"If that which you say be true and my brothers are dead—there are yet Douglases. Our cousins will deliver us."
"Your cousins have entered into your possessions," jeered the hag; "it is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland in order to rob them of that which is their own."
"We are not afraid," said the little maid, stoutly; "there are many in the land of the Scots who would gladly die to help us."
"Aye, that is it. They shall die—all die. Three of them died yester-even, torn to pieces by my lord's wolves. Fine, swift, four-footed guardians of the Castle of Machecoul—La Meffraye's friends! And one young cock below there of the same gang hath gone even now to my lord's chamber. He hath mounted the stairs he will never descend."
"Well," said the Maid of Galloway, "even so—we are not afraid. We can die, as died our friends."
"Die—die!" cried the hag, sharply, angered at the child's persistence. "'Tis easy to talk. To snuff a candle out is to die. Poof, 'tis done! But the young and beautiful like you, my dearies, do not so die at Machecoul. No; rather as a dying candle flickers out—falls low, and rises again, so they die. As wine oozes drop by drop from the needle-punctured wine-skin—so shall you die, weeping, beseeching, drained to the white like a dripping calf in the shambles, yet at the same time reddened and shamed with the shame deadly and unnameable. Then La Meffraye, whom now you disdain to answer with a look, will wash her hands in your life's blood and laugh as your tears fall slowly upon the latchet of her shoon!"
But a new voice broke in upon the railing of the hideous woman fiend.
"Out, foul hag! Get you to your own place!" it said, with an accent strong and commanding.
And the affrighted and heart-sick girls turned them about to see the Lady Sybilla stand fair and pale at the head of the turret stair which opened out upon the roof of the White Tower.
At this interruption the eyes of La Meffraye seemed to burn with a fresher fury, and the green light in them shone as shines an emerald stone held up to the sun.