He temptingly poured some of the sparkling water on the floor. A gleam passed over her eyes, and in a moment she placed her name, Jane Seton, to the paper, vainly endeavouring, as she did so, to see what the lines written above her signature contained; but there was a mist before her eyes, and now they failed her. She threw away the pen with a shriek, and stretched out her hands towards the vessel of water.
"What would ye think, now, if I spilled it all on the flagstones?" said Birrel, with a grin, as he withheld the jar.
At this cruel threat she could only clasp her hands, and gaze at him in silence.
After enjoying her agony for a few moments, he handed her the jar, from which she drank greedily and thirstily.
"Hechhow!" said Birrel, with a triumphant growl, "now ye drink, cummer, as I drank of the Douglasburn, at the foot of the Cairntable," and, extinguishing their lamp, the three wretches retired, and she was left to her own terrible thoughts.
Again and again she drank of the water, but the thrill of delight its coolness and freshness afforded her soon passed away; and setting down the vessel carefully, she gazed at it, and then burst into a passion of tears.
The paper she had signed, what could it mean?
At that moment the clock of St. Cuthbert's church, which stood in the hollow far down below the Castle, on the west, struck slowly and solemnly the hour of four, and this sound, as it ascended to her ear, recalled her to other thoughts.
The morning was shining through the rusty grating of her window—the morning of another day. She thought bitterly of the paper she had signed; and deploring her lack of strength and resolution, buried her lace in her pillow, and gave way at last to a wild paroxysm of despair.