Tales of the Covenanters - Ellen Emma Guthrie

"Mercy, mercy!" cried Lucy, now fully alive to the horrors of her lover's situation; and dragging herself to the feet of Claverhouse, she seized his hand and besought him in the most heart-rending terms to spare her lover. "He will never more fight against the King," she said, "he was returning here to live in peace—oh let him go!"

With a calm, cold smile, Claverhouse withdrew his hand from her hold, and made a signal to his men to prepare their arms.

"Mother, mother!" shrieked Lucy, as Mrs. Armstrong, almost breathless from her exertions, reached the spot where she knelt, "kneel with me before these men. The sight of your grey hairs may move their hearts to compassion, and they may grant you the mercy they have denied me."

"William!" exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong in faltering accents, "what of my husband and son—where are they?"

Young Crosbie's lips trembled. He sadly shook his head. She was answered—both had fallen at Bothwell Bridge.

"Now may I indeed kneel—kneel in sorrow and in anguish, for I am bereaved!" And with these words the weeping widow threw herself on her knees, and with clasped hands and upturned eyes, besought pardon for the youth about to suffer.

"O!" she exclaimed, "if your hearts still retain one human feeling; if they are not yet wholly seared by the bloody scenes through which you have passed, hearken unto me this night. It is a heart-broken woman who addresses you—one who is sorrowful even unto death. Husband and son have fallen. The lover of my youth, and he who would have been the stay of mine old age, are taken from me; and yet, I trust, in the midst of my affliction, I can say, God's will, not mine, be done! Will not, then, the blood of two suffice you——?"

"Two!" shouted Sir Robert Grierson, "though you had lost twenty such rebellious knaves, what matters it to us? death to all such rascals!"