"In my stomach. Bring me a sword, or lend me thy poniard, and I will swallow them both also. It runs in the family. I had an uncle who could digest cannon balls."
Tam uttered another of his hoarse laughs, and, bearing away the wooden tray, retired, and secured the double doors as usual. * * * * *
Next morning, at the early but accustomed hour, he undid the accumulated bolts and locks of the inner doorway (while Dobbie secured the outer), and entered, with breakfast on the trencher.
A cry burst from him, and he started back aghast on finding the place void, for one glance sufficed to show that it was empty.
The earl was indeed gone!
"Ah, the knife!" thought Trotter, as he rushed to the window. Every bar was in its place, and the undisturbed cobwebs of years were still woven between them. Not a flag of the floor, not a stone of the wall, appeared to have been displaced; and, terrified by such a phenomenon, Tam Trotter uttered a stentorian howl of dismay, and fled from the empty chamber.
CHAPTER XXV.
DOUGLASDALE.
"But you, dear scenes! that far away
Expand beneath these mountains blue,
Where fancy sheds a purer ray,
And robes the fields in richer hue,—
A softer voice in every gale,
I 'mid your woodlands wild should hear;
And Death's unbreathing shades would fail
To sigh their murmurs in mine ear." LEYDEN.
The sun of a morning in June shone brightly upon Douglasdale, as a valley of the middle ward of Lanarkshire is named—the country of the puissant Douglases. The pure air, the bright sunshine, the fresh meadows, the fragrant wind that stole along the uplands, were all indicative of that delightful season when the trees are heavy with their richest foliage, and the voices of the mavis, the merle, and the wood-pigeon are heard within their deep recesses. Under golden masses of the dark green broom, the white hawthorn, and the wild rose, the Douglas water stole, over its pebbled bed, towards the west.