First, to deliver his letter to the Regent, Earl of Arran.
Second, to deliver the other missive of Henry of Valois to the queen-mother, Mary of Lorraine.
Third, to discover his unknown mistress.
Fourth, to avenge his father's feud and fall by ridding the world of Claude Hamilton of Preston, the Lord Kilmaurs, and a few others; after which he would settle soberly down in his mother's house, and, for a time, lead the quiet life of a country gentleman—at least, such a life as they led in those days, when their swords were never from their sides.
And now, as he surmounted the long ridge of Fawside, the landscape opened further to the south and eastward, and he saw the old square keep of Elphinstone, in which George Wishart had been confined in the preceding year by Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, and the wall of which had rent with a mighty sound—rent from battlement to basement, as we may yet see it, at the moment of his martyrdom before the castle of St. Andrews.
The heart of Florence beat six pulses in a second as he drew nearer home, and saw the huge column of smoke ascending lazily from the square chimney of the hall, and the black crows and white pigeons fraternizing together on the stone ridge of the copehouse; and now he passed old Roger's thatched domicile, the Westmains or Grange, from whence the inmates of the castle were supplied with farm produce. It was all under fine cultivation save one wild spot named the Deilsrig, which was set aside, or left totally unused, for the propitiation of evil spirits; and none in the neigbourhood doubted that cattle which strayed or grazed thereon were elf-shot by the evil one, for they were frequently found dead within the turf boundary of this infernal spot, as their huge bones whitening among the dog-grass remained to attest; and there, too, lay the unblessed graves of certain Egyptians, who, despite the protections granted by James IV to "Anthony Gavino, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt," had been judicially drowned in the river Esk by Earl Bothwell, the sheriff of Haddington.
Florence glanced at the place, which had so many terrors for him as a child, and dashed up to the arched gate of the tower, where his emotion was such, that it was not until after three attempts he could sound the copper horn which hung by a chain to the wall; for such was the fashion then, when door-bells and brass knockers, like gas and steam and electricity, were still in the womb of time.
In a minute more he had sprung from his horse and rushed up the stair to the hall, where his mother, with a cry of mingled fear and joy, clasped him to her breast, and wept like a true woman rather than the stern and Spartan dame she usually seemed. Then old Roger of the Westmains, in the exuberance of his joy, flung his bonnet in the fire and danced about the hall table; and the grey-haired nurse, Maud, contended with the vicar, Mass John of Tranent, for the next and longest embrace of the returned one; for all welcomed him back to his home as one reprieved from the dead; for surmise had been exhausted, and all ingenuity had failed to afford a clue to his mysterious disappearance after landing at Leith from the galley of M. de Villegaignon.
After the first transports of her joy had subsided—and, indeed, they subsided soon, for her natural sternness of manner and ferocity of purpose soon resumed their sway in her angry and widowed heart, his mother kissed him thrice upon the forehead, held him at arm's length from her breast, surveying his features with an expression of mingled love, tenderness, anxiety, and anger.
"Thou hast been ill, Florence; thy cheeks are pale, wan, and hollow. Thou hast been suffering, my son—yea, suffering deeply. How came this about? Say!—thou hast no secrets from thine old mother!"