They were hardly gone, when the Lady Stradawn, leaving the old Sir Allan to entertain himself with his own dreamy musings and vacant thoughts, climbed to the bartizan of the tower to look out for her son, Murdoch. It was yet early in the morning—but as her two step-sons had a walk of a good many miles before them, ere they could reach the place where they proposed hunting, they and their people were seen toiling up the valley, at a pace which corresponded with the violence of those feelings which then possessed Sir Walter, who was stretching away at the head of the party.
“Curses on ye both!” cried the lady, with intense bitterness, after having followed them with her malignant eyes, till they had wound out of sight behind a projecting spur of a wooded mountain that flanked the valley.—“Curses!—black and withering curses on ye both, vile spawn that ye are, that stand between my boy and his prospects!—I fear that Walter—my especial curse upon him!—for, with all his fair words, he is stern and ferocious as a wild cat when he is roused.—But, wild cat though he be, the wily viper may yet wind its folds silently around him, and sting him to the death ere he may have time to unglove his claws.—What can make my darling boy tarry so long.—He has now been absent for more than three days.—Much as he hath enriched me with money and jewels, I like not the risk he runs.—But he will not be forbidden.—Nature works in him, and perhaps it is as well that he should thus render himself hardy, seeing that he must one day—aye, and that soon too, if I have any cunning left in me—command the proud Clan-Allan. Stay, did I not see tartans yonder, and arms glittering in yon farther lawnde, in the vale below, beyond those nearer woods? That must surely be Murdoch and his men. The foolish boy will not surely bring them within nearer ken of the Castle? Ha!—I see one figure separate from the rest, whilst the main body seems to take to the woods on the hill-side. In sooth, there is no prudence lacking in the youth, nay, nor any cunning neither, as I well know, from the trouble it hath cost me to lull his suspicions regarding the Priest of Dalestie. But if Murdoch hath cunning, he hath it from me, his mother; and it will be hard indeed if mine cannot match it. Ah!—there he already bursts from the wood—I must hasten to meet him in my bower, that I may learn what luck he hath had.”
The lady hurried down to her bower—quickly found some errand on which to despatch her woman—and then she sat waiting impatiently, turning over the bunch of antique keys which hung at her girdle, until she heard her son’s step in the passage, and his gentle tap at her door.
“Come in!” said the Lady Stradawn in a subdued voice—“come in, my son!”
“Ha!—I am glad that thou art here and alone, mother,” said Murdoch, a slim, handsome, dark-eyed youth, who, after cautiously entering, shut the door behind him, and carefully turned the huge key that locked it. “I am glad that you are here alone, for I have such treasure for you.”
“Hush, hush, my darling,” said the lady, almost in a whisper—“speak lower, I entreat you, lest any eaves-dropper should hear you.—Quick!—how sped ye?—and what have you got?”
“We have been all the way to Banff again this time,” replied Murdoch. “Seeing that we sped so well the last time we made thither, as thou well knowest we did, we thought we should try our luck there once more. We heard that there was a market in the Brugh, and we sent a clever-witted spy among the packmen, to gather who among them might be best worth holding talk with. Two of them we learned were to travel together for company’s sake,—fellows who dealt in goldsmiths’ work. But, marry! they travelled not far from the town-end till we met them, when, like good-natured civil fellows, we eased them of their heavy loads, under which they seemed to sweat so grievously; and that they might not trouble us here, and at the same time being loth to part two such friends, we set them both a travelling together on a journey to the next world.”
“Speak not of the next world, Murdoch!” said the lady, shuddering. “But they were sickerly sent thither, said’st thou?”
“As surely as we shall one day go there ourselves, good mother,” replied Murdoch.
“Speak not of our going there, boy,” said the lady. “’Tis time enough yet. But there is little crime I wot, after all, in ridding this world of such cheating gangerels as those you tell me of.”