"A witch-carlin!" muttered the butler. "I hope some fine day to see the iron branks on her jaws."
"'Tis said she rambles about in the likeness of a brown tyke, to work evil on us," added Mungo Tennant. "If I had her once in that form, within range of my arquebuse——"
"Silence!" said the laird sternly; "the blood of her house is red enough upon my hands already!"
"Well, well. But the letters—the letters!" urged Kilmaurs impatiently; "are we to lose them?"
"If he ever had any, he must have delivered them long ere this," said Shelly.
"Under favour, sir," said Glencairn, "he left not Edinburgh (for the gate-wards are in our pay) until this day at dawn, or late last night, when one answering to his description rode through the Water-gate on a white horse. Word came tardily to the warder at the Brig of Esk; we had killed or taken him else at the Howmire."
"Let the tower of Fawside be watched narrowly," said Kilmaurs; "for these letters we must have ere we meet Arran and the Queen at Stirling, to know their plans as well as our own; for men should play warily who risk their heads in a game like ours, my lords."
"And now once more to the black jack, sirs," exclaimed the laird of Preston; "see to the wine-bickers, Symon, and fill—fill, while we drink thrice to the three fair brides whom this bond will soon make wedded wives—the Queen of Scots, the Countesses of Bothwell and Yarrow!"
That night the rebel lords and their retainers drank deep in Preston Tower; but tidings of an irruption of certain feudal enemies into Carrick, Kyle, and Cunninghame, giving all to fire and sword in these fertile districts, compelled Cassilis, Glencairn, Kilmaurs, and others, to depart on the spur ere mid-day; and hence it was that, as related in the preceding chapter, Florence Fawside found himself at such perfect liberty to ride daily to the city in his gayest apparel, and almost without armour, to prosecute a futile search for his fair unknown; while his fiery mother chafed and scoffed at his delay in commencing hostilities with the Hamiltons of Preston.