"Thou shalt learn anon, and so shall all thy faction with a vengeance!" replied the captain, while a deep smile spread over his features. "Meantime adieu, and may God keep us separate, friend! I trust to thine honour."
"Adieu!"
He sprang into the secret passage, closed the pannel, and Walter heard his footsteps dying away as he ascended into the hollow recesses of the thick wall, and sought some of those secret hiding-places with which this ancient mansion abounded more than any other edifice in or around Edinburgh.
Morning came, and with it came an order from the king's advocate to bring the prisoners before the privy council, and to secure the persons of their entire household for future examination and thumb-screwing, if necessary.
The multiplied lamentations and exclamations of fear and sorrow, which rang through the house of Bruntisfield on the arrival of Macer Maclutchy, with this terrible fiat (which he announced with all the jack-in-office insolence peculiar to himself), and the clank of musquets and din of high words in the corridor or ambulatory, roused Walter from a second short but sound sleep, and starting, he raised his head from the table on which he had reclined.
Redly and merrily the rays of the morning sun rising above the oak woods streamed through the grated window of the chamber, and threw a warm glow on its dark-brown wainscotting. It was a sunny March morning, and the old oaks were tossing their leafless branches on the balmy wind; the black corbies cawed on their summits, and the lesser birds twittered and chirped from spray to spray; the clear sky was flecked with fleecy clouds, and its pure azure was reflected in the still bosom of the long and beautiful loch, that stretched away between its wooded banks towards the east, where the old house of Gilford and the craigs of Salisbury closed the background.
Walter felt his bruises still smarting from the recent struggle; he examined the place of his fierce visitor's exit, but failed to discover the least trace of it; every pannel fitted close, and was immovable, for he knew not the secret. The whole combat appeared like a dream; but a scar on his hand, a notch or two on his sword, and several overturned chairs, still remained to attest the truth of it. Hastening to unfasten the door which Quentin Napier had secured with such deadly intentions, a little glove on the floor attracted his eye. He snatched it up. It was very small, and of richly worked lace, tied by a blue ribbon.
"She has worn this. Oh, 'tis quite a prize," said the young man as he kissed it, and laughing at himself for doing so, placed it within the top of his corslet.
"My certie, here is a braw bit o' wark and a bonnie!" exclaimed Macer Maclutchy, bustling into the room. "Here is an order from the king's advocat to bring the leddies o' Bruntisfield to the Laigh Council House instanter, and the chamber o' dais is empty, toom as a whistle,—the birds clean awa, and the gomeral that stood by the door kens nae mair about them than an unchristened wean. My word on't, lads," he continued flourishing his badge of office, "some here maun kiss the maiden or climb the gallows for last night's wark!"
After swearing an oath or two, which appeared to give him infinite relief in his perplexity,