"We have got again, in the wood-bower, a lover," cried the father. "I insist, Matilda, that thou dost tell me who it is."
"I do not know, father," replied Matilda.
"Is it he with whom you attempted to elope that night when Bertha fell on the bridge?" asked the mother.
"I never attempted to elope," answered the maiden, weeping; "but I was attempted to be carried off by some one in disguise; and the man that is now in my bower may be he, but I know not."
"Sir Thomas Courtney!" cried the mother.
The father rushed out of the room. The sounds of voices were heard in the base-court, and that of George Douglas was pre-eminent. A shot was heard. Matilda looked out at the window, and saw some servants carrying the body of a wounded man across the bridge. Lights were brought, and some one called out the name of Templeton the archer. Matilda flew out of the room, and was in an instant in the ballium. She looked in the face of the wounded man. It was George Templeton. He opened his eyes, and fixed them on her face, took her hand into his, pressed it, sighed, and expired.
Some days afterwards, Matilda Rollo was led, dressed by the hands of her mother, into the presence of the priest who was to unite her and Sir George Douglas. When asked if she consented to receive the knight as her husband, she burst into a loud laugh. Her reason had fled; she was ever afterwards a maniac, and was tended by Bertha Maitland, who, sitting in the wood-bower, often contemplated, with feelings we will not attempt to describe, the unhappy victim of her treachery.
THE TWO SAILORS.
One dark and cloudy evening in September, two young men were seen walking on the road that winds so beautifully along the shore of the Solway, below the mouth of the Nith, between the quay and Caerlaverock. The summit of Criffel was hidden in clouds; the sky was dark and threatening; and the shrieking of the sea-fowl, and the whitening crests of the waves, as they broke before the freshening breeze, gave warning that a storm was at hand. At some distance, a two-masted boat, or wherry, as it is there called, lay on the beach, half afloat on the rising tide; and a boy sat on the green bank near, apparently watching her.