“Come with me,” said the mendicant, almost dragging him off; “the Captain’s plan is the best—I’ll carry ye to a place where ye might be concealed in the meantime, were they to seek ye ‘wi’ sleuth-hounds.”
“Go, go,” again urged Lieutenant Taffril—“to stay here is mere madness.”
“It was worse madness to have come hither,” said Lovel, pressing his hand—“But farewell!” And he followed Ochiltree into the recesses of the wood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.
—The Lord Abbot had a soul
Subtile and quick, and searching as the fire;
By magic stairs he went as deep as hell,
And if in devils’ possession gold be kept,
He brought some sure from thence—‘tis hid in caves,
Known, save to me, to none.—
The Wonder of a Kingdome.
Lovel almost mechanically followed the beggar, who led the way with a hasty and steady pace, through bush and bramble, avoiding the beaten path, and often turning to listen whether there were any sounds of pursuit behind them. They sometimes descended into the very bed of the torrent, sometimes kept a narrow and precarious path, that the sheep (which, with the sluttish negligence towards property of that sort universal in Scotland, were allowed to stray in the copse) had made along the very verge of its overhanging banks. From time to time Lovel had a glance of the path which he had traversed the day before in company with Sir Arthur, the Antiquary, and the young ladies. Dejected, embarrassed, and occupied by a thousand inquietudes, as he then was, what would he now have given to regain the sense of innocence which alone can counter-balance a thousand evils! “Yet, then,” such was his hasty and involuntary reflection, “even then, guiltless and valued by all around me, I thought myself unhappy. What am I now, with this young man’s blood upon my hands?—the feeling of pride which urged me to the deed has now deserted me, as the actual fiend himself is said to do those whom he has tempted to guilt.” Even his affection for Miss Wardour sunk for the time before the first pangs of remorse, and he thought he could have encountered every agony of slighted love to have had the conscious freedom from blood-guiltiness which he possessed in the morning.
These painful reflections were not interrupted by any conversation on the part of his guide, who threaded the thicket before him, now holding back the sprays to make his path easy, now exhorting him to make haste, now muttering to himself, after the custom of solitary and neglected old age, words which might have escaped Lovel’s ear even had he listened to them, or which, apprehended and retained, were too isolated to convey any connected meaning,—a habit which may be often observed among people of the old man’s age and calling.
At length, as Lovel, exhausted by his late indisposition, the harrowing feelings by which he was agitated, and the exertion necessary to keep up with his guide in a path so rugged, began to flag and fall behind, two or three very precarious steps placed him on the front of a precipice overhung with brushwood and copse. Here a cave, as narrow in its entrance as a fox-earth, was indicated by a small fissure in the rock, screened by the boughs of an aged oak, which, anchored by its thick and twisted roots in the upper part of the cleft, flung its branches almost straight outward from the cliff, concealing it effectually from all observation. It might indeed have escaped the attention even of those who had stood at its very opening, so uninviting was the portal at which the beggar entered. But within, the cavern was higher and more roomy, cut into two separate branches, which, intersecting each other at right angles, formed an emblem of the cross, and indicated the abode of an anchoret of former times. There are many caves of the same kind in different parts of Scotland. I need only instance those of Gorton, near Rosslyn, in a scene well known to the admirers of romantic nature.
The light within the eave was a dusky twilight at the entrance, which failed altogether in the inner recesses. “Few folks ken o’ this place,” said the old man; “to the best o’my knowledge, there’s just twa living by mysell, and that’s Jingling Jock and the Lang Linker. I have had mony a thought, that when I fand mysell auld and forfairn, and no able to enjoy God’s blessed air ony langer, I wad drag mysell here wi’ a pickle ait-meal; and see, there’s a bit bonny dropping well that popples that self-same gate simmer and winter;—and I wad e’en streek mysell out here, and abide my removal, like an auld dog that trails its useless ugsome carcass into some bush or bracken no to gie living things a scunner wi’ the sight o’t when it’s dead—Ay, and then, when the dogs barked at the lone farm-stead, the gudewife wad cry, Whisht, stirra, that’ll be auld Edie,’ and the bits o’ weans wad up, puir things, and toddle to the door to pu’ in the auld Blue-Gown that mends a’ their bonny-dies—But there wad be nae mair word o’ Edie, I trow.”