"From that hour a deadly and a mortal hatred possessed the heart of Douglas; and on his knees before the altar of St. Bryde, in Douglas-dale, he made a deep and impious vow of vengeance. Hearing that the new sheriff was administering justice in the kirk of the blessed Mary at Hawick, he entered the town at the head of his vassals; and the Knight of Dalhousie, having no suspicion of injury from his old friend and comrade in arms, was easily taken at vantage, wounded, and overpowered.
"Stripped of his armour, and loaded with chains, he was dragged through many a wild moss and moorland to this strong fortress, and here into this deep vault his captor thrust him down, manacled and bleeding with all his rankling wounds, and here the doomed man was left to die!
"It is a dark story, and I see thou startest. Here the wounded knight was left to struggle with hunger and with thirst, with cold and with agony. Above the place of his confinement there lay a heap of corn, and through a joint in the arch the grains fell one by one, yet few and far between—even as the water now drops from the same place—and with these he prolonged life for seventeen days, despite the agony of his festering wounds. On the seventeenth he died!
"And here his bones still lie, for the dampness of the vault has preserved them."[*]
[*] Some of these remains were found by Sir W. Scott, and by him presented to the Earl of Dalhousie. He was taken on the 20th June, sayeth the "Black Book of Scone."—Mag. Absalom.
"Rest him, God!" ejaculated Konrad, with a shudder which he could not repress.
"Such will be thy fate if thou art left here!"
"Whatever Heaven hath in store for me is welcome. I am tired of life."
"Thou snufflest like a Reformer. What! tired of life, and thou so young?"
"'Tis the verity!" responded the prisoner with a sigh; "but what thinkest thou, page, will be my fate?"