Dividing into three, at a wave of his hand the horsemen separated, and galloped off on their different routes.
Leaving the Knight of Ormiston and the Lieutenant of the Archers to pursue their various roads, which happily they did without success, we will accompany the Earl, who, with twenty prickers, or light-armed horsemen, rode towards the bridge of Bothwell, pursuing the ancient Roman way.
It was a glorious summer morning; the air was balmy, and all nature wore its brightest hue; the green fields and the waving foliage were rich and verdant, and glittered in the silver dew, which the sun was exhaling in gauzy mist. Bothwell, full of anxiety to recapture Konrad, and thereafter to find some means necessary for stifling the dangerous secret he possessed, rode furiously on, despatching his riders by couples along the various narrow paths that led from the ancient way, to the different baronial towers and hamlets whose smoke was seen curling from the woods on each side.
With their mossy roofs and clay-built lums, the latter were generally nestling in the wooded dingles which were overlooked by the battlemented peels, that stood in bold outline against the sky, with their red walls glancing, and dark smoke ascending in the sunshine. From their summits many a watchman looked sharply and keenly at the distant horsemen as they rode through the thickets below, appearing at times on the dusty highway, or spurring along the steep Hill-sides, with their lance-heads flashing like silver stars among the bright green leaves.
With all the impetuosity of his nature, Bothwell rode fast and furiously on, and till he reached the muir never drew bridle, save once, to cross himself and mutter an ave on passing one of those little chapels or roadside shrines, which are still so common in Spain and Italy, and which the pious spirit of the olden time erected by the wayside to remind the passers of their religious duties. It was rudely formed, and had been erected by his pious ancestress, Agnes Stewart of Buchan, that the wayfarer might say one prayer for the soul of her husband, Adam Earl of Bothwell, who had fallen fighting for Scotland on Flodden field.
And here the Earl, even in his path of vengeance, paused to offer up a prayer.
The little chapel was formed by a single gothic arch, containing an altar, a niche, and pedestal graven with the words, Saint Mary, pray for me! but the hands of the Reformers had been there; the shrine was empty, the altar mutilated, the weeds and wallflower were growing in luxuriance about it, and the fountain, that once had flowed from a carved face into a stone basin below, in consequence of the wanton and fanatical destruction of the latter, was running across the roadway, where it had long since made for itself a little channel.
The extensive muir of Bothwell, which is now so beautiful in its modern state of cultivation and fertility, was then a wide sequestered waste of purple heather, dotted by grey rocks, tufts of golden broom, and masses of dark green whin.
Traces of that recent feudal conflict, in which Ormiston and Bolton had been handling their swords, were met at every rood of the way, by the Earl and six horsemen who now accompanied him. Broken swords and splintered lances were lying by the roadside, and parties of peasantry were passed, bearing away the dead and wounded in grey plaids, on biers of pikes or branches of trees; the women tearing their hair and lamenting aloud; the men, with their bonnets drawn over their knitted brows, brooding on that future vengeance which, in those days of feudalism, and of bold hearts and ready hands, was never far distant.
A ride of a mile and a half from his castle gate brought the Earl to the village of Bothwell, which bordered the ancient way known as the Watling street. Then it was but a little thatched hamlet, clustered with gable ends and clay lums, near the venerable church founded by Archibald the Grim, Lord of Galloway. Beyond, lay the mains and groves of Bothwellhaugh, possessed by a lesser baron of the house of Hamilton.