MARY OF LORRAINE.

An Historical Romance.

BY

JAMES GRANT,

AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE AIDE-DE-CAMP," "ARTHUR BLANE,"
ETC. ETC.

"It was English gold and Scots traitors wan
Pinkeycleuch, but no Englishman."
OLD RHYME.

A NEW EDITION

LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS,
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL;
NEW YORK: 129, GRAND STREET.
1865.

Contents

I. [THE TOWER OF FAWSIDE]
II. [WESTMAINS]
III. [THE DEATH FEUD]
IV. [AN OLD SCOTTISH MATRON]
V. [THE "GOLDEN ROSE."]
VI. [CURIOSITY]
VII. [THE BRAWL]
VIII. [THE REGENCY OF ARRAN]
IX. [MISTRUST]
X. [IN WHICH THE PATIENT PROGRESSES FAVOURABLY]
XI. [THE OPAL RING]
XII. [MASTER POSSET]
XIII. [HOME]
XIV. [PRESTON TOWER]
XV. [THE LETTER OF THE VALOIS]
XVI. [THE COUNTESS]
XVII. [A SNARE]
XVIII. [THE DEATH-ERRAND]
XIX. [CADZOW FOREST]
XX. [MILLHEUGH]
XXI. [A BOTHWELL! A BOTHWELL!]
XXII. [THE SCORNED AMITY]
XXIII. [CADZOW CASTLE]
XXIV. [THE JOURNEY]
XXV. [THE PROCESSION]
XXVI. [THE CONVENTION OF ESTATES]
XXVII. [MADELINE HOME]
XXVIII. [CHAMPFLEURIE]
XXIX. [THE DOUGLAS ROOM]
XXX. [THE ROMAN ROCK]
XXXI. [THE JOURNEY HOME]
XXXII. [THE CHATELAINE OF THE TORWOOD]
XXXIII. [THE NEISH'S HEAD]
XXXIV. [THE NEISH'S HEAD—STORY CONTINUED]
XXXV. [A RIVAL]
XXXVI. [THE RETURN]
XXXVII. [LADY ALISON]
XXXVIII. [THE CHAPEL OF ST. MARTIN]
XXXIX. [THE LURE]
XL. [THE WAKENING]
XLI. [A BLOODY TRYST]
XLII. [THE PASSING BELL]
XLIII. [THE CROSS OF FIRE]
XLIV. [THE INVASION]
XLV. [THE MEN-AT-ARMS]
XLVI. [THE PARLEY]
XLVII. [THE BLACK SATURDAY]
XLVIII. [THE BATTLE]
XLIX. [THE FLIGHT]
L. [HAWTHORNDEN]
LI. [JOY]
LII. [PEDRO DE GAMBOA]
LIII. [THE GUISE PALACE]
LIX. [THE DEPARTURE]
LV. [SEQUEL TO THE INVASION]
LVI. [THE ISLE OF REST]
NOTES I: [FAWSIDE OF THAT ILK]
NOTES II: [THE BATTLE OF PINKEY]

PREFACE.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe something of the manners and inner life of the Lowland Scots at the period referred to, modernizing the language, which, to my English readers, might otherwise prove unintelligible.

For the political corruption of the Scottish noblesse at that—as at every other—period of their annals, ample proofs to support me are furnished by "Rymer's Foedera," and "Tytler's History;" while the fact that Henry VIII. and his successors too often employed in Scotland other and very different emissaries than the two I shall introduce to the reader, has been amply proved by the Calendar of State Papers on Scotland, lately published by Mr. Thorpe, who shows us that, in addition to the devastations and burning of his lawless invading armies of English, Spaniards, and Germans, he was base enough to hire secret assassins, to remove all who were inimical to his matrimonial speculations in Scotland.

Incidentally, I have introduced the terrible episode of a Highland feud which occurred in the time of James V. The story of "The Neish's Head" is still remembered in Strathearn; and I believe a different version of it appeared some years ago in a work entitled "The Scottish Wars."

The mode of torture mentioned in the adventure at Millheugh Tower, was not uncommon in those barbarous days. My attention was called, by a friend, to a paper which is preserved at Cullen House, Bauffshire, and which furnished the idea.

It formed part of a collection of MSS. which belonged to the late Rev. John Grant, of Elgin, and which, with his library, he bequeathed to his chief, the Earl of Seafield. It refers to the feud between the Earls of Huntley and Murray (which ended in the murder of the latter, at the Castle of Donibristle, in Fifeshire), and is a copy of a petition from the latter noble, the chief of the Grants, and Dunbar, sheriff of Moray, praying the government of James VI. to grant them protection against Huntley and his followers, and craving redress for injuries which they had sustained at his hands. After narrating many instances of fire-raising and bloodshed perpetrated by the Gordons, it demands justice "for the cruel slaughter of John Mhor, son of Alaster Mhor Grant, a kinsman and follower of John Grant, of Freuchie, who was hanged and smeikit in the cruick, till he died, by Patrick Gordon, brother to William Gordon, of Monaltrie, and five or six others, at the instance and command of the said George, Earl of Huntley."

In this document, which was dated 1591, there is another barbarity which I care not committing to print; but such were the cruelties and recklessness of life, about the times immediately before and after the Reformation, and the regency of Mary of Lorraine.

In the notes I have given a list—the gradual collection of years—of some of those Scottish gentlemen who fell in defence of their country on the 10th of September, 1547; and I have little doubt that many of my readers may discover their ancestors amongst them. I have seen no similar list so ample, save one that I possess of the brave who died at Flodden with King James.

26, DANUBE STREET, EDINBURGH,
May, 1860.

MARY OF LORRAINE.

CHAPTER I.
THE TOWER OF FAWSIDE.

The castle looketh dark without;
Within the rooms are cold and dreary;
The chill light from the window fades;
The fire it burneth all uncheery.
With meek hands cross'd beside the hearth,
The pale and anxious mother sitteth;
And now she listens to the bat
That, screaming, round the window flitteth.
Mary Howitt.

Ten miles eastward from the Cross of Edinburgh, and two southward from the sandy shore of the Firth of Forth, stands an old and ruined fortalice, named the Castle of Fawside, on a green ridge which rises by gradual and gentle undulations, to the height of three hundred feet above the sea.

In summer the foliage of a group of venerable trees generally conceals much of this ancient mansion, which occupies a lonely and sequestered spot; but its square crumbling chimneys and round turrets, cutting the sky line above the leafy coppice, are visible to all who traverse the roads which lie at the base of the aforesaid ridge. Covered with wood, and a little to the westward, is the hill of Carberry, the scene of Queen Mary's memorable surrender (some twenty years after the period of our present story) to those titled ruffians who styled themselves the Lords of the Congregation.

The more ancient part of this mansion is of unknown antiquity, and consists of a narrow and massive tower, entered by a low-browed archway, built of deep-red sandstone, facing the north. The arch gives access to a suite of those strong dark vaults which form the substructure of all old Scottish houses, and from thence, by a steep wheel stair (which contains a curious and secret hiding-place) we may ascend to a hall, the groined stone roof of which is still remaining, though covered on the top, where once the stone bartizan lay, by a coating of rich grass.

Here, in this grim and narrow tower, in the twelfth century, dwelt William de Fawsyde, a baron in the first parliament of King David I.; and his son Edmund, who stood by that brave monarch's side, when, in the monastery of the Holy Rood, he gifted the lands of Tranent to Thor, the son of Swan. The more modern parts of this ruin are on the south, and consist of a huge gable, having two massive turrets, a steep and narrow circular stair, and several large windows, in which the enormous harrow-shaped iron gratings are still remaining. Stone water-spouts, finely carved, project from these turrets; but no date gives an index to the time of these additions, which are in the Scoto-French style of the sixteenth century.

Like all such edifices in Scotland, this castle is haunted. It is the abode of a spectral lady, who wears a dule-weed, or antique suit of mourning, and appears once yearly, flitting among the ruins, on the anniversary of that Black Saturday in September when the fatal field of Pinkey was fought on the green slope and beautiful plain between the ruins and the sea. Benighted shepherds, gipsies, and other wanderers, who have ventured to seek shelter under the crumbling roof of the old hall, have more than once encountered her, to their terror and dismay; but this restless spirit molests no one. Pale, sad, and silent, she generally sits in a corner of the great northern window, with her wheel or spindle, and like she of whom we read in the "Battle of Regillus," it has been said of her that,—

"As she plied the distaff,
In sweet voice and low,
She sang of great old houses,
And fights fought long ago;
So spun she, so sang she, until the east was grey,
Then pointed to her bleeding heart, and shrieked and fled away."

This quaint ruin, which is still engirt by the remains of a high barbican wall, entered by one of those strong yetlan iron gates peculiar to all baronial houses in Scotland, after the portcullis fell into disuse, was the residence and stronghold of the Fawsides of that ilk—one of the oldest families in the Lowlands of Scotland. And now, with the reader's pardon for this somewhat archæological and architectural preamble, we will proceed at once to open our story.

In the year 1547, when the little Mary Queen of Scots was a chubby child of five years old, and her turbulent and rebellious kingdom, then wavering between Catholicism and a new faith, for which there was no other name but Heresy, was governed by the somewhat feeble authority of a regent, in the person of James Hamilton, second Earl of Arran, and next heir to the throne, the tower of Fawside was inhabited by Dame Alison Kennedy, widow of Sir John Fawside, who had been slain in a feud by the Hamiltons of Preston; and this stern woman—for singularly stern she was by nature—was a Kennedy of the house of Colzean, and cousin of that ferocious Earl of Cassilis, who, thirty-three years after the epoch of this our history, deliberately roasted Allan Stewart, commendator of Crossraguel, before a blazing fire, having first denuded him of his clothes, and basted him well with grease; and there, sputtering like a huge turkey, the hapless priest was turned upon a spit, until, with his scorched and shrivelled hand, he signed a charter, gifting all the lands of his abbey unto the earl and his heirs.

On the evening of the 1st of August, the Feast of St. Peter ad Vincula (or the Festival of the Chains), 1547, this lady was seated at the northern window of her hall, gazing with fixed and anxious eyes over the tract of country that lay between her castle and the sea. Untouched and neglected, her ivory-mounted spinning-wheel stood near her; close by were six other wheels of plainer construction, evincing that she and the women of her little household had been spinning since the time of dinner, which, in those stirring days, was taken at the hour of twelve.

The sun was setting beyond the purple hills of Dunblane, and its golden gleam lit all the far-extending shores of Lothian and of Fife, with their gray bluffs, green bays, and sandy beaches, the straggling burghs of Grail and Kinghorn, and many a fisher-village, all dark and weather-beaten by the stormy gales that blow from the German Sea. At anchor in Musselburgh Bay were a few of those small craft which were then termed topmen, from their peculiar rigging, and which traded with the low countries in wool, skins, salmon, cloth, silks, and wine. They had huge square poops, and low prows beaked with iron, and were always well equipped with falcons, crossbows, and arquebusses, as a defence against English pirates and Moorish rovers.

Save where a few cottages and a clump of trees dotted the slope here and there, the country was all open between the tower in which the lady sat, and the green knoll crowned by St. Michael's Kirk of Inveresk, and the high antique bridge and the thatched or stone-slated houses of the "honest town" of Musselburgh. This venerable municipality was then terminated on the westward by a beautiful chapel, dedicated to our Lady of Loretto, to whose shrine the late King James V., with taper in hand and feet and head bare, had made more than one pilgrimage for the health of his first queen, Magdalene of Valois, and of his second, Mary of Lorraine; for this old shrine shared all the fame and sanctity of its elder prototype in Italy. A great part of the adjacent town was in ruins, just as it had been left by the English after their invasion under Lord Hertford, three years before the date of our story.

Below the hill of Inveresk lay a deep and dangerous morass, named the Howe Mire, then the haunt of the heron, the wild goose, and coot, the water kelpie, and the will-o'-the-wisp.

Three miles distant from the window at which Dame Alison was seated rose the high and narrow tower of Preston; and when her wandering eyes fell on its grim dark mass, they flashed with a hateful glare, while the gloom of her pale anxious brow grew darker, and its stern lines more deep; for she hated the race of Hamilton, to whom it belonged, with all the hate an old Scottish feud inspired.

On the green slope of Fawside Hill the shepherds, grey-plaided and bonneted, were driving home to fold and penn the flocks which had browsed there the livelong harvest day; and these were all of that old Scottish breed which is now completely extinct, but was small, active, and keen-eyed, with tawny faces, hairy wool, and well-curved yellow horns.

The quiet evening aspect of the pastoral landscape on which the lady gazed was not made more lively by the grisly forms of two dead men hanging upon the arm of an oak tree about a bow-shot from the tower gate, where the black rooks and ravenous gleds were perching or wheeling in circles round them. These unfortunates had been "hangit in their buits," as they phrased it in those days, by order of the baroness; for there was then a law "that ilk baron might cleanse his lands of trespassers thrice in the year;" so, on finding two on her estate of Fawside, she ordered them to be hanged, and, in five minutes thereafter, old Roger of the Westmains, her bailie, had them dangling from an arm of the dule tree. Her neighbours averred that this severity was exercised because the culprits bore the name of Hamilton; and a greater horror was added to the episode by the discovery that certain portions of their limbs had been abstracted in the night,—"Doubtless," said the bailie, "by the witches of Salt Preston, for the furtherance of their damnable cantrips."

"Half-past eight," muttered Lady Alison, as the last segment of the ruddy sun sank behind the dark peak of Dumeyat, "and no sign's yet of horse or man upon the upland road. Woe to you, Westmains, for a loitering fool! Thou art too old to scourge, and too faithful to hang, or, by my husband's grave, my mood to-night would give thee to one or other—the rod or the rope!"

As she spoke her thoughts aloud, in that manner peculiar to those who think deeply and are much alone, she beat the paved floor passionately with the high heel of her shoe. There she sat alone in that quaint old hall, with the shadows of night closing around her—alone, because she was a woman whom, from her stern nature and wayward humour, many feared and few loved.

For the hundredth time that day, she anxiously consulted the horologue. This clock was a curious piece of mechanism, which occupied a niche in the hall, and was supported on four little brass pillars, surmounted by a metal dome, on which the hours were struck by a clumsy iron hammer. It bore the date 1507, and the name Leadenhall, having been found in an English ship, taken by Sir Robert Barton, who had presented it as an almost priceless gift to her late husband.

Nine o'clock struck from this sonorous horologue; and then the pale mother, who, in those perilous and stormy days, waited for an only and long-absent son, struck her hands despairingly together, and again seated herself at the grated window of the hall, to watch the darkening shadows without.

Suddenly a sound struck her ear, and a horseman was seen galloping up the narrow bridle-path which traversed Fawside Brae and led direct to the castle wall.

"Nurse—nurse Maud!" said Lady Alison impetuously to an old woman wearing a curchie and camlet gown, who joined her; "my eyes are full of tears, and I cannot see—is that horseman our bairn, or only old Westmains?"

"'Tis Westmains—I would ken his grey mare amang a thousand."

"He rideth fast, nurse, for a man so old in years."

"Yea; but a drunken man and a famished horse come fast home to bower and stall," responded the Abigail crustily; "the hour is late, and Preston's men were at Edinburgh market to-day; so, perhaps our bailie had a shrewd guess the way might be beset between the night and morning."

"Beset!—and my son——" muttered the pale mother through her clenched teeth.

"Fear na for him; he has friends——"

"Friends?"

"Yes, madam—his sword and dagger, and stout hands to wield them! But here comes that drunken carle, the bailie."

As the nurse spoke, the horseman trotted his nag into the paved barbican of the tower, and dismounted.

CHAPTER II.
WESTMAINS.

Oh, when will ye come hame again?
Dear Willie, tell to me;
"When sun and moon loup o'er yon hill—
And that will never be!"
She turned hersel right round about,
Her heart burst into three;
"My ae best son is dead and gane,
The other I ne'er shall see."
Old Ballad.

"A light," exclaimed Lady Alison; "a light, that I may see by this loiterer's face whether he be tipsy or sober!"

Candles were soon flaming in the numerous sconces of polished tin and brass that hung on knobs around the hall, and shed a cheerful light through every part of it; yet it was not without what we in these days would deem a quaint and weird aspect. Many centuries had darkened this old mansion, and twelve generations had hung their swords in that baronial hall. It is lofty, arched with stone, and its walls are still massive, deep, and strong. Father Seton, the vicar of the adjacent village, who was locally known as Mass John of Tranent, and to whose writings we are indebted for much that concerns this old family, has left a minute description of all the "gear and inside plenishing of the castle."

Large oak chests, girnels and almries, the receptacles of linen, vessels for the table, food, corn, and beer, occupied the recesses. Trophies of arms and racks of spears stood between the windows. In this apartment there were but two chairs of carved oak. These, as usual then in Scottish halls stood on each side of the fireplace: one, being for the father of the family, had never been used since the slaughter of Sir John Fawside by the Laird of Preston; the other was for Dame Alison. Round the hall were ranged various forms, creepies, and buffet stools; these, like the long table, were all of black old oak from the Burghmuir, and allotted to the use of the family or visitors. The stone seats in the windows were laid over with cushions of Flemish damask, and had footmats of plaited rushes from the Howemire. The stone walls, which, as the season was warm, were divested of tapestry, had been recently decorated by Andro Watson, the late king's favourite painter, and bore numerous gaudy and quaint designs, representing family traditions, such as passages of arms and daring feats performed in war or in the chase.

Over the arched fireplace stood the portrait of umquhile Sir John of that ilk, the work of the same hand. Quaint, stark and stiff, he was on foot, in an old suit of mail of the fifteenth century, jagged with iron beaks; a snowy beard flowed below his girdle, and his right hand grasped the bridle of a white horse, on the back of which this grim figure had frequently been found mounted at midnight, as nurse Maud, and other old servants, had more than once affirmed!—for Fawside Tower was haunted even then, as a matter of course. Too much blood had been shed in and about it, and too many of its mailed proprietors had perished by bloody and violent deaths, for the mansion to be without its due proportion of spectral appearances and mysterious sounds.

Thus, an antique copper bell which swung at the gable of the tower tolled of its own accord, and all untouched by mortal hand, when a Fawside died; and on the Eve of St. John, a bearded visage, averred by some to be that of the late laird, peeped in the twilight through the hall windows, though these were more than twenty feet from the ground. The gleaming eyes would gaze sadly for a moment on the shrinking beholder, and then the visage melted slowly away into air.

Above the mantelpiece, as above the barbican gate, were the arms of this old family—gules, a fess between three besants, the heraldic badge assigned to a predecessor who had been in Palestine—Sir Robert of that ilk, having served St. Louis IX. in the last crusade, and taken the motto Forth and feir nocht: but enough of this dull archæology, and now to resume our narrative.

Followed by several of the household, male and female, all anxious to learn what the town news was, and chiefly whether there were any tidings of their young master's return from France, where he had been resident nearly seven years, the ground bailie, Roger Fawside, of the Westmains, a vassal and remote kinsman, entered the hall. He was a stout and thickset man, about fifty years of age; his beard was grizzled and grey, like his Lombard coat, which had long hanging sleeves, with rows of horn buttons from the shoulder to the wrist. He wore grey breeches and white ribbed stockings gartered at the knee, a blue bonnet, a sword and dagger, slung at a calf-skin girdle. Doffing his bonnet, he made a reverence to Lady Alison, and walking straight to where, upon a binn, near the hall door, there stood a barrel of ale furnished with a wooden cup, for all who chose to drink thereat; he drew forth the spiggot, and proceeded to fill the aforesaid vessel with a foaming draught. With her brows knit, and her dark eyes flashing, the tall old dame came hastily forward, and by one blow of her jewelled hand, dashed from his the wooden tankard, while she exclaimed—

"Satisfy my impatience, carle, ere you satisfy your thirst! Well, what tidings of my son, Westmains, or of his ship? speak , and quickly too, for you have tarried long enough!"

"A ship supposed to be his, my Lady Alison, was seen on the water of Forth this morning, but she hath not come to land."

"This morning——"

"Yes."

"Art sure of this!"

"Sure as I live, madam."

"And he not here yet!" pondered the lady.

"The skippers at Musselburgh kent her well—a French galley, high pooped and low waisted, with King Henry's banner displayed; men called her the Salamandre, or some such name."

"Likely enough; 'tis the crest of the late king's mistress, Diana, the Duchess of Valentinois; and this——"

"Was about the dawning of the day, madam."

"And since then," continued the lady impatiently, "she has not passed the Inch."

"There have been no storms to delay the ship?"

"None, save that made by Girzy Gowdie, of Salt Preston, by baptising a cat in the devil's name last week, as we a' ken."

"But that storm came and went to drown a skipper of Dunbar, who had slighted her daughter."

"And yesterday," added Nurse Maude, "she did her penance under a pile o' tarred barrels on Gulane Links."

"Rightly was she served, the accursed witch!" responded Roger of Westmains, recovering the wooden cup and applying it hastily to the spiggot of the barrel, from whence he achieved a draught of ale; "for 'tis now kenned that when she rode forth on a broom stick, in the auld fashion, thrice a year, to keep the devil's sabbath at Clootie's Croft, on the Lammermuir, she left in bed beside her gudeman, a three-legged stool in the likeness of herself; and the said stool (which was burned wi' her) only assumed its own form when Father John of Tranent, chanced to pass that way, telling his beads, about the matin time."

"Cease this gossip, bailie," said the lady, starting again to the north window; "a horseman!—see, see!—a horseman at last is ascending the brae side."

"But he wheels off to Carberry," added the nurse, in a voice like a moan.

"Alas!" exclaimed this stern woman, as her eyes began to fill with tears—"my son; why comes he not?"

"The dogs howled the lee lang night," said the wrinkled nurse, applying her apron to her eyes; "and 'twas not for nocht that yonder howlet screamed on the cape-house head yestreen."

"What mean ye, Maud?" asked the lady sharply.

"They are kenned omens of evil."

"Of evil say ye!"

"Yes—weel awat it is!"

"Havers, Kimmer!" said the ground bailie, taking another jug of ale; "just an auld wife's havers!"

"Thou art right, Westmains," added Lady Alison; "for I have believed but little in omens since Flodden Field was stricken."

"Why since then, lady?"

"On the morn my husband marched from here to join the king's host on the Burghmuir of Edinburgh, as he combed his beard—and a braw lang beard it was, Westmains"——

"I mind it weel, for it spread from ilk shoulder to the other, covering corslet and pauldrons."

"Well, as he combed it out with a steel comb twelve inches long, and buckled on his armour, lo! there appeared before him, in the mirror—what think ye all?"

"I know not," replied the bailie, in his abstraction contriving to fill a third jug of ale; "but many strange sights were seen in those days. We a' ken o' the spectres that King James saw at Lithgow Kirk and Jeddart Ha', and of the weird spirit-herald who summoned the souls of the slain—the doomed men of the battle at Edinburgh Cross."

"But what think you my poor husband saw!"

"As I live, I know not," replied the bailie; while the hushed crowd of dependents drew near to listen.

"A mort head where his own comely face should have been!"

"Preserve us a'!"

"Our lady o' Whitehorn!"

"Say ye so, my lady?" were the varied exclamations of the servants.

"Yes!—there stood the shining reflection of his cuirass, pauldrons, and sleeves of Milan plate, just as we see them limned in yonder portrait; but the gorget was surmounted by a grinning skull. And yet he fell not with the king on that fatal ninth of September."

"God rest him now, in his grave in Tranent Kirk! He was a leal brave man, our laird!"

"True, Westmains," replied the lady, while her large black eyes kindled. "But none of his race have died a natural death—it would seem to be their doom. All, all have perished in feud or in the cause of Scotland; and though my heart would break were a hair of my Florence's head to be touched, never shall son of this house die in his bed like a fat monk of St. Mary or a lurdane burgess of Haddington."

"Thou art true to thy race, Lady Alison."

"Tell me what other news you heard, Westmains, in yonder borough town?"

"A band of abominable witches have been dancing about the market cross, as they did last Hallowe'en, with the deil, in the likeness of a hairy Hielandman, playing the pipes to them."

"Pshaw! And yet, 'tis strange—this witchcraft, like the spirit of Lollardy, seems to grow apace in the land."

"They have been caught, and are to thole an assize. One is accused of giving devilish drugs and philtres to the Earl of Bothwell, wherewith to win the love of the queen mother"——

"Mary of Lorraine?"

"Another, of cutting off a dead man's thumbs to make hell-broth, wherein she dipped nine elf-arrows, and shot nine o' auld Preston's kye."

"A murrain on him! Would to Heaven the hag had shot himself! But he is reserved for a better end."

"How?"

"Can you ask?" said the lady fiercely. "To die by a Fawside's sword—by the sword of my only son!"

"And there was taken," resumed the garrulous bailie, "a grisly warlock, to whose house in Lugton, last Lammastide, there came the deil"——

"Save us and sain us!" muttered the servants, crossing themselves—for Scotland was Catholic still, in outward form, at least, and the credulity of the people seems almost incredible now.

"The devil! say you, Roger?" asked the lady, becoming suddenly interested.

"The grim black deil himsel, but in the likeness of a fair woman—the Queen of Elfen,—and was there delivered of a female bairn, who in the space of three weeks grew large enough to become his wife, and through whom he knew as much as ever True Thomas did of old; for he confessed that by taking a dog under his left arm, and whispering in his ear the queer word macpeblis, he could raise the King of Evil, his master, at will; and by sprinkling a blanket with Esk water, as a spell, he drew all the clew and verdure of Wolmet-mains to his ain farm land, leaving the other bare and withered. Then, worse than a', when Wolmet's wife was lying in her childbed-lair, by devilish cantrips, he cast the whole of her pain, dolor, and sickness upon John Guidlat, the baron bailie of Dalkeith, who, during the entire time of her travail, was marvellously troubled, with such agonies, fury, and madness, that it took the town drummer, the bellman and piper to boot, to hold him; but the moment the gentlewoman was delivered, John felt himself a whole man, and well; and so, for all these, things, the grey warlock o' Lugton is to be brankit wi iron, and worried by fire at the Gallows-haugh."

"Enough of such tidings as these; heard ye nought else at Edinburgh-Cross, Westmains?"

"Else?"

"Yes, 'tis of my son and the state I would speak,—not the wretched gossip of an ale-brewster's spence. What is the queen-mother,—what are the Regent Arran and his pestilent Hamiltons about?"

"The regent bydes him at Holyrood, the queen-mother at her house on the Castle-hill; and there seems but little love and muckle jealousy between them yet, as I learned from a proclamation anent false coining, for which I saw three Frenchmen hanged and beheaded this morning."

"Anything more?"

"Odslife! I think that was enough to see before breaking one's fast; and then their heads were spiked, where six others girn, on the Bristo Porte."

"Goose! I would thine was with them; for the news I seek oozes out of thee like blood-drops."

"And there was an Irish leper woman branded by a hot iron on both cheeks, for returning uncleansed to her own house in St. Ninian's Row."

"Oh, Westmains, my heart is heavy!" said the lady, seating herself after a pause, during which the ground bailie had filled and drained a fourth cup, to which a fifth would have succeeded had not Nurse Maud, as a hint that he had imbibed enough already, angrily driven home the spiggot: "This day is the first of August; and at noon we heard Father John of Tranerit say mass for St. Peter's benediction, that the shorn lambs might escape the danger of cold."

"Mass according to the ancient wont."

"Mass according to the Church and faith of our fathers," continued the lady, with some asperity; and then she added plaintively, "I was in hopes that my son—my absent lamb—would be with us ere sunset, and yet he comes not."

"A braw lamb," said Westmains merrily; "a tall and proper youth, six feet high, in full steel harness, with sword, dagger, and spurs."

"A lamb he is to me, Roger; though I trust he may yet prove worse than a wolf to that old fox, Hamilton of Preston. Oh, why doth he tarry?" continued the mother, beginning to soften; "can danger have beset him?"

"Consult Mass John anent this," whispered the nurse; "his prayers are as spells of power——"

"For those that pay him weel," added the bailie under his beard, while he scratched his chin.

"Will his prayers bring home my bairn, if a fair wind fails him, think ye?"

"I dinna ken. Like Our Lady's image in the Nunraw of Haddington, they bring rain when the Tranent folk need it to gar their kail grow; or make the weather fair and clear, as the case may be; then why may they not bring hame the young laird?"

"Ay, why, indeed!" muttered the nurse.

"Oh, peace, you silly carlin!"

"As you please, madam," retorted Maud. "But there is a wise woman in Preston-grange——"

"And what of her?"

"She can forsee things to come, and the return o' folk that are far awa, by turning a riddle wi' shears."

"Nay, nay; I would rather see my son no more than see him by necromancy and acts against God's holy word, Nurse. But Preston's men have been abroad to-day, and they seldom ride on a good errand," said Lady Alison, starting from her seat with a new glow of anger and terror in her breast; "but woe to them if aught happens to my son, for bearded men shall weep for it, and I will kill Preston on his own hearthstone, as I would a serpent in its lair! If that foul riever, who slew my husband under tryst, and my brave and winsome Willie—— but he dare not!" she added, checking the bitter surmise by a husky and intense whisper; "no, he dare not!"

And, sinking into her chair, with nervous fingers she grasped the arms of it, and fixed her wild dark eyes upon the wall, as if she saw there in imagination the hereditary foeman of her husband's house.

"Yes, yes, he will be here in the morning," she said suddenly, "for the ship has been seen. Nurse Maud, look out the best dornick napery, and have a fire of turf and coal lighted in his room; hang the crimson curtains on the carved stand-bed, and the green arras on its tenter-hooks. See that the kitchen wenches set a posset of spiced alicant to simmer by the ingle—for the mornings are chill now; let them look well to what is in the spence and almerie against his hame-coming. We must make a feast, Nurse; for after seven years in France our auld Scottish fare will be alike welcome and new to him."

"Seven years," said Maud, thoughtfully.

"Yes, Nurse; seven years come yule-tide hath our beloved bairn been absent from our hearth and hame."

Westmains went away to his grange, or farm, which lay westward of the tower. The strong gates of yetlan iron were now closed for the night, and the lady of Fawside retired, to pray for her absent son, who at that moment was only ten miles distant, but lying on his back, bleeding and gashed by three wounds: but I anticipate my story.

CHAPTER III.
THE DEATH FEUD.

Then pale, pale grew her tearfu' cheek,
"Let ane o' my sons three
Alane guide this emprise, your eild
May ill sic travel dree!
O where were I, were my dear lord,
And a' my sons to bleed;
Better to brook the wrong, than sae
To wreck the high misdeed."
Hardyknute.

Several days passed; and though the ship had certainly come from France, and lay near the Beacon Rock, with all her sails furled, there came no tidings of the widow's son. Horsemen rode east, and horsemen rode west; the burly Roger of Westmains wore himself almost to a shadow, and every steed in the stables was completely knocked up; but no trace of Florence Fawside had been discovered, from the time he left the barge of M. de Villegaignon, at the old wooden pier of Leith. And now, with the reader's permission, we will go back a little in our story.

The Fawsides of that ilk were neither powerful nor wealthy, and their purses bore no proportion to their pride or their pedigree; but they were landed barons of good repute, who took (or gave, which matters not) their name from their own property, bringing thence in time of war or tumult forty armed men to the king's host. Faithful and true in times of treason and invasion, this fine old race had never failed the Scottish crown; but a deadly, bitter, and inextinguishable feud, one of those hereditary and transmitted hatreds peculiar to some Scottish families, existed between them and the Hamiltons of Preston, whose lofty baronial tower stands about three miles distant from Fawside Hill.

William of Fawside served under David I., in his war against Stephen of England, and saved his life at the Battle of Northallerton. For this service he received, that night, a charter written on the head of a kettle-drum, the only piece of parchment which the Chancellor, Bishop Engelram, had at hand, and it is remarkable for a laconic simplicity peculiar alike to the age and country:—

"David Dei Gratiæ Rex Scottorum, to all his people greeting. Know ye that I have granted unto William, son of Adam, son of John of Fawside, the right of pasturage on Gladsmuir, in perpetual gift, until the Day of Doom."

Now, in future years, long after the saintly David and the mailed knight who fought by his stirrup at Northallerton had been gathered to their fathers, there sprang up the Hamiltons, whose tower of Preston was adjacent to this muir or waste land; and the charter of the Fawsides was deemed sufficiently vague to make them claim the right of having the pasturage in common. Scotsmen required little excuse for unsheathing the sword in those sturdy old times; and hence, about this miserable tract of ground, which was covered with broom, whin, heather, and huge black boulder-stones, the rival barons quarrelled and fought from generation to generation, carrying their cause of feud even to the foot of the throne. More than once, in the time of James IV., Fawside and Preston, with their armed followers, had fought a desperate combat at the Market-cross of Edinburgh, and been forcibly expelled by the citizens, led by their provost, Sir Richard Lawson, of Boghall and Highrigs, who perished at Flodden. Again and again, they had been forfeited by the Parliament, outlawed by the King, and excommunicated by the Abbot of Holyrood; but each maintained himself in his strong old tower, and seemed never a whit the worse.

When the Court of Session was established by James V., their dispute "anent meithes and marches" was brought forward, and their case was the first on the roll; but during its discussion (which sorely puzzled lawyers who were unable to sign their names) they so beset the lords with fire and sword on the highway and in their own residences, each threatening to cut off all who were friendly to the other, that the plea was indignantly thrust aside, and they were left to settle it by the old Scottish arbiter of justice, the broadsword.

They were the terror of East Lothian; they fought whenever they met, and each houghed, killed, or captured the sheep and cattle of the other, whenever they were found straying upon the disputed territory.

About twenty years before the period of our story, Sir John Fawside and Claude Hamilton of Preston (both of whom had fought valiantly at Flodden, and rendered each other good service in that disastrous field), accompanied by several gentlemen, their friends, at the particular request of the good King James V.—the King of the Commons and Father of the Poor, as he loved to style himself,—met on Gladsmuir, with the solemn intention of peacefully adjusting the long-vexed question of their boundaries, and setting march-stones upon the common. They were attended by certain learned notaries, who had been duly examined and certified by the bishop of their diocese, "as being men of faith, gude fame, science, and law;" but the tedium and technicalities of these legal pundits proved too dreary for such "stoute and prettie men," as an old diarist terms our two feudatories; and, in short, Sir John and Hamilton soon came to high words. In the dispute, Roger of Westmains closed up beside his leader, and on drawing his sword, received a stroke from the truncheon of an adversary. Roger ran him through the body, and on the instant all came to blows in wild melée. Every sword was out of its scabbard, every hand uplifted, and every tongue shouting taunts and the adverse cries of—

"A Hamilton! a Hamilton!"

"Fawside—'Forth and fear nocht!'"

The notaries tucked up the skirts of their long black gowns, and fled, while the clash of swords continued on the grassy common, where many a horse and man went down; but the Hamiltons proved the most powerful, being assisted by the vassals of their kinsman, the Earl of Yarrow. Fawside was slain, and all his followers were routed, and pursued by the exulting victors up the grassy brae to the gates of the tower, on the iron bars of which the Hamiltons struck with their sword-blades, in token of triumph and contempt.

When the brave Sir John fell, his neighbours were uncharitable enough to regret that he had not (before his departure) given Preston a mortal wound; as all deemed it a pity that two such fiery and restless spirits should be separated for a time, even by the barriers of the other world. Denuded of his knightly belt and sword, Sir John's body was found among the green whins upon the moor, and was buried in the church of Tranent, where a tablet in the north wall still bears his arms, surmounted by a helmet, and inscribed simply,—

"John Fawside of that Ilk."

Three bullets fired from calivers were found in his body. His widow had these carefully extracted, with the intention of returning them to Claude Hamilton with terrible interest; and thrice she dipped the dead man's dagger in the blood that oozed from his wounds, with the hope that, in a future time, her oldest boy might cleanse the blade in the blood of the slayer.

Dame Alison was a fierce and stern woman, "animated by such terrible passions as the heroines of the middle ages alone possessed." The partner and partaker of all her husband's ideas, his rights and wrongs—real or imaginary,—she now became inspired by one prevailing thought, and one only—revenge;—and so absorbed was she by this devouring passion, that nothing in this world seemed to possess the least interest or value, unless it might feed this demon, or further the terrible object she had in view. Secluded in her gloomy tower, with her two sons, William and Florence at her knee, she told them a thousand times the dark, bloody story of the old hereditary feud and hate—of their father's fall, and how, when tall men and strong soldiers, they must avenge it, by slaying him who proved his destroyer in time of truce and tryst—slaying him as they would a wolf in his den, or a serpent in his lair. And as she poured these wild incentives to future bloodshed into their boyish ears, she would point to where the tower of Preston reared its tall grim outline between them and the sea, and say such things as such a mother, living in that wild age and warlike land, alone could say, till the little impulsive hearts of the boys panted like her own, in anticipation of the hour that would lay Hamilton at their feet, and avenge that day's slaughter on Gladsmuir and Fawside brae.

She gave each one of the bullets found in her husband's corpse; the third she reserved and wore at her neck, with the intention that if her sons' hands failed her when they grew to manhood, she had still one left for vengeance in her own.

She would have appealed to the king; but the house of Hamilton was then in the zenith of its power, and complaints against one of a sept so numerous could find no echo at Falkland or at Holyrood; and so the years passed on.

Because Sir John had died unconfessed, and had been suspected of Lollardy, the Vicar of Tranent had at first refused him Church rites. For this affront, the stern dame denied him the corse-presents exacted then by the priests, and until the Reformation, in 1559—to wit, the best cow of the deceased; the umest-claith, or uppermost covering on the bed whereon he lay, together with the silver commonly called Kirk-richts; and farther, she threatened to send Westmains with a troop of horse, to burn both kirk and vicarage about the ears of his reverence.

Yearly, on the anniversary of her husband's fall, she went, with hair dishevelled, feet bare, and a taper in her hand, to hear mass said for his soul, in the church of Tranent; and after the service, with an irreverence which even the old vicar failed to restrain, she invoked the curses of Heaven on the Hamiltons of Preston. Her sons heard these things; they sank deep into their little hearts, and absorbed all their thoughts.

Often when she prayed at her husband's tomb (it had now become her altar) she imagined that strange sounds came from it; that she heard him chiding her delay in avenging him in this world and joining him in the next; and these morbid fancies fostered yet more her spirit of revenge.

By her injunctions, the gudeman of Westmains left nothing undone to render the boys hardy, stout, and athletic, and expert in the use of weapons of every kind; thus, ere William, the eldest, who possessed great comeliness of face and beauty of person, had reached his twelfth year, he was master of the sword and dagger, the bow and arquebuse; and he could toss a pike, pitch a bar, or handle a quarterstaff with the best man in the barony. His brother Florence had gone to France, as page in the suite of Anne de la Tour de Vendome (the widowed duchess of the regent, John of Albany), who had promised Lady Alison he would return the most accomplished cavalier in Scotland; and, as related, he had now been seven years absent.

Fired by the story which his mother never ceased repeating and enforcing, by touching references to the empty chair which stood unused by the hall fire, to the unused plate that was placed daily on the hall table, to keep alive the memory of the slain man whose rusty arms and mouldering garments were hung in conspicuous places, and to all of which Dame Alison hourly drew the attention of her boys,—fired by the reiteration of all this, one evening, in the autumn of 1541, when Hamilton of Preston had just returned from the battle of Haldenrig, where the army of Henry VIII. had been defeated with considerable slaughter, William Fawside, then in his fourteenth year, without consulting his mother, Father John of Tranent, or his warlike preceptor, old Roger of the Westmains, presented himself at the iron gate of Preston tower, and, while his swelling heart beat high and his smooth cheek flushed crimson with the consciousness of his own audacity, he demanded of the surly and bearded warder admittance to the laird. The servants of the latter narrowly and insolently scrutinized the boy, who bore the arms of his house, gules, a fess between three besants, worked in crimson and gold on the breast of his velvet doublet.

"See that he has nae weapon—nae sting aboot him, the young wasp!" said Symon Brodie, the butler, whose name and convivial habits have come down to us in a famous old drinking song.

"They are kittle cattle, the Fawsides," whispered Mungo Tennant, the warder, as they ushered the boy into the high-arched hall, where the grim old laird was reclining asleep in a huge black leather chair, covered by a wolf's-skin, and seated near a fire that blazed on the tiled hearth.

"Bairn!" he exclaimed, with more astonishment than anger, on being wakened, "what want ye of me?"

"My father's sword!" replied young William boldly.

"Your father!—And who was he, my callant?"

"Sir John of Fawside and that ilk——"

"Aha!"

"He whom ye foully slew under tryst, as all in the Lothians know."

The high, stern brow of old Preston grew black as night. He grasped the carved arms of his high-backed chair, and for a moment surveyed the boy with a terrible frown; then, perceiving that he neither quailed nor shrank under this glance, but stoutly paid it back, though his little heart trembled at his temerity, Preston relaxed his ferocity a little, and grimly replied, under his shaggy moustache,

"Ye lie, ye d—d little limmer!—and they who told ye so, foully lie! I slew him, true; but it was in fair fight, and at open feud, as God and all braid Scotland be my judge!"

"Be that as you will, I want his sword; and, betide me weal, betide me woe, I shall have it!"

"His sword?"

"Yes!"

"For what purpose?"

"That ye shall ken anon," replied the boy with flashing eyes and clenched hands.

"Ye have the dour devilish look o' that termagant Kennedy, your mother, in ye, lad. You are the widow's son Willie, I suppose?"

"I am. Your insolent grooms here ken me weel; and better shall they ken me ere this death feud be stanched! But the sword, Claude Hamilton of Preston!—I say, my father's sword!"

"But what want ye with it, loon?"

"To stab you to the heart, when the time comes," responded the fearless boy.

"By my faith! this little devil takes fire like the match of an arquebuse!" growled the tall, grim laird.

"My father's sword, foul riever!" continued Willie, stamping his foot.

Old Preston now laughed outright, for the boy's daring charmed his warlike spirit.

"Though lawful spulzie, taken in combat and under harness, receive the sword, and welcome, bairn," replied Preston, unhooking from the wall one of those long cross-guarded and taper-bladed swords used in the early part of the fifteenth century, and handing it the boy, who trembled with stern exultation as he there kissed the hilt of polished steel. "It was good King James's gift to your father on that bloody morning when first we forgot our quarrel and fought side by side, like brither Scots, on the green slope of Flodden Hill, where our best and bravest were lying on the brae-side thick as the leaves in Carberry Wood. Take the weapon, bairn. Your father was a leal and gallant man—rest him, God! for Scotland had no better,—and I, the man he hated most on earth, avow it; and ill would it become Claude Hamilton to keep the sword of such a father from such a son. Take it, bairn, and welcome; and I pray Heaven that we may meet no more!"

"False carle, we shall meet, and that thou shalt see!" responded the boy, pressing the sword to his breast, while his eyes filled with tears.

Symon Brodie, the butler, here raised his huge hand to smite the boy down, but the laird interposed.

"Beware, fellow!" said he, "and let the bairn alone; yea, and let him speak, too. What have I to fear from a fushionless auld carline and twa halfling laddies?"

"I have been told that you fear not God, although you are a Hamilton; but I will teach you, carle, to fear me!"

"A brave lad!" exclaimed the old laird, with an admiration which he could not repress. "I love to see a lad stand up thus for his father's feud and his family honour. But let this matter end; in twa hunder years and mair we have surely had enough of it! Give me thy hand, Willie o' Fawside, and I will ask pardon for slaying thy father. 'Twas done in hot blood and under harness; and I will even pay unto Mass John of Tranent a hundred French crowns to say funeral services for his soul's repose."

"My hand!"

"Yes, bairn; an auld man asks it of thee."

"Never!" replied William Fawside, shrinking back. "If I gave a hand to thee, my mother would slay me like a cur; and I would well deserve the death. So fare ye well! with a thousand thanks for this fair gift, until—we meet again."

And they did meet, most fatally, five years afterwards.

William Fawside, then in his nineteenth year, was a tall and handsome cavalier, than whom there was none more gay or gallant in costume, manner, or bearing at the court of the Regent Arran, to whom he officiated as Master of the Horse. He was the most graceful dancer on Falkland Green, and there, also, the victor of the ring and butts, with spear and bow; but when he and Claude of Preston, then a man well up in years, confronted each other in the lists under the southern brow of the Castle Rock of Edinburgh, to fight a solemn duel, to which the taunts and open accusations of murder (for so the widow styled her husband's fall on Fawside Brae) had brought him, the young Sir William saw, without pity, that his grey-haired adversary was animated by a reluctance which he was at no pains to conceal, for on many a day of battle his courage had been put to the sternest proof.

Cartels of defiance had been duly exchanged; mass had been said in the chapel of Our Lady in the Portsburgh; and there, in presence of the assembled citizens of Edinburgh, whose provost, William Craik, appeared on horseback in complete armour, and before a chair, in which sat George Earl of Errol, hereditary lord high constable of Scotland, as vicar-general to the infant queen, wearing on his surcoat the three shields of his house, in a field argent, and within a listed space, sixty paces long and forty broad, stood the young and resolute challenger, on foot, at the eastern end, and Preston at the western, all according to the custom of judicial combats. Each was in full armour of unpolished but highly-tempered steel, with open helmets; each bore a Scottish target, a sword, and dagger.

They were sworn solemnly by the constable, "That they had not brought into the lists other armour or weapons than such as were allowed by Scottish law, or any firework engine, witch's spell or enchantment, and that they trusted alone to their own valour, as God and His holy Evangelists should help them!"

It was then proclaimed that no man should speak or utter a cry, under penalty of a fine equal in value to twenty cattle; or put forth hand or weapon, under pain of forfeiting limb and life to the queen—the poor little unconscious queen, who was then in her cradle, in time-hallowed Holyrood.

The constable rose from his seat, and waved his white truncheon thrice, exclaiming,

"Let them go! Let them go! Let them go, and do their worst!"

This was the usual formula; and then they rushed on each other.

Preston fought warily; but the fury of his adversary and the wounds he inflicted soon raised the old man's blood, and, by one tremendous stroke of his two-handed sword, he clove the widow's son—her boasted, her fair and comely Willie—through helmet and bone, to the chin, slaying him in a moment; as the quaint records of the lord high constable's court have it, "cleaving him through harnpan and harns to ye bearde with ane straik of his quhinger."

His body was sent home for burial, but denuded of his armour,—every buckle of which had been that morn adjusted by his mother's hands,—of his jewels and rings, which, according to the form of judicial combats in Scotland, became, together with the posts and rails of the lists, the fees of the constable's servants.

Lady Alison was on her knees at her husband's altar-tomb in Tranent Church, imploring God to aid and to protect her son, when old Roger of Westmains arrived, with his eyes swollen by weeping, and his heart swollen by rage and sorrow, to detail the death of her eldest boy by the same relentless sword that slew his father! The fierce, stern woman heard him to an end, and then fell prostrate on the tomb, in a paroxysm of grief, and perhaps of remorse.

If the latter found way in her breast, it did not linger long. Three days she remained in a darkened chamber, without speaking to any one; on the morning of the fourth she came out, graver, more gloomy, and, if possible, paler than before, and said briefly to Westmains—

"Write to France—to the chateau of Anne of Vendome, and desire Florence to come home without delay. I have yet the bullets that were found in the body of his father; and if the widow of John of Albany hath kept her royal word, I may yet have sure vengeance on yonder murderer and his brood!"

"The tenants have brought their herezelds," said Westmains in a low voice.

"Remit them; but say, to put their swords to the grindstone, for the day cometh when I, Alison Kennedy, shall need them all."

The bailie referred to the gift given in case of death to the heir of an over-lord, generally the best cow, yielded by those who held of the said lord an oxgang of land.

There were now TWO places vacant at the hearth, two platters unused on the table, and two scutcheons hung in the kirk of Tranent; but the mangled images of those who were gone remained enthroned more darkly than ever in the heart of the widow and mother!

CHAPTER IV
AN OLD SCOTTISH MATRON.

Can Christian love, can patriot zeal,
Can love of blessed charity—
Can piety the discord heal,
Or stanch the death feud's enmity?
Scott.

Lady Alison of Fawside had been a beauty in her youth, when the stout and buirdly knight Sir John had wooed and won her, in the Castle of Calzean; and in memory of this alliance, the cognisance of the Kennedys, a chevron gules, between three cross-crosslets, fitched sable, may still be traced on the roof of the hall; but in the year when our story opens few traces remained of those charms which Huchown Clerk of Tranent, the old macker (i.e. troubadour) extolled in his poems, and for which he was rewarded yearly by a silver chain an ell long, three French crowns, and a camlet gown lined with Flemish silk, until his death, which happened about the close of the reign of King James V.

The widow was of great stature, yet her figure was graceful, noble, and commanding; her features were fine; her nose was straight; and her black eyebrows, which met above it, together with the peculiar lines of her mouth and chin, expressed firmness and unflinching resolution. Her complexion was deadly pale. Her once-black hair was grey and escaped in grizzled locks from under her escallop or shell-shaped cap, which was made of thick point-lace, like her close-quilled ruff and ruffles. Her attire was always a black damask dress, buttoned by small silver knobs, from the lower peak of her long stomacher, up to her ruff. She wore a rosary and cross of ebony, and a black locket containing the hair of her late husband and his slaughtered son; but no other ornament. Her pocket sun-dial, or perpetual almanac, a brass plate inscribed, "This table beginneth in 1540, and so on for ever," with her keys (and huge antique keys they were), her scissors and huswife hung at her girdle; and she used a long ivory-mounted cane to assist her in walking, and as gossips averred, wherewith to chastise her lacqueys and serving-men. Her busk was of hard wood, and contained a bodkin. This was literally a dagger seven inches long, and worn for defence in those stirring and perilous times.

Four-and-thirty years ago this stern woman, without shedding a tear, had seen her husband and all his kinsmen ride forth on that invasion of England which terminated at Flodden; but she welcomed him with transports of joy when he returned. Alas! old Westmains, covered with wounds, was the sole representative of forty stout men of Lothian, well horsed, with jack and spear, who had followed Fawside's pennon to the field. After this catastrophe, they had a few years peace with the Hamiltons of Preston, whose men had all escaped, being a portion of those many thousand Scots who melted away a week before the battle, and left King James with his knights and nobles to confront the foe alone.

Lady Alison was a Scottish matron of a very "old school" indeed, and possessed a stern and Spartan spirit incident to the times of war and tumult, raid and feud, amid which she had been born and bred. The annals of her country record the names of many such, who, in extremity of danger, possessed that resolute spirit with which Scott has gifted his imaginary Helen MacGregor, and the coolness of the Lady of Harden, who, when the larder was bare, placed a pair of Ripon spurs in her husband's plate at dinner, as a hint to mount and ride for England, where the fat beeves browsed on the green hills of Cumberland. There was black Agnes Randolph, the Countess of March, who, for five months defended her castle of Dunbar against the troops of Edward III., and foiled them in the end; there was the Lady of Edinglassie, who, after her husband had been slain by the Laird of Invermarkie, had the head of the latter cut off, in September, 1584, and conveying it "by its hoar locks" to Edinburgh, cast it at the feet of the startled James VI., as a token that she could avenge her own wrongs without appeal to Lowland judge or jury; there was the Lady Johnstone, of Annandale, who, after the battle of the Dryffesands, where, in 1593, seven hundred Maxwells fell beneath the spears and axes of her clan, is accused of dashing out the Lord Maxwell's brains with her own white hand, when she found that brave, humane, and courteous noble lying mortally wounded on the field, and when his silver locks were exposed by the loss of his helmet, which had been struck off in the mêlée; and this terrible deed she is said to have perpetrated with the ponderous iron key of Lochmaben Kirk, at the old thorn tree on the green holm of Dryffe. There was also that grim patriot, the old Marchioness of Hamilton, who, when her son entered the Firth of Forth, in 1639, at the head of six thousand Englishmen, rode to the beach with a pair of pistols at her saddlebow, vowing to God that she would shoot him as a traitor and a parracide, if he dared to land on Scottish ground under a foreign flag—a hint, which the recreant marquis, her son, fully understood and obeyed.

We believe few men now-a-days would relish having such fiery "and termagant Scots," as the partners of their bed and board; but the spirit and nature of these women were the development of the age in which they lived—an age when every house was a barred or moated garrison,—when every man was a trained soldier, and when a day seldom passed in city or hamlet without blood being shed in public fray or private feud; but these grim matrons, and such as these, were the mothers of the brave who led the line of battle at Ancrumford and Pinkey-cleugh, at Sark and Arkinhome, at Chevy Chase, Bannockburn, Haldenrig, and Northallerton, and on a thousand other fields, where Scottish men without regret—yea, perhaps, with stern joy—gave their swords, and lives, and dearest blood for the mountain-land that bore them.

It was this feudal and warlike spirit which made the resolute Lady Alison prosecute the quarrel against Preston with such determination and vindictiveness.

She wept in secret for her slaughtered son; but his death seemed to be only one other item in that heavy debt of hatred and thirst for vengeance which every drop of blood in the veins of Claude Hamilton could not assuage, even if poured out at her feet—a debt which she had no object in life but to pay with all the interest of her stern soul.

Tiger-like, she panted with eagerness for the return of her second son, Florence, doubting not that when the death of his father and brother were added to the old and inborn hatred of the House of Preston, his younger and more skilful hand could never fail in the combat to which she had resolved the slayer should be invited and goaded by every taunt, if he proved unwilling.

To her confessor, the old vicar of Tranent, who strove in vain to soothe this unchristian spirit, she would say fiercely,—"Peace! am I to forego my just feud at the behest of a book-i'-the-bosom monk? I trow not! I am a Kennedy of Colzean. Oh that this boy were back to me, that he might unkennel and slay the old wolf who bydes in yonder tower,—even as his ancestor slew the wolf of Gulane." "He has no son," she was wont to say with savage exultation, while grinding her strong white teeth and beating the floor with her cane; "his wife left him childless—he has no cub to transmit his blood with the feud to future times; so with him it must end. The sword of my Florence will end the strife with Preston's godless career and grasping race—black dool and pyne be on them!"

"But he has a niece," urged the white-haired vicar gently.

"A niece——" a

"His ward and heiress,—a ward of the crown, too."

"Mean ye that moppet the Countess of Yarrow, whose father drew the sword in pure wantonness on the day my husband fell?"

"Yes, Claude Hamilton's sister was an earl's wife."

"Why tell me that? what care I for his niece's coronet? We were belted knights and landed barons ere surnames were known in the North,—yea, a hundred years and more before a Hamilton was heard of. And this niece—what of her?"

"She may marry."

"Well—well."

"And her husband may—though Heaven forfend it—take up the feud."

"Had she a hundred husbands, we'll find cold iron for them all, priest—and in the sword is all my trust."

"Alas, lady! trust alone in God," replied the vicar, shaking his head; "He giveth much, and yet hath nought the less."

"Oh that my brave bairn were back. The French are skilful masters of the sword; and Anne of Albany promised me that Florence should have the best; that his hand should—if my Willie's failed—redress the wrongs of ages."

But, as already related, several days elapsed after the arrival of the ship, yet there came to Fawside tower no tidings of her son, whom, as he bears a part of some importance in our history, we must now introduce to the reader.

CHAPTER V
THE "GOLDEN ROSE."

Leo.—What would you have with me, honest neighbour?

Dog.—Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you, that decerns you nearly.

Leo.—Brief, I pray you; for, you see, 'tis a busy time with me.

"Much Ado about Nothing."

The sun was setting in the westward—for in the year of grace 1547 it set in the westward just as it does now, though history omits to record the fact. Seven had tolled from the square towers of St. Mary and of the Commanderie of St. Anthony at Leith, on the evening of the first of August, the same on which we left a mother seated in the old tower upon the hills waiting anxiously for her son, when the latter—to wit, Florence Fawside—left the ship of the Sieur Nicolas de Villegaignon, knight of Rhodes, and admiral of the galleys of France, and landing with all his luggage, which consisted of three large leathern mails, found himself once more on terra firma, after a long but prosperous voyage from Brest; and, with a glow of satisfaction on his nut-brown visage, he stamped on the ground, to assure himself that it was not a planked deck, but the land—and good Scottish land too,—as he hurriedly approached the quaint wooden porch of "Ye Gowden Rois" (i.e. the "Golden Rose"), an hostel which bore that emblem painted on a huge signboard that swung between two wooden posts.

The latter were placed near the bank of the river, for although, to the eastward, there lay the charred remains of a wooden pier, burned by the English in 1544, Leith was destitute of a quay in those days; and thus a row of little gardens extended along the eastern bank between the water and the street of quaint Flemish-like mansions which faced it. These plots, or kailyards, were divided by privet or holly hedges, and among them lay fisher-boats, tar-barrels, rusty anchors, brown nets, and bladders, with other débris of the mercantile and fisher craft, which lay moored on both sides of the stream below Abbot Ballantyne's Bridge, the three stone arches of which spanned the Leith, where the pathway led to the church and burying-ground of St. Nicholas, and where stood a gate, at which a somewhat lucrative toll was levied by the monks of the Holy Cross.

Passing between the signposts and up the bank, Florence Fawside found himself before the "Golden Rose," a long irregular house three stories in height, built all of polished stone, yet having a front of elaborate timberwork forming two galleries, supported on carved pillars, and surmounted by three gables, whose acute apex sharply cut the sky-line, and gave the edifice a quaint and striking aspect. Cloaks of velvet and of camlet, horse-cloths, crimson saddles, belts of gold or buff leather, with one or two huge pieces of gaudy tapestry, were hung carelessly over the oak rails of the galleries, in which many persons were lounging, for the house and the stable-yard behind it were alike full of guests and bustle. The "Golden Rose" was the principal hostelry in Leith, and had been built for the accommodation of travellers, a few years before, by Logan of Restalrig, Lord Superior of the barony. Hence, the landlord, Ralf Riddel, being one of his vassals, was bound to give "up-putting to all the laird's retinue, man and horse, when they chanced to pass that way," a contingency which happened more frequently than the said Master Riddel, with all his inbred respect for the house of Logan, perhaps relished, especially as no overcharge could be made upon other visitors, for, by a statute of the late King James V., the bailies of royalties and regalities made a regular tariff of prices to be observed by all hostellers throughout the realm, and by this tariff the charges for corn, hay and straw, fish, flesh, bread, wine and ale, were all regulated and enforced under high penalties; but, by the same law, persons travelling with much money in their possession are wisely advised to reside with their friends. As Fawside entered, he observed a group of gentlemen, richly dressed, observing him narrowly from a dark gallery above the porch.

Though the arrival of a stranger, especially one on foot, did not usually excite much attention at the establishment of Master Ralf Riddel, the air and bearing, the handsome figure, and fine features of the young laird of Fawside, with his short-clipped beard and black moustache, à la François I., his magnificent crimson-velvet doublet, which was profusely embroidered with gold, and stiff as buckram and lace could make it, his enormous ruff and long sword, his little French cap of blue velvet, adorned by a long white feather, and diamond aigrette, the gift of Anne of Albany, his long black riding-boots, the tops of which joined his short trunk-hose, altogether caused the tapster and ostlers to make so favourable a report of his appearance that he was speedily waited on by the gudeman of the establishment in person.

He was conducted to an apartment the grated windows of which overlooked the stable-yard. The latter was full of pages, liveried lackeys, and armed troopers in iron-jacks, steel bonnets, and plate sleeves; horses, saddled and unsaddled, were led to and fro; and clumps of tall spears were reared here and there against the walls. The clamour of voices and clatter of hoofs, together with the neighing of steeds and barking of dogs, made the place instinct with life. The hostel was occupied by several of the noblesse and their retinues—for then no great lord could travel with out a troop of horse in his train; but, all unmindful of the bustle below, young Florence of Fawside, when the landlord returned, was gazing earnestly to the eastward, where, upon the crown of the high green eminence or sloping upland that overlooked the spacious bay of Musselburgh and stretched far away into Haddingtonshire, all bathed in gold and purple by the setting sun, he could discern, some ten miles distant, the outline of his old paternal home rising above the thicket of trees by which it was environed.

On turning, as he heard a step behind, he saw, on the roughly-hewn fir boards which formed the floor of the apartment, an ominous black stain, nearly a foot in circumference, to remind him that he dwelt in a land of swords and danger.

"I require a horse, gudeman," said he, divesting himself of his velvet mantle and rich sword-belt.

"A horse!—at this hour, sir?"

"Even so, my friend, for in less than an hour I must ride hence. You have, doubtless, a swift nag to spare?"

"Yea, sir, ten, if ye lacked them—ten, than whilk my Lord Regent hath none better in stall."

"'Tis well; and now for supper. I have been long in the land of kickshaws and frogs, where bearded men sup fricassees bedevilled with garlic and onions, in lieu of porridge and sturdy kailbrose; so, gudeman of mine, I long for a right Scottish dish."

"That shall ye have, fair sir, and welcome, with a stoup of Canary, Bourdeaux, or Alicant——"

"Nay, I am no bibber, believe me."

"We get brave gude wine hereawa in Leith, sir, by our trade with the Flemings of the Dam."

"After seven years in a foreign land, gudeman," said Florence, slapping the hosteller kindly on the back, while his heart swelled and his eyes filled, "your Scottish tongue comes like music to my ear—yea, like the melody o' an auld song, man; and I snuff up my native air like a young horse turned out to grass; for, save once a year, by a letter given me by a passing traveller hastening Paris-ward, I have heard naught from home, or of aught that passed in Scotland here."

"Nocht, said ye?"

"Naught—so the term of my absence seems marvellously long—naught but evil," he added, with a darkening expression of face.

"Evil!"

"Yea; for I have returned to avenge the death of a dear kinsman."

"Such errands are nothing new in Scotland," said Ralf Riddel, sighing and shrugging his shoulders.

"No—in these hot days of feud and endless quarrelling. 'Tis a heavy task I have in hand, gudeman; but it must be done, when I have obeyed the behests of those I left in France."

"Belong you to hereawa, sir?"

"I do," replied Fawside, smiling.

"May I be pardoned for—for——"

"For what?" asked Florence, while the hosteller smoothed down his front hair, and twirled his bonnet on his fingers; "for what should I pardon you?"

"For speiring your name?"

"You may be pardoned, but not gratified, gudeman," replied Florence, laughing. "There are over-many under your rooftree to make it safe for me to utter my name aloud, alone as I am; for though I have been wellnigh seven years away, I have not forgotten the danger of rashly telling one's name in fiery Scotland."

"You are right, sir; yet my house is one without reproach."

"What says this dark stain on the floor?"

"That there I slew an Englishman, in the May of '44, when all Leith was in flames—houses, ships, and and piers—and ten thousand of his comrades, under the Lord Hertford, were on the march for Edinburgh. Yea, sir, I slew him there by one blow of my jeddart staff, for making his quarters good at sword's point. The 'Gowden Rose' is a house without reproach."

"But its visitors may not be so, despite their silken doublets and gilded coats of mail. Whose jackmen and lacqueys are these in the stable-yard?"

"The followers of the Earl of Glencairn, and of his son, the Lord Kilmaurs; of the Lord Gray and his son, the Master, with others whom I ken not; but they muster eighty horsemen in all."

"The English faction!" muttered Fawside. "By Heaven, 'tis high time I had the water of Esk behind my horse's heels. And these lords——"

"Are all on their way to Stirling, to keep tryste with the Lord Regent."

"Fool that I was, not to know at once the shakefork of the stable worn by the ruffians of Glencairn," said Fawside, referring to the cognizance of the Cunninghames, which is argent, a shakefork sable, granted to Henry of Kilmaurs, who was master stabler to King Alexander III.

"And those fellows in pyne doublets and cuirasses?"

"With the oak branch in their burganets, and morsing horns at their girdles?"

"Yes."

"They are the liverymen of the laird of Preston."

"Of Claude Hamilton of Preston!" exclaimed Fawside, instinctively assuming his sword.

"Yes."

"By St. Giles, I was right to speak below my beard, and utter not my name." Then, in a fierce whisper, he added, "Is he here?"

"No."

"So much the better. But get me supper and a swift horse. Sumpter nags will come anon for my leathern mails, which I leave in your care, gudeman. Beware how you let men handle them, though my papers and valuables I carry on my own proper person, where my sword can easier answer any kind friend who inquires after them."

"My house, I have said, is stainless and sakeless."

"And now for supper," said Florence impatiently.

"I can let you have a pie of eels, from Lithgow Loch; a hash of Fife mutton, yea, mutton from Largo, where they say every tooth in a sheep's head is worth a French crown."

"Good!—the supper quick, the horse quicker," said Fawside laughing;—for it was a superstition in those days, and for long after, that the teeth of the flocks which browsed on the conical hill of Largo were turned to solid silver by its herbage.

He then turned once more to the window, to gaze on his mother's distant dwelling,—on those hills from whence the last gleam of sunlight had now died away. He drew from a pocket in the breast of his beautiful doublet two letters, tied with white ribbons saltirewise, and sealed with yellow wax, impressed by three fleur-de-lys. One was addressed—

"A Madame ma soeur, la Seine d'Ecosse."

The other bore—

"For Monseigneur the Earl of Arran, Lord Hamilton, Knight of St. Andrew and St. Michael, Regent of Scotland."