"Oh, thou art a wretch—a minion—the slave of servile slaves!" said Margaret, covering her face, and giving way to one of those wild bursts of grief which always convulsed her when the memory of the babe from which she had been so cruelly torn, arose more poignantly within her; "begone, and leave me to the horror thou hast wrought me."
"Madam," said Howard, with increasing sadness, "I take kind Heaven to witness, that I seek no higher ornament than the admiration you withhold from me; no greater glory than the love I can never win. You have thrice held out bribes to me, as if I wore some sordid Scottish lord or servile English clown, instead of being a gentleman of spotless coat-armour and reputable bearing. I have not deserved contempt thus, even at your hands, for your presence here has wrecked my peace as surely as it has wrecked your own; but alas! from very different causes. Dearly as he loves you, madam—and God who hears him only knows how dearly,—Edmund Howard will never again ask grace of one who has stigmatised him as a king's minion and a sordid wretch. I dare not land you on the Scottish coast; and I have now but one hope—that we shall fall in with old Andrew of Largo, and that after I have died fighting on my deck, you may be given to those whom you love by the lads I leave behind me; though I fear much that bold Dick Selby would rather throw a match in his magazine and blow the old Harry up, than see St. Andrew's cross above St. George's ensign! Farewell, madam—I will never trouble you more."
Repenting her harshness, and impressed by Howard's calm and noble demeanour, Margaret would have called him back; but he sprang upon deck, and summoning John o'Lynne, ordered him to prepare for sailing—to man the windlass and heave short, and to cast loose the courses, while Dick Selby fired a culverin as a signal to their consorts, the White Rose and Cressi, to put to sea.
"I will no longer act the traitor to my king," thought Howard, "or be the plaything of this proud beauty, who wrongs me in her heart, and treats my honest passion with the cold indifference of an anchor-stock. Too long have I been the laggard and the lover, and now the play is ended!"
"Ho! for England—cheerily, my hearts!" cried the gunner, as he summoned a squad, who cast loose and loaded a culverin; "I thought we should have ridden in this here cove till our anchors rusted and our cables rotted—or till the hungry devils of the Scottish sea had picked our ribs as clean as ivory. Ready the match! we have cruised long enough in these here northern latitudes to wish for home again!"
The culverin flashed redly from the dark port-hole; the woods of Phillorth, the cave and rocks of Kinnaird, and the shores of the bay, gave back the report with a hundred reverberations, as the courses fell and swelled out in the western breeze, when the anchors were apeak, and the topsails sheeted home, and the white flags with St. George's red cross were displayed from the gaff-peak and mainmast-head, as the stately Harry moved slowly out of that lonely northern bay, and once more began to roll upon the stormy waters of the Scoto-German sea, which broke in foam above the ghastly reefs then known as Phillorth Briggs.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE TORWOOD.
"On earth 'twas yet all calm around,
A pulseless silence, dread, profound,—
More awful than the tempest's sound."
Lalla Rookh.
It is recorded in history that James III. made a second effort to overcome the treason of Shaw, but in vain. The message delivered by Sir David Falconer and Lord Bothwell, commander of the Royal Guard, was received with derision and contempt; and for the evening and night the king remained in the town of Stirling, with all his troops around it, and fully resolved to fight the insurgents on the morrow, if they advanced against him.