“Ha! is it thee, thou carrion chough?” cried the Wolfe of Badenoch, recovering from the surprise and dismay into which he had been plunged by so unexpected and fearful a warning from one whom he had not at first recognized; “ha! morte de ma vie,” cried he, couching his lance, digging the spurs deep into his horse’s flanks, and making him bound furiously up the slope of the knoll; “by all the furies, thou shalt not ’scape me this bout, an thou be not a very fiend. Haste, Alexander, ride round the hill.”
“This way, villains,” cried Sir Alexander Stewart instantly, obedient to his father’s command; “this way, one-half of ye, and that way the other half. Let not the caitiff escape us; take him alive or dead; by the mass, it mattereth not which.” [[275]]
Divided into little parties, the Wolfe’s attendants spurred off to opposite points of the compass, in order to encircle the hill. The figure had already disappeared from the pinnacle it stood on, but the furious Earl of Buchan still pushed his panting horse up the steep ascent, until he disappeared over the top. The Earl of Moray and Sir Patrick Hepborne remained for some time in mute astonishment, perfectly at a loss what to think or how to act. Shouts were heard on all sides of the hillock; but in a short time they ceased, and the individuals of the Wolfe of Badenoch’s party came dropping in one by one, with faces in which superstitious dread was very strongly depicted.
“Didst thou see him?” demanded one. “Nay, I thank the Virgin, I saw him not,” replied another. “Whither can he have vanished?” cried a third. “Vanished indeed!” cried a fourth, shuddering, and looking over his shoulder. “Ave Maria, sweet Virgin, defend us, it must have been a spirit,” cried another, in a voice of the utmost consternation.
“Hold your accursed prating,” cried the Wolfe of Badenoch, who now appeared, with his sons clustered at his back, all bearing it up boldly, yet all of them, even the stout Earl himself, much disturbed and troubled in countenance. “Ha!” continued he, “by all that is good, there is something strange and uncommon about that same friar. I know not well what to think. I bid thee good-bye, brother-in-law; I wot, we part but as half friends; yet commend me to Margery. Sir Patrick Hepborne, when it pleaseth thee to come to Lochyndorbe, thou shalt be right welcome. Allons, son Alexander, we must thither to-night yet for our hostelry; so forward, I say;” and saying so, he rode away at the head of his party.
“Rash and intemperate man,” cried the good Earl of Moray, in a tone of extreme distress and vexation, as he turned his horse’s head towards Forres, “what is it thou hast done? Into what cruel and disgraceful outrage hath thy furious wreken driven thee. The very thought of this ferocious deed being thine, is to me more bitter than ligne-aloes. The noble and the peasant must now alike hold thee accursed for thy red crimes. Hadst thou not been my wife’s brother, and the son of my liege lord the King, I must of needscost have done my best to have seized thee straightway; but Heaven seemeth to be itself disposed to take cognizance of thy coulpe, for in truth he was more than mortal messenger who pronounced that dread denunciation against thee.”
The solemn silence with which these words were received by [[276]]Sir Patrick, showed how much his thoughts were in unison with those of the Earl.
“But let us prick onwards,” cried Lord Moray, starting from his musing fit; “every moment may be precious.”
They had not gone many yards, when they heard the mingled sound of numerous voices, and found themselves in the midst of a great crowd of people of all ages, and of both sexes, who, idle and unconcerned, had taken post on the brow of the hill, and now stood, or lay on the ground in groups, calmly contemplating the rapid destruction that was going on in the little town, and giving way to thoughtless expressions of wonder and delight, at the various changes of the aspect of combustion.
“Why stand ye here, idlers?” cried the Earl of Moray, riding in among them, and stirring up some of them with the shaft of his lance; “come, rouse ye, my friends; shame on you to liggen here, when ye might have bestirred ye to save the town; come, rouse ye, I say.”