For the hundredth time that day, she anxiously consulted the horologue. This clock was a curious piece of mechanism, which occupied a niche in the hall, and was supported on four little brass pillars, surmounted by a metal dome, on which the hours were struck by a clumsy iron hammer. It bore the date 1507, and the name Leadenhall, having been found in an English ship, taken by Sir Robert Barton, who had presented it as an almost priceless gift to her late husband.
Nine o'clock struck from this sonorous horologue; and then the pale mother, who, in those perilous and stormy days, waited for an only and long-absent son, struck her hands despairingly together, and again seated herself at the grated window of the hall, to watch the darkening shadows without.
Suddenly a sound struck her ear, and a horseman was seen galloping up the narrow bridle-path which traversed Fawside Brae and led direct to the castle wall.
"Nurse—nurse Maud!" said Lady Alison impetuously to an old woman wearing a curchie and camlet gown, who joined her; "my eyes are full of tears, and I cannot see—is that horseman our bairn, or only old Westmains?"
"'Tis Westmains—I would ken his grey mare amang a thousand."
"He rideth fast, nurse, for a man so old in years."
"Yea; but a drunken man and a famished horse come fast home to bower and stall," responded the Abigail crustily; "the hour is late, and Preston's men were at Edinburgh market to-day; so, perhaps our bailie had a shrewd guess the way might be beset between the night and morning."
"Beset!—and my son——" muttered the pale mother through her clenched teeth.
"Fear na for him; he has friends——"
"Friends?"