"Why are you here, mother, in the lightning?" cried Hector.—"And where is my father?" inquired Helen.—"See that flash again!" said Margaret, as she buried her head in her mother's bosom.
"Poor, helpless, little ones!" ejaculated she. "How little know ye that that which fears ye most, is to me the smallest of my terrors! If man's wrath were quenched, heaven's would be easily averted. This messenger's intelligence may seal your fates, and be felt in its consequences to the last term of your lives. Come, loves, to bed. Hear ye that foot in the stair?"
The allusion to a mysterious visitor accomplished what the lightning of heaven could not effect—such is the secret power of mystery over the young heart. Rising from her lap, they hurried away to their beds, and left the not less terrified mother to hear the intelligence of the night messenger. The door opened, and Ralph stood before her.
"God be thanked, my Leddie Cockburn," said he, in a repressed voice, and with fearful looks—"God be thanked, for Henderland's absence! The king, wi' his nobles, are at Peebles, on their way to Liddesdale, to tak vengeance on the chiefs o' the Borders, wha hae been foremost in the foray and the rieving raid. They whisper yonder that there's a hangman in the train, wi' ropes, to hang the ring-leaders on their castle buttresses; and Henderland is to be their first victim. O my Leddie! dispatch, quick as thae flashes o' levin, a messenger to the master, and tell him to flee to England, till the king's wrath has blawn owre. I hae braved this awful storm, auld as I am, to save my master; and, if I but saw him safe frae the king's ire, I could lay my banes at the foot o' the grave o' the Cockburns."
"I have been looking for this Ralph," answered Marjory, as she lifted her hands to seize her hair, in her distress. "Even now, God be merciful! my husband is in the very act of rieving and rebellion. But what said ye of Merlin's Elm, man? Is it not skaithed? Speak, no secrets now; are the trees beside it blasted, and does it stand?"
"I hae heard yer Leddieship laugh at that auld rhyme," replied the servitor. "Fear naething for a madman's freak. But it's true that three oaks by its side are blasted, riven and laid on the earth, and yet it stands."
"Strange, strange are the ways of heaven," cried she, wringing her hands. "Ralph, you must be the messenger to my husband. Haste and saddle my grey jennet, and flee by the Riever's Road, to Tushielaw. Tell Henderland and Adam Scott, that King James comes, with a halter, to avenge the rights of royalty and peace. Cry it forth in the midst of their battle. If he will not flee, take his horse's head, and lead him to England. Away, away, for mercy and Henderland's sake, good Ralph, and whisper in his ear—hark ye, man, 'tis no woman's dream—whisper the fate of Lailoken's tree. The thunder may drown his laugh."
The faithful servant obeyed the command of his former mistress; and, hastening as fast as his old limbs would enable him, mounted Marjory's grey jennet, and was soon out in the midst of the storm. The only remaining servant left in the tower, besides the warder, was, at the same time, despatched, by his half-frantic mistress, to proceed on the road to Peebles, and reconnoitre the king's company, and convey to her what intelligence he could learn in regard to its movements. By this time it was now about three o'clock; but the morning was still dark, the storm had not abated, the rain still poured, the lightning flashed, and the neighbouring streams rolled over their rugged channels with a noise that equalled the thunder which yet shook the heavens. Marjory again took her seat on the casement; and her fancy, stimulated by her fears, became again busy in the conjuration of images which, however fearful, unhappily stood too great a chance of being realized. The substratum of indisputable facts was itself a good foundation of fear:—The king, angry, and breathing revenge against his rebellious subjects of the Border, was at hand—even within a few miles of her husband's residence; and the ensign of his authority and punishment was borne by the common executioner; then he would detect her husband in the very commission of that rebellious act against which the royal vengeance was to be directed; and, above all, she feared—nay, she was certain, from her knowledge of Henderland's free, bold spirit, that he would disdain to fly, and would at once commit himself into the hands of a young incensed monarch, who had travelled forty miles for his blood. These were fearful, incontrovertible facts, and they were contemplated by a solitary female in the dark hour of night, in the midst of one of the fiercest storms that had ever visited that part of the country, and under the blue lights of a fancy that, in spite of the appeals of judgment, reverted to an old prophecy of a wonderful being, which seemed to have been respected even by the lightning of heaven: the elm still stood; its brethren of the forest had fallen; and the rope to be attached to it was on its way to Henderland. Fearful forebodings took possession of her mind; and, as her fears rose higher and higher, she looked out in the dark, while the gleams of lightning played round her couch, and every sound that differed from the roaring of the storm arrested her ear, and kept her on the rack of painful anxiety. Her little children, meanwhile, who had caught sympathetically her fears, and could not divine the cause of their mother's vigil by the window in a thunder storm, had renounced sleep; and, disregarding her efforts to restrain them, must see her at intervals, and question her again and again; and even from their sleeping apartment they sent their exclamations of fear, and aggravated, by their sorrows and terror, the misery of their mother.
In this condition Marjory remained for another hour. There was no stir in the tower, where a female domestic or two lay, or slipped about, under the weight of a fear, the cause of which had not been explained to them. The silence internally, broken at times by the cries of the restless children, formed a strange and awe-inspiring contrast to the turmoil without, where darkness and the storm still held sway over the earth. Oppressed by the sight of the black heavens, she yet trembled to look for the first glimpse of dawn, which might be soon expected to be seen struggling through the vapours of the storm. Light would bring the king and the executioner; and she prayed that she might have an opportunity of seeing her husband before the arrival of the royal cavalcade, that she might fall on her knees, and implore his instant flight into England; but her ears caught no sounds in the direction of Tushielaw, save the thunder and the rain, and, at intervals, the scream of the drenched owl or frightened hawk, or the wheep of the restless lapwing, driven from the morass by the overwhelming torrent. Then came the cry again, of "Mother, mother!" from her sleepless children, responded to by her own, "Hush, hush, my darlings! your father cometh!" when her pained ear sought again the direction of Peebles, and she trembled as her fancy suggested the sound of hoof or horn.
Thus another hour passed, and her racked feelings were still uncheered by a glimpse of hope. The strength of her soul seemed to have passed into the physical organs of the eye and ear; and every change, from darkness or silence, produced exacerbations of her fear, and painful apprehension. The faint shade of light in the eastern heavens, which gave tokens of the approaching dawn, might be a precursor of the king and his retinue; and as her eye fell upon it, she listened again for the coming tread. A very faint sound was now heard, and it was too evident that it came not from Tushielaw; it was from the direction of Peebles, and it sounded as if it were the tread of a horse. It must be, she instantly thought, the scout of the king's cavalcade; for, in her painful anxiety, she had forgotten her own messenger. The step approached nearer and nearer; and more intense, in the same degree, grew her apprehension, till the sound of her messenger's voice, calling the warder, struck her ear—and she imagined she never heard a voice so hollow and ominous of death. The man was admitted, and his heavy step up the spiral stair, flustering in the toil of a vain precipitude in the dark entrance, declared the impatience of his intelligence.