A shutter flew open, and the fair face of Lilian Napier, with all her bright hair waving around it, appeared for a moment gazing into the obscurity without.
"Soldiers! soldiers!" she screamed, as the light fell on corslets and accoutrements. "O! Aunt Grizel, we are ruined, disgraced, and undone for ever!"
CHAPTER III.
THE OLD CLOCKCASE.
In the meanwhile
The King doth ill to throw his royal sceptre
In the accuser's scale, ere he can know
How justice shall incline it.
THE AYRSHIRE TRAGEDY.
The entrance to the mansion was by the narrow tower already described, and which contained what is called in Scotland the Turnpike, a spiral stair, turning sharply round on its axis. The small doorway was heavily moulded, and ornamented above by a mossy coat armorial, the saltire and four roses. The door was of massive oak, covered with a profusion of iron studs, and furnished with two eyelet holes, through which visitors could be reconnoitred, or, if necessary, favoured with a dose of musketry.
"What graceless runions are you, that knock in this way, and sae near the deid hour of the nicht, too?" asked the querulous voice of old John Leekie, the gardener, while two rays of streaming light through the eylets imparted to the doorway the aspect of some gigantic visage, of which the immense risp was the nose.
"Gae wa' in peace," added the venerable butler, in a very blustering voice, "or bide to face the waur!"
"Open, rascals!" cried the sergeant, "or we will set the four corners of the house on fire."
"Doubtless, my bauld buckie," chuckled the old serving-man; "but the wa's are thick, and the winnocks weel grated, and we gaed a stronger band o' the English Puritans their kail through the reek in the year saxteen-hunderd-and-fifty." The over-night potations of the aged vassals had endued them with a courage unusual at that time, when a whole village trembled at the sight of a soldier.