* Massa-mora, an ancient name for a dungeon, derived from the Moorish language, perhaps as far back as the time of the Crusades.
But these times are past, and the authority which the nobles of the land should exercise is delegated to quibbling lawyers and their baser dependants. Hear me, Elspeth Cheyne! if you are your father’s daughter as I am mine, I will find means that they shall not marry. She walks often to that cliff that overhangs your dwelling to look for her lover’s boat—(ye may remember the pleasure ye then took on the sea, my Lord)—let him find her forty fathom lower than he expects!’—Yes! ye may stare and frown and clench your hand; but, as sure as I am to face the only Being I ever feared—and, oh that I had feared him mair!—these were your mother’s words. What avails it to me to lie to you?—But I wadna consent to stain my hand with blood.—Then she said, By the religion of our holy Church they are ower sibb thegither. But I expect nothing but that both will become heretics as well as disobedient reprobates;’—that was her addition to that argument. And then, as the fiend is ever ower busy wi’ brains like mine, that are subtle beyond their use and station, I was unhappily permitted to add—But they might be brought to think themselves sae sibb as no Christian law will permit their wedlock.’”
Here the Earl of Glenallan echoed her words, with a shriek so piercing as almost to rend the roof of the cottage.—“Ah! then Eveline Neville was not the—the”—
“The daughter, ye would say, of your father?” continued Elspeth. “No—be it a torment or be it a comfort to you—ken the truth, she was nae mair a daughter of your father’s house than I am.”
“Woman, deceive me not!—make me not curse the memory of the parent I have so lately laid in the grave, for sharing in a plot the most cruel, the most infernal”—
“Bethink ye, my Lord Geraldin, ere ye curse the memory of a parent that’s gane, is there none of the blood of Glenallan living, whose faults have led to this dreadfu’ catastrophe?”
“Mean you my brother?—he, too, is gone,” said the Earl.
“No,” replied the sibyl, “I mean yoursell, Lord Geraldin. Had you not transgressed the obedience of a son by wedding Eveline Neville in secret while a guest at Knockwinnock, our plot might have separated you for a time, but would have left at least your sorrows without remorse to canker them. But your ain conduct had put poison in the weapon that we threw, and it pierced you with the mair force because ye cam rushing to meet it. Had your marriage been a proclaimed and acknowledged action, our stratagem to throw an obstacle into your way that couldna be got ower, neither wad nor could hae been practised against ye.”
“Great Heaven!” said the unfortunate nobleman—“it is as if a film fell from my obscured eyes! Yes, I now well understand the doubtful hints of consolation thrown out by my wretched mother, tending indirectly to impeach the evidence of the horrors of which her arts had led me to believe myself guilty.”
“She could not speak mair plainly,” answered Elspeth, “without confessing her ain fraud,—and she would have submitted to be torn by wild horses, rather than unfold what she had done; and if she had still lived, so would I for her sake. They were stout hearts the race of Glenallan, male and female, and sae were a’ that in auld times cried their gathering-word of Clochnaben—they stood shouther to shouther—nae man parted frae his chief for love of gold or of gain, or of right or of wrang. The times are changed, I hear, now.”