The evening fell that night beautiful and serene. No vapour clouded the "silver sheen," and no breath of wind rustled a leaf on the trees.
"Hail to ye, bright queen!" ejaculated Helen, as she folded her mantle round her, and was on the eve of seeking the wood; "once more light me to my lover, if, after this meeting, you should for ever hide your face among the curtains of heaven."
And, breathing quick with the rising expectation of being enclosed in his arms, she issued from the house, and sought the well-known loaning that led to the burying-ground. Her grief had sunk for a time amidst the swelling impulses of her passion; and it was not till she had been pressed to his bosom, her brow kissed by his burning lips, and deep-drawn sighs exhausted the ardour of a first embrace after so long a separation, that one single thought of the cruelty of her situation arose in her mind. They sat on the tumulus where they had sat often before. The gravestones around them lay serene in a flood of moonlight; the soft "buller" of the wimpling Kirtle was all that disturbed the silence of the night; calmly there reposed the dead of many generations; if their lives were ended, their griefs, too, were past; and Mary of the Le', whose grey monument reflected clearly the moon's light, was free from the anguish which, in struggling sighs, came from the bosom of her who was yet above the green mound. Helen told her lover all the extraordinary circumstances of her situation. She wept at every turn of a new difficulty, and Adam's eyes were also suffused with tears; he pressed her again to his breast, and bade her be of better heart, for that better days were coming on the wings of time.
"I confess," he said, "my dear love, that I am unable to understand the conduct of that dark-minded man; but what can he do, if my Helen should yet redeem her error, and make this necessary disclosure? That is alone the cure of our pain. Oh, Helen! what a load of evil might have been averted from our heads by the exercise of a little self-command!"
"I see it, I feel it," replied she; "but there are powers higher than the resolves of mortals. I have struggled with myself till the blood was sent back in my veins, and frightened nature saved the powerless victim of grief by the mantle of unconsciousness. What, Adam, shall I do? I feel I am unequal to the task of speaking a daughter's rebellion and a traitor's resolution."
"When everything is explained, Helen," replied the other, "the treachery disappears, and a father and mother's love will not die under the passing cloud of a little anger. Think of our bliss, love! Did hope never bring courage to your tongue, Helen? Ah, what would that bright goddess make Adam Fleming dare!"
"And what," said she, "would Helen Bell not dare for the love she bears to her Adam, if that sacred feeling of a daughter's duty were overcome? But it must be. I shall fall upon my mother's neck, and weep out with burning tears of repentance a daughter's contrition. I will appeal to the heart of a mother and a woman. I will conjure up her own first love, move again the spring of her earliest affection, and feign to her my father lost, and her heart wrecked. Ay, Adam, hope—the hope of the possession of you—will accomplish all this. Helen has said it, and the issue will prove."
This burst of generous resolution produced a flood of tears. She crept closer to him, and the throbs of her heart were heard in the silence which reigned among the graves. A rustling sound among the trees roused her; she lifted her head, and fixed her eyes on a part of the wood on the other side of the Kirtle. For a moment she watched some movements not noticed by her lover. They rose, and Adam stood aside to get a better view of the interruption. In an instant she clung to his bosom; a loud shot reverberated through the wood; Helen fell dead—the ball destined for Kirkpatrick having been received by the devoted maiden, who saw the hand uplifted that was to do the deed of blood. Neither scream nor audible sigh came from her; one spring when the ball entered the heart—and death!
Kirkpatrick saw at once death and the cause of it, and in an instant he gave pursuit. Springing with a bound over the Kirtle, he seized Blacket House in the act of flight. The murderer turned, sword in hand, and a battle was fought in the wood, such as never was witnessed in the heat of the contest of armies. Had his opponent had twenty lives, the fury of Kirkpatrick would have been unsatiated by them all. His spirit was roused to that of a demon; a supernatural strength nerved his arm; he despised life and all its blessings; the world had in an instant lost for him any charms, but as the place where lived that one man whose blood was to glut his vengeance. His sword found the heart of Blacket House, and twenty wounds verified the ballad:—
"I lighted down my sword to draw—
I hacked him in pieces sma'—
I hacked him in pieces sma',
For her sake that died for me."