earth; and there died the brave Auchindoune, pierced by fifty wounds. His knights fought blindly in a dark cloud; for the smoke of the cannon and arquebusses filled the whole glen, while their reports rang among the mountain peaks with a thousand echoes.

In dark sreen tartans, bare-legged and bare-armed, with their targets slung behind them, and their claymores swayed by both hands, the Campbells poured down in thousands like a torrent upon the devoted band of Huntly, whose daring horsemen broke into two bodies, one led by himself, the other by the high constable, who was severely wounded, and desperately they fought, with all the fury that Highland valour, feudal hatred, and religious rancour could inspire; and thus for two hours the battle raged in that narrow glen, till Argyle, observing that his main body wavered, ordered John Grant of Gartenbeg, with his column, consisting of a thousand men of his own name, to "advance and sweep the Catholics from the field."

Clad in scarlet tartan, with helmets and cuirasses of steel, and targets of burnished brass, this body, which had not been engaged otherwise than suffering from the cannonade, was advancing to end the contest, when their leader, who in secret was an ally of Huntly, and a well-wisher to the Catholic cause, threw his target over his shoulder, sheathed his claymore, and cried—

"To the mountains! to the mountains!" on which the Grants, with the whole left wing, gave way, and retired en masse towards the hills. Thus Kenneth Logie, who had long curbed his impatience, found himself alone, and in one moment more was involved among the advancing tide of Huntly's desperate horsemen, who, fighting every foot of the way, with the earl's torn banner fluttering above them, were hewing a passage over a field strewed with clansmen, whose tartans were drenched in blood. Nothing could surpass the bravery on both sides; one fighting for glory—the other for their lives, honour, and religion.

In the heat of the conflict, Lord Huntly had his horse shot under him, and Halbert Gordon, who, with all his faults, was brave as a lion, quickly slew Campbell of Auchinbreck, and remounted the earl on that gentleman's steed. At that moment, Kenneth Logie, who, with the coolness of a spectator, had been watching the conflict, reserving his strength and his wrath for Gordon, uttered a wild yell of rage and grief, and rushed upon him. They both wore open helmets, and, recognising each other, encountered at once, bridle to bridle, and hand to hand, with a savage and sombre fury, which rendered them quite oblivious of the battle that raged like a storm around them. They had not a breath for insult or invective; their teeth were set; their eyes were full of fire; they both hovered on the brink of eternity, and each saw nothing but his enemy.

"For her sake, blessed Lord, direct my hand!" prayed Kenneth, and it seemed as if that voiceless prayer had been heard; for at the very moment his sword passed through the breast of Gordon, who fell forward across the saddle of his victor.

"Dog!" exclaimed the latter, seizing him relentlessly by the throat; "dog, and son of a dog, dost thou repent her death?"

"I do," gasped Gordon, almost choked in his blood; "sorely I do; but that fatal bullet was for thee—for thee—and not for her!"

"Would to Heaven thine aim had been more true! Lily," cried Kenneth, looking upward, "I have avenged thee."

"And thus I avenge myself!" exclaimed Gordon, as, with the last energy apparently of life, he twice buried his dagger in the body of Kenneth, and they fell together from their horses on the slippery field.

Gordon was supposed to be dead—but evil spirits do not pass so readily from among us.

Kenneth was borne away by a few of the Campbells; but he seemed to be in a dying state.

By this time Argyle, notwithstanding the vast superiority of his forces, had lost the battle, and Huntly was victorious. Disheartened by the treachery of the Grants and Lochnell, the Calvinists gave way in every direction; and though the brave M'Leans did all that mortal men could do to retrieve the falling fortune of the day, Huntly's horsemen drove them pell-mell beyond the rugged brook of Altconlachan, from whence the clansmen retreated to those steep mountains, up which mailed troopers could never pursue them. There, in the obscurity of the night, far down below in Glenlivat, they heard the trumpets sounding, as they summoned the Hays and the Gordons around their leaders, and all dismounted to kneel on that bloody field, where they solemnly sang Te Deum Laudamus.

Argyle left his two cousins Lochnell and Auchinbreck, the Laird of Barra, and five hundred men, dead in the valley; while Huntly lost only the Knight of Auchindoune, the Laird of Gicht, and a score or two of troopers.

Such was the Highland battle of Balrinnes or Glenlivat, which struck terror into the Scottish Protestants, and where Argyle lost his famous yellow banner, which was borne with other trophies into the Garioch, and placed on the summit of Huntly's castle of Strathbogie.

Abandoned by the Campbells in their hurried retreat, and left almost dying among the mountains that overlook the Livat, Kenneth found shelter in the hut of a poor old Highland crone, whose medical treatment, however kindly meant, aggravated the deadly nature of his wounds; and, as he had no wish to live, two months after the battle he sought his native place, but to die; and, however like romance the last episode of this story may be, I must only rehearse the event as it was narrated to me.

John Shool, the sexton of Logie Kirk, on entering the old burial-ground one cold and bitter morning in December, for the purpose of digging a grave, found a horse, with the bridle trailing between its legs, cropping the grass among the mounds and tombs; and he was still more startled—if any thing can startle one whose occupation is so horrible—on finding an armed man lying on the flat stone which covers fair Lily's grave. His rigid arms were spread over it, and his cold cheek rested on the letters of her name. The old carle turned him over, and uttered a cry of astonishment and pity on recognising Kenneth Logie of the Forest!

John averred, that when first found his lips were pressed upon the frost-covered gravestone. Some persons thought that this might be the sexton's fancy, or the position was accidental.

He looked calm and placid, and, as the winter sunshine fell upon his blanched face, and the morning wind lifted the dark locks of his dewy hair, it seemed to the old gravedigger as if poor Kenneth smiled.

He was buried there, and the stone which bears the inscription (already given), with the sword and cross, marks the place where he lies; the defaced tomb beside it covers the grave of Lily Donaldson.*

* A large cairn marked, or still marks, the place where Lily fell by the hand of Halbert Gordon. The stronghold of his family was pulled down many years ago, and the materials were used in the erection of other edifices; the deep wide Moat is still traceable on the farm called Parks-of-Coldstone. It surrounds an area of an acre; but the morass has long since been drained.

The flowers of many a summer have strewed their leaves above these graves; but at this hour the memory of those lovers is as fresh in Cromar as if they had been buried only yesterday.

Gordon did not die; but, leaving Scotland for ever, entered, as a Catholic, the service of the Emperor, and assuming his mother's name and designation, as Halbert Cunninghame of the Boortree-haugh, soon rose to honour and distinction. After the fashion of some of the Scoto-Imperialists, he spelt his name in a foreign manner, and as "Albrecht Count of Kœningheim" it will be frequently found in the pages of the Svedish Intelligencer, and the works of Famiano Strada, the Jesuit.