“What!” demanded the Wolfe, laughing heartily, “were those cockerals pecking at each other?”
“Yea,” replied Sir Andrew, “a trifling dispute between them, which I have quashed.”
“Pshaw,” replied the Wolfe, “by the beard of my grandfather, [[230]]but I like to see their spirit; let not thy drowsy control quell it in them, son Andrew. I would not have them tame kestrels like thee, for all the broad lands of my father’s kingdom; so leave them to me to tutor, son Andrew, dost hear?—Sir Patrick,” said he, turning to Hepborne, “I hope thou hast not suffered in thine entertainment by mine absence? I should crave thy pardon, I wis, for leaving thee so suddenly, and perhaps so rudely; but I have let off my dammed-up wrath since I last saw thee, and shall now be better company. By this trusty burly-brand, I have shorn off the best plumes from the plump Bishop Barr; I have seized the fat lands he held in the very midst of my Badenoch territory. By the infernal fiends, I swore that he should pay for his busy intermeddling in my family affairs, and by all the powers of darkness and desolation, I have faithfully kept mine oath. I have hameled his pride, I trow. He shall know what it is to have to do with the Wolfe of Badenoch. He holds earth no more there. These are the custom-cattle of his lands, and there dangleth the rent and the grassums gathered from his knave tenants. Such of the churls who were refractory I have driven forth, and put good men of mine own in their room. Begone with ye, ye screaming pewits,” cried he, angrily turning towards the wretched train of men and women who followed his party, and couching his lance as if he would have charged furiously at them—“begone with ye, I say, or, by the fires of the infernal realms, I will put every he and she of ye instantly to the sword!”
The miserable wretches, without a house to go to, ran off into the woods at his terrible threat, and the ferocious Wolfe rode on with his party. When they came to the water’s edge, the bugles sounded, and a boat being instantly manned by six rowers, the Wolfe called to Sir Patrick Hepborne to go along with him, and they were wafted across in a few strokes of the oar, leaving Sir Alexander Stewart and his brothers to superintend the embarkation of the booty. All in the Castle was stir and bustle the moment the owner of it appeared. The oldest man in it seemed to be endowed with additional muscular action at the very presence of the Wolfe. They were all ranked up to receive him as he entered the gateway, and they followed him, and darted off one by one, like arrows, in various directions, as he gave his hasty orders. [[231]]
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Lady Mariota and the Page—The Fury of the Wolfe.
The Wolfe and Sir Patrick Hepborne had no sooner entered the banquet-hall than they were surprised by the appearance of the Lady Mariota, who approached them from a room beyond it, drowned in tears.
“Eh!” cried the Wolfe, setting his teeth against each other; “ha! mort de ma vie, what is this I behold? Mariota in tears? Say, speak, why art thou thus bywoxen? What, in the fiend’s name, is the matter? Who hath caused these tears? Speak, and by all the infernal demons, I will have him flayed alive.”
“My Lord,” replied the Lady Mariota, hiding her face in her kerchief, “I can hardly speak it—the page—the page Maurice de Grey———”