"Well mounted on their gallant steeds,
The brothers led the van;
And with four-and-twenty troopers gude
Their midnight march began."—Ballad.
The fatal Friday was a dark and lowering day; the sun had been hidden in fiery clouds, and torrents of rain had fallen, swelling all the mountain streams. The minds of Euphemia and Sybilla Drummond, though joyful in the certainty of their loved sister's safety, were oppressed to some extent by vague forebodings of evil. Lord Drummond was still ignorant of his daughter's discovery, for he was absent on a mission of the insurgents, and was still nursing and maturing his plans of vengeance against James III., whom he deemed and styled "a forfeited and fugitive king."
Well attended, guarded, and surrounded as they were by many hundreds of faithful and obsequious vassals, whose adherence combined the love of the patriarchal clansman with the servility of the Lowland feudal serf, the two young lords had little difficulty in having the mansion of umquhile Sir Andrew Barton closely watched; and on the afternoon of Friday, Borthwick, who had been lying, en perdue, somewhere in the vicinity, announced to them that the two daughters of Lord Drummond had "set forth on their pretended pilgrimage to Loretto."
The two noble suitors hastened to assure themselves that such was indeed the case, and had the chagrin to see them pass out from Leith by St. Anthony's Porte, their cheeks flushed with fear and pleasure, and their eyes beaming, well mounted on ambling horses, with long and sweeping foot-cloths over their saddles, and each attended by a female servant, who rode on a pillion behind a page, and carried each a basket of offerings to the hermit.
"They ride fast," said Home, as they whipped their horses across the level links.
"They will come less speedily back," said Hailes, with his dark but courtly smile; "a heavy heart makes a slow wayfarer and their hearts I ween will be heavy enough."
"Two women and two pages——"
"A slender escort this for noble dames."
"Especially in such ticklish times as these."
"True, my lord; but what will not women risk for a lovers' sake?" said Hailes.