How thou unkind wad’st been to me,
I would have kept my Border-side,
In spite of all thy peers and thee.’
‘Hood her up, Dick! The worthless haggard! Like all her sex, I would not trust her a bow-shot out of hearing of the whistle, out of sight of the lure. Curse her! I should have known she was but a kestrel. By the bones of Earl Patrick, she shall never strike quarry in Liddesdale again!’
The warden was in a towering passion. His favourite hawk, a bird that he had chosen to name ‘The Queen,’ had not only missed the wild-fowl at which he had flown her, but spreading her broad pinions to the wind, had sailed recklessly away for several miles ere he could recover her, a salvage that had only been made at considerable expenditure of patience and horseflesh.
He was now standing by the side of his panting steed at the head of one of those deep, grassy glens which give such a pastoral character to the wilds of the Scottish Border. A severe and exhausting gallop the warden must have had, to judge by the condition of the bonny bay, whose heaving sides were reeking and lathered with sweat; yet the good horse pawed, snorted, shook himself, and got back his wind, ere the rider recovered his temper.
‘Dick-o-the-Cleugh,’ too, had mercifully taken his long body out of the saddle, and was now busy replacing hood and jesses on the recent captive.
‘There’s no siccan a falcon ’twixt here and Carlisle,’ said Dick, smoothing with no ungentle hand the neck plumage of the refractory wild bird. ‘Whiles she’ll gang her ain gate when she misses her stoop, and what for no? A falcon’s but a birdie when a’s said and done, and she’s just the queen of falcons; bonny and wilful, as a queen behoves to be!’
Bothwell turned angrily upon his follower. The warden’s temper had become more violent and uncertain than ever.