Many little chapels like Kilmartin, and such as St. Catherine at the Balm-well, St. John the Baptist on the Burghmuir, and of our Lady at Bridge-end, studded all the fertile Lothians, and were each kept by an old priest, who derived a scanty subsistence from the pious, the charitable or the credulous; from farmers, for blessing their herds and crops, for baptising their little ones, or praying for fine weather,—even now, when Scotland was on the verge of that tremendous change the Reformation. To Florence, the calm seclusion of this old chapel, which was situated in a green hollow of those wild and barren hills, seemed soothing and inviting, and there he resolved to rest awhile, and if possible to give himself up to deeper thought, that under its calm influence he might discover some means of extrication from his present difficulties. Dismounting, he tied his horse to the chapel door, and entered without observing that under the sycamores there stood three richly-caparisoned horses, two of which were ridden by armed grooms, in the royal livery, while the third, whereon was a lady's pad of crimson velvet, was riderless.
A plain altar, with a stone step, well-worn by the knees of generations of peasantry who had prayed there; a rude crucifix of freestone, carved within a niche, and an old skull, which, if abstracted, was said to have the power of always returning to the chapel, were the sole features of the interior, unless we add a slab in the centre, marked by a cross, and inscribed Mater Dei memento mei. This marked the grave of Father Martin, the repentant soldier of Ptolmais, who lived to the age of ninety, and died when Alexander III. was on the throne of Scotland.
Florence had scarcely entered, dipped his fingers in the stone font at the door, and surveyed the bare, bleak little oratory, with the listlessness of a pre-occupied man, when the rustling of silk and the sound of a light step behind, made him turn, and lo! Madeline Home, wearing over her usual dress a long blue riding-robe of Flemish cloth, and having on her pretty head one of the prettiest of little Anne Boleyn hoods of purple velvet, stood before him, with her long skirt gathered up gracefully in her left hand, on which sat her favourite hawk (the same bird which had excited Dame Alison's indignation), and in her right she held a jewelled riding-switch.
On beholding a person in the little chapel, she paused; but when their eyes met, a bright flush passed over her sweet delicate face, with an expression of surprise and inquiry. Her half-opened lips revealed her little teeth, so white and closely set; and her dilated eyes seemed to ask an explanation, but Florence pressed her hand, and then they exchanged one of those long and tender kisses which are never forgotten.
"Dearest Florence," she whispered, "how came you here?"
"At a time so strangely opportune, you would ask?"
"You did not follow me!"
"Follow you? Heavens, no!—and yet had I known——"
"Then how came you here?"
"By fatality—happy fortune—which you choose. God alone knoweth how, for, my sweetest heart, I know not. I rode forth from Fawside to escape from a bitterness too deep for telling; and riding on, on—I knew not, cared not whither; my grey—the grey the queen gave me—tarried at the chapel-door, and so I am here."