In their bridal wreaths and veils each was interred, with a golden chalice on her breast, in that old cathedral aisle; and there they sleep, side by side, where for many years solemn masses were said over them, until the belief in such things passed away.
Three blue slabs cover them, and mossy ruins and grassy graves are around them. The Allan murmurs by unchanged; but the trees that shade it are old now, and they moan as they shake their rustling leaves in the wind that comes from the distant Grampians. Few now know the stones that mark the graves of the three hapless sisters—the three beautiful Drummonds; for it is often the way of the world, that those whose couch in life has been decked with every splendour, have their bed of eternity forgotten and neglected.
Neither David Falconer nor Robert Barton died of broken hearts, as the heroes of romance might have done; but broken hearts were as little in fashion then as now. They sorrowed long and deeply, like noble and true-hearted men, and they never married.
Barton was knighted, and became comptroller of the royal household; the arquebussier, as we are informed by Buchanan, was slain at the head of the Royal Guard, of which he was captain, when covering the retreat of the king's artillery at the siege of Tantallon. He was then a man well up in years, being past his seventieth birthday; and when his body was stripped and plundered by the Douglas troopers, there were found, in a little bag at his neck, an Agnus Dei, a lock of hair, a ring, and a medal.
The ring and the lock of hair belonged to Sybilla Drummond, and the medal was the gift of King James IV. Some monks of North Berwick found the body as it lay on the highway; and though it had ever been Sir David's wish to lie in Dunblane, they buried him in the Auld-kirk close by the sea, which is now washing its burying-ground away.
The reader will naturally suppose that after achieving the long-desired wish of the English faction, in removing the unfortunate Margaret, the enterprising Lairds of Sauchie and Kyneff ultimately obtained their peerages; but such was not the case,—why, we are not in a position to state, for no doubt they, or their descendants, would have shone conspicuously in that black list of political traitors who broke the heart of King James V.
Sir Andrew Wood of Largo survived to see the early part of the reign of James V. He was then in extreme old age; and after a long career of faithful service and brilliant achievement, and after fighting his old ship, the Yellow Caravel, as long as her timbers held together, he retired to the Castle of Largo, in and around which Cuddie Clewline, the coxswain of his barge, Willie Wad, the gunner, Archy of Anster, the boatswain, and nearly all his crew, were located; for the Scottish Nelson lived in his old age, and died, when the hour came, like a true Scottish Trunnion.
When he grew feeble and unable to ride to Largo Kirk, where Father Zuill was chaplain, and where he long strove in vain to achieve the development of the parabolic speculum of Marcellus, it was proposed to make a litter, wherein his old shipmates might convey him on their shoulders.
"Nay, nay, Robbie Barton," said he, "I ken nothing of how to navigate such a craft; every man to his trade,—the gunner to his lintstock, the steersman to his helm, and the cook to the foresheet. Gadzooks, I shall be rowed in my barge as of yore!"
From the northern gate of Largo Castle he had a canal cut through a wooded hollow to Largo Kirk, and along this he was rowed every Sunday by his old barge's crew, with Cuddie in the prow, bearing a boat-hook, and keeping a look-out ahead, and an admiral's broad pennon floating in the water astern.