When again the hosteller of the "Golden Rose" saw his fair roan nag, it was pierced by bullets, half-disembowelled, and lying drowned in the lake which then formed the northern moat of Edinburgh.
The darkness had now completely set in; and, save where a few trees, turf fences, or low dykes of stone and earth inclosed the fields, the whole country between the city and its seaport was open, but varied by many undulations and eminences covered by furze, tufted broom, and dark-green whin, or broken by hollows that were swampy, where the coot squatted in the oozy pools and the heron sent up its lonely cry from amid the thick rushes and masses of the broad-leaved water-dock.
Leaving Leith, which was then without those strong walls and iron gates by which it was engirt during the stormy regency of Mary of Lorraine, Fawside, after tracking his way almost instinctively through narrow alleys of thatched cottages and kail-gardens, ascended the brae above the Abbot's Bridge, and reached the road that led by the Bonny-toun (or Bonnie-haugh), a little hamlet where, in after-years, old Bishop Keith wrote his "History of the Scottish Church;" but the hum of the river, which there poured over a ledge of rough rocks, had scarcely died away in his rear, when swiftly and furiously he heard the clatter of iron hoofs upon the dusty bridle-road he was traversing.
At that moment the near hind shoe of his nag gave way, but by adhering to the hoof by a nail or two for some paces, nearly brought the animal down on its haunches, and even this trivial occurrence served to lessen the distance between Fawside and his pursuers, who cared not to disguise their purpose, as they shouted, halloed, and taunted him by all the epithets and scurrility incident to the vulgar of the time; and foremost of all this rout, who were becoming excited with a thirst for blood and all the ardour of a hunt or race, rode Symon Brodie, the butler of Preston, mounted on a blood horse which belonged to his master, and had more than once borne at its neck the silver bell, the prize of the winner at Lanark races.
"Come on! come on!" he was exclaiming; "and look, lads, to your whingers and spur-whangs, for we win on him fast! Turn ye, Fawside! turn ye! and face, if ye dare, the same men that slew your kinsmen! Through! through!—a Hamilton! a Hamilton!"
These taunts made Fawside's blood boil within him, and a storm of hatred at these enemies of his family now tracking him with the most deadly intentions, gathered with stern ferocity in his heart: but the odds were too many against him; and though his cheek glowed and every pulse quickened with passion, he held on his way towards the city without swerving or casting a single glance behind. His pursuers were now so close, that he could hear them encouraging each other and laughing at those whom they distanced.
"Spur on—spur on!" cried the butler; "this gay galliard has nine golden targets at his velvet hat."
"They will blink brawly at our bonnet-lugs in the morning sun!" exclaimed another, goring his horse on hearing this fabricated incentive to blood and robbery. "I have plundered Dame Alison's eel-arks in the Howmire for a month past, and grazed my nowte on Birsley brae, but I must e'en change a' that if the laird win hame."
"The auld devil in the tower will burst her bobbins wi' spite if we slay her son!" said a third.
"On, on," cried others, "ere he gain the town-gates, for then the watch and the craftsmen will be raised like a hornet's nest on us, and the provost has but one word for brawlers—the Wuddie!"