So passed the first weeks of their separation in tears and dark forboding, save when Lilian was with Annie Laurie, whose joyous buoyancy of spirit banished care and fear together. Of Lord Clermistonlee she had seen nothing of late, save on one occasion, when he had followed her from the Abbey porch to the Bowhead; but as she was attended by Drouthy, the butler, and another liveryman, well armed with swords, and pistols in their girdles, she was under no apprehension.
The state of Edinburgh was daily becoming more and more alarming.
As yet there had been no tidings of William's landing; but his friends were on the alert. Under Sir George Munro, a strong division of militia occupied the city; but on the march of the regular troops, these failed to prevent the disaffected from making the capital the focus of their operations. No sooner had the Scottish army crossed the borders, than the Presbyterians, and all revolutionary spirits, crowded to Edinburgh well armed, and there held secret and seditious meetings, which were attended by the Earls of Dundonald, Crauford, Glencairn, and others.
The subtle Mersington, the proud Earl of Perth, the reckless Lord Clermistonlee, and others of the haughty council, were made aware of all this by their numerous spies; but the formidable tribunal which had so long ruled the land by the sword and gibbet, was now completely paralysed by the appearance of many "sulky blue bonnets" crowding the streets; they failed to arrest a single individual, though treason, like a hundred-headed hydra, stalked in daylight through their thoroughfares, and declaimed in their public places. The lords had no tidings of events in the south; all their dispatches from the King being effectually intercepted by Sir James Montgomery, a revolutionist.
And now came hoary Christmas; but it seemed not as of old. It was a dreary one to poor Lilian; and the forebodings that hung over bolder hearts, chilled hers with apprehension. Old Arthur's bare ridge and rocky cone, the great chain of the Pentlands, and all the lesser hills that lie around them, were mantled with shining snow; the deep glens were impassable, and many flocks had perished in them. The cold norlan blast howled over the bleak Burghmuir, then a wide and frozen heath, save where, in some places, a venerable oak spread its glistening branches in the sparkling air. Above the lofty city to the north, that towered afar off on its ridgy hill, the dun smoke of a myriad winter fires ascended into the clear mid-air, and overhung its spires and fortress like a thunder-cloud, portentious of the storm that was brewing among its denizens. The great loch of the burgh lay frozen like a sheet of shining crystal; and there a few jovial curlers, forgetful of the desperate game of politics, shot the ponderous stones along their slippery rinks.
The great Yule-logs crackled and blazed merrily, as in other days, in the wide stone fire-place of the dining-hall, and old familiar objects and beloved faces glowed in its light; but Lilian's heart and thoughts were far away, and she seemed wholly intent on watching the sparks as they flew up the broad-tunnelled chimney.
The eve of Christmas was dark and gloomy. The moon was enveloped in clouds, and not a star was visible; but the frozen snow that covered the whole ground gave, by its whiteness, a reflected light. The hollow wind blustered in the bare copsewood and rumbled in the chimnies, and a very social but hum-drum party of old friends formed a circle round the fire-place in the chamber-of-dais.
Old Lady Grisel occupied her great-cushioned chair, with her spinning-wheel on one hand, and her cup of milk posset on a tripod table at the other. The neighbouring Laird of Drumdryan, a plain, hard-featured man, in an unlaced coat and hideous wig; Sir Thomas Dalyell, in a gala suit of laced buff, rather cross and irritable with a lumbago contracted in Muscovy; and the dowager Lady Drumsturdy, all stomacher, starch, and black satin, with Mistress Priscilla, her daughter and exact counterpart, occupied the foreground; while honest Syme of the Greenhill, in his plain hodden-gray coat, a flaming red vest, with ribbed galligaskins rolled over his knees, and his fat, comely dame, with her serge gown, laced coif, and bunch of household keys, sat respectfully a little behind.
While the two lairds were accommodated with silver tankards, which Mr. Drouthy replenished again and again with the burnt sack, then so much in vogue, the bluff ground baillie, in virtue of his humbler station, drank nut-brown ale from plain pewter. Every thing in the apartment was trimmed with green holly branches, and a mistletoe bough hung from the great dormont-tree of the ceiling, under which the long-bearded old cavalier saluted Lady Grisel's faded cheek with much good humour and courtesy.
"Yes, Simeon, it was the case," continued the latter, who was engaged in some prosy reminiscence of King Charles the First's days. "A fiery dragon was seen in the west, and it flew owre the Muirfute hills, towards the castle of Dunbar; and, that day month, a mournful field was fought and lost there."