So they were married, and he removed her from the tower to the adjacent manse, from the more cheerful and ungrated windows of which she could see in the distance the roofless turrets and open walls of Piteadie, where the crows clustered and flapped their black wings, for the ruin had become a veritable rookery.
The king was dead; he had perished on the scaffold, and Scotland, under Cromwell and the false Argyle, was quiet, as we are told in that poetical romance by Macaulay, entitled "The History of England."
On a Sunday in summer, in the year of Glencairn's rising in the north for King Charles II., Annora sat in the Kirk of Calderwood about the beginning of sermon. The reverend Elijah, with straight, lank hair, and upturned eyes, Geneva bands and gown, after a glance at the dark oak pew where his young bride and victim sat, like the spectre of her former self, so pale, so crushed and heartbroken, twice repeated, in a dreary and quavering tone, the text upon which he was about to preach, with special reference to the rising in the north, inviting all sons of the Kirk to arm against the loyal Highlanders—
"He saith among the trumpets, Ha! ha! and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting! He is not affrighted, neither turneth he back from the sword; he goeth forth to meet the armed men."—Job xxxix.
Having given this warlike text, he adjusted his cloak, and turned the sand-glass, which, according to the fashion of those days, stood on the reading-desk. The rustle of Bible leaves, as of those that lie strewn in autumn, when gently stirred by the wind, passed through all the church; but from Annora's trembling and wan fingers, her Bible fell heavily to the ground.
At that moment a gaily-dressed young man, with the white rose in his plumed hat and on his laced mantle, with slashed doublet and boots, as he passed slowly up the aisle—the observed of all observers—as such cavalier fripperies were supposed to have passed away with Montrose and the king, stooped, and presented her with the fallen book.
Their haggard eyes met. He was pale even as death. A great wound, a sword-cut that traversed his face like a livid streak, in healing, had distorted the features; but like a glance of lightning that flashed into her soul, she recognized Willie Calderwood!
She would have shrieked, but lacked the power; a little sigh could only escape her, and so she swooned away.
There was a great commotion in the village kirk. She was borne forth into the air, and laid for a time upon a throchstane, or altar tomb, and was then conveyed to the manse, where she remained long as one on the verge of madness or the grave. The face of Willie, so sweet, so sad and earnest, but, alas! so sorely distorted, seemed ever before her, together with his gallant air and courtly bearing, all of which were so different from those of the sour-featured Whigs by whom she was surrounded.
But she was informed by her younger brother, Philip, that she should never see that face or bearing more, as her lover had come home, sorely wounded and broken in health, not to seek vengeance on her or hers, but only to die among his kinsmen, the Calderwoods of the Glen; and that he had died there, three days after their meeting in the kirk; and was buried at Eglise Marie, in the tomb of the lairds of Piteadie.