It was on a dark and stormy night in November, that he arrived at his own gate on horseback, and alone. Their lord’s return being wholly unexpected by his domestics, he had some difficulty in gaining admittance; but having at length satisfied the porter who kept the gate, that he was indeed his master, the former was thrown open; and, all dripping with wet, and perishing with cold, the Lord of Hermitage once more entered his own castle, where, in the enjoyment of the luxuries of a blazing fire and an ample repast, he quickly forgot the sufferings to which, for the last ten or twelve hours, he had been exposed.
In little more than an hour afterwards, however, the Lord of Hermitage’s arrival was followed by that of another person, who rode furiously up to the gate, and inquired, in an eager and anxious tone, if he had yet appeared. Being answered in the affirmative, the stranger called on the porter to open the gate, saying that he was an attendant of his master’s, whom the latter had hired some days previously, and that he had lost both him and his way in the dark, being a stranger in that part of the country. The man’s story was plausible; and he was instantly admitted. On entering the court-yard, and seeing some lights in the windows that overlooked it, the stranger inquired of the person who admitted him, whether any one, and which of these windows belonged to his master’s sleeping apartment. The porter, naturally thinking that the question was put by the stranger with the view of affording his master his services, pointed out the apartment he inquired after, and gave him particular directions how to find it. Desiring his informant now to hold his horse for a few minutes, till he should have informed his master of his arrival, when he would return, he said, to take charge of the animal himself, the stranger disappeared. In an instant after, the door of the Lord of Hermitage’s apartment was suddenly opened, and “Jock o’ the Syde” stood before its horror-struck inmate, who at once guessed the intentions of the intruder. What followed was the work of a moment. Armstrong—his eyes dilated with a fearful joy, and with a deadly smile playing on his haggard countenance, seized the unhappy Lord of Hermitage by the throat; and, as he struck a dagger to his heart, exclaimed—“Villain! most atrocious of villains! the hour of vengeance is come. I have caught thee at last. This, and this, and this,” he said, as he repeated his stabs, “is for Isabella Foster and her murdered father!”
Elated beyond bounds at this successful termination to all his weary toils and watchings, and gratified to think that his vengeance had been, after all, consummated in the very stronghold of the murderer, Armstrong flew to the court-yard, leaped on his horse, and having called to the porter, in a voice of fierce exultation, to open the gate, as his master had ordered him on a pressing and important mission, “Jock o’ the Syde” galloped out of the castle; and his loud and triumphant, but most appalling laugh, as he cleared the gate-way, rang wildly through the darkness and solitude of the night, and struck those who heard it with awe and dismay; for it was, indeed, unearthly.
GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT.
XVIII.—KINALDY.
Kinaldy is now the property of Mr Purves—an excellent country gentleman who has made an ample fortune in America; but the period to which my narrative refers, was long prior to this. The property is poor and moorish though now covered with wood, sheltered, and highly cultivated. In the days of Andrew Watson, it bore a very different appearance: in fact, Andrew was not the proprietor, but only the farmer; whilst a nephew of Archbishop Sharp, long resident in an asylum, was the nominal proprietor, under various trustees, of whom the famous Archbishop was one.
Farm houses in those days were very different from those of the present. A thatched and patched roof, with walls of alternate layers of turf and stone, and mid-walls or hallens of clay and straw, quite Egyptian manufacture, were all the go; and if any one, more advanced and uppish than his neighbours, got the length of a stone and clay wall, with a wooden partition within, he was deemed uncommonly appointed, as times went. Through these stone and turf walls there was free ingress and egress to the wind, as well as a plentiful allotment of rats, and the light infantry, the mice; and holes capable of admitting even the cat in full chase of her prey, perforated the clayey hallen in particular. Thus, by little and little, the frail separation betwixt but and ben—the house and the cha’mer—was in a manner undermined; and even the pressure of a little urchin’s elbow, of eight or ten years of age, was sufficient to shake it to its foundation. It is of one such as I am describing, that the author of Maggy Lauder speaks, when he makes his jolly heroine contemptuously exclaim—
“Begone ye hallenshauker,”