“My child, my darling Isabel, speak,” said the aged father, raising her in his trembling arms. “Oh! I have long suspected this, and the blow has killed her! Why did I suffer her to hear this tale!”
With difficulty they revived her; but she only woke to a spell of sickness; and for weeks her fate hung in a balance between life and death.
——
CHAPTER III.
But Grahame had not fallen. True, as his retainer asserted, he had maintained the unequal combat long after every one else had left the field, and true also he had finally been overwhelmed by numbers and left for dead, covered with wounds, upon the battle plain; but when the pursuing squadrons had swept by, leaving the field comparatively deserted, and the chill night wind breathed with reviving coolness over his brow, he awoke to consciousness, and was enabled, by the assistance of one of his followers who yet prowled about the scene of carnage in the hope of finding his master, to gain a secure retreat where he might be cured of his wounds. Here, on the rude couch of a humble cottage, he lay for weeks, and the third month had set in after the battle, before he was enabled to leave his lowly shelter. During all this time his faithful retainer watched over him, tending him one while with the assiduity of a nurse, and another while, on any alarm, preparing to defend him to the last extremity.
“I am now a houseless, persecuted outlaw,” said Grahame when he mounted his steed to leave the humble cottage where he had found shelter. “The crop-eared puritanic knaves have shed the best blood in the country and they will not spare mine. The land is overrun with their troops, and there is no safety, in this portion of it at least. I will go once more to the halls of my fathers, take a last farewell of them, and then carry my life and sword to some foreign market, for, God help me, there is nothing else left to do.”
It was a bright sunny afternoon when Grahame reached his ancestral halls, now deserted and melancholy. Already had the minions of the parliament sequestrated and shut up the mansion, and it was only through the fidelity of an old servant, who yet lingered around the place, that its former master was enabled to enter its portals. The aged retainer wept with joy on his lord’s hand, and said,
“Oh! dark was the day when news came of your honor’s death.”
“And was it then reported that I was no more? Yet how can I wonder at it, considering my long seclusion.”
“Oh! yes—and sad times too they had of it over at Mordaunt Hall. The young mistress fainted away, and was near dying, though since she has heard that you yet lived—as we all did, you know, by your messenger,—she has wonderfully revived. But what ails you, my dear master?—are you sick?”