"Well!" reiterated the Earl, in a sepulchral voice, as, overcome and exhausted by the sudden revulsion of his terrible thoughts, he leaned against the doorway. "Well! saidst thou? Oh, Hob Ormiston! my very soul seemed at my finger-points when I grasped him. My God! what am I saying? I was intoxicated—delirious! Cain—Cain!"
"Ah, Mariette!" groaned the repentant Bolton; "thy dying cry, and the last glare of thy despairing eyes, will haunt me to my grave!"
"Cock and pie!" cried Ormiston, with astonishment and exasperation; "have we here two bearded men, or two schulebairns blubbering over their Latinities? May a thousand yelling fiends hurl ye both to hell!" he added savagely. "Away! disperse—while I fire the train. The match—the lunt! Hither, Paris—Hubert—thou French villain! quick!"
"Separate!" said the Earl of Morton; "disperse—I go to Dalkeith on the spur. Away!" and, leaping on the horse that had borne the powder, this noble Earl, who at all times was extremely economical of his own person, galloped away, and disappeared over the brae to the southward.
Bothwell's olive face glowed for a moment, as he blew the slow match and fired the train. Like a fiery serpent, it glowed along the ground, flashed through the open doorway, and down the dark corridor of the house, till it reached the vaulted chamber below that of Darnley, and where the powder lay. Then there was a pause—but for a moment only—for, lo'——
Broad, red, and lurid, on the shadowy night, through all the grated windows of the house of the Kirk-of-Field, there flashed a volume of light—dazzling and blinding light—eclipsing the full-orbed moon and all the sparkling stars—revealing the forms of the shrinking conspirators, and every surrounding object. Full on the massive ramparts of the city, tufted with weeds and blackened by the smoke of years, fell that sudden glow, revealing the strong embrasures that stretched away into far obscurity, the grim bastel-house close by, with its deep-mouthed gunport and peering culverin—on the ivied aisles of Mary's lonely kirk—on the shattered tower of the Dominicans—and displaying even for a gleam the distant woods of Merchiston. The fields quaked—the walls of the mansion shook; and then came a roar, as if the earth was splitting.
The solid masonry rent from copestone to foundation in a hundred ruddy fissures; the massive vaults yawned and opened; the window-gratings were torn asunder like gossamer webs; and a gigantic column of fire and smoke, dust and stones, ascended into the air, as if vomited from the mouth of a volcano, to descend in ruin and darkness on the earth; and a vast pile of rubbish was all that remained of the house of St. Mary-in-the-Fields!
"Ho! ho!" cried Ormiston, with a wild laugh. "Like a bolt from a bow, there goeth Henry Stuart, Lord of Darnley, Duke of Albany, and King of Scotland!"
For a moment Bothwell felt as if he neither lived nor breathed; but Ormiston hurried him away, while all their appalled comrades dispersed in various directions. Konrad, although the whole affair was an incomprehensible mystery to him, acting by the natural instinct of self-preservation, on finding himself deserted by companions whom he dreaded and abhorred, instead of returning to the city, struck into a narrow horseway that led southward, and hurried with all speed from the scene of this terrible explosion; for the whole bearing of those who had so suddenly left him to his own reflections, informed him that it would neither be conducive to his safety or honour to be found in a vicinity so dangerous.
Ignorant of the country, and with no other object than to leave the city far behind him, he traversed the rough and winding path, on one side of which lay a vast lake[*] and the ruins of a convent; on the other, fields marked in the ancient fashion (when draining was unknown) by high rigs, having between deep balks or ditches, where the water lay glistening in the moonlight. Then he entered upon the vast common muir of the burgh, that in the gloom of the night appeared to be bounded only by the distant hills.