"A long farewell to our gude auld barony of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes—to main and holm, and wood and water," said Lady Grizel, mournfully; "we stand under the shadow of its green sauchs and oak woods for the last time. Once before I fled frae them, but that was in the year fifty, when our natural enemies, the English, won that doolfu' day at Dunbar, and again our hail plenishing will be ruined and harried, as in the days o' the ruffianly and ungracious Puritans."
"Not by us, Lady Bruntisfield," replied the young man, slightly piqued; "we are the soldiers of the gallant Dunbarton, the old Royals of Turenne, les Gardes Ecossais of a thousand battles and a thousand glorious memories, and your mansion will be sacred as if in the hands of so many apostles. Farewell, and God speed ye! Would that I could accompany your desolate steps to some place of safety! but that would discover all." They parted.
"I have done," muttered Walter, striking his breast; "and from this hour I am a lost man!"
Hastily returning, he resumed his post, with his heart beating high with the conflicting emotions of pleasure and apprehension. Youth and beauty in suffering, danger, or humiliation, form naturally an object of interest and compassion; but Walter, though pleased by the conviction that he had done a good action, and one so fully involving the gratitude of Lilian Napier and her haughty relative, felt a dread of what was to ensue, weighing heavily on his mind; for the Scottish privy council was then composed of men with whom the proudest noble dared not to trifle, and before whom the pride and power of the great Argyle, lord of a vast territory, and chief of the most powerful of the western clans, bent like a reed beneath the storm. Poor Walter reflected, that he was but a friendless and nameless volunteer, and too well he knew that the council would not be cheated of their prey without a terrible vengeance.
Scarcely had he resumed his post in the corridor, when the serjeant, whose brown visage was flushed with carousing, and whose corslet braces were unclasped to give space for the quantity of viands he had imbibed, reeled up with a relief of sentinels, all more or less in the same condition.
"All right, an't please you, Master Walter. I warrant you will be tired of this post of honour, and longing for a leg of a devilled capon, and a horn of the old butler's Rhenish."
"I thought you had forgotten me, Wemyss. You will have a care, sir," said Walter, addressing the soldier who relieved him, with a glance that was not to be misunderstood, "that you do not disturb the ladies by entering the chamber of dais; dost hear me, thou pumpkin-head?"
"Rot me, Master Fenton, I have clanked my bandoleers before the tent of Monsieur of France, and I need nae be learned now, how to keep guard on king or knave, baron or boor. Dost think that I, who am the son of an auld vassal of her ladyship's, would dragoon her out of marching money?"
"'Tis well," replied the pikeman, briefly, as he retired, not to the kitchen, but to a solitary apartment prepared for him by the orders of his old patron, the halberdier.