Many an oak almerie and meal-girnel stood round; and rows of pots and pans, pell-mell among helmets and corslets, swords and bucklers, spits and branders, made up the decorations and the furniture; while a great fire of wood and coal from "my Lord Sinclair's heughs" blazed day and night on the stone hearth, making the hall to seem in some places all red and quivering in red light, or sunk in sable shadow elsewhere.
It had but two chairs—one for the laird, and one for the lady—for such was then the etiquette in Scotland; thus even the Reverend Elijah had to accommodate his lean shanks on a three-legged creepie.
Dogs of various kinds were always basking before the fire on dun deer-skins; but the chief of them was Symon's great Scottish staghound, which was exactly of the breed and appearance described in the old rhyme—
Headed lyke a snake,
Neckèd lyke a drake.
Footed lyke a catte,
Taylèd lyke a ratte,
Syded lyke a team,
Chynèd lyke a beam.
On that night Symon and his sons, with Roger of Tyrie, and other followers, crossed the hill to Piteadie, and sacked and set on fire the dwelling of the Calderwoods, who, as adherents of the king, were deemed beyond the pale of the law by the Scottish government.
In the murk midnight, from the tower head of Seafield, the heart-sticken Annora could see the red flames of rapine wavering in the sky, beyond the woods of Grange, in the direction where she knew so well her absent lover's dwelling stood; and when her father and brothers came galloping down the brae, and clattering over the drawbridge of the tower, they laughingly boasted that, in passing Eglise Marie, they had defaced the family tomb of the Calderwoods, and overthrown the throchstone that marked where Willie's mother lay, under the shadow of an old yew tree.
"The nest is gane, Grizy," said Symon, grimly, as he unclasped his corslet, and hung his sword on the wall; "the nest is scouthered weel, and the black rooks can return to it nae mair."
"Would that we could lure the tassel to the gosshawk again," said Lady Grizel, with a dark glance at her daughter.
"For what end, gudewife?" asked Symon, with surprise.
"To make him a tassel on the dule-tree there without," was the cruel response.