At the same moment a pistol flashed within a few yards of where they stood, and Walter the heir of Riccon fell with a groan at the feet of Judith. Her screams rang through the woods, startling the slumbering birds from the branches, and causing them to fly to and fro in confusion. Gemmel sprang forward, and grasped her hand. "Now, fause ane," he cried, "kiss the lips o' yer bonny bridegroom!—catch his spirit as it leaves him! Hang roond his neck and haud him to yer heart till his corpse be cauld! Noo, he canna hae ye, and I winna! Fareweel!—fareweel!—fause, treacherous Judith!"
Thus saying, and striking his forehead, and uttering a loud and bitter scream, he rushed away.
Judith sank down by the dead body of Walter, and her tears fell upon his face. Her cries reached the encampment, where her parents and others of her race were. They hastened to the wood from whence her cries proceeded, and found her stretched upon the ground, her arms encircling the neck of the dead. They raised her in their arms, and tried to soothe her, but she screamed the more wildly, and seemed as one whose senses grief has bewildered.
"Judith," said her father, "speak to me, bairn—wha has done this? Was it——"
"Gemmel!—wicked Gemmel!" she cried; and in the same breath added, "No! no!—it wasna him! It was me!—it was me! It was fause Judith."
Gemmel Græme, however, had dropped his pistol on the ground when he beheld his victim fall, and one of the party taking it up, they knew him to be the murderer. Lussha Fleckie, touched by his daughter's grief, and disappointed by his dream of vain ambition being broken, caused each of his party to take a vow that they would search for Gemmel Græme, and whosoever found him should take blood for blood upon his head.
And they did search, but vainly, for Gemmel was no more heard of.
Twelve months passed, and autumn had come again. A young maniac mother, with a child at her breast, and dressed as a gipsy, endeavoured to cross the Tweed between Norham and Ladykirk. The waters rose suddenly, and as they rose she held her infant closer to her bosom, and sang to it; but the angry flood bore away the maniac mother and her babe. She was rescued and restored to life, though not to reason, but the child was seen no more.
For thirty years the poor maniac continued at intervals to visit the fatal spot, wandering by the river, stretching out her arms, calling on her child, saying, "Come to me—come to yer mother, my bonny bairn, for ye are heir o' Riccon, and why should I gang shoeless amang snaw! Come to me—it was cruel Gemmel Græme that murdered yer bonny faither—it wasna me!"
It was in January the body of a grey-haired woman, covered with a tattered red cloak, was found frozen and dead, below Norham Castle. It was the poor maniac Judith, the once beautiful gipsy. Some years afterwards, an old soldier, who had been in foreign wars, came to reside in the neighbourhood, and on his death-bed requested that he should be buried by the side of Judith, and the letters G. G. carved on a stone over his grave.