Meanwhile, passing under the dark brow of the Doocraig, a rock of the Calton, and past the old street and chapel of St. Ninian, which lay on the opposite eminence, the earl hurried down the long pathway then known as the Loan, which led to Leith. St. Anthony's Gate, which closed the seaport towards Edinburgh, was shut, but with the first peep of dawn it was opened by the warders; and as the earl had bestowed the interval in cleansing himself from several spots of blood, and adjusting his toilet, he passed without question the keepers of the barrier, and several of the old hospitallers of St. Anthony, who, even at that early hour, were perambulating the Kirkgate in their long black cassocks, which had a large T and a bell shaped in blue cloth on the breasts thereof.
At the pier—an ancient erection of wood which was burned by the English during Hertford's wanton invasion seven years after—the earl found the Kinghorn sloop just about to sail, and sprang on board, descending from the pier to the deck by one of those old-fashioned treenebrigges, which, by an act of the legislature in 1425, all ferriers were bound to have prepared for the safe shipment of horse and man. Unchanged since the days of James I., the fare was then only twopence Scots for a man or woman, and sixpence for a horse, under pain of imprisonment in the Tolbooth, and the forfeiture of forty shillings to the crown in case of extortion; thus the earl, though his funds were low indeed, easily passed on board, among the Fifeshire cottars and Burrowtown merchants of small wares, who crowded the low waist of the little vessel, which in a short time was running past the Mussel Cape and the Beacon Rock (whereon the martello tower now stands), and bearing away for the quaint and venerable town of Kinghorn, which lies on the opposite shore.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE PORTE OF THE SPUR.
"What! no reprieve, no least indulgence given,
No beam of hope from any point of heaven?
Ah, mercy! mercy! art thou dead above?
Is love extinguished in the source of love?"
The Last Day, Book III.
Redhall's second wound was of the most dangerous kind. It was below that inflicted by Roland, but nearer the region of the heart; it bled profusely; and his blind passion and fury on discovering that Lady Jane had really escaped, carried him beyond all bounds. While Trotter sprang on horseback, and galloped off for John of the Silvermills, and Dobbie, armed with the warrant, was despatched to recapture the fugitive Jane and her brother the earl, and have them secured in the castle of Edinburgh, Redhall, in a paroxysm of rage and despair, so great that it rendered him supine and powerless, lay on his bed as in a swoon, until the arrival of the physician, on whom, as on all, he enjoined (under the most tremendous threats) solemn silence concerning a wound, the inflicter of which he declined to name.
The strong emotions of anger and revenge, which, with every fresh interview, rejection, and defeat, had been gradually gathering in his heart, had now indeed swollen, drop by drop, to the torrent he had predicted; and, like the reed upon the current, she was about to be swept away with it.
"Harkye, Dobbie!" said he, through his clenched teeth, between which the blood was oozing, as he writhed in agony on his bed; "harkye! give me thy thumb; silence on all this—as thou livest, my good man and true—silence on this matter—I tell thee silence! Here is the warrant—seek the Albany herald and captain of the guard—quick! have this woman committed to ward, as it imports!"
"Should she say she has been our prisoner already?"
"Begone, fool! who would believe her? Hence—hence, my God!—go, wretch," he added, in a low, hissing voice, as Dobbie hurried away; "go, and accomplish this my work of vengeance; and, one day or other, I shall brush thee, too, from my path, like the bloated spider thou art!"