"Nothing?" continued Hamilton, furiously drawing his dagger; "know ye that stabbed—foully stabbed by the hand of the sacrilegious hag who bore thee, her pure blood has stained the floor of the church of God!"
"The cause of your injurious words procures their pardon. Stabbed! oh, too well know I that, for her blood dyed my hands as I knelt by her side; a dagger was there—a bodkin—my mother—Madeline...." muttered Florence incoherently. "God knows I am every way innocent, sakeless, and free of Madeline's blood—my Madeline, whom I loved with a love akin to worship! You have your dagger, Claude Hamilton—you and I are each the last of our races—strike! add one more item to the gory catalogue of this day's slaughter. Strike!" he added, sinking on one knee; "I care not to leave the last and final blow, with the triumph, if a triumph it is—and the fatal inheritance of our houses—the hatred and the feud, to thee!"
Mad with a fury which rendered him pitiless as a hungry tiger, Hamilton raised the dagger, and it flashed in the twilight which straggled through the ivy screen that closed the cavern-mouth, when his uplifted arm was arrested by the hand of some one behind, and the Countess of Yarrow, with the vicar of Tranent, appeared before them, as suddenly as if they had sprung from the floor of rock below.
"Guide me God, and every saint in heaven!" cried the old man, as he dashed his poniard down; "am I going mad? or do I see before me things that are not in existence!"
CHAPTER LI.
JOY.
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;
Rose-blossoms on her hands together prest.—Keats.
It was, indeed, Madeline, and no illusion or shadowy mockery, that stood before them, smiling, and smiling sweetly; looking her own fair self again, but paler, and, it might be, somewhat sickly in aspect; for the skilful nun of Haddington, by her simples and leechcraft, had really cured her; and barely was she able to be moved in a litter, when the sudden advance of the English, and the destruction of the village, the church, and vicarage of Tranent, compelled the vicar with his charge to seek safety in flight. Failing to reach the capital, which was already crowded by thousands of fugitives from all the southern and eastern towns and villages, on that very evening, after wandering from place to place, by a strange coincidence they had taken shelter in the same cavern to which Florence and her uncle had been driven by the force of events, or by the tide of war. Thus rage on one hand, and grief on the other, gave place to mutual explanations, and the details of dangers escaped and toils endured.
"But tell me, Father John," said Florence, "whence came the sound of that passing bell, which on the fatal evening struck such a horror on my heart?"
"It was a mistake of my sacristan."