White Cockades: An Incident of the "Forty-Five"

by Edward Prime-Stevenson

But the other answered, "I am as astonished as you; but it is too late, Your Majesty."

Boyd was stretched out at the foot of an oak, carefully tended. "What is it, true friend?" asked Charles, bending over him and clasping his sinewy hand. "God do more to me for ill than he hath, if I do not revenge you upon those who have so wronged you for my sake! Are you in great pain?"

"Not so great but that I would fain hear of your adventures after you left my poor house," began Boyd, gasping, despite his fortitude. "Alas! my house had done them no wrong! Why should they destroy it with its Master?"

"With its Master?" remonstrated Charles; "nay, Boyd, you are over-fearful. Chisholm and I—see, there he is—oh, we found the path that he well knew how to trace, and were here hours ago. A number of brave men, believing, from Rab Kaims' tale, that mischief was in the air, were dashing away toward the Neith Road to fall upon Danforth when he should set out for the town. They were your rescuers, and had gone when Chisholm and I got hither."

"God be blessed for them!" replied Boyd, feebly. "I thank Him that I, too, have been counted worthy to suffer for my king! What a joy, what an honor forever, in my family, unto Andrew's children's children, shall this week remain!" The thought seemed to possess him wholly.

"And what keen remorse and regret to me, noble Master of Windlestrae!" exclaimed Charles. He drew Andrew closer as they knelt there together. The lad had grown more alarmed than ever at his father's appearance, but was far from suspecting that MacCollum's whisper pronounced the wound mortal, and Gilbert's life a question of brief time. The infuriated trooper had not thrown away his shot.

"Nay, my lord—be it not so," replied Boyd, "not so! What hath chanced is of God and for my sovereign. Aha!" added he with a scornful curl of his lips, now white and compressed in pain, "what will my Windlestrae neighbors say when they learn it? Andrew, boy, the honor of my house, of thy house is won for thee, when Scotland shall see peace beneath her rightful king. Would I might not die here! If I could but live to welcome such a day, too! Not so is it set for me!"

"Father, father!" ejaculated Andrew, dropping his royal protector's hand as the bitter truth broke upon him. "Why speak you thus? Do you suffer so? Oh, tell me not, tell me not that he is—is dying! Look at him, gentlemen, look at him!"

"My poor fellow," responded MacCollum, gently, as he felt the patient's pulse—for Boyd had closed his eyes an instant, from agony and exhaustion—"I should wrong you by feigning. I fear that he cannot hold out long."

Boyd looked up again. A great change had suddenly come over his face. Andrew was terrified at it. His father not only was intensely pale and weak, but the lines of age had somehow stolen into his rugged countenance, the shadows of eld into his sunken eyes.