When our three fugitives found that their ammunition was expended—that day was breaking, and yet there came no signs of rescue—that the tree remained environed by armed men on every side—and that the fire which begirt it was mounting up the stem, despair and horror began to seize their hearts, and, creeping close together in the dark among the rising smoke and withering foliage, they were about to adopt the proposal of Robert Barton—that the whole three of them should leap down, sword in hand, on three different sides, and die under the steel of these vindictive enemies, if they could not baffle or surmount them, when, lo! to their astonishment, they heard a fourth voice beside them, and the bald head of the hermit appeared close by, projecting from a hole in the enormous trunk of the tree, which by age was quite hollow, and by decay had become a mere wooden tube.
"Mater purissima," said he; "quick, my bairns, quick! descend this way, while there is yet time."
"Descend—but to where? The smoke hath made me blind as a bat," said Barton; "but how, in the name of Saint or Satan, came you here, most reverend Father?"
"Up the hollow trunk of this old oak, with which a stair below communicates," replied the priest, whose voice was almost lost amid the crackling of the flames; "this has proved a hiding-place to more than one in time of broil and trouble; but descend, and, in the name of Our Lady, quickly? Give me thy hand—thy foot, I mean—place it here, so—this is the first step hollowed in the trunk—now thy hand, so—this is the next, and thus we descend; one of my predecessors constructed this stair, that he might say his prayers on the tree-top, in imitation of St. Simon Stock, who lived in a tree in Kent;—down—down—yet, carefully now."
The friar disappeared and Barton and Falconer followed; but the latter, missing a footstep, fell heavily to the bottom, and found himself underground, on the soft, damp mould of the burial vault.
Dumbfoundered by the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his companions, poor Willie Wad paused for a moment in great irresolution.
"Avast, Sir David—belay there," cried he; "hallo, gude Father Fairlie, in the name o' Our Leddy, dinna leave me here in stays! O-ho—I see how it is!" he added. Ignorant of the mode of descent, and not wishing exactly to drop into the dark hole below, he resolved to "go down by the run." After reflecting for a moment, Willie pulled out of the pouch which has been so often already referred to, a few fathoms of what a seaman is seldom without—stout cord, and looping it round a branch, lowered himself into the hole, from the bottom of which he heard Captain Barton anxiously shouting, and describing the mode of descent.
While the fat, pursy friar was clambering slowly and laboriously up to his assistance, he was unexpectedly met by the broad end of the short, squat gunner, who, as the cord slid through his hands, descended upon his shaven crown with all the force of a steam-hammer or a battering ram, and shot him at once to the bottom; nearly ending there his orisons and feasts of every kind, spiritual and temporal.
"O Mater castissima, you have slain me!" he cried, as he rose with difficulty from the floor of the vault; "Miserere nostri Domine!"
"Mercy on us!" said the startled gunner; "look ye, shipmate—holy Father, I mean—"