CHAPTER LXIX.
THE MIDNIGHT TRYST.
"And, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange scream of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New hatched to the woful time."—Macbeth.
True to his appointment, about twelve o'clock, "that hour o'nicht's black arch the keystane," on the night before the important day of the three solemnities, when the papal dispensation was to be read, an excommunication to be pronounced, and that Iron Belt, so famous in the history of James IV., to be consecrated and bestowed—Hew Borthwick, the fell spirit, the evil genius of Margaret Drummond—or rather, the vile slave and tool of villains more subtle than himself—appeared at the ancient bridge of Dunblane; the same which is mentioned in the introduction to this work as being the erection of the Bishop Findlay Dermach, in the year 1406.
The stillness of midnight reigned in and around that diminutive cathedral city. As Hew Borthwick, the outcast of nature, loitered on the old and narrow bridge which spans the Allan, and lingered under the gloom of some enormous alder or boor-trees that grew out of the rocks and threw their shadow on the path, some strange ideas began to hover in his mind.
Save the rush of the river over its rocky bed, the rustle of the autumn leaves in the coppice, or the bay of a sheep-dog on the distant muirlands, there was no sound in the air; but there came many an imaginary one to the ears of Borthwick. At one time he thought a wild cry went past him on the wind; at another, he was certain that voices were lamenting among the copsewood by the river side.
He listened breathlessly!
All was still, save the beating of his own heart.
Was conscience beginning to be stirred at last within that arid, cruel, and stony breast, or were these ideas the mere result of the dark and midnight hour, the place, the time, and the solemn and awful superstitions incident to the age and the nation?
Swinging high aloft in the beautiful square tower of carved stonework, the cathedral bell tolled the hour of twelve. The first sonorous note, as it rolled away upon the trembling air, made Borthwick's coward heart leap within him; and he listened to each stroke in breathless agony, as a wretch might listen to his death-knell, and when the last and twelfth had boomed away upon the darkened sky, he breathed more freely, but the perspiration hung in drops upon his clammy brow, for that bell had roused old memories in his heart, and called back the days that were gone, as an old familiar voice or gong might do.
"Tush!" he muttered; "let me not be now white-hearted and a fool, when the last die has been cast in this infernal game—the last scene prepared in this tremendous drama. Twelve has struck, but there is no appearance of them yet!"