But strange as it may seem, after the people had been gone for some considerable time in hot search of the felon, Lewis Grant himself rode slowly up to the priest’s house. For some reason which he best knew, he came by a road quite different from that which should have brought him directly from Auchernach. He seemed gloomy and thoughtful—his head hung down—and as he walked his horse up to the stable and dismounted, as he was often wont to do, to put the beast with his own hand into the stall with which it was sufficiently familiar, his eyes glanced furtively in all directions from under the broad bonnet that shaded his brow. Having disposed of the animal, he shut the stable door, and, with a downcast look and chastened step, very much unlike that which had usually carried him over the same fragment of ground, and with a sigh that almost amounted to a groan, he presented himself at the little portal of the house. With a hesitating hand he lifted the latch, and with his limbs trembling beneath him, he moved softly along the passage that led to the priest’s parlour. He halted for a moment irresolutely at the door of that little chamber where he had passed so many happy days and hours. At last he summoned up courage enough to open it, and he stood on its threshold with his eyes thrown upon the ground. Silence prevailed within, till it was broken by a deep convulsive sob. He looked up, and he beheld old Janet, with her back towards him, kneeling beside a low couch placed against the opposite wall; and upon its pillow, and stretched out at length upon it in a state which left him in doubt whether she was dying, or already dead, lay the grief-worn countenance and the form of Helen Dunbar. He was struck dumb by this spectacle. He stood amazed, with the blood running cold to his heart. But recollection soon returned to him—his whole frame shook with the agitation of his feelings, and, clasping his hands in an agony, he rushed forward and threw himself on his knees before the couch. The humble domestic was terrified to behold him, and started aloof at the very sight of him.
“Helen!—my life!—my love!” cried he in a frantic tone; “can I—can I, wretch that I am—can I, murderer that I am!—can I have brought death upon my beloved! Oh, answer me!—gaze not thus silently upon me with that fearful look! Am I then become in thy sight so accursed? Oh, mercy!—mercy!—look not so upon me!”
He tried to take her hand. His very attempt to do so seemed instantaneously to rouse her from the stupor in which she had hitherto lain. She recoiled from him back to the wall as if a serpent had stung her, whilst her fixed eyes stared, and her lips moved without sound, as if she could find no utterance for the horrors that possessed her.
“Is there no mercy for me?” cried Auchernach again. “Hast thou doomed me to destruction? Am I to be spurned by thee as I was by thine uncle Priest Innes?”
A prolonged and piercing shriek was all the reply that his frantic appeal received from Helen Dunbar. It was echoed by her old attendant, and mingled with loud cries for help. Steps were heard pattering fast without—Auchernach started up to his feet. The steps came hurrying along the passage—several men burst into the chamber—they stood for a moment in mute astonishment. Then it was that Helen Dunbar seemed to regain all her dormant energies. She sprang from the couch—retreated from Auchernach—and gazing fearfully at him, with, her head and body drawn back, she pointed wildly towards him, with both her outstretched arms and hands—and whilst every nerve was convulsed by the torture which her soul was enduring, she at last found words to speak.
“Seize him! Seize the murderer of mine uncle!” she cried in a voice which rang shrilly and terribly in the ears of all who heard her; and altogether exhausted by this extraordinary effort, she would have fallen forward senseless on the floor, had she not been caught by some of the bystanders, who carried her in a swoon to the couch from which she had so recently risen.
Auchernach stood fixed and frozen, as if her words had suddenly converted him into a pillar of ice. He was immediately laid hold of by some of the men, who hastily bound him, and he submitted to be led away, as if utterly unaware of what had befallen him. His horse was taken from the stable; he was lifted powerless into the saddle, and strapped firmly to the animal’s back. The crowd of people who had collected, some on horseback, and some on foot, looked upon him with horror, mingled with awe. But no one uttered a word, either of pity or of condemnation. He sat erect, it is true, but it was with all the rigidity of a stiffened corpse, for not a feature nor a muscle exhibited the smallest sign of consciousness. That night found him, after a wearisome journey, of the scenes or events of which he had no knowledge, chained, on a heap of straw, on the floor of one of the deepest dungeon-vaults in the Priory of Pluscarden.
The simple and unpretending funeral of the good Priest Innes had a larger following than that of any person who had been buried from that district for many years, and the silent sorrow which was exhibited by all who beheld it, was not only more sincere, but it was likewise far more eloquent than those louder lamentations, and those otherwise more obtrusive expressions of woe which had arisen around the bier of many a departed knight and laird of Strathspey. His corpse was carried the same road as they had taken the wretched man who stood charged with his murder. It was met at some distance from the Priory by its monks and their superior, who accompanied the procession, chanting hymns before the coffin, till it was carried into the church. There the services were performed for the dead, and he was laid to rest in his last narrow house, within the cemetery of that religious establishment, where the requiem masses that were sung for his soul went faintly, and with anything but consolation, to the ears of the wretched Auchernach in his subterranean prison.
Most of the gentry of the neighbouring country were present at these obsequies, and John Dhu Grant was there amongst others. It was especially remarked, that although his house of Knockando lay directly in the way between Easter Duthel and the Priory, and about equidistant from the two places, his desire to show respect to the memory of the deceased was so great that he appeared at the priest’s house early on the morning of the funeral, and rode with the procession all the way to the place of interment. He, moreover, took a very prominent part in the whole ceremonial. From these pregnant signs the good people naturally argued that there had been a gross mistake in the belief that had hitherto so currently prevailed as to which of the rival lairds had been really most favoured by Helen Dunbar and her uncle; and the wiser gossips now shook their heads, and looked forward to the time when John Dhu Grant would probably dry up the orphan’s tears, and establish her in the arm-chair at the comfortable fireside of Knockando. The laird himself never did nor said anything which might have contradicted any such supposition; on the contrary, he always spoke and acted as if it was tolerably well-founded.
A good many days passed away after the loss of her uncle, before the tide of Helen’s grief had gushed from her eyes in sufficient abundance to afford any relief to her deep affliction. Many were the kind hearts that came to condole with her, but some of her more intimate friends of her own sex only had as yet been admitted to her presence to share her sorrows. John Dhu Grant had made repeated journeys to call at the house, but his urgent entreaties for admission had been always met by courteous refusals. He came at length one day, and as he stated that he was the bearer of an especial message from the Lord Prior of Pluscarden, Helen could no longer decline giving him an audience. She received him, however, not only in the presence of old Janet, whose long services in the priest’s house had given her most of the privileges and indulgences of an old friend, but also in that of an elderly matron, who had kindly agreed to spend some time with her to cheer her loneliness. You will not be surprised when I tell you that Helen was deeply affected and much agitated when the laird entered. After she was somewhat composed, and the first preliminary civilities were interchanged,—