It was a far-stretching and glorious vista of triumph and success; the restoration of the king by his means, and oh, far above all,—the exultation of placing a Countess's coronet on the bright tresses of Lilian Napier.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE RETURNED EXILE.
Then, Mary, turn awa'
That bonnie face o' thine;
Oh, dinna shew the breast
That never can be mine.
Wi' love's severest pangs
My heart is laden sair;
And owre my breast the grass maun grow,
Ere I am free from care.
In the gloaming of an evening in the autumn of 1693 a man left the western gate of Edinburgh, and, skirting the suburb of the Highriggs, struck into the roadway between the fields.
The sickly rays of a yellow sun shining faintly through the mist after throwing the shadows of the gigantic castle far to the eastward, had died away, and a deeper gloom succeeding, denoted the close of the day as the fall of the fluttering leaves did that of the dreary year.
The stranger was Walter Fenton; but how changed in aspect and attire! His form was thin and emaciated, his cheek pale, his eyes sunken from the pain of his wound and the toil of campaigning; but his step was as free, and his bearing erect as ever. His attire was of the plainest grey freize, with great horn buttons; a brown scratch wig and a plain beaver hat concealed the dark locks that curled beneath them; he carried a walking staff in lieu of a sword, and appeared to lean on it a little at times. He was now in the character of a Low Country merchant, and, favoured by a passport from the conservator of Scottish privileges at Campvere, had an hour before landed from the good ship Fame of Queensferry, at the ancient wooden pier of Leith.
Often he made brief pauses to view the desolate scene around him; for in that year a heavy curse seemed to have fallen upon the desolate kingdom of Scotland.
On an evening in the preceding summer, when everything was blooming and smiling—when the land was rich with verdure and the woods were heavy with foliage, a cold wind came from the eastward, and, accompanied by a dense and sulphureous mist, swept over the face of the country, blighting whatsoever was touched by its pestilential breath.