“Did Elliot drive thee to desperation?” cried Sir Dacre. “Upon the villain’s head I will visit it an hundred-fold.”
“I have revealed all,” said Johnston, who was fast sinking, “and now I can die in peace. It has long been a weary burden on my heart; but my heart is lightened of it at last. My dying moments are cheered by this restoration, even though it has come through crime and bloodshed. Embrace! Embrace!”
Father and son, so long apart, so wonderfully restored, fell, with an irresistible impulse, into each other’s arms, and embraced with the intensest affection. The crowd of attendants burst out into a loud cheer, with which the wood resounded.
“But we shall hold merry times of it no more in old Hunterspath,” said Ringan Sinclair, lugubriously, in the ear of Ellis Comyn. “Who would have thought our brave captain a Southron? And who shall be captain now?”
“Ah, but who can lead us to foray and fray,” said Habbie Menmuir, “like Ruthven Somervil? To my mind, Ringan, our mosstrooping days are over.”
“Often,” said the gentle Johnston, “did my heart misgive me, and I yearned to restore the son to the father; but then the fierce and revengeful mood would come over me, and all my good thoughts were crushed.”
“Had you come to Warkcliff,” cried Sir Dacre, “and disclosed the secret to me, you would have been rewarded to the utmost. Why did your revenge last so long? The degradation of my son might have filled up your craving for vengeance, and led you to relent.”
“I was present when your men took him,” responded Johnston, “and I fought and shed my blood for him, and all was of no avail. Even his men detested me, and, when I offered to join them in a rescue, they scorned my aid. Wounded and feeble as I was, I set out to Warkcliff, and reached it on this morning, when I met with the band of Hunterspath, and heard from them the tidings that your son was to die. They had been informed by their spies of all that passed in the castle regarding his destined fate, and had come under disguise to attempt a rescue at the place of execution. I offered again to join them in the rescue; but they drove me away with detestation. They had no need of my aid, they said, for Ellis Comyn had entered the castle under the guise of a priest, and would save the captain. I again thought of throwing myself upon your mercy, Sir Dacre, and disclosing all; but terror overtook me, and I wandered up and down the valley like a madman. Then came the flight and the battle. I fought against you, and, at the last extremity, revealed the terrible secret.”
His strength was almost wasted away, but still he struggled with death, for he still had something to crave of the outlaw. It was his forgiveness; and he freely gave it.
“One last request I have, which I implore you to grant,” cried the dying man. “I will die here, but I fain would have my bones to lie beside those of my father and mother in the little kirkyard of Eburn, on the banks of the Teviot. I mind weel o’ the day that I laid my mither’s head in that grave; and I fain would rest beside her. When but a bairn I used to come in the gloamings wi’ my mither, and sit doon aside the grassy hillock that rose over the remains of my father. The clods o’ that kirkyard would be sweet to me.”