FROM -THE- LIBRARY- OF- 
 A. w. Ryder 
 
'Ut is IVef dock's head" 
 
 Drawn by Wal. Paget — Etched by H. Macbeth-Raeburn 
 
Illustrated Sterling edition 
 
 THE BETROTHED 
 
 CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 
 
 The Highland Widow 
 
 THE TALISMAN 
 
 Castle Dangerous 
 
 \ 
 
 BY 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. 
 
 BOSTON 
 DANA ESTES Oi: COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
S 
 
 
 \\ 
 
ffL 
 
 }4i 
 
 n^ 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BETROTHED 
 
 PAGK 
 
 'It is Wenlock's Head'" .... Frontisjiiece 
 
 The Constable awaited her at the fatal bridge" lO-l 
 Evelyn entered at the moment" .... 178 
 
 'Deliver him up to us, and I will draw off these 
 
 men-at-arms'" 256 
 
 THE TALISMAN 
 
 Each warrior prayed, ere he addressed himself 
 
 to his place of rest" ...... 41 
 
 ' Honor unto whom honor is due ' " . . , . 118 
 
 ivl29085 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHEL 
 
 The Tales of the Crusaders was determined upon as the title 
 of the following series of these novels, rather by the advice of 
 tlie few friends whom death has now rendered still fewer, 
 than by the Author's own taste. Not but that he saw plainly 
 enough the interest which might be excited by the very name 
 of the Crusades; but he was conscious, at the same time, 
 that that interest was of a character which it might be more 
 easy to create than to satisfy, and that by the mention of so 
 magnificent a subject each reader might be induced to call 
 up to his imagination a sketch so extensive and so grand that 
 it might not be in the power of the Author to fill it up, who 
 would thus stand in the predicament of the dwarf bringing 
 with him a standard to measure his own stature, and showing 
 himself, therefore, says Sterne, *' a dwarf more ways than 
 one." 
 
 It is a fact, if it Avere worth while to examine it, that the 
 publisher and author, however much their general interests 
 are the same, may be said to differ so far as title-pages are 
 concerned ; and it is a secret of the tale-telling art, if it 
 could be termed a secret worth knowing, that a taking title, 
 as it is called, best answers the purpose of the book-seller, 
 since it often goes far to cover his risk, and sells an edition 
 not infrequently before the public have well seen it. But 
 the author ought to seek more permanent fame, and wish 
 that his work, when its leaves are first cut open, should be 
 at least fairly judged of. Thus many of the best novelists 
 have b^en anxious to give their works such titles as render 
 it out of the reader's power to conjecture their contents, until 
 they should have an opportunity of reading them. 
 
 All this did not prevent the Tales of the Crusaders from 
 being the title fixed on ; and the celebrated year of projects 
 (1825) being the time of publication, an introduction was 
 prefixed according to the humor of the day. 
 
 The first tale of the series was influenced in its structure 
 
vl WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 rather by the wish to avoid the general expectations which 
 miglit be formed from the title than to comply with any one 
 of them, and so disappoint the rest. The story was, there- 
 fore, less an incident belonging to the Crusades than one 
 which wcs occasioned by the singular cast of mind introduced 
 and spread wide by these memorable undertakings. The ' 
 confusion among families was not the least concomitant evil of 
 the extraordinary preponderance of this superstition. _ It was 
 no unusual thing for a crusader, returning from his long 
 toils of war and pilgrimage, to tind his family augmented by 
 some young offshoot, of whom the deserted matron could 
 give no very accurate account, or perhaps to find his marriage 
 bed filled, and that, instead of becoming nurse to an old man, 
 his household dame had preferred being the lady-love of a 
 young one. Numerous are the stories of this kind told in 
 different parts of Europe ; and the returned knight or baron, 
 according to his temper, sat down good-naturedly contented 
 with the account which his lady gave of a doubtful matter, 
 or called in blood and fire to vindicate his honor, which, 
 after all, had been endangered chiefly by his forsaking his 
 household gods to seek adventures in Palestine. 
 
 Scottish tradition, quoted, I think, in some part of the 
 Border Minstrelsy, ascribes to the clan of Tweedie, a family 
 once stout and warlike, a descent which would not have mis- 
 become a hero of antiquity. A baron, somewhat elderly we may 
 suppose, had wedded a buxom young lady, and some months 
 after their union he left her to ply the distaff alone in his old 
 tower, among the mountains of the county of Peebles, near 
 the sources of the Tweed. He returnedafter seven or eight 
 years, no uncommon space for a pilgrimage to Palestine, 
 and found his family had not been lonely in his absence, the 
 lady having been cheered by the arrival of a stranger (of 
 whose approach she could give the best account of any one), 
 who Inmg on her skirts, and called her mammy, and Avas just 
 such as the baron would have longed to call his son, but that 
 he could by no means make his age correspond, according 
 to the doctrine of civilians, with his own departure for Pal- 
 estine. He applied to his wife, therefore, for the solution of 
 this dilemma. The lady, after many floods of tears, which 
 she had reserved for the occasion, informed the honest 
 gentleman, that, walking one day alone by the banks of the 
 infant river, a human form arose from a deep eddy, still 
 known and termed Tweed Pool, who deigned to inform her 
 that he was the tutelar genius of the stream, and hou gremal 
 gre, became the father of the sturdy fellow whose appearance 
 
IJVTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHED VJi 
 
 had so much surprised her Imsband. This story, however 
 suitable to pagan times, would have met with full credence 
 from few of the baron's contemporaries, but the wife Avas 
 young and beautiful, the husband old and in his dotage ; her 
 fami-ly (the Frasers, it is believed) were powerful and warlike, 
 and tlie baron had had fighting enough in the holy wars. 
 The event was, that he believed, or seemed to believe, the 
 tflle, and remained contented with the child with whom 
 his wife and the Tweed had generously presented him. The 
 only circumstance which preserved the memory of the incident 
 was, that the youth retained the name of Tweed or Tweedie. 
 The baron, meanwhile, could not, as the old Scotch song 
 says, "'Keep the cradle rowing," and the Tweed apparently 
 thought one natural son was family enough for a decent 
 Presbyterian lover ; and so little gall had the baron in iiis 
 composition, that, having bred up the young Tweed as his 
 heir while he lived, he left him in that capacity when he 
 died, and the son of the river-god founded the family of 
 Drummelzier and others, from whom have flowed, in the 
 phrase of the Ettrick Shepherd, " many a brave fellow and 
 many a bauld feat." 
 
 The tale of the Noble Moringer is somewhat of the same 
 nature ; it exists in a collection of German popular songs, 
 entitled Sammlnng Deutsclier ToIJcsIieder, Berlin, 1807; 
 published by Messrs. Busching and Von der Hagen. The 
 song is supposed to be extracted from a manuscript chronicle 
 of Nicolas Thomann, chaplain to St. Leonard in Weissen- 
 horn, and dated 1533. The ballad, which is popular in 
 Germany, is supposed, from the language, to have been 
 composed in the l5th century. The Noble Moringer, a 
 powerful baron of Germany, about to set out on a pilgrimage 
 to the land of St. Thomas, with the geography of which we 
 are not made acquainted, resolves to commit his castle, 
 dominions, and lady to the vassal who should pledge him 
 to keep watch over them till the seven years of his pilgrim- 
 age were accomplished. His chamberlain, an elderly and a 
 cautious man, declines the trust, observing that seven days, 
 instead of seven years, would be the utmost space to which 
 he would consent to pledge himself for the fidelity of any 
 woman. The esquire of the Noble Moringer confidently 
 accepts the trust refused by the chamberlain, and the baron 
 departs on his pilgrimage. The seven years are now elapsed, 
 all save a single day and night, when, behold, a vision de- 
 scends on the noble pilgrim as he sleeps in the land of the 
 stranger. 
 
viii iVAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 It was tne xiouie Moringer within an orchard slept, 
 When on the baron's slumbering sense a boding vision crept. 
 And whispered in his ear a voice, " Tis time, sir knight, to wake J 
 Thy lady and thy heritage another master take. 
 
 " Thy tower another banner knows, thy steeds another rein, 
 And stoop them to another's will thy gallant vassal train ; 
 And she, the lady of thy love, so faithful once and fair, 
 This night, within thy father's hall, she wed« Marstetten's heir." 
 
 The Moringer starts np and prays to his patron, St. 
 Thomas, to rescue him from the impending shame, which his 
 devotion to his patron had placed him in danger of incur- 
 ring. St. Thomas, who must have felt the justice of the 
 imputation, performs a miracle. The Moringer's senses were 
 drenched in oblivion, and when he waked he lay in a well- 
 known spot of his own domain ; on his right the castle of 
 his fathers, and on his left the mill, which, as usual, waa 
 built not far distant from the castle. 
 
 He leaned upon his pilgrim's staff, and to the mill he drew 
 So altered was his goodly form that none their master knew. 
 The baron to the miller said, " Good friend, for charity, 
 Tell a poor pilgrim, in your land, what tidings may there be ? " 
 
 The miller answered him again — " He knew of little news, 
 Save that the lady of tlie land did a new bridegroom choose. 
 Her husband died in distant land, such is the constant word ; 
 His death sits heavy on our souls, he was a worthy lord. 
 
 " Of him I held the little mill, which wins me living free ; 
 God rest the baron in his grave, he aye was kind to me 1 
 And when St. Martin's tide comes round, and millers take their toll. 
 The priest that prays for Moringer shall have both cope aad stole. 
 
 The baron proceeds to the castle gate, which is bolted to 
 prevent intrusion, while the inside of the mansion rung with 
 preparations for the marriage of the lady. The pilgrim 
 prayed the porter for entrance, conjuring him by his own 
 Bufferings, and for the sake of the late Moringer ; by the 
 orders of his lady, the warder gave him admittance. 
 
 Then up the hall paced Moringer, his step was sad and slow ; 
 It sat full hea\'y on his heart, none seemed their lord to know. 
 He sat him on a lowly bench, oppressed with woe and wrong ; 
 Short while he sat, but ne'er to him seemed little space so long. 
 
 Now spent was day, and feasting o'er, and come was evening hour, 
 The time was nigh when new-made brides retire to nuptial bower. 
 " Our castle's wont," a bridesman said, " hath been both firm and 
 
 long ; 
 No guest to harbor in our halls till he shall chant a song.** 
 
tlVTRODUUTION TO THE BETROTHED ix 
 
 When thus called upon, the disguised baron sung the fol- 
 lowing melancholy ditty : 
 
 " Chill flows the lay of frozen age," 'twas thus the pilgrim sung, 
 " Nor golden meed, nor garment gay, unlocks his heavy tongua 
 Once did I sit, thou bridegroom gay, at board as rich as thine, 
 And by my side as fair a bride, with all her charms, wa? mine. 
 
 '• But time traced furrows on my face, and I gew silver-haired, 
 For locks of bro%\Ti and cheeks of youth she left this brow and 
 
 beard ; 
 Once rich, but now a palmer poor, I tread life's latest stage, 
 And mingle with your bridtl mirth the lay if frozen age." 
 
 The lady, moved at the doleful recollections which th( 
 [)almer's song recalled, sent to him a cup of wine. TJie 
 pahner, having exhausted the goblet, returned it. and hav- 
 iiic; tirst dropped in the cup his nuptial ring, requested the 
 lady to pledge her venerable guest. 
 
 riie ring hath caught the lady's eye, she views it close and near, 
 Tlien might you hear her shriek aloud, " The Moringer is here !" 
 Tlien might you see her start from seat, while tears in torrents fell, 
 But if she wept for joy or woe, the ladies best can tell. 
 
 Full loud she uttered thanks to heaven and every saintly power. 
 Tliat had restored the Moringer before the midnig't hour : 
 And loud she uttered vow on vow, tl at nerer was there bride, 
 That had like her preserved her troth, or b en so sorely tried. 
 
 " Yes. here I claim the praise," she said, " to constant matrons due. 
 Who keep the troth that they have plight so steadfastly and ti-ue ; 
 For count the term iioweer you will, so that you count aright, 
 Seven twelvemonths and a day are out when bells toll twelve to- 
 night." 
 
 It was Marstetten then rose up. his falchion there he drew. 
 He kneeled before the Moringer, and down his weapon threw ; 
 " My oatli and knightly faith are broke," these were the words he 
 
 said ; 
 " Then take, my liege, thy vassal's sword, and take thy vassal's 
 
 head." 
 
 The noble Moringer he smiled, and then aloud did say, 
 
 •' He gathers wisdom that hath roamed seven twelvemonths and a 
 
 day; 
 My daughter now hath fifteen years, fame speaks her sweet and 
 
 fair ; 
 I give her for the bride you lose, and name her for my heir. 
 
 "The young bridegroom hath youthful bride, the old bridegroom 
 
 the old, 
 Whose faith was kept till term and tide so punctually were told ; 
 But blessings on the warder kind that oped my castle gate. 
 For had I come at morrow tide, I came a day too late." * 
 
 " These \erses are quoted from the Author's own translation, 
 with a few verbal alterations (Lam^). 
 
X WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 There is also, in the rich field of German romance, another 
 edition of this story, which has been converted by M. Tieck 
 (whose labors of that kind have been so remarkable) into 
 the subject of one of his romantic dramas. It is, however, 
 unnecccsary to detail it, as the present Anthor adopted his 
 idea of the tale chiefly from the edition preserved in the man- 
 sion of Haigh Hall, of old the mansion-house of the family 
 of Bradshaigh, now possessed by their descendants on the fe- 
 male side. the Earls of Balcarras. The story greatly resembles 
 that of tlie ISToble Moringer, only there is no miracle of St. 
 Thomas to shock the belief of good Protestants. I am per- 
 mitted, by my noble friends, the lord and lady of Haigh Hall, 
 to print the following extract from the family genealogy : — 
 
 5tr JKEilliam iSraSsIjagfjc 2ti ^ fHabrll ^lauglitcr anU 
 
 Sone to Sr iofjn foas 9. ^ 5ok {}rirc of Jl^ugfj 
 
 great traurllcr anti '3. ? floris tic Jt^agijc anti 
 
 SoulSgcr anti tnarrtctJ S ^lacluctc ant) hat) issue 
 
 €a > CA. S.E2. 
 
 of tiki's ilHabcI is a story I)g trat)itton of untioutctJ 
 fcrn'tg tljat in S"^ OEtUtam ISratisIjagc's absence 
 (btinge 10 gcarrs aiuag in tijc iuarcs) sljc 
 marri'rt a fcrlcl) k'. S^ tBilliam rctorningc 
 from tfjc iriarcs came in a ^abncrs Ijabit anto= 
 ntjst tljc ^oorc to Ijagljc. Ui^o ^\)in sbc salu ^ 
 conffctrin^c tljat \)z fnbourcti l}cr former 
 f)U5banti toept, for tuljielj tijc U' rljastfceti Ijer 
 Rt toicfi S'^ Olillianr tocnt anti matjc Iji'nt sdfc 
 IKnotone to f)ts (UTennants in iurlj space tIjc U' 
 flcti. but ncarc to ^tSjiton ^Darke S>' William oucr* 
 tookc f}im anti sUic Iji'm. CCfjc sait) Dame 
 ^abell ixias cntogncti by f)cr confessor to 
 iJoE ^cnnances bo going oncst cuern Ircek 
 barefout anti bare legg'H to a Crosse ncr GIgigan 
 from t^e !)agl}c foihst slje liiieti ^ t's calleti 
 fHabfa K to tljis tiag; x^»* tljer moninnent ILurs 
 m toigan C^urcl) a"g you sec tijcr ^Sortrti 
 
 an: Dom: 1313. 
 
 There were many vestiges around Haigh Hall, both of the 
 Catholic penances of the Lady Mabel and of this melancholy 
 transaction in particular ; the whole history was within the 
 memory of man portraj-ed upon a glass window in the hall, 
 where unfortunately it has not been preserved. Mab's Cross 
 is still extant. An old decayed building is said to have been 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHED xl 
 
 the place where the Lady Mabel was condemned to render 
 penance, by walking hither from Haigh Hall barefooted and 
 barelegged for the performance of her devotions. This relic, 
 to which an anecdote so curious is annexed, is now unfor- 
 tunately ruinous. Time and whitewash, says Mr. Koby, 
 have altogether defaced the effigies of the knight and lady 
 on the tomb. The particulars are preserved in Mr. Eoby's 
 Traditions of LancasMre,'^ to which the reader is referred 
 for further particulars. It does not appear that Sir William 
 liradshaigh was irreparably offended against the too hasty 
 Lady Mabel, although he certainly showed himself of a more 
 fiery mold than the Scottish and German barons who were 
 heroes of the former tales. The tradition, which the Author 
 knew very early in life, was told to him by the late Lady 
 Balcarras. Pie was so much struck with it that, being at 
 tliat time profuse of legendary lore, he inserted it in the 
 shape of a note to Waverley ,'\ the first of his romantic 
 offenses. Had he then known, as he now does, the value of 
 such a story, it is likely that, as directed in the inimitr.ble 
 receipt for making an epic poem, preserved in The Guardian^ 
 he would have kept it for some future opportunity. 
 
 As, however, the tale had not been completely told, and 
 was a very interesting one, and as it was sufficiently inter- 
 woven with the crusades, the wars between the Welsh and 
 the Norman lords of the marches were selected as a period 
 when all freedoms might be taken with the strict truth of 
 history without encountering any well-known fact which 
 might render the narrative improbable. Perhaps, however, 
 the period which vindicates the probability of the tale will, 
 with its wars and murders, be best found described in the 
 following passage of Gryffyth Ap Edwin's wars : — 
 
 This prince, in conjunction with Algar, Earl of Chester, who 
 had been banished from England as a traitor, in the reign of 
 Edward the Confessor, marched into Herefordshire and wasted ali 
 tliat fertile country with fire and sword, to revenge the death of 
 Ills brotlier Rhees, whose head had been brought to Edward in pur- 
 suance of an order sent by that king on account of the depreda- 
 tions which lie had committed against the English on the borders. 
 To stop these ravages the Earl of Hereford, who was nephew to 
 Edward, advanced with an army not of English alone, but of mer- 
 cenary Normans and French, whom he ha 1 entertained in his ser- 
 vice, against Gryffyth and Algar. He met them near Hereford, 
 
 * A very elegant work, 2 vols. 1829 [and 2 vols, more, 1831]. By 
 J. Roby, M.R.S.I. 
 t Waverley, Note 2, p. 470. 
 
xtt WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 and offered them battle, which the Welsh monarch, who had won 
 five pitched battles before, and never had fought without conquer- 
 ing, joyfully accepted. The earl had commanded his English forces 
 to hghl on horseback, in imitation of the Normans, against their 
 usual custom ; but the Welsh making a furious and desperate 
 charge, that nobleman himself, and the foreign cavalry led by 
 him, were so daunted at the view of them, that they sliamefuUy 
 fled without fighting ; whicli being seen by the English, they also 
 turned their backs on the enemy, who, having killed or wounded 
 as many of them as tliey could come up with in their flight, 
 entered triumphantly into Hereford, spoiled and fired the city, 
 razed the walls to tlie ground, slaughtered some of tlie citizens, 
 led many of them captive, and, to use the words of the AVelsh 
 chronicle, left nothing in tlie town but blood and ashes. After 
 this exploit they immediately returned into Wales, undoubtedly 
 from a desire of securing their prisoners and tlie rich plunder they 
 had gained. The king of England hereupon commanded Earl 
 Harold to collect a great army from all parts of tlie kingdom, and 
 assembling them at Gloucester, advanced from thence to invade 
 the dominions of Gryffyth in North Wales. He performed his 
 orders, and penetrated into that country without resistance from 
 the Welsh. Gryffyth and Algar returning into some parts of South 
 Wales. Wliat were their reasons for this conduct we are not well 
 informed, nor why Harold did not pursue his advantage against 
 them ; but it appears that he thouglit it more advisable at this time 
 to treat with, than subdue, them ; for he left Nortli Wales, and 
 employed liimself in rebuilding the walls of Hereford, while nego- 
 tiations were carrying on with Giyffth. which soon after produced 
 the restoration of Algar, and a peace with that king, not very 
 honorable to England, as he made no satisfaction for the mischief 
 he had done in tlie war, nor any submissions to Edward. Harold 
 must doubtless have had some private and forcible motives to con- 
 clude such a treaty. The very next year the Welsh monarch, upon 
 what quarrel we know not, made a new incursion into England, 
 and killed the bishop of Hereford, the sheriff of the county, and 
 many more of the English, botli ecclesiastics and laymen. Edward 
 was "counselled by Harold and Leofrick, Earl of Mercia. to make 
 peace with him again, which he again broke; nor could he be 
 restrained by any means from these barbarous inroads before the 
 vear one thousand and sixty-three ; when Edward, whose patience 
 and pacific disposition had been too much abused, commissioneil 
 Harold to assemble the whole strength of the kingdom, and make 
 war upon him in his own country, till he had subdued or destroyed 
 him. That general acted so vigorously, and with so much celerity, 
 that he had like to have surprised him in his palace ; but just 
 before the English forces arrived at his gate, having notice of the 
 danger that tlireatened him, and seeing no other means of safety, 
 he tlirew liimself, with a few of his household, into one of his 
 ships Avliich happened at the instant to be ready to sail, and put to 
 sea. — Lj'ttleton's [?] Hist, of England, vol. ii. p. 338. 
 
 This passage will be found to bear a general resemblance 
 to the fictitious tale told in the romance. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHED xiii 
 
 MINUTES 
 
 OF SEDERUNT OF A GENERAL MEETING OF THE SHARE- 
 HOLDERS DESIGNING TO FORM A JOINT-STOCK COMPANY, 
 UNITED FOR THE PURPOSE OF ^VRITING AND PUBLISH- 
 ING THE CLASS OF WORKS CALLED THE WAVERLEY 
 NOVELS, 
 
 IN THE WATERLOO TAVERN, REGENT's BBIDGB^ 
 Edinburgh, \st June, 1885 
 
 The reader must have reuiarked, that the various editions of the 
 proceedings at this meeting were given in the pviblic papers with 
 rather more than usual inaccuracy. The cause of this was no ill- 
 timed delicacy on the part of the gentlemen of the press to assert 
 their privilege of universal presence wherever a few are met 
 together, and to commit to the public prints whatever may then 
 and there pass of the most private nature. But very unusual and 
 arbitrary methods were resorted to on the present occasion to 
 prevent the reporters using a right which is generally conceded to 
 them by almost all meetings, whether of a political or commercial 
 description. Our own reporter, indeed, was bold enough to secrete 
 himself under the secretary's table, and was not discovered till the 
 meeting was wellnigh over. We are sorry to say he suffered much 
 in person from fists and toes, and two or three principal pages were 
 torn out of his note-book, which occasions his report to break off 
 abruptly. We cannot but consider this behavior as more particu- 
 larly illiberal on the part of men who are themselves a kind of 
 gentlemen of the press ; and they ought to consider themselves as 
 fortunate that the misused reporter has sought no other vengeance 
 than from the tone of acidity with which he has seasoned his 
 account of their proceedings. — Edinburgh Newspaper, 
 
 A MEETING of the gentlemen and others interested in the 
 celebrated publications called the Waverley Novels having 
 been called by public advertisement, the same was respect- 
 ably attended by various literary characters of eminence. 
 And it being in the first place understood that individuals 
 were to be denominated by the names assigned to them in 
 the publications in question, the eidolon or image of the 
 Author was unanimously called to the chair^ and Jonathan 
 Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns was requested to act as 
 secretary. 
 
xiv WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 The Preses then addressed the meeting to the following 
 purpose : — 
 
 " Gentlemen. — I need scarce remind you that we have a 
 joint interest in the valuable property which has accumulated 
 under our common labors. While the public have been idly 
 engaged in ascribing to one individual or another the im- 
 meiise mass of various matter which the labors of many had 
 accumulated, you, gentlemen, well know that every person 
 in this numerous assembly has had his share in the honors 
 and profits of our common success. It is, indeed, to me a 
 mystery how the sharp-sighted could suppose so huge a mass 
 of sense and nonsense, jest and earnest, humorous and 
 pathetic, good, bad, and indifferent, amounting to scores of 
 volumes, could be the work of one hand, when we know the 
 doctrine so well laid down by the immortal Adam Smith 
 concerning the division of labor. Were those who enter- 
 tained an opinion so strange not wise enoughto know that 
 it requires twenty pairs of "hands to make a thing so trifling 
 as a pin, twenty couple of dogs to kill an animal so insignif- 
 icant as a fox ? " 
 
 " Hout, man ! " said a stout countryman, " I have a grew 
 bitch at hame will worry the best tod in Pomoragrains before 
 ye could say dumpling." 
 
 ''Who is that person?" said the Preses, with some 
 warmth, as it appeared to us. 
 
 " A son of Dandy Dinmont's," answered the unabashed 
 rustic. " God, ye may mind him, I think ! ane o'the best 
 in your aught, I reckon. And, ye see, I am come into the 
 farm, and maybe something mair, anda wheen shares in this 
 buik-trade of yours." 
 
 "Well, well," replied the Preses, "peace, I pray thee— 
 peace. Gentlemen, when thus interrupted, I Avas on the 
 point of introducing the business of this meeting, being, as 
 is known to most of you, the discussion of a proposition now 
 on your tabic, which I myself had the honor to suggest at 
 last meeting, namelv, that we do apply to the legislature for 
 an act of parliament in ordinary, to associate us into a cor- 
 porate body, and give us a persona standi in jndicio, with 
 full power to prosecute and bring to ponviction all encroach- 
 ers upon our exclusive privilege, in the manner therein 
 to be made and provided. In a"^ letter from the ingenious 
 Mr. Dousterswivel which I have received -" 
 
 Oldbuck (warmly)—" I object to that fellow's name bemg 
 mentioned ; he is a common swindler." 
 
 "For shame, Mr, Oldbuck," said the Preses, "to use 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHED XV 
 
 such terms respecting the ingenious inventor of the great 
 patent machine erected at Groningen, where they put in 
 raw hemp at one end and take out ruffled shirts at the other, 
 without the aid of hackle or rippling-comb, loom, shuttle, 
 or weaver, scissors, needle, or seamstress. He had just com- 
 pleted it, by the addition of a piece of machinery to perform 
 the work of the laundress ; but when it was exhibited before 
 his honor the burgomaster, it had the inconvenience of 
 heating the smoothing-irons red-hot ; excepting which, the 
 experiment was entirely satisfactory. He will become as 
 rich as a Jew." 
 
 " Well," added Mr. Oldbuck, " if the scoundrel- " 
 
 " Scoundrel, Mr. Oldbuck," said the Preses, " is a most 
 unseemly expression, and I must call you to order. Mr. 
 Dousterswivel is only an eccentric genius." 
 
 " Pretty much the same in the Greek," muttered Mr. 
 Oldbuck ; and then said aloud, " And if this eccentric 
 genius has work enough in singeing the Dutchman's linen, 
 what the devil has he to do here ? " 
 
 " Why, he is of opinion that, at the expense of a little 
 mechanism, some part of the labor of composing these 
 novels might be saved by the use of steam." 
 
 There was a murmur of disapprobation at this proposal, 
 and the words " Blown up," and " Bread taken out of our 
 mouths," and " They might as well construct a steam parson," 
 were whispered. And it was not without repeated calls to 
 order that the Preses obtained an opportunity of resuming 
 his address. 
 
 " Order ! — order ! Pray, support the chair ! Hear — hear 
 — ^^hear the chair ! " 
 
 ** Gentlemen, it is to be premised that this mechanical 
 operation can only apply to those parts of the narrative 
 Tvhich are at present composed out of commonplaces, such 
 Hs the love-speeches of the hero, the description of the hero- 
 ine's person, the moral observations of all sorts, and the dis- 
 tribution of happiness at the conclusion of the piece. Mr. 
 Dousterswivel lias sent me some drawings, which go far to 
 show that, by placing the words and phrases technically em- 
 ployed on these subjects in a sort of framework, like that of 
 the sage of Laputa, and changing them by such a mechanical 
 process as that by which weavers of damask alter their pat- 
 terns, many new and happy combinations cannot fail to 
 occur, while the author, tired of pumping his own brains, 
 may have an agreeable relaxation in the use of his fingers." 
 
 " I speak for information, Mr. Preses/' said the Eev. Mr. 
 
xvi WA VERLE Y NO VELS 
 
 Laurence Templeton ; ''but I am inclined to suppose the 
 late publication of WaUadmor* to have been the work of 
 Dousterswivel, by the help of the steam-engine." 
 
 "For shame, Mr. Templeton," said the Presc-s ; ''there 
 are good things in Wolladmor, I assure you, had the writer 
 known anything about the country in which he laid the 
 scene." f 
 
 " Or had he had the wit, like some of ourselves, to lay the 
 scene in such a remote or distant country that nobody should 
 be able to backspeir him," said Mr. Oldbuck. 
 
 "Why, as to that," said the Preses, "you must consider 
 the thing was got up for the German market, where folks 
 are no better judges of Welsh manners than of Welsh ci'w." 
 
 "I make it my prayer that this be not found the fault of 
 our own next venture," said Dr. Dryasdust, pointing to 
 some books which lay on the table. " I fear the manners 
 expressed in that Betrothed of ours will scarce meet the ap- 
 probation of the Cymmorodion ; I could have wished that 
 Llhuvd had been looked into, that Powell had been con- 
 sulted, that Lewis's History had been quoted, the preliminary 
 dissertations particularly, in order to give due weight to the 
 work." . 
 
 "Weight !" said Captain Clutterbuck ; "by my soul, it 
 is heavy enough already. Doctor." 
 
 " Speak to the chair," said the Preses, rather peevishly, 
 
 " To the chair, then, I say it," said Captain Clutterbuck, 
 " that The Betrothed is heavy enough to break down the 
 chair of John of Gaunt, or Cader-Edris itself, I must add, 
 however, tluit, in my poor mind. The Talisman goes more 
 trippingly oflf." J 
 
 "It is not for me to speak," said the worthy minister of 
 St. Ronan's AVell ; "but yet I must say that, being so long 
 engaged upon the siege of Ptolemais, my work ought to 
 have been brought out, humble though it be, before any 
 other upon a similar subject at least." 
 
 " Your siege, parson !" said Mr. Oldbuck, with great con- 
 
 * A romance, by the Author of Waverley, having been expected 
 about tliis time at the great commercial mart of literature, the fair 
 of Leipsic, an ingenious gentleman of Germany, finding that none 
 such appeared, was so kind as to supply its place with a work, in 
 tliree volumes called WaUadmor, to which he prefixed the Chris- 
 tian and surname at full length. The character of this work is 
 given with tolerable fairness in the text.] 
 
 t [See Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. vii. pp. 384-386.] 
 I This was an opinion universally entertained among the friends 
 of the Author. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHED xvil 
 
 tempt ; " will you speak of your paltry prose-doings in my 
 presence, whose great historical poem, in twenty books, with 
 notes in proportion, has been postponed ad Grae cas ka- 
 lendas f " 
 
 The Preses, who appeared to suffer a great deal during 
 this discussion, now spoke with dignity and determination. 
 '' Gentlemen," he said, ** this sort of discussion is highly irreg- 
 ular. There is a question before you, and to that, gentle- 
 men, 1 must confine your attention. Priority of publica- 
 tion, let me remind you, gentlemen, is always referred to the 
 committee of criticism, whose determination on such sub- 
 jects is without appeal. I declare I will leave the chair if 
 any more extraneous matter be introduced. And now, 
 gentlemen, that we are once more in order, I would wish to 
 have some gentleman speak upon the question, whether as 
 associated to carry on a joint-stock trade in fictitious narra- 
 tive, in prose and verse, we ought not to be incorporated by 
 act of parliament ? What say you, gentlemen, to the pro- 
 posal ? Vis unita fortior is an old and true adage/' 
 
 " Societas mater' discordiarvrn is a brocard asaneient and 
 as veritable," said Oldbuck, who seemed determined, on tliis 
 occasion, to be pleased with no proposal that was counte- 
 nanced by the chair. 
 
 " Come, Monkbarns," said the Preses, in his most coax- 
 ing manner, " you have studied the monastic institutions 
 deeply, and know there must be a union of persons and 
 talents to do anything respectable, and attain a due ascend- 
 ance over the spirit of the age. Tres facmnt collegium : 
 it takes three monks to make a convent." 
 
 "And nine tailors to make a man," replied Oldbuck, not 
 in the least softened in his opposition — "a quotation as 
 much to the purpose as the other." 
 
 "Come — come," said the Preses, "you know the Prince 
 of Orange said to Mr. Seymour, ' Without an association, we 
 are a rope of sand.' " 
 
 "I know," replied Oldbuck, "it would have been as 
 seemly that none of the old leaven had been displayed on 
 this occasion, though you be the author of a Jacobite novel. 
 I know nothing of the Prince of Orange after 1688 ; but I 
 have heard a good deal oi the immortal William the 
 Third." 
 
 "And, to the best of my recollection," said Mr. Temple- 
 ton, whispering Oldbuck, " it was Seymour made the remark 
 to the Prince, not the Prince to Seymour. But this is a 
 specimen of our friend's accuracy, poor gentleman. He 
 
jcvui WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 trusts too much to his memory of late years — failing fast 
 sir — breaking up ! " 
 
 ** And breaking down too," said Mr. Oldbuck. " Bu 
 what can you expect of a man too fond of his own hast; 
 and flashy compositions to take the assistance of men o* 
 reading and of solid parts ?" 
 
 " Xo whispering — no caballing — no private business 
 gentlemen," said the unfortunate Preses, who reminded ui 
 somewhat of a Highland drover, engaged in gathering anc 
 keeping in the straight road his excursive black cattle. 
 
 " I have not yet heard," he continued, " a single reason- 
 able objection to applying for the act of parliament, of which 
 the draught lies on the table. You must be awai-e that the 
 extremes of rude and of civilized society are, in these our 
 days, on the point of approaching to each other. In the 
 patriarchal period, a man is his own weaver, tailor, butcher, 
 shoemaker, and so forth ; and, in the age of stock-com- 
 panies, as the present may be called, an individual may be 
 said, in one sense, to exercise the same plurality of trades. 
 In fact, a man who has dipped largely into these speculations 
 may combine his own expenditure with the improvement 
 of his own income, just like the ingenious hydraulic machine, 
 which, by its very waste, raises its own supplies of water. 
 Such a person buys his bread from his own Baking Com- 
 pany, his milk and cheese from his own Dairy Company, 
 takes off a new coat for the benefit of his own Clothing Com- 
 pany, illuminates his house to advance his own Gas Establish- 
 ment, and drinks an additional bottle of wine for the benefit 
 of the General Wine Importation Company, of which he is 
 himself a member. Every act, which would otherwise be 
 one of mere extravagance, is, to such a person, seasoned 
 with the odor lucri and reconciled to prudence. Even if the 
 price of the article consumed be extravagant, and the quality 
 indifferent, the person, who is in a manner liis own customer, 
 is only imposed upon for his own benefit. Kay, if the Joint- 
 stock Company of Undertakers shall unite with the medical 
 
 faculty, as proposed by the late facetious Doctor G , 
 
 under the firm of Death and the Doctor, the shareholder 
 might contrive to secure to his heirs a handsome slice of his 
 own death-bed and funeral expenses. In short, stock- 
 comj^anies are the fashion of the age, and an incorporating 
 act will, I think, be particularly useful in bringing back 
 the body over Avhom I have the honor to preside to a spirit 
 of subordination, highly necessary to success in every en- 
 terprise where joint wisdom, talent, and labor are to be 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHED xix 
 
 employed. It is with regret that I state that, besides several 
 differences amongst yourselves, I have not myself for some 
 time been treated with that deference among you which 
 circumstances entitled me to expect." 
 
 " Hinc illm lachrymce," muttered Mr. Oldbuck. 
 
 " But," continued the Chairman, " I see other gentlemen 
 impatient to deliver their opinions, and I desire to stand in 
 no man's way. I therefore — my place in this chair forbid- 
 ding me to originate the motion — beg some gentleman may 
 move a committee for revising the draught of the bill now 
 upon the table, and which has been duly circulated among 
 those having interest, and taken the necessary measures to 
 bring it before the House early next session." 
 
 There was a short murmur in the meeting, and at length 
 Mr. Oldbuck again rose. ''It seems, sir," he said, address- 
 ing the chair, ' ' that no one present is willing to make the 
 motion you point at. I am sorry no more qualified person 
 has taken upon him to show any reasons in the contrair, and 
 that it has fallen on me, as we Scotsmen say, to bell-the-cat 
 with you ; anent whilk phrase, Pitscottie hath a pleasant 
 jest of the great Earl of Angus " 
 
 Here a gentleman whispered to the speaker, ''Have a care 
 of Pitscottie !" and Mr. Oldbuck, as if taking the hint, went 
 on. 
 
 "But that's neither here nor there. Well, gentlemen, to 
 be short, I think it •unnecessary to enter into the general 
 reasonings whilk have this day been delivered, as I may say, 
 ex cathedra ; nor will I charge our worthy Preses with an 
 attempt to obtain over us, per mnhages, and under color of 
 an act of parliament, a despotic autliority, inconsistent with 
 our freedom ; but this I will say, that times are so much 
 changed above stairs, that whereas last year you might have 
 )btained an act incorporating a stock-company for riddling 
 ashes, you will not be able to procure one this year for 
 gathering pearls. What signifies, then, wasting the time of 
 the meeting, by inquiring whether or not we ought to go in 
 at a door which we know to be bolted and barred in our face, 
 and in the face of all the companies for fire or air, land or 
 water, which we have of late seen blighted ? " 
 
 Here there was a general clamor, seemingly of approba- 
 tion, in which the words might be distinguished, '* Needless 
 to think of it" — " Money thrown away " — " Lost before the 
 committee," etc. etc. etc. But above the tumult, the voices 
 of two gentlemen, in different corners of the room, answered 
 each other clear and loud, like the blows of the two figures 
 
XX WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 on St. Dunstan's clock ; and althongli the Chairman, in 
 much agitation, endeavored to silence them, his interrup- 
 tion had only the effect of cutting their words up into 
 syllables, thus — 
 
 First Voice. " The Lord Chan " 
 
 Second Voice. " The Lord Lau " 
 
 Chairman (loudly). " Scamlaluni mag7iatum ! " 
 
 First Voice. " The Lord Chancel " 
 
 Second Voice. " The Lord Lauder " 
 
 Chairman (louder yet). " Breach of privilege I" 
 
 First Voice. " The Lord Chancellor " 
 
 Second Voice. " My Lord Lauderdale " 
 
 Chairman (at the highest pitch of his voice). " Called be- 
 fore the House ! " 
 
 Both Voices together. " Will never consent to such a bill." 
 
 A general assent seemed to follow this last proposition, 
 
 which was propounded with as much emphasis as could be 
 
 contributed by the united clappers of the whole meeting, 
 
 joined to those of the voices already mentioned. 
 
 Several persons present seemed to consider the business of 
 the meeting as ended, and were beginning to handle their 
 hats and canes, with a view to departure, when the Chair- 
 man, who had thrown himself back in his chair with an air 
 of manifest mortification and displeasure, again drew him- 
 self up, and commanded attention. All stopped, though 
 some shrugged their shoulders, as if untler the predominat- 
 ing influence of what is called a "bore." But the tenor of 
 his discourse soon excited anxious attention. 
 
 " I perceive, gentlemen," he said, " that you are like the 
 young birds, who are impatient to leave their mother's nest ; 
 take care your own pin-feathers are strong enough to support 
 you, since, as for my part, I am tired of supporting on my 
 wing such a set of ungrateful gulls. But it signifies nothing 
 speaking — I will no longer avail myself of such weak minis- 
 ters as you : I will discard you — I will unbeget you, as Sir 
 Anthony Absolute says— I will leave you and your whole 
 hacked stock in trade — your caverns and your castles — your 
 modern antiques and your antiquated moderns — your confu- 
 sion of times, manners and circumstances — your properties, 
 as player-folk say of scenery and dresses — the whole of your 
 exhausted expedients, to the fools who choose to deal with 
 them. I will vindicate my own fame with my own right 
 hand, without appealing to such halting assistants. 
 
 Whom I have used for sport, rather than need. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE BETROTHED xxi 
 
 I Avill lay my foundations better than on quicksands. I will 
 rear my structure of better materials than painted cards ; in 
 a word, I will write History I" 
 
 There was a tumult of surprise, amid which our reporter 
 detected the following expressions — ' ' The devil you will ! " 
 — ''You, my dear sir — you?" — ''The old gentleman for- 
 gets that he is the greatest liar since Sir John Mandeville." 
 
 " Not the worse historian for that," said Oldbuck, "since 
 history, you know, is half fiction." 
 
 " I'll answer for that half being forthcoming," said the 
 former speaker ; " but for the scantling of truth which is 
 necessary after all. Lord help us ! Geofi;rey of Monmouth 
 will be Lord Clarendon to him." 
 
 As the confusion began to abate, more than one member 
 of the meeting was seen to touch his forehead significantly, 
 while Captain Clutterbuck hummed, 
 
 •' Be by your friends advised, 
 Too rash, too hasty, dad, 
 Maugre your bolts and wise head, 
 The world will think you mad. " 
 
 "The world, and you, gentlemen, may think what you 
 please," said the Chairman, elevating his voice ; " but I 
 intend to write the most wonderful book which the world 
 ever read — a book in which every incident shall be incred- 
 ible, yet strictly true — a work recalling recollections with 
 which the ears of this generation once tingled, and which 
 shall be read by our children with an admiration approach- 
 ing to incredulity. Such shall be the Life of Napoleon" 
 Bonaparte, by the Author of Waverley !" 
 
 In the general start and exclamation which followed this 
 annunciation, Mr. Oldbuck dropped his snuif-box ; and the 
 Scottish rappee, which dispersed itself in consequence, had 
 effects upon the nasal organs of our reporter, ensconced aS 
 he was under the secretary's table, which occasioned his 
 being discovered and extruded in the illiberal and unhand- 
 some manner we have mentioned, with threats of farther 
 damage to his nose, ears, and other portions of his body, 
 on the part especially of Captain Clutterbuck. Undis- 
 mayed by these threats, which indeed those of his profes- 
 sion are accustomed to hold at defiance, our young man 
 hovered about the door of the tavern, but could only bring 
 us the further intelligence, that the meeting had broken 
 up in about a quarter of an hour after his expulsion, in 
 much-admired disoraer. 
 
THE BETROTHED 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 Now in these dayes were hotte wars upon the marches of "Wales. 
 
 Lewis's History. 
 
 The chronicles from which this narrative is extracted assure 
 us that, during the long period when the AVelsh princes 
 maintained their independence, the year 1187 was peculiarly- 
 marked as favorable to peace betwixt them and their warlike 
 neighbors, the Lords Marchers, who inhabited those formid- 
 able castles on the frontiers of the ancient British on the 
 ruins of which the traveler gazes with wonder. This was 
 the time when Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, accom- 
 panied by the learned Giraldus de Barri, afterwards Bishop 
 of St. David's, preached the Crusade from castle to castle, 
 from town to town ; awakened the inmost valleys of his 
 native Cambria with the call to arms for recovery of the Holy 
 Sepulcher ; and, while he deprecated the feuds and wars of 
 Christian men against each other, held out to the martial 
 spirit of the age a general object of ambition, and a scene of 
 adventure where the favor of Heaven, as well as of earthly 
 renown, was to reward the successful champions. 
 
 Yet the British chieftains, among the thousands whom this 
 spirit-stirring summons called from their native land to a 
 distant and perilous expedition, had perhaps the best excuse 
 for declining the summons. The superior skill of the Anglo- 
 Norman knights, who were engaged in constant inroads on 
 the Welsh frontier, and who were frequently detaching from 
 it large portions, which they fortified with castles, thus mak- 
 ing good what they had won, was avenged, indeed, but not 
 compensated, by the furious inroads of the British, who, like 
 the billows of a retiring tide, rolled on successively with noise, 
 fury, and devastation ; but, on each retreat, yielded ground 
 insensibly to their invaders. 
 
 A union among the native princes might hftve opposed a 
 
4 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 connecting them were garnished with archers and men-at- 
 arms. 
 
 They proceeded to the banquet, at which Gwenwyn, for 
 the first time, beheld Eveline Berenger, the sole child of the 
 Norman castellane, the inheritor of his domains and of his 
 supposed wealth, aged only sixteen, and the most beautiful 
 damsel upon the Welsh marches. Many a spear had already 
 been shivered in maintenance of her charms ; and the gallant 
 Hugo de Lacy, Constable of Chester, one of the most re- 
 doubted warriors of the time, had laid at Eveline's feet the 
 prize which his chivalry had gained in a great tournament 
 held near that ancient town. Gwenwyn considered these 
 triumphs as so many additional recommendations to Eve- 
 line ; her beauty was incontestable, and she was heiress of 
 the fortress which he so much longed to possess, and which 
 he began now to think might be acquired by means more 
 smooth than those with which he was in the use of working 
 out his will. 
 
 Again, the hatred which subsisted between the British 
 and their Saxon and Norman invaders, his long and ill- 
 extinguished feud with this very Raymond Berenger, a 
 general recollection that alliances between the Welsh and 
 English had rarely been happy, and a consciousness that the 
 measure which he meditated would be unpopular among his 
 followers, and appear a dereliction of the systematic princi- 
 ples on which he had hitherto acted, restrained him from 
 speaking his wishes to Raymond or his daughter. The idea 
 of the rejection of his suit did not for a moment occur to 
 him : he was convinced he had but to speak his wishes, and 
 that the daughter of a Norman castellane, whose rank or 
 power were not of the highest order among the nobles of the 
 frontiers, must be delighted and honored by a proposal for 
 allying his family with that of the sovereign of a hundred 
 mountains. 
 
 There was indeed another objection, which in later times 
 would have been of considerable weight— Gwenwyn was 
 already married. But Brengwain was a childless bride ; 
 sovereigns, and among sovereigns the Welsh prince ranked 
 himself, marry for lineage, and the Pope was not Jikely to 
 be scrupulous where the question was to oblige a prince who 
 had assumed the cross with such ready zeal, even although, 
 in fact, his thoughts had been much more on the Garde 
 Doloureuse than on Jerusalem. In the mean while, if Ray- 
 mond Berenger, as was suspected, was not liberal enough in 
 his opinions to permit Eveline to hold the temporary rank 
 
THE BETROTHED 5 
 
 of concubine, which the manners of Wales warranted Gwen- 
 wyn to offer as an interim arrangement, he had only to wait 
 for a few months, and sue for a divorce through the Bishop 
 of St. David^s or some other intercessor at the Court of 
 Eome. 
 
 Agitating these thoughts in his mind, Gwenwyn prolonged 
 his residence at the castle of Berenger from Christmas till 
 Twelfth Day ; and endured the presence of the Norman caval- 
 iers who resorted to Raymond's festal halls, although, regard- 
 ing themselves, in virtue of their rank of knighthood, equal 
 to the most potent sovereigns, they made small account of the 
 long descent of the Welsh prince, who, in their eyes, was but 
 the chief of a semi-barbarous province ; while he, on his part, 
 considered them little better than a sort of privileged robbers, 
 and with the utmost difficulty restrained himself from mani- 
 festing his open hatred, when he beheld them careering in 
 the exercises of chivalry, the habitual use of which rendered 
 them such formidable enemies to his country. At length 
 the term of feasting was ended, and the knight and squire 
 departed from the castle, which once more assumed the 
 aspect of a solitary and guarded frontier fort. 
 
 But the Prince of Powys Land, while pursuing his sports 
 on his own mountains and valleys, found that even the abun- 
 dance of the game, as well as his release from the society of 
 the Norman chivalry, who affected to treat him as an equal, 
 profited him nothing, so long as the light and beautiful form 
 of Eveline, on her white palfrey, was banishied from the train 
 of sportsmen. In short, he hesitated no longer, but took into 
 his confidence his chaplain, an able and sagacious man, whose 
 pride was flattered by his patron's communication, and who, 
 besides, saw in the proposed scheme some contingent advan- 
 tages for himself and his order. By his counsel the proceed- 
 ing for Gwenwyn's divorce were prosecuted under favorable 
 auspices, and the unfortunate Brengwain was removed to a 
 nunnery, which, perhaps, she found a more cheerful habi- 
 tation than the lonely retreat in which she had led a neg- 
 lected life ever since Gwenwyn had despaired of her bed being 
 blessed with issue. Father Einion also dealt with the chiefs 
 and elders of the land, and represented to them the advan- 
 tages which in future wars they were certain to obtain by the 
 possession of the Garde Doloureuse, which had for more than 
 a century covered and protected a considerable tract of 
 country, rendered their advance difficult, and their retreat 
 perilous, and, in a word, prevented their carrying their in- 
 cursions as far as the gates of Shrewsbury. As for the 
 
6 WAVERLEY IfOVELS 
 
 union with tlie Saxon damsel, the fetters which it was to 
 form might not, the good father hinted, he found more jjer- 
 manent than those which had bound Gwenwyn to her pre- 
 decessor, Brengwain. 
 
 Tliese arguments, mingled with others adapted to the 
 views and wishes of different individuals, were so prevailing, 
 that tlie chaplain in the course of a few weeks was able to 
 report to his princely patron that his proposed match would 
 meet with no opposition from the elders and nobles of his 
 dominions. A golden bracelet, six ounces in weight, was 
 tbe instant reward of the priest's dexterity in negotiation, 
 and he was appointed by Gwenwyn to commit to paper those 
 proposals which he doubted not were to throw the Castle of 
 Garde Doloureuse, notwithstanding its melancholy name, 
 into an ecstacy of joy. With some difficulty the chaplain 
 prevailed on his patron to say nothing in this letter upon his 
 temporary plan of concubinage, which he wisely judged 
 might be considered as an affront both by Eveline and her 
 father. The matter of the divorce he represented as almost 
 entirely settled, and wound up his letter with a moral ap- 
 plication, in which were many illusions to Vashti, Esther, 
 and Ahasuerus. 
 
 Having despatched this letter by a swdftand trusty messen- 
 ger, the British prince oj^ened in all solemnity the feast of 
 Easter, which had come round during the course of these 
 external and internal negotiations. 
 
 Upon the approaching holy-tide, to propitiate the minds 
 of his subjects and vassals, they were invited in large num- 
 Ijers to partake a princely festivity at Castell Coch, or the 
 Eed Castle, as it was then called, since better known by the 
 name of Powys Castle, and in latter times the princely seat 
 of the Duke of Beaufort. The architectural magnificence 
 of this noble residence is of a much later period than that 
 of Gwenwyn, whose palace, at the time we speak of, was a 
 iong, low-roofed edifice of red stone, whence the castle de- 
 rived its name ; while a ditch and palisade were, in addition 
 to the commanding situation, its most important defenses. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 In Madoc's tent the clarion sounds, 
 
 With rapid clangor hurried far ; 
 Each hill and dale the note rebounds, 
 
 But when return the sons of war ? 
 Thou, born of stern necessity, 
 Dull peace ! the valley yields to thee, 
 
 And owns thy melancholy sway. 
 
 Welsh Poem. 
 
 The feasts of the ancient British princes usually exhibited 
 all the ritde splendor and liberal indulgence of mountain 
 hospitality, andGwenvvyn was, on the present occasion, anx- 
 ious to purchase popularity by even an usual display of pro- 
 fusion ; for he was sensible that the alliance which he med- 
 itated might indeed be tolerated, but could not be approved, 
 by his subjects and followers. 
 
 The following incident, trifling in itself, confirmed his 
 apprehensions. Passing one evening, when it was become 
 nearly dark, by the open window of a guard-room, usually 
 occupied by some few of his most celebrated soldiers, who 
 relieved each other in watching his palace, he heard Mor- 
 gan, a man distinguished for strength, courage, and feroc- 
 ity, say to the companion with whom he was sitting by the 
 watch-fire, " Gwenwyn is turned to a priest or a woman ! 
 When was it before these last months that a follower of his 
 was obliged to gnaw the meat from the bone so closely as I 
 am now peeling the morsel which I hold in my hand ?"* 
 
 " Wait but a while," replied his comrade, "till the Nor- 
 man match be accomplished ; and so small will be the prey 
 we sliall then drive from the Saxon churls, that we may be 
 glad to swallow, like hungry dogs, the very bones them- 
 selves." 
 
 Gwenwyn heard no more of their conversation ; but this 
 was enough to alarm his pride as a soldier and his jealousy 
 as a prince. He was sensible that the people over whom he 
 ruled were at once fickle in their disposition, impatient of 
 long repose, and full of hatred against their _ neighbors ; 
 and he almost dreaded the consequences of the inactivity to 
 
 ♦ See Taunt of Effeminacy. Note 1 
 7 
 
8 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 whicli a long truce might reduce them. The risk was now 
 incurred, however ; and to display even more than his 
 wonted splendor and liberalit}' seemed the best way of rec- 
 onciling the wavering affections of his subjects. 
 
 A Norman would have despised the barbarous magnif- 
 icence of an entertainment consisting of kine and sheep 
 roasted whole, of goats' flesh and deer's flesh seethed in the 
 skins of the animals themselves ; for the Normans piqued 
 themselves on the quality rather than the quantity of their 
 food, and, eating rather delicately than largely, ridiculed 
 the coarser taste of the Britons, although the last were in 
 their banquets much more moderate than were the Saxons ; 
 nor would the oceans of " crw " and hydromel, which over- 
 whelmed the guests like a deluge, have made up, in their 
 opinion, for the absence of the more elegant and costly 
 beverage which they had learned to love in the south of 
 Europe. Milk prepared in various M'ays was another ma- 
 terial of the British entertainment which would not have 
 received their approbation, although a nutriment which, on 
 ordinary occasions, often suiDplied the want of all others 
 among "the ancient inhabitants, whose country was rich in 
 flocks and herds, but poor in agricultural produce. 
 
 The banquet was spread in a long low hall, built of rough 
 wood lined with shingles, having a fire at each end, the 
 smoke of which, unable to find its Avay through the imper- 
 fect chimneys in the roof, rolled in cloudy billows above 
 the heads of the revelers, who sat on low seats purposely to 
 avoid its stifling fumes.* The mien and appearance of the 
 company assembled was wild, and, even in their social hours, 
 almost terrific. Their prince himself had the gigantic port 
 and fiery eye fitted to sway an unruly people whose delight 
 was in the 'field of battle ; and the long mustachios which he 
 and most of his champions wore added to the formidable 
 dignity of his presence. Like most of those present, 
 Gwenwyn vv^as clad in a simple tuiiic of white linen cloth, a 
 remnant of the dress which the Romans had introduced into 
 provincial Britain ; and he was distinguished by the eudor- 
 chaivg,] or chain of twisted gold links, with which the Celtic 
 tribes always decorated their chiefs. The collar, indeed, 
 representing in form the species of links made by children 
 out of rushes, was common to chieftains of inferior rank, 
 many of whom bore it in virtue of their birth, or had won 
 it by military exploits ; but a ring of gold, bent around the 
 
 * See Welsh Houses. Note 2. \ See Note 3. 
 
THE BETROTHED 9 
 
 head, intermingled with Gwenwyn's hair ; for he claimed 
 the rank of one of three diademed princes of Wales, and his 
 armlets and anklets of the same metal were peculiar to the 
 Prince of Powys, as an independent sovereign. Two squires 
 of his body, who dedicated their whole attention to his ser- 
 vice, stood at the Prince's back ; and at his feet sat a page, 
 whose duty it was to keep them warm by chafing and by 
 wrapping them in his mantle. The same right of sover- 
 eignty which assigned to Gwenwyn his golden crownlet 
 gave him a title to the attendance of the foot-bearer, or 
 youth, who lay on the rushes, and whose duty it was to 
 cherish the Prince's feet in his lap or bosom.* 
 
 Notwithstanding the military disi>osition of the guests, 
 and the danger arising from the feuds into Avhich they were 
 divided, few of the feasters wore any defensive armor except 
 the light goat-skin buckler, which hung behind each man's 
 seat. On the other hand, they were well provided with 
 offensive weapons ; for the broad, sharp, short, two-edged 
 sword was another legacy of the Eomans. Most added a 
 wood-knife or poniard ; and there were store of javelins, 
 darts, bows and arrows, pikes, halberds, Danish axes, and 
 Welsh hooksand bills ; so, in case of ill-blood arising during 
 the banquet, there was no lack of weapons to work mischief. 
 
 But although the form of the feast was somewhat dis- 
 orderly, and that the revelers were unrestrained by the 
 stricter rules of good-breeding which the laws of chivalry 
 imposed, the Easter banquet of Gwenwyn possessed, in the 
 attendance of twelve eminent bards, one source of the most 
 exalted pleasure in a much higher degree than the proud 
 Normans could themselves boast. The latter, it is true, had 
 their minstrels, a race of men trained to the profession of 
 poetry, song, and music ; but although those arts were highly 
 honored, and the individual professors, when they attained 
 to eminence, were often richly rev^arded and treated with 
 distinction, the order of minstrels, as such, was held in low 
 esteem, being composed chiefly of worthless and dissolute 
 strollers, by whom the art was assumed in order to escape 
 from the necessity of labor, and to have the means of pursu- 
 ing a wandering and dissipated course of life. Such, in all 
 times, has been the censure upon the calling of those who 
 dedicate themselves to the public amusement ; among whom 
 those distinguished by individual excellence are sometimes 
 raised high in the social circle, while far the more numerous 
 
 * See Foot-pages. Note 4. 
 
10 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 f)rofessors, who only reach mediocrity, are sunk into the 
 ower scale. But such was not the case with the order of 
 bards in Wales, who, succeeding to the dignity of the Druids, 
 under whom they had originally formed a subordinate frater- 
 nity, had many immunities, were held in the highest rever- 
 ence and esteem, and exercised much influence with their 
 countrymen. Their power over the public mind even rivaled 
 that of the priests themselves, to whom indeed they bore 
 some resemblance ; for they never wore arms, were initiated 
 into their order by secret and mystic solemnities, and homage 
 was rendered to their awen, or flow of poetic inspiration, as 
 if it had been indeed marked with a divine character. Thus 
 possessed of power and consequence, the bards were not un- 
 willing to exercise their privileges, and sometimes, in doing 
 so, their manners frequently savored of caprice. 
 
 This was perhaps the case with Cadwallon, the chief 
 bard of Gwenwyn, and who, as such, was expected to have 
 poured forth the tide of song in the banqueting-hall of 
 his prince. But neither the anxious and breathless expec- 
 tation of the assembled chiefs and champions, neither 
 the dead silence which stilled the roaring hall when his harp 
 was reverently placed before him by his attendant, nor even 
 the commands or entreaties of the Prince himself, could 
 extract from Cadwallon more than a short and interrupted 
 prelude upon the instrument, the notes of which arranged 
 themselves into an air inexpressibly mournful, and died away 
 in silence. The Prince frowned darkly on the bard, who 
 was himself far too deeply lost in gloomy thought to offer 
 any apology, or even to observe his displeasure. Again he 
 touched a "few wild notes, and, raising his looks upward, 
 seemed to be on the very point of bursting forth into a tide 
 of song similar to tfliose with which this master of his art 
 was wont to enchant his hearers. But tlie effort was in vain ; 
 he declared that his right hand was withered, and pushed 
 the instrument from him. 
 
 A murmur went round the company, and Gwenwyn read 
 in their aspects that they received the unusual silence of 
 Cadwallon on this high occasion as a bad omen. He called 
 hastily on a young and ambitious bard named Caradoc of 
 Menwygent, whose rising fame was likely soon to vie with 
 the established reputation of Cadwallon, and summoned him 
 to sing something which might command the applause of 
 his sovereigTi and the gratitude of the company. The young 
 man was ambitious, and understood tlie arts of a courtier. 
 He commenced a poem, in which, although under a feigned 
 
TEE BETROTHED H 
 
 name, he drew such a poetic picture of Eveline Berenger 
 tliat Gwenwyn was enraptured ; and wliile all who had seen 
 the beautiful original at once recognized the resemblance, 
 the eyes of the Prince confessed at once his passion for the 
 subject and his admiration of the poet. The figures of Celtic 
 poetry, in themselves highly imaginative, were scarce suffi- 
 cient for the enthusiasm of the ambitious bard, rising in his 
 tone as he perceived the feelings which he was exciting. 
 The praises of the Prince mingled with those of the Norman 
 beauty ; and "as a lion," said the poet, "can only be led 
 by the hand of a chaste and beautiful maiden, so a chief can 
 only acknowledge the empire of the most virtuous, the most 
 lovely of her sex. Who asks of the noonday sun in what 
 quarter of the world he was born ? and who shall ask oi such 
 charms as hers to what country they owe their birth ? " 
 
 Enthusiasts in pleasure as in war, and possessed of imagi- 
 nations which answered readily to the summons of their 
 poets, the Welsh chiefs and leaders united in acclamations 
 of applause ; and the song of the bard went farther to ren- 
 der popular the intended alliance of the Prince than had all 
 the graver arguments of his priestly precursor in the same 
 topic. 
 
 Gwenwyn himself, in a transport of delight, tore off the 
 golden bracelets which he wore, to bestow them upon a bard 
 whose song had produced an effect so desirable ; and said, as 
 he looked at the silent and sullen Cadwallon, " The silent 
 harp was never strung with golden wires." 
 
 ''Prince," answered the bard, whose pride was at least 
 equal to that of Gwenwyn himself, "you pervert the pro 
 verb of Taliessin : it is the flattering harp which never 
 lacked golden strings." 
 
 Gwenwyn, turning sternlv towards him, was about to make 
 an angry answer, when the sudden appearance of Jorworth, 
 the messenger whom he had despatched to Eaymond Ber- 
 enger, arrested his purpose. This rude envoy entered the 
 hall barelegged, excepting the sandals of goat-skin which he 
 wore, and having on his shoulder a cloak of the same, and 
 a short javelin in his hand. The dust on his garments and 
 the flush on his brow showed with what hasty zeal his errand 
 had been executed. Gwenwyn demanded of him eagerly, 
 "What news from Garde Doloureuse, Jorworth ap Jevan ?" 
 
 "I bear them in my bosom," said the son of Jevan ; and, 
 with much reverence, he delivered to the Prince a packet, 
 bound with silk, and sealed with the impression of a swan, 
 the ancient cognizance of the house of Berenger. Himself 
 
12 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ignorant of writing or reading, Gwenwyn, in anxions haste, 
 delivered the letter to Cadwalion, who usually acted as sec- 
 retary when the chaplain was not in jDreseuce, as chanced 
 then to be the case. Cadwalion, looking at the letter, said 
 briefly, " I read no Latin. Ill betide the Norman who writes 
 to a Prince of Powys in other language than that of Britain ! 
 and well was the hour when that noble tongue alone was 
 spoken from Tintadgei to Cairleon ! " 
 
 Gwenwyn only replied to him with an angry glance. 
 
 " Where is Father Einion ? " said the impatient prince. 
 
 " He assists in the church," replied one of his attendants, 
 *' for it is the feast of St. — '■ — " 
 
 " Were it the feast of St. David," said Gwenwyn, " and 
 were the pyx between his hands, he must come hither to me 
 instantly ! " 
 
 One of the chief henchmen sprung oif to command his 
 attendance, and, in the meantime, Gwenwyn eyed the letter 
 containing the secret of his fate, but which it required an 
 interpreter to read, with such eagerness and anxiety, that 
 Caradoc, elated by his former success, threw in a few notes 
 to divert, if possible, the tenor of his patron's thoughts dur- 
 ing the interval. A light and lively air, touched by a hand 
 which seemed to hesitate, like the submissive voice of an in- 
 ferior fearing to interrupt his master's meditations, intro- 
 duced a stanza or two applicable to the subject. 
 
 " And what though thou, scroll," he said, apostrophiz' 
 ing the letter, which lay on the table before his master, 
 " dost speak with the tongue of the stranger ? Hath not 
 the cuckoo a harsh note, and yet she tells us of green bud 
 and springing flowers ? What if thy language be that of 
 the stoled priest, is it not the same which binds hearts and 
 hands together at the altar ? And what though thou delay 
 est to render up thy treasures, are not all pleasures most 
 sweet when enhanced by expectation ? What were the 
 chase, if the deer dropped at our feet the instant he started 
 from the cover ; or what value were there in the love of the 
 ^laiden, were it yielded without coy delay ?" 
 
 The song of the bard was here broken short by the en- 
 trance of the priest, who, hasty in obeying the summons of 
 his impatient master, had not tarried to lay aside even th 
 stole which he had worn in the holy service ; and many of 
 the elders thought it was no good omen that, so habited, a 
 priest should appear in a festive assembly, and amid profane] 
 minstrelsy. 
 
 The priest opened the letter of the Norman baron, and, 
 
THE BETROTHED 13 
 
 ruck with surprise at the contents, lifted his eyes in 
 ■ence. 
 
 " Read it ! " exclaimed the fierce Gwenwyn. 
 " So please you/' replied the more prudent chaplain, **a 
 laller company were a fitter audience." 
 " Read it aloud ! " repeated the Prince, in a still higher 
 ne : " there sit none here who res^ject not the honor of 
 leir prince, or who deserve not his confidence. Read it, I 
 y, aloud, and by St. David, if Raymond the Norman hath 
 
 ired " 
 
 He stopped short, and, reclining on his seat, composed 
 mself to an attitude of attention ; but it was easy for his 
 llowers to fill up the breach in his exclamation which pru- 
 mce had recommended. 
 
 The voice of the chaplain was low and ill-assured as he 
 ad the following epistle : — 
 
 " Raymond Berenger, the noble Norman Knight, Senes- 
 lal of the Garde Doloureuse, to Gwenwyn, Prince of 
 owys — May peace be between them ! — sendeth health. 
 
 " Your letter, craving the hand of our daughter Eveline 
 eienger, was safely delivered to us by your servant, Jor- 
 orth ap Jevan, and we thank you heartily for the good 
 eaning therein expressed to us and to ours. But, con- 
 iering within ourselves the difference of blood and lin- 
 ige, with the impediments and causes of offense which have 
 ten arisen in the like cases, we hold it fitter to match our 
 lughter among our own people ; and this by no case in 
 sparagement of you, but solely for the weal of you, of 
 irselves, and of our mutual dependants, who will be the 
 ore safe from the risk of quarrel betwixt us, that we essay 
 3t to draw the bonds of our intimacy more close than be- 
 emeth. The sheep and the goats feed together in peace 
 1 the same pastures, but they mingle not in blood or race 
 le one with the other. Moreover, our daughter Eveline 
 ith been sought in marriage by a noble and potent Lord of 
 le Marches, Hugo de Lacy, the Constable of Chester, to 
 hich most honorable suit we have returned a favorable an- 
 swer. It is therefore impossible that we should in this 
 atter grant to you the boon you seek ; nevertheless, you 
 lall at all times find us, in other matters, willing to pleas- 
 re you ; and hereunto we call God. and Our Lady, and St. 
 ary Magdalene of Quatford to witness, to whose keeping 
 e heartily recommend you. 
 
14 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 " Written by our command, at our Castle of Garde Doloi, 
 euse, within the Marches of Wales, by a reverend prie;, 
 Father Aldrovand, a black monk of the house of Wenloc; 
 and to which we have ajDpended our seal, upon the eve I 
 the blessed martyr St. Alphegius, to whom be honor ai 
 glory ! " 
 
 The voice of Father Einion faltered, and the scroll whi i 
 he held in his hand trembled in his grasp, as he arrived t 
 the conclusion of this epistle ; for well he knew that insus 
 more slight than Gwenwyn would hold the least word t 
 contained were sure to put every drop of his British blci 
 into the most vehement commotion. Nor did it fail to o 
 so. The Prince had gradually drawn himself up from 1e 
 posture of repose in which he had prepared to listen to te 
 epistle ; and when it concluded, he sprung on his feet l:je 
 a startled lion, spurning from him as he rose the foot-bear;, 
 who rolled at some distance on the floor. " Priest,'' ;e 
 said, "hast thou read that accursed scroll fairly ? for if tha 
 hast added or diminished one word or one letter I will hjie 
 thine eyes so handled that thou shalt never read letir 
 more." ! 
 
 The monk replied, trembling, for he was well aware tji,t 
 the sacerdotal character was not uniformly respected amcjg 
 the irascible Welshmen, " By the oath of my order, migly 
 prince, I have read word for word and letter for letter.'' i 
 
 Tliere was a momentary jDause, while the fury of Gwen^vn 
 at this unexpected affront, offered to him in the presenceif 
 all his ucJcelivyr {i. e. noble chiefs, literally men of h;h 
 stature), seemed too big for utterance, when the silence ^jB 
 broken by a few notes from the hitherto mute harp of Ci- 
 wallon. The Prince looked round at first with dis^ileas 'e 
 at the interruption, for he was himself about to speak ; it 
 when he beheld the bard bending over his harp with an ir 
 of inspiration, and blending together, with unexamp^d 
 skill, the wildest and most exalted tones of his art, he h i- 
 self became an auditor instead of a speaker, and Cadwall i, 
 not the Prince, seemed to become the central point of le 
 assembly, on whom all eyes were bent, and to whom e h 
 ear was turned with breathless eagerness, as if his striis 
 were the responses of an oracle. 
 
 " We wed not with the stranger," thus burst the s<f.g 
 from the lips of the poet. " Vortigern wedded with .le 
 stranger; thence came the first woe upon Britain, an a 
 sword upon her nobles, and a thunderbolt upon her pahe. 
 
TEE BETROTHED 15 
 
 '" IVewed not with the enskived Saxon : the free and princely 
 
 tag seeks not for his bride the heifer whose neck the yoke 
 
 -lath worn. We wed not witli the rapacious Norman : the 
 
 "'''^Mioble hound scorns to seek a mate from the herd of ravening 
 
 * Solves. When was it heard that the Cymry, the descendants 
 
 »f Brute, the true children of the soil of fair Britain, were 
 
 )lundered, oppressed, bereft of their birthright, and insulted 
 
 "hiikyenin their last retreats — when, but since they stretched 
 
 rrivei heir hand in friendship to the stranger, and clasped to their 
 
 iitiraljosoms the daughter of the Saxon ? Which of the two is 
 
 word eared — the empty water-course of summer or the channel of 
 
 '■I'tk: he headlong winter torrent ? A maiden smiles at the sum- 
 
 '""oiner-shrunk brook while she crosses it, but a barbed horse 
 
 l>wti,nd his rider will fear to stem the Avintry flood. Mer of 
 
 ' ilathravel and Powys, be the dreaded flood of winter! 
 
 Twenwyn, son of Cyveiliock, may thy plume be the topmost 
 
 ■■'"'•i-jif its waves \" 
 
 fiest,"l| All thoughts of peace — thoughts which in themselves 
 "riftlilere foreign to the hearts of the warlike British — passed 
 «'ill blef ore the song of Cadwallon like dust before the whirlwind, 
 111 lets|,nd the unanimous shout of the assembly declared for instant 
 i^ar. The Prince himself spoke not, but, looking proudly 
 .round him, flung abroad his arm, as one who cheers his fol- 
 iiMpwers to the attack. 
 
 The priest, had he dared, might have reminded Gwenwyn 
 hat the cross which he had assumed on liis shoulder had 
 onsecrated his arm to the Holy War, and precluded his 
 ngaging in any civil strife. But the task was too danger- 
 ins for Father Einion's courage, and he shrunk from thehall 
 ileiiceijb the seclusion of his own convent. Caradoc, whose brief 
 lOur of popularity was passed, also retired, with humbled 
 ■ nd dejected looks, and not without a glance of indignation 
 .: it his triumphant rival, who had so judiciously reserved his 
 111 1111 j.isplay of art for the theme of war, that was ever most pop- 
 I'xanifj.lar with the audience. 
 
 , lie S The chiefs resumed their seats no longer for the purpose 
 
 ;iilffiill|'f festivity, but to fix, in the hasty manner customary 
 
 "ift'.mong these prompt warriors, where they were to assemble 
 
 heir forces, which, upon such occasions, comprehended 
 
 -iilmost all the able-bodied males of the country — for all, 
 
 jixcepting the priests and the bards, were soldiers — and to 
 
 tlieilettle the order of their descent upon the devoted marches, 
 
 nitlirhere they proposed to signalize, by general ravage, their 
 
 ;i, ialense of the insult which their prince had received, by the 
 
 iiiveiii] 
 ■ri'seiice! 
 
 ajection of his suit. 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 The sands are number'd that make up my life ; 
 Here mast I stay, and here my Ufe must end. 
 
 Henry VI. Act I. Scene IV. 
 
 When Eaymond Berenger had despatched his mission to 
 the Prince of Powys, he was not unsuspicious, though alto- 
 gether fearless, of the result. He sent messengers to the 
 several dependants who held their fiefs by the tenure of 
 " cornage," and warned them to be on the alert, that he -^ 
 might receive instant notice of the approach of the enemy, 
 These vassals, as is well known, occupied the numerous 
 towers which, like so many falcon-nests, had been built on th( 
 points most convenient to defend the frontiers, and wert 
 bound to give signal of any incursion of the Welsh, by blow 
 ing their horns ; which sounds, answered from tower to towe: 
 and from station to station, gave the alarm for general de 
 fense. But although Raymond considered these precaution 
 as necessary, from the fickle and precarious temper of hi 
 neighbors, and for maintaining his own credit as a soldier 
 he was far from believing the danger to be imminent ; fo 
 the preparations of the Welsh, though on a much more exter 
 sive scale than had lately been usual, were as secret as thej 
 resolution of war had been suddenly adopted. 
 
 It was upon the second morning after the memorabl 
 festival of Castell Ooch that the tempest broke on the Noi ^^ 
 man frontier. At first a single, long, and keen bugle-bla,' 
 announced the approach of the enemy ; presently the sign 
 of alarm were echoed from every castle and tower on tl 
 borders of Shropshire, where every place of habitation wil 
 then a fortress. Beacons were lighted upon crags and em' 
 nences, the bells were rung backward in the churches ai, 
 towns, while the general and earnest summons to arms a 
 nounced an extremity of danger which even the inhabitan.i 
 of that unsettled country had not hitherto experienced. 
 
 Amid this general alarm, Raymond Berenger, haviu 
 
 busied himself in arranging his few but gallant followers ad 
 
 adherents, and taken such modes of procuring intelligeu3 
 
 of the enemy's strength and motions as were in his power, t 
 
 16 
 
 
THE BETROTHED l^ 
 
 len^h ascended the watch-tower of the castle, to observe in 
 person the country around, already obscured in several places 
 by the clouds of smoke which announced the progress and 
 the ravages of the invaders. He was speedily joined by his 
 favorite squire, to whom the unusual heaviness of his mas- 
 ter's looks was cause of much surprise, for till now they had 
 ever been blithest at the hour of battle. The squire held in 
 his hand his master's helmet, for Sir Eaymond was all armed 
 saving the head. 
 
 " Dennis Morolt," said the veteran soldier, '*are our vas- 
 sals and liegemen all mustered ? " 
 
 " All, noble sir, but the Flemings, who are not yet come 
 in." 
 
 " The lazy hounds, why tarry they ? " said Eaymond. " HI 
 policy it is to plant such sluggish natures in our borders. 
 They are like their own steers, fitter to tug a plow than 
 for aught that requires mettle." 
 
 '•■ With your favor," said Dennis, " the knaves can do good 
 service notwithstanding. That Wilkin Flammock of the 
 Green can strike like the hammers of his ewn fulling- 
 mill." 
 
 " He will fight, I believe, when he cannot help it," said 
 Kaymond ; " but he has no stomach for such exercise, and 
 is as slow and as stubborn as a mule." 
 
 " And therefore are his countrymen rightly matched 
 against the Welsh," replied Dennis Morolt, " thattlieir solid 
 and unyielding temper may be a fit foil to the fiery and head- 
 long dispositions of our dangerous neighbors, just as restless 
 waves are best opposed by steadfast rocks. Hark, sir, 1 hear 
 Wilkin Flammock's step ascending the turret-stair as delib- 
 erately as ever monk mounted to matins." 
 
 Step by step the heavy sound approached, until the form 
 of the huge and substantial Fleming at length issued from 
 the turret-door to the platform where they were conversing. 
 Wilkin Flammock was cased in bright armor, of unusual 
 weight and thickness, and cleaned with exceeding care, which 
 marked the neatness of his nation ; but, contrary to the 
 custom of the Normans, entirely plain, and void of carving, 
 gilding, or any sort of ornament. The base-net, or steel- 
 cap, had no visor, and left exposed a broad countenance, 
 J with heavy and unpliable features, which announced the 
 J character of his temper and understanding. He carried in 
 J his hand a heavy mace. 
 
 A "So, Sir Fleming," said the castellane, "you are in no 
 'l hurry, methinks, to repair to the rendezvous." 
 
18 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 "So please you," answered the Fleming, ''we were com- 
 pelled to tarry, that we might load our wains with our bales nr 
 of cloth and other property." 
 
 Ha ! wains ! How many wains have you brought with 
 
 you^" 
 
 Six, noble sir," replied Wilkin. iiaii: 
 
 " And how many men ? " demanded Eaymond Berenger. Iiol 
 
 " Twelve, valiant sir," answered Flammock. 
 
 " Only two men to each baggage-wain ? I wonder you 
 would thus encumber yourself," said Berenger. 
 
 '' Under your favor, sir, once more," rejilied Wilkin, " it 
 is only the value which I and my comrades set upon our 
 goods that inclines us to defend them with our bodies ; and, 
 had we been obliged to leave our cloth to the plundering m 
 clutches of yonder vagabonds, I should have seen small fOD, 
 policy in stopping here to give them the opportunity of '' 
 adding murder to robbery. Gloucester should have been leni 
 my first halting-place." _ ive 
 
 The Norman knight gazed on the Flemish artisan, for' 
 such was Wilkin Flammock, with such a mixture of surprise 
 and contempt as excluded indignation. ''I have heard 
 much," he said, " but this is the first time that I have heard 
 one with a beard on his lip avouch himself a coward." 
 
 " Nor do you hear it now," answered Flammock, with 
 the utmost composure. "I am always ready to fight for 
 life and property ; and my coming to this country, where 
 they are both in constant danger, shows that I care not 
 much how often I do so. But a sound skin is better than a 
 slashed one, for all that." 
 
 " Well," said Eaymond Berenger, " fight after thine own 
 fashion, so thou wilt but fight stoutly with that long body 
 of thine. We are like to have need for all that we can do. 
 Saw you aught of these rascaille Welsh ? Have they Gweu- 
 wyn's banner amongst them ? " 
 
 " I saw it with the white dragon displayed," replied litin, 
 Wilkin : "I could not but know it, since it was broidered ijifo; 
 in my own loom." 
 
 Eaymond looked so grave upon this intelligence, that 
 Dennis Morolt, unwilling the Fleming should mark it, 
 tliought it necessary to withdraw his attention. " I can tell 
 thee," he said to Flammock, " that, when the Constable of 
 Chester joins us with his lances, you shall see your handi- 
 work, the dragon, fly faster homeward than ever flew the L 
 shuttle which wove it." , rljH 
 
 "It must fly before the Constable comes up, Dennis 
 
 e: \ 
 
i'utm 
 
 THE BETROTHED 10 
 
 ■ff»i [orolt," said Berenger, '* else it will fly triumphant over all 
 
 rlja. |nr bodies." 
 
 " In the name of God and the Holy Virgin ! " said Dennis, 
 what may you mean, sir knight ? — not that we shonld 
 jht with the Welsh before the Constable joins ns?^' He 
 ansed, and then, well understanding the firm yet melan- 
 loly glance with which his master answered the question, 
 proceeded, with yet more vehement earnestness, ''You 
 mnot mean it — you cannot intend that we shall quit this 
 istle, which we liave so often made good against them, and 
 iin,": mtend in the field witli two hundred men against thou- 
 nds ? Think better of it, my beloved master, and let not 
 le rashness of your old age blemish that character for 
 isdom and warlike skill which your former life basso nobly 
 on." ^ ^ 
 
 I am not angry with you for blaming; my pur|)ose, 
 ennis," answered the Norman, *' for I know you do it in 
 ve to me and mine. But, Dennis Morolt, this thing must 
 
 : we must fight the Welshmen within these three hours, 
 • the name of Eaymond Berenger must be blotted from the 
 
 nealogy of bis house." 
 
 "And so we will — we will fight them, my noble master,*' 
 id the esquire ; " fear not cold counsel from Dennis 
 orolt, where battle is the them:^. But we will fight 
 lem under the walls of the castle, with honest Wilkin 
 lammock and his cross-bows on the wall to protect our 
 inks, and afford us some balance against the numerous 
 Ids." 
 
 Not so, Dennis," answered his master — "in the open 
 jld we must fight them, or thy master must rank but as a 
 an-sworn knight. Know, that when I feasted yonder wily 
 vage in my halls at Christmas, and when the wine was 
 )wing fastest around, Gwenwyn threw out some praises of 
 e fastness and strength of my castle, in a manner which 
 timated it was these advantages alone that had secured me 
 
 former wars from defeat and captivity. I spoke in answer, 
 hen I had far better been silent ; for what availed my idle 
 )ast, but as a fetter to bind me to a deed next to madness ? 
 1,' I said, ' a prince of the Cymry shall again come iu 
 )stile fashion before the Garde Doloureuse, let him pitch 
 standard down in yonder plain by the bridge, and, by 
 word of a good knight and the faith of a Christian man, 
 aymond Berenger will meet him as willingly, be he many 
 
 be he few, as ever Welshman was met withal.*" 
 PejE Dennis was struck speechless when he heard of a promise 
 
20 WAVEELET NOVELS 
 
 80 rash, so fatal ; but his was not the casuistry which coulcj 
 release his master from the fetters with which his unwar- 
 confidence had bound him. It was otherwise with Wilkii 
 Flammock. He stared, he almost laughed, uotwithstandin: 
 the reverence due to the castellane, and his own insensibilit 
 to risible emotions. "And is this all?" he said. '"I 
 your honor had pledged yourself to pay one hundred florin 
 to a Jew or to a Lombard, no doubt you must have kept th 
 day, or forfeited your pledge ; but surely one day is as goot 
 as another to keep a promise for fighting, and that day i 
 best in which the promiser is strongest. But indeed, afte 
 all, what signifies any j^romise over a wine flagon ? " 
 
 ''It signifies as much as a promise can do that is give: 
 elsewhere. The promiser," said Berenger, '' escapes not th 
 sin of a word-breaker because he hath been a drunken brao 
 gart." 
 
 '' For the sin," said Dennis, '' sure 1 am, that rather tha 
 yon should do such deed of dole, the Abbot of Glastonbur 
 would absolve j^ou for a florin." 
 
 " But what shall wipe out the shame ? " demanded Bt 
 renger. " How shall I dare to show myself again amon 
 press of knights, who have broken my word of battle, pledge 
 for fear of a Welshman and his naked savages ? Xo, Denni 
 ]\Iorolt, speak of it no more. Be it for weal or woe, we figh 
 them to-day, and upon yonder fair field." 
 
 " It may be," said Flammock, " that Gwenwyn may hav 
 forgotten the promise, and so fail to appear to claim it in th 
 appointed space ; for, as we heard, your wines of Franc 
 flooded his Welsh brains deeply." 
 
 '' He again alluded to it on the morning after it wa 
 made," said the castellane ; " trust me, he will not forge 
 what will give him such a chance of removing me from li: 
 path forever." 
 
 As he spoke, they observed that large clouds of dust, whic 
 had been seen at different points of the landscape, wer 
 drawing down towards the opposite side of the river, ov£ 
 which an ancient bridge extended itself to the appointe 
 place of combat. They were at no loss to conjecture tli 
 cause. It was evident that Gwenwj-n, recalling the parti( 
 who had been engaged in partial devastation, Avas bene 
 ing with his ^vhole forces towards the bridge and the plai, 
 beyond it. 
 
 " Let us rush down and secure the pass," said Denn: 
 Morolt ; ''we may debate with them with some equality t 
 the advantage of defending the bridge. Your word boun 
 
 f 
 
THE BETEOTHEB 21 
 
 rou to the plain as to a field of battle, but it did not oblige 
 
 m!?! pu to forego such advantages as the passage of the bridge 
 
 , ', ivould aiford. Our men, our horses, are ready ; let our bow- 
 
 ,^11 ftien secure the banks, and my life on the issue." 
 
 ■"' " When I promised to meet him in yonder field, I meant," 
 
 eplied Kaymond Berenger, " to give the Welshman the full 
 
 id vantage of equality of ground. I so meant it, he so un- 
 
 lerstood it ; and what avails keeping my word in the letter, 
 
 , II break it in the sense ? We move not till the last Welsh- 
 
 ' I nan. has crossed the bridge ; and then " 
 
 ' * " And then," said Dennis, " we move to our death ! May 
 
 jrod forgive our sins ! But " 
 
 " But what ? " said Berenger ; " something sticks in thy 
 nind that should have vent." 
 
 My young lady, your daughter the Lady Eveline " 
 
 , . I have told her what is to be. She shall remain in the 
 "^''[ iastle, where I will leave a few chosen veterans, with you, 
 tennis, to command them. In twenty-four hours the siege 
 dll be relieved, and we have defended it longer with a 
 lighter garrison. Then to her aunt, the abbess of the Be- 
 ledictine sisters; thou, Dennis, wilt see her placed therein 
 's' lonor and safety, and my sister will care for her future pro- 
 
 ven braj 
 
 I 
 
 >. lien 
 we tijl 
 
 / leave you at this pinch ! " said Dennis Morolt, burst- 
 
 ng into tears, "/shut myself up within walls when my 
 
 I naster rides to his last of battles ! / become squire to a 
 
 J^'' ady, even though it be to the Lady Eveline, when he lies 
 
 ™ lead under his shield ! Raymond Berenger, is it for this 
 
 hat I have buckled thy armor so often ? " 
 
 The tears gushed from the old warrior's eyes as fast as 
 
 w'? rom those of a girl who weeps for her lover ; and Eaymond, 
 
 ' 'i''^''^'' aking him kindly by the hand, said, in a soothing tone, 
 
 'Do not think, my good old servant, that, were honor to 
 
 ™ le won, I would drive thee from my side. But this is a 
 
 ■ "^^ did and an inconsiderate deed, to which my fate or my folly 
 
 r;ver,C'« las bound me. I die to save my name from dishonor ; but, 
 
 appoiBtj Ija^g j J jnust leave on my memory the charge of impru- 
 
 ence." 
 
 . " Let me share your imprudence, my dearest master," said 
 
 M: W tennis Morolt, earnestly : " the poor esquire has no busi- 
 
 ■ liiep less to be thought wiser than his master. In many a battle 
 
 ny valor derived some little fame from partaking in the deeds 
 
 lid Ds" '^hich won your renown ; deny me not the right to share 
 
 KiniJitJ 1 that blame which your temerity may incur — let them not 
 
 ordta ^y that, so rash was his action, even his old esquire was not 
 
22 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 permitted to partake in it ! I am part of yonrself : it ]i 
 murder to every man whom you take with you, if you lea^ 
 me behind." 
 
 ''Dennis," said Berenger, ''you make me feel yet moi 
 bitterly the folly I have yielded to. I would grant you th 
 boon you ask, sad as it is, but my daughter " 
 
 " Sir knight," said the Fleming, who had listened to th 
 dialogue with somewhat less than his usual apathy, " it 
 not my purpose this day to leave this castle ; now, if yo 
 could trust my troth to do what a plain man may for tl 
 protection of my Lady Eveline " 
 
 "How, sirrah !" said Raymond ; "you do not propose i 
 leave the castle ? "Who gives you right to propose or di, 
 pose in the case, until my pleasure is known ?" 
 
 " I shall be sorry to have words with you, sir castellane. 
 said the imperturbable Fleming ; " but I hold here, in th 
 township, certain mills, tenements, cloth-yards, and so fort 
 for which I am to jjay man-service in defending this Cast 
 of the Garde Doloureuse, and in this I am ready. But if yc 
 call on me to march from hence, leaving the same cast 
 defenseless, and to offer up my life in a battle which yr 
 acknowledge to be desperate, I must needs say my tenu 
 binds me not to obey thee." 
 
 "Base mechanic!" said Morolt, laying his hand on h 
 dagger and menacing the Fleming. 
 
 But Raymond Berenger interfered with voice and han 
 " Harm him not. Morolt, and blame him not. He hatli 
 sense of duty, thougli not after our manner ; and he and 1: 
 knaves will fight best behind stone walls. They are taug 
 also, these Flemings, by the practise of their own countr 
 the attack and defense of walled cities and fortresses, ai 
 are especially skilful in working of mangonels and milita 
 engines. There are several of his countrymen in the castl 
 besides his own followers. These I propose to leave behinc 
 and I think they will obey him more readily than any b . 
 myself — how think'st thou ? Thou wouldst not, I kno- 
 from a misconstrued point of honor, or a blind love to m 
 leave this important place, and the safety of Eveline, . 
 doubtful hands ? " 
 
 "Wilkin Flammock is but a Flemish clown, noble sii' 
 answered Dennis, as much overjoyed as if he had obtain 
 some important advantage ; "but I must needs sa/ he is ; 
 stout and true as any whom you might trust ; and, besid? 
 his own shrewdness will teach him there is more to be gain ; 
 by defending such a castle as this than by yielding it i 
 
THE BETROTHED 23 
 
 «li:it! strangers, who may not be likely to keep the terms of sur- 
 yoalei render, however fairly they may offer tliem." 
 
 It is fixed then," said Eaymond Berenger. "Then, 
 yet iii|Pennis, thou shalt go with me, and he shall remain be- 
 ind. Wilkin Flammock," he said, addressing the Fleming 
 Idlemnly, " I speak not to thee the language of chivalry, of 
 hich thou knovvest nothing ; but, as thou art an honest 
 an and a true Christian, I conjure thee to stand to the de- 
 fense of this castle. Let no promise of the enemy draw 
 hee to any base composition, no threat to any surrender, 
 lief must speedily arrive ; if you fulfil your trust to me 
 ,d to my daughter, Hugo de Lacy will reward you richly ; 
 f you fail, he will punish you severely." 
 
 Sir knight," said Flammock, " I am pleased you have 
 
 elWbut your trust so far in a plain handicraftsman. For the 
 
 :'.iiitlikelsh, I am come from a land for which wo were com- 
 
 ' '• Selled — yearly compelled — to struggle with the sea ; and 
 
 liey who can deal with the waves in a tempest need not fear 
 
 m undisciplined people in their fury. Your daughter shall 
 
 )e as dear to me as mine own : and in that faith you may 
 
 )rick forth — if, indeed, you will not still, like a wiser man, 
 
 hut gate, down portcullis, up drawbridge, and let your 
 
 irchers and my cross-bows man the wall, and tell the knaves 
 
 'ou are not the fool that they take you for." 
 
 " Good fellow, that must not be," said the knight. " I 
 
 lear my daughter's voice," he added, hastily ; " I would not 
 
 Lgain meet her, again to part from her. To Heaven's keeping 
 
 ; commit thee, honest Fleming. Follow me, Dennis Morolt." 
 
 The old castellane descended the stair of the southern 
 
 ower hastily, just as his daughter Eveline ascended that of 
 
 he eastern turret to throw herself at his feet once more. 
 
 ihe was followed by the Father Aldrovand, chaplain of her 
 
 ather ; by an old and almost invalid huntsman, whose more 
 
 ictive services in the field and the chase had been for some 
 
 ime chiefly limited to the superintendence of the knight's 
 
 , I taoiKennels, and the charge especially of his more favorite 
 
 !,fp(ogiounds ; and by Rose Flammock, the daughter of Wilkin, 
 
 rj^linejii blue-eyed Flemish maiden, round, plump, and shy as a 
 
 )artridge, who had been for some time permitted to keep 
 
 . '-],!<j Jompany with the high-born Norman damsel, in a doubtful 
 
 itation, betwixt that of an humble friend and superior 
 
 ; lomestic. 
 
 Eveline rushed upon the battlements, her hair dishevelled 
 md her eyes drowned in tears, and eagerly demanded of the 
 ^'leming where her father was. 
 
24 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 Flammock made a clumsy reverence, and attempted somi 
 answer ; but his voice seemed to fail him. He turned hi 
 back upon Eveline without ceremony, and, totally disregard 
 ing the anxious inquiries of the huntsman and the chaplain 
 he said hastily to his daughter, in his own language, " Ma( 
 work ! — mad work ! look to the poor maiden, Roschen. Be: 
 alter Herr ist verriickt." 
 
 Without further speech, he descended the stairs, an( 
 never paused till he reached the buttery. Here he call© 
 like a lion for the controller of these regions, by the variou 
 names of kam merer, keller-master, and so forth, to whicl 
 the old Reinold, an ancient Norman esquire, answered no 
 until tlie Netherlander fortunately recollected his Angle 
 Norman title of butler. This, his regular name of office 
 was the key to the buttery-hatch, and the old man instantl 
 appeared, \, ith his gray cassock and high rolled liose, 
 ponderous bunch of keys suspended by a silver chain to hi 
 broad leatliern girdle, which, in consideration of the emei 
 gency of the time, he had thought it right to balance on th 
 left side with a huge falchion, which seemed much toi 
 weighty for his old arm to wield. 
 
 " What is your will,^' he said, " Master Flammock ? c 
 what are your commands, since it is my lord's jjleasure ths 
 they shall be laws to me for a time ? " 
 
 " Only a cup of wine, good Meister Keller-master — butlei 
 I mean.'* 
 
 " I am glad you remember the name of mine office. 
 Reinold, with some of the petty resentment of a spoile 
 domestic, who thinks that a stranger has been irregular] 
 put in command over him. 
 
 '* A flagon of Rhenish, if you love me," answered tMln'o 
 Fleming ; " for my heart is low and poor within me, and 
 must needs drink of the best." 
 
 " x\nd drink you shall," said Reinold, ''if drink will giT 
 you the courage which perhaps you may want." He d 
 scended to the secret crypts of which he was the guardiai 
 and returned with a silver flagon which might contain aboi 
 a quart. " Here is such wine," said Reinold, " as thou ha 
 seldom tasted," and was about to pour it out into a cup. 
 
 "Nay, the flagon — the flagon, friend Reinold: I love 
 deep and solemn draught when the business is weighty 
 said Wilkin. He seized on the flagon accordingly, ai 
 drinking a preparatory mouthful, paused as if to estima 
 the strength and flavor of the generous liquor. Apparent] 
 he was pleased with both, for he nodded in approbatioa 
 
 
en, I 
 
 THE BETROTHED 2& 
 
 '""ithe butler ; and, raising the flagon to his mouth onct. more, 
 he slowly and gradually brought the bottom of the vessel 
 parallel with the roof of the apartment, without sufl'ering 
 iiapia||one drop of the contents to escape him. 
 
 That hath savor, Herr Keller-master," said he, while he 
 recovering his breath by intervals, after so lor.g a sus- 
 pense of respiration ; '•■ but, may Heaven forgivj you for 
 Ms, aiilthinking it the best I have ever tasted ! You little know 
 he call ithe cellars of Ghent and of Ypres." 
 
 Mario I "And I care not for them," said Reinold : "those of 
 nil Igentle Norman blood hold the wines of Gascony and France, 
 ereili Igenerous, light, and cordial, worth all the acid potations of 
 Angi the Rhine and the Neckar." 
 
 " All is matter of taste," said the Fleming ; " but, harkye 
 is there much of this wine in the cellar ?" 
 nose, '•' Methought but now it pleased not your dainty palate ? " 
 amtol said Reinold. 
 
 lieeniM "Nay — nay, my friend," said Wilkin, "I said it had 
 oni savor. I may have drunk better ; but this is right good, 
 Mcht where better may not be had. Again, how much of it hast 
 thou ? " 
 
 The whole butt, man," answered the butler ; " I have 
 OT tlfbroached a fresh piece for you," 
 
 ' Good," replied Flammock ; " get the quart-pot of 
 i-WfChristian measure ; heave the cask up into this same buttery, 
 and let each soldier of this castle be served with such a cup 
 to/'sljas I have here swallowed. I feel it hath done me much 
 aspo good : my iieart was sinking when I saw the black smoke 
 irepili arising from mine own fulling mills yonder. Let each man, 
 1 say, have a full quart-pot : men defend not castles on thin 
 liquors." 
 
 " I must do as you will, good AVilkin Flammock," said 
 the butler ; " but 1 pray remember all men are not alike, 
 ^illJ'That which will but warm your Flemish hearts will put 
 " I iwildfire into Norman brains ; and what may only encourage 
 your countrymen to man the walls will make ours fly over 
 
 nod 
 
 [^ijalu |the battlements," 
 
 tlionlii I " Well, you know the conditions of your own countrymen 
 
 jfQp, best : serve out to them what wines and measure you list — 
 
 '. jiofl ionly let each Fleming have a solemn quart of Rhenish, But 
 
 jpiglitj iwhat will you do for the English churls, of whom there are 
 
 ; jy^l |a right many left with us ?" 
 
 ^'^,jlji]l j The old butler paused and rubbed his brow. ''' There will 
 
 [md ^® ^ strange waste of liquor," he said ; "and yet I may not 
 
 oUtiol ^^'^3^ ^^^^^ ^^® emergency may defend the expenditure. But 
 
26 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 for the English, they are, as you wot, a mixed breed, having 
 much of your German sullenness, together with a plentiful 
 touch of the hot blood of yonder Welsh furies. Light wines 
 stir them not ; strong, heavy draughts would madden them. 
 What think you of ale — an invigorating, strengthening liquor, 
 that warms the heart without inflaming the brain ?" 
 
 ''Ale!" said the Fleming. "Hum — ha — is your ale 
 mighty, sir butler ? — is it double ale V 
 
 " Do you doubt my skill ?" said the butler. " March and 
 October liave witnessed me ever as they came around, for 
 thirty years, deal with the best barley in Shropshire. You 
 shall judge." 
 
 He filled, from a large hogshead in the corner of the 
 buttery, the flagon which the Fleming had just emptied, 
 and which was no sooner replenished than Wilkiu agaiu 
 drained it to the bottom. 
 
 " Good ware," he said, " Master Butler — strong, stinging 
 ware. The English churls will fight like devils upon it ; 
 let them be furnished with mighty ale along with their heel | 
 and brown bread. And now, having given you your charge, j 
 Master Reinold, it is time I should look after mine own." j 
 
 Wilkin Flammock left the buttery, and with a mien anci I 
 judgment alike undisturbed by the deep potations in whicli j 
 he had so recently indulged, undisturbed also by the | 
 various rumors concerning what was passing without doors. : 
 he made the round of the castle and its outworks, mus- 
 tered the little garrison, and assigned to each their posts 
 reserving to his own countrymen the management of tli( 
 arblasts, or cross-bows, and of the military engines whicl 
 were contrived by the proud Normans, and were incompre 
 hensible to the ignorant English, or, more properly, thi 
 Anglo-Saxons, of the period, but which his more adroi 
 countrymen managed with great address. The jealousiei 
 (entertained by both the Normans and English, at being placec 
 under the temporary command of a Fleming, gradualb 
 yielded to the military and mechanical skill which he dis 
 played, as well as to a sense of the emergency, whiclr 
 became greater with every moment. 
 
 lit 
 III 
 
 I 
 
'Btliei 
 ?li(|iioi 
 
 irchi 
 e, \ 
 
 pOQIt 
 
 by I' 
 
 it Im 
 
 «ly,t 
 re 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Beside yon brigg out ower yon burn, 
 Where tlie water bickereth bright and sheen, 
 
 Shall many a falling courser spurn, 
 And knights shall die in battle keen. 
 
 Prophecy of Jliomas the Rhymer. 
 
 ff,' Phe daughter of Raymond Berenger, with the attendants 
 imptie fhom we have mentioned, continued to remain upon the 
 1 >g8 )attlements of the Garde Doloureuse, in spite of the ex- 
 lortations of the priest that she would rather await the 
 sue of this terrible interval in the chapel, and amid 
 he rights of religion. He perceived, at length, that she 
 lieirbei vas incapable, from grief and fear, of attending to or 
 cliargi inderstanding his advice ; and, sitting down beside her, 
 vhile the huntsman and Rose Flammock stood by, en- 
 lienai leavored to suggest such comfort as perhaps he scarcely 
 nwhiHelt himself. 
 
 *' This is but a sally of your noble father's," he said ; 
 'and though it may seem it is made on great hazard, yet who 
 ver questioned Sir Raymond Berenger's policy of wars ? 
 lir post le is close and secret in his purposes. I guess right well 
 it oft le had not marched out as he proposes, unless he knew 
 fs wMi hat the noble Earl of Arundel or the mighty Constable of 
 iieompif Chester were close at hand." 
 
 Think you this assuredly, good father ? Go, Raoul — 
 p, my dearest Rose — look to the East — see if you cannot 
 escry banners or clouds of dust. Listen — listen — hear you 
 ■lo trumpets from that quarter ?" 
 rra'tei ' *'Alas ! my lady," said Raoul, " the thunder of heaven 
 !i he di 'ou Id scarce be heard amid the howling of yonder Welsh 
 jj flii( volves." Eveline turned as he spoke, and, looking towards 
 •he bridge, she beheld an appalling spectacle. 
 
 The river, whose stream washes on three sides the base of 
 •he proud eminence on which the castle is situated, curves 
 iway from the fortress and its corresponding village on the 
 vest, and the hill sinks downward to an extensive plain, so 
 ixtremely level as to indicate its alluvial origin. Lower 
 lown, at the extremity of this plain, where the banks again 
 27 
 
 adn 
 loss 
 
28 WAVFRLEY NOVELS 
 
 close on the river, were situated the maniifacturini 
 houses of the stout Flemings, which were now burning i] 
 a bright flame. The bridge, a high, narrow combination o 
 arches of unequal size, was about half a mile distant fron 
 the castle, in the very center of the plain. The river itsel 
 ran in a deep rocky channel, was often unfordable, and a 
 all times difficult of passage, giving considerable advantag 
 to the defenders of the castle, who had spent on othe 
 occasions many a dear drop of blood to defend the f 
 which Raymond Berenger's fantastic scrujDles now inducei 
 him to abandon. The Welshman, seizing the opportunit 
 with the avidity with which men grasp an unexpectei 
 benefit, were fast crowding over the high and steep arches 
 while new bands, collecting from different points upon th 
 farther bank, increased the continued stream of warriors 
 who, passing leisurely and uninterrupted, formed thei 
 line of battle on the plain opposite to the castle. 
 
 At first father Aldrovand viewed their motions withou 
 anxiety, nay, with the scornful smile of one who observes a; 
 enemy in the act of falling into the snare spread for them b 
 superior skill. Raymond Berenger, with his little body c 
 infantry and cavalry, were drawn up on the easy hill whic' 
 is betwixt the castle and the plain, ascending from th 
 former towards the fortress ; and it seemed clear to th 
 Dominican, who had not entirely forgotten in the cloiste 
 his ancient military experience, that it was the knight 
 purpose to attack the disordered enemy when a certain nun 
 ber had crossed the river, and the others were partly on th 
 farther side and partly engaged in the slow and periloi 
 maneuver of effecting tlieir passage. But when large bodi( 
 of the white-mantled Welshmen were permitted witliov 
 interruption to take such order on the plain as their habii 
 of fighting recommended, the monk's countenance, thoug 
 he still endeavored to speak encouragement to the terrific 
 Eveline, assumed a different and an anxious expression ; an 
 his acquired habits of resignation contended strenuous! 
 with his ancient military ardor. " Be patient," he said, " m 
 daughter, and be of good comfort ; thine eyes shall behol 
 the dismay of yonder barbarous enemy. Let but a minui 
 elapse, and thou shalt see them scattered like dust. S 
 George ! they will surely cry thy name now, or never ! " 
 
 The monk's beads passed meanwhile rapidly throug 
 his hands, but many an expression of military imp: 
 tience mingled itself with his orisons. He could n< 
 conceive the cause why each successive throng of moui 
 
THE BETROTHED 20 
 
 taitieers, led under their different banners, and headed by 
 their respective chieftains, was permitted, without interrup- 
 tion, to pass the difficult defile, and extend themselves in 
 battle array on the near side of the bridge, while the Eng- 
 lish, or rather Anglo-Norman, cavalry remained stationary, 
 without so much as laying their lances in rest. There re- 
 mained, he thought, but one hope — one only rational 
 explanation of this unaccountable inactivity — this voluntary 
 surrender of every advantage of ground, when that of num- 
 bers was so tremendously on the side of the enemy. Father 
 Aldrovand concluded that the succors of the Constable of 
 Chester and other Lord Marchers must be in the immediate 
 vicinity, and that the Welsh were only permitted to pass the 
 river without opposition, that their retreat might be the 
 more effectually cut off, and their defeat, with a deep river 
 in their rear, rendered the more signally calamitous. But 
 even while he clung to this hope, the monk's heart sunk 
 within him, as, looking in every direction from which the 
 expected succors might arrive, he could neither see nor hear 
 the slightest token which announced their approach. In a 
 frame of mind approaching more nearly to despair than to 
 hope, the old man continued alternately to tell his beads, to 
 gaze anxiously around, and to address some words of con- 
 solation in broken phrases to the young lady, until the gen- 
 eral shout of the Welsh, ringing from the bank of the river 
 to the battlements of the castle, warned him, in a note of 
 exultation, that the very last of the British had defiled 
 through the pass, and that their whole formidable array 
 stood prompt for action upon the hither side of the river. 
 
 This thrilling and astounding clamor, to which each 
 Welshman lent his voice with all the energy of defiance, 
 thirst of battle, and hope of conquest, was at last answered 
 by the blast of the Norman trumpets — the first sign of 
 activity which had been exhibited on the part of Raymond 
 Berenger. But cheerily as they rung, the trumpets, in 
 comparison of the shout which they answered, sounded like 
 the silver whistle of the stout boatswain amid the howling 
 of the tempest. 
 
 At the same moment when the trumpets were blown, 
 Berenger gave signal to the archers to discharge their 
 arrows, and the men-at-arms to advance under a hailstorm 
 of shafts. Javelins and stones, shot, darted and slung by the 
 Welsh against their steel-clad assaihints. 
 
 The veterans of Raymond, on the other hand, stimulated 
 by many victorious recollections, confident in the talents of 
 
30 WA VEELET NOVELS 
 
 their accomplished leader, and undismayed even hy the des- 
 peration of their circumstances, charged the mass of the 
 Welshmen with their usual determined valor. It was a 
 gallant sight to see this little body of cavalry advance to the 
 onset, their plumes floating above their helmets, their lances 
 in rest, and projecting six feet in length before the breasts 
 of their coursers ; their shields hanging from their necks, 
 that their left hands might have freedom to guide their 
 horses ; and the whole body rushing on with an equal front, 
 and a momentum of speed which increased with every 
 second. Such an onset might have startled naked men (for 
 such were the Welsh, in respect of the mail-sheathed Nor- 
 mans), but it brought no terrors to the ancient British, who 
 had long made it their boast that they exposed their bare 
 bosoms and white tunics to the lances and swords of the 
 men-at-arms with as much confidence as if they had been 
 born invulnerable. It Avas not indeed in their power to 
 withstand the weight of the first shock, which, breaking 
 their ranks, densely as they were arranged, carried the 
 barbed horses into the very center of their host, and well- 
 nigh up to the fatal standard to which Eaymond Berenger, 
 bound by his fatal vow, had that day conceded so much 
 vantage-ground. But they yielded like the billows, which 
 give way, indeed, to the gallant ship, but only to assail her 
 sides, and to unite in her wake. With wild and horrible 
 clamors, they closed their tumultuous ranks around Beren- 
 ger and his devoted followers, and a deadly scene of strife 
 ensued. 
 
 The best warriors of Wales had on this occasion joined 
 the standard of Gwenwyn ; the arrows of the men of Gwent- 
 laud, whose skill in archery almost equaled that of the 
 Normans themselves, rattled on the helmets of the men-at- 
 arms ; and the spears of the people of Deheubarth, renowned 
 for the sharpness and temper of their steel heads, were 
 employed against the cuirasses, not without fatal effect, not- 
 withstanding the protection which these afforded to the 
 rider. 
 
 It was in vain that the archery belonging to Eaymond's 
 little band — stout yeomen who, for the most part, held pos- 
 sessions by militar}^ tenure — exhausted their quivers on the 
 broad mark afforded them by the Welsh army. It is prob- 
 able that every shaft carried a Welshman's life on its point ; 
 yet, to have afforded important relief to the cavalry, now 
 closely and inextricably engaged, the slaughter ought to 
 have been twenty-fold at least. Meantime, the Welsh, galled 
 
THE BETROTHED « 
 
 by this incessant discharge, answered it by volleys from 
 their own archers, whose numbers made some amends for 
 their inferiority, and who were supported by numerous 
 bodies of darters and slingers. So that the Norman arch- 
 ers, who had more than once attempted to descend from 
 their position to operate a diversion in favor of Raymond 
 and his devoted band, were now so closely engaged in front 
 as obliged them to abandon all thoughts of such a move- 
 ment. 
 
 Meanwhile, that chivalrous leader, who from the first had 
 hoped for no more than an honorable death, labored with 
 all his power to render his fate signal by involving in it that 
 of the Welsh prince, the author of the war. He cautiously 
 avoided the expenditure of his strength by hewing among 
 the British ; but, with the shock of his managed horse, 
 repelled the numbers who pressed on him, and leaving the 
 plebeians to the swords of his companions, shouted his war- 
 cry, and made his way towards the fatal standard of Gwen- 
 wyn, beside which, discharging at once the duties of a skil- 
 ful leader and a brave soldier, the Prince had stationed 
 himself. Raymond's experience of the Welsh disposition, 
 subject equally to the highest flood and most sudden ebb of 
 passion, gave him some hope that a successful attack upon 
 this point, followed by the death or capture of the Prince 
 and the downfall of his standard, might even yet strike suph 
 a panic as should change the fortunes of the day, otherwise 
 so nearly desperate. The veteran, therefore, animated his 
 comrades to the charge by voice and example ; and, in spite 
 of all opposition, forced his way gradually onward. But 
 Gwenwyn in person, surrounded by his best and noblest 
 champions, offered a defense as obstinate as the assault was 
 intrepid. In vain they were borne to the earth by the 
 barbed horses, or hewed down by the invulnerable riders. 
 Wounded and overthrown, the Britons continued their 
 resistance, clung round the legs of the Norman steeds a,nd 
 cumbered their advance ; while their brethren, thrusting 
 with pikes, proved every Joint and crevice of the plate and 
 mail, or, grappling with the men-at-arms, strove to pull 
 them from their horses by main force, or beat them down 
 with their bills and Welsh hooks. And woe betide those 
 who were by these various means dismounted, for the long 
 sharp knives worn by the Welsh soon pierced them with a 
 hundred wounds, and were then only merciful when the first 
 infliction was deadly. 
 
 The combat was at this point, and had raged for more 
 
32 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 than half an hour, when Berenger, having forced his horse 
 within two spears' length of the British standard, he and 
 Gwenwyn were so near to each other as to exchange tokens 
 of mutual defiance. 
 
 " Turn thee. Wolf of Wales/' said Berenger, ''and abide, 
 if thou darest, one blow of a good knight's sword ! Eay- 
 mond Berenger spits at thee and thy banner." 
 
 " False Norman churl ! " said Gwenwyn, swinging around 
 his head a mace of prodigious weight, and already clotted 
 with blood, ''thy iron head-piece shall ill protect thy lying 
 tongue, with which I will his day feed the ravens ! " 
 
 Raymond made no farther answer, but pushed his horse 
 towards the Prince, who advanced to meet him with equal 
 readiness. But ere they came within reach of each other's 
 weapons, a Welsh champion, devoted like the Romans who 
 opposed the elephants of Pyrrhus, finding that the armor 
 of Raymond's horse resisted the repeated thrusts of his spear, 
 threw himself under the animal, and stabbed him in the 
 belly with his long knife. The noble horse reared and fell, 
 crushing with his weight the Briton who had wounded him ; 
 the helmet of the rider burst its clasps in the fall, and rolled 
 away from his head, giving to view his noble features and gray 
 hairs. He made more than one effort to extricate himself 
 from the fallen horse, but, ere he could succeed, received 
 his death's-wound from the hand of Gwenwyn, who hesitated 
 not to strike him down with his mace while in the act of 
 attemptiug to rise. 
 
 During the whole of this bloody day, Dennis Morolt's horse 
 had kept pace for pace, and his arm blow for blow, with his 
 master's. It seemed as if two different bodies had been mov- 
 ing under one act of volition. He husbanded his strength 
 or put it forth exactly as he observed his knight did, and was 
 close by his side when he made the last deadly effort. Ai 
 that fatal moment when Raymond Berenger rushed on the 
 chief, tlie brave squire forced his way up to the standard, 
 and, grasping it firmly, struggled for possession of it with a 
 gigantic Briton, to whose care it had been confided, and who 
 now exerted his utmost strength to defend it. But, even 
 while engaged in this mortal struggle, the eye of Morolt 
 scarcely left his master ; and when he saw him fall, his own 
 force seemed by sympathy to abandon him, and the British 
 champion had no longer any trouble in laying him prostrate 
 among the slain. 
 
 The victory of the British was now complete. Upon the 
 fall of their leader, the followers of Raymond Berenger would 
 
THE BETROTHED 33 
 
 willingly have fled or surrendered. But the first was impos- 
 sible^ so closely had they been enveloped ; and in the cruel 
 wars maintained by the Welsh upon their frontiers quarter 
 to the vanquished was out of question. A few of the men- 
 at-arms were lucky enough to disentangle themselves from 
 the tumult, and, not even attempting to enter the castle, 
 fled in various directions, to carry their own fears among 
 the inhabitants of the marches, by announcing the loss 
 of the battle, and the fate of the far-renowned Eaymond 
 Berenger. 
 
 The archers of the fallen leader, as they had never been 
 so deeply involved in the combat, Avhich had been chiefly 
 maintained by the cavalry, became now, in their turn, the 
 sole object of the enemy's attack. But when they saw the 
 multitude come roaring towards them like a sea with all its 
 waves, they abandoned the bank which they had hitherto 
 bravely defended, and began a regular retreat to the castle 
 in the best order which they could, as the only remaining 
 means of securing their lives. A few of their light-footed 
 enemies attempted to intercept them, during the execution 
 of this prudent maneuver, by outstripping them in their 
 march, and throwing themselves into the hollow way which 
 led to the castle, to oppose their retreat. But the coolness 
 of the English archers, accustomed to extremities of every 
 kind, supported them on the present occasion. While a 
 part of them, armed with glaives and bills, dislodged the 
 Welsh from the hollow way, the others, facing in the op- 
 posite direction, and parted"^ into divisions, which alternately 
 halted and retreated, maintained such a countenance as to 
 check pursuit, and exchange a severe discharge of missiles 
 with the Welsh, by which both parties were considerable 
 sufferers. 
 
 At length, having left more than two-thirds of their brave 
 companions behind, the yeomanry attained the point which, 
 being commanded by arrows and engines from the battle- 
 ments, might be considered as that of comparative safety. 
 A volley of large stones and square-headed bolts of great 
 size and thickness effectually stopped the farther progress of 
 the pursuit, and those wno had led it drew back their desul- 
 tory forces to the plain, where, with shouts of jubilee and 
 exultation, their countrymen were emploved in securing 
 the plunder of the field ; while some, impelled bv hatred 
 and revenge, mangled and mutilated tlie limbs of the dead 
 Normans, in a manner unworthy of their national cause and 
 their own courage. The fearful yells with which this dread- 
 
34 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ful work was consummated, while it struck horror into the 
 minds of the slender garrison of the Garde Doloureuse, in- 
 spired them at the same time with the resolution rather to 
 defend the fortress to the last extremity than to submit to 
 the mercy of so vengeful an enemy.* 
 
 * See Courage of the Welsh. Note 5. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 That baron he to his castle fled. 
 
 To Barnard Castle then fled he ; 
 The uttermost walls were eathe to win, 
 
 The earls liave won them speediUe. 
 The uttermost walls were stone and brick; 
 
 But though they won them soon anon, 
 Long ere they won the inmost walls, 
 
 For they were hewn in rock of stone. 
 
 Percy's Relics of Ancient Poetry. 
 
 The unhappy fate of the battle was soon evident to the 
 anxious spectators upon the watch-towers of the Garde Do- 
 loureuse, which name the castle that day too well deserved. 
 With difficulty the confessor mastered his own emotions to 
 control those of the females on whom he attended, and who 
 were now joined in their lamentations by many others — 
 women, children, and infirm old men, the relatives of those 
 whom they saw engaged in this unavailing contest. These 
 helpless beings had been admitted to the castle for security's 
 sake, and they had now thronged to the battlements, from 
 which Father Aldrovand found difficulty in making them 
 descend, aware that the sight of them on the towers, that 
 should have appeared lined with armed men, would be an 
 additional encouragement to the exertions of the assailants. 
 He urged the Lady Eveline to set an example to this group 
 of helpless, yet untractable, mourners. 
 
 Preserving, at least endeavoring to preserve, even in the 
 extremity of grief, that composure, which the manner of the 
 times enjoined — for chivalry had its stoicism as well as phi- 
 losophy — Eveline replied with a voice which she would fain 
 have rendered firm, and which was tremulous in her despite 
 — "Yes, father, you say well — here is no longer aught left 
 for maidens to look upon. Warlike meed and honored deed 
 sunk when yonder white plume touched the bloody ground. 
 Come, maidens, there is no longer aught left us to see — to 
 mass, to mass — the tourney is over." 
 
 There was wildness in her tone, and when she rose, with 
 the air of one who would lead out a procession, she staggered, 
 and would have fallen but for the support of the confessor. 
 35 
 
36 WA VERL E Y NO VELS 
 
 Hastily wrapping her head in her mantle, as if auhamed of 
 the agony of grief which she could not restrain, and of which 
 her sobs and the low moaning sounds that issued from under 
 the folds enveloping her face declared the excess, she suffered 
 Father Aldrovand to conduct her whither he would. 
 
 ** Our gold," he said, " has changed to brass, our silver to 
 dross, our wisdom to folly ; it is His will who confounds the 
 counsels of the wise, and shortens the arm of the mighty. 
 To the chapel — to the chapel, Lady Eveline ; and instead of 
 vain repining, let us pray to God and the saints to turn away 
 their displeasure, and to save the feeble remnant from the 
 jaws of the devouring wolf." 
 
 Thus speaking, he half led, half supported Eveline, who 
 was at the moment, almost incapable of thought and action, 
 to the castle-chapel, Avhere, sinking before the altar, she 
 assumed the attitude at least of devotion, though her thoughts 
 despite the pious words which her tongue faltered out 
 mechanically, were upon the field of battle, beside the body 
 of her slaughtered parent. The rest of the mourners imitated 
 their young lady in her devotional posture, and in the 
 absence of her thoughts. The consciousness that so many of 
 the garrison had been cut off in Raymond's incautious sally 
 added to their sorrows the sense of personal insecurity, which 
 were exaggerated by the cruelties which were too often 
 exercised by the enemy, who, in the heat of victory, were 
 accustomed to spare neither sex nor age. 
 
 The monk, however, assumed among them the tone of 
 authority wliich his character warranted, rebuked their wail- 
 ing and ineffectual complaints, and having, as he thought, 
 brought them to such a state of mind as better became their 
 condition, he left them to their private devotions, to indulge 
 his own anxious curiosity by inquiring into the defenses of 
 the castle. Upon the outward walls he found Wilkin Flam- 
 mock, who, having done the office of a good and skilful 
 captain in the mode of managing his artillery, and beating 
 back, as we have already seen, the advanced guard of the 
 enemy, was now with his own hand measuring out to his 
 little garrison no stinted allowance of wine." 
 
 " Have a care, good Wilkin," said the father, " that thou 
 dost not exceed in this matter. Wine is, thou knowest, like 
 fire and water, an excellent servant, but a very bad master." 
 
 *' It will be long ere it overflow the deep and solid skulls 
 of my countrymen," said Wilkin Flammock. " Our Flem- 
 ish courage is like our Flanders horses — the one needs the 
 gpur, and the other must have a taste of the wine-pot ; but, 
 
THE BETROTHED St 
 
 credit me, father, they are of an enduring generation, and 
 will not shrink in the washing. But, indeed, if I were to 
 give the knaves a cup more than enough, it were not alto- 
 gether amiss, since they are like to have a platter the less/' 
 
 '* How do you mean ? " cried the monk starting. " 1 
 trust in the saints the provisions have been cared for ? " 
 
 " Not so well as in your convent, good father," replied 
 Wilkin, with the same immovable stolidity of countenance. 
 " We had kept, as you know, too jolly a Christmas to have a 
 very fat Easter. Yon Welsh hounds, who helped to eat up 
 our victuals, are now like to get into our hold fur the lack 
 of them." 
 
 '* Thou talkest mere folly," answered the monk : "orders 
 were last evening given by our lord — whose soul God assoilzie! 
 — to fetch in the necessary suj)plies from the country around!" 
 
 " Ay, but the Welsh were too sharp set to permit us to do 
 that at our ease this morning, which should have been done 
 weeks and months since. Our lord deceased, if deceased he 
 be, was one of those who trusted to the edge of the sword, 
 and even so hath come of it. Commend me to a cross-bow 
 and a well-victualed castle, if I must needs fight at all. You 
 look pale, my good father, a cup of wine will revive you." 
 
 The monk motioned away from him the untasted cup 
 which Wilkin pressed him to with clownish civility. " AVe 
 have now, indeed," he said, " no refuge save in prayer I" 
 
 " Most true, good father," again replied the impassable 
 Fleming ; '* pray therefore as much as you will. I will 
 content myself with fasting, which will come w^hether I will 
 or no." At this moment a horn was heard before the gate. 
 " Look to the portcullis and the gate, you knaves ! What 
 news, Neil Hansen ? " 
 
 '* A messenger from the Welsh tarries at the mill-hill, just 
 within shot of the cross-bows ; he has a white flag and de- 
 mands admittance." 
 
 " Admit him not, upon thy life, till we be prepared for 
 him," said Wilkin. *' Bend the bonny mangonel upon the 
 place, and shoot him if he dare to stir from the spot where 
 he stands till we get all prepared to receive him," said Flam- 
 mock, in his native language. "And, Neil, thou hounds- 
 foot, bestir thyself — let' every pike, lance and pole in the 
 castle be ranged along the battlements, and pointed through 
 the shot-holes ; cut up some tapestry into the shape of 
 banners, and show them from the highest towers. Be ready, 
 when I give a signal, to strike ' naker^ and blow trumpets, 
 if we have any ; if not, some cow-horns — anything for a noise. 
 
38 WA VERL EY NO VEL S 
 
 And harkye, Neil Hansen, do you and four or five of your 
 fellows go to the armory and slip on coats of mail : our 
 Netherlandish corslets do not appal them so much. Then 
 let the Welsh thief be blindfolded and brouglit in amongst 
 us. Do you hold up your heads and keep silence — leave me 
 to deal with him — only have a care there be no English 
 among us." 
 
 The monk, who in his travels had acquired some slight 
 knowledge of the Flemish language, had wellnigh started 
 when he heard the last article in Wilkin's instructions to his 
 countryman, but commanded himself, although a little sur- 
 prised, both at this suspicious circumstance and at the read- 
 iness and dexterity with which the rough-hewn Fleming 
 seemed to adapt his preparations to the rules of war and of 
 sound policy. 
 
 Wilkin, on his part, was not very certain whether the 
 monk had not heard and understood more of what he said 
 to his countryman than what he had intended. As if to lull 
 asleep any suspicion which Father Aldrovand might enter- 
 tain, he repeated to him in English most of the directions 
 which he had given, adding, " Well, good father, what think 
 you of it ? " 
 
 " Excellent well," answered the father, " and done as you 
 had practised war from the cradle, instead of weaving broad- 
 cloth." 
 
 "■ Nay, spare not your gibes, father," answered Wilkin. 
 "I know full well that you English think that Flemings 
 have nought in their brain-pan but sodden beef and cabbage ; 
 yet you see there goes wisdom to weaving of webs." 
 
 *■' Eight, Master Wilkin Flammock," answered the father; 
 " but, good Fleming, wilt thou tell me what answer thou 
 wilt make to the Welsh prince's summons ?" 
 
 " Reverend father, first tell me what the summons will 
 be," replied the Fleming. 
 
 " To surrender this castle upon the instant," answered 
 the monk. " What will be your reply ? " 
 
 " My answer will be — ' Nay, unless upon good composi- 
 tion.'" 
 
 " How, sir Fleming ! dare you mention composition and 
 the Castle of the Garde Doloureuse in one sentence?'* ex- 
 claimed the monk. 
 
 " Not if I may do better," answered the Flemi7ig. " But 
 would your reverence have me dally until the question 
 amongst the garrison be, whether a plump priest or a fat 
 Fleming will be the better flesh to furnish their shambles ?'* 
 
TBt: BETROTHED 8C 
 
 *■' Pshaw!'* replied Father Aldrovand, "thou canst not 
 mean such folly. Relief must arrive within tweuty-four 
 hours at farthest. Raymond Berenger expected it for cer- 
 tain within such a space." 
 
 " Raymond Berenger hath been deceived this morning in 
 more matters than one/' answered the Fleming. 
 
 " Hark thee, Flanderkin," answered the monk, whose 
 retreat from the world had not altogether quenched his 
 military habits and propensities, " I counsel thee to deal 
 uprightly in this matter, as thou dost regard thine own life ; 
 for here are as many English left alive, notwithstanding the 
 slaughter of the day, as may well suffice to fling the Flemish 
 bull-frogs into the castle-ditch, should they have cause to 
 think thou meanest falsely in the keeping of this castle and 
 the defense of the Lady Eveline." 
 
 " Let not your reverence be moved with unnecessary and 
 idle fears," replied Wilkin Flammock, " 1 am castellane in 
 this house, by command of its lord, and what I hold for the 
 advantage of mine service, that will I do." 
 
 " But I," said the angry monk — " I am the servant of the 
 Pope — the chaplain of this castle, with power to bind and to 
 unloose. I fear me thou art no true Christian, Wilkin 
 Flammock, but dost lean to the heresy of the mountaineers. 
 Thou hast refused to take the blessed cross ; thou hast 
 breakfasted, and drunk both ale and wine, ere thou hast 
 heard mass. Thou art not to be trusted, man, and I will 
 not trust thee ; I demand to be present at the conference 
 betwixt thee and the Welshman." 
 
 " It may not be, good father," said Wilkin, with the same 
 smiling, heavy countenance which he maintained on all occa- 
 sions of life, however urgent. " It is true, as thou sayest, 
 good father, that I have mine own reasons for not marching 
 quite so far as the gates of Jericho at present ; and lucky I 
 have such reasons, since I had not else been here to defend 
 the gate of the Garde Doloureuse. It is also true that I 
 may have been somstimes obliged to visit my mills earlier 
 than the chaplain was called by his zeal to the altar, and 
 that my stomach brooks not working ere I break my fast. 
 But for this, father, I have paid a mulct even to your wor- 
 shipful reverence, and methinks, since you are pleased to 
 remember the confession so exactly, you should not forget 
 the penance and the absolution." 
 
 The monk, in alluding to the secrets of the confessional, 
 had gone a step beyond what the rules of his order and of 
 the church permitted. He was baffled by the Fleming's 
 
40 WAVER LEY NOVELL 
 
 reply, and finding him unmoyed by the charge of heresy, he 
 conld only answer in some confusion, "You refuse, then, 
 to admit me to your conference with the Welshman ?" 
 
 " Eeverend father," said Wilkin, "it altogether respect- 
 eth secular matters. If aught of religious tenor should 
 intervene, you shall be summoned without delay." 
 
 "I will be there in spite of thee, thou Flemish ox," mnt- 
 tered the monk to himself, but in a tone not to be heard by 
 the bystanders ; and so speaking, he left the battlements. 
 
 Wilkin Flammock, a few minutes afterwards, having first 
 seen that all was arranged on the battlements, so as to give 
 an imposing idea of the strength which did not exist, de- 
 scended to a small guard-room, betwixt the outer and inner 
 gate, where he was attended by half a dozen of his own 
 people, disguised in tlie Norman armor which they had found 
 in the armory of the castle — their strong, tall, and bulky 
 forms and motionless postures causing them to look rather 
 like trophies of some jiast age than living and existing sol- 
 diers. Surrounded by these huge and inanimate figures, 
 in a little vaulted room which almost excluded daylight, 
 Flammock received the Welsh envoy, who was led in blind- 
 folded betwixt two Flemings, yet not so carefully watched 
 but that they permitted him to have a glimpse of the prep- 
 arations on the battlements, which had, in fact, been made 
 chiefly for the purpose of imposing on him. For the same 
 purpose an occasiona!^ clatter of arms was made without : 
 voices were heard a; 'f officers were going their rounds ; 
 and other sounds of active preparation seemed to announce 
 that a numerous and regular garrison was preparing to 
 receive an attack. 
 
 When the bandage was removed from Jorworth's eyes — 
 for the same individual who had formerly brought Gwen- 
 wyn's offer of alliance now bare his summons of surrender 
 — he looked haughtily around him, and demanded to whom 
 he was to deliver the commands of his master, the Gwen- 
 wyn, son of Cyveiliock, Prince of Powys. 
 
 " His highness," answered Flammock, with his usual 
 smiling indifference of manner, "must be contented to 
 treat with Wilkin Flammock of the fulling-mills, deputed 
 governor of the Garde Doloureuse." 
 
 "Thou deputed governor!" exclaimed Jorworth — "thou ! 
 a Low-Country weaver ! — it is impossible. Low as they are, 
 the English crogan cannot have sunk to a point so low as to 
 be commanded by tJiee! These men seem English ; to them 
 1 will deliver my message." 
 
 i 
 
TBE BETROTHED 41 
 
 "You may if you will/' replied Wilkin, "but if they 
 return you any answer save by signs, you shall call me 
 schelm." 
 
 "Is this true?" said the AVelsh envoy, looking towards 
 the men-at-arms, as they seemed, by whom Flammock was 
 attended — " are you really come to this pass ? I thought 
 that the mere having been born on British earth, though 
 the children of spoilers and invaders, had inspired you with 
 too much pride to brook the yoke of a base mechanic. Or, 
 if vou are not courageous, should you not be cautious ? 
 Well speaks the proverb, ' Woe to him that wdl trust a 
 stranger!' Still mute — still silent? Answer me by word 
 or sign. Do you really call and acknowledge him as your 
 leader?" 
 
 The men in armor with one accord nodded their casques 
 in reply to Jorworth's question, and then remained motion- 
 less as before. 
 
 The Welshman, with the acute genius of his country, sus- 
 pected there was something in this which he could not 
 entirely comprehend, but, preparing himself to be upon his 
 guard, he proceeded as follows : " Be it as it may, I care not 
 who hears the message of my sovereign, since it brings par- 
 don and mercy to the inhabitants of this Castell an Carrig,* 
 which you have called the Garde Doloureuse, to cover the 
 usurpation of the territory by the change of the name. 
 Upon surrender of the same to the Prince of Powys, with 
 its dependencies, and with the arms which it contains, and 
 with the maiden Eveline Berenger, all within the castle 
 shall depart unmolested, and have safe-conduct wheresoever 
 they will, to go beyond the marches of the Cymry." 
 
 " And how, if we obey not this summons ?'" said the 
 imperturbable Wilkin Flammock. 
 
 " Then shall your portion be with Raymond Berenger, 
 your late leader," replied Jorworth, his eyes, while he was 
 speaking, glancing with the vindictive ferocity which dic- 
 tated his answer. " So many strangers as be here amongst 
 ye, so many bodies to the ravens, so many heads to the 
 gibbet ! It is long since the kites have had such a banquet 
 of lurdane Flemings and false Saxons." 
 
 "Friend Jorworth," said Wilkin, "if such be thy only 
 message, bear mine answer back to thy master, " That wise 
 men trust not to the words of others that safety which they 
 can secure by their own deeds. We have walls high and 
 strong enough, deep moats, and plenty of munition, both 
 * Castle of the Craig. 
 
42 WAV ERLEY NOVELS 
 
 long-bow and arblast. We will keep the castle, trusting the 
 castle will keep us, till God shall send us succor." 
 
 " Do not peril your liyes on such an issue," said the Welsh 
 emissary, changing his language to the Flemish, which, from 
 occasional communication with those of that nation in Pem- 
 brokeshire, he spoke fluently, and which he now adopted, as 
 if to conceal the purport of his discourse from the supposed 
 English in the apartment. "Hark thee hither," he pro- 
 ceeded, "good Fleming. Knowest thou not that he in 
 whom is your trust, the Constable De Lacy, hath bound 
 himself by his vow to engage in no quarrel till he crosses the 
 sea, and cannot come to your aid without perjury ? He and 
 tlie other Lords Marchers have drawn their forces far north- 
 ward to join the host of Crusaders. AVhat will it avail you 
 to put us to the toil and trouble of a long siege, when you 
 can hope no rescue ? " 
 
 " And what will it avail me more," said Wilkin, answer- 
 ing in his native language, and looking at the Welshman 
 fixedly, yet with a countenance from which all expression 
 seemed studiously banished, and which exhibited, upon fea- 
 tures otherwise tolerable, a remarkable compound of dulnsss 
 and simplicity — " what will it avail me whether your trouble 
 be great or small ? " 
 
 " Come, friend Flammock," said the Welshman, " frame 
 not thyself more unapprehensive than nature hath formed 
 thee. The glen is dark, but a sunbeam can light the side of 
 it. Thy utmost efforts cannot prevent the fall of tliis castle ; 
 but thou mayst hasten it, and the doing so sliall avail thee 
 much." Thus speaking, he drew close up to AYilkin, and 
 sunk his voice to an insinuating whisper, as he said, "Never 
 did the withdrawing of a bar or the raising of a portcullis 
 bring such vantage to Fleming as they may to thee, if thou 
 wilt." 
 
 " I only know," said Wilkin, " that the drawing the one 
 and the dropping the other have cost me my whole worldly 
 substance." 
 
 "Fleming, it shall be compensated to thee with an over- 
 flowing measure. The liberality of Gwenwyn is as the 
 summer rain." 
 
 " My whole mills and buildings have been this morning 
 burnt to the earth " 
 
 "Thou shalt have a thousand marks of silver, man, in the 
 place of thy goods," said the Welshman ; but the Fleming 
 continued, without seeming to hear him, to number up his 
 
THE BETROTHED 43 
 
 " My lands are forayed, twenty kine driven off, and " 
 
 " Threescore shall replace them," interrupted Jorworth, 
 "chosen from the most bright-skinned of the spoil." 
 
 " But my daughter — but the Lady Eveline " said the 
 
 Fleming, with some slight change in his monotonous voice, 
 which seemed to express doubt and perplexity. ** You are 
 cruel conquerors, and " 
 
 " To those who resist us we are fearful," said Jorworth, 
 "but not to such as shall deserve clemency by surrender. 
 Gwenwyn will forget the contumelies of Eaymond, and raise 
 his daughter to high honor among the daughters of the 
 Cymry. For thine own child, form but a wish for her 
 advantage, and it shall be fulfilled to the uttermost. Now, 
 Fleming, we understand each other." 
 
 " I understand thee, at least," said Flammock. 
 
 " And I thee, I trust ? " said Jorworth, bending his keen, 
 wild blue eye on the stolid and unexpressive face of the 
 Netherlander, like an eager student who seeks to discover 
 some hidden and mysterious meaning in a passage of a clas- 
 sic author, the direct import of which seems trite and trivial. 
 
 " You believe that you understand me," said Wilkin; " 'but 
 here lies the difficulty — which of us shall trust the other ? " 
 
 " Barest thou ask ?" answered Jorworth. " Is it for thee 
 or such as thee to express doubt of the purposes of the Prince 
 of Powys ? " 
 
 " I know them not, good Jorworth, but through thee ; and 
 well I wot thou art not one who will let thy traffic miscarry 
 for want of aid from the breath of thy mouth." 
 
 " As I am a Christian man," said Jorworth, hurrying as- 
 severation on asseveration — " by the soul of my father — by 
 the faith of my mother — by the black rood of " 
 
 " Stop, good Jorworth ; thou heapest thine oaths too 
 thickly on each other for me to value them to the right 
 estimate," said Flammock : " that which is so lightly 
 pledged is sometimes not thought worth redeeming. Some 
 part of the promised guerdon in hand the whilst were worth 
 an hundred oaths." 
 
 " Thou suspicious churl, darest thou doubt my word ?" 
 
 "No, by no means," answered Wilkin; " ne'ertheless, I 
 will believe thy deed more readily." 
 
 " To the point, Fleming," said Jorworth. " What wouldst 
 thou have of me ?" 
 
 " Let me have some present sight of the money thou didst 
 promise, and I will think of the rest of thy proposal." 
 
 "Base silver-broker!" answered Jorworth," thinkest 
 
44 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 tliou the Prince of Powys has as many money-bags as the 
 merchants of thy land of sale and barter ? He gathers treas- 
 ures by his conquests, as the waterspout sucks up water by 
 its strength ; but it is to disperse them among his followers, 
 as the cloudy column restores its contents to earth and 
 ocean. The silver that I promise thee has yet to be gath- 
 ered out of the Saxon chests — nay, the casket of Berenger 
 himself must be ransacked to make up the tale." 
 
 *•• Methmks I could do that mj^self, having full power in 
 the castle, and so save you a labor," said the Fleming. 
 
 "■ True," answered Jorworth, "but it would be at the ex- 
 pense of a cord and a noose, whether the Welsh took the 
 place or the jSTormans relieved it : the one would expect 
 their booty entire, the other their countryman's treasures to 
 be delivered undiminished." 
 
 " I may not gainsay that," said the Fleming. " "Well, say 
 I were content to trust you thus far, why not return my cat- 
 tle, which are in your own hands and at your disposal ? If 
 you do not pleasure me in something beforehand, what can 
 I expect of you afterward ? " 
 
 '' I would pleasure you in a greater matter," answered the 
 equally suspicious Welshman. '•' But what would it avail 
 thee to have thy cattle within the fortress ? They can be 
 better cared for on the plain beneath." 
 
 "In faith," replied the Fleming, "thou sayst truth — they 
 w'ill be but a trouble to us here, where we have so many 
 already provided for the use of the garrison. And yet, when 
 I consider it more closely, we have enough of forage to main- 
 tain all we have, and more. Now, my cattle are of a pecul- 
 iar stock, brought from the rich pastures of Flanders, and 
 I desire to have them restored ere your axes and Welsh hooks 
 be busy with their hides." 
 
 " You shall have them this night, hide and horn," said 
 Jorworth ; " it is but a small earnest of a great boon." 
 
 " Thanks to your munificence," said the Fleming ; " I am 
 a simple-minded man, and bound my wishes to the recovery 
 of my own property." 
 
 "Thou wilt be ready, then, to deliver the castle ?" said 
 Jorworth. 
 
 " Of that we will talk farther to-morrow," said Wilkin 
 Flammock ; "if these English and iS'ormans should suspect 
 such a purpose, we should have wild work : they must be 
 fully dispersed ere I can hold farther communication on the 
 subject. Meanwhile, I pray thee, depart suddenly, and as 
 if offended with the tenor of our discourse." 
 
THE BETROTHED 45 
 
 *' Yet would I fain know something more fixed and abso- 
 lute," said Jorworth. 
 
 " Impossible — impossible," said the Fleming; " see you not 
 yonder tall fellow begins already to handle his dagger. Go 
 hence in haste, and angrily — and forget not the cattle." 
 
 " I will not forget them," said Jorworth ; "but if thou 
 keep not faith with us " 
 
 So speaking, he left the apartment with a gesture of 
 menace, partly really directed to Wilkin himself, partly as- 
 sumed in consequence of his advice. Flammock replied in 
 English, as if that all around might understand what he 
 said — 
 
 " Do thy worst, sir Welshman ! I am a true man ; I defy 
 the proposals of rendition, and will hold out this castle to 
 thy shame and thy master's ! Here — let him be blindfolded 
 once more, and returned in safety to his attendants without ; 
 the next Welshman who appears before the gate of the 
 Garde Doloureuse shall be more sharply received." 
 
 The Welshman was blindfolded and withdrawn, when, as 
 Wilkin Flammock himself left the guard-room, one of the 
 seeming men-at-arms who had been present at this inter- 
 view said in his ear, in English, " Thou art a false traitor, 
 Flammock, and shalt die a traitor's death !" 
 
 Startled at this, the Fleming would have questioned the 
 man farther, but he had disappeared so soon as the words 
 were uttered. Flammock was disconcerted by this circum- 
 stance, which showed him that his interview with Jorworth 
 had been observed, and its purpose known or conjectured, 
 by some one who was a stranger to his confidence, and might 
 thwart his intentions ; and he quickly after learned that thi. 
 was the case. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Blessed Mary, mother dear, 
 
 To a maiden bend thine ear 
 
 Virgin, undefiled, to thee 
 
 A wretched virgin bends the knee. 
 
 Hymn to the Virgin. 
 
 The daughter of the slaughtered Raymond had descended 
 from the elevated station whence she had beheld the field of 
 battle, in the agony of grief natural to a child whose eyes 
 have beheld the death of an honored and beloved father. 
 But her station, and the principles of chivalry in which she 
 had been trained up, did not permit any prolonged or need- 
 less indulgence of inactive sorrow. In raising the young and 
 beautiful of the female sex to the rank of princesses, or 
 rather goddesses, the spirit of that singular system exacted 
 from them, in requital, a tone of character and a line of 
 conduct superior, and something contradictory, to that of 
 natural or merely human feeling. Its heroines frequently 
 resembled portraits shown by an artificial light — strong and 
 luminous, and which placed in high relief the objects on 
 which it was turned ; but having still something of adventi- 
 tious splendor, which compared with that of the natural 
 day, seemed glaring and exaggerated. 
 
 It was not permitted to the orphan of the Garde Doloureuse, 
 the daughter of a line of heroes, whose stem was to be found 
 in the race of Thor, Balder, Odin, and other deified warriors 
 of the North, whose beauty was the theme of a hundred min- 
 strels, and her eyes the leading star of half the chivalry of 
 the warlike marches of Wales, to mourn her sire with the in- 
 effectual tears of a village maiden. Young as she was, and 
 horrible as was the incident which she had but that instant 
 witnessed, it was not altogether so appalling to her as to a 
 maiden whose eye had not been accustomed to the rough, 
 and often fatal, sports of chivalry, and whose residence had 
 not been among scenes and men where war and death had 
 been the unceasing theme of every tongue, whose imagina- 
 tion had not been familiarized with wild and bloody events., 
 or, finally, who had not been trained up to consider an honor- 
 able " death under shield,^' as that of a field of battle was 
 
THE BETROTHED 4T 
 
 termed, as a more desirable termination to the life of a war- 
 rior than that lingering and unhonored fate which comes 
 slowly on, to conclude the listless and helpless inactivity of 
 prolonged old age. Eveline, while she wept for her father, 
 felt her bosom glow when she recollected that he died in the 
 blaze of his fame, and amidst heaps of his shiuglitered enemies ; 
 and when she thought of the exigencies of her own situation, 
 it was with the determination to defend her own liberty, and 
 to avenge lier father's death, by every means which Heaven 
 had left within her power. 
 
 The aids of religion were not forgotten ; and, according 
 to the custom of the times and the doctrines of the Roman 
 Church, she endeavored to propitiate tlie favor of Heaven by 
 vows as well as prayers. In a small crypt, or oratory, adjoin- 
 ing to the chapel was hung over an altar-piece, on which a 
 lamp constantly burned, a small picture of the Virgin Mary, 
 revered as a household and peculiar deity by the family of 
 Berenger, one of whose ancestors had brought it from tlie 
 Holy Land, whither he had gone upon pilgrimage. It was of 
 the period of the Lower Empire, a Grecian painting, not un- 
 like those which in Catholic countries are often imputed to 
 the Evangelist Luke. The crpyt in which it was placed was 
 accounted a shrine of uncommon sanctity — nay, supposed to 
 have displayed miraculous powers ; and Eveline, by the daily 
 ■ garlands of flower which she offered before the painting, and 
 by the constant prayers with which they were accompanied, 
 had constituted herself the peculiar votress of Our Lady of 
 the Garde Doloureuse, for so the picture was named. 
 
 Now, apart from others, alone, and in secrecy, sinking in 
 the extremity of her sorrow before the shrine of her patron- 
 ess, she besought the protection of kindred purity for the 
 defense of her freedom and honor, and invoked vengeance 
 on the wild and treacherous chieftain who had slain her 
 father and was now beleaguering her place of strength. Not 
 only did she vow a large donative in lands to the shrine of 
 the protectress whose aid she implored, but the oath passed 
 I her lips (even though they faltered, and though something 
 ! within her remonstrated against the vow), that whatsoever 
 i favored knight Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse might em- 
 ploy for her rescue should obtain from her in guerdon what- 
 , eyer^ boon she might honorably grant, were it that of her 
 1 virgin hand at the holy altar. Taught as she was to believe, 
 : by the assurances of many a knight, that such a surrender 
 ' was the highest boon which Heaven could bestow, she felt 
 ! as discharging a debt of gratitude when she placed herself 
 
48 WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 entirely at the disposal of the pure and blessed patroness in 
 whose aid she confided. Perhaps there lurked in this devo- 
 tion some earthly hope of which she was herself scarce con- 
 scious, and which reconciled her to the indefinite sacrifice 
 thus freely offered. The Virgin (this flattering hope might 
 insinuate), kindest and most benevolent of patronesses, will 
 use compassionately the power resigned to her, and he will 
 be the favored champion of Maria upon whom her votaress 
 would most willingly confer favor. 
 
 But if there was such a hope, as something selfish will 
 often mingle with our noblest and purest emotions, it arose 
 unconscious of Eveline herself, who, in the full assurance 
 of implicit faith, and fixing on the representative of her 
 adoration eyes in which the most earnest supplication, the 
 most humble confidence, struggled with unbidden tears, 
 was perhaps more beautiful than when, young as she was, 
 she was selected to bestow the prize of chivalry in the lists 
 of Chester. It was no wonder that, in such a moment of 
 high excitation, when prostrated in devotion before a being 
 of whose power to protect her, and to make her protection 
 assured by a visible sign, she doubted nothing, the Lady 
 Eveline conceived she saw with her own eyes the acceptance 
 of her vow. As she gazed on the picture with an over- 
 strained eye, and an imagination heated with enthusiasm, 
 the expression seemed to alter from the hard outlined fash- 
 ioned by the Greek painter : the eyes appeared to become 
 animated, and to return with looks of compassion the sup- 
 pliant entreaties of the votaress ; and the mouth visibly 
 arranged itself into a smile of inexpressible sweetness. It 
 even seemed to her that the head made a gentle inclination. 
 
 Overpowered by supernatural awe at appearances of which 
 her faith permitted her not to question the reality, the Lady 
 Eveline folded her arms on her bosom and prostrated her 
 forehead on the pavement, as the posture most fitting to 
 listen to divine communication. 
 
 But her vision went not so far : there was neither sound 
 nor voice, and when, after stealing her eyes all around the 
 crypt in which she knelt, she again raised them to the figure 
 of Our Lady, the features seemed to be in the form in which 
 the limner had sketched them, saving that, to Eveline's 
 imagination, they still retained an august and yet gracious 
 expression, which she had not before remarked upon the 
 countenance. With awful reverence, almost amounting to 
 fear, yet comforted and even elated with the visitation she 
 had witnessed, the maiden repeated again and again the ' 
 
THE BETBOTUEt) 4Si 
 
 orisons which she thought most grateful to the ear of her 
 benefactress ; and, rising at length, retired backwards, as 
 from the presence of a sovereign, until she attained the outer 
 chapel. 
 
 Here one or two females still knelt before the saints which 
 the walls and niches presented for adoration ; but the rest 
 of the terrified suppliants, too anxious to prolong their 
 devotions, had dispersed through the castle to learn tidings 
 of their friends, and to obtain some refreshment, or at least 
 some place of repose, for themselves and their families. 
 
 Bowing her head, and muttering an ave to each saint as 
 she passed his image (for impending danger makes men 
 observant of the rites of devotion), the Lady Eveline had 
 ahnost reached the door of the chapel, when a man-at-arms, 
 as he seemed, entered hastily ; and with a louder voice than 
 suited the holy place, unless when need was most urgent, 
 demanded the Lady Eveline. Impressed with the feelings 
 of veneration which the late scene had produced, she was 
 about to rebuke his military rudeness, when he spoke again, 
 and in anxious haste, " Daughter, we are betrayed ! " and 
 though the form, and the coat of mail which covered it, 
 were those of a soldier, the voice was that of Father Aldro- 
 vand, who, eager and anxious at the same time, disengaged 
 liimself from the mail hood and showed his countenance. 
 
 '' Father," she said, "what means this? Have you for- 
 gotten the confidence in Heaven which you are wont to rec- 
 ommend, that you bear other arms than your order assigns 
 to you?" 
 
 " It may come to that ere long," said Father Aldrovand ; 
 " for I was a soldier ere I was a monk. But now I have 
 donned this harness to discover treachery, not to assist 
 force. Ah ! my beloved daughter, we are dreadfully beset 
 — foemen without — traitors within ! The false Fleming, 
 Wilkin Flammock, is treating for the surrender of the 
 castle." 
 
 "Who dares say so ?" said a veiled female, who had been 
 kneeling unnoticed in a sequestered corner of the chapel, 
 but who now started up and came boldly betwixt Lady Eve- 
 line and the monk. 
 
 " Go hence, thou saucy minion," said the monk, sur- 
 prised at this iDold interruption, " this concerns not thee-" 
 
 " But it doth concern me," said the damsel, throwing back 
 
 lier veil, and discovering the juvenile countenance of Eose, 
 
 the daughter of Wilkin Flammock, her eyes sparkling, and 
 
 her cheeks blushing with anger, the vehemence of which 
 
 4 
 
50 WA VEELEY NO VEL8 
 
 made a singular contrast with the very fair complexion and 
 almost infantine features of the speaker, whose whole form 
 and figure was that of a girl who has scarce emerged from 
 childhood, and indeed whose general manners were as gentle 
 and bashful as they now seemed bold, impassioned, and 
 undaunted. " Doth it not concern me," she said, " that 
 my father's honest name should be tainted with treason ? 
 Doth it not concern the stream when the fountain is troubled ? 
 It doth concern me, and I will know the author of the 
 calumny." 
 
 ''Damsel," said Eveline, "restrain thy useless passion; 
 the good father, tliougli he cannot intentionally calumniate 
 thy father, speaks, it may be, from false report." 
 
 " As I am an unworthy priest," said the father, " I speak 
 from the report of my own ears. Upon the oath of my order, 
 myself heard this Wilkin Flammock chaffering with the 
 Welshman for the surrender of the Garde Doloureuse. By 
 help of this hauberk and mail hood, I gained admittance to 
 a conference where he thought there were no English ears. 
 They spoke Flemish too, but I knew the jargon of old." 
 
 " The Flemish," said the angry maiden, whose headstrong 
 passion led her to speak first in answer to the last insult 
 offered, "is no jargon like your piebald English, half Nor- 
 man, half Saxon, but a noble Gothic tongue, spoken by the 
 brave warriors who fought against the Roman kaisers, when 
 Britain bent the neck to them. And as for this he has said 
 of Wilkin Flammock," she continued, collecting her ideas 
 into more order as she went on, "believe it not, my dearest 
 lady ; but as you value the honor of your own noble father, 
 confide, as in the Evangelists, in the honesty of mine." 
 This she spoke with an imploring tone of voice, mingled 
 with sobs, as if her heart had been breaking. 
 
 Eveline endeavored to soothe her attendant. " Rose/* 
 she said, " in this evil time suspicions will light on the best 
 men, and misunderstandings will arise among the best 
 friends. Let us hear the good father state what he hath to 
 charge upon your parent. Fear not but that Wilkin shall 
 be heard in his defense. Thou wert wont to be quiet and 
 reasonable." 
 
 " I am neither quiet nor reasonable on this matter," said 
 Rose, with redoubled indignation ; " and it is ill of you, 
 lady, to listen to the falsehoods of that reverend mummer, 
 who is neither true priest nor true soldier. But I will fetch 
 one who shall confront him either in casque or cowl." 
 
 So saying, she went hastily out of the chapel, while th» 
 
TEK BETROTHED 51 
 
 monk, after some pedantic circumlocution, acquainted the 
 Lady Eveline with wliat he had overheard betwixt Jorworth 
 and Wilkin ; and proposed to her to draw together the few 
 English who were in the castle, and take possession of the 
 innermost square tower — a keep which, as usual in Gothic 
 fortresses of the Norman period, was situated so as to make 
 considerable defense, even after the exterior works of the 
 castle, which it commanded, were in the hand of the enemy. 
 
 " Father,"' said Eveline, still confident in the vision she 
 had lately witnessed, " this were good counsel in extremity ; 
 but otherwise, it were to create the very evil we fear, by 
 setting our garrison at odds amongst themselves. I have a 
 strong, and not unwarranted, confidence, good father, in 
 our blessed Lady of this Garde Douloureuse, that we shall 
 attain at once vengeance on our barbarous enemies and 
 escape from our present Jeopardy ; and I call you to witness 
 the vow I have made, that to him whom Our Lady should 
 employ to work us succor I will refuse nothing, were it my 
 father's inheritance or the hand of his daughter." 
 
 "Ave Maria ! Ave Regina Coeli .'" said the priest ; " on a 
 rock more sure you could not have founded your trust. But, 
 daughter," he continued, after the proper ejaculation had 
 been made, ' ' have you never heard, even by a hint, that 
 there was a treaty for your hand betwixt our much honored 
 lord, of whom we are cruelly bereft — may God assoilzie his 
 ,Boul ! — and the great house of Lacy ?" 
 
 " Something I may have heard," said Eveline, dropping 
 her eyes, while a slight tinge suffused her cheek; ''but 
 I refer me to the disposal of Our Lady of Succor and 
 Consolation." 
 
 As she spoke. Rose entered the chapel with the same 
 vivacity she had shown in leaving it, leading by the hand 
 her father, whose sluggish though firm step, vacant counte- 
 nance, and heavy demeanor formed the strongest contrast to 
 the rapidity of her motions, and the anxious animation of 
 her address. Her task of dragging him forward might have 
 reminded the spectator of some of those ancient monuments 
 on which a small cherub, singularly inadequate to the task, 
 is often represented as hoisting upward towards the empyrean 
 the fleshly bulk of some ponderous tenant of the tomb, 
 whose disproportioned weight bids fair to render ineffectual 
 the benevolent and spirited exertions of its fluttering guide 
 and assistant. 
 
 "Roschen — my child, what grieves thee?" said the 
 Netherlander, as he yielded to his daughter's violence with 
 
52 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 a smile, which, being on the countenance of a father, had 
 more of expression and feeling than those which seemed to 
 have made their constant dwelling upon his lips. 
 
 "^ Here stands my father," said the impatient maiden ; 
 " impeach him with treason, who can or dare ? There 
 stands Wilkin Flammock, son of Dieterick, the cramer of 
 Antwerp ; let those accuse him to his face who slandered 
 him behind his back ! " 
 
 " Speak, Father Aldrovand,*' said the Lady Eveline ; '* we 
 are young in our lordship, and, alas ! the duty hath de- 
 scended upon us in an evil hour ; yet we will, so may God 
 and Our Lady help us, hear and judge of your accusation to 
 the utmost of our power." 
 
 " This Wilkin Flammock,'* said the monk, " however bold 
 he hath made himself in villainy, dares not deny that I 
 heard him with my own ears treat for the surrender of the 
 castle." 
 
 " Strike him, father ! '* said the indignant Rose — " strike 
 the disguised mummer ! The steel hauberk may be struck, 
 though not the monk's frock — strike him, or tell him that 
 he lies foully ! " 
 
 " Peace, JRoschen, thou art mad," said her father, angrily ; 
 "the monk hath more truth than sense about him, and I 
 would his ears had been farther off when he thrust them into 
 what concerned him not." 
 
 Rose's countenance fell when she heard her father bluntly 
 avow the treasonable communication of which she had 
 thought him incapable ; she dropped the hand by which she 
 had dragged him into the chapel, and stared on the Lady 
 Eveline with eyes which seemed starting from their sockets, 
 and a countenance from which the blood, with which it was 
 so lately highly colored, had retreated to garrison the heart. 
 
 Eveline looked upon the culprit with a countenance in 
 which sweetness and dignity were mingled with sorrow. 
 " Wilkin," she said, " I could not have believed this. What ! 
 on the very day of thy confiding benefactor's death, canst 
 thou have been tampering with his murderers, to deliver up 
 the castle and betray thy trust ? But I will not upbraid 
 thee. I deprive thee of the trust reposed in so unworthy a 
 person, and appoint thee to be kept in ward in the western 
 tower till God send us relief, when, it may be, thy daughter's 
 merits shall atone for thy offenses, and save farther punish- 
 ment. See that our commands be presently obeyed." 
 
 " Yes — yes — yes ! " exclaimed Rose, hurrying one word 
 on the other as fast and vehemently as she could articulate. 
 
THE BETROTHED 3S 
 
 " Let us go — let us go to the darkest dungeon ; darkness 
 befits us better than light." 
 
 The monk, on the other hand, perceiving that the Flem- 
 ing made no motion to obey the mandate of arrest, came 
 forward, in a manner more suiting his ancient profession and 
 present disguise than his spiritual character ; and with the 
 words, " I attach thee, Wilkin Flammock, of acknowledged 
 treason to your liege lady,'' would have laid hand upon him, 
 had not the Fleming stepped back and warned him off with 
 a menacing and determined gesture, while he said — "Ye are 
 mad ! — all of you English are mad when the moon is full, 
 and my silly girl hath caught the malady. Lady, your hon- 
 ored father gave me a charge, which I purpose to execute to 
 the best for all parties, and you cannot, being a minor, de- 
 prive me of it at your idle pleasure. Father Aldrovand, a 
 monk makes no lawful arrests. Daughter Koschen, hold 
 your peace and dry your eyes — you are a fool." 
 
 " I am — I am," said Kose, drying her eyes and regaining 
 her elasticity of manner — "I am indeed a fool, and worse 
 than a fool^ for a moment to doubt my father's probity. 
 Confide in him, dearest lady ; he is wise though he is grave, 
 and kind though he is i:)lain and homely in his speech. 
 Should he prove false he will fare the worse ! for I will 
 plunge myself from the pinnacle of the Warder's Tower to 
 the bottom of the moat, and he shall lose his own daughter 
 for betraying his master's." 
 
 '' This is all frenzy," said the monk. " Who trusts avowed 
 traitors ? Here, Normans — English, to the rescue of your 
 liege lady. Bows and bills — bows and bills ! " 
 
 "You may spare your throat for your next homily, good 
 father," said the Netherlander " or call in good Flemish, 
 since you understand it, for to no other language will those 
 within hearing reply." 
 
 He then approached the Lady Eveline with a real or 
 affected air of clumsy kindness, and something as nearly ap- 
 proaching to courtesy as his manners and features could 
 assume. He bade her good-night, aud, assuring her that he 
 would act for the best, left the chapel. The monk was about 
 to break forth into revilings, but Eveline, with more pru- 
 dence, checked his zeal. 
 
 " I cannot," she said, " but hope that this man's inten- 
 tions are honest " 
 
 " Now, God's blessings on you, lady, for that very word !" 
 said Rose, eagerly interrupting her, and kissing her hand. 
 
 " But if unhappily they are doubtful," continued Eveline, 
 
54 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " it is not by reproach that we can bring him to a better 
 purpose. Good father, give an eye to the preparations for 
 resistance, and see nought omitted that our means furnish 
 for the defense of the castle." 
 
 " Fear nothing, my dearest daughter," said Aldrovand : 
 " there are still some English hearts amongst us, and we will 
 rather kill and eat the Flemings themselves than surrender 
 the castle." 
 
 " That were food as dangerous to come by as bear's veni- 
 son, father," answered Rose, bitterly, still on fire with the 
 idea that the monk treated her nation with suspicion and 
 contumely. 
 
 On these terms they separated — the women to indulge 
 their fears and sorrows in private grief, or alleviate them by 
 private devotion ; the monk to try to discover what were the 
 the real purposes of Wilkin Flammock, and to counteract 
 them if possible, should they seem to indicate treachery. 
 His eye, however, though sharpened by strong suspicion, 
 saw nothing to strengthen his fears, excepting that the Flem- 
 ing had, with considerable military skill, placed the principal 
 posts of the castle in the charge of his own countrymen, which 
 must make any attempt to dispossess him of his present 
 authority both difficult and dangerous. The monk at length 
 retired, summoned by the duties of the evening service, and 
 with the determination to be stirring with the light next 
 morning. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 O, sadly shines the morning sun 
 
 On leaguer'd castle wall, 
 When bastion, tower, and battlement. 
 
 Seem nodding to their fall. 
 
 Old Ballad. 
 
 True to his resolution, and telling his beads as he went, that 
 he might lose no time. Father Aldrovand began his rounds 
 in the castle so soon as daylight had touched the top of the 
 eastern horizon. A natural instinct led him first to those stalls 
 which, had the fortress been properly victualled for a seige, 
 ought to have been tenanted by cattle ; and great was his 
 delight to see more than a score of fat kine and bullocks in 
 the place which had last night been empty ! One of them 
 had already been carried to the shambles, and a Fleming or 
 two, who played butchers on the occasion, were dividing the 
 carcass for the cook's use. The good father had well-nigh 
 cried out, "A miracle !" but, not to be too precipitate, he 
 limited his transport to a private exclamation in honor of 
 Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse. 
 
 " Who talks of lack of provender ? — who speaks of sur- 
 render now ?"' he said. ''Here is enough to maintain us 
 till Hugo de Lacy arrives, were he to sail back from Cyprus 
 to our relief. I did purpose to have fasted this morn- 
 ing, as well to save victuals as on a religious score ; but the 
 the blessing of the saints must not be slighted. Sir cook, 
 let me have half a yard* or so of broiled beef presently ; bid 
 the pan tier send me a manchet, and the butler a cup of wine. 
 I will make a running breakfast on the western battle^ 
 ments." 
 
 At this place, which was rather the weakest point of the 
 Garde Doloureuse, the good father found Wilkin Flammock 
 anxiously superintending the necessary measures of defense. 
 He greeted him courteously, congratulated him on the stock 
 of provisions with which the castle had been supplied during 
 the night, and was inquiring how they had been so happily 
 introduced through the Welsh beseigers, when Wilkin took 
 the first occasion to interrupt him. 
 
 * See Selling Meat by Measure. Note 6. 
 66 
 
56 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 " Of all this another time, good father ; but I wish at 
 present, and before other discourse, to consult thee on a 
 matter which presses my conscience, and moreover, deeply 
 concsrns my worldly estate/' 
 
 ''Speak on, my excellent son," said the father, conceiving 
 that he should thus gain the key to Wilkin's real intentions. 
 •■' 0, a tender conscience is a jewel ! and he that will not 
 listen when it saith, "Pour out thy doubts into the ear of 
 the priest," shall one day have his own dolorous outcries 
 choked with fire and brimstone. Thou wert ever of a ten- 
 der conscience, son Wilkin, though thou hast but a rough 
 and borrel bearing." 
 
 " Well then," said Wilkin, " you are to know, good father, 
 that I have had some dealings with my neighbor, Jan Van- 
 welt, concerning my daughter Rose, and that he has paid 
 me certain guilders on condition I will match her to him." 
 
 " Pshaw — pshaw ! my good son," said the disappointed 
 confessor, " this gear can lie over : this is no time for marry- 
 ing or giving in marriage, when we are all like to be 
 murdered." 
 
 " Nay, but hear me, good father," said the Fleming, " for 
 this point of conscience concerns the present case more 
 nearly than you wot of. You must know I have no will 
 to bestow Rose on this same Jan Vanwelt, who is old and 
 of ill conditions ; and I would know of you whether I may, 
 in conscience, refuse him my consent ?" 
 
 "Truly," said Father Aldrovand, "Rose is a pretty lass, 
 though somewhat hasty; and I think you may honestly 
 withdraw your consent, always on paying back the guilders 
 you have received," 
 
 " But there lies the pinch, good father," said the Flem- 
 ing :" the refunding this money will reduce me to utter 
 poverty. The Welsh have destroyed my substance ; and this 
 handful of money is all, God help me ! on which I must 
 begin the world again." 
 
 "Nevertheless, son Wilkin," said Aldro van d, "thou must 
 keep thy word, or pay the forfeit ; for Avhat saith the text ? 
 Quis liabitnhit in tahernacnlo, quis requiscet in monte 
 sancfo? Who shall ascend to the tabernacle, and dwell in 
 the holy mountain ? Is it not answered again, Qui jurat 
 proximo, et non decipit ? Go to, my son — break not thy 
 plighted word for a little filthy lucre ; better is an empty 
 stomach and a hungry heart with a clear conscience than a 
 fatted ox with iniquity and word-breaking. Sawest thou 
 not our late noble lord, who — may his soul be happy ! — chose 
 
THE BETBOTBED 57 
 
 rather to die in unequal battle, like a true knight, than live 
 a perjured man, though he had but spoken a rash word to a 
 Welshman over a wine-flask ?" 
 
 "Alas! then," said the Fleming, "this is even what 1 
 feared ! We must e'en render up the castle, or restore to 
 the Welshman, Jorworth, the cattle, hj means of which 
 I had schemed to victual and defend it." 
 
 ^-^ How — wherefore — what dost thou mean?'* said the 
 monk in astonishment. "I speak to thee af Rose Flam- 
 mock and Jan Van-devil, or whatever you call him, and 
 you reply with talk about cattle and castles, and I wot 
 not what ! " 
 
 "So please you, holy father, I did but speak in para- 
 bles. This castle was the daughter I had promised to 
 deliver over, the Welshman is Jan Vanwelt, and the guilders 
 were the cattle he has sent in, as a part-payment before- 
 hand of my guerdon." 
 
 " Parables ! " said the monk, coloring with anger at the 
 trick put on him — " what has a boor like thee to do with 
 parables ? But I forgive thee — I forgive thee." 
 
 '* I am therefore to yield the castle to the Welshman, 
 or restore him his cattle ? " said the impenetrable Dutchman. 
 
 " Sooner yield thy soul to Satan I " replied the monk. 
 
 " I fear me it must be the alternative," said the Fleming ; 
 **for the example of thy honorable lord " 
 
 *' The example of an honorable fool," answered the monk ; 
 then presently subjoined, " Our Lady be with her servant ! 
 This Belgic-brained boor makes me forget what I would 
 say." 
 
 "Nay, but the holy text which your reverence cited to 
 me even now," continued the Fleming. 
 
 " Go to," said the monk ; "what hast thou to do to pre- 
 sume to think of texts ? Knowest thou not that the letter of 
 the Scripture slayeth, and that it is the exposition which 
 maketh to live ? Art thou not like one who, coming to a 
 physician, conceals from him half the symptoms of the dis- 
 ease ? I tell thee, thou foolish Fleming, the text speaketh 
 but of promises made unto Christians, and there is in the 
 rubric a special exception of such as are made to Welsh- 
 men." At this commentary the Fleming grinned so broadly 
 as to show his whole case of broad strong white teeth. 
 Father Aldrovand himself grinned in sympathy, and then 
 proceeded to say, " Come — come, I see how it is. Thou 
 hast studied some small revenge on me for doubting of thy 
 truth; and, in verity, I think thou hast taken it wittily 
 
68 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 enough. But wherefore didst thou not let me into the secret 
 from the beginning ? I promise thee 1 had foul suspicions 
 of thee." 
 
 " What ! " said the Fleming, " is it possible I could ever 
 think of involving your reverence in a little matter of 
 deceit 'f Surely Heaven hath sent me more grace and man- 
 ners. Hark, I hear Jorworth's horn at the gate." 
 
 " He blows like a town swineherd," said Aldrovand, in 
 disdain. 
 
 ''It is not your reverence's pleasure that I should restore 
 the cattle unto him, then ?" said Flammock. 
 
 ''■ Yes, thus far. Prithee deliver him straightway over 
 the walls such a tub of boiling water as shall scald the hair 
 from his goat-skin cloak. And, hark thee, do thou in the 
 first place try the temperature of the kettle with thy fore- 
 finger, and that shall be thy penance for the trick thou hast 
 played me." 
 
 The Fleming answered this with another broad grin of 
 intelligence, and they proceeded to the outer gate, to which 
 Jorworth had come alone. Placing himself at the wicket, 
 which, however, he kept carefully barred, and speaking 
 til rough a small opening, contrived for such purpose, Wilkin 
 Flammock demanded of the Welshman his business. 
 
 " To receive rendition of the castle, agreeable to promise," 
 said Jorworth. 
 
 " Ay ? and art thou come on such an errand alone ? " said 
 Wilkin. 
 
 "No, truly," ansAvered Jorworth ; "1 have some twoscore 
 of men concealed among yonder bushes." 
 
 " Then thou hadst best lead them away quickly," answered 
 Wilkin, ''before our firchers let fly a sheaf of arrows among 
 them." 
 
 " How, villain ! Dost thou not mean to keep thy prom- 
 ise ? said the Welshman. 
 
 " I gave thee none," said the Fleming ; "I promised but 
 to think on what thou didst say. I have done so, and have 
 communicated with my ghostly father, who will in no 
 respect hear of my listening to thy proposal." 
 
 "And wilt thou," said Jorworth, "keep the cattle, which 
 I simply sent in to the castle on the faith of our agreement ? " 
 
 " I will excommunicate and deliver him over to Satan," 
 said the monk, unable to wait the phlegmatic and lingering 
 answer of the Fleming, " if he give horn, hoof, or hair of 
 them to such an uncircumcised Philistine as thou or thy 
 master." 
 
THE BETROTHED 59 
 
 "Itis well, shorn priest," answered Jorworth, in great 
 anger. '* But mark me — reckon not on your frock for ran- 
 som. When Gwenwyn hath taken this castle, as it shall not 
 longer shelter such a pair of faithless traitors, I will have 
 you sewed uj) each into the carcass of one of these kine, for 
 which your penitent has forsworn himself, aud lay you where 
 wolf and eagle shall be your only companions. ■'' 
 
 " Thou wilt work thy will when it is matched with thy 
 power," said the sedate Netherlander. 
 
 ''False Welshman, we defy thee to thy teeth ! " answered, 
 in the same breath, the more irascible monk. " I trust to 
 *ee the hounds gnaw thy joints ere that day come that ye talk 
 bi so proudly." 
 
 By way of answer to both, Jorworth drew back his arm 
 with his leveled javelin, and shaking the shaft till it acquired 
 A vibratory motion, he hurled it with equal strength and 
 dexterity right against the aperture in the wicket. It 
 whizzed through tlie opening at which it was aimed, and 
 flew — harmlessly, however — between the heads of the monk 
 and the Fleming ; the former of whom started back, while 
 the latter only said, as he looked at the javelin, which stood 
 quivering in the door of the guard-room, *' That was well 
 aimed, and happily balked." 
 
 Jorworth, the instant he had flung his dart, hastened to 
 the ambush which he had prepared, and gave them at once 
 the signal and the example of a rapid retreat down the hill. 
 Father Aldrovand would willingly have followed them with 
 a volley of arrows, but the Fleming observed that ammuni- 
 tion was too precious with them to be wasted on a few 
 runaways. Perhaps the honest man remembered that they 
 had come within the danger of such a salutation, in some 
 measure, on his own assurance. 
 
 When the noise of the hasty retreat of Jorworth and his 
 followers had died away, there ensued a dead silence, well 
 corresponding with the coolness and calmness of that early 
 hour in the morning. 
 
 " This will not last long," said Wilkin to the monk, in a 
 tone of foreboding seriousness, which found an echo in the 
 good father's bosom. 
 
 " It will not, and it cannot," answered Aldrovand ; ''and 
 we must expect a shrewd attack, which I should mind little, 
 but that their numbers are great, ours few, the extent of 
 the walls considerable, and the obstinacy of these Welsh 
 fiends almost equal to their fury. But we will do the best. 
 I will to the Lady Eveline. She must show herself upon 
 
60 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 the battlements. She is fairer in feature than becometh a 
 man of my order to speak of ; and she has withal a breathing 
 of her father's lofty spirit. The look and the word of such 
 a lady will give a man double strength in the hour of need." 
 *'' It may be," said the Fleming ; *' and I will go see that 
 the good breakfast which I have appointed be presently 
 served forth ; it will give my Flemings more strength than 
 the sight of the ten thousand virgins— may their help be 
 with us I — were they all arranged on a fair field." 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 Twas when ye raised, 'mid sap and siege. 
 The banner of your rightful liege 
 
 At your she captain's call, 
 Who, miracle of womankind. 
 Lent mettle to the meanest hind 
 
 That niann'd her castle wall. 
 
 William Stewart Rose. 
 
 The morning light was scarce fully spread abroad when 
 Eveline Berenger, in compliance with her confessor's advice, 
 commenced her progress around the walls and battlements 
 of the beleaguered castle, to confirm by her personal en- 
 treaties the minds of the valiant, and to rouse the more 
 timid to hope and to exertion. She wore a rich collar and 
 bracelets, as ornaments which indicated her rank and high 
 descent ; and her under tunic, in the manner of the times, 
 was gathered around her slender waist by a girdle, embroid- 
 ered with precious stones, and secured by a large buckle of 
 gold. From one side of the girdle was suspended a pouch or 
 purse, splendidly adorned with needlework, and on the left 
 side it sustained a small dagger of exquisite workmanship. 
 A dark-colored mantle, chosen as emblematic of her clouded 
 fortunes, was flung loosely around her ; and its hood was 
 brought forward so as to shadow, but not hide, her beauti- 
 ful countenance. Her looks had lost the high and ecstatic 
 expression which had been inspired by supposed revelation, 
 but they retained a sorrowful and mild, yet determined, 
 character ; and, in addressing the soldiers, she used a mix- 
 ture of entreaty and command — now throwing herself upon 
 their protection, now demanding in her aid the just tribute 
 of their allegiance. 
 
 The garrison was divided, as military skill dictated, in 
 groups, on the points most liable to attack, or from which an 
 assailing enemy might be best annoyed ; and it was this un- 
 avoidable separation of their force into small detachments 
 which showed to disadvantage the extent of walls, compared 
 with the number of the defenders ; and though AYilkin 
 Flammock had contrived several means of concealing this 
 deficiency of force from the enemy, he could not disguise it 
 from the defenders of the castle, who cast mournful glances 
 
62 yTA VEBL EY NO VEL S 
 
 ou the length of battlements wliich were unoccupied save 
 by sentinels, and then looked out to the fatal field of battle, 
 loaded with the bodies of those who ought to have been 
 their comrades in this hour of peril. 
 
 The presence of Eveline did much to rouse the garrison 
 from this state of discouragement. She glided from post to 
 post, from tower to tower of the old gray fortress, as a gleam 
 of light passes over a clouded landscape, and, touching its 
 various points in succession, calls them out to beauty and 
 effect. Sorrow and fear sometimes makes sufferers elo- 
 quent. She addressed the various nations who composed 
 her little garrison, each in appropriate language. To the 
 English, she spoke as children of the soil ; to the Flemings, 
 as men who had become denizens by the rightof hospitality ; 
 to the Normaus, as descendants of that victorious race whose 
 swords had made them the nobles and sovereigns of every 
 land where its edge had been tried. To them she used th 
 language of chivalry, by whose rules the meanest of that 
 nation regulated, or affected to regulate, his actions ; the 
 English she reminded of their good faith and honesty of 
 heart ; and to the Flemings she spoke of the destruction of 
 their property, the fruits of their honest industry. To all 
 she proposed vengeance for the death of their leader and 
 his followers ; to all she recommended confidence in God 
 and Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse ; and she ventured 
 to assure all of the strong and victorious bands that were 
 already in march to their relief. 
 
 •' Will the gallant champions of the cross,'' she said, 
 " think of leaving their native land, while the w^ail of women 
 and of orphans is in their ears ? It were to convert their 
 pious purpose into mortal sin, and to derogate from the 
 high fame they have so well won. Yes, fight but valiantly, 
 and perhaps, before the very sun that is now slowly rising 
 shall sink in the sea, yon will see it shining on the ranks of 
 Shrewsbury and Chester. When did the Welshman wait to 
 hear the clangor of their trumpets or the rustling of their 
 silken banners ? Fight bravely — fight freely but a while. 
 Our castle is strong — our munition ample— your hearts 
 are good — your arms are powerful. God is nigh to us, and 
 our friends are not far distant. Fight, then* in the name of 
 all that is good and holy — fight for yourselves, for your 
 wives, for your children, and for your property ; and oh ! 
 fight for an orphan maiden, who hath no other defenders 
 but what a sense of her sorrows, and the remembrance of 
 her father, may raise up among you 1 " 
 
THE BETROTHED 68 
 
 Such speeches as these made a powerful impression on the 
 men to whom they were addressed, already hardened, by 
 habits and sentiments, against a sense of danger. The 
 chivalrous Normans swore, on the cross of their swords, they 
 would die to a man ere they would surrender their posts ; 
 the blunter Anglo-Saxons cried, ''Shame on him who would 
 render up such a lamb as Eveline to a Welsh wolf, while he 
 could make her a bulwark with his body ! " Even the cold 
 Flemings caught a spark of the enthusiasm with which the 
 others were animated, and muttered to each other praists of 
 the young lady's beauty, and short but honest resolves to do 
 the best they might in her defense. 
 
 Rose Flammock, who accompanied her lady with one or 
 two attendants upon her circuit around the castle, seemed to 
 have relapsed into her natural character of a shy and timid 
 girl, out of the excited state into which she had been 
 brought by the suspicions which in the evening before had 
 attached to her father's character. She tripped closely but 
 respectfully iifter Eveline, and listened to what she said 
 from time to time, with the awe and admiration of a child 
 listening to its tutor, while only her moistened eye expressed 
 how far she felt or comprehended the extent of the danger, 
 or the force of the exhortations. There was, however, a 
 moment when the youthful maiden's eye became more 
 bright, her step more confident, her looks more elevated. 
 This was when they approached the spot where her father, 
 having discharged the duties of commander of the garrison, 
 was now exercising those of engineer, and displaying great 
 skill, as well as wonderful personal strength, in directing 
 and assisting the establishment of a large mangonel (a mili- 
 tary engine used for casting stones) upon a station com- 
 manding an exposed postern-gate, which led from the 
 western side of the castle down to the plain ; and where a 
 severe assault Avas naturally to be expected. The greater 
 part of his armor lay beside him, but covered with his cas- 
 sock to screen it from the morning dew ; while in his 
 leathern doublet, with arms bare to the shoulder, and a 
 huge sledge-hammer in his hand, he set an example to the 
 mechanics who worked under his direction. 
 
 In slow and solid natures there is usually a touch of 
 shamefacedness, and a sensitiveness to the breach of petty 
 observances. Wilkin Flammock had been unmoved even to 
 insensibility at the imputation of treason so lately cast upon 
 him ; but he colored high, and was confused, while, hastily 
 throwing on his cassock, he endeavored to conceal the dis- 
 
U IVAP^EliLEY NOVELS 
 
 habille in which he had been surprised by the Lady Eveline. 
 Not so his daughter. Proud of her father's zeal, her eye 
 gleamed from him to her mistress with a look of triumph, 
 which seemed to say, " Aud this faithful follower is he who 
 was suspected of treachery ! " 
 
 Eveliue's ovvu bosom made her the same reproach ; and, 
 anxious to atone for her momentary doubt of his fidelity, 
 she offered for his acceptance a ring of value, " In small 
 amends," she said, " of a momentary misconstruction." 
 
 " It needs not, lady," said Flammock, with his usual 
 bluntness, '^unless I have the freedom to bestow the gaud 
 on Rose ; for I think she was grieved enough at that which 
 moved me little — as why should it ?" 
 
 "Dispose of it as thou wilt," said Eveline, "the stone it 
 bears is as true as thine own faith." 
 
 Here Eveline paused, and looking on the broad expanded 
 plain which extended between the site of the castle and the 
 river, observed how silent and still the morning was rising 
 over what had so lately been a scene of such extensive 
 slaughter. 
 
 " It Avill not be so long," answered Elammock : " we shall 
 have noise enough, and that nearer to our ears than yester- 
 day." 
 
 "Which way lie the enemy ?" said Eveline ; "methinks 
 I can spy neither tents or pavilions." 
 
 " They use none, lady," answered Wilkin Elammock. 
 "Heaven has denied them the grace and knowledge to weave 
 linen enough for such a purpose. Yonder they lie on both 
 sides of the river, covered with naught but their white man- 
 tles. Would one think that a host of thieves and cut-throats 
 could look so like the finest object in nature — a well-spread 
 bleaching-field ? Hark — hark '! the wasps are beginning to 
 buzz ; they will soon be plying their stings." 
 
 In fact, there was heard among the Welsh army a low and 
 indistinct murmur, like that of 
 
 Bees alarm'd, and mvistering in their hives. 
 
 Terrified at the hollow menacing sound, which grew louder 
 every moment. Rose, who had all the in itability of a sensitive 
 temperament, clung to her father's arm, saying, in a terrified 
 whisper, "It is like the sound of the scathe night before 
 the great inundation." 
 
 " And it betokens too rough weather for women to be 
 abroad in," said Elammock. ^' Go to your chamber. Lady 
 
THE BETROTHED 65 
 
 Eveline, if it be your will ; and go you too, Eoschen. God 
 bless you both, ye do but keep us idle here." 
 
 And, indeed, conscious that she had done all that was in- 
 cumbent upon her, and fearful lest the chill which she felt 
 creeping over her own heart should infect others, Eveline 
 took her vassal's advice, and withdrew slowly to her own 
 apartment, often casting back her eye to the place where the 
 Welsh, now drawn out and under arms, were advancing their 
 ridgy battalions, like the waves of an approaching tide. 
 
 The Prince of Powys had, with considerable military skill, 
 adopted a plan of attack suitable to the fiery genius of his 
 followers, and calculated to alarm on every point the feeble 
 garrison. 
 
 The three sides of the castle which were defended by the 
 river were watched each by a numerous body of the British, 
 with instructions to confine themselves to the discharge of 
 arrows, unless they should observe that some favorable oppor- 
 tunity of close attack should occur. But far the greater 
 part of Gwenwyn's forces, consisting of three columns of 
 great strength, advanced along the plain on the western side 
 of the castle, and menaced, with a desperate assault, the 
 walls, which, in that direction, were deprived of the defense 
 of the river. The first of these formidable bodies consisted 
 entirely of archers, who dispersed themselves in front of the 
 beleaguered place, and took advantage of every bush and rising 
 ground which could afford them shelter ; and then began to 
 bend their bows and shower their arrows on the battlements 
 and loopholes, suffering, however, a great deal more damage 
 than they were able to inflict, as the garrison returned their 
 shot in comparative safety, and with more secure and de- 
 liberate aim.* Under cover, however, of their discharge of 
 arrows, two very strong bodies of Welsh attempted to carry 
 the outer defenses of the castle by storm. They had axes 
 to destroy the palisades, then called barriers ; fagots to fill 
 up the external ditches ; torches to set fire to aught com- 
 bustible which they might find ; and, above all, ladders to 
 scale the walls. 
 
 These detachments rushed with incredible fury towards the 
 point of attack, despite a most obstinate defense, and the great 
 loss which they sustained by missiles of every kind, and con- 
 tinued the assault for nearly an hour, supplied by reinforce- 
 ments which more than recruited their diminished numbers. 
 When they were at last compelled to retreat, they seemed to 
 
 * See Welsh Bowman. Note 7. 
 
66 WAVERLEi' NOVELS. 
 
 adopt a new and yet more harassing species of attack. A 
 large body assaulted one exposed point of the fortress with 
 such fury as to draw thither as many of the beseiged as could 
 possibly be spared from other defended posts, and when there 
 appeared a point less strongly manned than was adequate to 
 defence, that, in its turn, was furiously assailed by a separate 
 body of the enemy. 
 
 Thus the defenders of the Garde Doloureuse resembled the 
 embarrassed traveler engaged in repelling a swarm of hornets, 
 which, while he brushes them from one part, fix in swarms 
 upon another, and drive him to despair by their numbers 
 and the boldness and multiplicity of their attacks. The 
 postern being, of course, a principal point of attack, Father 
 Aldrovand, whoso anxiety would not permit him to be absent 
 from the walls, and who, indeed, where decency would permit, 
 took an occasional share in the active defense of the place, 
 hasted thither, as the point chiefly in danger. 
 
 Here he found the Fleming, like a second Ajax, grim with 
 dust and blood, working with his own hands the great engine 
 which he had lately helped to erect, and at the same time 
 giving heedful eye to all the exigencies around. 
 
 " How thinkest thou of this day's work ?" said the monk 
 in a whisper. 
 
 " What skills it talking of it, father ? " replied Flammock ; 
 " thou art no soldier, and I have no time for words. '^ 
 
 " Nay, take thy breatli," said the monk, tucking up the 
 sleeves of his frock ; "I will try to help thee the whilst, 
 although, Our Lady pity me, 1 know nothing of these strange 
 devices, not even the names. But our rule commands us to 
 labor ; there can be no harm, therefore, in turning this 
 winch, or in placing this steel-headed piece of wood opposite 
 to the cord (suiting his action to his words), nor see I aught 
 uncanonical in adjusting the lever thus, or in touching the 
 spring." 
 
 The large bolt whizzed through the air as he spoke, and 
 was so successfully aimed, that it struck down a Welsh chief 
 of eminence, to whom Gwenwyn himself was in the act of 
 giving some important charge. 
 
 " Well driven, trebuchet — well flown, quarrel !" cried the 
 monk, unable to contain his delight, and giving, in his tri- 
 umph, the true technical names to the engine and the 
 javelin which it discharged. 
 
 ''And well aimed, monk," added Wilkin Flammock : " I 
 think thou knowest more than is in thy breviary." 
 
 " Care not thou for that," said the father ; " and now 
 
THE BETROTFIED 67 
 
 that thou seest I can work an engine, and that the Welsh 
 knaves seem something low in stomach, what think'st thou 
 of our estate ?" 
 
 " Well enough, for a bad one, if we may hope for speedy 
 succor ; but men's bodies are of flesh, not of iron, and we 
 may be at last wearied out by numbers. Only one soldier 
 to four yards of wall is a fearful odds ; and the villaina 
 are aware of it, and keep us to sharp work/' 
 
 The renewal of the assault here broke off their conver- 
 sation, nor did the active enemy permit them to erjoy 
 much repose until sunset ; for, alarming them with repeated 
 menaces of attack upon different points, besides making 
 two or three formidable and furious assaults, they left 
 them scarce time to breathe, or to take a moment's refresh- 
 ment. Yet the Welsh paid a severe price for tlieir temerity ; 
 for while nothing could exceed the bravery with which their 
 men repeatedly advanced to the attack, those which were 
 made latest in the day had less of animated desperation than 
 their first onset ; and it is probable that the sense of having 
 sustained great loss, and apprehension of its effects on the 
 spirits of his people, made nightfall, and the interruption 
 of the contest, as acceptable to Gwenwyn as to the exhausted 
 garrison of the Garde Doloureuse. 
 
 But in the camp or leaguer of the Welsh there was glee 
 and triumph, for the loss of the past day was forgotten in 
 recollection of the signal victory which had preceded this 
 siege ; and the dispirited garrison could hear from their 
 walls the laugh and the song, the sound of harping and 
 gaiety, which triumphed by anticipation over their surrender. 
 
 The sun was for some time sunk, the twilight deepened, 
 and night closed with a blue and cloudless sky, in which 
 the thousand spangles that deck the firmament received 
 double brilliancy from some slight touch of frost, although 
 the paler planet, their mistress, was but in her first quarter. 
 The necessities of the garrison were considerably aggravated 
 by that of keeping a very strong and watchful guard, ill 
 according with the weakness of their numbers, at a time 
 which appeared favorable to any sudden nocturnal alarm ; 
 and, so urgent was this duty, that those who had been more 
 slightly wounded on the preceding day were obliged to take 
 their share in it, notwithstanding their hurts. The monk 
 and Fleming, who now perfectly understood each other, 
 went in company around the walls at midnight, exhorting 
 the warders to be watchful, and examining with their own 
 eyea the state of the fortress. It was in the course of these 
 
68 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 rounds, and as they were ascending an elevated platform by 
 a range of narrow and uneven steps, something galling to 
 the monk's tread, that they perceived on the summit to 
 which they were ascending, instead of the black corslet of 
 the Flemish sentinel who had been jalaced there, two white 
 forms, the appearance of which struck Wilkin Flammock 
 with more dismay than he had shown during any of the 
 doubtful events of the preceding day's fight. 
 
 " Father," he said, " betake yourself to your tools ; es 
 spucht — there are hobgoblins here \" 
 
 The good father had not learned, as a priest, to defy the 
 spiritual host, whom, as a soldier, he had dreaded more than 
 any mortal enemy ; but he began to recite, with chattering 
 teeth, the exorcism of the church, " Conjouro vos omnes, 
 spiritus maligni, magni atque parvi," when he was inter- 
 rupted by tlie voice of Eveline, who called out, '" Is it you. 
 Father Aldrovand ? " 
 
 Much lightened at heart by finding they had no ghost to 
 deal with, Wilkin Flammock and the priest advanced hastily 
 to the platform, where they found the lady with her faithful 
 Kose, the former with a half pike in her hand, like a sentinel 
 on duty. 
 
 "How is this, daughter ? " said the monk — ''how came 
 you here, and thus armed ? And where is the sentinel — the 
 lazy Flemish hound that should have kept the post ? " 
 
 " May he not be a lazy hound, yet not a Flemish one, 
 father ? " said Eose, who was ever awakened by anything 
 which seemed a reflection upon her country ; ''methinks I 
 have heard of such curs of English breed." 
 
 " Go to. Rose, you are too malapert for a young maiden," 
 said her father. " Once more, where is Peterkin Vorst, who 
 should have kept this post ?" 
 
 " Let him not be blamed for my fault," said Eveline, point- 
 ing to a place where the Flemish sentinel lay in the shade of 
 the battlement fast asleep. " He was overcome with toil, had 
 fought hard through the day, and when I saw him asleep as 
 I came hither, like a wandering spirit that cannot take 
 slumber or repose, I would not disturb the rest which I 
 envied. As he had fought for me, I miglit, I thought, watch 
 an hour for him ; so I took his weapon with the purpose of 
 remaining here till some one should come to relieve him." 
 
 "I will relieve the schelm, with a vengeance!" said 
 Wilkin Flammock, and saluted the slumbering and prostrate 
 warder with two kicks which made his corslet clatter. The 
 man started to his feet iu no small alarm, which he would 
 
THE BETROTHED CD 
 
 have communicated to the next sentinels and to the whole 
 garrison, by crying out that the Welsh were upon the walls, 
 had not the monk covered his broad mouth with his hand 
 just as the roar was issuing forth. " Peace, and get thee 
 down to the under bailey/' said he ; ''thou deservest death, 
 by all the policies of war ; but, look ye, varlet, and see who 
 has saved your worthless neck, by watching while you were 
 dreaming of swine's flesh and beer-pots." 
 
 The Fleming, although as yet but half awake, was suffi- 
 ciently conscious of his situation to sneak off without reply, 
 after two or three awkward congees, as well to Eveline as 
 to those by whom his repose had been so unceremoniously 
 interrupted. 
 
 " He deserves to be tied neck and heel, the houndsfoot," 
 said Wilkin. ''But what would you have, lady?" My 
 countrymen cannot live without rest or sleep." So saying, 
 he gave a yawn so wide as if he had proposed to swallow one 
 of the turrets at an angle of the platform on which he stood, 
 as if it had only garnished a Christmas pasty. 
 
 "True, good Wilkin," said Eveline ; "and do you there- 
 fore take some rest, and trust to my watchfulness, at least 
 till the guards are relieved. I cannot sleep if I would, and 
 I would not if I could." 
 
 " Thanks, lady," said Flammock ; "and in truth, as this 
 is a centrical place, and the rounds must pass in an hour at 
 farthest, I will e'en close my eyes for such a space, for the 
 lids feel as heavy as flood-gates." 
 
 " 0, father — father ! " exclaimed Eose, alive to her sire's 
 unceremonious neglect of decorum, "think where you are, 
 and in whose presence \ " 
 
 " Ay — ay, good Flammock," said the monk, " remember 
 the presence of a noble ISTorman maiden is no place for fold- 
 ing of cloaks and donning of nightcaps." 
 
 " Let him alone, father," said Eveline, who in another 
 moment might have smiled at the readiness with which 
 Wilkin Flammock folded himself in his huge cloak, extended 
 his substantial form on the stone bench, and gave the most 
 decided tokens of profound repose, long ere the monk had 
 done speaking. "Forms and fashions of respect," she con- 
 tinued, " are for times of ease and nicety ; when in danger, 
 the soldier's bedchamber is wherever he can find leisure for 
 an hour's sleep ; his eating-hall, wherever he can obtain 
 food. Sit thou down by Rose and me, good father, and tell 
 ns of some holy lesson, which may pass away these hours of 
 weariness and calamity." 
 
70 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 The father obeyed ; but, however willing to afford con- 
 solation, his ingenuity and theological skill suggested noth- 
 ing better than a recitation of the penitentiary psalms, in 
 which task he continued until fatigue became too powerful 
 for hira also, when he committed the same breach of de- 
 corum for which he had upbraided Wilkin Flammock, and 
 fell fast asleep in the midst of his devotions. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ** O night of woe," she said and wept, 
 
 " O night foreboding sorrow I 
 O night of woe," she said and wept, 
 
 " But more I dread the morrow ! " 
 
 Sir Gilbert Elliot. 
 
 The fatigue which had exhausted Flammock and the monk 
 was nnfelt by the two anxious maidens, who remained with 
 their eyes bent, now upon the dim landscape, now on the 
 stars by which it was lighted, as if they could have read 
 there the events which the morrow was to bring forth. It 
 was a placid and melancholy scene. Tree and field, and 
 hill and plain, lay before them in doubtful light, while, at 
 greater distance, their eye could with difficulty trace one or 
 two places where the river, hidden in general by banks and 
 trees, spread its more expanded bosom to the stars and the 
 pale crescent. All was still, excepting tlie solemn rush of 
 the waters, and now and then the shrill tinkle of a harp, 
 which, heard from more than a mile's distance through the 
 midnight silence, announced that some of the Welshmen 
 still protracted their most beloved amusement. The vild 
 notes, partially heard, seemed like the voice of some passing 
 spirit ; and, connected as they were with ideas of fierce and 
 unrelenting hostility, thrilled on Eveline's ear, as if pro- 
 phetic of war and woe, captivity and death. The only other 
 sounds which disturbed the extreme stillness of the night 
 were the occasional step of a sentinel upon his post, or the 
 hooting of the owls, which seemed to wail the approaching 
 downfall of the moonlight turrets in which they had estab- 
 lished their ancient habitations. 
 
 The calmness of all around seemed to press like a weight 
 on the bosom of the unhappy Eveline, and brought to her 
 mind a deeper sense of present grief, and keener apprehen- 
 sion of future horrors, than had reigned there during the 
 bustle, blood, and confusion of the preceding day. She 
 rose up, she sat down, she moved to and fro on the plat- 
 form, she remained fixed like a statue to asingle spot, as if 
 she were trying by variety of posture to divert her internal 
 sense of fear and sorrow. 
 
 At length, looking at the monk and the Fleming as they 
 71 
 
12 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 slept soundly under the shade of the battlement, she could 
 no longer forbear breaking silence. "Men are happy /^ she 
 said, " my Beloved Eose : their anxious thoughts are either 
 diverted by toilsome exertion or drowned in the insensibility 
 which follows it. They may encounter wounds and death, 
 but it is we who feel in the spirit a more keen anguish 
 than the body knows, and in the gnawing sense of present 
 ill and fear of future misery suffer a living death, more 
 cruel than that which ends our woes at once." 
 
 "Do not be thus downcast, my noble lady," saia Rose; 
 " be rather what you were yesterday, caring for the wounded, 
 for the aged, for every one but yourself, exposing even your 
 dear life among the showers of the Welsh arrows, when do- 
 ing so could give courage to others ; while I — shame on me ! 
 — could but tremble, soId, and weep, and needed all the little 
 wit I have to prevent my shouting with the wild cries of the 
 Welsh, or screaming and groaning with those of our friends 
 who fell around me." 
 
 " Alas ! Eose," answered her mistress, "you may at pleas- 
 ure indulge your fears to the verge of distraction itself ; you 
 have a father to fight and watch for you. Mine — my kind, 
 noble, and honored parent — lies dead on yonder field, and 
 all which remains for me is to act as may best become his 
 memory. But this moment is at least mine, to think upon 
 and to mourn for him." 
 
 So saying, and overpowered by the long-repressed burst of 
 filial sorrow, she sunk down on the banquette which ran 
 along the inside of the embattled parajjet of the platform, 
 and murmuring to herself, " He is gone forever ! " aban- 
 doned herself to the extremity of grief. One hand grasped 
 unconsciously the weapon which she held, and served, at 
 the same time, to prop her forehead, while the tears, by 
 which she was now for the first time relieved, flowed in tor- 
 rents from her eyes, and her sobs seemed so convulsive, that 
 Rose almost feared her heart was bursting. Her affection 
 and sympathy dictated at once the kindest course which 
 Eveline's condition permitted. Without attempting to con- 
 trol the torrent of grief in its full current, she gently sat 
 her down beside the mourner, and possessing herself of the 
 hand which had sunk motionless by her side, she alternately 
 pressed it to her lips, her bosom, and her brow, now cov- 
 ered it with kisses, now bedewed it with tears, and, amid 
 these tokens of the most devoted and humble sympathy, 
 waited a more composed moment to offer her little stock of 
 consolation in such deep silence and stillness, that, as the 
 
THE BETROTHED 78 
 
 pale light fell upon the two beautiful young women, it 
 seemed rather to show a group of statuary, the work of some 
 eminent sculptor, than beings whose eyes still wept and 
 whose hearts still throbbed. At a little distance, the gleam- 
 ing corslet of the Fleming, and the dark garments of Father 
 Aldrovand, as they lay prostrate on the stone steps, might 
 represent the bodies of those for whom the principal figures 
 were mourning. 
 
 After a deep agony of many minutes, it seemed that the 
 sorrows of Eveline were assuming a more composed charac- 
 ter : her convulsive sobs were changed for long, k;w% pro- 
 found sighs, and the course of her tears, though they still 
 flowed, was milder and less violent. Her kind attendant, 
 availing herself of these gentler symptoms, tried softly to 
 win the spear from her lady's grasp. " Let me be sentinel 
 for a while," she said, " my sweet lady ; I will at least 
 scream louder than you if any danger should approach." 
 She ventured to kiss her cheek and throw her arms around 
 Eveline's neck while she spoke ; but a mute caress, which 
 expressed her sense of the faithful girl's kind intentions to 
 minister if possible to her repose, was the only answer re- 
 turned. They remained for many minutes silent and in the 
 same posture — Eveline like an upright and slender poplar. 
 Rose, 'who encircled her lady in her arms, like the wood- 
 bine which twines around it. 
 
 At length Rose suddenly felt her young mistress shiver in 
 her embrace, and that Eveline's hand grasped her arm rig- 
 idly as she whispered, " Do you hear nothing ? " 
 
 ''No, nothing but the hooting of the owl," answered 
 Rose, timorously. 
 
 " I heard a distant sound," said Eveline — " I thought I 
 heard it. Hark, it comes again ! Look from the battle- 
 ments, Rose, while I awaken the priest and thy father." 
 
 " Dearest lady," said Rose, ' ' I dare not. What can this 
 sound be that is heard by one only ? You are deceived by 
 the rush of the river." 
 
 " I would not alarm the castle unnecessarily," said Eve- 
 line, pausing, "or even break your father's needful slum- 
 bers, by a fancy of mine But hark — hark ! I hear it 
 
 again—distinct amidst the intermitting sound of the rush- 
 ing water — a low, tremulous sound, mingled with a tinkling 
 like smiths or armorers at work upon their anvils." 
 
 Rose had by this time sprung up on the banquette, and 
 flinging back her rich tresses of fair hair, had applied her 
 hand behind her ear to collect the distant sound. " I hear 
 
74 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 it/' she cried, " and it increases. Awake them, for Heaven's 
 sake, and without a moment's delay ! " 
 
 Eveline accordingly stirred the sleepers with the reversed 
 end of the lance, and as they started to their feet in haste, 
 she whispered, in a hasty but cautious voice, " To arms — 
 the Welsh are upon us ! " 
 
 "What — where ?" said Wilkin Flammock — "where be 
 they?" 
 
 " Listen, and you will hear them arming," she replied. 
 
 " The noise is but in thine own fancy, lady," said the 
 Fleming, whose organs were of the same heavy character 
 with his form and his disposition. " I would I had not gone 
 to sleep at all, since I was to be awakened so soon." 
 
 " Nay, but listen, good Flammock ; the sound of armor 
 comes from the northeast." 
 
 " The Welsh lie not in that quarter, lady," said Wilkin, 
 "and, besides, they wear no armor." 
 
 "I hear it — I hear it !" said Father Aldrovand, who had 
 been listening for some time. " All praise to St. Benedict ! 
 Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse has been gracious to her 
 servants as ever ! It is the tramp of horse — it is the clash of 
 armor ; the chivalry of the Marches are coming to our relief. 
 Kyrie eleison ! " 
 
 " I hear something too," said Flammock — " something 
 like the hollow sound of the great sea, when it burst into 
 my neighbor Klinkerman's warehouse, and rolled his pots and 
 pans against each other. But it were an evil mistake, father, 
 to take foes for friends: we were best rouse the people." 
 
 " Tush ! " said the priest, " talk to me of pots and kettles ? 
 Was I squire of the body to Count Stephen Mauleverer for 
 twenty years, and do I not know the tramp of a war-horse or 
 the clash of a mail-coat ? But call the men to the walls at 
 any rate, and have me the best drawn up in the base-court ; 
 we may help them by a sally." 
 
 " That will not be rashly undertaken with my consent," 
 murmured the Fleming ; "but to the wall if you will, and 
 in good time. But keep your Normans and English silent, 
 sir priest, else their unruly and noisy joy will awaken the 
 Welsh camp, and prepare them for their unwelcome visitors." 
 
 The monk laid his finger on his lip in sign of intelligence, 
 and they parted in opposite directions, each to rouse the de- 
 fenders of the castle, who were soon heard drawing from all 
 quarters to their posts upon the walls, with hearts in a very 
 different mood from that in which they had descended from 
 them. The utmost caution being used to prevent noise, the 
 
THE BETROTHED 75 
 
 manning of the walls was accomplished in silence, and the 
 garrison awaited in breathless expectation the success of the 
 forces who were rapidly advancing to their relief. 
 
 The character of the sounds, which now loudly awakened 
 the silence of this eventful night, could no longer be mis- 
 taken. They were distinguishable from the rushing of a 
 mighty river, or from the muttering sound of distant thun- 
 der, by the sharp and angry notes which the clashing of the 
 rider's arms mingled with the deep bass of the horses' rapid 
 tread.* From the long continuance of the sounds, their 
 loudness, and the extent of horizon from which they reemed 
 to come, all in the castle were satisfied that the approaching 
 relief consisted of several very strong bodies of horse. At 
 once this mighty sound ceased, as if the earth on which they 
 trode had either devoured the armed squadrons or had be- 
 come incapable of resounding to their tramp. The defenders 
 of the Garde Doloureuse concluded that their friends had 
 made a sudden halt, to give their horses breath, examine the 
 leaguer of the enemy, and settle the order of the attack 
 upon them. The pause, however, was but momentary. 
 
 The British, so alert at surprising their enemies, were 
 themselves, on many occasions, liable to surprise. Their 
 men were undisciplined, and sometimes negligent of the 
 patient duties of the sentinel ; and, besides, their foragers 
 and flying parties, who scoured the country during the 
 preceding day, had brought back tidings which had lulled 
 them into fatal security. Their camp had been therefore 
 carelessly guarded, and, confident in the smallness of the 
 garrison, tliey had altogether neglected the important mili- 
 tary duty of establishing patrols and outposts at a proper 
 distance from their main body. Thus, the cavalry of the 
 Lords Marchers, notwithstanding the noise which accom- 
 panied their advance, had approached very near the British 
 camp without exciting the least alarm. But while they 
 were arranging their forces into separate columns, in order 
 to commence the assault, a loud and increasing clamor 
 among the Welsh announced that they were at length aware 
 of their danger. The shrill and discordant cries by which 
 they endeavored to assemble their men, each under the 
 banner of his chief, resounded from their leaguer. But 
 these rallying shouts were soon converted into screams, and 
 clamors of horror and dismay, when the thundering charge 
 of the barbed horses and heavily-armed cavalry of the Anglo- 
 Normans surprised their undefended camp. 
 * See Rattle of Armor. Note 8. 
 
76 WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 Yet not even under circumstances so adverse did the 
 descendants of the ancient Britons renounce their defense, 
 or forfeit their old hereditary i^rivilege to he called the 
 bravest of mankind. Their cries of detiance and resistance 
 were heard resounding above the groans of the wounded, 
 the shouts of the triumphant assailants, and the universal 
 tumult of the night-battle. It was not until the morning 
 light began to peej^ forth that the slaughter or dispersion of 
 Gwenwyn's forces was complete, and that the ''earthquake 
 voice of victory^' arose in uncontrolled and unmingled 
 energy of exultation. 
 
 Then the besieged, if they could be still so termed, look- 
 ing from their towers over the expanded country beneath, 
 witnessed nothing but one widespread scene of desultory 
 flight and unrelaxed pursuit. That the Welsh had been 
 permitted to encamp in fancied security upon the hither side 
 of the river now rendered their discomfiture more dread- 
 fully fatal. The single pass by which they could cross to 
 the other side was soon completely choked by fugitives, on 
 whose rear raged the swords of the victorious Normans. 
 Many threw themselves into the river, upon the precarious 
 chance of gaining the farther side, and, except a few who 
 were uncommonly strong, skilful, and active, perished 
 among the rocks and in the currents; others, more for- 
 tunate, escaped by fords, with which they had accidentally 
 been made acquainted ; many dispersed, or, in small bands, 
 fled in reckless despair towards the castle, as if the fortress, 
 which had beat them off when victorious, could be a place 
 of refuge to them in their present forlorn condition ; while 
 others roamed wildly over the plain, seeking only escape 
 from immediate and instant danger, without knowing whith- 
 er they ran. 
 
 The Xormans, meanwhile, divided into small parties fol- 
 lowed and slaughtered them at pleasure ; while, as a rally- 
 ing point for the victors, the banner of Hugo de Lacy 
 streamed from a small mount, on which Gwenwyn had lately 
 pitched his own, and surrounded by a competent force, both 
 of infantry and horsemen, which the experienced baron per- 
 mitted on no account to wander far from it. 
 
 The rest, as we have already said, followed the chase with 
 shouts of exultation and of vengeance, ringing around the 
 battlements, which resounded with the cries, " Ha, St. 
 Edward ! Ha, St. Denis ! Strike — slay — no quarter to the 
 Welsh wolves — think on Eaymond Berenger ! " 
 
 The soldiers on the walls joined in these vengeful and 
 
THE BETROTHED 77 
 
 nctorious clamors, and discharged several sheavet of arrows 
 ipon such fugitives as, in their extremity, approached too 
 lear the castle. They would fain liave sallied to give more 
 ictive assistance in the work of destruction ; but the com- 
 nunication being now open with the Constable of Chester's 
 'orces, Wilkin Mammock considered himself and the garri- 
 son to be under the orders of that renowned chief, and re- 
 'used to listen to the eager admonitions of Father Aldrovand, 
 vho would, notwitlistandiug his sacerdotal character, have 
 villingly himself taken charge of the sally which he pro- 
 osed. 
 
 (At length, the scene of slaughter seemed at an end. The 
 etreat was blown on many a bugle, and knights halted on 
 he plain to collect their personal followers, muster them 
 mder their proper pennon, and then march them slowly 
 )ack to the great standard of their leader, around which the 
 • nam body were again to be assembled, like the clouds which 
 !,;ither around the evening sun — a fanciful simile, which 
 night yet be drawn farther, in respect of the level rays of 
 trong lurid light which shot from those dark battalions, as 
 he beams were flung back from their polished armor. 
 
 The plain was in this manner soon cleared of the liorse- 
 nen, and remained occupied only by the dead bodies of the 
 laughtered Welshmen. The bands who had followed the 
 rarsuit to a greater distance were also now seen returning, 
 
 mhappy captives, to whom they had given quarter when 
 heir thirst of blood was satiated. 
 
 It was then that, desirous to attract the attention of his 
 iberators, Wilkin Flammock commanded all the banners of 
 he castle to be displayed, under a general shout of acclama- 
 ion from those who had fought under them. It was an- 
 wered by a universal cry of joy from De Lacy's army, which 
 ung so wide as might even yet have startled such of the 
 Velsh fugitives as, far distant from this disastrous field of 
 light, might have ventured to halt for a moment's repose. 
 
 Presently after this greeting had been exchanged a single 
 ider advanced from the Constable's army towards the castle, 
 bowing, even at a distance, an unusual dexterity of horse- 
 nanship and grace of deportment. He arrived at the draw- 
 )ridge, which was instantly lowered to admit him, whilst 
 flammock and the monk, for the latter, as far as he could, 
 'associated himself with the former in all acts of authority, 
 lastened to receive the envoy of their liberator. They 
 ound him just alighted from the raven-colored horse, which 
 
T8 WAVERLET N0VEL8 
 
 was slightly flecked with blood as well as foam, and still 
 panted with the exertions of the evening [morning] ; 
 though, answering to the caressing hand of his youthful 
 rider, he arched his neck, shook his steel caparison, and 
 snorted, to announce his unabated mettle and unwearied 
 love of combat. The 'young man's eagle look bore the same 
 token of unabated vigor, mingled with the signs of recent 
 exertion. His helmet hanging at his saddle-bow showed a ,i 
 gallant counttnance, colored highly, but not inflamed, || 
 which looked out from a rich profusion of short chestnut i 
 curls ; and although his armor was of a massive and simple 
 form, he moved under it with such elasticity and ease, that 
 it seemed a graceful attire, not a burden or incumbrance. 
 A furred mantle had not sat on him with more easy grace : 
 than the heavy hauberk, which complied with every gesture 
 of his noble form. Yet his countenance was so juvenile 
 that only the down on the upper li]) announced decisively 
 the approach to manhood. The females, who thronged into : 
 the court to see the first envoy of their deliverers, could not . 
 forbear mixing praises of his beauty with blessings on his 
 valor ; and one comely middle-aged dame, in particular, dis- 
 tinguished by the tightness with which her scarlet hose sat 
 on a Avell-shaped leg and ankle, and by the cleanness of her : 
 coif, pressed close iip to the young squire, and, more for- 
 ward than the rest, doubled the crimson hue of his cheek bjic: 
 crying aloud that Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse haclf:: 
 sent them news of their redemption by an angel from thJ^ 
 sanctuary — a speech which, altliough Father Aldrovam 
 shook his head, was received by her companions with sucl 
 general acclamation as greatly embarrassed the young man' 
 modesty. 
 
 ** Peace, all of ye!" said Wilkin Flammock. '* Knoi 
 you no respect, you women, or have you never seen a youn 
 gentleman before, that you hang on him like flies on 
 honeycomb ? Stand back, I say, and let us hear in peac 
 what are the commands of the noble Lord of Lacy." 
 
 " These," said the young man, " I can only deliver in tl: 
 presence of the right noble demoiselle, Eveline Berenger, ' 
 I may be thought worthy of such honor." 
 
 " That thou art, noble sir," said the same forward dami 
 who had before expressed her admiration so energeticallj] 
 " I will uphold thee worthy of her presence, and whatev; 
 other grace a lady can do thee." 
 
 " Now hold thy tongue, with a wanion ! " said the monlj|||[f~„' 
 while in the same breath the Fleming exclaimed, " Bewar 
 
THE BETROTHED TO 
 
 the cucking-stool, Dame Scant-o'-Grace ! " while he con- 
 ducted the noble youth across the court. 
 
 *' Let my good horse be cared for/' said the cavalier, as 
 he put the bridle into the hand of a menial ; and in doing 
 so got rid of some part of his female retinue, who began to 
 pat and praise the steed as much as they had done the rider ; 
 and some, in the enthusiasm of their joy, hardly abstained 
 from kissing the stirrups and horse-furniture. 
 
 But Dame Gillian was not so easily diverted from her own 
 point as were some of her companions. She continued to 
 repeat the word "cucking-stool" till the Flemiug was out 
 of hearing, and then became more specific in her objurga- 
 tion. "And why cucking-stool, I pray, Sir Wilkin Butter- 
 firkin ? You are the man would stop an English mouth 
 with a Flemish damask napkin, I trow ! Marry gnep, my 
 cousin the weaver! And why the cucking-stool, I pray ? 
 because my young lady is comely, and the young squire is a 
 man of mettle, reverence to his beard that is to come yet ! 
 Have we not eyes to see, and have we not a mouth and a 
 tongue ? " 
 
 " In troth. Dame Gillian, they do you wrong who doubt 
 it," said Eveline's nurse, who stood by; "but, I prithee, 
 keep it shut now, were it but for womanhood." 
 
 " How now, mannerly Mrs. JMargery ?" replied the incor- 
 rigible Gillian ; " is your heart so high, because you dandled 
 our young lady on your knee fifteen years since ? Let me 
 tell you, the cat will find its way to the cream, though it 
 was brought up on an abbess's lap." 
 
 " Home, housewife — home \" exclaimed her husband, the 
 old huntsman, who was weary of this public exhibition of 
 his domestic termagant — " home, or I will give you a taste 
 of my dog-leash. Here are both the confessor and Wilkin 
 Flammock wondering at your impudence." 
 
 "Indeed!" replied Gillian; "and are not two fools 
 enough for wonderment, that you must come with youi 
 grave pate to make up the number three ? " 
 
 There was a general laugh at the huntsman's expense, 
 under cover of which he prudently withdrew his spouse, 
 without attempting to continue the war of tongue, in which 
 she had shown such a decided superiority. 
 
 This controversy, so light is the change in human spirits, 
 especially among the lower class, awakened bursts of idle 
 mirth among beings who had so lately been in the jaws of 
 clanger, if not of absolute despair. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 They bore him barefaced on his bier. 
 
 Six proper youtlis and tall, 
 And many a tear bedew'd his grave 
 
 Within yon kirkyard wall. 
 
 Tlie Friar of Orders Gray, 
 
 While these matters took place in the castle-yard, the 
 young squire, Damian Lacy, obtained the audience which he 
 had requested of Eveline Berenger, who received him in the 
 great hall of the castle, seated beneath the dais, or canopy, 
 and waited upon by Eose and other female attendants, of 
 whom the first alone was jiermitted to use a tabouret or 
 small stool in her jjresence, so strict were the Norman maidens 
 of quality in maintaining their claims to high rank and 
 observance. 
 
 The youth was introduced by the confessor and Flammock, 
 as the spiritual character of the one, and the trust reposed 
 by her late father in the other, authorized them to be j)res- 
 ent upon the occasion. Eveline naturally blushed as she 
 advanced two steps to receive the handsome youthful envoy ; 
 and her bashfulness seemed infectious, for it was with some 
 confusion that Damian went through the ceremony of salut- 
 ing the hand which she extended towards him in token of 
 welcome. Eveline was under the necessity of speaking first. 
 
 ''We advance as far as our limits will permit us," she 
 said, " to greet with our thanks the messenger who brings 
 us tidings of safety. We speak — unless we err — to the noble 
 Damian of Lacy ?" 
 
 '"'To the humblest of your servants," answered Damian, 
 falling with some difficulty into the tone of courtesy which 
 his errand and character required, " who approaches you on 
 behalf of his noble uncle, Hugo de Lacy, Constable of 
 Chester." 
 
 " Will not our noble deliverer in person honor with his 
 presence the poor dwelling which he has saved ?" 
 
 "My noble kinsman," answered Damian, " is now God's 
 
 soldier, and bound by a vow not to come beneath a roof 
 
 until he embark for the Holy Land. But by my voice he 
 
 congratulates you on the defeat of your savage enemies, and 
 
 80 
 
THE BETROTHED 81 
 
 sends you these tokens that the comrade and friend of your 
 noble father hath not left his lamentable death many hours 
 unavenged." So saying, he drew forth and laid before 
 Eveline the gold bracelets, the coronet, and the eudorchawg, 
 or chain of linked gold, which had distinguished the rank of 
 the Welsh prince. 
 
 " Gwenwyn hath then fallen ? " said Eveline, a natural 
 shudder combating with the feelings of gratified vengeance, 
 as she beheld that the trophies were specked with blood — 
 
 '' the slayer of my father is no more ! 
 " Mv kinsman's 
 
 My kinsman's lance transfixed the Briton as he endeav- 
 ored to rally his flying people ; he died grimly on the weapon 
 which had passed more than a fathom through his body, and 
 exerted his last strength in a furious but ineffectual blow 
 with his mace." 
 
 " Heaven is just," said Eveline ; " may his sins be for- 
 given to the man of blood, since he hath fallen by a death 
 so bloody ! One question I would ask you, noble sir. My 
 father's remains " she paused, unable to proceed. 
 
 " An hour will place them at your disposal, most honored 
 lady," replied the squire, in the tone of sympathy which the 
 sorrows of so young and so fair an orphan called irresistibly 
 forth. ''Such preparations as time admitted were making, 
 even when I left the host, to transport what was mortal of the 
 noble Berenger from the field on which we found him, amid 
 a monument of slain which his own sword had raised. My 
 kinsman's vow will not allow him to pass your portcullis ; 
 but, with your permission, I will represent him, if such be 
 your pleasure, at these honored obsequies, having charge 
 to that effect." 
 
 " My brave and noble father," said Eveline, making an 
 effort to restrain her tears, " will be best mourned by the 
 noble and the brave." She would have continued, but her 
 voice failed her, and she was obliged to withdraw abruptly, 
 in order to give vent to her sorrow, and prepare for the fu- 
 neral rites with such ceremony as circumstances should permit. 
 Damian bowed to the departing mourner as reverently as he 
 would have done to a divinity, and, taking his horse, returned 
 to his uncle's host, which had encamped hastily on the recent 
 field of battle. 
 
 The sun was now high, and the whole plain presented the 
 appearance of a bustle equally different from the solitude of 
 the early morning and from the roar and fury of the subse- 
 quent engagement. The news of Hugo de Lacy's victory 
 everywhere spread abroad with all the alacrity of triumph, 
 6 
 
82 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 and had induced many of the inhabitants of the country, 
 who had fled before the fury of the Wolf of Plinlimmon, to 
 return to their desolate habitations. Numbers also of the loose 
 and profligate characters which abound in a country subject 
 to the frequent changes of war, had flocked thither in quest 
 of spoil, or to gratify a spirit of restless curiosity. The Jew 
 and the Lombard, despising danger where there was a chance 
 of gain, might be already seen bartering liquors and wares 
 with the victorious men-at-arms, for the blood-stained orna- 
 ments of gold lately worn by the defeated British. Others 
 acted as brokers betwixt the Welsh captives and their cap- 
 tors ; and where they could trust the means and good faith 
 of the former, sometimes became bound for, or even advanced 
 in ready money, the sums necessary for their ransom ; whilst 
 a more numerous class became themselves the purchasers of 
 those prisoners who had no immediate means of settling with 
 their conquerors. 
 
 That the spoil thus acquired might not long encumber the 
 soldier, or blunt his ardor for farther enterprise, the usual 
 means of dissipating military sjDoils were already at hand. 
 Courtesans, mimes, jugglers, minstrels, and tale-tellers of 
 every description had accompanied the night-march ; and, 
 secure in the military reputation of the celebrated De Lacy, 
 had rested fearlessly at some little distance until the battle j 
 was fouglit and won. These now approached, in many a : 
 joyous group, to congratulate the victors. Close to the par- 
 ties which they formed for the dance, the song, or the tale, 
 upon the yet bloody field, the countrymen, summoned in for j 
 the purpose, were ojiening large trenches for depositing the j 
 dead, leeches were seen tending the wounded, priests and 
 monks confessing those in extremity, soldiers transporting I 
 from the fields the bodies of the more honored among the ! 
 slain, peasants mourning over their trampled crops and \ 
 plundered habitations, and widows and orphans searching i 
 for the bodies of husbands and parents amidst the promis- ; 
 cuous carnage of two combats. Thus woe mingled her ; 
 wildest notes with those of jubilee and bacchanal triumph, ! 
 and the plain of the Garde Douloureuse formed a singular i 
 parallel to the varied maze of human life, where joy and 
 grief are so strangely mixed, and where the confines of mirth 
 and pleasure often border on those of sorrow and of death. 
 
 About noon these various noises were at once silenced, 
 and the attention alike of those who rejoiced or who grieved 
 was arrested by the loud and mournful sounds of six trum- 
 pets, which, uplifting and uniting their thrilling tones in a 
 
TEE BETROTHED 88 
 
 T wild and melancholy death-note, apprised all that the ob- 
 sequies of the valiant Raymond Berenger were about to com- 
 mence. From a tent which had been hastily pitched for the 
 immediate reception of the body, twelve black monks, the 
 inhabitants of a neighboring convent, began to file out in 
 pairs, headed by their abbot, who bore a large cross, and 
 thundered forth the sublime notes of the Catholic Afiserere 
 me, Domine. Then came a chosen body of men-at-arms, 
 trailing their lances, with their points reversed and pointed 
 to the earth ; and after them the body of the valiant Beren- 
 ger, wrapped in his own knightly banner, which, regained 
 from the liandsof the Welsh, now served its noble owner in- 
 stead of a funeral pall. The most gallant knights of the Con- 
 stable's household (for, like other great nobles of that period, 
 he had formed it upon a scale which approached to that of 
 
 i;ji ; royalty) walked as mourners and supporters of the corpse, 
 I! which was borne upon lances ; and the Constable of Chester 
 
 »!; '' himself, alone and fully armed, excepting the head, followed 
 as chief mourner, A chosen body of squires, men-at-arms, 
 and pages of noble descent brought up the rear of the pro- 
 
 .,; cession ; while their nakers and trumpets echoed back, from 
 time to time, the melancholy song of the monks, by replying 
 in a note as lugubrious as their own. 
 
 The course of pleasure was arrested, and even that of 
 
 sorrow was for a moment turned from her own griefs, to 
 
 . witness the last honors bestowed on him who had been in 
 
 ^. life the father and guardian of his people. 
 
 |"flj The mournful procession traversed slowly the plain which 
 
 (IjIi had been within a few hours the scene of such varied events ; 
 
 ,1 and, pausing before the outer gate of the barricades of the 
 castle, invited, by a prolonged and solemn flourish, the fort- 
 ress to receive the remains of its late gallant defender. The 
 melancholy summons was answered by the warden's horn, 
 _^. the drawbridge sunk, the portcullis rose, and Father Aldro- 
 
 11^,: I vand appeared in the middle of the gateway, arrayed in his 
 
 ]jj, j sacerdotal habit, whilst a little space behind him stood the 
 I j orphaned damsel, in such weeds of mourning as time ad- 
 
 ,^y I mitted, supported by her attendant Rose, and followed by 
 
 'jjj the females of the household. 
 
 ■jll I The Constable of Chester paused upon the threshold of 
 
 ^,,,]i \ the outer gate, and, pointing to the cross signed in white 
 
 ; cloth upon his left shoulder, with a lowly reverence resigned 
 
 to his nephew, Damian, the task of attending the remains 
 
 ji. I of Raymond Berenger to the chapel within the castle. The 
 
 ■ il soldiers of Hugo de Lacy, most of whom were bound by the 
 
84 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 same vow with himself, also halted v/ithoat the castle gate, 
 and remained under arms, while the death-peal of the 
 chapel bell announced from within the progress of the pro- 
 cession. 
 
 It winded on through those narrow entrances which were 
 skilfully contrived to interrupt the progress of an enemy, 
 even should he succeed in forcing the outer gate, and 
 arrived at length in the great courtyard, where most of the 
 inhabitants of the fortress, and those who, under recent 
 circumstances, had taken refuge there, were drawn up, in 
 order to look, for the last time, on their departed lord. 
 Among these were mingled a few of the motley crowd from 
 without, whom curiosity, or the expectation of a dole, had 
 brought to the castle gate, and who, by one argument or 
 another, had obtained from the warders permission to enter 
 the interior. 
 
 The body was here set down before the door of the chapel, 
 the ancient Gothic front of which formed one side of the 
 courtyard, until certain prayers were recited by the priests, 
 in which the crowd around were supposed to join with 
 becoming reverence. 
 
 It was during this interval that a man, whose peaked 
 beard, embroidered girdle, and high-crowned hat of gray 
 felt gave him the air of a Lombard merchant, addressed 
 Margery, the nurse of Eveline, in a whispering tone, and 
 with a foreign accent. "lam a traveling mercliant, good 
 sister, and am come hither in quest of gain ; can you tell 
 me Avhether I can have any custom in this castle ?" 
 
 " You are come at an b\\\ time, sir stranger : you may 
 yourself see that this is a place for mourning, and not for 
 merchandise.'" 
 
 " Yet mourning times have their own commerce," said 
 the stranger, approaching still closer to the side of Margery, 
 and lowering his voice to a tone yet more confidential. " I 
 have sable scarfs of Persian silk ; black bugles, in which a 
 princess might mourn for a deceased monarch ; Cyprus, such 
 as the East hath seldom sent forth ; black cloth for mourn- 
 ing hangings — all that may express sorrow and reverence in. 
 fashion and attire ; and I know how to be grateful to those 
 who help me to custom. Come, bethink you, good dame, 
 such things must be had ; I will sell as good ware and as 
 cheap as another ; and a kirtle to yourself, or at youi 
 pleasure, a purse with five florins, shall be the meed of youi 
 kindness." 
 
 *' I prithee peace, friend," said Margery, "and choose i 
 
THE BETROTHED 
 
 better time for vaiuiting your wares ; you neglect both 
 place and season, and if you be farther importunate, I must 
 speak to those who will show you the outward side of the 
 castle gate. I marvel the warders would admit peddlers 
 upon a day such as this : they would drive a gainful bar- 
 gaiu by the bedside of their mother, were she dying, I 
 trow/' So saying, she turned scornfully from him. 
 
 While thus angrily rejected on the one side, the merchant 
 felt his cloak receive an intelligent twitch upon the other, 
 and, looking around upon the signal, he saw a dame, whose 
 black kerchief was affectedly disposed, so as to give an ap- 
 pearance of solemnity to a set of light laughing features, 
 which must have been captivating when young, since they 
 retained so many good points when at least forty years had 
 passed over them. She winked to the mercliaut, touching 
 at the same time her under lip with her forefinger, to an- 
 nounce the propriety of silence and secrecy ; then gliding 
 ■ from the crowd, retreated to a small recess formed by a 
 projecting buttress of the chapel, as if to avoid the pressure 
 - likely to take place at the moment when the bier should be 
 ilifted. The merchant failed not to follow her example, and 
 ;iM [was soon by her side, when she did not give him the trouble of 
 iWjiopening his affairs, but commenced the conversation herself. 
 m\ " 1 have heard what you said to our Dame Margery — 
 '; Mannerly Margery, as I call her — heard as much, at least, 
 as led me to guess the rest, for I have got an eye in my 
 . :- head, I promise you." 
 
 i "A pair of them, my pretty dame, and as bright as drops 
 of dew in a May morning." 
 
 " Oh, you say so, because I have been weeping," said the 
 
 scarlet-hosed Gillian, for it was even herself who spoke ; 
 
 a \" and to be sure, I have good cause, for our lord was always 
 
 0i jmy very good lord, and would sometimes chuck me under 
 
 ■■! ^the chin, and call me buxom Gillian of Croydon ; not that 
 
 the good gentleman was ever uncivil, for he would thrust a 
 
 silver twopennies into my hand at the same time. Oh ! the 
 
 friend that I have lost ! And I have had anger on this 
 
 account too: I have seen old Raoul as sour as vinegar, and 
 
 ■ fit for no place but the kennel for a whole day about it ; 
 
 but, as I said to him, it was not for the like of me to be 
 
 ,„ li affronting our master, and a great baron, about a chuck 
 
 TOiii fonder the chin, or a kiss, or such like." 
 
 "No wonder you are so sorry for so kind a master, 
 dame," said the merchant. 
 " No wonder indeed," replied the dame, with a sigh j 
 
 mosei 
 
86 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 " and then what is to become of us ? It is like my young 
 mistress will go to her aunt ; or she will marry one of these 
 Lacys that they talk so much of ; or, at any rate, she will 
 leave the castle ; and it's like old Raoul and I will be turned 
 to grass with the lord's old chargers. The Lord knows, 
 they may as well hang him up with the old hounds, for he 
 is both footless and faugless, and fit for nothing on earth 
 that I know of." 
 
 " Your young mistress is that lady in the mourning 
 mantle," said the merchant, "who so nearly sunk down 
 upon the body just now ?" 
 
 "In good troth is she, sir, and much cause she has to 
 sink dow)i. I am sure she will be to seek for such another 
 father." 
 
 " I see you are a most discerning woman, gossip Gillian," 
 answered the merchant ; " and yonder youth that sui^ported 
 her is her bridegroom ? " 
 
 " Much need she has for some one to support her," said 
 Gillian ; ' * and so have I for that matter, for what can poor 
 old rusty Raoul do ? " 
 
 . " But as to your young lady's marriage?" said the mer- 
 chant. 
 
 "No one knows more, than that such a thing was in 
 treaty between our late lord and the great Constable of 
 Chester, that came to-day but just in time to prevent the 
 "Welsh from cutting all our throats, and doing the Lore 
 knoweth what mischief besides. But there is a marriagf 
 talked of, that is certain ; and most folk think it must b( 
 for this smooth-cheeked boy, Damian, as they call him ; foi 
 though the Constable has gotten a beard, which his nephev 
 hath not, it is something too grizzled for a bridegroom' 
 chin. Besides, he goes to the Holy Wars — fittest place fo 
 all elderly warriors — I wish he would take Raoul with him 
 But what is all this to what you were saying about you 
 mourning wares eveu now ? It is a sad truth, that my poo 
 lord is gone. But what then. Well-a-day, you know th 
 good old saw — 
 
 Cloth must we wear. 
 Eat beef and drink beer, 
 Though the dead go to bier. ' 
 
 And for your merchandising, I am as like to help you wit 
 my good word as Mannerly Margery, provided you bid fa 
 for it ; since, if the lady loves me not so much, I can tur 
 the steward round my finger." 
 
THE BETROTHED 87 
 
 **Take this in part of our bargain, pretty Mrs. Gillian," 
 said the merchant ; " and when my wains come up, I will 
 consider you amply, if I get good sale by your favorable re- 
 port. But how shall I get into the castle again ? for I would 
 wish to consult you, being a sensible woman, before I come 
 in with my luggage." 
 
 " Why," answered the complaisant dame, *'if our English be 
 on guard, you have only to ask for Gillian, and they will open 
 tlie wicket to any single man at once — for we English stick 
 all together, were it but to spite the Normans ; but if a Nor- 
 man be on duty, you must ask for old Eaoul, and say you 
 come to speak of dogs and hawks for sale, and I warrant you 
 come to speech of me that way. If the sentinel be a Flem- 
 ing, you have but to say you are a merchant, and he will let 
 you in for the love of trade." 
 
 The merchant repeated his thankful acknowledgment, 
 glided from her side, and mixed among tlie spectators, leav- 
 ing her to congratulate herself on liaving gained a brace of 
 florins by the indulgence of her natural talkative humor ; 
 for which, on other occasions, she had sometimes dearly 
 paid. 
 
 The ceasing of the heavy toll of the castle bell now gave 
 intimation that the noble Eaymond Berenger had been laid 
 in the vault with his fathers. That part of the funeral 
 attendants who had come from the host of De Lacy now pro- 
 ceeded to the castle hall, where they partook, but with tem- 
 perance, of some refreshments, which were offered as a death- 
 meal ; and presently after left the castle, headed by young 
 Damian, in the same slow and melancholy form in which 
 they had entered. The monks remained w'ithin the castle 
 to sing repeated services for the soul of the deceased, and 
 for those of his faithful men-at-arms who had fallen around 
 him, and who had been so much mangled during, and after, 
 the contest with the Welsh that it was scarce possible to 
 know one individual from another ; otherwise the body of 
 Dennis Morolt would have obtained, as his faith well de- 
 : served, the honors of a separate funeral.* 
 
 * See Cruelties of the Welsh. Jf ote 9. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The funeral baked meats 
 Did coldly furnish forth the marriage table. 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 The religious rites which followed the funeral of Eaymond 
 Berenger endured without interruption for theperiod"^ of six- 
 days, during which alms were distributed to the poor, and 
 relief administered, at the expense of the Lady Eveline, to 
 all those who had suffered by the late inroad. Death-meals, 
 as they were termed, were also S23read in honor of the de- 
 ceased ; but the lady herself, and most of her attendants, 
 observed a stern course of vigil, discipline, and fasts, which 
 appeared to the Normans a more decorous manner of testi- 
 fying their respect for the dead than the Saxon and Flemish 
 custom of banqueting and drinking inordinately upon such 
 occasions. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Constable de Lacy retained a large body 
 of his men encamped under the walls of the Garde Do- 
 lourense, for protection against some new irruption of the 
 Welsh, while with the rest he took advantage of his victory 
 and struck terror into the British by many well-conducted 
 forays, marked with ravages scarcely less hurtful than their 
 own. Among the enemy, the evils of discord were added 
 to those of defeat and invasion ; for two distant relations of 
 Gwenwyn contended for the throne he had lately occupied 
 and on this, as on many other occasions, the Britons suffered 
 as much from internal dissension as from the sword of the 
 Normans. A worse politician and a less celebrated soldier 
 than the sagacious and successful De Lacy could not have 
 failed, under such circumstances, to negotiate as he did an 
 advantageous peace, which, while it deprived Powys of a part 
 of its frontier, and the command of some important passes, 
 in which it was the Constable's purpose to build castlesy 
 rendered the Garde Doloureuse more secure than formerly 
 from any sudden attack on the part of their fiery and rest-i 
 less neighbors. De Lacy's care also went to re-establishing 
 those settlers who had fled from their possessions, and puti 
 ting the whole lordship, which now descended upon an un* 
 
 I 
 
THE BETROTHED 89 
 
 protected female, into a state of defeuse as pei'fect as its 
 situation on a hostile frontier could possibly permit. 
 
 Whilst thus anxiously provident in the affairs of the orphan 
 of the Garde Doloureuse, De Lacy, during the space we have 
 mentioned, sought not to disturb her filial grief by any per- 
 sonal intercourse. His nephew, indeed, was despatched by 
 times every morning to lay before her his uncle's devoirs, in 
 the high-flown language of the day, and acquaint her with 
 che steps whicli he had taken in her affairs. As a meed due 
 to his relative's high services, Damian was always admitted 
 to see Eveline on such occasions, and returned charged with 
 her grateful thanks, and her implicit acquiescence in what- 
 ever the Constable proposed for her consideration. 
 
 But when the days of rigid mourning were elapsed, the 
 young De Lacy stated, on the part of his kinsman, that his 
 treaty with the AVelsh being concluded, and all things in the 
 district arranged as well as circumstances would permit, the 
 Constable of Chester now proposed to return into his own 
 territory, in order to resume his instant preparations for the 
 Holy Land, which the duty of chastising her enemies had 
 for some days interrupted. 
 
 "And will not the noble Constable, before he departs from 
 this place," said Eveline, with a burst of gratitude which 
 the occasion well merited, " receive the personal thanks of 
 her that was ready to perish when he so valiantly came to 
 herald?" 
 
 " It was even on that point that I was commissioned to 
 speak," replied Damian ; "but my noble kinsman feels dif- 
 fident to propose to you that which he most earnestly desires 
 — the privilege of speaking to your own ears certain matters 
 of high import, and Avith which he judges it fit to entrust no 
 third party." 
 
 "Surely," said the maiden, blushing, "there can be 
 , , naught beyond the bounds of maidenhood in my seeing the 
 ij*j noble Constable whenever such is his pleasure." 
 ijj "But his vow," replied Damian, "binds my kinsman not 
 p.jf j to come beneath a roof until he sets sail for Palestine ; and 
 .;fi j in order to meet him, you must grace him so far as to visit 
 [l(ii( his pavilion — a condescension which, as a knight and Nor- 
 J| man noble, he can scarcely ask of a damsel of high degree." 
 '0 \ " And is that all ?" said Eveline, who, educated in a re- 
 ^jj: j-mote situation, was a stranger to some of the nice points of 
 ^. \ etiquette which the damsels of the time observed in keeping 
 '.- , their state towards the other sex. " Shall I not," she said, 
 " go to render my thanks to my deliverer, since he cannot 
 
90 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 come hither to receive them ? Tell the noble Hngo de Lacy 
 that, next to my gratitude to Heaven, it is due to him and 
 to his brave companions in arms. I will come to his tent as 
 to a holy shrine ; and, could such homage please him, I 
 would come barefooted, were the roads strewed with flints 
 and with thorns." 
 
 " My uncle will be equally honored and delighted with 
 your resolve," said Damian ; " but it will be his study to save 
 you all unnecessary trouble, and with that view a pavilion 
 shall be instantly planted before your castle gate, which, if 
 it please you to grace it with your j)resence, may be the place 
 for the desired interview." 
 
 Eveline readily acquiesced in what was proposed, as the 
 expedient agreeable to the Constable and recommended by 
 Damian ; but, in the simplicity of her heart, she saw no 
 good reason why, under the guardianship of the latter, she 
 should not instantly, and without farther form, have trav- 
 ersed the little familiar plain on which, when a child, she 
 used to chase butterflies and gather king's-cups, and where 
 of later years she was wont to exercise her palfrey on this 
 well-known plain, being the only space, and that of small 
 extent, which separated her from the camp of the Constable 
 
 The youthful emissary, with whose presence she had now 
 become familiar, retired to acquaint his kinsman and lord 
 with the success of his commission ; and Eveline experienced 
 the first sensation of anxiety upon her own account which 
 had agitated her bosom since the defeat and death of 
 Gwenwyn gave her permission to dedicate her thouglits ex 
 clusively to grief for the loss which she had sustained in the 
 person of her noble father. But now, when that grief 
 though not satiated, was blunted by solitary indulgence ; 
 now that she was to appear before the person of whose fame 
 she had heard so much, of whose powerful protection she 
 had received such recent proofs, her mind insensibly turned 
 upon the nature and consequences of that important inter- 
 view. She had seen Hugo de Lacy, indeed, at the great 
 tournament at Chester, where his valor and skill were thai 
 theme of every tongue, and she had received the homage 
 which he rendered her beauty when he assigned to her the 
 prize with all the gay flutterings of youthful vanity ; but of 
 his person and figure she had no distinct idea, exceptingi 
 that he was a middle-sized man. dressed in peculiarly rich! 
 armor, and that the countenance wliich looked out fromi 
 under the sliade of his raised visor seemed to heiMuvenile 
 estimate very nearly as old as that of her father. This per 
 
 
THE BETROTHED 91 
 
 son, of whom she had such slight recollection, had been the 
 chosen instrument employed by her tutelar protectress in 
 rescuing her from captivity, and in avenging the loss of a 
 father, and she was bound by her vow to consider him as the 
 arbiter of her fate, if indeed he should deem it worth his 
 while to become so. She wearied her memory with vain 
 *■' efforts to recollect so much of his features as might give her 
 some means of guessing at his disposition, and her judgment 
 toiled in conjecturing what line of conduct he was likely to 
 pursue towards her. 
 
 The great baron himself seemed to attach to their meeting 
 
 a degree of consequence, which was intimated by the formal 
 
 preparations which he made for it. Eveline had imagined 
 
 : that he might have ridden to the gate of the castle in five 
 
 ■ minutes, and that, if a pavilion were actually necessary to 
 the decorum of their interview, a tent could have been 
 transferred from his leaguer to the castle gate, and pitched 
 there in ten minutes more. But it was plain that the Con- 
 stable considered much more form and ceremony as essential 
 to their meeting ; for, in about half an hour after Damian 
 de Lacy had left the castle, not fewer than twenty soldiers 
 and artificers, under the direction of a pursuivant, whose 
 tabard was decorated with the armorial bearings of the house 
 of Lacy, were employed in erecting before tlie gate of the 
 Garde Doloureuse one of those splendid pavilions which 
 were employed at tournaments and other occasions of public 
 state. It was of purple silk, valanced with gold embroidery, 
 
 ■ having the cords of the same rich materials. The doorway 
 '^■' was formed by six lances, the staves of which were plated 
 
 • with silver, and the blades composed of the same precious 
 
 ■ metal. These were pitched into the ground by couples, and 
 crossed at the top, so as to form a sort of succession of 
 arches, Avhich were covered by drapery of sea-green silk, 
 forming a pleasing contrast with the purple and gold. 
 
 i^" i The interior of the tent was declared by Dame Gillian and 
 'f''j others, whose curiosity induced them to visit it, to be of a 
 f^'M splendor agreeing with the outside. There were Oriental 
 '''* i carpets, and there were tapestries of Ghent and Bruges 
 if '; mingled in gay profusion, while the top of the pavilion, 
 
 * i covered with sky-blue silk, was arranged so as to resemble 
 I'* I the firmament, and richly studded with a sun, moon, and 
 ■"• stars, composed of solid silver. This gorgeous pavilion had 
 
 been made for the use of the celebrated William of Ypres, 
 ' who acquired such great wealth as general of the mercena- 
 i"''' ■ ries of King Stephen, and was by him created Earl of Albe- 
 
92 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 marie ; but the chance of war had assigned it to De Lacy, , 
 after one of the dreadful engagements so many of which i 
 occurred during the civil wars betwixt Stephen and the 
 Empress Maude, or Matilda. The Constable had never be- 
 fore been known to use it ; for, although wealthy and power- 
 ful, Hugo de Lacy was, on most occasions, plain and un- 
 ostentatious ; which, to those who knew him, made ' his 
 present conduct seem the more remarkable. At the hour of 
 noon he arrived, nobly mounted, at the gate of the castle, 
 and drawing up a small body of servants, pages, and equer- 
 ries, who attended him in their richest liveries, placed him- 
 self at their head, and directed his nephew to intimate to 
 the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse that the humblest of her 
 servants awaited the honor of her presence at the castle 
 gate. 
 
 Among the spectators who witnessed his arrival, there 
 were many who thought that some part of the state and J 
 splendor attached to his pavilion and his retinue had been 
 better applied to set forth the person of the Constable him- 
 self, as his attire was simple even to meanness, and his per- 
 son by no means of such distinguished bearing as might 
 altogether dispense with the advantages of dress and orna- 
 ment. The opinion became yet more prevalent when he 
 descended from horseback, until which time his masterly 
 management of the noble animal he bestrode gave a dignity 
 to his person and figure which he lost upon dismounting 
 from his steel saddle. In height, the celebrated Constable 
 scarce attained the middle size, and his limbs, though 
 strongiy built and well knit, were deficient in grace and I 
 ease of movement. His legs were slightly curved outwards, 
 which gave liim advantage as a horseman, but showed un- 
 favorably when he was upon foot. He halted, though very 
 slightly, in consequence of one of his legs having been 
 broken by the fall of a charger, and inartificially set by an 
 inexperienced surgeon. This, also, was a blemish in his 
 deportment ; and though his broad shoulders, sinewy arms, 
 and expanded chest betokened the strength which he often 
 displayed, it was strength of a clumsy and ungraceful char- 
 acter. His language and gestures were those of one seldom 
 used to converse with equals, more seldom still with supe- 
 riors — short, abrupt, and decisive, almost to the verge of 
 sternness. In the judgment of those who were habitually 
 acquainted with the Constable, there was both dignity and 
 kindness in his keen eye and expanded brow ; but such as 
 saw him for the first time judged less favorably, and pre- 
 
TEE BETROTHED 93 
 
 tended to discover a harsh and passionate expression, 
 although they allowed his countenance to have, on the 
 whole, a bold and martial character. His age was in reality 
 not more than five-and-forty, but the fatigues of war and of 
 climate had added in appearance ten years to that period of 
 time. By far the jjlainest dressed man of his train, he wore 
 only a short Norman mantle over the close dress of shamoy 
 leather, which, almost always covered by his armor, was in 
 some places slightly soiled by its pressure. A brown hat, in 
 which he wore a sprig of rosemary in memory of his vow, 
 served for his head-gear ; his good sword and dagger hung 
 at a belt made of seal-skin. 
 
 Thus accoutered, and at the head of a glittering and gilded 
 band of retainers, who watched his slightest glance, the Con- 
 stable of Chester awaited the arrival of the Lady Eveline 
 Berenger at the gate of her castle of Garde Dolou reuse. 
 
 The trumpets from within announced her presence, the 
 bridge fell, and, led by Damian de Lacy in his gayest habit, 
 and followed by her train of females and menial or vassal 
 attendants, she came forth in her loveliness from under the 
 massive and antique portal of her paternal fortress. She 
 was dressed without ornaments of any khid, and in deep 
 mourning weeds, as best befitted lier recent loss ; forming, 
 in this respect, a strong contrast with the rich attire of her 
 conductor, whose costly dress gleamed with jewels and em- 
 broidery, while their age and personal beauty made them in 
 every other respect the fair counterpart of each other — a 
 circumstance which probably gave rise to the delighted mur- 
 mur and buzz which passed through the bystanders on their 
 appearance, and which only respect for the deep mourning 
 of Eveline prevented from breaking out into shouts of ap- 
 plause. 
 
 The instant that the fair foot of Eveline had made a step 
 beyond the palisades which formed the outward barrier of 
 the castle, the Constable de Lacy came forward to meet her, 
 and, bending his right knee to the earth, craved pardon for 
 the discourtesy which his vow had imposed on him, while 
 he expressed his sense of the honor with which she now 
 graced him as one for which his life, devoted to her service, 
 would be an inadequate acknowledgment. 
 
 The action and speech, though both in consistence with 
 the romantic gallantry of the times, embarrassed Eveline, 
 and the rather that this homage was so publicly rendered. 
 She entreated the Constable to stand up, and not to add to 
 the confusion of one who was already sufficiently at a loss 
 
94 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 how to acquit herself of the heavy debt of gratitude which 
 she owed him. The Constable arose accordingly, after salut- 
 ing her hand, which she extended to him, and prayed her, 
 since she was so far condescending, to deign to enter the 
 poor hut he had prepared for her shelter, and to grant him 
 the honor of the audience he had solicited. Eveline, with- 
 out further answer than a bow, yielded him her hand, and, 
 desiring the rest of her train to remain where they were, 
 commanded the attendance of Itose Flammock. 
 
 " Lady," said the Constable, " the matters of which I am 
 compelled thus hastily to speak are of a nature the most 
 private." 
 
 " This maiden," replied Eveline, '' is my bower-woman, 
 and acquainted with my most inward thoughts ; I beseech 
 you to permit her presence at our conference." 
 
 "It were better otherwise," said Hugo de Lacy, with 
 some embarrassment ; " but your pleasure shall be obeyed." 
 
 He led the Lady Eveline into the tent, and entreated her 
 to be seated on a large pile of cushions, covered with rich 
 Venetian silk. Rose placed herself behind her mistress, half 
 kneeling upon the same cushions, and watched the motions 
 of the all-accomplished soldier and statesman, whom the voice 
 of fame lauded so loudly, enjoying his embarrassment as a 
 triumph of her sex, and scarcely of opinion that his shamoy 
 doublet and square form accorded with the splendor of the 
 scene, or the almost angelic beauty of Eveline, the other 
 actor therein. 
 
 " Lady," said the Constable, after some hesitation, " I 
 would willingly say what it is my lot to tell you in such 
 terras as ladies love to listen to, and which surely your ex- 
 cellent beauty more especially deserves ; but I have been too 
 long trained in camps and councils to express my meaning 
 otherwise than simply and plainly." 
 
 " I shall the more easily understand you, my lord," said 
 Eveline, trembling, though she scarce knew why. 
 
 " My story, then, must be a blunt one. Something there 
 passed between your honorable father and myself, touching 
 a union of our houses." He paused, as if he wished or ex- 
 pected Eveline to say something, but, as she was silent, he 
 proceeded. " I would to God that, as he was at the begin- 
 ning of this treaty, it had pleased Heaven he should have 
 conducted and concluded it with his usual wisdom ; but 
 what remedy ? he has gone the path which we must all tread." 
 
 " Your lordship," said Eveline, " has nobly avenged the 
 death of your noble friend." 
 
THE BETROTHED 95 
 
 '* I have but done my devoir, lady, as a good l^night in 
 defense of an endangered maiden, a Lord Marcher in pro- 
 tection of the frontier, and a friend in avenging his friend. 
 But to the point. Our long and noble line draws near to a 
 close. Of my remote kinsman, Kandal Lacy, I will not 
 speak ; for in him I see nothing that is good or hopeful, nor 
 have we been at one for many years. My nephew, Damian, 
 gives hopeful promise to be a worthy branch of our ancient 
 tree ; but he is scarce twenty years old, and hath a long 
 career of adventure and peril to encounter ere he can hon- 
 orably propose to himself the duties of domestic privacy or 
 matrimonial engagements. His mother also is English, 
 some abatement perhaps in the escutcheon of his arms ; yet, 
 had ten years more passed over him with the honors of 
 chivalry, I should have proposed Damian de Lacy for the 
 happiness to which I at present myself aspire." 
 
 '' You — you, my lord ! it is impossible ! " said Eveline, 
 endeavoring at tlie same time to suppress all that could be 
 offensive in the surprise which she could not help exhibit- 
 ing. 
 
 " I do not wonder," replied the Constable, calmly, for, 
 the ice now being broken, he resumed the natural steadi- 
 ness of his manner and character — " that you express sur- 
 prise at this daring proposal. I have not perhaps the form 
 that pleases a lady's eye, and I have forgotten — that is, if 
 ever I knew them — the terms and phrases which please a 
 lady's ear ; but, noble Eveline, the lady of Hugo de Lacy will 
 be one of the foremost among the matronage of England," 
 
 '' It will the better become the individual to whom so 
 high a dignity is offered," said Eveline, " to consider how 
 far she is capable of discharging its duties," 
 
 " Of that I fear nothing," said De Lacy. *' She who 
 hath been so excellent a daughter cannot be less estimable 
 in every other relation in life." 
 
 " I do not find that confidence in myself, my lord," re- 
 plied the embarrassed maiden, " with which you are so will- 
 ing to load me. And I — forgive me — must crave time for 
 other inquiries as well as those which respect myself," 
 
 " Your father, noble lady, had this union warmly at 
 heart. This scroll, signed with his own hand, will show it." 
 He bent his knee as he gave the paper. " The wife of De 
 Lacy will have, as the daughter of Raymond Berenger 
 merits, the rank of a princess ; his widow, the dowry of a 
 queen." 
 
 " Mock me not with your knee, my lord, while you plead 
 
96 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 to me the paternal commands, which, joined to other cir- 
 cumstances " she paused, and sighed deeply — " leave 
 
 me, perhaps, but little room for free-will I " 
 
 Emboldened by this answer, De Lacy, who had hitherto 
 remained on his knee, rose gently, and assuming a seat be- 
 side the Lady Eveline, continued to press his suit — not, 
 indeed, in the language of passion, but of a plain-spoken 
 man, eagerly urging a proposal on which his happiness 
 depended. The vision of the miraculous image was, it 
 may be supposed, uppermost in the mind of Eveline, wdio, 
 tied down by the solemn vow she had made on that occasion, 
 felt herself constrained to return evasive answ^ers, where she 
 might perhaps have given a direct negative, had her own 
 wishes alone been to decide her reply. 
 
 " You cannot," she said, " expect from me, my lord, in 
 this my so recent orphan state, that I should come to a 
 speedy determination upon an affair of such deep import- 
 ance. Give me leisure of your nobleness for consideration 
 with myself — for consultation with my friends." 
 
 " Alas ! fair Eveline," said the baron, " do not be offended 
 at my urgency. I cannot long delay setting forward on a 
 distant and perilous expedition ; and the short time left zne 
 for soliciting your favor must be an apology for my im- 
 portunity." 
 
 " And is it in these circumstances, noble De Lacy, that 
 you would encumber yourself with family ties ?" asked the 
 maiden, timidly. 
 
 "I am God's soldier," said the Constable, "and He in 
 wdiose cause I fight in Palestine will defend my Avife in 
 England." 
 
 "■ Hear then my present answer, my Lord," said Eveline 
 Berenger, rising from her seat. " To-morrow I proceed to 
 the Benedictine nunnery at Gloucester, where resides my 
 honored father's sister, who is abbess of that reverend house. 
 To her guidance I will commit myself in this matter." 
 
 "A fair and maidenly resolution," answered De Lacy, 
 who seemed, on his part, rither glad that the conference 
 was abridged, " and, as I trust, not altogether unfavorable 
 to the suit of your humble suppliant, since the good lady 
 abbess hath been long my honored friend.'' He then turned 
 to Rose, who w^as about to attend her lady. '• Pretty 
 maiden," he said, offering a chain of gold, " let this car- 
 canet encircle thy neck and buy thy good-will." 
 
 " My good-will cannot be purchased, my lord," saidRose^ 
 putting back the gift which he proffered. 
 
THE BEIBOIEEB 97 
 
 "Your fair word then/' said the Constable, again pressing 
 it upon her. 
 
 " Fair words are easily bought," said Eose, still rejecting 
 the chain, " but they are seldom worth the purchase- 
 money." 
 
 " Do you scorn my proffer, damsel ?" said De Lacy ; **it 
 has graced the neck of a Norman count." 
 
 " Give it to a Norman countess, then, my lord," said the 
 damsel. " I am plain Rose Flammock, the weaver's daugh- 
 ter. I keep my good word to go with my good-will, and a 
 latten chain will become me as well as beaten gold." 
 
 " Peace, Rose," said her lady ; " you are over malapert to 
 talk thus to the Lord Constable. And you, my lord," she 
 continued, "■ permit me now to depart, since you are pos- 
 sessed of my answer to your present proposal. I regret it 
 had not been of some less delicate nature, that, by granting 
 it at once, and without delay, I might have shown my sense 
 of your services." 
 
 The lady was handed forth by the Constable of Chester 
 with the same ceremony which had been observed at their 
 entrance, and she returned to her own castle, sad and anx- 
 ious in mind for the event of this important coxiference. 
 She gathered closely around her the great mourning-veil, 
 that the alteration of her countenance might not be ob- 
 served ; and, without pausing to speak even to Father 
 Aldrovand, she instantly withdrew to the privacy of her 
 own bower. 
 7 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Now all ye ladies of fair Scotland, 
 And ladies of England, that happy would prove, 
 
 Marry never for houses, nor marry for land, 
 Nor marry for nothing but only love. 
 
 Family Quarrels. 
 
 When the Lady Eveline had retired into her own private 
 chamber, Rose Fhimniock followed her unbidden, and prof- 
 fered her assistance in removing the large veil which she had 
 worn while she was abroad ; but the lady refused her per- 
 mission, saying, "You are forward with service, maiden, 
 when it is not required of you." 
 
 " You are displeased with me, lady ! " said Rose. 
 
 "And if I am, I have cause," replied Eveline. **You 
 know my difficulties, you know what my duty demands ; yet, 
 instead of aiding me to make the sacrifice, you render it 
 more difficult." 
 
 " Would I had influence to guide your path I" said Rose ; 
 **you should find it a smooth one — ay, an honest and 
 straight one to boot." 
 
 "How mean you, maiden !" said Eveline. 
 
 *' I would have you," answered Rose, " recall the encour- 
 agement — the consent, I may almost call it — you have 
 yielded to this proud baron. He is too great to be loved 
 himself, too haughty to love you as you deserve. If you 
 wed him, you wed gilded misery, and, it may be, dishonor as 
 well as discontent." 
 
 "Remember, damsel," answered Eveline Berenger, "his 
 services towards us." 
 
 " His services ! " answered Rose. " He ventured his life 
 for us, indeed, but so did every soldier in his host. And am 
 I bound to wed any ruffling blade among them, because he 
 fought when the trumpet sounded ? I wonder what is the 
 meaning of their devoir, as they call it, when it shames 
 them not to claim the highest reward woman can be- 
 stow, merely for discharging the duty of a gentleman by a 
 distressed creature. A gentleman, said I ? The coarsest 
 boor in Flanders would hardly expect thanks for doing the 
 duty of a man by women in such a case," 
 
THE BETROTHED 99 
 
 "But my father's wishes ?" said the young lady. 
 
 " They had reference, without douht, to the inclination of 
 your father's daughter/' answered the attendant. " I will 
 not do my late noble lord — may God assoilzie him ! — the in- 
 justice to suppose he would have urged aught in this manner 
 which squared not with yoar free choice." 
 
 '' Then my vow — my fatal vow, as I had wellnigh called 
 it," said Eveline. " May Heaven forgive me my ingratitude 
 to my patroness ! " 
 
 " Even this shakes me not," said Rose. " I -will never 
 believe our Lady of Mercy would exact such a penalty for 
 her protection as to desire me to wed the man I could not 
 love. She smiled, you say, upon your prayer. Go, lay at 
 her feet these difficulties which oppress you, and sec if she 
 will not smile again. Or seek a dispensation from your vow 
 — seek it at the expense of half of your estate — seek it at the 
 expense of your whole property. Go a pilgrimage barefooted 
 to Rome — do anything but give your hand where you cannot; 
 give your heart." 
 
 " You speak warmly, Rose," said Eveline, still sighing as 
 she spoke. 
 
 " Alas ! my sweet lady, I have cause. Have I not seen a 
 household where love was not — where, although there was 
 worth and good-will, and enough of the means of life, all was 
 embittered by regrets, which were not only vain, but crim- 
 inal ?" 
 
 "Yet, methinks,Rose, a sense of what is due to ourselves 
 and others may, if listened to, guide and comfort us under 
 such feelings even as thou hast described." 
 
 " It will save us from sin, lady, but not from sorrow," an- 
 swered Rose ; " and wherefore should we, with our eyes 
 open, rush into circumstances where duty must war with 
 inclination ! Why row against wind and tide, when you 
 may as easily take advantage of tlie breeze ?" 
 
 " Because the voyage of my life lies where winds and cur- 
 rents oppose me," answered Eveline. ''It is my fate. Rose." 
 
 " Not unless you make it such by choice," answered Rose. 
 
 " 0, could you but have seen the pale cheek, sunken eye, and 
 dejected bearing of my poor mother! I have said too much." 
 
 *' It was then your mother," said her young lady, "of 
 whose unhappy wedlock you have spoken ? " 
 
 " It was — it was," said Rose, bursting into tears. '' Ihave 
 exposed my own shame to save you from sorrow. Unhappy 
 she was, though most guiltless — so unhappy, that the breach 
 of the dyke, and the inundation in which she perished, were, 
 
100 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 but for my saKe, to her welcome as night to the weary 
 laborer. She had a heart like yours, formed to love and to 
 be loved ; and it would be doing honor to yonder proud 
 baron to say he had such worth as my father's. Yet was 
 she most unhappy. ! my sweet lady, be warned, and 
 break off this ill-omened match ! " 
 
 Eveline returned the pressure with which the affectionate 
 girl, as she clung to her hand, enforced her well-meant ad- 
 vice, and then muttered, with a profound sigh, " Eose, it is 
 too late.'* 
 
 " Never — never," said Rose, looking eagerly round the 
 room. " Where are those writing-materials ? Let me bring 
 Father Aldrovand, and instruct him for your pleasure ; or 
 stay, the good father hatli himself an eye on the splendors 
 of the world which he thinks he has abandoned — he Avill be 
 no safe secretary. I will go myself to the Lord Constable ; 
 ine his rank cannot dazzle, or his wealth bribe, or his power 
 overawe. I will tell him he doth no knightly part towards 
 you, to press his contract with your father in such an hour 
 of helpless sorrow ; no pious part, in delaying the execution 
 of liis vows for the purpose of marrying or giving in mar- 
 riage ; no honest part, to press himself on a maiden whose 
 heart has not decided in his favor ; no wise part to marry 
 one whom he must presently abandon either to solitude or 
 to the dangers of a profligate court." 
 
 " You have not courage for such an embassy. Rose," said 
 her mistress, sadly smiling through her tears at her youth- 
 ful attendant's zeal. 
 
 " Not courage for it ! and wherefore not ? Try me," an- 
 swered the Flemish maiden, in return. " I am neither 
 Saracen or Welshman : his lance and sword scare me not. 
 I follow not his banner : his voice of command concerns me 
 not. 1 could, with your leave, boldly tell him he is a selfish 
 man, veiling with fair and honorable pretext his pursuit of 
 fibjects which concern his own pride and gratification, and 
 founding high claims on having rendered the services which 
 common humanity demanded. And all for what ? Forsooth, 
 the great De Lacy must have an heir to his noble house, and 
 his fair nephew is not good enough to be his representative, 
 because his mother was of Anglo-Saxon strain, and the real 
 heir must be pure unmixed Norman ; and for this Lady 
 Evelina Berenger, in the first bloom of youth, must be wed- 
 ded to a man who might be her father, and who, after leaving 
 her unprotected for years, will return in such guise as might 
 beseem her grandfather ! " 
 
THE BETRO'^HnD 101 
 
 '* Since he is thus scrupulous concerning purity of line- 
 age/' said Eveline, ''perhaps he may call to mind — what 
 80 good a herald as he is cannot fail to know — that I am of 
 Saxon strain by my father's mother," 
 
 *' Oh," replied Rose, "he will forgive that blot in the 
 heiress of the Garde Dolou reuse/' 
 
 " Fie, Rose/' answered her mistress, " thou dost him 
 wrong in taxing him with avarice/' 
 
 " Perhaps so/' answered Rose ; " but he is undeniably 
 ambitious ; and avarice, I have heard, is ambition's bastard 
 brother, though ambition be sometimes ashamed of the rela- 
 tionship/' 
 
 " You speak too boldly, damsel," said Eveline ; *'and, while 
 I acknowledge your affection, it becomes me to check your 
 mode of expression/' 
 
 "Nay, take that tone, and I have done," said Rose. *'To 
 Eveline, whom I love, and who loves me, I can speak freely ; 
 but to the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse, the prond Norman 
 damsel — which when you choose to be you can be — I can 
 courtesy as low as my station demands, and speak as little 
 truth as she cares to hear/' 
 
 " Thou art a wild but a kind girl," said Eveline, " no one 
 who did not know thee would think that soft and childish 
 exterior covered such a soul of fire. Thy mother must in- 
 deed have been the being of feeling and passion you paint 
 her ; for thy father — nay, nay, never arm in his defense un- 
 til he be attacked — I only meant to say, that his solid sense 
 and sound judgment are his most distinguished qualities/' 
 
 " And I would you would avail yourself of them, lady," 
 said Rose. 
 
 " In fitting things I will ; but he were rather an unmeet 
 counselor in that which we now treat of," said Eveline. 
 
 "You mistake him," answered Rose Elammock, " and 
 underrate his value. Sound judgment is like to the grad- 
 uated measuring-wand, which, though usually applied only 
 to coarser cloths, will give with equal truth the dimensions 
 of Indian silk or of cloth of gold." 
 
 "Well — well, this affair presses not instantly at least," 
 said the young lady. " Leave me now. Rose, and send Gil- 
 lian, the tirewoman, hither ; I have directions to give about 
 the packing and removal of my wardrobe." 
 
 ** That Gillian the tirewoman hath been a mighty favorite 
 of late/' said Rose ; " time was when it was otherwise." 
 
 " I like her manners as little as thou dost," said Eveline ; 
 " but she is old Raoul's wife : she was a sort of half-favorite 
 
102 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 with ray dear father, who, like other men, was perhaps taken 
 by that very freedom which we think unseeml}^ in persons of 
 our sex ; and then there is no otlier woman in the castle that 
 hath such skill in cmpacketing clothes without the risk of 
 their being injured." 
 
 *' That last reason alone," said Eose, smiling, "is, I ad- 
 mit, an irresistible pretension to favor, and Dame Gillian 
 shall presently attend you. But take my advice, lady : keep 
 her to her bales and her mails, and let her not prate to you 
 on what concerns her not." 
 
 So saying, Eose left the apartment, and her young lady 
 looked after her in silence, then murmured to herself — 
 " Eose loves me truly ; but she would willingly be more of 
 the mistress than the maiden ; and then she is somewhat 
 jealous of every other person that approaches me. It is 
 strange that I have not seen Damian de Lacy since my inter- 
 view with the Constable. He anticipates, I suppose, the 
 chance of his finding in me a severe aunt !" 
 
 But the domestics, who crowded for orders with reference 
 to her removal early on the morrow, began now to divert the 
 current of their lady's thoughts from the consideration of 
 her own particular situation, which, as the prospect pre- 
 sented nothing pleasant, with the elastic spirit of youth, she 
 willingly postponed till further leisure. 
 
CHAPTER Xm 
 
 Too mucli rest is rust, 
 
 There's ever cheer in changing ; 
 We tyne by too much trust, 
 
 So we'll be up and ranging. 
 
 Old Song. 
 
 JEarly on the subsequent morning, a gallant company, sad- 
 dened indeed by the deep mourning which their principals 
 wore, left the well-defended Castle of the Garde Doloureuse, 
 which had been so lately the scene of such remarkable 
 events. 
 
 The sun was just beginning to exhale the heavy dews 
 which had fallen during the night, and to disperse the thin 
 gray mist which eddied around towers and battlements, when 
 Wilkin Flammock, with six cross-bowmen on horseback, and 
 as many spearmen on foot, sallied forth from under the 
 Gothic gateway, and crossed the sounding drawbridge. After 
 this advanced guard came four household servants well 
 mounted, and after them as many inferior female attendants, 
 all in mourning. Then rode forth the young Lady Eveline 
 herself, occupying the center of the little procession, and 
 her long black robes formed a striking contrast to the color 
 of her milk-white palfrey. Beside her, on a Spanish jennet, 
 the gift of her affectionate father — who had procured it at a 
 high rate, and who would have given half his substance to 
 gratify his daughter — sat the girlish form of Eose Flam- 
 mock, who had so much of juvenile shyness in her manner, 
 so much of feeling and of judgment in her thoughts and 
 actions. Dame Margery followed, mixed in the party es- 
 corted by Father Aldrovand, whose company she chiefly 
 frequented ; for Margery affected* a little the character of 
 the devotee, and her influence in the family, as having been 
 Eveline's nurse, was so great as to render her no improper 
 companion for the chaplain, when her lady did not require 
 her attendance on her own person. Then came old Eaonl 
 the huntsman, his wife, and two or three other officers of 
 Raymond Berenger's household ; the steward, with his golden 
 chain, velvet cassock, and white wand, bringing up the rear, 
 which was closed by a small band of archers and four men- 
 103 
 
104 ' WAVERLET N0VSL8 
 
 at-arms. The guards, and indeed the greater part of the 
 attendants, were only designed to give the necessary degree 
 of honor to the young lady's movements, by accompanymg 
 her a short space from the castle, where they were met by 
 the Constable of Chester, who, with a retinue of thu'ty 
 lances, proposed himself to escort Eveline as far as Glouces- 
 ter, the place of her destination. Under his protection no 
 danger was to be apprehended, even if the severe defeat so 
 lately sustained bv the Welsh had not of itself been likely to 
 prevent any attempt, on the part of those hostile moun- 
 taineers, to disturb the safety of the marches for some time 
 
 to come. -,, J t.^ 
 
 In pursuance of this arrangement, which permitted the 
 armed part of Eveline's retinue to return for the protection 
 of the castle, and the restoration of order in the district 
 around, the Constable awaited her at the fatal bridge, at the 
 head of the gallant band of selected horsemen whom he had 
 ordered to attend upon him. The parties halted, as if to 
 salute each other ; but the Constable, observing that Eveline 
 drew her veil more closely around her, and recollecting the 
 loss she had so lately sustained on that luckless spot, had the 
 judgment to confine his greeting to a mute reverence, so 
 low1:hat the lofty plume which he wore (for he was now in 
 complete armor) minded with the flowing mane of his gal- 
 lant horse. Wilkin Flammock next halted, to ask the lady 
 if slie had any farther commands. 
 
 " None, good Wilkin," said Eveline ; "but to be, as ever, 
 true and watchful." , . -, -,^, i 
 
 "The properties of a good mastiff," said l^lammock. 
 " Some rude sagacity, and a stout hand instead of a sharp 
 case of teeth, are all that I can claim to be added to them. 
 I will do my best. Fare thee well, Roschen ! Thou art 
 going among strangers ; forget not the qualities which made 
 thee loved at home. The saints bless thee— farewell ! " ^ 
 
 The steward next approached to take his leave, but in 
 doino- so, had nearly met with a fatal accident. It had 
 been^the pleasure of Raoul, who was in his own disposi- 
 tion cross-orained, and in person rheumatic, to accommo- 
 date himself with an old Arab horse, which had been M 
 kept for the sake of the breed, as lean, and almost as m 
 lame, as himself, and with a temper as vicious as that ' 
 of a fiend. Betwixt the rider and the horse was a con- 
 stant misunderstanding, testified on Raoul's part by oaths, 
 rough checks with the curb, and severe digging with the 
 epurs, which Mahound (so pagauishly was the horse named) 
 
**The Constable awaited her at the fatal bridge." 
 
THE BETROTHED 105 
 
 answered by pluncjing, bounding, and endeavoring by all ex- 
 pedients to unseat his rider, as well as striking and lashing out 
 furiously at whatever else approached him. It was thought 
 by many of the household that Raoul preferred this vicious, 
 cross-tempered animal upon all occasions when he traveled 
 in company with his wife, in order to take advantage by the 
 chance that, amongst the various kicks, plunges, gambades, 
 lashings out, and other eccentricities of Mahound, his heela 
 might come in contact with Dame Gillian's ribs. And now, 
 when as the important steward spurred up his palfrey to kiss 
 his young lady's hand, and to take his leave, it seemed to the 
 bystanders as if Raoul so managed his bridle and spur, that 
 Mahound jerked out his hoofs at the same moment, one of 
 which coming in contact with the steward's thigh, would 
 have splintered it like a rotten reed, had tlie parties been a 
 couple of inches nearer to each other. As it was, the stew- 
 ard sustained considerable damage ; and they that observed 
 the grin upon Raoul's vinegar countenance entertained little 
 doubt that Mahound's heels then and there avenged certain 
 nods, winks, and wreathed smiles which had passed betwixt 
 the gold-chained functionary and the coquettish tirewoman 
 since the party left the castle. 
 
 This incident abridged the painful solemnity of parting 
 betwixt the Lady Eveline and her dependants, and lessened 
 at the same time the formality of her meeting with the Con- 
 stable, and, as it were, resigning herself to his protection. 
 
 Hugo de Lacy, having commanded six of his men-at-arms 
 to proceed as an advanced guard, remained himself to see the 
 steward properly deposited on a litter, and then, with the 
 rest of his followers, marched in military fashion about one 
 hundred yards in the rear of Lady Eveline and her retinue, 
 judiciously forbearing to present himself to her society while 
 she was engaged in the orisons which the place where they 
 met naturally suggested, and waiting patiently until the 
 elasticity of youthful temper should require some diversion 
 of the gloomy thoughts which the scene inspired. 
 
 Guided by this policy, the Constable did not approach the 
 ladies until the advance of the morning rendered it politeness 
 to remind them that a pleasant spot for breaking their fast 
 occurred in the neighborhood, where he had ventured to 
 make some preparations for rest and refreshment. Imme- 
 diately after the Lady Eveline had intimated her acceptance 
 of this courtesy, they came in sight of the spot he alluded 
 to, marked by an ancient oak, which, spreading its broad 
 branches far and wide, reminded the traveler of that ol 
 
106 WA VERLET NOVEL S 
 
 Mamre, under which celestial beings accepted the hospitality 
 of the patriarch. Across two of tliese huge protecting arms 
 was tiung a piece of rose-colored sarsnet, as a canopy to keep 
 off the morning beams, which were already rising high. 
 Cushions of silk, interchanged with others covered with the 
 furs of animals of the chase, were arranged round a repast 
 whicli a Norman cook had done his utmost to distinguish, 
 by the sui^erior delicacy of his art, from the gross meals of 
 the Saxons, and the penurious simplicity of the Welsh tables. 
 A. fountain which bubbled from under a large mossy stone at 
 some distance, refreshed the air with its sound,^ and the 
 taste with its liquid crystal ; while, at the same time, it 
 form.ed a cistern for cooling two or three flasks of Gascon 
 wine and hippocras, which were at that time the necessary 
 accompaniments of the morning meal. 
 
 When Eveline, with Rose, the confessor and at some farther 
 distance her faithful nurse, was seated at this sylvan banquet, 
 the leaves rustling to a gentle breeze, the water bubbling in 
 the background, the birds twittering around, while the half- 
 heard sounds of conversation and laughter at a distance an- 
 nounced that their guard was in the vicinity, she could not 
 avoid making the Constable some natural compliment on his 
 happy selection of a place of repose. " • 
 
 "You do me more than justice," replied the baron : '' the 
 spot was selected by my nephew, who hath a fancy like a 
 minstrel. Myself am but slow in imagining such devices.'" 
 
 Rose looked full at her mistress, as if she endeavored to 
 look into her very inmost soul ; but Eveline answered with 
 the utmost simplicity — " And wherefore hath not the noble 
 Damian waited to join us at the entertainment which he 
 hath directed ?" 
 
 ''He preferred riding onward," said the baron, "with 
 some light horsemen ; for, notwithstanding there are now no 
 Welsh knaves stirring, yet the marches are never free from 
 robbers and outlaws ; and though there is nothing to fear 
 for a band like ours, yet you should not be alarmed even by 
 the approach of danger." 
 
 ''I have indeed seen but too much of it lately," said 
 Eveline ; and relapsed into the melancholy mood from whicli 
 the novelty of the scene had for a moment awakened her. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Constable, removing, with the assistance 
 of his squire, his mailed hood and his steel crest, as well as 
 his gauntlets, remained in his flexible coat of mail, composed 
 entirely of rings of steel curiously interwoven, his hands bare, 
 and his brows covered with a velvet bonnet of a peculiar 
 
TBE BETROTHED l(fl 
 
 fashion, appropriated to the use of knights, and called a 
 mortier, which permitted him both to converse and to eat 
 more easily than when he wore the full defensive armor. His 
 discourse was plain, sensible, and manly ; and, turning upon 
 the state of the country, and the precautions to be observed 
 for governing and defending so disorderly a frontier, it be- 
 came gradually interesting to Eveline, one of whose warmest 
 wishes was to be the protectress of her father's vassals. De 
 Lacy, on his part, seemed much pleased ; for, young as Eve- 
 line was, her questions showed intelligence, and her mode of 
 answering both apprehension and docility. In short, famil- 
 iarity was so far established betwixt them that, in the next 
 stage of their journey, the Constable seemed to think his ap- 
 propriate place was at the Lady Eveline's bridle-rein ; and al- 
 though she certainly did not countenance his attendance, yet 
 neither did she seem willing to discourage it. Himself no 
 ardent lover, although captivated both with the beauty and 
 the amiable qualities of the fair orphan, De Lacy was satisfied 
 with being endured as a companion, and made no efforts to 
 improve the opportunity which this familiarity afforded him, 
 by recurring to any of the topics of the preceding day. 
 
 A halt was made at noon in a small village, where the 
 same purveyor had made preparations for their accommoda- 
 tion, and particularly for that of the Lady Eveline ; but, 
 something to her surprise, he himself remained invisible. 
 The conversation of the Constable of Chester was, doubtless, 
 in the highest degree instructive ; but at Eveline's years a 
 maiden might be excused for wishing some addition to the 
 society in the person of a younger and less serious attendant ; 
 and when she recollected the regularity with which Damian 
 Lacy had hitherto made his respects to her, she rather won- 
 dered at his continued absence. But her reflection went no 
 deeper than the passing thought of one who was not quite 
 so much delighted with her present company as not to be- 
 lieve it capable of an agreeable addition. She was lending a 
 patient ear to the account which the Constable gave her of 
 the descent and pedigree of a gallant knight of the distin- 
 guished family of Herbert, at whose castle he purposed to 
 repose dui-ing the night, when one of the retinue announced 
 a messenger from the Lady of Baldringham. 
 
 " My honored father's aunt," said Eveline, arising to 
 testify that respect for age and relationship which the man- 
 ners of the time required. 
 
 ''I knew not," said the Constable, " that my gallant friend 
 had such a relative." 
 
108 WA VERLEY NO VEL8 
 
 " She was my grandmother's sister," answered Eveline, 
 " a noble Saxon lady ; but she disliked the match formed 
 with a Norman house, and never saw her sister after the 
 period of her marriage." 
 
 She broke off, as the messenger, who had the appearance 
 of tlie steward of a person of consequence, entered their 
 presence, and, bending his knee reverently, delivered a 
 letter, which, being examined by Father Aldrovand, was 
 found to contain the following invitation, expressed, not in 
 French, then the general language of communication 
 amongst the gentry, but in the old Saxon language, modified 
 as it now was by some intermixture of French : — 
 
 " If the grand-daughter of Aelfreid of Baldringham hath 
 so much of the old Saxon strain as to desire to see an ancient 
 relation, who still dwells in the house of her forefathers and 
 lives after their manner, she is thus invited to repose for the 
 night in the dwelling of Ermengarde of Baldringham." 
 
 "Your pleasure will be, doubtless, to decline the present, 
 hospitality ?" said the Constable de Lacy. " The noble 
 Herbert expects us, and has made great preparation." 
 
 " Your presence, my lord," said Eveline, "will more than 
 console him for my absence. It is fitting and proper that I 
 should meet my aunt's advances to reconciliation, since she 
 has condescended to make them." 
 
 De Lacy's brow was slightly clouded, for seldom liad he 
 met with anything approaching to contradiction of his 
 pleasure. "I pray you to reflect. Lady Eveline," he said, 
 " that your aunt's house is probably defenseless, or at least 
 very imperfectly guarded. Would it not be your pleasure 
 that I should continue my dutiful attendance ?" 
 
 " Of that, my lord, mine aunt can, in her own house, be 
 the sole judge ; and methinks, as she has not deemed it 
 necessary to request the honor of your lordship's company, 
 it were unbecoming in me to permit you to take the trouble 
 of attendance : you have already had but too much on my 
 account." 
 
 " But for the sake of your own safety, madam," said De 
 Lacy, unwilling to leave his charge. 
 
 " My safety, my lord, cannot be endangered in the house 
 of so near a relative ; whatever precautions she may take on 
 her own behalf will doubtless be amply sufficient for mine." 
 
 " I hope it will be found so," said De Lacy ; " and I will 
 at lest add to them the security of a patrol around the castle 
 
THE BETROTHED 109 
 
 during your abode in it/' He stopped, and then proceeded 
 with some hesitation to express his hope that Eveline, now 
 about to visit a kinswoman whose prejudices against the 
 Norman race were generally known, would be on her guard 
 against what she might hear upon that subject. 
 
 Eveline answered with dignity, that the daughter of Ray- 
 mond Berenger was unlikely to listen to any opinions which 
 would alfect the dignity of that good knight's nation and 
 descent ; and with this assurance the Constable, finding it 
 impossible to obtain any which had more special reference 
 to himself and his suit, was compelled to remain satisfied, 
 ile recollected also that the castle of Herbert was within 
 iwo miles of the habitation of the Lady of Baldringham, and 
 that his separation from Eveline was but for one night ; yet 
 a sense of the difference betwixt their years, and perhaps of 
 his own deficiency in those lighter qualifications by Avhich 
 the female heart is supposed to be most frequently won, 
 rendered even this temporary absence matter of anxious 
 thought and apprehension ; so that, during their afternoon 
 journey, he rode in silence by Eveline's side, rather meditat- 
 ing what might chance to-morrow than endeavoring to avail 
 himself of present opportunity. In this unsocial manner 
 they traveled on until the point was reached where they 
 were to separate for the evening. 
 
 This was an elevated spot, from which they could see, on 
 the right hand, the castle of Amelot [William] Herbert, 
 rising high upon an eminence, with all its Gothic j^innacles 
 and turrets ; and on the left, low-embowered amongst oaken 
 woods, the rude and lonely dwelling in which the Lady of 
 Baldringham still maintained the customs of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, and looked with contempt and hatred on all in- 
 novations that had been introduced since the battle of 
 Hastings. 
 
 Here the Constable De Lacy, having charged a part of his 
 men to attend the Lady Eveline to the house of her relation, 
 and to keep watch around it with the utmost vigilance, but 
 at such a distance as might not give offense or inconvenience 
 to the family, kissed her hand, and took a reluctant leave. 
 Eveline proceeded onwards by a path so little trodden as to 
 show the solitary condition of the mansion to which it led. 
 Large kine, of an uncommon and valuable breed, were feed- 
 ing in the rich pastures around ; and now and then fallow 
 deer, which appeared to have lost the shyness of their nature, 
 tripped across the glades of the woodland, or stood and lay 
 in small groups under some great oak. The transient 
 
^jQ WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 v,;oK cnnli fl scene of rural quiet was calculated to 
 
 S »d otore'sSrous f eeling\, when a sudde.^Ujrn 
 
 t ifn un°-it once in front of the mansion-house, of which 
 
 iT'l? 1 seen nothing since she first beheld it from the point 
 
 1 p .henaJted with the Constable, and which she had 
 
 "" itn one leasl for regarding with some apprehension. 
 
 '''%t nnS for it could Sot be termed a castle, was only 
 
 Ihe house tor it cou ^^^-^ ^^-^^^ doors and 
 
 two stones hgh ow and J ^^,^^^ ^^^^-^^^ -^ ,,,,,^x\y 
 
 ""nrM^voT the walls were mantled with various creeping 
 called Saxon, the wans we undisturbed; grass 
 
 P^'^'nnto he very ttesl oW, at which hung a buffalo's 
 grew up to t le veiy i massive door of black 
 
 horn suspendedby ab.^ssc an^^^ A^^^ ^^^^ ^^^.^^^ ^^^^ 
 
 ?rtctTf'a^St^aIepuL"r:and not a soul appeared to 
 
 """^^^^rZ'::?^^^^'' --^ the officious Dame 
 ailhan "I would tun/bridle yet; for this old dungeon 
 
 Eveline imposed^silen^^^^^ I^ose which confessed some- 
 the Confessor . cursino- the rude instrument 
 
 was sending ite t"™"^-*^ ?„t„aernT tc£ ,,, wa^s'carvcc 
 front, as extensive as *'"' «/ ^ ""^ne, and garnished oi 
 over wit\»"'^™™'%,°' j;'T/riets from efcl. of whicl 
 the top w.tli.a l»ng.'™f,^,°^;"„„ saint, whose barharou 
 
 lady to Eveline now sepped ^^^^\^J^ „,, ; 
 assist her from lierpamey, o ^^ 
 
 Sised^^Ut^X'^rrs/luKpper end of which she w. 
 
TEE BETROTHED Ul 
 
 at length permitted to dismoimt. Two matrons of advanced 
 years, and four young women of gentle birth, educated by 
 the bounty of Ermengarde, attended with revei-ence the 
 arrival of her kinswoman. Eveline would have inquired of 
 them for her grand-aunt, but the matrons with much respect 
 laid their fingers on their mouths, as if to enjoin her silence 
 — a gesture which, united to the singularity of her reception 
 in other respects, still further excited her curiosity to see 
 her venerable relative. 
 
 It was soon gratified ; for through a pair of folding-doors, 
 which opened not far from the platform on which she stood, 
 she was ushered into the large low apartment hung with 
 arras ; at the upper end of which, under a species of canopy, 
 was seated the ancient Lady of Baldringham. Fourscore 
 years had not quenched the brightness of her eyes, or bent 
 an inch of her stately height ; her gray hair was still so pro- 
 fuse as to form a tier, combined as it was with a chaplet of 
 ivy leaves ; her long dark-colored gown fell in ample folds, 
 and the broidered girdle, which gathered it around lier, was 
 fastened by a buckle of gold, studded with precious stones, 
 which were worth an earl's ransom ; her features, which had 
 once been beautiful, or rather majestic, bore still, though 
 faded and wrinkled, an air of melancholy and stern grandeur, 
 that assorted well with her garb and deportment. She had 
 a staff of ebony in her hand ; at her feet rested a large aged 
 wolf-dog, who pricked his ears and bristled up his neck as 
 the step of a stranger, a sound so seldom heard in those halls, 
 approached the chair in which his aged mistress sat motion- 
 less. 
 
 '* Peace, Thryme," said the venerable dame ; " and thou, 
 daughter of the house of Baldringham, approach, and fear 
 not their ancient servant." 
 
 The hound sunk down to his couchant posture when she 
 spoke, and, excepting the red glare of his eyes, might have 
 seemed a hieroglyphical emblem, lying at the feet of some 
 ancient priestess of Woden or Freya ; so strongly did the ap- 
 pearance of Ermengarde, with her rod and her chaplet, 
 correspond with the ideas of the days of paganism. Yet he 
 who had thus deemed of her would have done therein much 
 injustice to a venerable Christian matron, who had given 
 many a hide of land to holy church, in honor of God and St. 
 Dunstan. 
 
 Ermengarde's reception of Eveline was of the same anti- 
 quated and formal cast with her mansion and her exterior. 
 She did not at first arise from her seat when the noble maiden 
 
(12 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 approached her, nor did she even admit her to the salnte 
 uhich she advanced to offer; but hiying her hand on Eveline's 
 arm, stopped her as she advanced, and perused her counte- 
 nance with an earnest and unsparing eye of minute observa- 
 tion. 
 
 " Berwine," she said to the most favored of the two attend- 
 ants, "our niece hath tlie skin and eyes of the Saxon hue ; 
 but the hue of her eyebrows and hair is from the foreigner 
 and alien. Thou art, nevertheless, Avelcome to my house, 
 maiden," she added, addressing Eveline, " especially if thou 
 canst bear to hear that thou art not absolutely a perfect crea- 
 ture, as doubtless these flatterers around thee have taught 
 thee to believe.'' 
 
 So saying, she at length arose, and sahited her niece with 
 a kiss on the forehead. She released her not, however, from 
 her grasp, but proceeded to give the attention to her gar- 
 ments which she had hitherto bestowed upon her features. 
 
 ''St. Dunstan keep us from vanity !" she said ; " and so 
 this is the new guise, and modest maidens wear such tunics 
 as these, showing the shape of their persons as plain as if — 
 St. Mary defend us ! — they were altogether without gar- 
 ments ! And see, Berwine, these gauds on the neck, and 
 that neck itself uncovered as low as the shoulder — these be 
 the guises which strangers have brought into merry England! 
 and this pouch, like a player's placket, hath but little to do 
 with housewifery, I Avot ; and tliat dagger, too, like a glee- 
 man's wife, that rides a-mumming in masculine apparel ; 
 dost thou ever go to the wars, maiden, that thou wearest 
 steel at thy girdle ?" 
 
 Eveline, equally surprised and disobliged by the depreciat- 
 ing catalogue of her apparel, replied to the last question with 
 some spirit. " The mode may have altered, madam ; but I 
 only wear such garments as are now worn by those of my age 
 and condition. For the poniard, may it please you, it is not 
 many days since I regarded it as the last resource betwixt 
 me and dishonor." 
 
 " The maiden speaks well and boldly, Berwine," said Dame, 
 Ermengarde ; " and in truth, pass we but over some of these 
 vain fripperies, is attired in a comely fashion. Thy father, 
 I hear, fell knight-like in the field of battle." 
 
 *' He did so," answered Eveline, her eyes filling with tears 
 at the recollection of her recent loss. 
 
 "I never saw him," continued Dame Ermengarde; "he 
 carried the old Norman scorn towards the Saxon stock.. 
 vrhom they wed but for what they can make by them, ai 
 
the bramble clings to the elm ; nay, never seek to vindicate 
 him/' she continued, observing that Eveline was about to 
 speak;, " I have known the Norman spirit for many a year 
 ere thou wert born." 
 
 At this moment the steward appeared in the chamber, and, 
 after a long gennflection, asked his lady's pleasure concern- 
 ing the guard of Norman soldiers who remained without the 
 mansion. 
 
 "Norman soldiers so near the house of Baldringhara ! " 
 said the old lady, fiercely. '* Who brings them hither, and 
 for what purpose ?" 
 
 " They came, as I think," said the sewer, " to wait on and 
 guard this gracious young lady." 
 
 " What, my daughter," said Ermengarde, in a tone of 
 melancholy reproach, "darest thou not trust thyself un- 
 guarded for one night in the castle of thy forefathers ? " 
 
 " God forbid else!" said Eveline. "But these men are 
 not mine, nor under my authority. They are part of the 
 train of the Constable De Lacy, who left them to watch 
 around the castle, thinking there might be danger from 
 robbers." 
 
 " Robbers," said Ermengarde, " have never harmed the 
 ^j[': house of Baldringham since a Norman robber stole from it 
 I its best treasure in the person of thy grandmother. And 
 ! so, poor bird, thou art already captive — unhappy flutterer ! 
 I But it is thy lot, and wherefore should I wonder or repine ? 
 i When was there fair maiden with a wealthy dower, but she 
 t was ere maturity destined to be the slave of some of those 
 I petty kings, who allow us to call nothing ours that their 
 ; passions can covet ? Well, I cannot aid thee : I am but a 
 . poor and neglected woman, feeble both from sex and age. 
 i And to which of these De Lacys art thou the destined house- 
 I hold drudge ? " 
 
 I A question so asked, and by one whose prejudices were of 
 j such a determined character, was not likely to draw from 
 Eveline any confession of the real circumstances in which she 
 , ./as placed, since it was but too plain her Saxon relation 
 ; could have afforded her neither sound counsel nor useful as- 
 : sistance. She replied therefore briefly, that as the Lacys, 
 and the Normans in general, were unwelcome to her kins- 
 woman, she would entreat of the commander of the patrol 
 to withdraw it from the neighborhood of Baldringham. 
 J "Not so, my niece," said the old lady; " as we cannot 
 ; escape the Norman neighborhood, or get beyond the souna 
 '. of their curfew, it signifies not whether they be near our 
 o 
 
114 WAVBRLEF NOVELS 
 
 walls or more far off, so that they enter them not. And, 
 Berwine, bid Huudwolf drench the Normans with liquor 
 and gorge them with food — food of the best and liquor of 
 the strongest. Let them not say the old Saxon hag is 
 churlish of her hospitality. Broach a piece of wine, for I 
 warrant their gentle stomachs brook no ale." 
 
 Berwine, her huge bunch of keys jangling at her girdle, 
 withdrew to give the necessary directions, and presently 
 returned. 
 
 Meanwhile Ermengarde proceeded to question her niece 
 more closely. ''Is it that thou wilt not, or canst not, tell 
 me to which of the De Lacys thou art to be bondswoman ? 
 To the overweening Constable, who, sheathed in impenetra- 
 ble armor, and mounted on a swift and strong horse asin\ul- 
 nerable as himself, takes pride that he rides down and stabs 
 at his ease, and with perfect safety, the naked Welshmen ? 
 Or is it to his nephew, the beardless Damian ? Or must thy 
 possession go to mend a breach in the fortunes of that other 
 cousin, Eandal Lacy, the decayed reveler, who, they say, 
 can no longer ruffle it among the debauched crusaders for 
 want of means ? " 
 
 " My honored aunt," replied Eveline, naturally displeased 
 with this discourse, " to none of the Lacys, and I trust to 
 none other, Saxon or Xorman, will your kinswoman become 
 a household drudge. There was, before the death of my 
 honored father, some treaty betwixt him and the Constable*, 
 on which account I cannot at present decline his attendance ; 
 but what may be the issue of it, fate must determine." 
 
 ** But I can show thee, niece,how the balance of fate in- 
 clines," said Ermengarde, in a low and mysterious voice. 
 "Those united Avith us by blood have, in some sort, the 
 privilege of looking forward beyond the points of present 
 time, and seeing in their very bud the thorns or flowers 
 which are one day to encircle their head." 
 
 "For my own sake, noble kinswoman," answered Eveline, 
 " I would decline such foreknowledge, even were it possible 
 to acquire it without transgressing the rules of the church. 
 Could I have foreseen what has befallen me within these last 
 unhappy days, I had lost the enjoyment of every happy mo- 
 ment before that time." 
 
 " Nevertheless, daughter," said the Lady of Baldring- 
 ham, "thou, like others of thy race, must within this house 
 conform to the rule of passing one night within the cham- 
 ber of the Red-Finger. Berwine, see that it be preparec? 
 for my niece's reception/* 
 
THE BETROTHED 115 
 
 "I — I — have heard speak of tliat chamber, gracious 
 aunt," said Eveline, timidly, "and if it may consist with 
 your good pleasure, I would not now choose to pass the 
 night there. My health has suffered by my late perils and 
 fatigues, and with your good-will I will delay to another 
 time the usage, which I have heard is peculiar to the daugh- 
 ters of the house of Buldringham." 
 
 "And which, notwithstanding, you would willingly 
 avoid," said the old Saxon lady, bending her brows angrily. 
 "Has not such disobedience cost your house enough al- 
 ready?" 
 
 "Indeed, honored and gracious lady," said Berwine, un- 
 able to forbear interference, though well knowing the ob- 
 stinacy of her patroness, " that chamber is in disrepair, and 
 cannot easily on a sudden be made fit for the Lady Eveline : 
 and the noble damsel looks so pale, and hath lately suffered 
 so much, that, might I have the permission to advise, this 
 were better delayed." 
 
 " Thou art a fool, Berwine," said the old lady, sternly ; 
 **thinivest thou I will bring anger and misfortune on my 
 house, by suffering this girl to leave it without rendering 
 the usual homage to the Red-Finger ? Go to, let the room 
 be made ready : small preparation may serve, if she cherish 
 not the Korman nicety about bed and lodging. Do not 
 reply, but do as I command thee. And you, Eveline, are 
 you so far degenerated from the brave spirit of your ances- 
 try, that you dare not pass a few hours in an ancient apart- 
 ment ? " 
 
 " You are my hostess, gracious madam," said Eveline, 
 '* and must assign my apartment where you judge proper ; 
 my courage is such as innocence and some pride of blood 
 and birth have given me. It has been, of late, severely 
 tried ; but, since such is your pleasure, and the custom of 
 your house, my heart is yet strong enough to encounter 
 what you propose to subject me to." 
 
 She paused here in displeasure ; for she resented, in some 
 measure, her aunt's conduct, as unkind and inhospitable. 
 And yet, when she reflected upon the foundation of the 
 legend of the chamber to which she was consigned, she 
 could not but regard the Lady of Baldringham as having 
 considerable reason for her conduct, according to the tradi- 
 tions of the family, and the belief of the times, in which 
 Eveline herself was devout. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Sometimes, methinks, I hear the groans of ghosts. 
 Then hollow sounds and lamentable screams, 
 Then, like a dying echo from afar, 
 My mother's voice, that cries, " Wed not, Almeyda; 
 Forewarned, Almeyda, marriage is thy crime." 
 
 Don Sebastian. 
 
 The evening at Baldringham would have seemed of por- 
 tentous and unendurable length, had it not been that appre- 
 hended danger makes time pass quickly betwixt us and the 
 dreaded hour, and that, if Eveline felt little interested or 
 amused by the conversation of her aunt and Berwine, which 
 turned upon the long deduction of their ancestors from the 
 warlike Horsa, and the feats of Saxon champions, and the 
 miracles of Saxon monks, she was still better pleased to 
 listen to these legends than to anticipate her retreat to the 
 destined and dreaded apartment where she Avas to pass the 
 night. There lacked not, however, such amusement as the 
 house of Baldringham could afford, to pass away the even- 
 ing. Blessed by a grave old Saxon monk, the chaplain of 
 the house, a sumptuous entertainment, which might have 
 sufficed twenty hungry men, was served up before Ermen- 
 garde and her niece, whose sole assistants, besides the rev- 
 erend man, were Berwine and Rose Flammock. Eveline 
 was the less inclined to do justice to this excess of hospital- 
 ity, that the dishes were all of the gross and substantial 
 nature which the Saxons admired, but which contrasted dis- 
 advantageously with the refined and delicate cookery of the 
 Normans, as did the moderate cup of light and high-flavored 
 Gascon wine, tempered with more than half its quantity of 
 the purest water, with the mighty ale, the high-spiced pig- 
 ment and hippocras, and the other potent liquors, which, 
 one after another, were in vain proffered for her acceptance 
 by the steward Hundwolf, in honor of the hospitality of 
 Baldringham. 
 
 Neither were the stated amusements of the evening more 
 
 congenial to Eveline's taste than the profusion of her aunt's 
 
 solid refection. When the boards and tresses on which the 
 
 viands had been served were withdrawn from the apartment, 
 
 1X6 
 
 I 
 
THE BETROTHED 117 
 
 the menials, under direction of tlie steward, proceeded to 
 liglit several long waxen torches, one of which was gradu- 
 ated for the purpose of marking the passing time, and di- 
 viding it into portions. These were announced by means 
 of brazen balls, suspended by threads from the ^orch, the 
 spaces betwixt them being calculated to occupy a certain 
 time in burning; so that, when the flame reached the 
 thread, and the balls fell, each in succession, into a brazen 
 basin placed for its reception, the office of a modern clock 
 was in some degree discharged. By this light the party was 
 arranged for the evening. 
 
 The ancient Ermengarde's lofty and ample chair was re- 
 moved, according to ancient custom, from the middle of the 
 apartment to the warmest side of a large grate, filled with 
 charcoal, and her guest was placed on her right, as the seat of 
 honor. Berwine then arranged in due order the females of 
 the household, and, having seen that each was engaged with 
 her own proper task, sat herself down to ply the spindle and 
 distaff. The men, in a more remote circle, betook them- 
 selves to the repairing of their implements of husbandry, or 
 new furbishing weapons of the chase, under the direction of 
 the steward, Hundwolf. For tlie amusement of the family 
 thus assembled, an old gleeman sung to a harp, which had 
 but four strings, a long and apparently interminable legend 
 upon some religious subject, which was rendered almost 
 unintelligible to Eveline by the extreme and complicated 
 affectation of the poet, who, in order to indulge in the allit- 
 eration which was accounted one great ornament of Saxon 
 poetry, had sacrificed sense to sound, and used words in the 
 most forced and remote sense, provided they could be com- 
 pelled into his service. There was also all the obscurity 
 arising from elision, and from the most extravagant and 
 hyperbolical epithets. 
 
 Eveline, though well acquainted with the Saxon language, 
 soon left off listening to the singer, to reflect for a moment 
 on the gay fahliaux and imaginative lais of the Norman 
 minstrels, and then to anticipate, with anxious apprehension, 
 what nature of visitation she might be exposed to in the 
 mysterious chamber in which she was doomed to pass the 
 night. 
 
 The hour of parting at length approached. At half an 
 hour before midnight, a period ascertained by the consump- 
 tion of the huge waxen torch, the ball w^hich was secured to 
 it fell clanging into the brazen basin placed beneath, and 
 announced to all the hour of rest. The old gleeman paused 
 
118 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 in his song iustantaueonsl}^ and in the middle of a stanza, 
 and the household were all on foot at the signal, some r(;ir- 
 ing to their own apartments, others lighting torches or 
 bearing lamps to conduct the visitors to their places of repose. 
 Among these last was a bevy of bower-women, to whom the 
 duty was assigned of conveying the Lady Eveline to her 
 chaniber for the night. Her aunt took a solemn leave of 
 her, crossed her forehead, kissed it, and whispered in her 
 ear, " Be courageous, and be fortunate." 
 
 " May not my bower-maiden. Rose Flammock, or my tire- 
 woman. Dame Gillian, Raoul's wife, remain in the apart- 
 ment with me for this night ?" said Eveline. 
 
 ''Flammock — Raoul I" repeated Ermengarde, angrily: 
 ** is thy household thus made up? The Flemings are tlie 
 cold palsy to Britain, the Xormans the burning fever I" 
 
 ''And the poor Welsh will add," said Rose, whose resent- 
 ment began to surpass her awe for the ancient Saxon dame, 
 " that the Anglo-Saxons were the original disea-se, and 
 resemble a wasting pestilence." 
 
 "Thou art too bold, sweetheart," said the Lady Ermen- 
 garde, looking at the Flemish maiden from under her dark 
 brows ; " and yet there is wit in thy words. Saxon, Dane, 
 and Norman have rolled like successive billows over the 
 land, each having strength to subdue what they lacked 
 wisdom to keep. When shall it be otlierwise ?" 
 
 " When Saxon, and Briton, and Norman, and Fleming," 
 answered Rose, boldly, " shall learn to call themselves by 
 one name, and think themselves alike children of the land 
 they are born in." 
 
 " Ha ! " exclaimed the Lady of Baldringham, in the tone 
 of one half surprised, half pleased. Then turning to her 
 relation, she said, " There are words and wit in this maiden ; 
 see that she use, but do not abuse, them." 
 
 " She is as kind and faithful as she is prompt and ready- 
 witted," said Eveline. "I pray you, dearest aunt, let me 
 use her company for this night." 
 
 "It may not "be : it were dangerous to both. Alone you 
 must learn your destiny, as have all the females of our race, 
 excepting your grandmother ; and what have been the con- 
 sequences of her neglecting the rules of our house ? Lo ! 
 her descendant stands before me an orphan, in the very 
 bloom of youth." 
 
 " I wilfgo then," said Eveline, with a sigh of resignation ; 
 " and it shall never be said I incurred future woe to shun 
 present terror." 
 
THE BETROTHED 119 
 
 '*^Your attendants," said the Lady Ermengarde, '' may 
 occupy the anteroom, and be almost within your call. Ber- 
 wine will show you the apartment ; I cannot, for we, thou 
 knowest, who have once entered it, return not thither again. 
 Farewell, my child, and may Heaven bless thee ! " 
 
 With more of human emotion and sympathy than she had 
 yet shown, the lady again saluted Eveline, and signed to her 
 to follow Berwine, who, attended by two damsels bearing 
 torches, waited to conduct her to the dreaded apartment. 
 
 Their torches glared along the rudely-built walls and dark 
 arched roofs of one or two long winding passages ; these by 
 their light enabled them to descend the steps of a winding 
 stair, whose inequality and ruggedness showed its antiquity ; 
 and finally led into a tolerably large chamber on the lower 
 story of the edifice, to which some old hangings, a lively 
 fire on the hearth, the moonbeams stealing through a latticed 
 window, and the boughs of a myrtle plant which grew 
 around the casement, gave no uncomfortable appearance. 
 
 " This," said Berwine, is the resting-place of your attend- 
 ants," and she pointed to the couches which had been pre- 
 pared for Rose and Dame Gillian ; " we," she added, "pro- 
 ceed farther." 
 
 She then took a torch from the attendant maidens, both 
 of whom seemed to shrink back with fear, which was readily 
 caught by Dame Gillian, although she was not probably 
 aware of the cause. But Rose Flammock, unbidden, fol- 
 lowed her mistress withont hesitation, as Berwine conducted 
 her through a small wicket at the upper end of the apart- 
 ment, clenched with many an iron nail, into a second but 
 smaller anteroom or wardrobe, at the end of which was a 
 similar door. This wardrobe had also its casements mantled 
 with evergreens, and, like the former, it was faintly enlight- 
 ened by the moonbeam. 
 
 Berwine paused here, and, pointing to Rose, demanded of 
 Eveline, "Why does she follow ?" 
 
 -' To share my mistress's danger, be it what it may," an- 
 swered Rose, with her characteristic readiness of speech and 
 resolution. "Speak," she said, " my dearest lady," grasp- 
 ing Eveline's hand, while she addressed her ; " you will not 
 drive your Rose from you ? If I am less high-minded than 
 one of your boasted race, I am bold and quick-witted in all 
 honest service. You tremble like the aspen ! Do not go 
 into this apartment ; do not be gulled by all this pomp and 
 mystery of terrible preparation ; bid defiance to this anti- 
 quated, and, I think, half-pagan, superstition.*' 
 
120 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " The Lady Eveline must go, minion/' replied Berwine, 
 sternly ; " and she must go without any malapert adviser or 
 companion." 
 
 " Must go — must go ! " repeated Eose. " Is this language 
 to a free and noble maiden ? Sweet lady, give me once but 
 the least hint that you wish it, and their ' must go' shall be 
 put to the trial. I will call from the casement on the Nor- 
 man cavaliers, and tell them we have fallen into a den of 
 witches instead of a house of hospitality." 
 
 " Silence, madwoman !" said Berwine, her voice quiver- 
 ing with anger and fear ; " you know not who dwells in the 
 next chamber ! " 
 
 " I will call those who will soon see to that," said Rose, 
 flying to the casement, when Eveline, seizing her arm in her 
 turn, compelled her to stop. 
 
 " I thank thy kindness. Rose," she said, ''but it cannot 
 help me in this matter. She who enters yonder door must 
 do so alone." 
 
 " Then I will enter it in your stead, my dearest lady," 
 said Rose. " You are pale — you are cold — you will die of 
 terror if you go on. There may be as much of trick as of 
 supernatural agency in this matter : me they shall not de- 
 ceive, or, if some stern spirit craves a victim, better Rose 
 than her lady." 
 
 "Forbear — forbear," said Eveline, rousing up her own 
 spirit ; "you make me ashamed of myself. This is an an- 
 cient ordeal, which regards the females descended from the 
 house of Baldringham as far as in the third degree, and 
 them only. I did not indeed expect, in my present circum- 
 stances, to have been called upon to undergo it ; but, since 
 the hour summons me, I will meet it as freely as any of my 
 ancestors." 
 
 So saying, she took the torch from the hand of Berwine, 
 and wishing good-night to her and Rose, gently disengaged 
 herself from tlie hold of the latter, and advanced into the 
 mysterious chamber. Rose pressed after her so far as to see 
 that it was an apartment of moderate dimensions, resembling 
 that through which they had last passed, and lighted by the 
 moonbeams, which came through a window lying on the 
 same range with those of the anterooms. More she could 
 not see, for Eveline turned on tlie threshold, and, kissing 
 her at the same time, thrust her gently back into tlie smaller 
 apartment which she had just left, shut the door of com- 
 munication, and barred and bolted it, as if in security against 
 her well-raeant intrusion. 
 
THE BETROTHED 121 
 
 Berwme now exhorted Rose, as she vahied her life, to re- 
 tire into the first ante-room, where the beds were prepared, 
 and betake herself, if not to rest, at least to silence and de- 
 votion ; but the faithful Flemish girl stoutly refused her 
 entreaties and resisted her commands. 
 
 " Talk not to me of danger," she said ; '' here I remain, 
 that 1 may be at least within hearing of my mistress's dan- 
 ger ; and woe betide those who shall offer her injury .' Take 
 notice, that twenty Norman spears surround this inhospitable 
 dwelling, prompt to avenge whatsoever injury shall be of- 
 fered to the daughter of Raymond Berenger." 
 
 " Reserve your threats for those who are mortal," said 
 Berwine, in a low but piercing whisper; "the owner of 
 yonder chamber fears them not. Farewell — thy danger be 
 on thine own head I" 
 
 She departed, leaving Rose strangely agitated by what had 
 passed, and somewhat appalled at her last words. " These 
 Saxons," said the maiden, within herself, ''are but half con- 
 verted after all, and hold many of their old hellish rites in 
 the worship of elementary spirits. Their very saints are 
 unlike to the saints of any Christian country, and have, as 
 it were, a look of something savage and fiendish ; their very 
 names sound pagan and diabolical. It is fearful being aloiie 
 here ; and all is silent as death in the apartment into which 
 my lady has been thus strangely compelled. Shall I call up 
 Gillian ? But no ; she has neither sense, nor courage, nor 
 principle, to aid me on such an occasion : better alone than 
 have a false friend for company. I will see if the Normans 
 are on their post, since it is to them I must trust if a mo- 
 ment of need should arrive." 
 
 Thus reflecting, Rose Flammock went to the window of 
 the little apartment, in order to satisfy herself of the vigi- 
 lance of the sentinels, and to ascertain the exact situation of 
 the corps de garde. The moon was at full, and enabled her 
 to see with accuracy the nature of the ground without. In 
 the first place, she was rather disappointed to find that, in- 
 stead of being so near the earth as she supposed, the range 
 of windows, which gave light as well to the two ante-rooms 
 as to the mysterious chamber itself, looked down upon an 
 ancient moat, by which they were divided from the level 
 ground on the farther side. The defense which this fosse 
 afforded seemed to have been long neglected, and the bottom, 
 entirely dry, was choked in many places with bushes and 
 low trees, which rose up against the wall of the castle, and 
 by means of which it seemed to Rose the windows might be 
 
122 WA VERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 easily scaled and the mansion entered. From tlie level plain 
 beyond, the space adjoining to the castle was in a consider- 
 able degree clear, and the moonbeams slumbered on its close 
 and beautiful turf, mixed with long shadows of the towers 
 and trees. Beyond this esplanade lay the forest ground, with 
 a few gigantic oaks scattered individually along the skirt of 
 its dark and ample domain, like champions who take their 
 ground of defiance in front of a line of arrayed battle. 
 
 The calm beauty and repose of a scene so lovely, the still- 
 ness of all around, and the more matured reflections which 
 the whole suggested, quieted, in some measure, the ap- 
 prehensions which the events of the evening had inspired. 
 " After all," she reflected, " why should I be so anxious on 
 account of the Lady Eveline ? There is among the proud 
 Normans and the dogged Saxons scarce a single family of 
 note but must needs be held distinguished from others by 
 some superstitious observance peculiar to their race, as if 
 they thought it scorn to go to Heaven like a poor simple 
 Fleming such as I am. Could I but see a Norman sentinel, 
 1 would hold myself satisfied of my mistress's security. And 
 yonder one stalks along the gloom, wrapt in his long white 
 mantle, and the moon tipping the point of his lance with 
 silver. What ho, sir cavalier ! " 
 
 The Norman turned his steps, and approached the ditch 
 as she spoke. "What is your pleasure, damsel?" he de- 
 manded. 
 
 " The window next to mine is that of the Lady Eveline 
 Berenger, whom you are appointed to guard. Please to give 
 heedful watch upon this side of the castle." 
 
 " Doubt it not, lady," answered the cavalier ; and, en- 
 veloping himself in his long chappe, or military watch-cloak, 
 he withdrew to a large oak-tree at some distance, and stood 
 there with folded arms, and leaning on his lance, more like a 
 trophy of armor than a living warrior. 
 
 Embolded by the consciousness that in case of need succor 
 was close at hand, Eose drew back into her little cham- 
 ber, and having ascertained, by listening, that there was 
 no noise or stirring in that of Eveline, she began to 
 make some preparations for her own repose. For this pur- 
 pose she went into the outward ante-room, where Dame 
 Gillian, whose fears had given way to thesoporiferous effects 
 of a copious draught of lithe-alos (mild ale, of the first 
 strength and quality), slept as sound a sleep as that generous 
 Saxon beverage could procure. 
 
 Muttering an indignant censure on her sloth and indiffer- 
 
THE BETROTHED 123 
 
 enoe. Rose caught, from the empty couch which had been 
 destined for her own use, the upper covering, and dragging 
 it with her into the inner ante-room, disposed it so as, with 
 the assistance of the rushes which strewed that apartment, 
 to form a sort of couch, upon wliich, half seated, half re- 
 clined, she resolved to pass the night in as close attendance 
 npon lier mistress as circumstances permitted. 
 
 Thus seated, her eye on the pale planet which sailed in 
 'nil glory through the blue sky of midnight, she proposed to 
 lerself that sleep should not visit her eyelids till th^i dawn 
 )f morning should assure her of Eveline's safety. 
 
 Her thoughts, meanwhile, rested on the boundless and 
 shadowy world beyond the grave, and on the great, and 
 perhaps yet undecided, question, whether the separation of 
 its inhabitants from those of this temporal sphere is absolute 
 and decided, or whether, influenced by motives which we 
 cannot appreciate, they continue to hold shadowy communi- 
 cation with those yet existing in eartlily reality of flesh and 
 blood ? To have denied this would, in the age of crusades 
 and of miracles, have incurred the guilt of heresy ; but 
 Rose's firm good sense led her to doubt at least the frequency 
 of supernatural interference, and she comforted herself with 
 an opinion, contradicted, however, by her own involuntary 
 starts and shudderings at every leaf which moved, that, in 
 submitting to the performance of the rite imposed on her, 
 Eveline incurred no real danger, and only sacrificed to an 
 obsolete family superstition. 
 
 As this conviction strengthened on Rose's mind, her pur- 
 pose of vigilance began to decline ; her thoughts wandered 
 to objects towards which they were not directed, like sheep 
 which stray beyond the charge of their shepherd ; her eyes 
 no longer brought back to her a distinct apprehension of the 
 broad, round, silvery orb on which they continued to gaze. 
 At length they closed, and seated on the folded mantle, her 
 back resting against the wall of the apartment, and her 
 white arms folded on her bosom. Rose Flammock fell fast 
 asleep. 
 
 Tier repose was fearfully broken by a shrill and piercing 
 shriek from the apartment where her lady reposed. To 
 start up and fly to the door was the work of a moment for 
 "the generous girl, who never permitted fear to struggle with 
 love or duty. The door was secured with both bar and bolt ; 
 and another fainter scream, or rather groan, seemed to say, 
 aid must be instant, or in vain. Rose next rushed to the 
 window, and screamed rather than called to the Norman 
 
124 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 Boldier, who, distinguished by the white folds of his watch- 
 cloak, still retained his position under the old oak-tree. 
 
 At the cry of "Help-help ! the Lady Eveline is murdered ! " 
 the seeming statue, starting at once into active exertion, sped 
 with the swiftness of a race-horse to the brink of the moat, 
 and was about to cross it, opposite to the spot where Eose 
 stood at the open casement, urging him to speed by voice 
 and gesture. 
 
 "Not here — not here! ''she exclaimed with breathless 
 precipitation, as she saw him make towards her — "the win- 
 dow to the right — scale it, for God's sake, and undo the door 
 of communication." 
 
 The soldier seemed to comprehend her ; he dashed into 
 the moat without hesitation, securing himself by catching at 
 the boughs of trees as he descended. In one moment he 
 vanished among the underwood ; and in another, availing 
 himself of the branches of a dwarf oak, Eose saw him upon 
 her right, and close to the window of the fatal apartment. 
 One fear remained — the casement might be secured against 
 entrance from without ; but no ! at the thrust of the Korman 
 it yielded, and, its clasps or fastenings being worn with time, 
 fell inward with a crash which even Dame Gillian's slum- 
 bers were unable to resist. 
 
 Echoing scream upon scream, in the usual fashion of 
 fools and cowards, she entered the cabinet from the ante- 
 room, just as the door of Eveline's chamber opened, and the 
 soldier appeared, bearing in his arms the half-undressed and 
 lifeless form of the Norman maiden herself. Without 
 speaking a word, he placed her in Rose's arms, and, with the 
 same precipitation with which he had entered, threw him- 
 self out of the opened window from which Eose had sum- 
 moned him. 
 
 Gillian, half distracted with fear and wonder, heaped 
 exclamations on questions, and mingled questions with cries 
 for help, till Eose sternly rebuked her in a tone which seemed 
 to recall her scattered senses. She became then composed 
 enough to fetch a lamp which remained lighted in the room 
 she had left, and to render herself at least partly useful in 
 suggesting and applying the usual modes for recalling the 
 suspended sense. In this they at length succeeded, for 
 Eveline fetched a fuller sigh, and opened her eyes ; but pres- 
 ently shut them again, and letting her head drop on Eose's 
 bosom, fell into a strong shuddering fit ; while her faithful 
 damsel, chafing her hands and her temples alternately with 
 affectionate assiduity, and mingling caresses with these efforts. 
 
THE BETROTHED 125 
 
 exclaimed aloud, " She lives ! She is recovering. Praised 
 be God ! " 
 
 " Praised be God \" was echoed in a solemn tone from the 
 window of the apartment ; and turning towards it in terror. 
 Rose beheld the armed and plumed head of the soldier who 
 had come so opportunely to their assistance, and who, sup- 
 ported by his arm, had raised himself so high as to be able to 
 look into the interior of the cabinet. 
 
 Rose immediately ran towards him. " Go — go, good 
 friend," she said ; " the lady recovers — your rewrrd shall 
 await you another time. Go — begone ! Yet stay — keep on 
 your post, and I will call you if there is farther need. 
 Begone — be faithful and be secret." 
 
 The soldier obeyed without answering a word, and she 
 presently saw him descend into the moat. Rose then re- 
 turned back to her mistress, whom she found supported by 
 Gillian, moaning feebly, and muttering hurried and unintel- 
 ligible ejaculations, all intimating that she labored under a 
 violent shock sustained from some alarming cause. 
 
 Dame Gillian had no sooner recovered some degree of self- 
 possession than her curiosity became active in proportion. 
 " What means all this ?" she said to Rose — " what has been 
 doing among you ?" 
 
 '' I do not know," replied Rose. 
 
 " If you do not," said Gillian, " who should ? Shall I 
 call the other women and raise the house ? " 
 
 *' Xot for your life," said Rose, "till my lady is able to 
 give her own orders ; and for this apartment, so help me 
 Heaven, as I will do my best to discover the secrets it con- 
 tains ! Support my mistress the whilst." 
 
 So saying, she took the lamp in her hand, and, crossing 
 her brow, stepped boldly across the mysterious threshold, 
 and, holding up the light, surveyed the apartment. 
 
 It was merely an old vaulted chamber of very moderate 
 dimensions. In one corner was an image of the Virgin, 
 rudely cut, and placed above a Saxon font of curious work- 
 manship. There were two seats, and a couch covered with 
 coarse tapestry, on which it seemed that Eveline had been 
 reposing. The fragments of the shattered casement lay on 
 the floor ; but that opening had been only made when the 
 soldier forced it in, and she saw no other access by which a 
 stranger could have entered an apartment the ordinary 
 access to which was barred and bolted. 
 
 Rose felt the influence of those terrors which she had 
 hitherto surmounted ; she cast her mantle hastily around her 
 
126 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 head, as if to shroud her sight from some hlighting vision, 
 and tripping back to the cabinet with more speed and a less 
 firm step than when she left it, she directed Gillian to lend 
 her assistance in conveying Eveline to the next room ; and 
 having done so, carefully secured the door of communica- 
 tion, as if to put a barrier betwixt them and the suspected 
 danger. 
 
 The Lady Eveline was now so far recovered that she 
 could sit up, and was trying to speak, though but faintly. 
 " Rose," she said at length, '^ I have seen her — my doom is 
 sealed." 
 
 Rose immediately recollected the imprudence of suffering 
 Gillian to hear what her mistress might say at such an awful 
 moment, and hastily adopting the proj^osal she had before 
 declined, desired her to go and call other two maidens of 
 their mistress's household. 
 
 "And where am I to find them in this house," said Dame 
 Gillian, " where strange men run about one chamber at 
 midnight, and devils, for aught I know, frequent the rest 
 of the habitation ? " 
 
 " Find them where you can," said Rose, sharply ; "but 
 begone presently." 
 
 Gillian withdrew lingeringly, and muttering at the same 
 time something which could not distinctly be understood. 
 No sooner was she gone than Rose, giving way to the enthu- 
 siastic affection which she felt for her mistress, implored her, 
 in the most tender terms, to " Open her eyes (for she had 
 again closed them), and speak to Rose, her own Rose, who 
 was ready, if necessary, to die by her mistress's side." 
 
 " To-morrow — to-morrow. Rose,'' murmured Eveline , "I 
 cannot speak at present." 
 
 " Only disburden your mind with one word : tell what 
 has thus alarmed you — what danger you apprehend." 
 
 "I have seen her," answered Eveline — " I have seen the 
 tenant of yonder chamber — the vision fatal to my race ! 
 Urge me no more ; to-morrow you shall know all." * 
 
 As Gillian entered with two of the maidens of her mis- 
 tress's household, they removed the Lady Eveline, by Rose's 
 directions, into a chamber at some distance, which the lat- 
 ter had occupied, and placed her in one of their beds, where 
 Rose, dismissing the others (Gillian excepted) to seek repose 
 where they could find it, continued to Avatch her mistress. 
 For some time she continued very much disturbed, but, 
 
 * See Bahr-geiat. Note 10. 
 
THE BETROTHED 127 
 
 gradually, fatigue, and the influence of some narcotic which 
 Gillian had sense enough to recommend and prepare, seemed 
 to compose her spirits. She fell into a deep slumber, from 
 which she did not awaken until the sun was high oyer the 
 distant hills. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 I see a hand you cannot see. 
 
 Which beckons me away ; 
 I hear a voice you cannot hear. 
 
 Which says I must not stay. 
 
 IMallet. 
 
 When Eveline first opened her eyes, it seemed to be 
 without any recollection of what had passed on the night 
 preceding. Slie looked round the apartment, which was 
 coarsely and scantily furnished, as one destined for the use 
 of domestics and menials, and said to Eose, with a smile, 
 '' Our good kinswoman maintains the ancient Saxon hos- 
 pitality at a homely rate, so far as lodging is concerned. I 
 could Lave willingly parted with last night's pi'ofuse supper, 
 to have obtained a bed of a softer texture. Methinks my 
 limbs feel as if I had been under all the flails of a franklin's 
 barnyard." 
 
 "1 am glad to see you so pleasant, madam," answered 
 Eose, discreetly avoiding any reference to the events of the 
 night before. 
 
 Dame Gillian was not so scrupulous. '' Your ladyship 
 last night lay down on a better bed than this," she said, 
 ''unless I am much mistaken; and Eose Flammock and 
 yourself know best why you left it." 
 
 If a look could have killed. Dame Gillian would have 
 been in deadly peril from that which Eose shot at her, by 
 "way of rebuke for this ill-advised communication. It had 
 instantly the effect which was to be apprehended, for Lady 
 Eveline seemed at first surprised and confused, then, as 
 recollections of the past arranged themselves in her memory, 
 she folded her hands, looked on the ground, and wept bit- 
 terly, with much agitation. 
 
 Eose entreated her to be comforted, and offered to fetch 
 the old Saxon chaplain of the house to administer spiritual 
 consolation, if her grief rejected temporal comfort. 
 
 " Xo, call him not," said Eveline, raising her head and 
 
 drying her eyes; *' I have had enough of Saxon kindness. 
 
 What a fool was I to expect, in that hard and unfeeling 
 
 woman, any commiseration for my youth — my late suffer 
 
 128 
 
THE BETROTHED 129 
 
 ings — my orphan condition ! I will not permit her a poor 
 triumph over the Norman blood of Berenger, by letting her 
 see how much I have suffered under her inhuman infliction. 
 But first, Rose, answer me truly, was any intimate of Bald- 
 ringham witness to my distress last night ?" 
 
 Eose assured her that she had been tended exclusively by 
 her own retinue, herself and Gillian, Blanche and Ternotte. 
 
 She seemed to receive satisfaction from this assurance. 
 -' Hear me, both of you," she said, " and observe my words, 
 as you love and as you fear me. Let no syllable be breathed 
 from your lips of what has happened this night. Carry the 
 same charge to my maidens. Lend me thine instant aid, 
 Gillian, and thine, my dearest Rose, to change these dis- 
 ordered garments and arrange this disheveled hair. It was 
 a poor vengeance she souglit, and all because of my country. 
 I am resolved she shall not see the slightest trace of the 
 sufferings she has inflicted." 
 
 As she spoke thus, her eyes flashed with indignation, 
 which seemed to dry up the tears that had before filled them. 
 Rose saw the change of her manner with a mixture of pleas- 
 ure and concern, being aware that her mistress's predomi- 
 nant failing was incident to her, as a spoiled child, who, 
 accustomed to be treated with kindness, deference, and 
 indulgence by all around her, was apt to resent warmly 
 whatever resembled neglect or contradiction. 
 
 " God knows," said the faithful bower-maiden, " I would 
 hold my hand out to catch drops of molton lead, rather than 
 endure your tears ; and yet, my sweet mistress, I would 
 rather at present see you grieved than angry. This ancient 
 lady hath, it would seem, but acted according to some old 
 superstitious rite of her family, which is in part yours. _ Her 
 name is respectable, both from her conduct and possessions ; 
 and, hard-pressed as you are by the Normans, with whom 
 your kinswoman, the prioress, is sure to take part, 1 was in 
 hope you might have had some shelter and countenance 
 from the Lady of Baldringham." 
 
 " Never, Rose — never," answered Eveline ; '' you know 
 not — you cannot guess what she has made me suffer, expos- 
 ing me to witchcraft and fiends. Thyself said it, and said it 
 truly — the Saxons are still half pagans, void of Christianity, 
 as of nature and kindliness." 
 
 ''Ay, but," replied Rose, " I spoke then to dissuade you 
 from a danger ; now that the danger is passed and over, I 
 may judge of it otherwise." 
 
 "Speak not for them. Rose," replied Eveline, angrily ; 
 9 
 
130 WAVEBLET NOVELS 
 
 '* no innocent victim was ever offered np at the altar of a 
 fiend with more indifference than my father's kinswoman 
 delivered up me — me an orphan, bereaved of my natural and 
 powerful support. I hate her cruelty — I hate her house — I 
 hate the thought of all that has happened here — of all, Rose, 
 except thy matchless faith and fearless attachment. Go. 
 bid our train saddle directly ; I will be gone instantly. I 
 will not attire myself," she added, rejecting the assistance 
 she had at first required — " I will have no ceremony — tarry 
 for no leave-taking." 
 
 In the hurried and agitated manner of her mistress. Rose 
 recognized with anxiety another mood of the same irritable 
 and excited temperament which had before discharged itself 
 in tears and fits. But perceiving, at the same time, that 
 remonstrance Avas in vain, she gave the necessary orders for 
 collecting their company, saddling, and preparing for de- 
 parture ; hoping that, as her mistress removed to a farther 
 distance from the scene where her mind had received so 
 severe a shock, her equanimity might, by degrees, he re- 
 stored. 
 
 Dame Gillian, accordingly, was busied with arranging the 
 packages of her lady, and all the rest of Lady Eveline's 
 retinue in preparing for instant departure, when, preceded 
 by her steward, who acted also as a sort of gentleman-usher, 
 leaning upon her confidential BerAvine, and followed by two 
 or three more of the most distinguished of her household, 
 Avith looks of displeasure on her ancient yet lofty brow, the 
 Lady Ermengarde entered the appartment. 
 
 Eveline, witli a trembling and hurried hand, a burning 
 cheek, and other signs of agitation, was herself busied about 
 the arrangement of some baggage, when her relation made 
 her appearance. At once, to Rose's great surprise, she 
 exerted a strong command over herself, and, repressing 
 every external appearance of disorder, she advanced to meet 
 her relation, with a calm and haughty stateliness equal to 
 her own. 
 
 " I come to give you good-morning, our niece," said 
 Ermengarde, haughtily indeed, yet with more deference 
 than she seemed at first to have intended, so much did the 
 bearing of Eveline impose respect upon her. " I find that 
 you have been jjleased to shift that chamber which was 
 assigned you, in conformity with the ancient custom of 
 this household, and betake yourself to the apartment of a 
 menial." 
 
 "Are you surprised at that, lady ?" demanded Eveline in 
 
THE BETROTHED 131 
 
 her turn ; " or are you disappointed that you find me not a 
 corpse, within the limits of the chamber which your hospi- 
 tality and affection allotted to me ?" 
 
 " Your sleep, then, has been broken ?" said Ermengarde, 
 looking fixedly at the Lady Eveline as she spoke. 
 
 "^ If I complain not, madam, the evil must be deemed of 
 little consequence. What has happened is over and past, 
 and it is not my intention to trouble you with the recital." 
 
 " She of the ruddy finger," replied Ermengarde, trium- 
 phantly, "loves not the blood of the stranger." 
 
 " She had less reason, while she walked the earth, to love 
 that of the Saxon," said Eveline, " unless her legend speaks 
 false in that matter ; and unless, as I well suspect, your 
 house is haunted, not by the soul of the dead who suffered 
 within its walls, but by evil spirits, such as the descendants 
 of Ilengist and Horsa are said still in secret to worship." 
 
 " You are pleasant, maiden," replied the old lady, scorn- 
 fully, " or, if your words are meant in earnest, the shaft of 
 your censure has glanced aside. A house blessed by the 
 holy St. Dunstan and by the royal and holy Confessor is no 
 abode for evil spirits." 
 
 ''The house of Baldringham," replied Eveline, ''is no 
 abode for those who fear such spirits ; and as I will, with all 
 humility, avow myself of the number, I shall presently 
 leave it to the custody of St. Dunstan." 
 
 " Not till you have broken your fast, I trust ? " said the 
 Lady of Baldringham ; "you will not, I hope, do my years 
 and our relationship such foul disgrace ?" 
 
 " Pardon me, madam," replied the Lady Eveline ; "those 
 who have experienced your hospitality at night have little 
 occasion for breakfast in the morning. Rose, are not those 
 loitering knaves assembled in the courtyard, or are they yet 
 on their couches, making up for the slumber they have lost 
 by midnight disturbances ?" 
 
 Rose announced that her train was in the court, and 
 mounted ; when, with a low reverence, Eveline endeavored 
 to pass her relation, and leave the apartment without far- 
 ther ceremony. Ermengarde at first confronted her with a 
 grim and furious glance, which seemed to show a soul 
 fraught with more rage than the thin blood and rigid 
 features of extreme old age had the power of expressing, 
 and raised her ebony staff as if about even to proceed to 
 some act of personal violence. But she changed her pur- 
 pose, and suddenly made way for Eveline, who passed with- 
 out farther parley ; and as she descended the staircase 
 
132 fir A VEitLEY NOVELS 
 
 which conducted from the apartment to the gateway, she 
 heard the voice of her aunt behind her, like that of an 
 aged and offended sibyl, denouncing wrath and woe upon 
 her insolence and presumption. 
 
 "Pride," she exclaimed, '^'goetli before destruction, and 
 a haughty spirit before a fall. She who scorneth the house 
 of her forefathers, a stone from its battlements shall crush 
 her ! She who mocks the gray hairs of a parent, never shall 
 one of her own locks be silvered with age ! She who weds 
 Avith a man of war and of blood, her end shall neither be 
 peaceful nor bloodless ! " 
 
 Hurrying to escape from these and other ominous denun- 
 ciations, Eveline rushed from the house, mounted her 
 palfrey with the precipitation of a fugitive, and, surrounded 
 by her attendants, who had caught a part of her alarm, 
 though without conjecturing the cause, rode hastily into 
 the forest ; old Eaoul, who was well acquainted with the 
 country, acting as their guide. 
 
 Agitated more than she was willing to confess to herself, 
 by thus leaving the habitation of so near a relation, loaded 
 with maledictions instead of the blessings which are usually 
 bestowed on a parting kinswoman, Eveline hastened for- 
 ward, until the huge oak trees with intervening arms had 
 hidden from her view the fatal mansion. 
 
 The trampling and galloping of horse was soon after 
 heard, announcing the approach of the patrol left by the 
 Constable for the protection of the mansion, and who now, 
 collecting from their different stations, came prepared to 
 attend the Lady Eveline on her farther road to Gloucester, 
 great part of which lay through the extensive forest of 
 Dean, then a silvan region of large extent, though now 
 much denuded of trees for the service of the iron mines. 
 The cavaliers came up to join the retinue of Lady Eveline, 
 with armor glittering in the morning rays, trumpets sound- 
 ing, horses prancing, neighing, and thrown, each by his 
 chivalrous rider, into the attitude best qualified to exhibit 
 the beauty of the steed and dexterity of the horseman; 
 while their lances, streaming with long penoncelles, were 
 brandished in every manner which could display elation of 
 heart and readiness of hand. The sense of the military 
 character of her countrymen of Normandy gave to Eveline a 
 feeling at once of security and triumph, which operated to- 
 wards the dispelling of her gloomy thoughts, and of the 
 feverish disorder which affected her nerves. The rising sun 
 also, the song of the birds among the bowers, the lowing of 
 
THE BETROTHED 133 
 
 the cattle as they were driven to pasture, the sight of the 
 hind, who, with her fawn trotting by her side, often crossed 
 some forest ghide within view of the travelers — all contrib- 
 uted to dispel the terror of Eveline's nocturnal visions, and 
 soothe to rest the more angry passions which had agitated her 
 bosom at her departure from Baldringham. She suffered her 
 palfrey to slacken his pace, and, with female attention to 
 propriety, began to adjust her riding-robes and compose her 
 head-dress, disordered in her hasty departure, Eose saw her 
 cheek assume a paler but more settled hue, instead of the 
 angry hectic which had colored it, saw her eye become more 
 steady as she looked with a sort of triumph upon her mili- 
 tary attendants, and pardoned, what on other occasions she 
 would probably have made some reply to, her enthusiastic 
 exclamations in praise of her countrymen. 
 
 " We journey safe," said Eveline, " under the care of the 
 princely and victorious Normans. Theirs is the noble wrath 
 of the lion, which destroys or is appeased at once ; there is 
 no guile in their romantic affection, no sullenness mixed with 
 their generous indignation ; they know the duties of the hall 
 as well as those of battle ; and were they to be surpassed in 
 the arts of war, which will only be when Plinlimmon is re- 
 moved from its base, they would still remain superior to 
 every other people in generosity and courtesy." 
 
 " If I do not feel all their merits so strongly as if I shared 
 their blood," said Rose, " I am at least glad to see them around 
 us, in woods which are said to abound with dangers of vari- 
 ous kinds. And I confess my heart is the lighter that I can 
 now no longer observe the least vestige of that ancient man- 
 sion, in which we passed so unpleasant a night, and the rec- 
 ollection of which will always be odious to me." 
 
 Eveline looked sharply at her. " Confess the truth, Rose ; 
 thou wouldst give thy best kirtle to know all of my horrible 
 adventure." 
 
 '' It is but confessing that I am a woman," answered Rose ; 
 "and did I say a man, I daresay the difference of sex would 
 imply but a small abatement of curiosity." 
 
 " Thou makest no parade of other feelings which prompt 
 thee to inquire into my fortunes," said Eveline ; " but, 
 svveet Rose, I give thee not the less credit for them. Be- 
 lieve me, thou shalt know all — but, I think, not now." 
 
 " At your pleasure," said Rose ; "■ and yet, methinks, the 
 bearing in your solitary bosom such a fearful secret will only 
 render the weight more intolerable. On my silence you may 
 rely as on that of the Holy Image, which hears us confess 
 
134 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 what it never reveals. Besides sucli things become familiar 
 to the imagination when they have been spoken of, and that 
 which is familiar gradually becomes stripped of its terrors." 
 
 " Thou speakest with reason, my prudent Rose ; and surely 
 in this gallant troop, borne like a flower on a bush by my 
 good palfrey Yseulte, fresh gales blowing round us, flowers 
 opening and birds singing, and having thee by my bridle- 
 rein, I ought to feel this a fltting time to communicate what 
 thou hast so good a title to know. And — yes ! thou shalt 
 know all ! Thou art not, I presume, ignorant of the quali- 
 ties of what the Saxons of this land call a hahr-geist ? " 
 
 ''Pardon me, lady," answered Rose, "my father dis- 
 couraged my listening to such discourses. I might see evil 
 spirits enough, he said, without my imagination being taught 
 to form such as were fantastical. The word 'bahr-geist' I 
 have heard used by Gillian and other Saxons ; but to me it 
 only conveys some idea of indeflnite terror, of which I have 
 never asked nor received an explanation." 
 
 " Know then," said Eveline, " it is a specter, usually the 
 image of a departed person, who, either for wrong sustained 
 in some particular place during life, or through treasure hid- 
 den there, or from some such other cause, haunts the spot 
 from time to time, becomes familiar to those who dwell there, 
 takes an interest in their fate, occasionally for good, in other 
 instances or times for evil. The bahr-geist is, therefore, 
 sometimes regarded as the good genius, sometimes as the 
 avenging flend, attached to particular families and classes of 
 men. It is the lot of the family of Baldringham — of no 
 mean note in other respects — to be subject to the visits of 
 such a being." 
 
 " May I ask the cause, if it be known, of such visitation ?" 
 said Rose, desirous to avail herself to the uttermost of the 
 communicative mood of her young lady, which might not 
 perhaps last very long. 
 
 " I know the legend but imperfectly," replied Eveline pro- 
 ceeding with a degree of calmness, the result of strong exertion 
 over her mental anxiety, "but in general it runs tluis : — 
 Baldrick, the Saxon hero who first possessed yonder dwell- 
 ing, became enamored of a fair Briton, said to have been 
 descended from those Druids of whom the Welsh speak so 
 much, and deemed not unacquainted with the arts of sorcery 
 which they practised, when they offered up human sacrifices 
 amid those circles of unhewn and living rock, of which 
 thou hast seen so many. After more than two years' wed- 
 lock, Baldrick became weary of his wife to such a point, that 
 
 i' 
 
TBE BETROTHED 135 
 
 he formed the cruel resolution of putting her to death. 
 Some say he doubted her fidelity ; some that the matter was 
 pressed on him by the church, as slie was suspected of 
 heresy ; some that he removed her to make way for a 
 more wealthy marriage ; but all agree in the result. He 
 sent two of his cnichts to the house of Baldringham, to put 
 to death the unfortunate Vanda, and commanded them to 
 bring him the ring which had circled her finger on the day 
 of wedlock, in token that his orders were accomplished. 
 The men were ruthless in their office : they strangled Vanda 
 i7i yonder apartment, and as the hand was so swollen that 
 no effort could draw off the ring, they obtained possession of 
 it by severing the finger. But long before the return of 
 those cruel perpetrators of her death, the shadow of Vanda 
 had appeared before her appalled husband, and holding up 
 to him her bloody hand, made him fearfully sensible how 
 well his savage commands had been obeyed. After haunting 
 him in peace and war, in desert, court, and camp, until he 
 died despairingly on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the 
 bahr-geist, or ghost, of the murdered Vanda became so ter- 
 rible in the house of Baldringham that the succor of St. 
 Dunstan was itself scarcely sufficient to put bounds to her 
 visitation. Yea, the blessed saint, when he had succeeded 
 in his exorcism, did, in requital of Baldrick's crime, impose 
 a strong and enduring penalty upon every female descendant 
 of the house in the third degree ; namely, that once in their 
 lives, and before their twenty-first year, they should each 
 spend a solitary night in the chamber of the murdered 
 Vanda, saying therein certain prayers, as well for her repose 
 as for the suffering soul of her murderer. During that 
 awful space, it is generally believed that the spirit of the 
 murdered person appears to the female who observes the 
 vigil, and shows some sign of her future good or bad for- 
 tune. If favorable, she appears with a smiling aspect, and 
 crosses them with her unbloodied hand ; but she announces 
 evil fortune by showing the hand from which the finger was 
 severed, with a stern countenance, as if resenting upon the 
 descendant of her husband his inhuman cruelty. Some- 
 times she is said to speak. These particulars I learned long 
 since from an old Saxon dame, the mother of our Margery, 
 who had been an attendant on my grandmother, and left the 
 house of Baldringham when she made her escape from it 
 with my father's father." 
 
 " Did your grandmother ever render this homage," said 
 Eose, *' which seems to me — under favor of St. Dunstan — to 
 
136 WAVEitLEY NOVELS 
 
 bring humanity into too close intercourse with a being of a 
 doubtful nature ?" 
 
 ''My grandfather thought so, and never permitted my 
 grandmother to revisit the house of Baldringham after her 
 marriage ; hence disunion betwixt him and his son on the 
 one part and the members of that family on the other. 
 They laid sundry misfortunes, and particularly the loss of 
 male heirs which at that time befell them, to my parent's 
 not having done the hereditary homage to the bloody-fin- 
 gered bahr-geist." 
 
 " And how could you, my dearest lady,'' said Eose, " know- 
 ing that they held among them a usage so hideous, think of 
 accepting the invitation of Lady Ermengarde ?" 
 
 "I can hardly answer you the question," replied Eveline. 
 "Partly I feared my father's recent calamity, to be slain, as 
 I have heard him say his aunt once prophesied of him, by 
 the enemy he most despised, might be the result of this rite 
 having been neglected ; and partly I hoped that, if my 
 mind should be appalled at the danger, when it presented 
 itself closer to my eye, it could not be urged on me in cour- 
 tesy and humanity. You saw how soon my cruel-hearted 
 relative pounced upon the opportunity, and hoAV impossible 
 it became for me, bearing the name, and, I trust, the spirit, 
 of Berenger, to escape from the net in which I had involved 
 myself." 
 
 " No regard for name or rank should have engaged me," 
 replied Rose, *'' to place myself where apprehension alone, 
 even without the terrors of a real visitation, might have pun- 
 ished my presumption with insanity. But what, in the 
 name of Heaven, did you see at this horrible rendezvous ?" 
 
 ''Ay, there is the question," said Eveline, raising her 
 hand to her brow — " how I could witness that which I dis- 
 tinctly saw, yet be able to retain command of thought and 
 intellect ! I had recited the prescribed devotions for the 
 murderer and his victim, and sitting down on the couch 
 which was assigned me, had laid aside such of my clothes as 
 might impede my rest — I had surmounted, in short, the 
 first shock which I experienced in committing myself to this 
 mysterious chamber, and I hoped to pass the night in 
 slumber as sound as my thoughts were innocent. But I was 
 fearfully disappointed. I cannot judge how long I had 
 slept, when my bosom was oppressed by an unusual weight, 
 which seemed at once to stifle my voice, stop the beating of 
 my heart, and prevent me from drawing my breath ; and 
 when I looked up to discover the cause of this horrible suf* 
 
THE BETROTHED 137 
 
 focation, the form of the murdered British matron stood 
 over my couch, taller than life, shadowy, and with a coun- 
 tenance where traits of dignity and beauty were mingled 
 with a fierce expression of vengeful exultation. She held 
 over me the hand which bore the bloody marks of her hus- 
 band's cruelty, and seemed as if she signed the cross, devot- 
 ing me to destruction ; while, with an unearthly tone, she 
 uttered these words — 
 
 " Widow'd wife and wedded maid. 
 Betrothed, betrayer, and betray'd ! " 
 
 The phantom stooped over me as she spoke, and lowered 
 her gory fingers, as if to touch my face, when, terror giving 
 me the power of which at first it had deprived me, I 
 screamed aloud — the casement of the apartment was thrown 
 
 open with a loud noise — and But what signifies my 
 
 telling all this to thee. Rose, who show so plainly, by the 
 movement of eye and lip, that you consider me as a silly 
 and childish dreamer ? " 
 
 " Be not angry, my dear lady," said Rose ; " I do indeed 
 believe that the witch we call Mara has been dealing with 
 you ; but she, you know, is by leeches considered no real 
 phantom, but solely the creation of our own imagination, 
 disordered by causes which arise from bodily indisposition." 
 
 " Thou art learned, maiden," said Eveline, rather peev- 
 ishly ; " but when I assure thee that my better angel came 
 to my assistance in a human form, that at his appearance 
 the fiend vanished, and that he transported me in his arms 
 out of the chamber of terror, I think thou wilt, as a good 
 Christian, put more faith in that which I tell you." 
 
 *' Indeed — indeed, my sweetest mistress, I cannot," replied 
 Rose. "It is even that circumstance of the guardian angel 
 which makes me consider the whole as a dream. A Norman 
 sentinel, whom I myself called from his post on purpose, 
 did indeed come to your assistance, and, breaking into your 
 apartment, transported you to that where I myself received 
 you from his arms in a lifeless condition." 
 
 "A Norman soldier, ha!" said Eveline, coloring ex- 
 tremely; "and to whom, maiden, did you dare give com- 
 mission to break into my sleeping-chamber ?'* 
 
 "Your eyes flash anger, madam, but is it reasonable they 
 should ? Did I not hear your screams of agony, and was I 
 to stand fettered by ceremony at such a moment ? — no more 
 than if the castle had been on fire." 
 
188 WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 " I ask you again, Rose/' said her mistress, still with dis- 
 composure, though less angrily than at first, " whom you 
 directed to break into my apartment ? " 
 
 " Indeed, I know not, lady," said Rose ; " for, besides 
 that he was muffled in his mantle, little chance was there of 
 my knowing his features, even had I seen them fully. But 
 I can soon discover the cavalier ; and I will set about it, 
 that I may give him the reward 1 promised, and warn him 
 him to be silent and discreet in this matter." 
 
 "Do so," said Eveline; *'and if you find him among 
 those soldiers who attend us, I will indeed lean to thine 
 opinion, and think that fantasy had the chief share in the 
 evils I have endured the last night." 
 
 Rose struck her palfrey with the rod, and accompanied 
 by her mistress, rode up to Philip Guariue, the Constable's 
 squire, who for the present commanded their little escort. 
 " Good Guarine," she said, " I had talk with one of these 
 sentinels last night from my window, and he did me some 
 service, for which I promised him recompense. Will you 
 inquire fT the man, that I may pay him his guerdon ? " 
 
 "Truly, I will owe him a guerdon also, pretty maiden," 
 answered the squire ; " for if a lance of them approached 
 near enough the house to hold speech from the windows, he 
 transgressed the precise orders of his watch." 
 
 " Tush ! you must forgive that for my sake," said Rose. 
 " I warrant, had I called on yourself, stout Guarine, I 
 should have had influence to bring you under my chamber 
 window." 
 
 Guarine laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. " True it 
 is," he said, "when women are in place, discipline is in 
 danger." 
 
 He then went to make the necessary inquiries among his 
 band, and returned with the assurance that his soldiers, 
 generally and severally, denied having approached the man- 
 sion of the Lady Ermengarde on the preceding night. 
 
 " Thou seest. Rose," said Eveline, with a significant look 
 to her attendant. 
 
 " The poor rogues are afraid of Guarine's severity," said 
 Rose, "and dare not tell the truth ; I shall have some one 
 in private claiming the reward of me." 
 
 "I would I had the privilege myself, damsel," said 
 Guarine ; " but for these fellows, they are not so timorous 
 as you suppose them, being even too ready to avouch their 
 foguery when it hath less excuse. Besides, I promised them 
 impunity. Have you anything farther to order ? " 
 
THE BETROTHED 18& 
 
 " Nothing, good Guarine," said Eveline ; " only this small 
 donative to procure wine for tiiy soldiers, that they may 
 spend the next night more merrily than the last. And now 
 he is gone. Maiden, thou must, I think, be now well aware 
 that what thou sawest was no earthly being ?" 
 
 " I must believe mine own ears and eyes, madam/' replied 
 Rose. 
 
 " Do — but allow me the same privilege,'' answered Eve- 
 line. " Believe me that my deliverer, for so I must call 
 him, bore the features of one who neither was, nor could 
 be, in the neighborhood of Baldringham. Tell me but one 
 thing. What dost thou think of this extraordinary pre- 
 diction — 
 
 ' Widow'd wife and wedded maid, 
 Betrothed, betrayer, and betrayed'? 
 
 Thou wilt say it is an idle invention of my brain ; but think 
 it for a moment the speech of a true diviner, and what 
 wouldst thou say of it ? " 
 
 "That you may be betrayed, my dearest lady, but never 
 can be a betrayer," answered Rose, with animation. 
 
 Eveline reached her hand out to her friend, and as she 
 pressed affectionately that which Rose gave in return, she 
 whispered to her with energy, *' I thank thee for the judg- 
 ment, which my own heart confirms." 
 
 A cloud of dust now announced the approach of the 
 Constable of Chester and his retinue, augmented by the 
 attendance of his host Sir William [Amelot] Herbert, and 
 some of his neighbors and kinsmen who came to pay their 
 respects to the orphan of the Garde Doloureuse, by which 
 appellation Eveline was known upon her passage through 
 their territory. 
 
 Eveline remarked, that at their greeting De Lacy looked 
 with displeased surprise at the disarrangement of her dress 
 and equipage, which her hasty departure from Baldringham 
 had necessarily occasioned ; and she was, on her part, struck 
 with an expression of countenance which seemed to say, " I 
 am not to be treated as an ordinary person, who may be re- 
 ceived with negligence, and treated slightly with impunity." 
 For the first time, she thought that, though always deficient 
 in grace and beauty, the Constable's countenance was 
 formed to express the more angry passions with force and 
 vivacity, and that she who shared his rank and name must 
 lay her account with the implicit surrender of her will and 
 wishes to those of an arbitrary lord and master. 
 
140 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 But the cloud soon passed from the Constable's brow ; 
 and m the conversation which he afterwards maintained 
 with Herbert and the other knights and gentlemen, who 
 from time to time came to greet and accompany them for a 
 little way on their journey, Eveline had occasion to admire 
 his superiority, both of sense and expression, and to remark 
 the attention and deference with which his words were 
 listened to by men too high in rank, and too proud, readily 
 to admit any pre-eminence that was not founded on ac- 
 knowledged merit. The regard of women is generally much 
 influenced by the estimation which an individual maintains 
 in the opinion of men ; and Eveline, when she concluded 
 her journey in the Benedictine nunnery in Gloucester, could 
 not think without respect upon the renowned warrior and 
 celebrated politician, whose acknowledged abilities ap- 
 peared to place him above every one whom she had seen 
 approach him. His wife, Eveline thought (and she was not 
 without ambition), if relinquishing some of those qualities 
 in a husband which are in youth most captivating to the 
 female imagination, must be still generally honored and 
 respected, and have contentment, if not romantic felicity, 
 within her reach. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Lady Eveline remained nearly four months with her 
 aunt, the abbess of the Benedictine nunnery, under whose 
 auspices the Constable of Chester saw his suit advance and 
 prosper as it would probably have done under that of the de- 
 ceased Raymond Berenger, her brother. It is probable, 
 however, that, but for the supposed vision of the Virgin, and 
 the vow of gratitude which that supposed vision had called 
 forth, the natural dislike of so young a person to a match so 
 unequal in years might have effectually opposed his success. 
 Indeed, Eveline, while honoring the Constable's virtues, 
 doing justice to his high character, and admiring his talents, 
 could never altogether divest herself of a secret fear of him, 
 which, while it prevented her from expressing any direct dis- 
 approbation of his addresses, caused her sometimes to shud- 
 der, she scarce knew why, at the idea of their becoming 
 successful. 
 
 The ominous words, " betraying and betrayed," would 
 then occur to her memory ; and when her aunt (the period 
 of the deepest mourning' being elapsed) had fixed a day for 
 her betrothal, she looked forward to it with a feeling of 
 terror, for which she was unable to account to herself, and 
 which, as well as the particulars of her dream, she concealed 
 even from Father Aldrovand in the hours of confession. It 
 was not aversion to the Constable ; it was far less preference 
 to any other suitor ; it was one of those instinctive move- 
 ments and emotions by which nature seems to warn us of 
 approaching danger, though furnishing no information re- 
 specting its nature, and suggesting no means of escaping 
 from it. 
 
 So strong were these intervals of apprehension, that, if 
 they had been seconded by the remonstrances of Rose Flam- 
 mock, as formerly, they might perhaps have led to Eveline's 
 even yet forming some resolution unfavorable to the suit of 
 the Constable. But, still more zealous for her lady's honor 
 than even for her happiness. Rose had strictly forborne every 
 effort which could affect Eveline's purpose, when she had 
 once expressed her approbation of De Lacy's addresses ; and 
 141 
 
142 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 whatever she thought or anticipated concerning the pro 
 posed marriage, she seemed from that moment to consider 
 it as an event which must necessarily take phice. 
 
 De Lacy himself, as he learned more intimately to know 
 tlie merit of the prize which he was desirous of possessing, 
 looked forward with different feelings towards the union 
 than those with which he had first proposed the measure to 
 Raymond Berenger. It was then a mere match of interest 
 and convenience, which had occurred to the mind of a proud 
 and politic feudal lord, as the best mode of consolidating 
 the power and perpetuating the line of his family. Nor did 
 even the splendor of Eveline's beauty make that impression 
 upon De Lacy which it was calculated to do on the fiery and 
 impassioned chivalry of the age. He was past that period 
 of life when the wise are captivated by outward form, and 
 might have said with truth, as well as with discretion, that 
 he could have wished his beautiful bride several years older, 
 and possessed of a more moderate portion of personal charms, 
 in order to have rendered the match more fitted for his own 
 age and disposition. This stoicism, however, vanished; 
 when, on repeated interviews with his destined bride, he 
 found that she was indeed inexperienced in life, but desirous 
 to be guided by superior wisdom ; and that, although gifted 
 with high spirit, and a disposition which began to recover 
 its natural elastic gaiety, she was gentle, docile, and, above 
 all, endowed with a firmness of principle which seemed to give 
 assurance that she would tread uprightly, and without spot, 
 the slippery paths in which youth, rank, and beauty are 
 doomed to move. 
 
 As feelings of a warmer and more impassioned kind 
 '•Qwards Eveline began to glow in De Lacy's bosom, his en- 
 gagements as a crusader became more and more burdensome 
 to him. The benedictine abbess, the natural guardian of 
 Eveline's happiness, added to these feelings by lier reason- 
 ing and remonstrances. Although a nun and a devotee, she 
 held in reverence the holy state of matrimony, and compre- 
 hended so much of it as to be aware that its important 
 purposes could not be accomplished while the whole conti- 
 nent of Europe was interposed betwixt the married pair ; for 
 as to a hint from the Constable, that his young spouse might 
 accompany him into the dangerous and dissolute precincts 
 of the Crusader's camp, the good lady crossed herself with 
 horror at the proposal, and never permitted it to be a second 
 time mentioned in her presence. 
 
 It was not, however, uncommon for kings, princes, and 
 
THE BETROTHED 148 
 
 other persons of high consequence, wlio had taken upon them 
 the vow to rescue Jerusalem, to obtain delays, and even a 
 total remission of their engagement, by proper application 
 to the Church of Rome. The Constable was sure to possess 
 the full advantage of his sovereign's interest and counte- 
 nance, in seeking permission to remain in England, for he 
 was the noble to whose valor and policy Henry had chiefly 
 entrusted the defense of the disorderly Welsh marches ; and 
 it was by no means with his good-will that so useful a sub- 
 ject had ever assumed the cross. 
 
 It was settled, therefore, in private betwixt the abbess and 
 the Constable, that the latter should solicit at Rome, and 
 with the Pope's legate in England, a remission of his vow for 
 at least two years — a favor which it was thought could scarce 
 be refused to one of his wealth and influence, backed as it 
 was with the most liberal ofi'ers of assistance towards the re- 
 demption of the Holy Land. His offers were indeed munifi- 
 cent ; for he proposed, if his own personal attendance were 
 dispensed with, to send an hundred lances at his own cost, 
 each lance accompanied by two squires, three archers, and a 
 varlet or horse-boy, being double the retinue by which his 
 own person was to have been accompanied. He offered be- 
 sides to deposit the sum of two thousand bezants to the 
 general expense of the expedition, to surrender to the use of 
 the Christian armament those equipped vessels which he had 
 provided, and which even now awaited the embarkation of 
 himself and his followers. 
 
 Yet, while making these magnificent proffers, the Con- 
 stable could not help feeling they Avouldbe inadequate to the 
 expectations of the rigid prelate Baldwin, who, as he had 
 himself preached the crusade, and brought the Constable 
 and many others into that holy engagement, must needs see 
 with displeasure the work of his eloquence endangered, by 
 the retreat of so important an associate from his favorite 
 enterprise. To soften, therefore, his disappointment as 
 much as possible, the Constable offered to the Archbishop, 
 that, in the event of his obtaining license to remain in Britain, 
 his forces should be led by his nephew, Damian Lacy, already 
 renowned for his early feats of chivalry, the present hope of 
 his house, and, failing heirs of his own body, its future head 
 and support. 
 
 The Constable took the most prudent method of communi- 
 cating this proposal to the Archbishop Baldwin, through a 
 mutual friend, on whose good offices he could depend, and 
 whose interest with the prelate was regarded as great. But, 
 
144 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 notwithstanding the splendor of the proposal, the prelate 
 heard it with sullen and obstinate silence, and referred for 
 answer to a personal conference with the Constable at an 
 appointed day, when concerns of the church would call the 
 Archbishop to the cit.v of Gloucester. The report of the 
 mediator was such as induced the Constable to expect a severe 
 struggle with the proud and powerful churchman ; but, him- 
 self proud and powerful, and backed by the favor of his 
 sovereign, he did not expect to be foiled in the contest. 
 
 The necessity that this point should be previously adjusted, 
 as well as the recent loss of Eveline's father, gave an air 
 of privacy to De Lacy's courtship, and prevented its being 
 signalized by tournaments and feats of military skill, in 
 which he would have been otherwise desirous to display his 
 address in the eyes of his mistress. The rules of the convent 
 prevented his giving entertainments of dancing, music, or 
 other more pacific revels ; and although the Constable dis- 
 played his affection by the most splendid gifts to his future 
 bride and her attendants, the whole affair, in the opinion of 
 the experieuced Dame Gillian, proceeded more with the 
 solemnity of a funeral than the light pace of an approaching 
 bridal. 
 
 The bride herself felt something of this, and thought occa- 
 sionally it might have been lightened by the visits of young 
 Damian, in whose age, so nearly corresponding to her own, 
 she might have expected some relief from the formal court- 
 ship of his graver uncle. But he came not, and from what 
 the Constable said concerning him, she was led to imagine 
 that the relations had, for a time at least, exchanged occu- 
 pations and character. The elder De Lacy continued, indeed, 
 in nominal observance of his vow, to dwell in a pavilion by 
 the gates of Gloucester ; but he seldom donned his armor, 
 substituted costly damask and silk for his war-worn shamoy 
 doublet, and affected at his advanced time of life more gaiety 
 of attire than his contemporaries remembered as distinguish- 
 ing his early youth. His nephew, on the contrary, resided 
 almost constantly on the marches of Wales, occupied in set- 
 tling by prudence, or subduing by main force, the various 
 disturbances by which these provinces were continually 
 agitated ; and Eveline learned with surprise, that it was 
 with difficulty his uncle had prevailed on him to be present 
 at the ceremony of their being betrothed to each other, or, 
 as the Normans entitled the ceremony, their finnQaUhs. 
 This engagement, which preceded the actual marriage for a 
 space more or less, according to circumstances, was usually 
 
THE BETROTHED 148 
 
 celebrated with a solemnity corresponding to the rank of the 
 
 contracting parties. 
 
 The Constable added, with expressions of regret, that 
 Damian gave himself too little rest, considering his early 
 youth, slept too little, and indulged in too restless a disposi- 
 tion ; that his health was suffering, and that a learned Jew- 
 ish leech,whose opinion had been taken, had given his advice 
 that the warmth of a more genial climate was necessary to 
 restore his constitution to its general and natural vigor. 
 
 Eveline heard this with much regret, for she remembered 
 Damian as the angel of good tidings, who first brought her 
 news of deliverance from the forces of the Welsh ; and the 
 occasions on which they had met, though mournful, brought 
 a sort of pleasure in recollection, so gentle had been the 
 youth's deportment, and so consoling his expressions of sym- 
 pathy. She wished she could see him, that she might her- 
 self judge of the nature of his illness ; for, like other damsels 
 of that age, she was not entirely ignorant of the art of healing, 
 and had been taught by Father Aldrovand, himself no mean 
 physician, how to extract healing essences from plants and 
 herbs gathered under planetary hours. She thought it pos- 
 sible that her talents in this art, slight as they were, might 
 perhaps be of service to one already her friend and liberator, 
 and soon about to become her very near relation. 
 
 It was therefore with a sensation of pleasure, mingled with 
 some confusion (at the idea, doubtless, of assuming the part 
 of medical adviser to so young a patient), that one evening, 
 while the convent was assembled about some business of their 
 chapter, she heard Gillian announce that the kinsman of the 
 Lord Constable desired to speak with her. She snatched up 
 the veil which she wore in compliance with the customs of 
 the house, and hastily descended to the parlor, commanding 
 the attendance of Gillian, who, nevertheless, did not think 
 proper to obey the signal. 
 
 When she entered the apartment, a man whom she had 
 never seen before advanced, kneeled on one knee, and tak- 
 ing up the hem of her veil, saluted it with an air of the most 
 profound respect. She stepped back, surprised and alarmed, 
 although there was nothing in the appearance of the stranger 
 to justify her apprehension. He seemed to be about thirty 
 years of age, tall of stature, and bearnig a noble though 
 wasted form, and a countenance on which disease, or per- 
 haps youthful indulgence, liad anticipated the traces of age. 
 His demeanor seemed courteous and respectful, even in a 
 degree which approached to excess. He observed Eveline*s 
 
146 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 surprise, and said, in a tone of pride, mingled with emotion, 
 ^' I fear that I have been mistaken, and that my visit is re- 
 garded as an unwelcome instrusion." 
 
 " Arise, sir," answered Eveline, " and let me know your 
 name and business. I was summoned to a kinsman of the 
 Constable of Chester." 
 
 " And you expected the stripling Daraian," answered the 
 stranger. " But the match with which England rings will 
 connect you with others of tlie house besides that young 
 person ; and amongst these with the luckless Randal de Lacy. 
 Perhaps," continued he, "the fair Eveline Berenger may 
 not even have heard his name breathed by his more fortunate 
 kinsman — more fortunate in every respect, but most fortunate 
 in his present prospects." 
 
 This compliment was accompanied by a deep reverence, 
 and Eveline stood much embarrassed how to reply to his 
 civilities ; for although she now well remembered to have 
 heard this Randal slightly mentioned by the Constable when 
 speaking of his family, it was in terms which implied that 
 there was no good understanding betwixt them. She there- 
 fore only returned his courtesy by general thanks for the 
 honor of his visit, trusting he would then retire ; but such 
 was not his purpose. 
 
 " I comprehend," he said, ''from the coldness with which 
 the Lady Eveline Berenger receives me, that what she has 
 heard of me from my kinsman — if indeed he thought me 
 worthy of being mentioned to her at all — has been, to say 
 the least, unfavorable. And yet my name once stood as high 
 in fields and courts as that of the Constable ; nor is it aught 
 more disgraceful than what is indeed often esteemed the 
 v/orst of disgraces — poverty, which prevents my still aspir- 
 ing to places of honor and fame. If my youthful follies 
 have been numerous, I have paid for them by the loss of my 
 fortune and the degradation of my condition ; and therein 
 my happy kinsman might, if he pleased, do me some aid. 
 I mean not with his purse or estate ; for, poor as I am, I 
 would not live on alms extorted from the reluctant hand of 
 an estranged friend ; but his countenance would put him to 
 no cost, and, in so far, I might expect some favor." 
 
 " In that my Lord Constable," said Eveline, " must Judge 
 for himself. I have — as yet, at least — no right to interfere 
 in his family affairs ; and if I should ever have such right, 
 it will well become me to be cautious how I use it." 
 
 "It is prudently answered," replied Randal ; " but what 
 I ask of you is merely that you, in your gentleness, would 
 
TEE BETROTHED W 
 
 please to convey to my cousin a suit, which I find it hard to 
 bring my ruder tongue to utter with sufficient submission. 
 The usurers, whose claims have eaten like a canker into my 
 means, now menace me with a dungeon — a threat which 
 they dared not mutter, far less attempt to execute, were it 
 not that they see me an outcast, unprotected by the natural 
 head of my family, and regard me rather as they would some 
 unfriended vagrant than as a descendant of the powerful 
 house of Lacy." 
 
 ''It is a sad necessity," replied Eveline; "but I see not 
 how I can help you in such extremity." 
 
 '• Easily," replied Randal de Lacy. " The day of your 
 betrothal is fixed, as I hear reported ; and it is your right 
 to select what witnesses you please to the solemnity, which 
 may the saints bless ! To every one but myself, presence or 
 absence on that occasion is a matter of mere ceremony ; to 
 me it is almost life or death. So am I situated, that the 
 marked instance of slight or contempt implied by my exclu- 
 sion from this meeting of our family will be held for the 
 signal of my final expulsion from the house of the De Lacys, 
 and for a thousand bloodhounds to assail me without mercy 
 or forbearance, whom, cowards as they are, even the slightest 
 show of countenance from my powerful kinsman would 
 compel to stand at bay. But why should I occupy your 
 time in talking thus ? Farewell, madam — be happy ; and 
 do not think of me the more harshly, that for a few minutes 
 I have broken the tenor of your happy thoughts by forcing 
 my misfortunes on your notice." 
 
 " Stay, sir," said Eveline, affected by the tone and man- 
 ner of the noble suppliant ; ''you shall not have it to say, 
 that you have told your distress to Eveline Berenger without 
 receiving such aid as is in her power to give. I will mention 
 your request to the Constable of Chester." 
 
 " You must do more, if you really mean to assist me," 
 said Randal de Lacy, "yon must make that request your 
 own. You do not know," said he, continuing to bend on 
 her a fixed and expressive look, " how hard it is to change 
 the fixed purpose of a De Lacy ; a twelvemonth hence you 
 will probably be better acquainted with the firm texture of 
 our resolutions. But, at present, what can withstand your 
 wish should you deign to express it ? " 
 
 " Your suit, sir, shall not be lost for want of my advanc- 
 ing it with my good word and good wishes," replied 
 Eveline ; " but you must be well aware that its success or 
 failure must rest with the Constable himself." 
 
148 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 Eandal de Lacy took his leave with tlie same air of deep 
 reverence which had marked his entrance ; only that, as he 
 then saluted the skirt of Eveline's robe, he now rendered the 
 same liomage by touching her liand with his lip. She saw 
 him depart with a mixture of emotions, in which compassion 
 was predominant ; although in his complaints of the Con- 
 stable's unkindness to him there was something offensive, 
 and his avowal of follies and excess seemed uttered rather 
 in the spirit of wounded pride than in that of contrition. 
 
 AYhen Eveline next saw the Constable, she told him of the 
 visit of Eandal, and of his request ; and strictly observing 
 his countenance while she spoke, she saw that, at the first 
 mention of his kinsman's name, a gleam of anger shot along 
 his features. He soon subdued it, however, and, fixing his 
 eyes on the ground, listened to Eveline's detailed account of 
 the visit, and her request " that Eandal might be one of the 
 invited witnesses to their fiauQailles." 
 
 The Constable paused for a moment, as if he were consid- 
 ering how to elude the solicitation. At length he replied, 
 " You do not know for whom you ask this, or you would 
 perhaps liave forborne your request ; neither are you apprised 
 of its full import, though my crafty cousin well knows that, 
 when I do him this grace which he asks, I bind myself, as it 
 were, in the eye of the world once more — and it will be for 
 the third time — to interfere in his affairs, and place them on 
 such a footing as may afford him the means of re-establish- 
 ing his fallen consequence, and repairing his numerous 
 errors." 
 
 "And wherefore not, my lord?" said the generous 
 Eveline. " If he has been ruined only through follies, he 
 is now of an age when these are no longer tempting snares ; 
 and if his heart and hand be good, he may yet be an honor 
 to the house of De Lacy." 
 
 The Constable shook his head. " He hath indeed," he 
 said, " a heart and hand fit for service, God knoweth, 
 whether in good or evil. But never shall it be said that 
 you, my fair Eveline, made request of Hugo de Lacy which 
 he was not to his uttermost willing to comply with. Eandal 
 shall attend at our fimiQailles. There is indeed the more 
 cause for his attendance, as I somewhat fear we may lack 
 that of our valued nephew Damian, whose malady rather 
 increases than declines, and, as I hear, with strange symptoms 
 of unwonted disturbance of mind and starts of temper, to 
 which the youth hath not hitherto been subject." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Ring out the merry bells, the bride approaches. 
 The blush upon her cheek has shamed the morning, 
 For that is dawning palely. Grant, good saints, 
 These clouds betoken naught of evil omen 1 
 
 Old Play. 
 
 The day of the fian^ailles, or espousals, was now approach- 
 ing ; and it seems that neither the profession of the abbess, 
 nor her practise at least, was so rigid as to prevent her 
 selecting the great parlor of the convent for that holy rite, 
 although necessarily introducing many male guests within 
 those vestal j)recincts, and notwithstanding that the rite 
 itself was the preliminary to a state which the inmates of 
 the cloister had renounced forever. The abbess's Norman 
 pride of birth, and the real interest which she took in her 
 niece's advancement, overcame all scruples ; and the vener- 
 able mother might be seen in unwonted bustle, now giving 
 orders to the gardener for decking the apartment with 
 flowers, now to her cellaress, her precentrix^ and the lay- 
 sisters of the kitchen, for preparing a splendid banquet, 
 mingling her commands on these worldly subjects with an 
 occasional ejaculation on their vanity and worthlessness, and 
 every now and then converting the busy and anxious looks 
 which she threw upon her preparations into a solemn turn- 
 ing upward of eyes and folding of hands, as one who sighed 
 over the mere earthly pomp which she took such trouble in 
 superintending. At another time the good lady might have 
 been seen in close consultation with Father Aldrovand, upon 
 the ceremonial, civil and religious, which was to accompany 
 a solemnity of such consequence to her family. 
 
 Meanwhile, the reins of discipline, although relaxed for a 
 season, were not entirely thrown loose. The outer court of 
 the convent was indeed for the time opened for the recep- 
 tion of the male sex ; but the younger sisters and novices of 
 the house, being carefully secluded in the more inner apart- 
 ments of the extensive building, under the immediate eye of 
 a grim old nun, or, as the conventual rule designed her, an 
 ancient, sad, and virtuous person, termed Mistress of the 
 Novices, were not permitted to pollute their eyes by looking 
 149 
 
150 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 on waving plumes and rustling mantles. A few sisters, 
 indeed, of the abbess's own standing were left at liberty, 
 being such goods as it was thought could not, in shopman's 
 phrase, take harm from the air, and which are therefore left 
 lying loose on the counter. These antiquated dames went 
 mumping about with much affected indifference, and a great 
 deal of real curiosity, endeavoring indirectly to get informa- 
 tion concerning names, and dresses, and decorations, without 
 daring to show such interest in these vanities as actual 
 questions on the subject might have implied. 
 
 A stout band of the Constable's spearmen guarded the gate 
 of the nunnery, admitting within the hallowed precinct the 
 few only who were to be piesent at the solemnity, with their 
 principal attendants ; and while the former were ushered 
 with all due ceremony into the apartments dressed out for 
 the occasion, the attendants, although detained in the outer 
 court, were liberally supplied with refreshments of the most 
 substantial kind; and had the amusement, so dear to the 
 menial classes, of examining and criticising their masters 
 and mistresses, as they passed into the interior apartments 
 prepared for their reception. 
 
 Amongst the domestics who were thus employed were old 
 Raoul the huntsman and his jolly dame : he, gay and glori- 
 ous, in a new cassock of green velvet, she, gracious and 
 comely, in a kirtle of yellow silk, fringed with minivair, and 
 that at no mean cost, were equally busied in beholding the 
 gay spectacle. The most inveterate wars have their occa- 
 sional terms of truce, the most bitter and boisterous weather 
 its hours of warmth and of calmness ; and so was it with the 
 matrimonial horizon of this amiable pair, wliich, usually 
 cloudy, had now for brief space cleared up. The splendor 
 of their new apparel, the mirth of the spectacle around them, 
 with the aid, perhaps, of a bowl of muscadine quaffed by 
 Raoul, and a cup of hippocras sipped by his wife, had ren- 
 dered them rather more agreeable in each other's eyes than 
 was their wont ; good cheer being in such cases, as oil is to a 
 rusty lock, the means of making those valves move smoothly 
 and glibly which otherwise work not together at all, or by 
 shrieks and groans express their reluctance to move in union. 
 The pair had stuck themselves into a kind of niche, three 
 or four steps from the ground, which contained a small 
 stone bench, whence their curious eyes could scrutinize with 
 advantage every guest who entered the court. 
 
 Thus placed, and in their present state of temporary con- 
 cord, Raoul with his frosty visage formed no unapt repre- 
 
THE BETROTHED 151 
 
 eentative of January, the bitter father of the year ; and 
 though Gillian was past the delicate bloom of youthful May, 
 yet the melting fire of a full black eye, and the genial glow 
 of a ripe and crimson cheek, made her a lively type of the 
 fruitful and jovial August. Dame Gillian used to make it 
 her boast, that she could please everybody with her gossip, 
 when she chose it, from Raymond Berenger down to Robin 
 the horse-boy ; and like a good housewife, who, to keep her 
 hand in use, will sometimes even condescend to dress a dish 
 for her husband's sole eating, she now thought proper to 
 practice her powers of pleasing on old Raoul, fairly conquer- 
 ing, in her successful sallies of mirth and satire, not only 
 his cynical temperament towards all human kind, but his 
 peculiar and special disposition to be testy with his spouse. 
 Her jokes, such as they were, and the coquetry with which 
 they were enforced, had such an effect on this Timon of the 
 woods, that he curled up his cynical nose, displayed his few 
 straggling teeth like a cur about to bite, broke out into a 
 barking laugh, which was more like the cry of one of his own 
 hounds, stopped short in the explosion, as if he had suddenly 
 recollected that it was out of character ; yet, ere he resumed 
 his acrimonious gravity, shot such a glance at Gillian as 
 made his nut-cracker jaws, pinched eyes, and convolved nose 
 bear no small resemblance to one of those fantastic faces which 
 decorate the upper end of old bass viols. 
 
 " Is not this better than laying your dog-leash on your 
 loving wife, as if she were a brach of the kennel ?" said 
 August to January. 
 
 "In troth is it," answered January, in a frost-bitten tone; 
 " and so it is also better than doing the brach-tricks which 
 bring the leash into exercise." 
 
 " Humph ! " said Gillian, in the tone of one who thought 
 her husband's proposition might bear being disputed ; but 
 instantly, changing the note to that of tender complaint, 
 " Ah ! Raoul," she said, " do you not remember how you 
 once beat me because our late lord — Our Lady assoilzie him! 
 — took my crimson breast-knot for a peony rose ?" 
 
 " Ay — ay," said the huntsman ; " I remember our old 
 master would make such mistakes — Our Lady assoilzie him! 
 as you say : the best hound will hunt counter." 
 
 " And how could you think, dearest Raoul, to let the wife 
 of thy bosom go so long without a new kirtle ? '" said his 
 helpmate. 
 
 " Why, thou hast got one from our young lady that might 
 , serve a countess," said Raoul, his concord jarred by her 
 
152 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 touching tliis chord ; '' how many kirtles wouldst thou 
 have ? " 
 
 " Only two, kind Eaoul, Just that folk may not count their 
 children's age by the date of Dame Gillian's last new gown." 
 
 " Well — well, it is hard that a man cannot be in good- 
 humor once and away without being made to pay for it. 
 But thou shalt have a new kirtle at Michaelmas, when I sell 
 the bucks' hides for the season. The very antlers should 
 bring a good penny this year." 
 
 " Ay — ay," said Gillian ; " I ever tell thee, husband, the 
 horns would be worth the hide in a fair market." 
 
 Raoul turned briskly round as if a wasp had stung him, 
 and there is no guessing what his reply might have been to 
 this seemingly innocent observation, had not a gallant horse- 
 man at that instant entered the court, and, dismounting 
 like the others, gave his horse to the charge of a squire, or 
 equerry, whose attire blazed with embroidery. 
 
 "' By St. Hubert, a proper horseman, and a destrier ior 
 an earl," said Eaoul, " and my Lord Constable's liveries 
 withal ; yet I know not the gallant." 
 
 " But I do," said Gillian; "it is Randal de Lacy, the 
 Constable's kinsman, and as good a man as ever came of the 
 name." 
 
 " Oh ! by St. Hubert, I have heard of him ; men say he 
 is a reveler, and a jangler, and a waster of his goods." 
 
 " Men lie now and then," said Gillian, dryly. 
 
 '' And women also," replied Raoul ; " why, methinks he 
 winked on thee just now." 
 
 " That right eye of thine saw never true since our good 
 k)rd — St. Mary rest him I — flung a cup of wine in thy face 
 for pressing over boldly into his withdrawing-room." 
 
 " I marvel," said Raoul, as if he heard her not, " that 
 yonder ruffler comes hither. I have heard that he is sus- 
 pected to have attempted the Constable's life, and that they 
 have not spoken together for five years." 
 
 " He comes on my young lady's invitation, and that I know 
 full well," said Dame Gillian ; "and he is less like to do the 
 Constable wrong than to have wrong at his hand, poor gen- 
 tleman, as indeed he has had enough of that already." 
 
 " And who told thee so ? " said Raoul, bitterly. 
 
 " No matter, it was one who knew all about it very well," 
 said the dame, who began to fear, that in displaying her tri- 
 umph of superior information, she had been rather over- 
 communicative. I 
 
 " It must have been the devil, or Randal himself," saidi 
 
THE BETROTHED 153 
 
 ftaoul, ''for no other mouth is hirge enough for such a lie. 
 But harkye, Dame Gillian, who is he that presses forward 
 next, like a man that scarce sees how he goes ?" 
 
 " Even your angel of grace, my young Squire Damiau," 
 said Dame Gillian. 
 
 ''It is impossible ! " answered Kaoul. "Call me blind if 
 thou wilt, but I have never seen man so changed in a few 
 weeks ; and his attire is flung on him so wildly as if he wore a 
 horse-clotli round him instead of a mantle. What can ail 
 the youth ? He has made a dead pause at the door, as if he 
 saw something on the threshold that debarred his entrance. 
 St. Hubert, but he looks as if he were elf-stricken ! " 
 
 " You ever thought him such a treasure !" said Gillian ; 
 " and now look at him as he stands by the side of a real 
 gentleman, how he stares and trembles as if he were dis- 
 traught. '^ 
 
 "I will speak to him," saidEaoul, forgetting his lameness, 
 and springing from his elevated station — "I will speak to 
 him ; and, if he be unwell, I have my lancets and fleams to 
 bleed man as well as brute." 
 
 " And a fit physician for such a patient," muttered Gillian 
 — " a dog-leech for a dreamy madman, that neither knows 
 his own disease nor the way to cure it." 
 
 Meanwhile the old huntsman made his way towards the 
 entrance, before which Damian remained standing, in appar- 
 ent uncertainty whether he should enter or not regardless 
 of the crowd around, and at the same time attracting their 
 attention by the singularity of his deportment. 
 
 Eaoul had a private regard for Damian • for which, per- 
 haps, it was a chief reason that of late his wife had been in 
 the habit of speaking of him in a tone more disrespectful 
 than she usually applied to handsome young men. Besides, 
 he understood the youth was a second Sir Tristrem in sylvan 
 sports by wood and river, and there needed no more to fetter 
 Raoul's soul to him with bands of steel. He saw with great 
 concern his conduct attract general notice, mixed with some 
 ridicule. 
 
 ' ' He stands,** said the town jester, who had crowded into 
 the gay throng, " before the gate like Balaam's ass in the 
 mystery, when the animal sees so much more than can be 
 seen by any one else." 
 
 A cut from Raoul's 'ready leash rewarded the felicity of 
 this application, and sent the fool howling ofE to seek a more 
 favorable audience for his pleasantry. At the same time 
 Raoul pressed up to Damian, and, with an earnestness very 
 
154 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 different from his usual dry causticity of manner, begged 
 him for God's sake not to make himself the general specta- 
 cle, by standing there as if the devil sat on the doorway, but 
 either to enter, or, what might be as becoming, to retire, and 
 make himself more fit in apparel for attending on a solem- 
 nity so nearly concerning his house. 
 
 ' ' And what ails my apparel, old man ? " said Damian, 
 turning sternly on the huntsman, as one who has been hastily 
 and unciviley roused from a reverie. 
 
 '' Only, with respect to your valor," answered the hunts- 
 man, " men do not usually put old mantles over new doub- 
 lets ; and methinks, with submission, that of yours neither 
 accords with your dress nor is fitted for this noble presence." 
 
 " Thou art a fool ! " answered Damian, "and as green in 
 wit as gray in years. Know you not that in these days the 
 young and old consort together — contract together — wed to- 
 gether ? and should we take more care to make our apparel 
 consistent tban our actions ? " 
 
 '' For God's sake, my lord," said Kaoul, " forbear these 
 wild and dangerous words ! they may be lieard by other ears 
 than mine, and construed by worse interpreters. There may 
 be here those who will pretend to track miscliief from light 
 words, as I would find a buck from his frayings. Your 
 cheek is pale, my lord, your eye is bloodshot ; for Heaven's 
 sake, retire." 
 
 ''I will not retire," said Damian, with yet more distem- 
 perature of manner, " till I have seen the Lady Eveline." 
 
 " For the sake of all the saints," ejaculated Raoul, ''not 
 now ! You will do my lady incredible injury by forcing 
 yourself into her presence in this condition." 
 
 " Do you think so?" said Damian, the remark seeming 
 to operate as a sedative which enabled him to collect his 
 scattered thoughts. " Do you really think so ? I thought 
 that to have looked upon her once more — but no, you are in 
 the right, old man." 
 
 He turned from the door as if to withdraw, but ere he 
 could accomplish liis purpose, he turned yet more pale than 
 before, staggered, and fell on tlie pavement ere Raoul could 
 afford him his support, useless as that might have proved. 
 Those who raised him were surprised to observe that his 
 garments were soiled with blood, and that the stains upon 
 his cloak, which had been criticised by Raoul, were of the 
 same complexion. A grave-looking personage, wrapped in 
 a sad-colored mantle, came forth from the crowd. 
 
 " I knew how it would be," he said ; *' I made venesectioD 
 
THE BETROTHED 155 
 
 bhis morning, and commanded repose and sleep according to 
 the aphorisms of Hippocrates ; but if young gentlemen will 
 aeglect the ordinance of their physician, medicine will 
 avenge herself. It is impossible that my bandage or liga- 
 ture, knit by these fingers, should have started, but to avenge 
 the neglect of the precepts of art." 
 
 " What means this prate ? " said the voice of the Consta- 
 ble, before which all others were silent. He had been sum- 
 moned forth just as the rite of espousal or betrothing was 
 concluded, on the confusion occasioned by Damian's siiua- 
 tion, and now sternly commanded the physician to replace 
 the bandages which had slijjped from his nephew's arm, 
 liimself assisting in the task of supporting the patient, with 
 the anxious and deeply agitated feelings of one who saw a 
 near and justly valued relative — as yet the heir of his fame 
 and family — stretched before him in a condition so danger- 
 ous. 
 
 But the griefs of the powerful and the fortunate are often 
 mingled with the impatience of interrupted prosperity. 
 " What means this ? " he demanded sternly of the leech. " I 
 sent you this morning to attend my nephew on the first tid- 
 ings of his illness, and commanded that he should make no 
 attempt to be present on this day's solemnity, yet I find him 
 in this state and in this place." 
 
 " So please your lordship," replied the leech, with a con- 
 scious self-importance which even the presence of the Con- 
 stable could not subdue, " Curatio est canojiica, non coacta ; 
 which signifieth, my lord, that the physician acteth his cure 
 by rules of art and science, by advice and prescription, but 
 not by force or violence upon the patient, who cannot be at 
 all benefited unless he be voluntarily amenable to the orders 
 of his medicum." 
 
 " Tell me not of your jargon," said De Lacy ; '' if my 
 nephew was light-headed enough to attempt to come hither 
 in the heat of a delirious distemper, you should have had 
 sense to prevent him, had it been by actual force." 
 
 "It may be," said Randal de Lacy, joining the crowd, 
 who, forgetting the cause which had brought them together, 
 were now assembled about Damian, "that more powerful 
 was the magnet which drew our kinsman hither than aught 
 the leech could do to withhold him." 
 
 The Constable, still busied about his nephew, looked up 
 as Randal spoke, and, when he was done, asked, with formal 
 coldness of manner, " Ha, fair kinsman, of what magnet do 
 you speak ? " 
 
156 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 " Surely of your nephew's love and regard to your lord- 
 ship," answered Randal, " which, not to mention his respect 
 for the Lady Eveline, must have compelled him hither, if 
 his limbs were able to bear him. And here the bride comes, 
 I think, in charity, to thank him for his zeal." 
 
 " What unhappy case is this ? " said the Lady Eveline, 
 pressing forward, much disordered with the intelligence of 
 Damian^s danger, which had been suddenly conveyed to her. 
 " Is there nothing in which my poor service may avail ?" 
 
 " Nothing, lady," said the Constable, rising from beside 
 his nephew, and taking her hand ; -^'your kindness is here 
 mistimed. This motley assembly, this unseeming confu- 
 sion, become not your presence." 
 
 "Unless it could be helpful, my lord," said Eveline, 
 eagerly. " It is your nephew who is in danger — my deliv- 
 erer — one of my deliverers, I would say." 
 
 '' He is fitly attended by his chirurgeon," said the Con- 
 stable, leading back his reluctant bride into the coiivent ; 
 while the medical attendant triumphantly exclaimed — 
 
 " Well judgeth my Lord Constable, to withdraw his noble 
 lady from the host of petticoated empirics, who, like so 
 many Amazons, break in upon and derange the regular 
 course of physical practise, with their petulant prognostics, 
 their rash recipes, their mithridate, their febrifuges, their 
 amulets, and their charms. Well speaketh the ethnic poet, 
 
 Non audet, nisi quae [qui] didicit, dare : quod medicoruin est 
 Promittunt medici : tractant fabrilia fabri. 
 
 As he repeated these lines with much emphasis, the doc- 
 tor permitted his patient's arm to drop from his hand, that 
 he might aid the cadence with a flourish of his own. 
 " There," said he to the spectators, " \& what none of you 
 understand — no, by St. Luke, nor the Constable himself." 
 
 " But he knows how to whip in a hound that babbles 
 when he should be busy," said Raoul ; and, silenced by this 
 hint, the chirurgeon betook himself to his proper duty of 
 superintending the removal of 3^oung Damian to an apart- 
 ment in the neighboriiig street, where the symptoms of his 
 disorder seemed rather to increase than diminish, and 
 speedily required all the skill and attention which the leech 
 could bestow. 
 
 The subscription of the contract of marriage had, as 
 already noticed, been just concluded, when the company 
 assembled on the occasion were interrupted by the news of 
 Damian's illness. When the Constable led his bride from 
 
THE BETBOTHED 157 
 
 the courtyard into the apartment where the company was 
 assembled, there was discomposure and uneasiness on the 
 countenance of both ; and it was not a little increased by 
 the bride pulling her hand hastily from the hold of the 
 bridegroom, on observing that the latter was stained with 
 recent blood, and had in truth left the same stamp upon 
 her own. With a faint exclamation she showed the marks 
 to Rose, saying at the same time, " What bodes this ? Is 
 this the revenge of the Bloody-Finger already commencing ?" 
 '' It bodes nothing, my dearest lady," said Rose ; " it is 
 our own fears that are prophets, not those trifles which we 
 take for augury. For God's sake, speak to my lord ! He 
 is surprised at your agitation." 
 
 " Let him ask me the cause himself," said Eveline ; 
 " fitter it should be told at his bidding than be offered by 
 me unasked." 
 
 The Constable, while his bride stood thus conversing with 
 her maiden, had also observed that, in his anxiety to assist 
 his nephew, he had transferred part of his blood from his 
 own hands to Eveline's dress. He came forward to apolo- 
 gize for what at such a moment seemed almost ominous. 
 ''Fair lady," said he, "the blood of a true De Lacy can 
 never bode aught but peace and happiness to you." 
 
 Eveline seemed as if she would have answered, but could 
 not immediately find words. The faithful Rose, at the risk 
 of incurring the censure of being over-forward, hastened to 
 reply to the compliment. " Every damsel is bound to be- 
 lieve what you say, my noble lord," was her answer, '' know- 
 ing how readily that blood hath ever flowed for protecting 
 the distressed, and so lately for our own relief." 
 
 " It is well spoken, little one," answered the Constable ; 
 " and the Lady Eveline is happy in a maiden who so well 
 knows how to speak when it is her own pleasure to be 
 silent. Come, lady," he added, ''let us hope this mishap 
 of my kinsman is but like a sacrifice to fortune, which per- 
 mits not the brightest hour to pass without some intervening 
 shadow. . Damian, I trust, will speedily recover ; and be we 
 mindful that the blood-drops which alarm you have been 
 drawn by a friendly steel, and are symptoms rather of re- 
 covery than of illness. Come, dearest lady, your silence 
 discourages our friends, and wakes in them doubts whether 
 we be sincere in the welcome due to them. Let me be your 
 sewer," he said ; and, taking a silver ewer and napkin from 
 the standing cupboard, which was loaded with plate, he 
 presented them on his knee to his bride. 
 
158 WAVERLEY IfOVELS 
 
 Exerting herself to shake off the alarm into which she had 
 been thrown by some snpposed coincidence of the present 
 accident with the apparition of Baldringham, Eveline, en- 
 tering into her betrothed husband's humor, was about to 
 raise him from the ground, when he was interrupted by the 
 arrival of a hasty messenger, who, coming into the room 
 without ceremony, informed the Constable that his nephew 
 was so extremely ill, that, if he hoped to see him alive, it 
 would be necessary he should come to his lodgings in- 
 stantly. 
 
 The Constable started up, made a brief adieu to Eveline 
 and to the guests, who, dismayed at this new and disastrous 
 intelligence, were preparing to disperse themselves, when, as 
 he advanced towards the door, he was met by a paritor, or 
 summoner of the ecclesiastical court, whose official dress had 
 procured him unobstructed entrance into the precincts of 
 the abbey. 
 
 " Deus vobiscum," said the joaritor ; "I would know 
 which of this fair company is the Constable of Chester ! " 
 
 "I am he," answered the elder De Lacy; "but if thy 
 business be not the more hasty, I cannot now speak with 
 thee : I am bound on matters of life and death." 
 
 " I take all Christian people to witness that I have dis- 
 charged my duty," said the paritor, putting into the hand 
 of the Constable a slip of parchment. 
 
 " How is this, fellow ?" said the Constable, in great in- 
 dignation : " for whom or what does your master the Arch- 
 bishop take me, that he deals with me in this uncourteous 
 fashion, citing me to compear before him more like a delin- 
 quent than a friend or a nobleman ?" 
 
 " My gracious lord," answered the paritor, haughtily, "is 
 accountable to no one but our Holy Father the Pope for the 
 exercise of the power which is entrusted to him by the 
 canons of the church. Your lordship's answer to my cita- 
 tion ? " 
 
 " Is the Archbishop present in this city ?" said the Con- 
 stable, after a moment's reflection. " I knew not of his 
 purpose to travel hitherj still less of his purpose to exercise 
 authority Avithin these bounds." 
 
 " My gracious lord the Archbishop," said the paritor, " is 
 but now arrived in this city, of which he is metropolitan ; 
 and, besides, by his apostolical commission, a legate a latere 
 hath plenary jurisdiction throughout all England, as those 
 may find, whatsoever be their degree, who may dare to dis- 
 obey his summons." 
 
THE BETROTHED 159 
 
 " Hark thee, fellow/' said the Constable, regarding the 
 paritor with a grim and angry countenance, '' were it not for 
 certain resjiects, which I promise thee thy tawny hood hath 
 little to do with, thou wert better have swallowed thy cita- 
 tion, seal and all, than delivered it to me with the addition 
 of such saucy terms. Go hence, and tell your master I will 
 see him within the space of an hour, during which time I 
 am delayed by the necessity of attending a sick relation." 
 
 The paritor left the apartment with more humility in his 
 manner than when he had entered, and left the assembled 
 guests to look upon each other in silence and dismay. 
 
 The reader cannot fail to remember how severely the yoke 
 of the Roman supremacy pressed both on the clergy and 
 laity of England during the reign of Henry II. Even the 
 attempt of that wise and courageous monarch to make a 
 Btand for the independence of his throne in the memorable 
 case of Thomas a Becket had such an unhappy issue that, 
 like a suppressed rebellion, it was found to add new strength 
 to the domination of the church. Since the submission of 
 the king in that ill-fated struggle, the voice of Rome had 
 double potency whenever it was heard, and the boldest peers 
 of England held it more wise to submit to her imperious 
 dictates than to provoke a spiritual censure which had so 
 many secular consequences. Hence the slight and scornful 
 manner in which the Constable was treated by the prelate 
 Baldwin struck a chill of astonishment into the assembly of 
 friends whom he had collected to witness his espousals ; and 
 as he glanced his haughty eye around, he saw that many who 
 would have stood by him through life and death in any 
 other quarrel, had it even been with his sovereign, were 
 turning pale at the very thought of a collision with the 
 church. Embarrassed, and at the same time incensed at 
 their timidity, the Constable hasted to dismiss them, with 
 the general assurance that all would be well ; that his 
 nephew's indisposition was a trifling complaint, exaggerated 
 by a conceited physician and by his own want of care ; and 
 that the message of the Archbishop, so unceremoniously de- 
 livered, was but the consequence of their mutual and friendly 
 familiarity, which induced them sometimes, for the jest's 
 sake, to reverse or neglect the ordinary forms of intercourse. 
 " If I wanted to speak with the prelate Baldwin on ex- 
 press business and in haste, such is the humility and indif- 
 ference to form of that worthy pillar of the church, that I 
 should not fear offense," said the Constable, *'didlsend 
 the meanest horse-boy in my troop to ask an audience of him." 
 
160 WA VBRLEY NO VELS 
 
 So he spoke, but there was something in his countenance 
 which contradicted his words ; and his friends and relations 
 retired from the splendid and joyful ceremony of his espousals 
 as from a funeral feast, with anxious thoughts and with down- 
 cast eyes. 
 
 Eandal was the only person who, having attentively 
 watched the whole progress of tlie affair during the evening, 
 ventured to approach his cousin as he left the house, and 
 asked him, " In the name of tlieir reunited friendship, 
 whether he had nothing to command him ?" assuring him, 
 with a look more expressive than his words, that he would 
 not find him cold in his service. 
 
 " I have naught which can exercise your zeal, fair cousin," 
 replied the Constable, with the air of one who partly ques- 
 tioned the speaker's sincerity ; and the parting reverence with 
 whicli he accompanied his words left Randal no pretext for 
 continuing his attendance, as he seemed to have designed. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Oh, were I seated high as my ambition, 
 
 I'd place this naked foot on necks of monarchs ! 
 
 3Iystenmis Mother. 
 
 The most anxious and unhappy moment of Engo de 
 Lacy's life was unquestionably that in wliieh, by espousing 
 Eveline with all civil and religious solemnity, he seemed to 
 approach to what for some time he had considered as the 
 prime object of his wishes. He was assured of the early 
 possession of a beautiful and amiable wife, endowed with 
 such advantage of worldly goods as gratified his ambition 
 as well as his affections. Yet, even in this fortunate mo- 
 ment, the horizon darkened around him in a manner which 
 presaged naught but storm and calamity. At his nephew's 
 lodging he learned that the pulse of the patient had risen, 
 and his delirium had augmented, and all around him spoke 
 very doubtfully of his chance of recovery, or surviving a 
 crisis which seemed speedily approaching. The Constable 
 stole towards the door of the apartment which his feelings 
 permitted him not to enter, and listened to the raving 
 which the fever gave rise to. Nothing can be more melan- 
 choly than to hear the mind at work concerning its ordinary 
 occupations when the body is stretched in pain and danger 
 upon the couch of severe sickness : the contrast betwixt the 
 ordinary state of health, its joys or its labors, renders doubly 
 affecting the actual helplessness of the patient before whom 
 these visions are rising, and we feel a corresponding degree 
 of compassion for the sufferer whose thoughts are wandering 
 so far from his real condition. 
 
 The Constable felt this acutely, as he heard his nephew 
 shout the war-cry of the family repeatedly, appearing, by 
 the words of command and direction which he uttered from 
 time to time, to be actively engaged in leading his men-at- 
 arms against the Welsh. At another time he muttered 
 various terms of the manege, of falconry, and of the chase ; 
 he mentioned his uncle's name repeatedly on these occasions, 
 as if the idea of his kinsman had been connected alike with 
 his martial encounters and. with his sports by wood and river. 
 161 
 
162 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 Other sounds there were, which he muttered so low as to be 
 altogether undistinguishable. 
 
 With a heart even still more softened towards his kins- 
 man's sufferings from hearing the points on which his mind 
 wandered, the Constable twice applied his hand to the latch 
 of the door, in order to enter the bedroom, and twice for- 
 bore, his eyes running faster with tears than he chose should 
 be witnessed by the attendants. At length, relinquishing 
 his purpose, he hastily left the house, mounted his horse, 
 and, followed only by four of his personal attendants, rode 
 towards the palace of the bishop, where, as he learned from 
 public rumor, the arch-prelate Baldwin had taken up his 
 temporary residence. 
 
 The train of riders and of led horses, of sumpter-mules, 
 and of menials and attendants, both lay and ecclesiastical, 
 Avhich thronged around the gate of the episcopal mansion, 
 together with the gaping crowd of inhabitants who had 
 gathered around, some to gaze upon the sj^lendid show, some 
 to have the chance of receiving the benediction of the holy 
 prelate, was so great as to impede the Constable's approach 
 to the palace door ; and when this obstacle was surmounted, 
 he found another in the obstinacy of the Archbishop's at- 
 tendants, who 2:)ermitted him not, though announced by 
 name and title, to cross the threshold of the mansion until 
 they should receive the express command of their master to 
 that effect. 
 
 The Constable felt the full effect of this slighting recep- 
 tion. He had dismounted from his horse in full confidence 
 of being instantly admitted into the palace at least, if not 
 into the prelate's presence ; and as he now stood on foot 
 among the squires, grooms, and horse-boys of the spiritual 
 lord, he was so much disgusted, that his first impulse was to 
 remount his horse and return to his pavilion, pitched for the 
 time before the city walls, leaving it to the bishop to seek 
 him there, if he really desired an interview. But the neces- 
 sity of conciliation almost immediately rushed on his mind, 
 and subdued the first haughty impulse of his offended pride. 
 " If our wise king,'' he said to himself, " hath held the 
 stirrup of one prelate of Canterbury when living, and sub- 
 mitted to the most degrading observances before his shrine 
 when dead, surely I need not be more scrupulous towards 
 his priestly successor in the same overgrown authority." 
 Another thought, which he dared hardly to acknowledge, 
 recommended the same humble and submissive course. He 
 could not but feel that, in endeavoring to evade his vows as 
 
THE BETROTHED 163 
 
 a crusader, he was incurring some just censure from the 
 church ; and he was not unwilling to hope that his present 
 cold and scornful reception on Baldwin's part might be 
 meant as a part of the penance which his conscience informed 
 him his conduct was about to receive. 
 
 After a short interval, De Lacy was at length invited to 
 enter the palace of the Bishop of Gloucester, in which he 
 was to meet the Primate of England ; but there was more 
 than one brief pause, in hall and ante-room, ere he at length 
 was admitted to Baldwin's presence. 
 
 The successor of the celebrated Becket had neither the 
 extensive views nor the aspiring spirit of that redoubted per- 
 sonage ; but, on the other hand, saint as the latter had be- 
 come, it may be questioned whether, in his professions for 
 the weal of Christendom, he was half so sincere as was the 
 present archbishop. Baldwin was, in truth, a man well 
 qualified to defend the powers which the church had gained, 
 though perhaps of a character too sincere and candid to be 
 active in extending them. The advancement of the Crusade 
 was the chief business of his life, his success the principal 
 cause of his pride ; and if the sense of possessing the powers 
 of eloquent persuasion, and skill to bend the minds of men 
 to his purpose, was blended with his religious zeal, still the 
 tenor of his life, and afterwards his death before Ptolemais, 
 showed that the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher from the 
 infidels was the unfeigned object of all his exertions. Hugo 
 de Lacy well knew this ; and the difficulty of managing 
 such a temper appeared much greater to him on the eve of 
 the interview in which the attempt was to be made than he 
 had suffered himself to suppose when the crisis was yet 
 distant. 
 
 The prelate, a man of a handsome and stately form, with 
 features rather too severe to be pleasing, received the Con- 
 stable in all the pomp of ecclesiastical dignity. He was 
 seated on a chair of oak, richly carved with Gothic orna- 
 ments, and placed above the rest of the floor under a niche 
 of the same workmanship. His dress was the rich episcopal 
 robe, ornamented with costly embroidery, and fringed 
 around the neck and cuffs ; it opened from the throat and 
 in the middle, and showed an under vestment of embroidery, 
 betwixt the folds of which, as if imperfectly concealed, 
 peeped the close shirt of haircloth which the prelate con- 
 stantly wore under all his pompous attire. His miter was 
 placed beside him on an oaken table of the same workman- 
 ship with his throne, against which also rested his pastoral 
 
164 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 staff, representing a shepherd's crook of the simplest form, 
 yet which had proved more powerful and fearful than lance 
 or scimitar, when wielded by the hand of Thomas a' Backet. 
 
 A chaplain in a white surplice kneeled at a little distance 
 before a desk, and read forth from an illuminated volume 
 some portion of a theological treatise, in which Baldwin 
 appeared so deeply interested that he did not seem to notice 
 the entrance of the Constable, who, highly displeased at this 
 additional slight, stood on the floor of the hall, undeter- 
 mined whether to interrupt the reader and address the prel- 
 ate at once, or to withdraw without saluting him at all. 
 Ere he had formed a resolution, the chai^lain had arrived at 
 some convenient pause in the lecture, where the Archbishop 
 stopped him with "Satis est, mi Jili." 
 
 It was in vain that the proud secular baron strove to con- 
 ceal the embarrassment with which he approached the 
 prelate, whose attitude was jDlainly assumed for the purpose 
 of impressing him with awe and solicitude. He tried, in- 
 deed, to exhibit a demeanor of such ease as might charac- 
 terize their old friendship, or at least of such indifference as 
 might infer the possession of perfect tranquillity ; but he 
 failed in both, and his address expressed mortified pride, 
 mixed with no ordinary degree of embarrassment. The 
 genius of the Catholic Church was on such occasions sure 
 to predominate over the haughtiest of the laity. 
 
 " I perceive," said De Lacy, collecting his thoughts, and 
 ashamed to find he had difficulty in doing so — "1 perceive 
 that an old friendship is here dissolved. Methinks Hugo 
 de Lacy might have expected another messenger to summon 
 him to this reverend presence, and that another welcome 
 should wait him on his arrival." 
 
 The Archbishop raised himself slowly in his seat, and 
 made a half-inclination towards the Constable, who, by an 
 instinctive desire of conciliation, returned it lower than he 
 had intended, or than the scanty courtesy merited. The 
 prelate at the same time signing to his chaplain, the latter 
 arose to withdraw, and receiving permission in the phrase 
 " Do veniam," retreated reverently, without either turning 
 his back or looking upwards, his eyes fixed on the ground, 
 his hands still folded in his habit and crossed over his 
 bosom. 
 
 When this mute attendant had disappeared, the prelate's 
 brow became more open, yet retained a dark shade of grave 
 displeasure, and he replied to the address of De Lacy, but 
 still without rising from his seat. "It skills not now, my 
 
THE BETROTHED 165 
 
 lord, to say what the hrave Constable of Chester has been 
 to the poor priest Bahlwiu, or with what love and pride we 
 beheld him assume the holy sign of salvation, and, to honor 
 Him by whom he has himself been raised to honor, vow him- 
 self to the deliverance of the Holy Land. If I still see that 
 noble lord before me in the same holy resolution, let me 
 know the joyful trutli, and I will lay aside rochet and miter, 
 and tend his horse like a groom, if it be necessarv by snch 
 menial service to show the cordial respect I bear to him." 
 
 " Keverend father," answered De Lacy, with hesitation, 
 " I had hoped that the projjositions which were made to 
 you on my part by the Dean of Hereford might have seemed 
 more satisfactory in your eyes." Then regaining his native 
 confidence, he proceeded with more assurance in speech and 
 manner, for the cold, inflexible looks of the Archbishop 
 irritated him, " If these proposals can be amended, my lord, 
 let me know in what points, and, if possible, your pleasure 
 shall be done, even if it should prove somewhat unreason- 
 able. I would have peace, my lord, Avith Holy Church, and 
 am the last who would despise her mandates. This has 
 been known by my deeds in field and counsels in the state ; 
 nor can I think my services have merited cold looks and cold 
 language from the Primate of England." 
 
 " Do you upbraid the church with your services, vain 
 man ?" said Baldwin. " I tell thee, Hugo de Lacy, that 
 what Heaven hath wrought for the church by thy hand 
 could, had it been the divine pleasure, have been achieved 
 with as much ease by the meanest horse-boy in thy host. 
 It is tJiou that art honored, in being the chosen instrument 
 by which great things have been Avrought in Israel, l^ay, 
 interrupt me not. I tell thee, proud baron, that, in the 
 sight of Heaven, thy Avisdom is but as folly, thy courage, 
 which thou dost boast, but the cowardice of a village 
 maiden, thy strength weakness, thy spear an osier, and thy 
 sword a bulrush." 
 
 "All this I know, good father," said the Constable, "and 
 have ever heard it repeated wlien such poor services as I 
 may have rendered are gone and past. Marry, when there 
 was need for my helping hand, I was the very good lord of 
 priest and prelate, and one who should be honored and 
 prayed for with patrons and founders who sleep in the choir 
 and under the high altar. There was no thought, I trow, 
 of osier or of bulrush, when I have been prayed to couch my 
 lance or draw my Vv^eapon ; it is only when they are needless 
 that they and their owner are undervalued. Well, my rev- 
 
186 WA VERLEY NO VEL S 
 
 erend father, be it so ; if. the church can cast the Saracens 
 from the Holy Land by grooms and horse-boys, wherefore 
 do you preach knights and nobles from the homes and the 
 countries which they are born to protect and defend ?" 
 
 The Archbishop looked steadily on him as he replied, 
 " Not for the sake of their fleshly arm do we disturb your 
 knights and barons in their prosecution of barbarous festiv- 
 ities and murderous feuds, which you call enjoying their 
 homes and protecting their domains — not that Omnipotence 
 requires their arm of flesh to execute the great predestined 
 work of liberation, but for the weal of their immortal souls." 
 These last words he pronounced with great emphasis. 
 
 The Constable paced the floor impatiently, and muttered 
 to himself, " Such is the airy guerdon for which hosts on 
 hosts have been drawn from Europe to drench the sands of 
 Palestine with their gore ; such the vain promises for which 
 we are called upon to barter our country, our lands, and our 
 lives ! " 
 
 " Is it Hugo de Lacy speaks thus ? " said the Archbishop, 
 arising from his seat, and qualifying his tone of censure with 
 the appearance of shame and of regret. " Is it he who 
 nnder-prizes the renown of a knight, the virtueof a Christian, 
 the advancement of his earthly honor, the more incalculable 
 profit of his immortal soul ? Is it he who desires a solid 
 and substantial recompense in lands or treasure, to be won 
 by warring on his less powerful neighbors at home, while 
 knightly honor and religious faith, his vow as a knight and 
 his baptism as a Christian, call him to a more glorious and 
 more dangerous strife ? Can it be indeed Hugo de Lacy, 
 the mirror of the Anglo-Norman chivalry, whose thoughts 
 can conceive such sentiments, whose words can utter 
 them ? " 
 
 " Flattery and fair speech, suitably mixed with taunts and 
 reproaches, my lord," answered the Constable, coloring and 
 biting his lip, '' may carry your point with others ; but I 
 am of a temper too solid to be either wheedled or goaded 
 into measures of importance. Forbear, therefore, this strain 
 of affected amazement ; and believe me, that, whether he 
 goes to the Crusade or abides at home, the character of Hugo 
 Lacy will remain as unimpeached in point of courage as that 
 of the Archbishop Baldwin in point of sanctitude." 
 
 " May it stand much higher," said the Archbishop, 
 " than the reputation with which you vouchsafe to compare 
 it I But a l)laze may be extinguished as well as a spark ; 
 and ) tell the Constable of Chester, that the fame wliich 
 
TEE BETUOTBEB 167 
 
 has sat on his basnet for so many years may flit from it in 
 one moment, never to be recalled." 
 
 " Who dares to say so ?" said the Constable, tremblingly 
 alive to the honor for which he had encountered so many 
 dangers. 
 
 "A friend," said the Prelate, "whose stripes should be 
 received as benefits. You think of pay, sir Constable-, and 
 of guerdon, as if you still stood in the market, free to 
 chaffer on the terms of your service. I tell you, you are no 
 longer your own master : you are, by the blessed bad^e you 
 have voluntarily assumed, the soldier of God Himself ; nor 
 can you fly from your standard without such infamy as even 
 coistrels or grooms are unwilling to incur/' 
 
 " You deal all too hardly with us, my lord," said Hugo 
 de Lacy, stopping short in his troubled walk. " You of the 
 spirituality make us laymen the packhorses of your own 
 concerns, and climb to ambitious heights by the help of our 
 overburdened shoulders. But all hath its limits; Becket 
 transgressed it, and " 
 
 A gloomy and expressive look corresponded with the tone 
 in which he spoke this broken sentence ; and the j^relate, at 
 no loss to comprehend his meaning, replied, in a firm and 
 determined voice, "And he was murdered! that is what 
 you dare to hint to me — even to me, the successor of that 
 glorified saint — as a motive for complying with your fickle 
 and selfish wish to withdraw your hand from the plow. 
 You know not to whom you address such a threat. True, 
 Becket, from a saiut militant on earth, arrived, by the 
 bloody path of martyrdom, to the dignity of a saint in 
 Heaven ; and no less true is it that, to attain a seat a thou- 
 sand degrees beneath that of his blessed predecessor, the un- 
 worthy Baldwin were willing to submit, under Our Lady's 
 protection, to whatever the worst of wicked men can inflict 
 on his earthly frame." 
 
 " There needs not this show of courage, reverend father," 
 said De Lacy, recollecting himself, "where there neither is 
 nor can be clanger. I pray you, let us debate this matter 
 more deliberately. I have never meant to break off my 
 purpose for the Holy Land, but only to postpone it. Me- 
 thinks the offers that I have made are fair, and ought to 
 obtain for me what has been granted to others in the like 
 case — a slight delay in the time of my departure." 
 
 " A slight delay on the part of such a leader as you, noble 
 De Lacy," answered the prelate, " were a death-blow to our 
 holy and most gallant enterprise. To meaner men we might 
 
168 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 have granted tne privilege of marrying and giving in mar- 
 riage, even although they care not for the sorrows of Jacob ; 
 but you, my lord, are a main prop of our enterprise, and, 
 being withdrawn, the whole fabric may fall to the ground. 
 Who in England will deem himself obliged to press forward, 
 when Hugo de Lacy falls back ? Think, my lord, less upon 
 your plighted bride, and more on your plighted word ; and 
 believe not that a union can ever come to good which shakes 
 jrour purpose towards our blessed undertaking for the honor 
 of Christendom." 
 
 The Constable was embarrassed by the pertinacity of the 
 prelate, and began to give way to his arguments, though 
 most reluctantly, and only because the habits and opinions 
 of the time left him no means of combating his arguments 
 otherwise than by solicitation. "^ I admit," he said, " my 
 engagements for the Crusade, nor have I — I repeat it- 
 further desire than that brief interval which may be neces- 
 sary to place my important affairs in order. Meanwhile, my 
 vassals led by my nephew " 
 
 " Promise that which is within thy power," said the 
 prelate. " Who knows whether, in resentment of thy seek- 
 ing after other things than His most holy cause, thy nephew 
 may not be called hence, even while we speak together ?" 
 
 " God forbid !" said the baron, starting up, as if about to 
 fly to his nephew's assistance ; then suddenly pausing, he 
 turned on the prelate a keen and investigating glance. ■' It 
 is not well," he said, " that your reverence should thus trifle 
 with the dangers which threaten my house. Damian is dear 
 to me for his own good cpialities — dear for tlie sake of my 
 only brother. May God forgive us both ! he died when we 
 were in unkindness with each other. My lord, your words 
 import that my beloved nephew suffers pain and incurs 
 danger on account of mj^ offenses ? " 
 
 The Archbishop perceived he had at length touched the 
 chord to which his refractory penitent's heart-strings must 
 needs vibrate. He rej)lied with circumspection, as well 
 knowing with whom he had to deal — " Far be it from me to 
 presume to interpret the councils of Heaven ! but we read 
 in Scripture, that when the fathers eat sour grapes, the teeth 
 of the children are set on edge. What so i-easonable as that 
 we should be punished for our pride and contumacy, by a 
 judgment specially calculated to abate and bend that spirit 
 of surquedry ? You yourself best know if this disease clung 
 to thy nephew before you had meditated defection from the 
 banner of the Cross." 
 
THE BETROTHED 169 
 
 Hugo de Lacy hastily recollected himself, and found that 
 it was indeed true that, until he thought of his union with 
 Eveline, there had ajjpeured no change in his nephew's 
 health. His silence and confusion did not escape the artful 
 prelate. He took the hand of the warrior, as he stood before 
 him overwhelmed in doubt, lest his preference of the con- 
 tinuance of his own house to the rescue of the Holy Sepul- 
 cher should have been punished by the disease which threat- 
 ened his nephew's life. " Come," he said, " noble De Lacy, 
 the judgment provoked by a moment's presumption may be 
 even yet averted by prayer and penitence. The dial went 
 back at the prayer of the good KingHezekiah ; down — down 
 upon thy knees, and doubt not that, with confession, and 
 penance, and absolution, thou mayst yet atone for thy falling 
 away from the cause of Heaven." 
 
 Borne down by the dictates of the religion in which he 
 had been educated, and by the fears lest his delay was 
 punished by his nephew's indisposition and danger, the 
 Constable sunk on his knees before the prelate, whom he 
 had shortly before well-nigh braved, confessed, as a sin to be 
 deeply repented of, his purpose of delaying his departure 
 for Palestine, and received, with patience at least, if not 
 with willing acquiescence, the penance inflicted by the 
 Archbishop, which consisted in a prohibition to proceed 
 farther in his proposed wedlock with the Lady Eveline, 
 until he was returned from Palestine, where he was bound 
 by his vow to abide for the term of three years. 
 
 "And now, noble De Lacy," said the prelate, ''once 
 more my best beloved and most honored friend, is not thy 
 bosom lighter since thou hast thus nobly acquitted thee of 
 thy debt to Heaven, and cleansed thy gallant spirit from 
 those selfish and earthly stains which dimmed its bright- 
 ness ?" 
 
 The Constable sighed. '' My happiest thoughts at this 
 moment," he said, '' would arise from knowledge that my 
 nephew's health is amended." 
 
 " Be not discomforted on the score of the noble Damian, 
 your hopeful and valorous kinsman," said the Archbishop, 
 " for well I trust shortly ye shall hear of his recovery ; or 
 that, if it shall please God to remove him to a better world, 
 the passage shall be so easy, and his arrival in yonder haven 
 of bliss so speedy, that it were better for him to have died 
 than to have lived." 
 
 The Constable looked at him, as if to gather from his 
 'ountenance more certainty of his nephew's fate than his 
 
no WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 words seemed to imply ; and the prelate, to escape being 
 fartlier pressed on a subject on which he was perhaps con- 
 scious he had adventured too far, rung a silver bell which 
 stood before him on the table, and commanded the chaplain 
 who entered at the summons that he should despatch a 
 careful messenger to the lodging of Damian Lacy, to bring 
 particular accounts of his health. 
 
 "A stranger," answered the chaplain, ''just come from 
 the sick-chamber of the noble Damian Lacy, waits here 
 even now to have speech of my Lord Constable/' 
 
 "Admit him instantly,'^ said the Archbishop ; "my mind 
 tells me he brings us joyful tidings. Never knew I such 
 humble penitence, such willing resignation of natural af- 
 fections and desires to the doing of Heaven's service, but it 
 was rewarded with a guerdon either temporal or spiritual." 
 
 As he spoke, a man singularly dressed entered the apart- 
 ment. His garments, of various colors and showily disposed, 
 were not of the newest or cleanest, neither were they alto- 
 gether fitting for the presence in which he now stood. 
 
 "How now, sirrah!" said the prelate; "when was it 
 that jugglers and minstrels pressed into the company of 
 such as we without permission ?" 
 
 " So please you," said the man, " my instant business 
 was not with your reverend lordship, but with my lord the 
 Constable, to whom I will hope that my good news may 
 atone for my evil apparel." 
 
 "Speak, sirrah, does my kinsman live?" said the 
 Constable, eagerly. 
 
 "And is like to live, my lord," answered the man : " a 
 favorable crisis, so the leeches call it, hath taken place in 
 his disorder, and they are no longer under any appre- 
 hensions for his life." 
 
 "Now, God be praised, that hath granted me so much 
 mercy ! " said the Constable. 
 
 "Amen — amen!" replied the Archbishop, solemnly 
 "About what period did tliis blessed change take place ?" 
 
 "Scarcely a quarter of an hour since," said the mes- 
 senger, " a soft sleep fell on the sick youth, like dew upon 
 a parched field in summer ; he breathes freely, the burning 
 heat abated, and, as I said, the leeches no longer fear for 
 his life." 
 
 " Marked you the hour, my Lord Constable F" said the 
 bishop, with exultation; "even then you stooped to those 
 counsels which Heaven suggested through the meanest of its 
 servants I But two Avords avouching penitence, but one 
 
THE BETROTHED 171 
 
 brief prayer, and some kind saint has interceded for an in- 
 stant hearing and a liberal granting of thy petition. Noble 
 Hugo," he continued, grasping his hand in a species of en- 
 thusiasm, ''surely Heaven designs to work high things by 
 tlie hand of him whose faults are thus readily forgiven, 
 whose prayer is thus instantly heard. For this shall Te Deum 
 Laudamus be said in each church and each convent of 
 Gloucester ere the world be a day older.*' 
 
 The Constable, no less Joyful, though perhaps less able to 
 perceive an especial providence in his nephew's recovery, 
 expressed his gratitude to the messenger of the good tidings, 
 by throwing him his purse. 
 
 " I thank you, noble lord," said the man ; "but if I stoop 
 to pick up this taste of your bounty, it is only to restore it 
 again to the donor." 
 
 "How now, sir?" said the Constable; *' methinks thy 
 coat seems not so well lined as needs make thee spurn at 
 such a guerdon." 
 
 " He that designs to catch larks, my lord,'* replied the 
 messenger, '* must not close his net upon sparrows : I have 
 a greater boon to ask of your lordship, and therefore I 
 decline your present gratuity." 
 
 '<■ "A greater boon, ha ! " said the Constable. "lam no 
 ■knight-errant, to bind myself by promise to grant it ere I 
 know its import ; but do thou come to my pavilion to- 
 morrow, and thou wilt not find me unwilling to do what is 
 reason." 
 
 So saying, he took leave of the prelate, and returned 
 homeward, failing not to visit his nephew's lodging as he 
 passed, where he received the same pleasant assurances 
 which had been communicated by the messenger of the 
 parti-colored mantle. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 He was a minstrel, in his mood 
 
 Was wisdom mix'd \\ith folly — 
 A tame companion to the good, 
 But wild and fierce among the rude, 
 
 And jovial witli tlie jolly. 
 
 Archibald Armstrong. 
 
 The events of the preceding day had been of a nature so 
 interesting, and hitterly so harassing, that the Constable 
 felt weary, as after a severely-contested battle-field, and slept 
 soundly until the earliest beams of dawn saluted him through 
 the opening of the tent. It was then that, with a mingled 
 feeling of pain and satisfaction, he began to review tlie 
 change which had taken place in his condition since the 
 preceding morning. He had then risen an ardent bride- 
 groom, anxious to find favor in the eyes of his fair bride, 
 and scrupulous about his dress and appointments, as if he 
 had been as young in years as in hopes and wishes. This 
 was over, and he had now before him the painful task of 
 leaving his betrothed for a term of years, even before wedlock 
 had united them indissolubly, and of reflecting that she was 
 exposed to all the dangers which assail female constancy in 
 a situation thus critical. When the immediate anxiety for 
 his nephew was removed, he was tempted to think that he 
 had been something hasty in listening to the arguments of 
 the Archbishop, and in believing that Damian's death or 
 recovery depended upon his own accomplishing, to the letter, 
 and without delay, his vow for the Holy Land. " How 
 many princes and kings," he thought to himself, "have 
 assumed the cross, and delayed or renounced it, yet lived 
 and died in wealth and honor, without sustaining such a 
 visitation as that with which Baldwin threatened me ; and 
 in what case or particular did such men deserve more indul- 
 gence than I ? But the die is now cast, and it signifies little \ 
 to inquire whether my obedience to the mandates of the i 
 church has saved the life of my nephew, or whether I have 
 not fallen, as laymen are wont to fall, whenever there is an 
 encounter of wits betwixt them and those of the spirituality. 
 I would to God it may prove otherwise, since, girding on my 
 172 
 
THE BETROTHED 173 
 
 Bword as Heaven's champion, I might the better expect 
 Heaven's protection for her whom I must unhappily leave 
 behind me." 
 
 As these reflections passed through his mind, he heard the 
 warders at the entrance of his tent challenge some one whose 
 footsteps were heard approaching it. The person stopped 
 on their challenge, and presently after was heard the sound 
 of a rote (a small species of lute), the strings of which were 
 managed by means of a small wheel. After a short prelude, 
 a manly voice, of good comjoass, sung verses, which, trans- 
 lated into modern language, might run nearly thus ; 
 
 Soldier, wake ! The day is peeping, 
 Honor ne'er was won in sleeping, 
 Never when the sunbeams still 
 Lay unreflected on the hill : 
 'Tis when they are glinted back 
 From ax and armor, spear and jack. 
 That they promise futm'e story, 
 Many a page of deathless glory. 
 Sliields that are the foeman's terror 
 Ever are the morning's mirror. 
 
 Arm and up I The morning beam 
 Hath call'd the rustic to his team. 
 Hath call'd the falc'ner to the lake, 
 Hath call'd the huntsman to the brake ; 
 The early student ponders o'er 
 His dusty tomes of ancient lore. 
 Soldier, wake ! Thy harvest, fame ; 
 Thy study, conquest ; war, thy game. 
 Shield, that would be foeman's terror, 
 Still should gleam the morning's mirror. 
 
 Poor hire repays the rustic's pain. 
 
 More paltiy still the sportsman's gain, 
 
 Vainest of all, the student's theme 
 
 Ends in some metaphysic dream ; 
 
 Yet each is u}), and each has toil'd 
 
 Since first the peep of dawn has smiled 
 
 And each is eagerer in his aim 
 
 Than he who barters life for fame. 
 
 Up, up, and arm thee, son of terror ! 
 
 Be thy bright shield the morning's mirror. 
 
 When the song was finished, the constable heard some 
 talking without, and presently Philip Guarine entered the 
 pavilion to tell that a person, come hither as he said by the 
 Constable's appointment, waited permission to speak 'with 
 him. 
 
174 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 "By my appointment?" said De Lacy. "Admit him 
 immediately.'' 
 
 The messenger of tlie preceding evening entered the tent, 
 holding in one hand his small cap and feather, in the other 
 the rote on which he had been jnst playing. His attire was 
 fantastic, consisting of more than one inner dress of various 
 colors, all of the brightest and richest dyes, and disposed 
 so as to contrast with each other ; the upper garment was a 
 very short Norman cloak of bright green. An embroidered 
 girdle sustained, in lieu of offensive w^eapons, an inkhorn 
 with its appurtenances on the one side, on the other a knife 
 for the purposes of the table. His hair was cut in imitation 
 of the clerical tonsure, which w^as designed to intimate that 
 he had arrived to a certain rank in his profession ; for the 
 joyous science, as the profession of minstrelsy was termed, 
 had its various ranks, like the degrees in the church and in 
 chivalry. The features and manners of the man seemed to 
 be at variance with his profession and habit ; for, as the lat- 
 ter was gay and fantastic, the former had a cast of gravity, 
 and almost of sternness, which, unless when kindled by the 
 enthusiasm of his poetical and musical exertions, seemed 
 rather to indicate deep reflection than the thoughtless viva- 
 city of observation which characterized most of his brethren. 
 His countenance, though not handsome, had therefore some- ^j 
 thing in it striking and impressive, even from its very con- 
 trast with the parti-colored hues and fluttering shape of his 
 vestments ; and the Constable felt something inclined to 
 patronize him, as he said, " Good-morrow, friend, and 1 
 thank thee for thy morning greeting ; it was well sung and 
 well meant, for when we call forth any one to bethink him 
 how time j^asses, we do him the credit of supposing that he 
 can ejnploy to advantage that flitting treasure." 
 
 The man, who had listened in silence, seemed to pause 
 and make an effort ere he rejDlied, " My intentions, at least, 
 were good, when I ventured to disturb my lord thus early ; 
 and I am glad to learn that my boldness hath not been evil 
 received at his hand.'" 
 
 " True," said the Constable, ''you had a boon to ask of 
 me. Be speedy, and say thy request : my leisure is short." 
 
 " It is for permission to follow you to the Holy Land, my 
 lord," said the man. 
 
 "Thou hast asked what I can hardly grant, my friend.'* 
 answered De Lacy. " Thou art a minstrel, art thou not ?" 
 
 *' An unworthy graduate of the gay science, my lord," said 
 the musician ; " yet let me say for myself, that I will not 
 
THE BETROTHED HB 
 
 yield to the king of minstrels, Geoffrey Rudel, though the 
 King of England hath given him four manors for one song. 
 I would be willing to contend with him in romance, lay, or 
 fable, were the judge to be King Henry himself." 
 
 " You have your own good word, doubtless," said De 
 Lacy ; "nevertheless, sir minstrel, thou goest not with me. 
 The Crusade has been already too much encumbered by 
 men of thy idle profession ; and if thou dost add to the 
 number, it shall not be under my protection. I am too old 
 to be charmed by thy art, charm thou never so wisely." 
 
 *' He that is young enough to seek for and to win the love 
 of beauty," said the minstrel, but in a submissive tone, as if 
 fearing his freedom might give offense, " should not term 
 himself too old to feel tlie charms of minstrelsy." 
 
 The Constable smiled, not insensible to the flattery which 
 assigned to him the character of a younger gallant. *' Thou 
 Art a jester," he said, " I warrant me, in addition to thy 
 other qualities ? " 
 
 *'No," replied the minstrel, "it is a branch of our pro- 
 fession which I have for some time renounced : my fortunes 
 iiave put me out of tune for jesting." 
 
 " Nay, comrade," said the Constable, "if thou hast been 
 Qardly dealt with in the world, and canst comply with the 
 rules of a family so strictly ordered as mine, it is possible we 
 mav agree together better than I thought. What is thy 
 name and country 'i Thy speech, methinks, sounds some- 
 what foreign." 
 
 " 1 am an Armorican, my lord, from the merry shores of 
 Morbihan ; and hence my tongue hath some touch of my 
 country speech. My name is, Renault Vidal." 
 
 " Such being the case, Renault," said the Constable, " thou 
 shalt follow me, and I will give orders to the master of my 
 household to have thee attired something according to thy 
 function, but in more orderly guise than thou now appearest 
 in. Dost thou understand the use of a weapon ? " 
 
 "Indifferently, my lord," said the Armorican; at the 
 same time taking a sword fjom the wall, he drew it, and 
 made a pass with it so close to the Constable's body, as he 
 sat on the couch, that he started up, crying, " Villain, for- 
 bear ! " 
 
 " La you ! noble sir," replied Vidal, lowering with all 
 
 submission the point of his weapon, " I have already given 
 
 you a proof of sleight which has alarmed even your experi- 
 
 aiij ence ; I have an hundred other besides." 
 
 not I "It may be so," said De Lacy, somewhat ashamed at 
 
176 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 having shown himself moved by the sudden and lively action 
 of the juggler ; '' but I love not jesting with edge-tools, and 
 nave too much to do with sword and sword-blows in earnest 
 to toy with them ; so I pray you let us have no more of this, 
 but call me my squire and my chamberlain, for I am about 
 to array me and go to mass." 
 
 The religious duties of the morning performed, it was the 
 Constable's intention to visit the lady abbess, and communi- 
 cate, with the necessary precautions and qualifications, the 
 altered relations in which he was placed towards her niece, 
 by the resolution he had been compelled to adopt, of depart- 
 ing for the Crusade before accomplishing his marriage, in 
 the terms of the precontract already entered into. He was 
 conscious that it would be difficult to reconcile the good 
 lady to this change of measures, and he delayed some time 
 ere he could think of the best mode of communicating and 
 softening the unpleasant intelligence. An interval was also 
 spent in a visit to his nephew, whose state of convalescence 
 continued to be as favorable as if in truth it had been a 
 miraculous consequence of the Constable's having complied 
 with the advice of the Archbishop. 
 
 From the lodging of Damian, the Constable proceeded to 
 ehe convent of the Benedictine abbess. But she had been 
 already made acquainted with the circumstances which he 
 came to communicate, by a still earlier visit from the Arch- 
 bishop Baldwin himself. The Primate had undertaken the 
 office of mediator on this occasion, conscious that his suc- 
 cess of the evening before must have placed the Constable in 
 a delicate situation with the relations of his betrothed bride, 
 and willing, by his countenance and authority, to reconcile 
 the disputes which might ensue. Perhaps he had better 
 have left Hugo de Lacy to plead his own cause ; for tlie ab- 
 bess, though she listened to the communication with all the 
 respect due to the highest dignitary of the English Church, 
 drew consequences from the Constable's change of resolution 
 which the Primate had not expected. She ventured to op- 
 pose no obstacle to De Lacy's accomplishment of his vows, 
 but strongly argued that the contract with her niece should 
 be entirety set aside, and each party left at liberty to form a 
 new choice. 
 
 It was in vain that the Archbishop endeavored to dazzle 
 the abbess with the future honors to be won by the Consta- 
 ble in the Holy Land, the splendor of which would attach 
 not to his lady alone, but to all in the remotest degree 
 allied to or connected with her. All his eloquence was to no 
 
THE BETROTHED 111 
 
 purpose, though upon so favorite a topic he exerted it to 
 the utmost. The abbess, it is true, remained silent for a 
 moment after his arguments had been exhausted, but it was 
 only to consider how she should intimate, in a suitable and 
 reverent manner, that children, the usual attendants of a 
 happy union, and the existence of which she looked to for 
 the continuation of the house of her father and brother, 
 could not be hoped for with any probability unless the pre- 
 contract was followed by marriage, and the residence of the 
 married parties in the same country. She therefore insisted 
 that, the Constable having altered his iiitentions in this most 
 important particular, the fiangaiUes should be entirely abro- 
 gated and set aside ; and she demanded of the Primate, as 
 an act of justice, that, as he had interfered to prevent the, 
 bridegroom's execution of his original purpose, he should 
 now assist with his influence wholly to dissolve an engage- 
 ment which had been thus materially innovated upon. 
 
 The Primate, who was sensible he had himself occasioned 
 De Lacy's breach of contract, felt himself bound in honor 
 and reputation to prevent consequences so disagreeable to his 
 friend as the dissolution of an engagement in which his in- 
 terest and inclinations were alike concerned. He reproved 
 the lady abbess for the carnal and secular views which she, 
 a dignitary of the church, entertained upon the subject of 
 matrimony and concerning the interest of her house. He 
 even upbraided her with selfishly preferring the continuation 
 of the line of Berenger to the recovery of the Holy Sepul- 
 cher, and denounced to her that Heaven would be avenged of 
 the short-sighted and merely human policy which postponed 
 the interests of Christendom to those of an individual family. 
 
 After this severe homily, the prelate took his departure, 
 leaving the abbess highly incensed, though she prudently 
 forbore returning any irreverent answer to his paternal ad- 
 monition. 
 
 In this humor the venerable lady was found by the Con- 
 stable himself, when, with some embarrassment, he pro- 
 ceeded to explain to her the necessity of his present depar- 
 cure for Palestine. 
 
 She received the communication with sullen dignity, her 
 imple black robe and scapular seeming, as it were, to swell 
 Dut in yet prouder folds as she listened to the reasons and 
 the emergencies which compelled the Constable of Chester 
 '.0 defer the marriage, which he avowed was the dearest wish 
 )f his heart, until after his return from the Crusade, tor 
 ^vhich he was about to set forth. 
 
 12 
 
m WA VERLET NO VEL S 
 
 " Methinks," replied the abbess, with much coldness, "if 
 this communication is meant for earnest — and it were no fit 
 business, I myself no fit person, for jesting with — methinks 
 the Constable's resolution should have been proclaimed to 
 us yesterday, before t\\Q fian^ailles had united his troth with 
 that of Eveline Berenger, under expectations very different . 
 from those which he now announces." : 
 
 "On the word of a knight and a gentleman, reverend < 
 lady," said the Constable,"" I had not then the slightest! 
 thought that I should be called upon to take a step no lessi 
 distressing to me than, as I see with pain, it is unpleasing 
 to you." 
 
 " I can scarcely conceive," replied the abbess, " the cogent 
 reasons which, existing as they must have done yesterday, 
 have nevertheless delayed their operation until to-day." 
 
 " I own," said De Lacy, reluctantly, " that I entertained 
 too ready hopes of obtaining a remission from my vow, 
 which my Lord of Canterbury hath, in iiis zeal for Heaven's 
 service, deemed it necessary to refuse me." 
 
 ^'At least, then," said the abbess, veiling her resentment 
 under the appearance of extreme coldness, " your lordship 
 will do us the justice to place us in the same situation in 
 which we stood yesterday morning ; and, by joining with 
 my niece and her friends in desiring the abrogation of a 
 marriage contract, entered into with very different views 
 from tliose which you now entertain, put a young person in 
 that state of liberty of which she is at present deprived by 
 her contract with you ? " 
 
 "Ah, madam !" said the Constable, "what do you ask of 
 me ? and in a tone how cold and indifferent do yon demand 
 me to resign hopes the dearest which my bosom ever enter- 
 tained since the life-blood warmed it ! " 
 
 "I am unacquainted with language belonging to such 
 feelings, my lord," replied the abbess ; " but methinks the 
 prospects which could be so easily adjourned for years, might, 
 by a little, and a very little, further self-control be altogether 
 abandoned." 
 
 Hugo de Lacy paced the room in agitation, nor did he 
 answer until after a considerable pause. " If your niece, 
 madam, shares the sentiments which you have expressed, I 
 could not, indeed, with justice to her, or perhaps to myself, 
 desire to retain that interest in her which our solemn 
 espousals have given me. But I must know my doom from 
 her own lips ; and if it is as severe as that which your ex- 
 pressions lead me to fear, I will go to Palestine the he^Pi 
 
I^5-X|.ru^ 
 
 • Evelya entered at the moment- 
 
^ 
 
THE BETROTHED 179 
 
 Boldicr of Heaven that I shall have little left on earth that 
 can interest me." 
 
 The abbess, without farther answer, called on her pre- 
 centrix, and desired her to command her niece's attendance 
 immediately. The precentrix bowed reverently and with- 
 drew. 
 
 " May I presume to inquire/' said De Lacy, " whether 
 the Lady Eveline hath been possessed of the circumstances 
 wliich have occasioned this unhappy alteration in ray 
 purpose ? " 
 
 "1 have communicated the whole to her, from point to 
 jioint," said the abbess, " even as it was explained to me 
 this morning by my Lord of Canterbury — for with him I 
 have already spoken upon the subject — and confirmed but 
 noAV by your lordship's own mouth." 
 
 " I am little obliged to the Archbishop," said the Con- 
 stable, "for having forestalled my excuses in the quarter 
 where it was most important for me that they should be 
 accurately stated and favorably received." 
 
 " That," said the abbess, " is but an item of the account 
 betwixt you and the prelate ; it concerns not us." 
 
 "Dare I venture to hope," continued De Lacy, without 
 taking offense at the dryness of the abbess's manner, 
 "that Lady Eveline has heard this most unhappy change 
 of circumstances without emotion — I would say, without 
 displeasure ?" 
 
 " She is the daughter of a Berenger, my lord," answered 
 the abbess, " and it is our custom to punish a breach of 
 faith or to contemn it, never to grieve over it. What my 
 niece may do in this case I know not. I am a woman of 
 religion, sequestered from the world, and would advise 
 peace and Christian forgiveness, with a proper sense of 
 contempt for the unworthy treatment which she has re- 
 ceived. She has followers and vassals, and friends, doubt- 
 less, and advisers, who may not, in blinded zeal for worldly 
 honor, recommend to her to sit down slightly with this 
 injury, but desire she should rather appeal to the king, 
 or to the arms of her father's followers, unless her liberty- 
 is restored to her by the surrender of the contract into 
 which she has been enticed. But she comes to answer 
 for herself." 
 
 Eveline entered at the moment, leaning on Eose's arm. 
 She had laid aside mourning since the ceremony of the 
 fiafiQailles, and was dressed in a kirtle of white, with an 
 upper robe of pale blue. Her head was covered with 9 
 
180 WAVE RLE Y NOVELS 
 
 reil of white gauze so thin as to float about her like the 
 misty cloud usually painted around the countenance of a 
 seraph. But the face of Eveline, though in beauty not un- 
 worthy one of this angelic order, was at present far from 
 resembling that of a seraph in tranquillity of expression. 
 Her limbs trembled, her cheeks were pale, the tinge of red 
 around the eyelids expressed recent tears ; yet, amidst these 
 natural signs of distress and uncertainty, there was an air of 
 profound resignation — a resolution to discharge her duty in 
 every emergence reigning in the solemn expression of her 
 eye and eyebrow, and showing her prepared to govern the 
 agitation which she could not entirely subdue. And so well 
 tvere these opposing qualities of timidity and resohition 
 mingled on her cheek, that Eveline, in the utmost pride of 
 her beauty, never looked more fascinating than at that in- 
 stant ; and Hugo de Lacy, hitherto rather an unimpassioned 
 lover, stood in her presence with feelings as if all the exag- 
 gerations of romance were realized, and his mistress were a 
 being of a higher sphere, from whose doom he was to receive 
 happiness or misery, life or death. 
 
 It was under the influence of such a feeling that the war- 
 rior dropped on one knee before Eveline, took the hand 
 which she rather resigned than gave to him, pressed it to his 
 lips fervently, and ere he parted with it, moistened it with 
 one of the few tears which he was ever known to shed. But, 
 although surprised, and carried out of his character by a 
 sudden impulse, he regained his composure on observing 
 that the abbess regarded his humiliation, if it can be so 
 termed, with an air of triumph ; and he entered on his de- 
 fense before Eveline with a manly earnestness, not devoid 
 of fervor, nor free from agitation, yet made in a tone of 
 firmness and pride which seemed assumed to meet and con- 
 trol that of the offended abbess. 
 
 " Lady," he said, addressing Eveline, ** you have heard 
 from the venerable abbess in what unhappy position I have 
 been placed since yesterday by the rigor of the Archbishop — 
 perhaps I should rather say by his just though severe inter-: 
 pretation of my engagement in the Crusade. I cannot ^2 
 doubt that all this has been stated with accurate truth by 
 the venerable lady ; but, as I must no longer call her my 
 friend, let me fear whether she has done me justice in her 
 commentary upon the unhappy necessity which must pres- 
 ently compel me to leave my country, and with my country 
 to forego — at best to postpone — the fairest hopes which man 
 ever entertained. The venerable lady hath upbraided me, 
 
 8tlC 
 
 mi 
 
 ftfl 
 
 Cli 
 
 ih 
 
 II 
 
 SfflDK 
 Hi 
 
 Jiuf, 
 
THE BETROTHED 181 
 
 that, being myself the cause that the execution of yester- 
 day's contract is postponed, I would fain keep it suspended 
 over your head for an indefinite term of years. No one 
 resigns willingly such rights as yesterday gave me ; and, let 
 me speak a boastful word, sooner than yield them up to 
 or man or woman born, I would hold a fair field against all 
 comers, with grinded sword and sharp spear, from sunrise 
 to sunset, for three days' space. But what I would retain at 
 the price of a thousand lives, I am willing to renounce if it 
 would cost you a single sigh. If, therefore, you think you 
 cannot remain happy as the betrothed of De Lacy, you may 
 command my assistance to have the contract annulled, and 
 make some more fortunate man happy." 
 
 He would have gone on, but felt the danger of being over- 
 powered again by those feelings of tenderness so new to his 
 steady nature, that he blushed to give way to them. 
 
 Eveline remained silent. 
 
 The abbess took the word. •' Kinswoman," she said, 
 " you hear that the generosity, or the justice, of the Con- 
 stable of Chester proposes, in consequence of his departure 
 u[ion a distant and perilous expedition, to cancel a contract 
 entered into upon the specific and precise understanding 
 that he was to remain in England for its fulfilment. You 
 cannot, methinks, hesitate to accept of the freedom which 
 he offers you, with thanks for his bounty. For my part, I 
 will reserve mine own until I shall see that your joint appli- 
 cation is sufficient to win to your purpose his Grace of Can- 
 terbury, who may again interfere with the actions of his 
 friend the Lord Constable, over whom he has already exerted 
 so much influence, for the weal, doubtless, of his spiritual 
 concerns." 
 
 ''If it is meant by your words, venerable lady," said the 
 Constable, " that I have any purpose of sheltering myself 
 behind the prelate's authority, to avoid doing that which I 
 proclaim my readiness, though not my willingness, to do, I 
 can only say that you are the first who has doubted the faith 
 of Hugo de Lacy." And while the proud baron thus addressed 
 a female and a recluse, he could not prevent his eye from 
 sparkling and his cheek from flushing. 
 
 "My gracious and venerable kinswoman," said Eveline, 
 summoning together her resolution, " and you, my good 
 lord, be not offended, if I pray you not to increase by ground- 
 less suspicions and hasty resentments your difficulties and 
 mine. My lord, the obligations which I lie under to you are 
 such as I can never discharge, since they comprehend for- 
 
182 WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 tune, life, and honor. Know that, in my anguish of mind, 
 when besieged by the Welsh in my castle of the Garde 
 Doloureuse, I vowed to the Virgin that, my honor safe, I 
 would place myself at the disposal of him whom Our Lady 
 should employ as her instrument to relieve me from yonder 
 hour of agony. In giving me a deliverer, she gave me a 
 master ; nor could I desire a more noble one than Hugo de 
 Lacy." 
 
 " God forbid, lady," said the Constable, speaking eagerly, 
 as if he was afraid his resolution should fail him ere he 
 could get the renunciation uttered, " that I should, by such' 
 a tie, to which you subjected yourself -in the extremity of 
 your distress, bind you to any resolution in my favor which 
 can put force on your own inclinations ! " 
 
 The abbess herself could not help expressing her applause 
 of this sentiment, declaring it was spoken like a IVorman 
 gentleman ; but, at the same time, her eyes, turned towards 
 her niece, seemed to exhort her to beware how she declined 
 to profit by the candor of De Lacy. 
 
 But Eveline proceeded, Avith her eyes fixed on the ground, 
 and a slight color overspreading her face, to state her own 
 sentiments, without listening to the suggestions of any one. 
 " I will own, noble sir," she said, " that, when your valor 
 had rescued me from approaching destruction, I could have 
 wished — honoring and respecting you, as I had done your 
 late friend, my excellent father — that you could have ac- 
 cepted a daughter's service from me. I do not pretend en- 
 tirely to have surmounted these sentiments, although I have 
 combated them, as being unworthy of me and ungrateful to 
 you. But, from the moment you were pleased to honor me 
 by a claim on this poor hand, I have studiously examined 
 my sentiments towards you, and taught myself so far to 
 make them coincide with my duty, that I may call myself 
 assured that De Lacy would not find in Eveline Berenger an 
 indifferent, far less an unworthy, bride. In this, sir, you 
 may boldly confide, whether the union you have sought' for 
 takes place instantly or is delayed till a longer season. Still 
 farther, I must acknowledge that the postponement of these 
 nuptials will be more agreeable to me than their immediate 
 accomplishment. I am at present very young, and totally 
 inexperienced. Two or three year's will, I trust, render 
 me yet more worthy the regard of a man of honor." 
 
 At this declaration iu his favor, however cold and qualified, 
 De Lacy had as much difficulty to restrain his transports as 
 formerly to moderate his agitation. 
 
THE BETRO ED 183 
 
 " Angel of bounty and of kindness ! " he said, kneeling 
 once more, and again possessing himself of her hand, " per- 
 haps I ought in honor to resign voluntarily those hopes 
 which you decline to ravish from me forcibly. But who 
 could be capable of such unrelenting magnanimity ? Let 
 me hope that my devoted attachment, that which you shall 
 hear of me when at a distance, that which you shall know 
 of me when near you, may give to your sentiments a more 
 tender warmth than they now express ; and, in the mean- 
 while, blame me not that I accept your plighted faith anew, 
 under the conditions which you attach to it. I am conscious 
 my wooing has beeu too late in life to expect the animated 
 returns proper to youthful passion. Blame me not if I 
 remain satisfied with those calmer sentiments which make life 
 happy, though they cannot make passion rapturous. Your 
 hand remains in my grasp, but it acknowledges not my 
 pressure. Can it be that it refuses to ratify what your lips 
 have said ? " 
 
 "Never, noble De Lacy!" said Eveline, with more ani- 
 mation than she had yet expressed; and it appeared that the 
 tone was at length sufficiently encouraging, since her lover 
 was emboldened to take the lips themselves for guarantee. 
 
 It was with an air of pride, mingled Avitli respect, that, 
 after having received this pledge of fidelity, he turned to 
 conciliate and to appease the offended abbess. " I trust, 
 venerable mother," he said, "that you will resume your 
 former kind thoughts of me, which I am aware were only 
 interrupted by your tender anxiety for the interest of her 
 who should be dearest to us both. Let me hope that I may 
 ^eave this fair flower under the protection of the honored 
 lady who is her next in blood, happy and secure as she must 
 ever be while listening to your counsels and residing within 
 these sacred walls." 
 
 But the abbess was too deeply displeased to be propitiated 
 by a compliment which perhaps it had been better policy to 
 have delayed till a calmer season. "My lord," she said, 
 "and you, fair kinswoman, you ought needs to be aware 
 how little my counsels, not frequentty given where they 
 are unwillingly listened to, can be of avail to those embarked 
 in worldly affairs. I am a woman dedicated to religion, to 
 solitude, and seclusion — to the service, in brief , of Our Lady 
 and St. Benedict. I have been already censured by my 
 superior because I have, for love of you, fair niece, mixed 
 more deeply in secular affairs than became the head of a 
 convent of recluses . J will merit no farther blame on such 
 
184 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 an account, nor can yon expect it of me. My brother's 
 daughter, unfettered by worldly ties, had been the welcome 
 sharer of my poor solitude. But this house is too mean for 
 the residence of the vowed bride of a mighty baron ; nor do 
 I, in my lowliness and inexperience, feel fitness to exercise 
 over such a one that authority which must belong to me 
 over every one whom this roof protects. The grave tenor of 
 our devotions, and the serener contemplation to which the 
 females of this house are devoted," continued the abbess, 
 with increasing heat and vehemence, " shall not, for the 
 sake of my worldly connections, be disturbed by the intru- 
 sion of one whose thoughts must needs be on the worldly 
 toys of love and marriage." 
 
 " I do indeed believe, reverend mother," said the Con- 
 stable, in his turn giving way to displeasure, " that a richly- 
 dowered maiden, unwedded, and unlikely to wed, were a 
 fitter and more welcome inmate to the convent than one who 
 cannot be separated from the world, and whose wealth is not 
 likely to increase the house's revenues." 
 
 The Constable did the abbess great injury in this hasty 
 insinuation, and it only went to confirm her purpose of re- 
 jecting all charge of her niece during his absence. She was 
 in truth as disinterested as haughty ; and her only reason 
 for anger against her niece was, that her advice had not 
 been adopted without hesitation, although the matter re- 
 garded Eveline's happiness exclusively. 
 
 The ill-timed reflection of the Constable confirmed her in 
 the resolution which she had already, and hastily, adopted. 
 "May Heaven forgive you, sir knight," she replied, "your 
 injurious thoughts of His servants ! It is indeed time, for 
 your soul's sake, that you do penance in the Holy Land, 
 having such rash judgments to repent of. For you, my 
 niece, you cannot want that hospitality which, without 
 verifying, or seeming to verify, unjust suspicions, I cannot 
 now grant to you, while you have, in your kinswoman of 
 Baldringham, a secular relation, whose nearness of blood 
 approaches mine, and who may open her gates to you with- 
 out incurring the unworthy censure that she means to enrich 
 herself at your cost." 
 
 The Constable saw the deadly paleness which came over 
 Eveline's cheek at this proposal, and, without knowing the 
 cause of her repugnance, he hastened to relieve her from the 
 apprehensions which she seemed evidently to entertain. 
 " No, reverend mother," he said ; " since yoto so harshly re- 
 ject the care of your kinswomg-n, she shall not be a burden 
 
THE BETROTHED 186 
 
 to any of her other relatives. While Hugo de Lacy hath six 
 gallant castles, and many a manor besides, to maintain fire 
 upon their hearths, his betrothed bride shall burden no one 
 with her society who may regard it as otherwise than a great 
 honor; and methinks I were much poorer than Heaven hath 
 made me, could I not furnish friends and followers sufficient 
 to serve, obey, and protect her/' 
 
 " No, my lord," said Eveline, recovering from the dejec- 
 tion into which she had been thrown by the unkindness of 
 her relative ; '' since some unhappy destiny separates me 
 from the protection of my father's sister, to whom I could 
 so securely have resigned myself, I will neither apply for 
 shelter to any mor^ distant relation nor accept of that which 
 you, my lord, so generously offer ; since my doing so might 
 excite harsh, and, I am sure, undeserved, reproaches against 
 her by whom I was driven to choose a less advisable dwelling- 
 place. I have made my resolution. I have, it is true, only 
 one friend left, but she is a powerful one, and is able to pro- 
 tect me against the particular evil fate which seems to follow 
 me, as well as against the ordinary evils of human life." 
 
 "The queen, I suppose?" said the abbess, interrupting 
 her impatiently. 
 
 " The Queen of Heaven ! venerable kinswoman," answered 
 Eveline — " our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse, ever gracious 
 to our house, and so lately my especial guardian and pro- 
 tectress. Methinks, since the vowed votaress of the Virgin 
 rejects me, it is to her holy patroness whom I ought to apply 
 for succor." 
 
 The venerable dame, taken somewhat at unawares by this 
 answer, pronounced the interjection, ''Umph!" in a tone 
 better befitting a Lollard or an Iconoclast than a -Catholic 
 abbess, and a daughter of the house of Berenger. Truth is, 
 the lady abbess's hereditary devotion to the Lady of the 
 Garde Doloureuse was much decayed since she had known 
 the full merits of another gifted image, the property of her 
 own convent. 
 
 Eecollecting herself, however, she remained silent, while 
 the Constable alleged the vicinity of the Welsh, as what 
 might possibly again render the abode of his betrothed bride 
 at the Garde Doloureuse as perilous as she had on a former 
 occasion found it. To this Eveline replied, by reminding 
 him of the great strength of her native fortress, the various 
 sieges which it had withstood, and the important circum- 
 stances, that, upon the late occasion, it was only endangered 
 because, in compliance with a point of honor, her father 
 
186 WAVBRLEY NOVELS 
 
 Raymond had sallied out with the garrison, and fought at 
 disadvantage a battle under the walls. She farther sug- 
 gested, that it was easy for the Constable to name, from 
 among his own vassals or hers, a seneschal of such approved 
 prudence and valor as might ensure the safety of the place 
 and of its lady. 
 
 Ere De Lacy could reply to her arguments, the abbess 
 rose, and, pleading her total inability to give counsel in sec- 
 ular affairs, and ths rules of her order, which called her, as she 
 said, with a heightened color and raised voice, " to the simple 
 and peaceful discharge of her conventual duties," she left the 
 betrothed parties in the locutory, or parlor, without any com- 
 pany save Rose, who prudently reniained at some distance. 
 
 The issue of their private conference seemed agreeable to 
 both ; and when Eveline told Rose that they were to return 
 presently to the Garde Doloureuse, under a sufficient escort, 
 and were to remain there during the period of the Crusade, 
 it was in a tone of heartfelt satisfaction which her follower 
 had not heard her make use of for many days. She spoke 
 also highly in praise of the kind acquiescence of the Con- 
 stable in her wishes, and of his whole conduct witli a 
 warmth of gratitude approaching to a more tender feeling. 
 
 "And yet, my dearest lady," said Rose, "if you will speak 
 unfeignedly, you must, I am convinced, allow, that you 
 loo!: upon this interval of years interposed betwixt your 
 contract and your marriage rather as a respite than in any 
 other light." 
 
 "I confess it," said Eveline, "nor have I concealed from 
 my future lord that such are my feelings, ungracious as they 
 may seem. But it is my youth. Rose — my extreme youth, 
 which makes me fear the duties of De Lacy's wife. Then 
 those evil auguries hang strangely about me. Devoted to 
 evil by one kinswoman, expelled almost from the roof of 
 another, I seem .to myself, at present, a creature who must 
 carry distress with her, pass where she will. This evil hour, 
 and, what is more, the apprehensions of it, will give way to 
 time. When I shall have attained the age of twenty. Rose, 
 I shall be a full-grown woman, with all the soul of a Be- 
 renger strong within me, to overcome those doubts and 
 tremors which agitate the girl of seventeen." 
 
 " Ah ! my sweet mistress," answered Rose, " may God and 
 Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse guide all for the best I 
 But I would that this contract had not taken place, or, hav- 
 ing taken place, that it could have been fulfilled by your 
 immediate union/' 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 The king called down his merry-men all, 
 
 By one, and by two, and three ; 
 Earl Marshal was wont to be the foremost man, 
 
 But the hindmost man was he. 
 
 Old Ballad. 
 
 If the Lady Eveline retired satisfied and pleased from her 
 private interview with De Lacy, the joy on the part of the 
 Constable arose to a higher pitch of rapture than he was in 
 the habit of feeling or expressing ; and it was augmented 
 by a visit of the leeches who attended his nephew, from 
 whom he received a minute and particular account of 
 his present disorder, with every assurance of a speedy re- 
 covery. 
 
 The Constable caused alms to be distributed to the convents 
 and to the poor, masses to be said, and tapers to be lighted. 
 He visited the Archbishop, and received from him his full 
 approbation of the course which he proposed to pursue, with 
 the promise that, out of the plenary power which he held 
 from the Pope, the prelate was willing, in consideration of 
 his instant obedience, to limit his stay in the Holy Land to 
 the term of three years, to become current from his leaving 
 Britain, and to include the space necessary for his return to 
 his native country. Indeed, having succeeded in the main 
 point, the Archbishop judged it wise to concede every in- 
 ferior consideration to a person of the Constable's rank and 
 character, whose good-will to the proposed expedition was 
 perhaps as essential to its success as his bodily presence. 
 
 In sliort, the Constable returned to his pavilion highly 
 satisfied with the manner in which he had extricated him- 
 self from those difficulties which in the morning seemed 
 almost insuperable ; and when his officers assembled to dis- 
 robe him (for great feudal lords had their levees and couchees, 
 in imitation of sovereign princes), he distributed gratuities 
 among them, and jested and laughed in a much gayer humor 
 than they had ever before witnessed. 
 
 *' For thee," he said, turning to Vidal, the minstrel, who, 
 sumptuously dressed, stood to pay his respects among the 
 other attendants, " I will give thee nought at present : but 
 187 
 
188 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 do thou remain by my bedside until I am asleep, and I will 
 next morning reward thy minstrelsy as I like it." 
 
 " My lord/' said Vidal, "I am already rewarded, both by 
 the honor and by the liveries, which better befit a royal min- 
 strel than one of my mean fame ; but assign me a subject, 
 and I will do my best, not out of greed of future largesses, 
 but gratitude for past favors/' 
 
 '' Gramercy, good fellow," said the Constable. *^ Gua- 
 rine," he added, addressing his squire, "let the watch be 
 posted, and do thou remain within the tent ; stretch thyself 
 on the bear-hide, and sleep, or listen to the minstrelsy, as 
 thou likest best. Thou thinkest thyself a judge, I have 
 heard, of such gear." 
 
 It was usual, in those insecure times, for some faithful 
 domestic to sleep at night within the tent of every great 
 baron, that, if danger arose, he might not be unsupported 
 or unprotected. Guarine accordingly drew his sword, and, 
 taking it in his hand, stretched himself on the ground in 
 such a manner that, on the slightest alarm, he could spring 
 up, sword in hand. His broad black eyes, in which sleep 
 contended with a desire to listen to the music, were fixed on 
 Vidal, who saw them glittering in the reflection of the silver 
 lamp, like those of a dragon or basilisk. 
 
 After a few preliminary touches on the chords of his rote, 
 the minstrel requested of the Constable to name the subject 
 on which he desired the exercise of his powers. 
 
 "The truth of w^oman," answered Hugo de Lacy, as he 
 laid his head upon his pillow. 
 
 After a short prelude, the minstrel obeyed, by singing 
 nearly as follows : — 
 
 Woman's faith and woman's trust — 
 Write the characters in dust, 
 Stamp them on the running stream, 
 Print them on the moon's pale beam, 
 And each evanescent letter 
 Shall be clearer, firmer, better, 
 And more pei'manent, I ween, 
 Than the thing those letters mean. 
 
 I have strain'd the spider's thread 
 
 'Gainst the promise of a maid ; 
 
 I have weigh'd a grain of sand 
 
 'Gainst her plight of heart and hand ; 
 
 I told my true love of the token. 
 
 How her faith proved light, and her word was broken : 
 
 Again her word and truth she plight, 
 
 And I believed them again ere night. 
 
THE BETROTHED 18J 
 
 ''How now, sir knave," said the Constable, raising him- 
 self on his elbow — " from what drunken rhymer did you 
 learn that half-witted satire ? " 
 
 " From an old, ragged, cross-grained friend of mine, 
 called experience," answered Vidal. " I pray Heaven he 
 may never take your lordship, or any other worthy man, 
 under his tuition." 
 
 '' Go to, fellow," said the Constable, in reply ; "thou art 
 one of those wiseacres, I warrant me, that would fain be 
 thought witty, because thou canst make a jest of those 
 things which wiser men hold worthy of most worjhip — the 
 honor of men and the truth of women. Dost thou call thy- 
 self a minstrel, and hast no tale of female fidelity ? " 
 
 " I had right many a one, noble sir, but I laid them aside 
 when I disused my practice of the jesting part of the joyous 
 science. Nevertheless, if it pleases your nobleness to listen, 
 I can sing you an established lay upon such a subject." 
 
 De Lacy made a sign of acquiescence, and laid himself as 
 if to slumber ; while Vidal began one of those interminable 
 and almost innumerable adventures concerning that paragon 
 of true lovers, fair Ysolte, and of the constant and uninter- 
 rupted faith and affection which she displayed, in numerous 
 situations of difficulty and peril, to her paramour, the gal- 
 lant Sir Tristrem, at the expense of her less favored hus- 
 band, the luckless King Mark of Cornwall, to whom, as all 
 the world knows. Sir Tristrem w^as nephew. 
 
 This was not the lay of love and fidelity which De Lacy 
 would have chosen ; but a feeling like shame prevented his 
 interrupting it, perhaps because he was unwilling to yield to 
 or acknowledge the unpleasing sensations excited by the 
 tenor of the tale. He soon fell asleep, or feigned to do so ; 
 and the harper, continuing for a time his monotonous chant, 
 began at length himself to feel the influence of slumber : 
 his words, and notes which he continued to touch upon the 
 harp, were broken and interrupted, and seemed to escape 
 drowsily from his fingers and voice. At length the sounds 
 ceased entirely, and the minstrel seemed to have sunk into 
 profound repose, with his head reclining on his breast, and 
 one arm dropped down by his side, while the other rested on 
 his harp. His slumber, however, was not very long, and 
 when he awoke from it, and cast his eyes around him, re- 
 connoitering, by the light of the night-lamp, whatever was 
 in the tent, he felt a heavy hand, which pressed his shoulder 
 as if gently to solicit his attention. At the same time the 
 voice of the vigilant Philip Guarine whispered in his ear. 
 
190 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 '' Thine office for the night is ended ; depart to thine own 
 quarters with all the silence thon mayst." 
 
 The minstrel wrapped himself in his cloak without reply, 
 though perhaps not without feeling some resentment at a 
 dismissal so uuceremonious. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 O I then I see Queen Mab has been with you. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 The su jject on which the mind has last been engaged at 
 night is apt to occupy our thoughts even during slumber,, 
 when imagination, uncorrected by the organs of sense, 
 weaves her own fantastic web out of wliatever ideas rise at 
 random in the sleeper. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
 De Lacy in his dreams had some confused idea of being 
 identified with the unlucky Mark of Cornwall ; and that he 
 awakened from such unpleasant visions with a brow more 
 clouded than when he was preparing for his couch on the 
 evening before. He was silent, and seemed lost in thought, 
 ■ while his squire assisted at his levee with the respect now 
 only paid to sovereigns. *' Guarine,^^ at length he said, 
 " know you the stout Fleming, who was said to have borne 
 him so well at the seige of the Garde Doloureuse — a tall, 
 big, brawny man ?" 
 
 "Surely, my lord," answered his squire, "1 know Wilkin 
 Flammock ; I saw him but yesterday. 
 
 '' Indeed ! " replied the Constable. " Here, meanest thou 
 — in this city of Gloucester ?" 
 
 "Assuredly, my good lord. He came hither partly about 
 his merchandise, partly, I think, to see his daughter Rose, 
 who is in attendance on the gracious young Lady Eveline." 
 
 " He is a stout soldier, is he not ?" 
 
 "Like most of his kind — a rampart to a castle, but rub- 
 bish in the field," said the Norman squire. 
 
 "Faithful, also, is he not ?" continued the Constable. 
 
 " Faithful as most Flemings, while you can pay for their 
 faith," replied Guarine, wondering a little at the unusual 
 interest taken in one whom he esteemed a being of an in- 
 ferior order ; when, after some farther inquiries, the Con- 
 stable ordered the Fleming^s attendance to be presently 
 commanded. 
 
 Other business of the morning now occurred, for his 
 speedy departure required many arrangements to be hastily 
 adopted, when, as the Constable was giving audience to 
 191 
 
192 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 several officers of his troops, the bulky figure of Wilkin 
 Flammock was seen at the entrance of the pavilion, in 
 jerkin of white cloth, and having only a knife by his side 
 
 " Leave the tent, my masters," said De Lacy, " but con- 
 tinue in attendance in the neighborhood ; for here comes 
 one I must speak to in private." 
 
 The officers withdrew, and the Constable and Fleming 
 were left alone. " You are Wilkin Flammock, who fought 
 well against the Welsh at the Garde Doloureuse ? " 
 
 "J did my best, my lord," answered Wilkin; "I was 
 bound to it by my bargain, and I hope ever to act like a 
 man of credit." 
 
 "'Methinks," said the Constable, "that you, so stout of 
 limb, and, as I hear, so bold in spirit, might look a little 
 higher than this weaving trade of thine." 
 
 "No one is reluctant to mend hie station, my lord," said 
 Wilkin ; "yet am I so far from comiolaining^of mine, that I 
 would willingly consent it should never be better, on con- 
 dition I could be assured it were never worse." 
 
 "Nay, but, Flammock," said the Constable, "I mean 
 higher things for you than your modesty apprehends : I 
 mean to leave thee in a charge of great trust." 
 
 "Let it concern bales of drapery, my lord, and no one 
 will perform it better," said the Fleming. 
 
 " Away ! thou art too lowly-minded," said the Constable. 
 " What think'st thou of being dubbed knight, as thy valor 
 well deserves, and left as chatelaine of the Garde Dolour- 
 euse ? " 
 
 " For the knighthood, my lord, I should crave your for- 
 giveness ; for it would sit on me like a gilded helmet on a 
 hog. For any charge, whether of castle or cottage, I trust 
 I might discharge it as well as another." 
 
 "I fear me thy rank must be in some way mended," said 
 the Constable, surveying the unmilitary dress of the figure 
 before him ; " it is at present too mean "to befit the protector 
 and guardian of a young lady of high birth and rank." 
 
 "I the guardian of a young lady of birth and rank!" 
 said Flammock, his light, large eyes" turning larger, lighter, 
 and rounder as he spoke. 
 
 "Even thou," said the Constable. "The Lady Eveline 
 proposes to take up her residence in her castle of the Garde 
 Doloureuse. I have been casting about to whom I may 
 entrust the keeping of her person, as well as of the strong- 
 hold. Were I to choose some knight of name, as I have 
 many in my household, he would be setting about to do 
 
THE BETROTHED 198 
 
 deeds of vassalage upon the Welsli, and engaging himself in 
 turmoils, which would render the safety of the castle pre- 
 carious ; or he would be absent on feats of chivalry, tour- 
 naments, and hunting-parties ; or he would, perchance, 
 have shows of that light nature under the walls, or even 
 within the courts of the castle, turning the secluded and 
 quiet abode which becomes the situation of the Lady Eve- 
 line into the misrule of a dissolute revel. Thee I can con- 
 fide in : thou wilt fight when it is requisite, yet wilt not 
 provoke danger for the sake of danger itself ; thy birth, thy 
 habits will lead thee to avoid those gaieties, which, however 
 fascinating to others, cannot but be distasteful to thee ; thy 
 management will be as regular as I will take care that it 
 shall be honorable ; and thy relation to her favorite. Rose, 
 will render thy guardianship more agreeable to the Lady 
 Eveline than, perchance, one of her own rank. And, to 
 speak to thee a language which thy nation readily compre- 
 hends, the reward, Fleming, for the regular discharge of 
 this most weighty trust shall be beyond thy most flattering 
 hope." 
 
 The Fleming had listened to the first part of this dis- 
 course with an expression of surprise, which gradually gave 
 way to one of deep and anxious reflection. He gazed fix- 
 edly on the earth for a minute after the Constable had 
 ceased speaking, and then raising up his eyes suddenly, said, 
 ** It is needless to seek for roundabout excuses. This can- 
 not be your earnest, my lord ; but if it is, the scheme is 
 naught." 
 
 "How and wherefore ? " asked the Constable, with dis- 
 pleased surprise. 
 
 " Another man might grasp at your bounty," continued 
 Wilkin, ''and leave you to take chance of the value you 
 were to receive for it ; but I am a downright dealer, I will 
 not take payment for service I cannot render." 
 
 '' But I demand, once more, wherefore thou canst not, or 
 rather wilt not, accept this trust ?" said the Constable. 
 *' Surely, if I am willing to confer such confidence, it is well 
 thy part to answer it.*' 
 
 " True, my lord," said the Fleming ; ''but methinks the 
 noble Lord de Lacy should feel, and the wise Lord de Lacy 
 should foresee, tliat a Flemish weaver is no fitting guardian 
 for his plighted bride. Think her shut up in yonder solitary 
 castle, under such respectable protection, and reflect how 
 long the place will be solitary in this land of love and 
 adventure ! We shall have minstrels singing ballads by the 
 13 
 
194 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 threave under our windows, and such twangling of harps 
 as would be enough to frighten our walls from their foun- 
 dations, as clerks say happened to those of Jericho. We 
 shall have as many knights-errant around us as ever had 
 Charlemagne or King Arthur. Mercy on me ! A less 
 matter than a fine and noble recluse immured — so will they 
 term it — in a tower, under the guardianship of an old 
 Flemish weaver, would bring half the chivalry in England 
 round us, to break lances, vow vows, display love-liveries, 
 and I know not what follies besides. Think you such gal- 
 lants, with the blood flying through their veins like quick- 
 silver, would much mind my bidding them begone ? " 
 
 " Draw bolts, up with the drawbridge, drop portcullis,*' 
 said the Constable, with a constrained smile. 
 
 " And thinks your lordship such gallants would mind 
 these impediments ? such are the very essence of the ad- 
 ventures which they come to seek. The Knight of the 
 Swan would swim through the moat ; he of the Eagle would 
 fly over the walls ; he of the Thunderbolt would burst open 
 the gates.'' 
 
 " Ply cross-bow and mangonel," said De Lacy. 
 
 " And be besieged in form," said the Fleming, " like the 
 Castle of Tintadgel in the old hangings, all for the love of 
 fair lady ? And then those gay dames and demoiselles, who 
 go upon adventure from castle to castle, from tournament 
 to tournament, with bare bosoms, flaunting plumes, j^oniards 
 at their sides and javelins in their hands, chattering like 
 magpies, and fluttering like jays, and ever and anon cooing 
 like doves — how am I to exclude such from the Lady Eve- 
 line's privacy ? " 
 
 " By keeping doors shuts, I tell thee," answered the Con- 
 stable, still in the same tone of forced jocularity : "a wooden 
 bar will be thy warrant." 
 
 " Ay, but," answered Flammock, "if the Flemish weaver 
 say ' shut,' when the Norman young lady says ' open,' think 
 which has best chance of being obeyed ? At a word, my 
 lord, for the matter of guardianship and such-like, I wash 
 my hands of it : I would not undertake to be guardian to the 
 chaste Susannah, though she lived in an enchanted castle 
 which no living thing could approach." 
 
 " Thou boldest the language and thoughts," said De Lacy, 
 " of a vulgar debauchee, who laughs at female constancy, 
 because he has lived only with the most worthless of the 
 sex. Yet thou shouldst know the contrary, having, as I 
 know, a most virtuous daughter " 
 
THE BETROTHED 195 
 
 " Whose mother was not less so/' said Wilkin, breaking 
 in upon the Constable's speech with somewhat more emotion 
 than he usually displayed. " But law, my lord, gave me 
 authority to govern and direct my wife, as both law and 
 nature give me power and charge over my daughter. That 
 which 1 can govern, I can be answerable for ; but how to 
 discharge me so well of a delegated trust is another question. 
 Stay at home, my good lord," continued the honest Fleming, 
 observing that his speech made some impression upon De 
 Lacy : " let a fool's advice for once be of avail to change a 
 wise man's purpose, taken, let me say, in no wise hour. 
 Eemain in your own land, rule your own vassals, anu protect 
 your own bride. You only can claim her cheerful love and 
 ready obedience ; and sure I am that, without pretending 
 to guess what she may do if separated from you, she will, 
 under your own eye, do the duty of a faithful and a loving 
 spouse." 
 
 _ "And the Holy Sepulcher ?" said the Constable, with a 
 sigh, his heart confessing the wisdom of the advice, which 
 circumstances prevented him from following. 
 
 "Let those who lost the Holy Sepulcher regain it, my 
 lord," replied Flammock. " If those Latins and Greeks, as 
 they call them, are no better men than I have heard, it sig- 
 nifies very little whether they or the heathen have the coun- 
 try that has cost Europe so much blood and treasure." 
 
 '•In good faith," said the Constable, "there is sense in 
 what thou sayest ; but I caution thee to repeat it not, lest 
 thou be taken for a heretic or a Jew. For me, my word and 
 oath are pledged beyond retreat, and I have only to consider 
 whom I may best name for that important station, which 
 thy caution has — not without some shadow of reason — in- 
 duced thee to decline." 
 
 "There is no man to whom your lordship can so naturally 
 or honorably transfer such a charge," said Wilkin Flammock, 
 " as to the kinsman near to you, and possessed of your trust ; 
 yet much better would it be were there no such trust to be 
 reposed in any one." 
 
 "If," said the Constable, "by my near kinsman you mean 
 Randal de Lacy, I care not if I tell you that I consider him 
 as totally worthless, and undeserving of honorable confi- 
 dence." 
 
 "Nay, I mean another," said Flammock, "nearer to you 
 by blood, and, unless I greatly mistake, much nigher also in 
 affection ; I had in mind your lordship's nephew, Damian 
 de Lacy/' 
 
166 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 The Constable started as if a wasp had stung him ; but 
 instantly replied, with forced composure, " Damian was to 
 have gone in my stead to Palestine, it now seems I must go 
 in his ; for, since this last illness, the leeches have totally 
 changed their minds, and consider that warmth of the cli- 
 mate as dangerous which they formerly decided to be salutary. 
 But our learned doctors, like our learned priests, must ever 
 be in the right, change their counsels as they may, and we 
 poor laymen still in the wrong. I can, it is true, rely on 
 Damian with the utmost confidence ; but he is young, Flam- 
 mocJi — very young — and, in that particular, resembles but 
 too nearly the party who might be otherwise committed to 
 his charge." 
 
 " Then, once more, my lord," said the plain-spoken Flem- 
 ing, " remain at home, and be yourself the protector of 
 what is naturally so dear to you." 
 
 " Once more, I repeat that I cannot," answered the Con- 
 stable. " The step which I have adopted as a great duty 
 may perhaps be a great error, I only know that it is 
 irretrievable." 
 
 " Trust your nephew, then, my lord," replied "Wilkin ; 
 " he is honest and true, and it is better trusting young lions 
 than old wolves. He may err, perhaps, but it will not be 
 from premeditated treachery." 
 
 " Thou art right, Flammock," said the Constable ; " and 
 perhaps I ought to wish I had sooner asked thy counsel, 
 blunt as it is. But let what has passed be a secret betwixt 
 us ; and bethink thee of something that may advantage thee 
 more than the privilege of speaking about my affairs." 
 
 "■ That account will be easily settled, my lord," replied 
 Flammock ; "for my object was to ask your lordship's favor 
 to obtain certain extensions of our privileges in yonder wild 
 corner where we Flemings have made our retreat." 
 
 ''Thou shalt have them, so they be not exorbitant," said 
 the Constable. And the honest Fleming, among whose 
 good qualities scrupulous delicacy was not the foremost, 
 hastened to detail, with great minuteness, the particulars of 
 his request or petition, long pursued in vain, but to which 
 this interview was the means of ensuring success. 
 
 The Constable, eager .to execute the resolution which he 
 had formed, hastened to the lodging of Damian de Lacy, 
 and, to the no small astonishment of his nephew, intimated 
 to him his change of destination, alleging his own hurried 
 departure, Damiau's late and present illness, together with 
 the necessary protection to be afforded to the Lady Eveline, 
 
TEE BETROTHED 191 
 
 as reasons why his nephew must needs remain behind him — 
 to represent him during his absence, to protect the family 
 rights and assert the family honor of the house of De Lacy, 
 above all, to act as the guardian of the young and beautiful 
 bride whom liis uncle and patron had been in some measure 
 compelled to abandon for a time. 
 
 Damian yet occupied his bed while the Constable com- 
 municated this change of purpose. Perhaps he might think 
 the circumstance fortunate, that in this position he could 
 conceal from his uncle's observation the various emotions 
 which he could not help feeling ; while the Constable, with 
 the eagerness of one who is desirous of hastily finishing 
 what he has to say on an unpleasing subject, hurried over 
 an account of the arrangements which he had made, in order 
 that his nephew might have the means of discharging, with 
 sufficient effect, the important trust committed to him. 
 
 The youth listened as to a voice in a dream, which he had 
 not the power of interrupting, though there was something 
 within him which whispered there would be both prudence 
 and integrity in remonstrating against his uncle's alteration 
 of plan. Something he accordingly attemjited to say, when 
 the Constable at length paused ; but it was too feebly spoken 
 to shake a resolution fully though hastily adopted, and ex- 
 plicitly announced, by one not in the use to speak before his 
 purpose was fixed, or to alter it when it was declared. 
 
 The remonstrance of Damian, besides, if it could be termed 
 such, was spoken in terms too contradictory to be intelligi- 
 ble. In one moment he professed his regret for the laurels 
 which he had hoped to gather in Palestine, and implored his 
 uncle not to alter his purpose, but permit him to attend his 
 banner thither ; and in the next sentence he professed his 
 readiness to defend the safety of Lady Eveline with the last 
 drop of his blood. De Lacy saw nothing inconsistent in 
 these feelings, though they were for the moment contra- 
 dictory to each other. It was natural, he thought, that a 
 young knight should be desirous to win honor — natural also 
 that he should willingly assume a charge so honorable and 
 important as that with which he proposed to invest him ; 
 and therefore he thought it was no wonder that, assuming 
 his new office willingly, the young man should yet feel regret 
 at losing the prospect of honorable adventure, which he 
 must abandon. He therefore only smiled in reply to the 
 broken expostulations of his nephew ; and, having confirmed 
 his former arrangement, left the young man to reflect at 
 leisure on his change of destination, while he himself, in a 
 
198 WAVE RLE r NOVELS 
 
 second visit to the Benedictine abbey, communicated the 
 purpose which he had adopted to the abbess and to his bride- 
 elect. 
 
 The displeasure of the former lady was in no measure 
 abated by this communication, in which, indeed, she affected 
 to take very little interest. She pleaded her religious duties, 
 and her Avant of knowledge of secular affairs, if she should 
 chance to mistake the usages of the world ; yet she had 
 always, she said, understood that the guardians of the young 
 and beautiful of her own sex were chosen from the more 
 mature of the other. 
 
 "Your own unkindness, lady," answered the Constable, 
 ** leaves me no better choice than I have made. Since the 
 Lady Eveline's nearest friends deny her the privilege of 
 their roof, on account of the claim with which she has hon- 
 ored me, I, on my side, were worse than ungrateful did I 
 not secure for her the protection of my nearest male heir. 
 Damian is young, but he is true and honorable ; nor does 
 the chivalry of Eugland afford me a better choice." 
 
 Eveline seemed surprised, and even struck with consterna- 
 tion, at the resolution which her bridegroom thus suddenly 
 announced ; and perhaps it was fortunate that the remark 
 of the lady abbess made the answer of the Constable necessary, 
 and prevented him from observing that her color shifted 
 more than once from pale to deep red. 
 
 Eose, who was not excluded from the conference, drew 
 close up to her mistress ; and, by affecting to adjust her 
 veil, while in secret she strongly pressed her hand, gave her 
 time and encouragement to compose her mind for a reply. 
 It was brief and decisive, and announced with a firmness 
 which showed that the uncertainty of the moment had 
 passed away or been suppressed. " In case of danger," she 
 said, "she would not fail to apply to Damian De Lacy to 
 come to her aid, as he had once done before ; but she did 
 not apprehend any danger at present within her own secure 
 castle of the Garde Doloureuse, where it was her purpose to 
 dwell, attended only by her own household. She was re- 
 solved," she continued, "in consideration of her peculiar 
 condition, to observe the strictest retirement, which she ex- 
 pected would not be violated even by the noble young knight 
 who was to act as her guardian, unless some apprehension 
 for her safety made his visit unavoidable." 
 
 The abbess acquiesced, though coldly, in a proposal which 
 her ideas of decorum recommended ; and preparations were 
 hastily made for the Lady Eveline's return to the castle of 
 
THE SETBOTHED 199 
 
 her father. Two interviews which intervened before her 
 leaving the convent were in their nature painful. The first 
 was when Damian was formally presented to her by his 
 uncle, as the delegate to whom he had committed the charge 
 of his own property, and, which was much dearer to him, as 
 he affirmed, the protection of her person and interest. 
 
 Eveline scarce trusted herself with one glance ; but that 
 single look comprehended and reported to her the ravage 
 which disease, aided by secret grief, had made on the manly 
 form and handsome countenance of the youth beforo her. 
 She received his salutation in a manner as embari-assed as 
 that in which it was made ; and, to his hesitating proffer of 
 service, answered, that " She trusted only to be obliged to him 
 for his good- will during the interval of his uncle's absence." 
 
 Her parting with the Constable was the next trial which she 
 was to undergo. It was not without emotion, although she 
 preserved her modest composure, and De Lacy his calm 
 gravity of deportment. His voice faltered, however, when 
 he came to announce, that " It were unjust she should be 
 bound by the engagement which she had been graciously 
 contented to abide under. Three years he had assigned for 
 its term, to which space the Archbishop Baldwin had con- 
 sented to shorten tbe period of liis absence. " If I appear noi 
 when these are elapsed," he said, "let the Lady Eveline 
 conclude that the grave holds De Lacy, and seek out for her 
 mate some happier man. She cannot find one more grateful, 
 though there are many who better deserve her." 
 
 On these terms they parted ; and the Constable, speedily 
 afterwards embarking, plowed the narrow seas for the 
 shores of Flanders, where he proposed to unite his forces 
 with the count of that rich and warlike country, who had 
 lately taken the cross, and to proceed by the route which 
 should be found most practicable on their destination for the 
 Holy Land. The broad pennon, with the arms of the 
 Lacys, streamed forward with a favorable wind from the 
 prow of the vessel, as if pointing to the quarter of the hor- 
 izon where its renown was to be augmented ; and, consider- 
 ing the fame of the leader, and the excellence of the soldiers 
 who followed him, a more gallant band, in proportion to 
 their numbers, never went to avenge on the Saranens the 
 evils endured by the Latins of Palestine. 
 
 Meanwhile Eveline, after a cold parting with the abbess, 
 whose offended dignity had not yet forgiven the slight 
 regard which she had paid to her opinion, resumed her 
 journey homeward to her paternal castle, where her house- 
 
200 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 hold was to be arranged in a manner suggested by the Con- 
 stable, and approved of by herself. 
 
 The same preparations were made for her accommodation 
 at every halting-place which she had experienced upon her 
 journey to Gloucester, and, as before, the purveyor was in- 
 visible, although she could be at little loss to guess his name. 
 Yet it appeared as if the character of these preparations was 
 in some degree altered. All the realities of convenience and 
 accommodation, with the most perfect assurances of safety, 
 accompanied her everywhere on the route ; but they were no 
 longer mingled with that display of tender gallantry and 
 taste which marked that the attentions were paid to a young 
 and beautiful female. The clearest fountain-head and the 
 most shady grove were no longer selected for the noontide 
 repast ; but'the house of some franklin, or a small abbey, 
 afforded the necessary hospitality. All seemed to be ordered 
 with the most severe attention to rank and decorum : it 
 seemed as if a nun of some strict order, rather than a young 
 maiden of high quality and a rich inheritance, had been 
 journeying through the land ; and Eveline, though pleased 
 with the delicacy which seemed thus to respect her unpro- 
 tected and peculiar condition, would sometimes think it un- 
 necessary that, by so many indirect hints, it should be forced 
 on her recollection. 
 
 She thought it strange, also, that Damian, to Avhose care 
 she had been so solemnly committed, did not even pay his 
 respects to her on the road. Something there was which 
 whispered to her that close and frequent intercourse might 
 be unbecoming, even dangerous ; but surely the ordinary 
 duties of a knight and gentleman enjoined him some personal 
 communication with the maiden under his escort, were it 
 only to ask if her accommodations had been made to her 
 satisfaction, or if she had any special wish which was un- 
 gratified. The only intercourse, however, which took place 
 betwixt them was through means of Amelot, Damian de 
 Lacy's youthful page, who came at morn and evening to 
 receive Eveline's commands concerning their route and the 
 hours of journev and repose. 
 
 These formalities rendered the solitude of Eveline's return 
 less endurable ; and had it not been for the society of Rose, 
 she would have found herself under an intolerably irksome 
 degree of constraint. She even hazarded to her attendant 
 some remarks upon the singularity of De Lacy's conduct, 
 who, authorized as he was by his situation, seemed yet as 
 much afraid to approach her as if she had been a basilisk. 
 
THE BETROTHED 201 
 
 Rose let the first observation of his nature pass as if it had 
 been unheard ; but when her mistress made a second remark 
 to the same purpose, she answered, with the truth and free- 
 dom of her character, though perhaps with less of her usual 
 prudence, *■' Damian de Lacy judges well, noble lady. He to 
 whom the safe keeping of a royal treasure is entrusted should 
 not indulge himself too often by gazing upon it." 
 
 Eveline blushed, wrapped herself closer in her veil, nor did 
 she again during their journey mention the name of Damian 
 de Lacy. 
 
 When the gray turrets of the Garde Doloureuse greeted her 
 sight on the evening of the second day, and she once more 
 belield her fatlier's banner floating from its highest watch- 
 tower in honor of her ajippoach, her sensations were mingled 
 with pain ; but, upon the whole, she looked towards that 
 ancient home as a place of refuge, where she might indulge 
 the new train of thoughts which circumstances had opened 
 to her, amid the same scenes which had sheltered her infancy 
 and childhood. 
 
 She pressed forward her palfrey, to reach the ancient por- 
 tal as soon as possible, bowed hastily to the well-known faces 
 which showed themselves on all sides, but spoke to no one, 
 until, dismounting at the chapel door, she had penetrated to 
 the crypt, in which Avas preserved the miraculous painting. 
 There, prostrate on the ground, she implored the guidance 
 and protection of the Holy Virgin through those intricacies 
 in which she had involved herself, by the fulfilment of the 
 vow which she had made in her anguish before the same 
 shrine. If the prayer was misdirected, its purjjort was virtu- 
 ous and sincere ; nor are we disposed to doubt that it attained 
 fchat Heaven towards which it was devoutly addressed. 
 
OHAPTEK XXII 
 
 The Virgin's image falls ; yet some, I ween, 
 Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend, 
 As to a visible power, in which miglit blend 
 All that was mix'd, and reconciled in her, 
 Of mother's love with maiden's purity, 
 Of high with low, celestial with terrene. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 The household of the Lady Eveline, though of an establish- 
 ment becoming her present and future rank, was of a solemn 
 and sequestered character, corresponding to her place of resi- 
 dence, and the privacy connected with her situation, retired 
 as she was from the class of maidens who are yet unengaged, 
 and yet not united with that of matrons, Avho enjoyed the 
 protection of a married name. Her immediate female at- 
 tendants, with whom the reader is already acquainted, consti- 
 tuted almost her whole society. The garrison of the castle, 
 besides household servants, consisted of veterans of tried 
 faith, the followers of Berenger and of De Lacy in many a 
 bloody field, to whom the duties of watching and warding 
 were as familiar as any of their more ordinary occupations, 
 and whose courage, nevertheless, tempered by age and expe- 
 rience, was not likely to engage in any rash adventure or ac- 
 cidental quarrel. These men maintained a constant and 
 watchful guard, commanded by the steward, but under the 
 eye of Father Aldrovand, who, besides discharging his eccle- 
 siastical functions, was at times pleased to show some 
 sparkles of his ancient military education. 
 
 Whilst this garrison afforded security against any sudden 
 attempt on the part of the Welsh to surprise the castle, a 
 strong body of forces were disposed within a few miles of the 
 G-arde Uoloureuse, ready, on the least alarm, to advance to 
 defend the place against any more numerous body of in- 
 vaders, who, undeterred by the fate of Gwenwyn, might have 
 the hardihood to form a regular siege. To this band, which, 
 under the eye of Damian de Lacy himself, was kept in con- 
 stant readiness for action, could be added on occasion all the 
 military force of the marches, comprising numerous bodies 
 of Flemings and other foreigners, who held their establish- 
 ments by military tenure. 
 
 208 
 
THE BETROTHED 203 
 
 While the fortress was thus secure from hostile violence, 
 the life of its inmates was so unvaried and simple as might 
 have excused youth and beauty for wishing for variety, even 
 at the expense of some danger. The labors of the needle 
 were only relieved by a walk round the battlements, where 
 Eveline, as she passed arm in arm with Rose, received a mili- 
 tary salute from each sentinel in turn, or in the courtyard, 
 where the caps and bonnets of the domestics paid her the 
 same respect which she received above from the pikes and 
 javelins of the warders. Did they wish to extend their airing 
 beyond the castle gate, it was not sufficient that dcors and 
 bridges were to be opened and lowered ; there was, besides, 
 an escort to get under arms, who, on foot or horseback, as the 
 case might require, attended for the security of the Lady 
 Eveline's person. Without this military attendance they 
 could not in safety move even so far as the mills, where hon- 
 est Wilkin Flammock, his warlike deeds forgotten, was oc- 
 cupied with his mechanical labors. But if a further disport 
 was intended, and the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse pro- 
 posed to hunt or hawk for a few hours, her safety was not 
 confided to a guard so feeble as the garrison of the castle 
 could afford. It was necessary that Raoul should announce 
 her purpose to Damian by a special messenger despatched 
 the evening before, that there might be time before daybreak 
 to scour, with a body of light cavalry, the region in which 
 she intended to take her pleasure ; and sentinels were placed 
 in all suspicious places while she continued in the field. In 
 truth, she tried, upon one or two occasions, to make an 
 excursion without any formal annunciation of her intention ; 
 but all her purposes seemed to be known to Damian as soon 
 as they were formed, and she was no sooner abroad than 
 parties of archers and spearmen from his camp were seen 
 scouring the valleys and guarding the mountain-pass, and 
 Damian's own plume was usually beheld conspicuous among 
 the distant soldiers. 
 
 The formality of these preparations so much allayed the 
 pleasure derived from the sport, that Eveline seldom resorted 
 to amusement which was attended with such bustle, and pu^ 
 in motion so many persons. 
 
 The day being worn out as it best might, in the evening 
 Father Aldrovaud was wont to read out of some holy legend, 
 or from the homilies of some departed saint, such passages 
 as he deemed fit for the hearing of his little congregation. 
 Sometimes also he read and expounded a chapter of the 
 Holy Scripture ; but in such cases, the good man's attention 
 
204 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 was so strangely turned to tlie military part of the Jewish 
 history, that he was never able to quit the books of Judges 
 and of Kings, together with the triunij^hs of Judas Macca- 
 bseus ; altliough the manner in which he illustrated the vic- 
 tories of the children of Israel was much more amusing to 
 himself than edifying to his female audience. 
 
 Sometimes, but rarely, Rose obtained permission for a 
 strolling minstrel to entertain an hour with his ditty of love 
 and chivalry ; sometimes a pilgrim from a distant shrine 
 repaid by long tales of the wonders which he had seen in 
 other lands the hospitality which the Garde Doloureuse 
 afforded ; and sometimes also it happened that the interest 
 and intercession of the tiring-woman obtained admission for 
 traveling merchants, or pedlers, who, at the risk of their 
 lives, found profit by carrying from castle to castle the mate- 
 rials of rich dresses and female ornaments. 
 
 The usual visits of mendicants, of jugglers, of traveling 
 jesters, are not to be forgotten in this list of amusements ; 
 and though this nation subjected him to close watch and ob- 
 servation, even the Welsh bard, with his huge harp strung 
 with horse-hair, was sometimes admitted to vary the uniform- 
 ity of their secluded life. But, saving such amusements, 
 and saving also the regular attendance upon the religious 
 duties at the chapel, it was impossi'ble for life to glide away 
 in more wearisome monotony than at the castle of the Garde 
 Doloureuse. Since the death of its brave owner, to whom 
 feasting and hospitality seemed as natural as thoughts of 
 honor and deeds of chivalry, the gloom of a convent might 
 be said to have enveloped the ancient mansion of Eaymond 
 Berenger, were it not that the presence of so many armed 
 warders, stalking in solemn state on the battlements, gave 
 it rather the aspect of a state-prison ; and the temper of the 
 inhabitants gradually became infected by the chaiacter of 
 their dwelling. 
 
 The spirits of Eveline in particular felt a depression which 
 her naturally lively temper was quite inadequate to resist, 
 and as her ruminations became graver, had caught that 
 calm and contemplative manner which is so often united 
 with an ardent and enthusiastical temperament. She medi- 
 tated deeply upon the former accidents of her life ; nor can 
 it be wondered that her thoughts repeatedly wandered back 
 to the two several periods on which she had witnessed, or 
 supposed that she had witnessed, a supernatural appearance. 
 Then it was that it often seemed to her as if a good and evil 
 power strove for mastery over her destiny. 
 
THE BETROTHED 205 
 
 Soltitude is favorable to feelings of self-importance ; and it 
 is when alone, and occupied only with their own thoughts, 
 that fanatics have reveries, and imagined saints lose them- 
 selves in imaginary ecstacies. With Eveline the influence of 
 enthusiasm went not such a length, yet it seemed to her as 
 if in the vision of the night she saw sometimes the aspect of 
 the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse, bending upon her glances 
 of pity, comfort and protection ; sometimes the ominous 
 form of the Saxon castle of Baldringham, holding up the 
 bloody hand as witness of the injuries with which she had 
 been treated while in life, and menacing with revenge the 
 descendant of her murderer. 
 
 On awakening from such dreams, Eveline would reflect 
 that she was the last branch of her house — a house to which 
 the tutelage and protection of the miraculous image, and the 
 enmity and evil influence of the revengeful Vanda, had been 
 peculiarly attached for ages. It seemed to her as if she were 
 the prize for the disposal of which the benign saint and vin- 
 dictive fiends were now to play their last and keenest game. 
 
 Thus thinking, and experiencing little interruption of her 
 meditations from any external circumstance of interest and 
 amusement, she became pensive, absent, wrapped herself up 
 in contemplations which withdrew her attention from the 
 conversations around her, and walked in the world of reality 
 like one who is still in a dream. When she thought of her 
 engagement with the Constable of Chester, it was with resig- 
 nation, but without a wish, and almost without an expec- 
 tation, that she would be called upon to fulfil it. She had 
 accomplished her vow by accepting the faith of her deliverer 
 in exchange for her own ; and although she held herself 
 willing to redeem the pledge — nay, would scarce confess to 
 herself the reluctance with which she thought of doing so — 
 yet it is certain that she entertained unavowed hopes that 
 Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse would not be a severe 
 creditor ; but, satisfied with the readiness she had shown to 
 aruomplish her vow, would not insist upon her claim in its 
 full rigor. It would have been the blackest ingratitude to 
 j have wished that her gallant deliverer, whom she had so 
 ;much cause to pray for, should experience any of those 
 fatalities which in the Holy Land so often changed the 
 laurel wreath into cypress ; but other accidents chanced, 
 when men had been long abroad, to alter those purposes 
 with which they had left home. 
 
 A strolling minstrel, who sought the Garde Doloureuse, had 
 recited, for the amusement of the lady and household, the 
 
206 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 celebrated lay of the Count of Gleichen, who, already mar- 
 ried in his own country, laid himself under so many obliga- 
 tions in the East to a Saracen princess, througli whose 
 means he achieved his freedom, that he married her also. 
 The Pope and his conclave were pleased to approve of the 
 double wedlock in a case so extraordinary ; and the good 
 Count of Gleichen shared his nuptial bed between two wives 
 of equal rank, and now sleeps between them under the same 
 monument. 
 
 Tiie commentai'ies of the inmates of the castle had been 
 various and discrepant upon this legend. Father Aldro- 
 vand considered it as altogether false, and an unworthy 
 calumny on the head of the church, in affirming his Holi- 
 ness would countenance such irregularity. Old Margery, 
 with the tender-heartedness of an ancient nurse, wept bit- 
 terly for pity during tlie tale, and, never questioning either 
 the power of the Pope or the propriety of his decision, was 
 pleased that a mode of extrication was found for a compli- 
 cation of love distresses which seemed almost inextricable. 
 Dame Gillian declared it unreasonable that, since a woman 
 was only allowed one husband, a man should, under any cir- 
 cumstances, be permitted to have two wives ; whilst Raoul, 
 glancing towards her a look of verjuice, pittied the deplor- 
 able idiocy of the man who could be fool enough to avail 
 himself of such a privilege. 
 
 " Peace, all the rest of you," said the Lady Eveline ; 
 '' and do you, my dear Eose, tell me your judgment upon 
 this Count of Gleichen and his two Avives." 
 
 Eose blushed, and replied, " She was not much accus- 
 tomed to think of such matters ; but that, in her appre- 
 hension, the wife who could be contented with but one half 
 of her husband's affections had nevej deserved to engage the 
 slightest share of them." 
 
 "Thou art partly right, Eose," said Eveline ; ''and me- 
 thinks the European lady, when she found herself outshone 
 by the young and beautiful foreign princess, would have 
 best consulted her own dignity in resigning the place, and 
 giving the Holy Father no more trouble than in annulling 
 the marriage, as has been done in cases of more frequent 
 occurrence." 
 
 This she said with an air of indifference, and even gaiety, 
 which intimated to her faithful attendant with how little 
 effort she herself could have made such a sacrifice, and 
 served to indicate the state of her affections towards the 
 Constable. But there was another than the Constable on 
 
THE BETROTHED 207 
 
 whom her thoughts turned more frequently, though invol- 
 untarily, than perhaijs in prudence they should have done. 
 The recollections of Damian de Lacy had not been erased 
 from Eveline's mind. They were, indeed, renewed by hear- 
 ing his name so often mentioned, and by knowing that he 
 was almost constantly in tho neighborhood, with his whole 
 attention fixed upon her convenience, interest, and safety ; 
 whilst, on the other hand, so far from waiting on her in 
 person, he never even attempted, by a direct communication 
 witli herself, to consult her pleasure, even upon what most 
 concerned her. 
 
 The messages^ conveyed by Father Aldrovand or by Eose 
 to Amelot, Damian's page, while they gave an air of formal- 
 ity to their intercourse which Eveline thought unnecessary, 
 and even unkind, yet served to fix her attention upon the 
 connection between them, and to keep it ever present to her 
 memory. The remark by which Rose had vindicated the 
 distance observed by her youthful guardian sometimes arose 
 to her recollection ; and while her soul repelled with scorn 
 the suspicion that, in any case, his presence, whether at 
 intervals or constantly, could be prejudicial to his uncle's 
 interest, she conjured up various arguments for giving him 
 a frequent place in her memory. Was it not her duty to 
 think of Damian often and kindly, as the Constable's near- 
 est, best beloved, and most trusted relative ? Was he not 
 her former deliverer and her present guardian ? And 
 might he not be considered as an instrument specially em- 
 ployed by her divine patroness in rendering effectual the 
 protection with which she had graced her in more than one 
 emergency ? 
 
 Eveline's mind mutinied against the restrictions which 
 were laid on their intercourse, as against something which 
 inferred suspicion and degradation, like the compelled se- 
 clusion to which she had heard the paynim infidels of the 
 East subjected their females. Why should she see her 
 guardian only in the benefits which he conferred upon her and 
 the cares betook for her safety, and hear his sentiments only 
 by the mouth of others, as if one of them had been infected 
 with the plague, or some other fatal or infectious disorder, 
 which might render their meeting dangerous to the other ? 
 And if they did meet occasionally, what else could be the 
 consequence, save that the care of a brother towards a sister, 
 of a trusty and kind guardian to the betrothed bride of his 
 near relative and honored patron, might render the melan- 
 choly seclusion of the Garde Doloreuse more easy to be en- 
 
208 fVA VERL EY NOVELS 
 
 dured by one so young in years, and, though dejected by 
 present circumstances, naturally so gay in temper ? 
 
 Yet, though this train of reasoning appeared to Eveline, 
 when tracing it in her own mind, so conclusive that she 
 several times resolved to communicate her view of the case 
 to Rose Flammock, it so chanced that, whenever she looked 
 on the calm, steady blue eye of the Flemish maiden, and 
 remembered that her unblemished faith was mixed with a 
 sincerity and plain dealing proof against every consideration, 
 she feared lest she might be subjected in the opinion of her 
 attendant to suspicions from which her own mind freed her ; 
 and her proud Norman spirit revolted at the idea of being 
 obliged to justify herself to another, when she stood self- 
 acquitted to her own mind. " Let things be as they are," 
 she said, " and let us endure all the weariness of a life 
 which might be so easily rendered more cheerful, rather 
 than that this zealous but punctilious friend should, in the 
 strictness and nicety of her feelings on my account, conceive 
 me capable of encouraging an intercourse which could lead 
 to a less worthy thought of me in the mind of the most 
 scrupulous of man — or of womankind." But even this vacil- 
 lation of opinion and resolution tended to bring the image 
 of the handsome young Damian more frequently before the 
 Lady Eveline's fancy than perhaps his uncle, had he known 
 it, would altogether have approved of. In such reflections, 
 however, she never indulged long ere a sense of the singular 
 destiny which had hitherto attended her led her back into 
 the more melancholy contemplations from which the buoy- 
 ancv of her youthful fancy had for a short time emanci- 
 pated her. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Ours is the skie, 
 Where at what fowl we please our hawk shall flie. 
 
 Randolph. 
 
 One bright September morning, old Raoul was busy in the 
 mews where he kej^t his hawks, grumbling all the while to 
 himself as he surveyed the condition of each bird, and blam- 
 ing alternately the carelessness of the under-falconer, and 
 the situation of the building, and the weather, and the wind, 
 and all things around him, for the dilapidation which time 
 and disease had made in the neglected hawking establish- 
 ment of the Garde Doloureuse. While in these unpleasing 
 meditations, he was surprised by the voice of his beloved 
 Dame Gillian, who seldom was an early riser, and yet more 
 rarely visited him when he was in his sphere of peculiar 
 authority. " Eaoul — Raoul ! where art thou, man ? Ever 
 to seek for, when thou canst make aught of advantage for 
 thyself or me ! " 
 
 "And what want'st thou, dame ^" said Raoul — "what 
 means thy screaming w^orse than the sea-gull before wet 
 weather ? A murrain on thy voice ! it is enough to fray 
 every hawk from the perch." 
 
 "Hawk!" answered Dame Gillian; "it is time to be 
 looking for hawks, when here is a cast of the bravest falcons 
 come hither for sale that ever flew by lake, brook, or mea- 
 dow ! " 
 
 " Kites ! like her that brings the news," said Raoul. 
 
 " No, nor kestrels like him that hears it," replied Gillian ; 
 "but brave jerfalcons, with large nares, strongly armed, 
 and beaks short and something bluish " 
 
 "Pshaw, with thy jargon ! Where came they from ?" 
 said Raoul, interested in the tidings, but unwilling to give 
 his wife the satisfaction of seeing that he was so. 
 
 "Erom the Isle of Man," replied Gillian. 
 
 "They must be good, then, though it was a woman 
 brought tidings of them," said Raoul, smiling grimly at his 
 own wit ; then, leaving the mews, he demanded to know 
 where this famous falcon-merchant was to be met withal. 
 209 
 
210 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 " Why, between tlie barriers and the inner gate/* replied 
 Gillian, "where other men are admitted that have wares to 
 utter. Where should he be ?" 
 
 " And who let him in ?" demanded the suspicious Eaoul. 
 
 "Why, master steward, thou owl!" said Gillian; "he 
 came but now to my chamber, and sent me hither to call 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, the steward — the steward, I might have guessed as 
 much. And he came to thy chamber, doubtless, because he 
 could not have as easily come hither to me himself. Was it 
 not so, sweetheart ? " 
 
 "I do not know why he chose to come to me rather than 
 to you, Raoul," said Gillian ; " and if I did know, perhaps 
 I would not tell you. Go to, miss your bargain or make 
 your bargain, I care not which ; the man will not wait for 
 you : he has good proffers from the seneschal of Malpas and 
 the Welsh Lord of Dinevawr." 
 
 " I come — I come," said Eaoul, who felt the necessity of 
 embracing this opportunity of improving his hawking estab- 
 lishment, and hastened to the gate, where he met the mer- 
 chant, attended by a servant, who kept in separate cages the 
 three falcons which he offered for sale. 
 
 The first glance satisfied Raoul that they were of the best 
 breed in Europe, and that, if their education were in corre- 
 spondence to their race, there could scarce be a more 
 valuable addition even to a royal mews. The merchant did 
 not fail to enlarge upon all their points of excellence — the 
 breadth of their shoulders, the strength of their train, their 
 full and fierce dark eyes, the boldness with which they 
 endured the approach of strangers, and the lively spirit and 
 vigor with which they pruned their plumes, and shook, or, 
 as it was technically termed, roused themselves. He expa- 
 tiated on the difficulty and danger with which they were 
 obtained from the Rock of Ramsey, on which they were 
 bred, and which was an eyrie unrivaled even on the coast 
 of Norway. 
 
 Raoul turned apparently a deaf ear fco all these commen- 
 dations. "Friend merchant," said he, "I know a falcon 
 as well as thou dost, and 1 will not deny that thine are fine 
 ones ; but if they be not carefully trained and reclaimed, I 
 would rather have a goss-hawk on my perch than the fairest 
 falcon that ever stretched wing to weatlier." 
 
 " I grant ye," said the merchant ; "but if we agree on 
 the price, for that is the main matter, thou shalt see the 
 birds fly if thou wilt, and then buy them or not as thou 
 
THE BETROTHED 211 
 
 Kkest. I am no true merchant if thou ever saw*st birds 
 beat them, whether at the mount or the stoop." 
 
 " That I call fair," said Raoul, " if the price be equally 
 so." 
 
 " It shall be corresponding," said the hawk-merchant ; 
 "for I have brought six cass from the island, by the good 
 favor of good King Reginald of Man, and I have sold every 
 feather of them save these ; and so, having emptied my cages 
 and filled my purse, I desire not to be troubled longer with 
 the residue ; and if a good fellow, and a judge, as thou 
 seemest to be, should like the hawks when he has seen them 
 fly, he shall have the price of his own making." 
 
 " Go to," said Raoul, "we will have no blind bargains ; 
 my lady, if the hawks be suitable, is more able to pay for 
 them than thou to give them away. Will a bezant be a 
 conformable price for the cast ?" 
 
 " A bezant, master falconer ! By my faith, you are no 
 bold bedesman ; nevertheless, double your offer, and I will 
 consider it." 
 
 " If the hawks are well reclaimed," said Raoul, " I will 
 give you a bezant and a half ; but I will see them strike a 
 heron ere I will be so rash as deal with you." 
 
 " It is well," said the merchant, " and I had better take 
 your offer than be longer cumbered with them ; for were I 
 to carry them into Wales, I miglit get paid in a worse 
 fashion by some of their long knives. Will you to horse 
 presently ?" 
 
 " Assuredly," said Raoul ; " and, though March be the 
 fitter month for hawking at the lieron, yet I will show you 
 one of these frog-peckers for the trouble of riding "the 
 matter of a mile by the water-side." 
 
 " Content, sir falconer," said the merchant. " But are we 
 to go alone, or is there no lord or lady in the castle who 
 would take pleasure to see a piece of game gallantly struck ? 
 I am not afraid to show these hawks to a countess." 
 
 " My lady used to love the sport well enough," said 
 Raoul ; " but, I wot not why, she is moped and mazed ever 
 since her father's death, and lives in her fair castle like a nun 
 in a cloister, without disport or revelry of any kind. Never- 
 theless, Gillian, thou canst do something with her ; good 
 now, do a kind deed for once, and move her to come out 
 and look on this morning's sport. The poor heart hath seen 
 no pastime this summer." 
 
 " That I will do," quoth Gillian ; " and, moreover, I will 
 ghow her such a new riding-tire for the head, that no woman 
 
212 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 born could ever look at without the wish to toss it a little 
 in the wind." 
 
 As Gillian spoke, it appeared to her jealous-pated husband 
 that he surprised a glance of more intelligence exchanged 
 betwixt her and the trader than brief acquaintance seemed 
 to warrant, even when allowance was made for the extreme 
 frankness of Dame Gillian's disposition. He thought also 
 that, on looking mora closely at the merchant, his lineaments 
 were not totally unknown to him ; and proceeded to say to 
 him drily, "We have met before, friend, but I cannot call 
 to remembrance where," 
 
 "Like enough," said the merchant: " I have used this 
 country often, and may have taken money of you in the way 
 of trade. If I were in fitting place, I would gladly bestow 
 a pottle of wine to our better acquaintance." 
 
 "Not so fast, friend," said the old huntsman; "ere I 
 drink to better acquaintance with any one, I must be well 
 pleased with what I already know of him, "We will see thy 
 hawks fly, and if their breeding match thy bragging, we 
 may perhaps crush a cup together. And here come grooms 
 and equerries, in faith : my lady has consented to come 
 forth." 
 
 The opportunity of seeing this rural pastime had offered 
 itself to Eveline, at a time when the delightful brilliancy of 
 the day, the temperance of the air, and the joyous Avork of 
 harvest, proceeding in every direction around, made the 
 temptation to exercise almost irresistible. 
 
 As they j^roposed to go no farther than the side of the 
 neighboring river, near the fatal bridge, over which a small 
 guard of infantry was constantly maintained, Eveline dis- 
 pensed with any farther escort, and, contrary to the custom 
 of the castle, took no one in her train save Rose and 
 Gillian, and one or two servants, Avho led spaniels or carried 
 appurtenances of the chase. Raoul, the merchant, and 
 an equerry attended her, of course, each holding a hawk on 
 his wrist, and anxiously adjusting the mode in which they 
 should throw them off," so as best to ascertain the extent of 
 their powers and training. 
 
 When these important points had been adjusted, the party 
 rode down the river, carefully looking on every side for the 
 object of their game ; but no heron was seen stalking on the 
 usual haunts of the bird, although there was a heronry at no 
 great distance. 
 
 Few disappointments of a small nature are more teasing 
 than that of a sportsman who, having sat out with all means 
 
TUE BETROTHED 213 
 
 and appliances for destruction of game, finds that there is 
 none to be met with ; because he conceives himself, with 
 his full shooting trim and his empty game-pouch, to be sub- 
 jected to the sneer of every passing rustic. The party of 
 the Lady Eveline felt all the degradation of such disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 ''A fair country this," said the merchant, ''where, on 
 two miles of river, you cannot find one poor heron \" 
 
 " It is the clatter those d — d Flemings make with their 
 water-mills and fulling-mills," said Eaoul : "they destroy 
 good sport and good company wherever they come. But 
 were my lady willing to ride a mile or so farther to the Eed 
 Pool, I could show you a long-shanked fellow who would 
 make yonr hawks canceller till their brains were giddy." 
 
 " The Eed Pool I" said Eose ; "thou knowest it is more 
 than three miles beyond the bridge, and lies up towards the 
 hills." 
 
 •''' Ay — ay," said Eaoul, " another Flemish freak to spoil 
 pastime ! They are not so scarce on the marches these 
 Flemish wenches, that they should fear being hawked at by 
 Welsh haggards." 
 
 " Eaoul is right, Eose," answered Eveline : " it is absurd 
 to be cooped up like birds in a cage, when all around us has 
 been so uniformly quiet. I am determined to break out oi 
 bounds for once, and see sport in our old fashion, without 
 being surrounded with armed men like prisoners of state. 
 "We will merrily to the Eed Pool, wench, and kill a heron 
 like free maids of the marches." 
 
 " Let me but tell my father, at least, to mount and follow 
 us," said Eose ; for they were now near the reestablished 
 manufacturing-houses of the stout Fleming. 
 
 " I care not if thou dost, Eose," said Eveline ; " yet credit 
 me, girl, we will be at the Eed Pool, and thus far on our 
 way home again, ere tliy father has donned his best doublet, 
 girded on his two-handed sword, and accoutered his strong 
 Flanderkin elephant of a horse, which he judiciously names 
 Sloth — nay, frown not, and lose not, in justifying thy father, 
 tlie time that may be better spent in calling him out." 
 
 Rose rode to the mills accordingly, when Wilkin Flam- 
 mock, at the command of his liege mistress, readily hastened 
 to get his steel cap and habergeon, and ordered half a dozen 
 of liis kinsmen and servants to get on horseback. Eose 
 remained with him, to urge him to more despatch than his 
 methodical disposition rendered natural to him ; but, in 
 spite of all her efforts to stimulate him, the Lady Eveline • 
 
214 WA VERLEY N VEL S 
 
 had passed the bridge more than half an hour ere her escort 
 
 was prepared to follow her. 
 
 Meanwhile, apprehensive of no evil, and riding gaily on, 
 with the sensation of one escaped from confinement, Eveline 
 moved forward on her lively jennet, as light as a lark ; the 
 plumes with which Dame Gillian had decked her riding-bon- 
 net dancing in the wind, and her attendants galloping behind 
 her, with dogs, pouches, lines, and all other appurtenances 
 of the royal sport of hawking. After passing the river, the 
 wild greensward path which they pursued began to wind up- 
 ward among small eminences, sometimes bare and craggy, 
 sometimes overgrown with hazel, sloe-thorn, and other dwarf 
 shrubs, and at length, suddenly descending, brought them 
 to the verge of a mountain rivulet, that, like a lamb at play, 
 leaped merrily from rock to rock, seemingly uncertain which 
 way to run. 
 
 '' This little stream was always my favorite. Dame Gillian," 
 said Eveline, "and now methinks it leaps the lighter that it 
 sees me again." 
 
 " Ah ! lady," said Dame Gillian, whose turn for conversa- 
 tion never extended in such cases beyond a few phrases of 
 gross flattery, " many a fair knight would leap shoulder- 
 height for leave to look on you as free as the brook may ! 
 more especially now that you have donned that riding-cap, 
 which, in exquisite delicacy of invention, methinks is a bow- 
 shot before aught that I ever invented. What thinkest 
 thou, Raoul ?" 
 
 " I think," answered her well-natured helpmate, " tliat 
 women's tongues were contrived to drive all the game out of 
 the country. Here we come near to the spot where we hope 
 to speed, or nowhere ; wherefore, pray, my sweet lady, be silent 
 yourself, and keep your followers as much so as tlieir natures 
 will permit, while we steal along the bank of the pool, under 
 the wind, with our hawk's hoods cast loose, all ready for a 
 flight." 
 
 As he spoke, they advanced about a hundred yards up the 
 brawling stream, until the little vale through which it flowed 
 making a very sudden turn to one side, showed them the 
 Red Pool, the superfluous water of which formed the rivulet 
 itself. 
 
 This mountain-lake, or tarn, as it is called in some coun- 
 tries, was a deep basin of about a mile in circumference, but 
 rather oblong than circular. On the side next to our falcon- 
 ers arose a ridge of rock, of a dark red hue, giving name to 
 the pool, which, reflecting this massive and dusky barrier, 
 
THE BETROTHED 215 
 
 appeared to partake of its color. On the opposite side was 
 a heathy hill, whose autumnal bloom had not yet faded from 
 purple to russet ; its surface was varied by the dark green 
 furze and the fern, and in many places gray cliffs, or loose 
 stones of the same color, formed a contrast to the ruddy 
 precipice to which they lay opposed. A natural road of 
 beautiful sand was formed by a beach, which, extending all 
 the way around the lake, separated its waters from the pre- 
 cipitous rock on the one hand, and on the other from the 
 steep and broken hill ; and being nowhere less than five or 
 six yards in breadth, and in most places greatly more, offered 
 around its whole circuit a tempting opportunity to the rider 
 who desired to exercise and breathe, the horse on which he 
 was mounted. The verge of the pool on the rocky side was 
 here and there strewed with fragments of large size, detached 
 from the precipice above, but not in such quantity as to en- 
 cumber this pleasant horse-course. Many of these rocky 
 masses, having passed the margin of the water in their 
 fall, lay immersed there like small islets ; and placed amongst 
 a little archipelago, the quick eye of Raoul detected the heron 
 which they were in search of. 
 
 A moment's consultation was held to consider in what 
 manner they should approach the sad and solitary bird, 
 which, unconscious that itself was the object of a formidable 
 ambuscade, stood motionless on a stone by the brink of the 
 lake, watching for such small fish or water-reptiles as might 
 chance to pass by its lonely station. A brief debate took 
 place betwixt Eaoul and the hawk-merchant on the best 
 mode of starting the quarry, so as to allow Lady Eveline and 
 her attendants the most perfect view of the flight. The 
 facility of killing the heron at the far jetee or at i\\e jetee 
 ferre — that is, upon the hither or farther side of the pool- 
 was anxiously debated in language of breathless importance, 
 as if some great and perilous enterprise was about to be 
 executed. 
 
 At length the arrangements were fixed, and the party be- 
 gan to advance towards the aquatic hermit, who, by this 
 time aware of their approach, drew himself up to his full 
 height, erected his long, lean neck, spread his broad fan-like 
 wings, uttered his usual clanging cry, and, projecting his 
 length of thin legs far behind him, rose upon the gentle 
 breeze. It was then, with a loud whoop of encourage- 
 ment, that the merchant threw off the noble hawk he bore, 
 having first unhooded her to give her a view of the quarry. 
 
 Eager as a frigate in chase of some rich galleon, darted 
 
216 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 the falcon towards the enemy which she had been taught to 
 pursue ; while, preparing for defense, if he should be unable 
 to escape by flight, the heron exerted all his powers of speed 
 to escape from an enemy so formidable. Plying his almost 
 unequaled strength of wing, he ascended high and higher 
 in the air, by short gyrations, that the hawk might gain no 
 vantage-ground for pouncing on him ; while his spiked beak, 
 at the extremity of so long a neck as enabled him to strike 
 an object at a yard's distance in every direction, possessed for 
 any less spirited assailant all the terrors of a Moorish javelin. 
 
 Another hawk was now thrown off, and encouraged by the 
 halloos of the falconer to join her companion. Both kept 
 mounting, or scaling the air, as it were, by a succession of 
 small circles, endeavoring to gain that superior height which 
 the heron on his part was bent to preserve ; and, to the ex- 
 quisite delight of the spectators, the contest was continued 
 until all three were wellnigh mingled with the fleecy clouds, 
 from which was occasionally heard the harsh and plaintive 
 cry of the quarry, appealing as it were to the heaven which 
 he was approaching against the wanton cruelty of those by 
 whom he was persecuted. 
 
 At length one of the falcons had reached a pitch from 
 which she ventured to stoop at the heron ; but so judici- 
 ously did the quarry maintain his defense, as to receive 
 on his beak the stroke which the falcon, shooting down at 
 full descent, had made against his right wing ; so that one 
 of his enemies, spiked tlirough the body by his own weight, 
 fell fluttering into the lake, very near the land, on the side 
 far 111 est from the falconers, and perished there. 
 
 *' There goes a gallant falcon to the fishes/' said Eaoul. 
 ** Merchant, thy cake is dough." 
 
 Even as he spoke, however, the remaining bird had 
 avenged the fate of her sister ; for the success which the 
 heron met with on one side did not prevent his being as- 
 sailed on the other wing ; and the falcon stooping boldly, 
 and grappling with, or, as it is called in falconry,'' binding," 
 his prey, both came tumbling down together, from a great 
 height 'in the air. It was then no small object on the part 
 of the falconers to come in as soon as possible, lest the 
 falcon should receive hurt from the beak or talons of the 
 heron ; and the whole party, the men setting spurs and the 
 females switching their palfreys, went off like the wind, 
 sweeping along the fair and smooth beach betwixt the 
 rock and the water. 
 
 Lady Eveline, far better mounted than any of her train. 
 
THE BETROTHED 217 
 
 her sj^irits elated by the sport and by the speed at which she 
 moved, was much sooner than any of her attendants at the 
 spot where the falcon and heron, still engaged in their 
 mortal struggle, lay fighting upon the moss, the wing of 
 the latter having been broken by the stoop of the former. 
 The duty of a falconer in such a crisis was to rush in and 
 assist the hawk, by thrusting the heron's bill into the earth 
 and breaking his legs, and thus permitting the falcon to 
 despatch him on easy terms. 
 
 Neither would the sex nor quality of the Lady Eveline 
 have excused her becoming second to the falcon in this 
 cruel manner ; but, just as she had dismounted for that 
 purpose, she was surprised to .find herself seized on by a 
 wild form, who exclaimed in Welsh that he seized her as a 
 waif, for hawking on the demesnes of Dawfyd with the 
 One Eye. At the same time many other Welshmen, to the 
 number of more than a score, showed themselves from 
 behind crags and bushes, all armed at point with the axes 
 called Welsh hooks, long knives, darts, and bows and 
 arrows. 
 
 Eveline screamed to her attendants for assistance, and at 
 the same time made use of what Welsh phrases she pos- 
 sessed, to move the fears or excite the compassion of the 
 outlawed mountaineers ; for she doubted not that she had 
 fallen under the power of such a party. When she found 
 her requests were unheeded, and she perceived it was their 
 purpose to detain her prisoner, she disdained to use farther 
 entreaties ; but demanded at their peril that they should 
 treat her with respect, promising in that case that she 
 would pay them a large ransom, and threatening them with 
 the vengeance of the Lords Marchers, and particularly of Sir 
 Damian de Lacy, if they ventured to use her otherwise. 
 
 The men seemed to understand her, and although they 
 proceeded to tie a bandage over her eyes, and to bind her 
 arms with her own veil, yet they observed in these acts of 
 violence a certain delicacy and attention both to her feel- 
 ings and her safety which led her to hope that her request 
 had had some effect upon them. They secured her to the 
 saddle of her palfrey, and led her away with them through 
 the recesses of the hills; while she had the additional dis- 
 tress to hear behind her the noise of a confiict, occasioned 
 by the fruitless efforts of her retinue to procure her rescue. 
 
 Astonishment had at first seized the hawking-party, when 
 they saw from some distance their sport interrupted by a 
 violent assault on their mistress. Old Raoul valiantly put 
 
m WA VSRLEY NOVEL S 
 
 spurs to his horse, and, calling on the rest to follow him 
 to the rescue, rode furiously towards the banditti ; but, 
 having no other arms save a hawking-pole and short sword, 
 he and those who followed him in his meritorious but in- 
 effectual attempt were easily foiled, and Raoul and one or two 
 of the foremost severely beaten ; the banditti exercising upon 
 them their own poles till they were broken to splinters, but 
 generously abstaining from the use of more dangerous 
 weapons. The rest of the retinue, completly discouraged, 
 dispersed to give the alarm, and the merchant and Dame 
 Gillian remained by the lake, filling the air with shrieks of 
 useless fear and sorrow. The outlaws, meanwhile, drawing 
 together in a body, shot a few arrows at the fugitives, but 
 more to alarm than to injure them, and then marched off, 
 as if to cover their companions who had gone before with 
 the Lady Eveline in their custody. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Four ruffians seized me yester morn- 
 Alas ! a maiden most forlorn I 
 They choked my cries with wicked might. 
 And bound me on a palfrey white. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Such adventures as are now only recorded in works of 
 mere fiction were not uncommon in the feudal ages, when 
 might was so universal'ly superior to right ; and it followed 
 that those whose condition exposed them to frequent vio- 
 lence were more prompt in repelling, and more patient in 
 enduring, it than could otherwise have been expected from 
 their sex and age. 
 
 The Lady Eveline felt that she was a prisoner, nor was she 
 devoid of fears concerning the purpose of this assault ; but 
 she suffered neither her alarm nor the violence with which 
 she was hurried along to deprive her of the power of observ- 
 ing and reflecting. From the noise of hoofs which now in- 
 creased around, she concluded that the greater part of the 
 ruffians by whom she had been seized had betaken them- 
 selves to their horses. This she knew was consonant to the 
 practise of the Welsh marauders, who, although the small 
 size and slightness of their nags made them totally unfit for 
 service in battle, availed themselves of their activity and 
 sureness of foot to transport them with the necessary celerity 
 to and from the scenes of their rapine, ensuring tbus a rapid 
 and unperceived approach, and a secure and speedy retreat. 
 These animals traversed without difficulty, and beneath the 
 load of a heavy soldier, the wild mountain-paths by which 
 the country was intersected, and in one of which Lady 
 Eveline Berenger concluded she was now engaged, from the 
 manner in which her own palfrey, supported by a man on 
 foot at either rein, seemed now to labor up some precipice, 
 and anon to descend with still greater risk on the other side. 
 
 At one of those moments, a voice which she had not yet 
 distinguished addressed her in the Anglo-Norman language, 
 and asked, with apparent interest, if she sat safely on her 
 saddle, offering at the same time to have her accouterments 
 altered at her pleasure and convenience. 
 2id 
 
220 WA VERL ET NO VEL S 
 
 *' Insult not my condition with the mention of safety," 
 said Eveline ; " you may well believe that I hold my safety 
 altogether irreconcilable with these deeds of violence. If I 
 or my vassals have done injury to any of the Oymry, let me 
 know, and it shall be amended. If it is ransom which you 
 desire name the sum, and I will send an order to treat for 
 it ; but detain me not prisoner, for that can but injure me, 
 and will avail you nothing." 
 
 '' The Lady Eveline," answered the voice, still in a tone 
 of courtesy inconsistent with the violence which she sus- 
 tained, " will speedily find that our actions are more rough 
 than our purposes.*' 
 
 " It you know who I am," said Eveline, " you cannot 
 doubt that this atrocity will be avenged ; you must know by 
 whose banner my lands are at present protected." 
 
 " Under De Lacy's," answered the voice, with a tone of 
 indifference. *' Be it so — falcons fear not falcons." 
 
 At this moment there was a halt, and a confused murmur 
 arose amongst those around her, who had hitherto been 
 silent, unless when muttering to each other in Welsh, and 
 as briefly as possible, directions which way to hold, or en- 
 couragement to use haste. 
 
 These murmurs ceased, and there was a pause of several 
 minutes ; at length Eveline again heard the voice which for- 
 merly addressed her, giving directions which she could not 
 understand. He then spoke to herself. " You will pres- 
 ently see," he said, "whether I have spoken truly when 1 
 said I scorned the ties by which you are fettered. But you 
 are at once the cause of strife and the reward of victory, 
 your safety must be cared for as time will admit ; and, 
 strange as the mode of protection is to which we are to com- 
 mit you, I trust the victor in the approaching struggle will 
 find you uninjured." 
 
 " Do not, for the sake of the Blessed Virgin, let there be 
 strife and bloodshed!" said Eveline; "rather unbind my 
 eyes, and let me speak to those whose approach you dread. 
 If friends, as it would seem to me, I will be the means of 
 peace between you." 
 
 "I despise peace," replied the speaker. "1 have not 
 undertaken a resolute and daring adventure, to resign it as 
 a child doth his plaything, at the first frown of fortune. 
 Please to alight, noble lady ; or rather be not offended that 
 I thus lift you from the seat and place you on the green- 
 sward." 
 
 As he spoke, Eveline felt herself lifted from her palfrey. 
 
THE BETROTHED 221 
 
 and placed carefully and safely on the ground, in a sitting 
 posture. A moment after, the same peremptory valet who 
 had aided her to dismount disrobed her of her cap, the 
 masterpiece of Dame Giillau, and of her upper mantle. 
 " I must yet further require you," said the bandit leader, 
 " to creep on hands and knees into this narrow aperture. 
 Believe me, I regret the nature of the singular fortification 
 to which I commit your person for safety." 
 
 Eveline crept forwards as directed, conceiving resistance 
 to be of no avail, and thinking that compliance with the re- 
 quest of one who spoke like a person of consequence might 
 find her protection against the unbridled fury of the Welsh, 
 to whom she was obnoxious, as being the cause of Gwen- 
 wyn's death and the defeat of the Britons under the walls 
 of the Garde Doloureuse. 
 
 She crept then forwards through a narrow and damp pas- 
 sage, built on either side with rough stones, and so low that 
 she could not have entered it in any other posture. When 
 she had proceeded about two or three yards, the passage 
 opened into a concavity or apartment, high enough to per- 
 mit her to sit at her ease, and of irregular, but narrow, 
 dimensions. At the same time she became sensible, from 
 the noise which she heard behind her, that the ruffians were 
 stopping up the passage by which she had been thus intro- 
 duced into the bowels of the earth. She could distinctly 
 hear the clattering of stone with which the} closed the en- 
 trance, and she became sensible that the current of fresh 
 air which had rushed through the opening was gradually 
 failing, and that the atmosphere of the subterranean apart- 
 ment became yet more damp, earthy, and oppressive than 
 at first. 
 
 At this moment came a distant sound from without, in 
 which Eveline thought she could distinguish cri'^s, blows, 
 the trampling of horse, the oaths, shouts, and screams of the 
 combatants, but all deadened by the rude walls ot her prison 
 into a confused, hollow murmur, conveying such intelli- 
 gence to her ears as we may suppose the dead to hear from 
 the world they have quitted. 
 
 Influenced by desperation, under circumstances so dread- 
 ful, Eveline struggled for liberty with such frantic energy 
 that she partly effected her purpose by forcing her arms from 
 the bonds which confined them. But this only convinced 
 her of the impossibility to escape ; for, rending off the veil 
 which wrapped her head, she found herself in total darkness, 
 and flinging her arms hastily around her, she discovered she 
 
222 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 was cooped np in a subterranean cavern of very narrow 
 dimensions. Her hands, wliich groped around, encountered 
 only pieces of decayed metal, and a substance which, at an- 
 other moment, would have made her shudder, being, in 
 truth, the moldering bones of the dead. At present, not 
 even this circumstance could add to her fears, immured as 
 she seemed to be, to perish by a strange and subterranean 
 death, while her friends and deliverers were probably within 
 a few yards of her. She flung her arms wildly around in 
 search of some avenue of escape, but every effort she made 
 for liberating herself from the ponderous circumvallation was 
 as ineffectual as if directed against the dome of a cathedral. 
 
 The noise by which her ears were at first assailed increased 
 rapidly, and at one moment it seemed as if the covering of 
 the vault under which she lay sounded repeatedly to blows, 
 or the shock of substances which had fallen, or been thrown, 
 against it. It was impossible that a human brain could have 
 withstood these terrors, operating upon it so immediately; 
 but happily this extremity lasted not long. Sounds, more 
 hollow and dying away in distance, argued that one or other 
 of the parties had retreated ; and at length all was silent. 
 
 Eveline was now left to the undisturbed contemj^lation of 
 her own disastrous situation. The fight was over, and, as 
 circumstances led her to infer, her own friends were con- 
 querors ; for otherwise the victor would have relieved her 
 from her place of confinement, and carried her away captive 
 with him, as his words had menaced. But what could the 
 success of her faithful friends and followers avail Eveline, 
 who, pent up under a place of concealment which, whatever 
 was its character, must have escaped their observation, was 
 left on the field of battle, to become again the prize of the 
 enemy, should their band venture to return, or die, in dark- 
 ness and privation, a death as horrid as ever tyrant invented 
 or martyr underwent, and which the unfortunate young lady 
 could not even bear to think of without a prayer that her 
 agony might at least be shortened. 
 
 In this hour of dread she recollected the poniard which 
 she wore, and the dark thought crossed her mind that, when 
 life became hopeless, a speedy death was at least within her 
 reach. As her soul shuddered at so dreadful an alternative, 
 the question suddenly occurred, might not this weapon be 
 put to a more hallowed use, and aid her emancipation in- 
 stead of abridging her sufferings ? 
 
 This hope once adopted, the daughter of Eaymond Be- 
 renger hastened to prove the experiment, and by repeated 
 
THE BETROTHED 223 
 
 efforts succeeded, though with difficulty, in changing her 
 posture, so as to admit of her inspecting her place of con- 
 tinement all around, but particularly the passage by v/hich 
 she had entered, and by which she now attempted again to 
 return to the light of day. She crept to the extremity, and 
 found it, as she expected, strongly blocked up with large 
 stones and earth, rammed together in such a manner as nearly 
 to extinguish all hope of escape. The work, however, had 
 been hastily performed, and life and liberty were prizes to 
 stimulate exertion. AVith her poniard she cleared away the 
 earth and sods ; with her hands, little accustomed to such 
 labor, she removed several stones, and advanced in her task 
 so far as to obtain a glimmering of light. ai\d, what was 
 scarce less precious, a supply of purer air. But, at the same 
 time, she had the misfortune to ascertain that, from the 
 size and massiveness of a huge stone which closed the ex- 
 tremity of the passage, there was no hope that her unas- 
 sisted strength could effect her extrication. Yet her condi- 
 tion was improved by the admission of air and light, as well 
 as by the opportunity afforded of calling out for assistance. 
 
 Such cries, indeed, were for some time uttered in vain ; 
 tlie field had probably been left to the dead and the dying, 
 for low and indistinct groans were the only answer which 
 she received for several minutes. At length, as she repeated 
 her exclamation, a voice, faint as that of one just awakened 
 from a swoon, pronounced these words in answer : " Edris 
 of the Earthen House, dost thou call from thy tomb to the 
 wretch who just hastens to his own ? Are the boundaries 
 broken down which connect me with the living ? And do I 
 already hear, with fleshly ears, the faint and screaming ac- 
 cents of the dead ?" 
 
 " It is no spirit who speaks,'* replied Eveline, overjoyed 
 at finding she could at least communicate her existence to 
 a living person — "no spirit, but a most unhappy maiden, 
 Eveline Berenger by name, immured beneath this dark 
 vault, and in danger to perish horribly, unless God send me 
 
 rescue 
 
 1 » 
 
 '• Eveline Berenger !*' exclaimed he whom she addressed, 
 in the accents of wonder. "It is impossible! I watched 
 her green mantle — I watched her plumy bonnet, as I saw 
 her hurried from the field, and felt my own inability to 
 follow to the rescue ; nor did force or exertion altogether 
 leave me till the waving of the robe and the dancing of the 
 feathers were lost to my eyes, and all hope of rescuing her 
 abandoned my heart." 
 
224 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ''Faithful vassal, or right true friend, or courteous 
 stranger, whichsoever I may name thee," answered Eveline, 
 " know thou hast been abused by the artifices of these Welsh 
 banditti : the mantle and head-gear of Eveline Berenger 
 they have indeed with them, and may have used them to 
 mislead those true friends who, like thee, are anxious for 
 my fate. Wherefore, brave sir, devise some succor, if thou 
 canst, for thyself and me ; since I dread that these ruffians, 
 when they shall have escaped immediate pursuit, will return 
 hither, like the robber to the hoard where he has deposited 
 his stolen booty." 
 
 "Now, the Holy Virgin be praised," said the wounded 
 man, "that I can spend the last breath of my life in thy 
 iust and honorable service 1 I would not before blow my 
 bugle, lest I recalled from the pursuit to the aid of my 
 worthless self some of those who might be effectually en- 
 gaged in thy rescue ; may Heaven grant that the recall may 
 now be heard, that my eyes may yet see the Lady Eveline 
 in safety and liberty ! " 
 
 The words, though spoken in a feeble tone, breathed a 
 spirit of enthusiasm, and were followed by tlie blast of a 
 horn, faintly winded, to which no answer was made save the 
 echoing of the dell. A sharper and louder blast was then 
 sent forth, but sunk so suddenly that it seemed the breath 
 of him who sounded the instrument had failed in the effort. 
 A strange thought crossed Eveline's mind even in that mo- 
 ment of uncertainty and terror. " That," she said, " was 
 the note of a De Lacy ; surely you cannot be my gentle 
 kinsman. Sir Uamian ? " 
 
 " I am that unhappy wretch, deserving of death for the 
 evil care which I have taken of the treasure entrusted to me. 
 What was my business to trust to reports and messengers ? 
 I should have worshiped the saint who was committed to 
 my keeping with such vigilance as avarice bestows on the 
 dross which he calls treasure. I should havo rested no- 
 where, save at your gate ; outwatched the brightest stars in 
 the horizon ; unseen and unknown myself, I should never 
 have parted from your neighborhood ; then had you not 
 been in the present danger, and — much less important con- 
 sequence — thou, Damian de Lacy, had not filled the grave 
 of a forsworn and negligent caitiff ! " 
 
 " Alas ! noble Damian," said Eveline, " break not my 
 heart by blaming yourself for an imprudence wliicli is 
 altogether my own. Thy succor was ever near when I in- 
 timated the least want of it ; and it embitters my own mis- 
 
THE BETROTHED 225 
 
 fortune to know that my rashness has been the cause of your 
 disaster. Answer me, gentle kinsman, and give me to hope 
 that the wounds you have suffered are such as may be cured. 
 Alas ! how much of your blood liave I seen spilled, and what 
 a fate is mine, that I should ever bring distress on all for 
 whom I would most willingly sacrifice my own happiness ! 
 But do not let us embitter the moments given us in mercy 
 by fruitless repinings. Try what you can to stop thine ebb- 
 uig blood, which is so dear to England— to Eveline— and to 
 thine uncle." 
 
 Damian groaned as she spoke, and was silent ; while, mad- 
 dened with the idea that ho might be perishing for want of 
 aid, Eveline repeated her efforts to extricate herself for her 
 kinsman's assistance, as well as lier own. It was all in vain, 
 and she had ceased the attempt in despair, and, passing 
 from one hideous subject of terror to another, she sat listen- 
 ing with sharpened ear for the dying groan of Damian, when 
 — feeling of ecstasy ! — the ground was shaken with horses' 
 feet advancing rapidly. Yet this joyful sound, if decisive 
 of life, did not assure her of liberty. It might be the banditti 
 of the mountains returning to seek their captive. Even 
 then they would surely allow her leave to look upon and bind 
 up the wounds of Damian de Lacy ; for to keep him as a 
 captive might vantage them more in many degrees than 
 could his death. A horseman came up ; Eveline invoked 
 his assistance ; and the first word she lieard was an ex- 
 clamation in Flemish from the faithful Wilkin Flammock, 
 which nothing save some spectacle of the most unusual kind 
 was ever known to comjael from that phlegmatic person. 
 _ His presence, indeed, was particularly useful on this occa- 
 sion ; for, being informed by the Lady Eveline in what con- 
 dition she was placed, and implored at the same time to 
 lookto the situation of Sir Damian de Lacy, he began, with 
 admirable composure and some skill, to stop the wounds of 
 the one, while his attendants collected levers, left by the 
 Welsh as they retreated, and were soon ready to attempt the 
 liberation of Eveline. With much caution, and under the 
 experienced direction of Flammock, the stone was at length 
 so much raised that the Lady Eveline was visible, to the 
 delight of all, and especially of the faithful Eose, who, 
 regardless of the risk of personal harm, fluttered around her 
 mistress's place of confinement, like a bird robbed of her 
 nestlings around the cage in which the truant urchin has 
 imprisoned them. Precaution was necessary to remove the 
 stone, lest falling inwards it might do the lady injury. 
 15 
 
226 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 At length the rocky fragment was so much displaced that 
 she could issue forth ; while her people, as in hatred of the 
 coercion which she had sustained, ceased not to heave with 
 bar and lever till, totally destroying the balance of the 
 heavy mass, it turned over from the little flat on which it 
 had been placed at the mouth of the subterranean entrance, 
 and, acquiring force as it revolved down a steep declivity, 
 was at length put into rapid motion, and rolled, crashed, 
 and thundered down the hill, amid flashes of fire which it 
 forced from the rocks, and clouds of smoke and dust, until 
 it alighted in the channel of a brook, where it broke into 
 several massive fragments, with a noise that might have 
 been heard some miles off. 
 
 With garments rent and soiled through the violence she 
 had sustained, with disheveled hair and disordered dress, 
 faint from the stifling effect of her confinement, and ex- 
 hausted by the eiiorts she had made to relieve herself, Eve- 
 line did not, nevertheless, waste a single minute in consid- 
 ering her own condition ; but, with the eagerness of a sister 
 hastening to the assistance of her only brother, betook her- 
 self to examine the several severe wounds of Damian de 
 Lacy, and to use proper means to stanch the blood and re- 
 call him from his swoon. We have said elsewhere that, like 
 other ladies of the time, Eveline was not altogether unac- 
 quainted with the surgical art, and she now displayed a 
 greater share of knowledge than she had been thought capa- 
 ble of exerting. There was prudence, foresight, and ten- 
 derness in every direction which she gave, and the softness 
 of the female sex, with their officious humanity, ever ready 
 to assist in alleviating human misery, seemed in her en- 
 hanced, and rendered dignified, by the sagacity of a strong 
 and powerful understanding. After hearing with wonder 
 for a minute or two the prudent and ready-witted directions 
 of her mistress. Rose seemed at once to recollect that the 
 patient should not be left to the exclusive care of the Lady 
 Eveline, and joining, therefore, in the task, she rendered 
 what assistance she could, while the attendants were em- 
 ployed in forming a litter, on which the wounded knight 
 was to be conveyed to the castle of the Garde Doloureuse. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 A merry place, 'tis said, in days of yore ; 
 
 But something ails it now — the place is cursed. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 The place on which the skirmish had occurred, and the 
 deliverance of the Lady Eveline had been effected, was a wild 
 and singular spot, being a small level plain, forming a sort 
 of stage, or resting-place, between two very rough paths, 
 one of which winded up the rivulet from below, and another 
 continued the ascent above. Being surrounded by hills and 
 woods, it was a celebrated spot for finding game, and, in 
 former days, a Welsh prince, renowned for his universal hos- 
 pitality, his love of " crw " and of the chase, had erected a 
 forest-lodge, where he used to feast his friends and followers 
 with a profusion unexampled in Cambria. 
 
 The fancy of the bards, always captivated with magnifi- 
 cence, and having no objections to the peculiar species of 
 profusion practised by this potentate, gave him the surname 
 of Edris of the Goblets, and celebrated him in their odes in 
 terms as high as those which exalt the heroes of the famous 
 Ilirlas horn. The subject of their praises, however, fell 
 finally a victim to his propensities, having been stabbed to 
 the heart in one of those scenes of confusion and drunken- 
 ness which were frequently the conclusion of his renowned 
 banquets. Shocked at this catastroj)he, the assembled 
 Britons interred the relics of the prince on the place where 
 he had died, within the narrow vault where Eveline had 
 been confined, and having barricaded the entrance of the 
 sepulcher with fragments of rock, heaped over it an im- 
 mense cairn, or pile of stones, on the summit of which they 
 put the assassin to death. Superstition guarded the spot ; 
 and for many a year this memorial of Edris remained un- 
 violated, although the lodge had gone to ruin, and its ves- 
 tiges had totally decayed. 
 
 In latter years, some prowling band of Welsh robbers had 
 
 discovered the secret entrance, and opened it with the 
 
 view of ransacking the tomb for arms and treasures, which 
 
 were in ancient times often buried with the dead. These 
 
 227 
 
228 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 marauders were disappointed, and obtained nothing by the 
 violation of the grave of Edris excepting the knowledge of 
 a secret place, which might be used for depositing their 
 booty, or even as a place of retreat for one of their number 
 in a case of emergency. 
 
 When the followers of Damian, five or six in number, ex- 
 plained their part of the history of the day to Wilkin Flam- 
 mock, it appeared that Damian had ordered them to horse 
 at break of day, with a more considerable body, to act, as 
 they understood, against a party of insurgent peasants, when 
 of a sudden he had altered his mind, and, dividing his force 
 into small bands, employed himself and them in recon- 
 noitering more than one mountain-pass betwixt Wales and 
 the marches of the English country, in the neighborhood of 
 the Garde Doloureuse. 
 
 This was an occupation so ordinary for him that it excited 
 no particular notice. These maneuvers were frequently 
 undertaken bv the warlike marchers, for the purpose of in- 
 timidating the Welsh in general, more especially the bands 
 of outlaws, who, independent of any regular government, 
 infested those wild frontiers. Yet it escaped not comment 
 that, in undertaking such service at this moment, Damian 
 seemed to abandon that of dispersing the insurgents, which 
 had been considered as the chief object of the day. 
 
 It was about noon when, falling in, as good fortune would 
 have it. with one of the fugitive grooms, Damian and his 
 immediate attendants received information of the violence 
 committed on the Lady Eveline, and, by their perfect knowl- 
 edge of the country, were able to intercept the ruffians at 
 the Pass of Edris, as it was called, by which the Welsh rovers 
 ordinarilv returned to their strongholds in the interior. It 
 is probable that the banditti were not aware of the small 
 force which Damian headed in person, and at the same time 
 knew that there would be an immediate and hot pursuit in 
 their rear ; and these circumstances led their leader to adopt 
 the singular expedient of hiding Eveline in the tomb, while 
 one of°their own number, dressed in her clothes, might 
 serve as a decoy to deceive their assailants, and lead them 
 from the spot where she was really concealed, to which it 
 was no doubt the purpose of the banditti to return, when 
 thev had eluded their pursuers. 
 
 Accordingly, the robbers had already drawn up before the 
 tomb for the purpose of regularly retreating, until they 
 should find some suitable place either for making a stand, 
 or where, if overmatched, they miglit, by abandoning their 
 
THE BETROTHED 229 
 
 horses ana dispersing among the rocks, evade the attack of 
 the Norman cavah-y. Their plan had been defeated by the 
 precipitation of Daniian, who, beholding as he thought the 
 plumes and mantle of the Lady Eveline in the rear of their 
 party, charged them without considering either the odds of 
 numbers or the lightness of his own armor, which, consist- 
 ing only of a head-piece and a buff surcoat, offered but im- 
 perfect resistance to the Welsh knives and glaives. He was 
 accordingly wounded severely at the onset, and would have 
 been slain, but for the exertions of his few followers, and 
 the fears of the Welsh that, while thus continuing the battle 
 in front, they might be assaulted in the rear by the followers 
 of Eveline, whom they must now suppose were all in arms 
 and motion. They retreated, therefore, or rather fled, and 
 the attendants of Damian were despatched after them by 
 their fallen master, with directions to let no consideration 
 induce them to leave off the chase until the captive Lady 
 of the Garde Doloureuse was delivered from her ravishers. 
 
 The outlaws, secure in their knowledge of the paths and 
 the activity of their small Welsh horses, made an orderly 
 retreat, with the exception of two or three of their rearguard, 
 cut down by Damian in his furious onset. They shot arrows, 
 from time to time, at the men-at-arms, and laughed at the 
 ineffectual efforts which these heavy-armed warriors, with 
 their barbed horses, made to overtake them. But the scene 
 was changed by the appearance of Wilkin Flammock, on his 
 puissant war-horse, who was beginning to ascend the pass, 
 leading a party consisting both of foot and horse. The fear 
 of being intercepted caused the outlaws to have recourse to 
 their last stratagem, and, abandoning their Welsh nags, 
 they betook themselves to the cliffs, and, by superior activity 
 and dexterity, baffled, generally speaking, the attempts of 
 their pursuers on either hand. All of them, however, were 
 not equally fortunate, for two or three fell into the hands of 
 Flammock's party ; amongst others, the person upon whom 
 Eveline's clothes had been placed, and who now, to the 
 great disappointment of those who had attached themselves 
 to his pursuit, proved to be, not the lady whom they were 
 emulous to deliver, but a fair-haired young Welshman, 
 whose wild looks and incoherent speech seemed to argue a 
 disturbed imagination. This would not have saved him 
 from immediate death, the usual doom of captives taken in 
 .such skirmishes, had not the faint blast of Damian's horn, 
 sounding from above, recalled his own party, and summoned 
 that of Wilkin Flammock to the spot ; while, in the con- 
 
230 WAVERLEJ NOVELS 
 
 fusion and hurry of their obeying the signal, the pity or the 
 contempt of his guards suffered the prisoner to escape. 
 They had, indeed, little to learn from him, even had he 
 been disposed to give intelligence, or capable of communi- 
 cating it. All were well assured that their lady had fallen 
 into an ambuscade, formed by Dawfyd the One-eyed, a re- 
 doubted freebooter of the period, who had ventured upon 
 this hardy enterprise in the hope of obtaining a large ran- 
 som for the captive Eveline, and all, incensed at his extreme 
 insolence and audacity, devoted his head and limbs to the 
 eagles and the ravens. 
 
 These were the particulars which the followers of Flam- 
 mock and of Damian learned by comparing notes with each 
 other on the incidents of the day. As they returned by the 
 Red Pool, tl)ey were joined by Dame Gillian, who, after 
 many exclamations of joy at the unexpected liberation of 
 her lady, and as many of sorrow at the unexpected disaster 
 of Damian, proceeded to inform the men-at-arms that the 
 merchant whose hawks had been the original cause of these 
 adventures had been taken prisoner by two or three of the 
 Welsh in their retreat, and that she herself and the wounded 
 Raoul would have shared the same fate, but that they had 
 no horse left to mount her upon, and did not consider old 
 Raoul as worth either ransom or the trouble of killing._ One 
 had, indeed, flung a stone at him as he lay on the hillside, 
 but happily, as his dame said, it fell something short of 
 him. "ItVasbut a little fellow who threw it," she said. 
 "There was a big man amongst them ; if he had tried, it's 
 like, by Our Lady's grace, he had cast it a thought farther.*' 
 So saying, the dame gathered herself up, and adjusted her 
 dress for again mounting on horseback. 
 
 The wounded Damian was placed on a litter, hastily con- 
 structed of boughs, and, with the females, was placed in the 
 center of the little troop, augmented by the rest of the young 
 Knight's followers, who began to rejoin his standard. The 
 anited body now marched with military order and precau- 
 tion, and winded through the passes with the attention of 
 men prepared to meet and to repel injury. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 What I fair, and young, and faithful too? 
 A miracle, if this be true. 
 
 Waller. 
 
 Rose, by nature one of the most disinterested and affec- 
 donate maidens that ever breathed, was the first wlio, has- 
 tily considering the peculiar condition in which her lady 
 was placed, and the marked degree of restraint which had 
 hitherto characterized her intercourse with her youthful 
 guardian, became anxious to know how the wounded knight 
 was to be disposed of ; and when she came to Eveline's side 
 for the purpose of asking this important question, her reso- 
 lution welluigh failed her. 
 
 The appearance of Eveline was indeed such as might have 
 made it almost cruelty to intrude upon her any other subject 
 of anxious consideration than those with which her mind 
 had been so lately assailed, and was still occupied. Her 
 countenance was as pale as death could have made it, unless 
 where it was specked with drops of blood ; her veil, torn 
 and disordered, was soiled with dust and with gore ; her hair, 
 wildly disheveled, fell in elf-locks on her brow and shoulders, 
 and a single broken and ragged feather, which was all that 
 remained of her head-gear, had been twisted among her 
 tresses and still flowed there, as if in mockery, rather than 
 ornament. Her eyes were fixed on the litter where Damian 
 was deposited, and she rode close beside it, without appar- 
 ently wasting a thought on anything, save the danger of him 
 who was extended there. 
 
 Rose plainly saw that her lady was under feelings of ex- 
 citation which might render it difficult for her to take a 
 wise and prudent view of her own situation. She endeav- 
 ored gradually to awaken her to a sense of it. "Dearest 
 lady,"'' said Rose, " will it please you to take my mantle ? " 
 
 "Torment me not,'* answered'Eveline, with some sharp- 
 ness in her accent. 
 
 "Indeed, my lady," said Dame Gillian, bustling up as 
 one who feared her functions as mistress of the robes might 
 be interfered with — " indeed, my lady. Rose Flammock 
 231 
 
232 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 speaks truth ; and neither your kirtle nor your gown are sit- 
 ting as they should do ; and, to speak truth, tliey are but 
 barely decent. And so, if Rose will turn herself, and put 
 her horse out of my way," continued the tire-woman, "I 
 will put your dress in better order in the sticking in of a 
 bodkin than any Fleming of them all could do in twelve 
 hours." 
 
 " I care not for my dress," replied Eveline, in the same 
 manner as before. 
 
 " Care then for your honor — for your fame," said Eose, 
 riding close to her mistress and whispering in her ear : 
 'Uhink, and that hastily, how you are to dispose of this 
 wounded young man." 
 
 " To the castle," answered Eveline aloud, as if scorning 
 the affectation of secrecy — ''lead to the castle", and that 
 straiglit as you can." 
 
 " Why not rather to his own camp, or to Malpas ? " said 
 Eose. '' Dearest lady, believe, it will be for the best." 
 
 " Wherefore not— wherefore not ? Wherefore not leave 
 him on the wayside at once, to the knife of the Welshman 
 and the teeth of the wolf ? Once— twice— three times has 
 he been my preserver. Where I go, he shall go ; nor will I 
 be in safety myself a moment sooner than I know that he is 
 so." 
 
 Rose saw that she could make no impression on her mis- 
 tress, and her own reflection told her that the wounded 
 man's life miglit be endangered by a longer transportation 
 than was absolutely necessary. An expedient occurred to 
 her, by which she imagined this objection might be obvi- 
 ated ; but it was necessary she should consult her father. 
 She struck her palfrey with her riding-rod, and in a moment 
 her diminutive, though beautiful, figure and her spirited 
 little jennet were by the side of the gigantic Fleming and 
 his tall black horse, and riding, as it were, in their vast 
 shadow. " My dearest father," said Rose, " the lady intends 
 that Sir Damian be transported to the castle, where it is like 
 he may be a long sojourner — what think you, is that whole- 
 some counsel ?" 
 
 " Wholesome for the youth, surely, Roschen," answered 
 the Fleming, " because he will better escape the risk of a 
 fever." 
 
 " True ; but is it wise for my lady ?" continued Rose. 
 
 " Wise enough, if she deal wisely. But wherefore shouldst 
 thou doubt her, Roschen ? " 
 
 " I know not," said Rose, unwilling to breathe even to her 
 
THE BETROTHED 233 
 
 father the fears and doubts which she herself entertained ; 
 " but where there are evil tongues, there may be evil rehears- 
 ing. Sir Damian and my lady are both very young. Me- 
 thinks it were better, dearest father, would you offer the 
 shelter of your roof to the wounded knight, in the stead of 
 his being carried to the castle. '^ 
 
 " That I shall not, wench," answered the Fleming, hast- 
 ily — " that I shall not, if I may help. Norman shall not 
 cross my quiet threshold, nor Englishman neither, to mock 
 my quiet thrift and consume my substance. Thou dost not 
 know them, because thou art ever with thy lady, and hast 
 her good favor ; but I know them well, and the best I can 
 get from them is ' Lazy Flanderkin,' and ' Greedy Flan- 
 derkin,' and 'Flemish sot' — I thank the saints they cannot 
 say ' Coward Flanderkin,' since Gwenwyn's Welsh uproar." 
 
 " I had ever thought, my father," answered Rose, '' that 
 your spirit was too calm to regard these base calumnies. 
 Bethink you we are under this lady's banner, and that 
 she has been my loving mistress, and her father was your 
 good lord ; to the Constable, too, are you beholden for en- 
 larged privileges. Money may pay debt, but kindness only 
 can requite kindness ; and I forebode that you will never 
 have such an opportunity to do kindness to the houses of 
 Berenger and De Lacy as by opening the doors of your 
 house to this wounded knight." 
 
 ''The doors of my house !" answered the Fleming — 
 " do I know how long I may call that, or any house upon 
 earth, my own ? Alas, my daughter, we came hither to fly 
 from the rage of the elements, but who knows how soon 
 we may perish by the wrath of men ! " 
 
 " You speak strangely, my father," said Rose. " It 
 holds not with your solid wisdom to augur such general 
 evil from the rash enterprise of a Welsh outlaw." 
 
 "I think not of the one-eyed robber," said Wilkin, " al- 
 though the increase and audacity of such robbers as Dawfyd 
 is no good sign of a quiet country. But thou, who livest 
 within yonder walls, hearest but little of what passes 
 without, and your estate is less anxious ; you had known 
 nothing of the news from me, unless in case I had found it 
 necessary to remove to another country." 
 
 " To remove, my dearest father, from the land where 
 your thrift and industry have gained you an honorable 
 competency ?" 
 
 " x\y, and where the hunger of wicked men, who envy 
 me the produce of my thrift, may likely bring me to a dis- 
 
234 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 honorable death. There have been tumnlts among the 
 English rabble in more than one county, and their wrath is 
 directed against those of our nation, as if we were Jews or 
 heathens, and not better Christians and better men than 
 themselves. They have, at York, Bristol, and elsewhere, 
 sucked the houses of tlie Flemings, spoiled their goods, mis- 
 used their families, and murdered themselves. And why, 
 except that we have brought among them the skill and the 
 industry which they possessed not ; and because wealth, 
 which they would never else have seen in Britain, was the 
 reward of our art and our toil ? Roschen, this evil spirit is 
 spreading wider daily. Here we are more safe than else- 
 where, because we form a colony of some numbers and 
 strength. But I confide not in our neighbors ; and hadst 
 not thou, Rose, been in security, I would long ere this have 
 given up all and left Britain." 
 
 "Given up all and left Britain l'^ The words sounded 
 prodigious in the ears of his daughter, who knew better 
 than any one how successful her father had been in his 
 industry, and how unlikely one of his firm and sedate 
 temper was to abandon known and present advantages for 
 the dread of distant or contingent peril. At length she re- 
 plied, " If such be your peril, my father, methinks your 
 house and goods cannot have a better protection than the 
 presence of this noble knight. Where lives the man who 
 dare aught of violence against the house which harbors 
 Daniian De Lacy ?" 
 
 " I know not that," said the Fleming, in the same com- 
 posed and steady, but ominous, tone. "May Heaven for- 
 give it me if it be sin ! but I see little save folly in these 
 Crusades, which the priesthood have preached up so success- 
 fully. Here has the Constable been absent for nearly three 
 years, and no certain tidings of his life or death, victory or 
 defeat. He marched from hence, as if he meant not to 
 draw bridle or sheathe sword until the Holy Sepulcher was 
 won from the Saracens, yet we can hear with no certainty 
 whether even a hamlet has been taken from the Saracens. 
 In the mean while, the people that are at home grow dis- 
 contented ; their lords, with the better part of their 
 followers, are in Palestine — dead or alive we scarcely know ; 
 the people themselves are oppressed and flayed by stewards 
 and deputies, whose yoke is neither so light nor so lightly 
 endured as that of the actual lord. The commons, who 
 naturally hate the knights and gentry, think it no bad time 
 to make some head against them ; ay, and there be some 
 
THE BETROTHED 235 
 
 of noble blood who would not care to be their leaders, that 
 they may have their share in the spoil ; for foreign expedi- 
 tions and profligate habits have made many poor, and he 
 that is poor will murder his father for money. I hate poor 
 people, and I would the devil had every man who cannot 
 keep himself by the work of his own hand I" 
 
 The Fleming concluded, with this characteristic impreca- 
 tion, a speech which gave Rose a more frightful view of the 
 state of England than, shut up as she was within the Garde 
 Doloureuse, she had before had an opportunity of learning. 
 " Surely," she said — " surely these violences of which you 
 speak are not to be dreaded by those who live under the 
 banner of De Lacy and of Berenger ?" 
 
 " Berenger subsists but in name," answered Wilkin Flam- 
 mock, "andDamian, though a brave youth, hath not his 
 uncle's ascendency of character and authority. His men 
 also complain that they are harassed with the duty of 
 watching for protection of a castle in itself impregnable 
 and sufficiently garrisoned, and that tliey lose all oppor- 
 tunity of honorable enterprise, as they call it — that is, of 
 fight and spoil — in this inactive and inglorious manner of 
 life. They say that Damian the beardless was a man, but 
 tliafc Damian with the mustachio is no better than a woman ; 
 and tliat age, which has darkened his upper lip, hath at the 
 same time blenched his courage. And they say more, 
 wliich were but wearisome to tell." 
 
 " Nay, but, let me know what they say — let me know it, 
 for Heaven's sake!" answered Rose, '-'if it concerns, as it 
 must concern, my dear lady." 
 
 " Even so, Roschen," answered Wilkin. " There are 
 many among the Norman men-at-arms who talk, over their 
 wine-cups, how that Damian de Lacy is in love with his 
 uncle's betrothed bride ; ay, and that they correspond 
 together by art magic." 
 
 "By art magic, indeed, it must be, ' said Rose, smiling 
 scornfully, "for by no earthly means do they correspond, as 
 I, for one, can bear witness." 
 
 " To art magic, accordingly, they impute it," quoth 
 Wilkin Flammock, " that, so soon as ever my lady stirs 
 beyond the portal of her castle, De Lacy is in the saddle 
 with a party of his cavalry, though they are positively 
 certain that he has received no messenger, letter, or other 
 ordinary notice of her purpose ; nor have they ever, on such 
 occasions, scoured the passes long ere they have seen or 
 heard of my Lady Eveline's being abroad." 
 
236 WAVERLEV NOVELS 
 
 " This has not escaped me," said Eose ; " and my lady 
 has expressed herself even displeased at the accuracy which 
 Damiun displayed in procuring a knowledge of her motions, 
 as well as at the officious punctuality with which he has 
 attended and gviarded them. To-day has, however, shown," 
 she continued, "that his vigilance may serve a good jDur- 
 pose ; and as they never met upon these occasions, but con- 
 tinued at such distance as excluded even the possibility of 
 intercourse, methinks they might have escaped the censure 
 of the most suspicious." 
 
 "Ay, my daughter Roschen," replied Wilkin, "but it is 
 possible even to drive caution so far as to excite suspicion. 
 Why, say the men-at-arms, should these two observe such 
 constant, yet such guarded, intelligence with one another ? 
 Why should their aj)proacli be so near, and why, yet, should 
 they never meet ? If they had been merely the nephew and 
 the uncle's bride, they must have had interviews avowedly 
 and frankly ; and, on the other hand, if they be two secret 
 lovers, there is reason to believe that they do find their own 
 private places of meeting, though they have art sufficient to 
 conceal them." 
 
 " Every word that you speak, my father," replied the 
 generous Eose, " increases the absolute necessity that you 
 receive this wounded youth into your house. Be the evils 
 you dread ever so great, yet may you rely upon it that they 
 cannot be augmented by admitting him, with a few of his 
 faithful followers." 
 
 "Not one follower," said the Fleming, hastily— "not one 
 beef-fed knave of them, save the page that is to tend him 
 and the doctor that is to attempt his cure." 
 
 " But I may offer the shelter of your roof to these three, 
 at least ? " answered Rose. 
 
 " Do as thou wilt — do as thou wilt," said the doating 
 father. " By my faith, Roschen, it is well for thee thou 
 hast sense and moderation in asking, since I am so foolishly 
 prompt in granting. This is one of your freaks, now, of 
 honor or generosity ; but commend me to prudence and 
 honesty. Ah ! Eose — Eose, those who would do what is 
 better than good sometimes bring about what is worse than 
 bad ! But I think I shall be quit of the trouble for the 
 fear ; and that thy mistress, who is, with reverence, some- 
 thing of a damsel-errant, will stand stoutly for the chival- 
 rous privilege of lodging her knight in her own bower, and 
 tending him in person." 
 
 The Fleming prophesied true. Eose had no sooner made 
 
THE BETROTHED 237 
 
 the proposal to Eveline that the wounded Damian should 
 be left at her father's house for his recovery than her mis- 
 tress briefly and positively rejected the proijosal. " He has 
 been my preserver," she said, " and if there be one being left 
 for whom the gates of the Garde Doloureuse should of them- 
 selves fly open, it is to Damian de Lacy. Nay, damsel, look 
 not upon me with that suspicious and yet sorrowful coun- 
 tenance ; they that are beyond disguise, my girl, contemn 
 suspicion. It is to God and Our Lady that I must answer, 
 and to them my bosom lies open ! " 
 
 They proceeded in silence to the castle gate, when the 
 Lady Eveline issued her orders that her guardian, as she 
 emphatically termed Damian, should be lodged in her 
 father's apartment ; and, with the prudence of more advanced 
 age, she gave the necessary directions for the reception and 
 accommodation of his followers, and the arrangements which 
 such an accession of guests required in the fortress. All 
 this she did with the utmost composure and presence of 
 mind, even before she altered or arranged her own disordered 
 
 Another step still remained to be taken. She hastened to 
 the chapel of the Virgin, and prostrating herself before her 
 divine protectress, returned thanks for her second deliver- 
 ance, and implored her guidance and direction, and, through 
 her intercession, that of Almighty God, for the disposal and 
 regulation of her conduct. " Tliou knowest," she said, 
 *' that from no confidence in my own strength have I thrust 
 myself into danger. make me strong where I am most 
 weak. Let not my gratitude and my compassion be a snare 
 to me ; and while I strive to discharge the duties which 
 thankfulness imposes on me, save me from the evil tongues 
 of men, and save — save me from the insidious devices of 
 my own heart ! " 
 
 She then told her rosary with devout fervor, and, retiring 
 from the chapel to her own apartment, summoned her women 
 S to adjust her dress, and remove the external appearance oj 
 I the violence to which she had been so lately subjected. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Julia. Gentle sir, 
 
 You are our captive ; but we'll use you so, 
 That you shall think your prison-joys may match 
 Whate'er your liberty hath known of pleasure. 
 
 Roderick. No, fairest, we have trifled here too long; 
 And, lingering to see your roses blossom, 
 I've let my laurels wither. 
 
 Old Play. 
 
 Arkayed in garments of a mourning color, and of a fashion 
 more matronly than perhaps altogether befitted her youth — 
 plain to an extremity, and devoid of all ornament save her 
 rosary — Eveline now performed the duty of waiting upon 
 her wounded deliverer — a duty which the etiquette of the 
 time not only permitted, but peremptorily enjoined. She 
 was attended by Rose and Dame Gillian. Margery, whose 
 element was a sick-chamber, had been already despatched to 
 that of the young knight, to attend to whatever his condition 
 might require. 
 
 Eveline entered the room with a light step, as if unwilling 
 to disturb the patient. She paused at the door, and cast her 
 eyes around her. It had been her father's chamber, nor 
 had she entered it since his violent death. Around the walls 
 hung a part of his armor and weapons, with hawking gloves, 
 hunting-poles, and other instruments of sylvan sport. These 
 relics brought, as it were, in living form before her the 
 stately presence of old Sir Raymond. " Frown not, my 
 father" — her lips formed the words, though her voice did 
 not utter them — " frown not : Eveline will never be un- 
 worthy of thee." 
 
 Father Aldrovand and Amelot, the page of Damian, were 
 seated by the bedside. They rose as Lady Eveline entered ; 
 and the first, who meddled a little with the healing art, said 
 to Eveline, that " The knight had slumbered for some time, 
 and was now about to awake." 
 
 Amelot at the same time came forward, and in a hasty and 
 low voice begged that the chamber might be kept quiet and 
 the spectators requested to retire. " My lord," he said, " ever 
 since his illness at (rloucester, is apt to speak something 
 
THE BETRO THED ' 239 
 
 wildly as he awakes from sleep, and will be displeased with 
 me should 1 permit any one to be near him/' 
 
 Eveline accordingly caused her women and the monk to re- 
 tire into the ante-room, while she herself remained standing 
 by the door-communication which connected the apartments, 
 and heard Damiau mention her name as he turned him- 
 self painfully on his couch. " Is she safe and unharmed ?" 
 was his first question, and it was asked with an eagerness 
 which intimated how far it preceded all other considerations. 
 When Amelot replied in the affirmative, he sighed, as one 
 whose bosom is relieved from some weighty load, and, in a 
 less animated voice, asked of the page where they were. 
 *'This apartment," he said, "with its furniture, are all 
 strange to me." 
 
 " My dear master," said Amelot, " you are at present too 
 weak to ask questions and receive explanations." 
 
 " Be I where I will," said Damian, as if recovering his rec- 
 ollection, " I am not in the place where my duty calls me. 
 Tell my trumpets to sound to horse — to horse, and let Kalph 
 Genvil carry my banner. To horse — to horse ! we have not a 
 moment to lose." 
 
 The wounded knight made some effort to rise, which, in 
 his state of weakness, Amelot was easily able to frustrate. 
 " Thou art right," he said, as he sunk back into his reclin- 
 ing posture — " thou art right, I am weak ; but why should 
 strength remain when honor is lost ?" 
 
 The unhappy young man covered his face with his hands, 
 and groaned in agony, which seemed more that of the mind 
 than of the body. Lady Eveline approached his bedside with 
 unassured steps, fearing she knew not what, yet earnest to 
 testify the interest which she felt in the distress of the suf- 
 ferer. Damian looked up and beheld her, and again hid his 
 face with his hands. 
 
 " What means this strange passion, sir knight ?" said Eve- 
 line, with a voice which, at first weak and trembling, gradu- 
 ally obtained steadiness and composure. " Ought it to grieve 
 you so much, sworn as you are to the duties of chivalry, that 
 Heaven hath twice made you its instrument to save the un- 
 fortunate Eveline Berenger ?" 
 
 "■ no — no ! " he exclaimed with rapidity ; " since you are 
 saved, all is well ; but time presses — it is necessary I should 
 presently depart — nowhere ought 1 now to tarry — least of 
 all within this castle. Once more, Amelot, let them get to 
 horse ! " 
 
 " Nay, my good lord,'* said the damsel, *' this must not 
 
240 WAVER LEY 'SOVELS 
 
 be. As your ward, I cannot let my guardian part thus sud- 
 denly ; as a physician, I cannot allow my patient to destroy 
 himself. It is impossible that you can brook the saddle." 
 
 "A litter — a bier — a cart, to drag forth the dishonored 
 knight and traitor — all were too good for me — a coffin 
 were best of all ! But see, Amelot, that it be framed like 
 that of the meanest churl : no spurs dis])layed on the pall, no 
 shield with the ancient coat of the De Lacys, no helmet with 
 their knightly crest must deck the hearse of him whose name 
 is dishonored ! " 
 
 " Is his brain unsettled," said Eveline, looking with terror 
 from the wounded man to his attendant ; " or is there some 
 dreadful mystery in these broken words ? If so, speak it 
 forth ; and if it may be amended by life or goods, my de- 
 liverer will sustain no wrong." 
 
 Amelot regarded her with a dejected and melancholy air, 
 shook his head, and looked down on his master with a coun- 
 tenance which seemed to express that the questions which 
 she asked could not be prudently answered in Sir Damian^s 
 presence. The Lady Eveline, observing this gesture, stepped 
 back into the outer apartment, and made Amelot a sign to 
 follow her. He obeyed, after a glance at his master, who re- 
 mained in the same disconsolate posture as formerly, with 
 his hands crossed over his eyes, like one who wished to ex- 
 clude the light and all which the light made visible. 
 
 When Amelot was in the wardrobe, Eveline, making signs 
 to her attendants to keep at such distance as the room per- 
 mitted, questioned him closely on the cause of his luaster's 
 desperate expression of sorrow and remorse. " Thou 
 knowest," she said, " that I am bound to succor thy lord, if 
 I may, both from gratitude, as one Avhom he hath served to 
 the peril of his life, and also from kinsmanship. Tell me, 
 therefore, in what case he stands, that I may help him if I 
 can ; that is," she added, her pale cheeks deeply coloring, 
 "if the cause of his distress be fitting for me to hear." 
 
 'JMie page bowed low, yet showed such embarrassment when 
 he began to speak as produced a corresponding degree of con- 
 fusion in the Lady Eveline, who, nevertheless, urged him as 
 before " to speak without scruple or delay — so that the tenor 
 of liis discourse was fitting for her ears." 
 
 " Believe me, noble lady," said Amelot, " your commands 
 had been instantly obeyed, but that I fear my master's dis- 
 pleasure if I talk of his affairs without his warrant ; neverthe- 
 less, on your command, whom I know he honors above all 
 earthly beings, I will speak thus far, that, if his life be safe 
 
 1 'I 
 
THE BETROTHED 241 
 
 from the wounds he has received, his lionor and worship 
 may be in great danger, if it please not Heaven to send me a 
 remedy." 
 
 " Speak on," said Eveline ; " and be assured you will do 
 Sir Damian de Lacy no prejudice by the confidence you may 
 rest in me." 
 
 '• I will believe it, lady," said the page. " Know, then, 
 if it be not already known to you, that the clowns and rabble 
 who have taken arms against the nobles in the west pretend 
 to be favored in their insurrection not only by Eandal Lacj, 
 but by my master. Sir Damian." 
 
 '' They lie that dare charge him with such foul treason to 
 his own blood, as well as to his sovereign," replied Eveline. 
 
 " Well do I believe they lie," said Amelot ; "but this hin- 
 ders not their falsehoods from being believed by those who 
 iknow him less inwardly. More than one runaway from our 
 troop have Joined this rabblement, and that gives some credit 
 to the scandal. And then they say — they say — that — in 
 short, that my master longs to possess the lands in his 
 proper right which he occupies as his uncle's administrator ; 
 and that if the old Constable — I crave your pardon, madam — 
 should return from Palestine, he should find it difficult to 
 obtain possession of his own again." 
 
 '•The sordid wretches judge of others by their own base 
 minds, and conceive those temptations too powerful for men 
 of worth which they are themselves conscious they would be 
 unable to resist. But are the insurgents then so insolent 
 and so powerful ? We have heard of their violences, but 
 only as if it had been some popular tumult." 
 
 " We had notice last night that they have drawn together 
 in great force, and besieged or blockaded Wild Wenlock. 
 with his men-at-arms, in a village about ten miles hence. 
 He hath sent to my master, as his kinsman and companion- 
 at-arms, to come to his assistance. We were on horseback 
 this morning to march to the rescue, when " 
 
 He paused, and seemed unwilling to proceed. Eveline 
 caught at the word. " When ye heard of my danger ? " she 
 said. " I would ye had rather heard of my death ! " 
 
 " Surely, noble lady," said the page, with his eyes fixed 
 on the ground, " nothing but so strong a cause could have 
 made my master halt his troop and carry the better part of 
 them to the "Welsh mountains, when his countryman's dis- 
 tress, and the commands of the king's lieutenant, soj^eremp- 
 tovily demanded his presence elsewhere." 
 
 '* I knew it," she said — " I knew I was born to be his de- 
 xb 
 
242 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 struction ; yet metliinks this is worse than I dreamed of, 
 when the worst was in my thoughts. I feared to occasion 
 his death, not his loss of fame. For God's sake, young Ame- 
 lot, do what thou canst, and that without loss of time ! Get 
 thee straightway to horse, and join to thy own men as many 
 as thou canst gather of mine. Go — ride, my brave youth — 
 show thy master's banner, and let them see that his forces 
 and his heart are with them, though his person be absent. 
 Haste — haste, for the time is precious ! " 
 
 " But the safety of this castle — but your own safety ? " 
 said the page. " God knows how willingly I would do aught 
 to save his fame ! But I know my master's mood ; and were 
 you to suffer by my leaving the Garde Doloureuse, even 
 although I were to save him lands, life, and honor by my 
 doing so, I should be more like to taste of his dagger than 
 of his thanks or bounty.^' 
 
 "Go, nevertheless, dear Amelot," said she : "gather what 
 force thou canst make, and begone." 
 
 " You spur a willing horse, madam," said the page, spring- 
 ing to his feet ; "and, in the condition of my master, I see 
 nothing better than that his banner should be displayed 
 against these churls. '^ 
 
 "To arms, then," said Eveline, hastily — "to arms, and 
 win thy spurs. Bring me assurance that thy master's honor 
 is safe, and I will myself buckle them on thy heels. Here 
 — take this blessed rosary, bind it on thy crest, and be the 
 thought of the Virgin of the Garde Doloureuse, that never 
 failed a votary, strong with thee in the hour of conflict." 
 
 She had scarcely ended, ere Amelot flew from her presence, 
 and summoning together such horse as he could assemble, 
 both of his master's and of those belonging to the castle, 
 there were soon forty cavaliers mounted in the courtyard. 
 
 But although the page was thus far readily obeyed, yet 
 when the soldiers heard they were to go forth on a dangerous 
 expedition, with no more experienced general than a youth 
 of fifteen, they showed a decided reluctance to move from the 
 castle. The old soldiers of De Lacy said, " Damian himself 
 was almost too youthful to command them, and had no right 
 to delegate his authority to a mere boy ; " while the followers 
 of Berenger said. "Their mistress might be satisfied with 
 her deliverance of the morning, without trying farther dan- 
 gerous conclusions by diminishing the garrison of her castle. 
 The times," they said, " were stormy, and it was wisest to 
 keep a stone roof over their heads." 
 
 The more the soldiers communicated their ideas and ap* 
 
THE BETROTHED 243 
 
 prehensions to each other, the stronger their disinclination 
 to the undertaking became _; and when Amelot, who, page- 
 like, had gone to see that his own horse was accoutered and 
 brought forth, returned to the castle-yard, he found them 
 standing confusedly together, some mounted, some on foot, 
 all men speaking loud, and all in a state of disorder. Ralph 
 Genvil, a veteran whose face was seamed with many a scar, 
 and who had long followed the trade of a soldier of fortune, 
 stood apart from the rest, holding his horse's bridle in one 
 hand, and in the other the banner-spear, around which the 
 banner of De Lacy was still folded. 
 
 "What means this, Genvil?" said the page, angrily. 
 " Why do you not mount your horse and display the banner? 
 and what occasions all this confusion ?" 
 
 "Truly, sir page," said Genvil, composedly, "lam not in 
 my saddle, because I have some regard for this old silken 
 rag, which I have borne to honor in my time, and I will not 
 willingly carry it where men are unwilling to follow and de- 
 fend it." 
 
 "JSTo march — no sally — no lifting of banner to-day!" 
 cried the soldiers, by way of burden to the bannerman's 
 discourse. 
 
 " How now, cowards, do you mutiny ?" said Amelot, lay- 
 ing his hand on his sword. 
 
 " Menace not me, sir boy," said Genvil, " nor shake your 
 sword my way. I tell thee, Amelot, were my weapon to 
 cross with yours, never flail sent abroad more chaff than I 
 would make splinters of your hatched and gilded toasting- 
 iron. Look you, there are gray-bearded men here that care 
 not to be led about on any boy's humor. For me, I stand 
 little upon that, and I care not whether one boy or another 
 commands me. But I am theLacy's man for the time ; and 
 I am not sure that, in marching to the aid of this Wild 
 Wenlock, we shall do an errand the Lacy will thank us for. 
 Why led he us not thither in the morning, when we were 
 commanded off into the mountains ? " 
 
 " You well know the cause," said the page. 
 
 " Yes, we do know the cause ; or, if we do not, we can 
 guess it," answered the bannerman, with a horse-laugh, 
 which was echoed by several of his companions. 
 
 "I will cram the calumny down thy false throat, Genvil !" 
 said the page ; and, drawing his sword, threw himselt* head- 
 long on the bannerman, without considering their great 
 difference of strength. 
 
 Genvil was contented to foil his attack bj one, and, as it 
 
244 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 seemed, a slight, movement of his gigantic arm, with which 
 he forced the page aside, parrying, at the same time, his 
 blow with the standard spear. 
 
 There was anotlier loud langh, and Amelot, feeling all his 
 efforts baffled, threw his sword from him, and, weeping in 
 pride and indignation, hastened back to tell the Lady 
 Eveline of his bad success. "All,'' he said, "is lost: the 
 cowardly villains have mutinied, and will not move ; and 
 the blarne of their sloth and faint-heartedness will be laid on 
 my dear master ! " 
 
 ''That shall never be," said Eveline, ''should I die to 
 prevent it. Follow me, Amelot." 
 
 She hastily threw a scarlet scarf over her dark garments, 
 and hastened down to the courtyard, followed by Gillian, 
 assuming, as she went, various attitudes and actions, express- 
 ing astonishment and pity, and by Rose, carefully suppressing 
 all appearance of the feelings which she really entertained. 
 
 Eveline entered the castle-court, with the kindling eye 
 and glowing brow which her ancestors were wont to bear in 
 danger and extremity, when their soul was arming to meet 
 the storm, and displayed in their mien and looks high com- 
 mand and contempt of danger. She seemed at the moment 
 taller than her usual size ; and it was with a voice distinct 
 and clearly heard, though not exceeding the delicacy of 
 feminine tone, that the mutineers heard her address them. 
 ''How is this, my masters ?" she said; and as she spoke, 
 the bulky forms of the armed soldiers seemed to draw closer 
 together, as if to escape her individual censure. It was like 
 a group of heavy waterfowl, Avhen they close to avoid the 
 stoop of the slight and beautiful merlin, dreading the supe- 
 riority of its nature and breeding over their own inert physical 
 strength. " How now ? " again she demanded of them ; " is 
 it a time, think ye, to mutiny, when your lord is absent, and 
 his nephew and lieutenant lies stretched on a bed of sickness ? 
 It is thus you keep your oaths ? Thus ye merit your leader's 
 bounty ? Shame on ye, craven hounds, that quail and give 
 back the instant you lose sight of the huntsman !" 
 
 There was a pause ; the soldiers looked on each other, and 
 then again on. Eveline, as if ashamed alike to hold out in 
 their mutiny or to return to their usual discipline. 
 
 " I see how it is, my brave friends — ye lack a leader here ; 
 but stay not for that — I will guide you myself, and, woman 
 as I am, there need not a man of you fear disgrace where a 
 Berenger commands. Trap my palfrey with a steel saddle," 
 she said^ "and that instantly." She snatched from the 
 
TUE BETROTHED 245 
 
 ground the page's liglit headpiece, and threw it over her 
 hair, caught up liis drawn sword, and went on. *' Here I 
 promise you my countenance and guidance ; this gentleman," 
 she pointed to Genvil, "shall supply my lack of military 
 skill. He looks like a man that hath seen many a day of 
 battle, and can well teach a young leader her devoir." 
 
 " Certes," said the old soldier, smiling in spite of himself, 
 and shaking his head at the same time, " many a battle have 
 I seen, but never under such a commander." 
 
 " Nevertheless," said Eveline, seeing how the eyes of the 
 rest turned on Genvil, " you do not — cannot — will not — 
 refuse to follow me ? You do not as a soldier, for my weak 
 voice supplies your captain's orders ; you cannot as a gentle- 
 man, for a lady, a forlorn and distressed female, asks you a 
 boon ; you will not as- an Englishman, for your country 
 ! requires your sword, and your comrades are in danger. 
 Unfurl your banner, then, and march." 
 
 ''I would do so, upon my soul, fair lady," answered Gen- 
 vil, as if preparing to unfold the banner, " and Amelot might 
 lead us well enough, with advantage of some lessons from 
 me, but I wot not whether you are sending us on the right 
 road." 
 
 "Surely — surely," said Eveline, earnestly, "it must be 
 the right road which conducts you to the relief of Wenlock 
 and his followers, besieged by the insurgent boors." 
 
 "I know not," said Genvil, still hesitating. " Our leader 
 here. Sir Damian de Lacy, protects the commons — men say 
 he befriends them ; and I know he quarreled with Wild 
 Wenlock once for some petty wrong he did to the miller's 
 wife [daughter] at Twyford. We should be finely off, when 
 our fiery young leader is on foot again, if he should find we 
 had been fighting against the side he favored." 
 
 " Assure yourself," said the maiden, anxiously, " the more 
 he would protect the commons against oppression, the more 
 he would put them down when oppressing others. Mount 
 and ride, save Wenlock and his men ; there is life and death 
 in every moment. I will warrant, with my life and lands, 
 that whatsoever you do will be held good service to De Lacy. 
 Come, then, follow me." 
 
 " None surely can know Sir Damian's purpose better than 
 you, fair damsel, " answered Genvil ; "nay, for that matter, 
 you can make him change as ye list. And so I will march with 
 the men, and we will aid Wenlock, if it is yet time, as I trust 
 it may ; for he is a rugged wolf, and when he turns to bay 
 will cost the boors blood enough ere they sound a mort. But 
 
246 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 do you remain within the castle, fair lady, and trust to Ame- 
 lot and me. Come, sir page, assume the command, since so 
 it must be ; though, bj my faith, it is pity to take the head- 
 piece from that pretty head and the sword from that pretty 
 hand. By St. George! to see them there is a credit to the 
 soldier's profession." 
 
 The lady accordingly surrendered the weapons to Amelot, 
 exhorting him in few words to forget the offense be bad 
 received, and do his devoir manfully. Meanwhile, Genvil 
 slowly unrolled the pennon, then shook it abroad, and, with- 
 out putting his foot in the stirrup, aided himself a little with 
 resting on the spear, and threw himself into the saddle, heavi- 
 ly armed as he was. "We are ready now, an it like your ju- 
 venility," said he to Amelot ; and then, while the page was 
 putting the band into order, he whispered to his nearest 
 comrade, "Methinks, instead of this old swallow's tail,* we 
 should muster rarely under a broidered petticoat: a furbe- 
 lowed petticoat bas no fellow in my mind. Look you, Ste- 
 phen Pontoys, I can forgive Damian now for forgetting his 
 uncle and his own credit about this wench ; for, by my faith, 
 she is one I could have doated to death upon pa?- amours. 
 Ah! evil luck be the women's portion ! they govern us at 
 every turn, Stephen, and at every age. When they are 
 young, they bribe us with fair looks and sugared words, 
 sweet kisses and love tokens ; and when they are of middle 
 age, they work us to their will by presents and courtesies, 
 red wine and red gold ; and wben they are old, we are fain to 
 run their errands to get out of sight of their old leathern vis- 
 ages. Well, old De Lacy should have stayed at home and 
 watched his falcon. But it is all one to us, Stephen, and we 
 may make some vantage to-day, for these boors have plun- 
 dered more than one castle." 
 
 " Ay — ay," answered Pontoys, "the boor to the booty, and 
 the bannerman to the boor, a right pithy proverb. But, pri- 
 thee, canst thou say why his pageship leads us not forward 
 yet?" 
 
 " Pshaw ! " answered Genvil, " the shake I gave him has 
 addled his brains ; or perchance he has not swallowed all his 
 tears yet ; sloth it is not, for'tis a forward cockeril for his 
 years, wherever honor is to be won. See they now begin to 
 move. Well, it is a singular thing tbis gentle blood, Ste- 
 phen ; for here is a child whom I but now baffled like a 
 Bchooboy must lead us graybeards where we may get our 
 heads broken, and that at the command of a light kdy." 
 * See Knight's Pennon. Note 11. 
 
THE BETROTHED 247 
 
 *' I warrant Sir Damian is secretary to my pretty lady/* 
 answered Stephen Pontoys, " as this springald Amelot is to 
 Sir Damian ; and so we poor men must obey and keep our 
 mouths shut/' 
 
 " But our eyes open, Stephen Pontoys ; forget not that/* 
 
 They were by this time out of the gates of the castle, and 
 upon the road leading to the village, in which, as they under- 
 stood by the intelligence of the morning, Wenlockwas besieged 
 or blockaded by a greatly superior number of the insurgent 
 commons. Amelot rode at the head of the troop, still embar- 
 rassed by the affront which he had received in presence of the 
 soldiers, and lost in meditating how he was to eke out that 
 deficiency of experience which on former occasions had been 
 supplied by the counsels of the bannerman, with whom he was 
 ashamed to seek a reconciliation. But Genvil was not of a 
 nature absolutely sullen, though an habitual grumbler. He 
 rode up to the page, and having made his obeisance, respect- 
 fully asked him whether it were not well that some one or two 
 of their number pricked forward upon good horses to learn 
 how it stood with Wenlock, and whether they should be able 
 to- come up in time to his assistance. 
 
 "^ Methinks, bannerman," answered Amelot, ''you should 
 take the ruling of the troop, since you know so fittingly what 
 should be done. You may be the fitter to command, 
 because But I will not upbraid you." 
 
 "Because I know so ill how to obey," replied Genvil — " that 
 is what you would say ; and, by my faith, I cannot deny but 
 there may be some truth in it. But is it not peevish in thee 
 to let a fair expedition be unwisely conducted, because of a 
 foolish word or a sudden action? Come, let it be peace 
 v/ith us." 
 
 " With all my heart," answered Amelot ; " and I will send 
 out an advanced party upon the adventure, as thou hast 
 advised me." 
 
 " Let it be old Stephen Pontoys and two of the Chester 
 spears : he is as wily as an old fox, and neither hope nor fear 
 will draw him a hairbreadth farther than judgment war- 
 rants." 
 
 Amelot, eagerly embraced the hint, and, at his command, 
 Pontoys and two lances darted foi'ward to reconnoiter the 
 road before them, and inquire into- the condition of those 
 whom they were advancing to succor. " And now that we are 
 on the old terms, sir page," said tl:ie bannerman, " tell me, 
 if thou canst, doth not yonder fair lady love our handsome 
 knight ^ar amours 9 " 
 
248 WAVEELEY yOVELS 
 
 "It is a false calumny," said Amelot indignantly; ''betrothed 
 as she is to his uncle, I am convinced she would rather die 
 than to have such a thought, and so would our master. I 
 have noted this heretical belief in thee before now, Genvil, 
 and I have prayed thee to check it. You know the thing 
 cannot be, for you know they have scarce ever met." 
 
 " How should I know that," said Genvil, " or thou 
 either ? Watch them ever so close — much water slides j^ast 
 the mill that Hob Miller never wots of. They do correspond ; 
 that, at least, thou canst not deny." 
 
 " I do deny it," said Amelot, " as I deny all that can 
 touch their honor." 
 
 " Then how, in Heaven's name, comes he by such perfect 
 knowledge of her motions as he has displayed no longer since 
 than the morning ? " 
 
 " How should I tell ? " answered the page. '' There be 
 such things, surely, as saints and good angels, and if there 
 be one on earth deserves their protection, it is Dame Eveline 
 Berenger." 
 
 " Well said, master counsel-keeper," replied Genvil, laugh- 
 ing, " but that will hardly pass on an old trooper. Saints 
 and angels, quotha ! most saint-like doings, I warrant you." 
 
 The page was about to continue his angry vindication, when 
 Stephen Pontoys and his followers returned upon the spur. 
 " Wenlock holds out bravel}^," he exclaimed, " though he 
 is felly girded in with these boors. The large cross-bows 
 are doing good service ; and I little doubt his making his 
 place good till we come up, if it pleases you to ride some- 
 thing sharply. They have assailed the barriers, and were 
 close up to them even now, but were driven back with small 
 success." 
 
 The party were now put in as rapid motion as might con- 
 sist with order, and soon reached the top of a small eminence, 
 beneath which lay the village where Wenlock was making his 
 defense. The air rung with the cries and shouts of the 
 insurgents, who, numerous as bees, and possessed of that 
 dogged spirit of courage so peculiar to the English, thronged 
 like ants to the barriers, and endeavored to break down the 
 palisades, or to climb over them, in despite of the showers 
 of stones and arrows from within, by which they suffered 
 great loss, as well as by the swords and battle-axes of the 
 men-at-arms, wlienever they came to hand-blows. 
 
 " We are in time — we are in time," said Amelot, dropping 
 the reins of his bridle and joyfully clapping his hands ; '* shake 
 thy banner abroad, Genvil— give Wenlock and his fellows a 
 
THE BETROTHED 249 
 
 fair view of it. Comrades, halt — breathe your horses for a 
 moment. Hark hither, Genvil. If we descend by yonder 
 broad pathway into the meadow where tlie cattle are " 
 
 " Bravo, my young falcon ! " replied Genvil, whose love of 
 battle, like that of the war-horse of Job, kindled at the sight 
 of the spears and at the sound of the trumpet ; we shall have 
 then an easy field for a charge on yonder knaves." 
 
 "What a thick black cloud the villains make !" said 
 Amelot ; but we will let daylight through it with our lances. 
 See. Genvil, the defenders hoist a signal to show they have 
 seen us." 
 
 " A signal to us ! " exclaimed Genvil. " By Heaven, it is 
 a white flag — a signal of surrender !" 
 
 " Surrender ! they cannot dream of it, when we are 
 advancing to their succor," replied Amelot ; when two or 
 three melancholy notes from the trumpets of the besieged, 
 with a thundering and tumultuous acclamation from the 
 besiegers, rendered the fact indisputable. 
 
 "Down goes Wenlock's pennon," said Genvil, "and the 
 churls enter the barricades on all points. Here has been 
 cowardice or treachery. What is to be done ?" 
 
 "Advance on them," said Amelot, "retake the place, and 
 deliver the prisoners." 
 
 "Advance, indeed !" answered the bannerman, — "not a 
 horse's length by my counsel ; we should have every nail in 
 our corslets counted with arrow-shot before we got down the 
 hill in the face of such a multitude ; and the place to storm 
 afterwards — it were mere insanity." 
 
 " Yet come a little forward along with me," said the page ; 
 " perhaps we may find some path by which we could descend 
 Tinjjerceived." 
 
 According they rode forward a little way to reconnoiter 
 the face of the hill, the page still urging the possibility of 
 descending it unperceived amid the confusion, when Genvil 
 answered impatiently, "Unperceived! you are already per- 
 ceived : here comes a fellow, pricking towards us as fast as 
 his beast may trot." 
 
 As he spoke, the rider came up to them. He was a short, 
 thickset peasant, in an ordinary frieze jacket and hose, with 
 a blue cap on his head, which he had been scarcely able to 
 pull over a shock head of red hair, that seemed in arms to 
 repel the covering. The man's hands were bloody, and he 
 carried at his saddlebow a linen bag, wliich was also stained 
 with blood. " Ye be of Damiau de Lacy's company, be ye 
 not ?" said this rude messenger ; and, when they answered 
 
250 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 in the affirmative, he proceeded with the same blunt cour- 
 tesy, " Hob Miller of Twyford commends him to Damian de 
 Lacy, and, knowing his purpose to amend disorders in the 
 commonwealth. Hob Miller sends him toll of the grist which 
 he hath grinded ; " and with that he took from the bag a 
 human head and tendered it to Amelot. 
 
 *' It is Wenlock's head," said Genvil ; " how his eyes 
 stare ! " 
 
 " They will stare after no more wenches now," said the 
 boor ; '' I have cured him of caterwauling." 
 
 " Thou ! " said Amelot, stepping back in disgust and in- 
 dignation. 
 
 "Yes, I myself," replied the peasant; "I am Grand 
 Justiciary of the Commons, for lack of a better." 
 
 " Grand hangman, thou wouldst say," replied Genvil. 
 
 "Call it what thou list," replied the peasant. "Truly, 
 it behooves men in state to give good example. _ T'll bid no 
 man do that I am not ready to do myself. It is as easy to 
 hang a man as to say " hang him " ; we will have no split- 
 ting of offices in this new world which is happily set up in 
 Old England." 
 
 " Wretch !" said Amelot, " take back thy bloody token to 
 them that sent thee. Hadst thou not come upon assurance, 
 I had pinned thee to the earth with my lance. But, be as- 
 sured, your cruelty shall be fearfully avenged. Come, Gen- 
 vil, let us to our men ; there is no farther use in abiding 
 here." 
 
 The fellow, who had expected a very different reception, 
 stood staring after them for a few moments, then replaced 
 his bloody trophy in the wallet, and rode back to them Avho 
 sent him. 
 
 " This come: of meddling with men's amourettes," said 
 Genvil: "Sir Damian would needs brawl with Wenlock 
 about his dealings with this miller's daughter [wife], and 
 you see they account him a favorer to their enterprise ; it 
 will be well if others do not take up the same opinion. I 
 wish we were rid of the trouble which such suspicions may 
 bring upon us — ay, were it at the price of my best horse. I 
 am like to lose him at any rate Avith the day's hard service, 
 and I would it were the worst it is to cost us." 
 
 The party returned, wearied and discomforted, to the 
 castle of the Garde Doloureuse, and not without losing 
 several of their number by the way — some straggling owing 
 to the weariness of their horses, and other taking the op- 
 portunity of desertion, in order to join with the bands of 
 
THE BETROTHED 251 
 
 insurgents and plunderers, who had now gathered together 
 in different quarters, and were augmented by recruits from 
 the dissolute soldiery. 
 
 Amelot, on his return to the castle, found that the state 
 of his master was still very precarious, and that the Lady 
 Eveline, though much exhausted, had not yet retired to 
 rest, but was awaiting his return with impatience. He was 
 introduced to her accordingly, and, with a heavy heart, 
 mentioned the ineffectual event of his expedition. 
 
 "Now the saints have pity upon us!" said the Lady 
 Eveline ; " for it seems as if a jjlague or pest attached to 
 me, and extended itself to all who interest themselves in my 
 welfare. From the moment they do so, their very virtues 
 become snares to them ; and what would, in every other 
 case, recommend them to honor is turned to destruction to 
 the friends of Eveline Berenger." 
 
 " Fear not, fair lady," said Amelot ; " there are still men 
 enough in my master's camp to put down these disturbers of 
 the jDublic peace. I will but abide to receive his instruc- 
 tions, and will hence to-morrow, and draw out a force to 
 restore quiet in this part of the country." 
 
 " Alas ! you know not yet the worst of it," replied Eveline. 
 "Since you went hence, we have received certain notice 
 that, when the soldiers at Sir Damian's camp heard of the ac- 
 cident which he this morning met Avith, already discontented 
 with the inactive life which they had of late led, and dis- 
 pirited by the hurts and reported deatli of their leader, they 
 have altogether broken up and dispersed their forces. Yet 
 be of good courage, Amelot,"she said ; ''this house is strong 
 enough to bear out a worse tempest tlian any that is likely 
 to be poured on it ; and if all men desert your master in 
 wounds and affliction, it becomes yet more tlie part of Eve- 
 line Berenger to shelter and protect her deliverer." 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Let our proud trumpet shake their castle wall, 
 Menacing death and ruin. 
 
 Otway. 
 
 The evil news with which the last chapter concluded were 
 necessarily told to Damian de Lacy, as the person whom 
 they chieily concerned ; and Lady Eveline herself undertook 
 the task of communicating them, mingling what she said 
 with tears, and again interrupting those tears to suggest 
 topics of liope and comfort, which carried no consolation to 
 her own bosom. 
 
 The wounded knight continued with his face turned to- 
 wards her, listening to the disastrous tidings, as one who 
 was no otherwise affected by them than as they regarded 
 her who told the story. When she had done speaking, he 
 continued as in a reverie, with his eyes so intently fixed upon 
 her that she rose up with the purpose of withdrawing from 
 looks by which she felt herself embarrassed. He hastened to 
 speak, that he might prevent her departure. "All that 
 you have said, fair lady," he replied, " had been enough, 
 if told by another, to have broken my heart ; for it tells 
 me that the power and honor of my house, so solemnly 
 committed to my charge, have been blasted in my mis- 
 fortunes. But when I look upon you, and hear your voice, 
 I forget everything, saving that you have been rescued and 
 are here in honor and safety. Let me therefore pray of 
 your goodness that I may be removed from the castle which 
 holds you, and sent elsewhere. I am in no shape worthy 
 of your farther care, since I have no longer the swords of 
 others at my disposal, and am totally unable for the present 
 to draw my own." 
 
 "And if you are generous enough to think of me in 
 your own misfortunes, noble knight," answered Eveline,, 
 "can you suppose that I forget wlierefore, and in whose 
 rescue, these wounds were incurred ? No, Damian, speak 
 not of removal : while there is a turret of the Garde 
 Doloureuse standing, within that turret shall you find 
 shelter and protection. Such, I am well assured, would 
 be the pleasure of your uncle were he here in person." 
 
THE BETROTHED 253 
 
 It seemed as if a sudden pang of his wound had seized 
 upon Damian ; for rej^eating the words, "My uncle \" he 
 writhed himself round, and averted his face from Eveline ; 
 then again composing himself, replied, " Alas ! knew my 
 uncle how ill I have obeyed his precepts, instead of shelter- 
 ing me within this house he would command me to be 
 flung from the battlements." 
 
 '* Fear not his displeasure," said Eveline, again pre- 
 paring to withdraw ; '' but endeavor, by the composure of 
 your spirit, to aid the healing of your wounds ; when I 
 doubt not, you will be able again to establish good order 
 in the Constable's Jurisdiction, long before his return." 
 
 She colored as she pronounced the last words, and hastily 
 left the apartment. When she was in her own chamber, 
 she dismissed her other attendants, and retained Eose. 
 *' What dost thou think of these things, my wise maiden 
 and monitress ?" said she. 
 
 " I would," replied Eose, " either that this young knight 
 had never entered this castle, or that, being here, he could 
 presently leave it, or that he could honorably remain here 
 forever." 
 
 "What dost thou mean by remaining here forever?" 
 said Eveline, sharply and hastily. 
 
 " Let me answer that question with another — How long 
 has the Constable of Chester been absent from England ?" 
 
 *' Three years come St. Clement's day," said Eveline ; 
 "and what of that?" 
 
 *' Nay, nothing ; but " 
 
 " But what ? I command you to speak out." 
 
 " A few weeks will place your hand at your own disposal." 
 
 *'And think you, Eose," said Eveline, rising with dignity, 
 " that there are no bonds save those which are drawn by 
 the scribe's pen ? We know little of the Constable's adveri- 
 tures ; but we know enough to show that his towering hopes 
 have fallen, and his sword and courage proved too weak to 
 change the fortunes of the Sultan Saladin. Suppose him 
 returning some brief time hence, as we have seen so many 
 crusaders regain their homes, poor and broken in health ; 
 suppose that he finds his lands laid waste, and his followers 
 dispersed, by the consequence of their late misfortunes, how 
 would it sound should he also find that his betrothed bride 
 had wedded and endowed with her substance the nephew 
 whom he most trusted ? Dost thou think such an engage- 
 ment is like a Lombard's mortgage, which must be redeemed 
 on the very day, else forfeiture is sure to be awarded ? " 
 
254 WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 "I cannot tell, madam/' replied Eose ; ''but they that 
 keep their covenant to the letter are, in my country, held 
 bound to no more." 
 
 " That is a Flemish fashion. Rose,'' said her mistress ; 
 " but the honor of a Norman is not satisfied with an observ- 
 ance so limited. What ! wouldst thou have my honor, my 
 affections, my duty, all that is most valuable to a woman, 
 depend on the same progress of the calendar which an usurer 
 watches for the purpose of seizing on a forfeited pledge ? 
 Am I such a mere commodity, that I must belong to one 
 man if he claims me before Michaelmas, to another if he 
 comes afterwards ? No, Rose, I did not thus interpret my 
 engagement, sanctioned as it was by the special providence 
 of Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse." 
 
 " It is a feeling worthy of you, my dearest lady," 
 answered the attendant; ''yet you are so young, so beset 
 with perils, so much exposed to calumny, that I, at least, 
 looking forward to the time when you may have a legal 
 companion and protector, see )t as an extrication from much 
 doubt and danger." 
 
 " Do not think of it. Rose," answered Eveline : "do not 
 liken your mistress to those provident dames who, while one 
 husband yet lives, though in old age or weak health, are 
 prudently engaged in plotting for another." 
 
 " Enough, my dearest lady," 8aid Rose ; "yet not so. Per- 
 mit me one word more. Sinc'^ you are determined not to 
 avail yourself of your freedom, even when the fatal period 
 of your engagement is expired, why suffer this young man to ' 
 share our solitude ? He is surely well enough to be removed 
 to some other place of security. Let us resume our former 
 sequestered mode of life, until Providence send us some 
 better or more certain prospects." 
 
 Eveline sighed, looked down, then, looking upwards, once 
 more had opened her lips to express her willingness to en- 
 force so reasonable an arrangement, but for Damian's recent 
 wounds, and the distracted state of the country, when she 
 was interrupted by the shrill sound of trumpets, blown be- 
 fore the gate of the castle ; and Raoul, with anxiety on his 
 brow, came limping to inform his lady that a knight, 
 attended by a pursuivant-at-arms, in the royal livery, with 
 a strong guard, was in front of the castle, and demanded 
 admittance in the name of the king. 
 
 Evalme paused a moment ere she replied, " Not even to 
 the icing's order shall the castle of my ancestors be opened, 
 until we are well assured of the person by whom, and the 
 
THE BETROTHED 255 
 
 purpose for which, it is demanded. We will onrself to the 
 gate, and learn the meaning of this summons. My veil, 
 Eose ; and call my women. Again that trumpet sounds ! 
 Alas ! it rings like a signal to death and ruin." 
 
 The prophetic apprehensions of Eveline were not false ; 
 for scarce had she reached the door of the apartment, when 
 she was met by the page Amelot, in a state of such disor- 
 dered apprehension as an Sieve of chivalry was scarce on any 
 occasion permitted to display. ' ' Lady — noble lady," he 
 said, hastily bending his knee to Eveline, ''save my dearest 
 master. You, and you alone, can save him at this extrem- 
 ity." 
 
 " I ! " said Eveline, in astonishment — " I save him ! And 
 from what danger ? God knows how willingly ! " 
 
 There she stopped short, as if afraid to trust herself with 
 expressing what rose to her lips. 
 
 "Guy Monthermer, lady, is at the gate, with a pursuivant 
 and the royal banner. The hereditary enemy of the house 
 of Lacy, thus accompanied, comes hither for no good : the 
 extent of the evil I know not, but for evil he comes. My 
 master slew his nephew at the field of Malpas, and there- 
 fore " He was here interrupted by another flourish of 
 
 trumpets, which rung, as if in shrill impatience, through 
 the vaults of the ancient fortress. 
 
 The Lady Eveline hasted to the gate, and found that the 
 wardens, and others who attended there, were looking on 
 each other with doubtful and alarmed countenances, which 
 they turned upon her at her arrival, as if to seek from their 
 mistress the comfort and the courage which they could not 
 communicate to each other. Without the gate, mounted 
 and in complete armor, Avas an elderly and stately knight, 
 whose raised visor and beaver depressed showed a beard 
 already grizzled. Beside him appeared the pursuivant on 
 horseback, the royal arms embroidered on his heraldic dress 
 of office, and all the importance of offended consequence on 
 his countenance, which was shaded by his barret-cap and 
 triple plume. They were attended by a body of about fifty 
 soldiers, arranged under the guidon of England. 
 
 When the Lady Eveline appeared at the barrier, the 
 knight, after a slight reverence, which seemed more in for- 
 mal courtesy than in kindness, demanded if he saw the 
 daughter of Kaymond Berenger. " And is it," he contin- 
 ued, when he had received an answer in the affirmative, 
 " before the castle of that approved and favored servant of 
 the house of Anjou that King Henry's trumpets have thrice 
 
256 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 sounded without obtaining an entrance for those who are 
 honored with their sovereign's command ?" 
 
 "My condition," answered Eveline, "must excuse my 
 caution. I am a lone maiden, residing in a frontier fortress. 
 I may admit no one without inquiring his purpose, and being 
 assured that his entrance consists with the safety of the place 
 and mine own honor." 
 
 " Since you are so punctilious, lady," replied Monthermer, 
 " know that, in the present distracted state of the country, 
 it is his Grace the King's pleasure to place within your walls 
 a body of men-at-arms sufficient to guard this important 
 castle both from the insurgent peasants, who burn and slay, 
 and from the Welsh, who, it must be expected, will, accord- 
 ing to their wont in time of disturbance, make incursions on 
 the frontiers. Undo your gates, then, Lady of Berenger, 
 and suffer his Grace's forces to enter the castle." 
 
 "Sir knight," answered the lady, "this castle, like every 
 other fortress in England, is the king's by law ; but by law 
 also I am the keeper and defender of it, and it is the tenure 
 by which my ancestors held these lands. I have men enough 
 to maintain the Garde Doloureuse in my time, as my father, 
 and my grandfather before him, defended it in theirs. The 
 King is gracious to send me succors, but I need not the aid 
 of hirelings ; neither do I think it safe to admit such into my 
 castle, who may, in this lawless time, make themselves mas- 
 ters of it for other than its lawful mistress." 
 
 " Lady," replied the old warrior, " his Grace is not igno- 
 rant of the motives which produce a contumacy like this. It 
 is not any apprehension for the royal forces which influences 
 you, a royal vassal, in this refractory conduct. I might pro- 
 ceed upon your refusal to proclaim you a traitor to the crown, 
 but the King remembers the services of your father. Know, 
 then, we are not ignorant that Damian de Lacy, accused of 
 instigating and heading this insurrection, of deserting his 
 duty in the field, and abandoning a noble comrade to the 
 sword of the brutal peasants, has found shelter under this 
 roof, with little credit to your loyalty as a vassal, or your 
 conduct as a high-born maiden. Deliver him up to us, and 
 1 will draw off these men-at-arms, and dispense, though I 
 may scarce answer doing so, with the occupation of the 
 castle." 
 
 "' Guy de Monthermer," answered Eveline, "he that throws 
 a stain on my name speaks falsely and unworthily ; as for 
 Damian de Lacy, he knows how to defend his own fame. 
 This only let me say, that, wdiile he takes his abode in the 
 
" • Deliver him up to us, and I will draw off these men-at-a 
 
THE BETROTHED 257 
 
 castle of the betrothed of his kinsman, she delivers him to 
 no one, least of all to his well-known fendal enemy. Drop 
 the portcullis, wardens, and let it not be raised without my 
 special order." 
 
 The portcullis, as she spoke, fell rattling and clanging to 
 the ground, and Mon.thermer, in baffled spite, remained ex- 
 cluded from the castle. " Unworthy lady " he began in 
 
 passion, then checking himself, said calmly to the pursui- 
 vant, " Ye are witness that she hath admitted that the traitor 
 is within that castle ; ye are witness that, lawfully sum- 
 moned, tills Eveline Berenger refuses to deliver him up. Do 
 your duty, sir pursuivant, as is usual in such cases." 
 
 The pursuivant then advanced and proclaimed, in the 
 formal and fatal phrase befitting the occasion, that Eveline 
 Berenger, lawfully summoned, refusing to admit the king's 
 forces into her castle, and to deliver up the body of a false 
 traitor, called Damian de Lacy, had herself incurred the 
 penalty of high treason, and had involved within the same 
 doom all wlio aided, abetted, or maintained her in holding 
 out the said castle against their allegiance to Henry of 
 Anjou, The trumpets, so soon as the voice of the herald 
 had ceased, confirmed the doom he had pronounced by along 
 and ominous peal, startling from their nests the owl and the 
 raven, who replied to it by their ill-boding screams. 
 
 The defenders of the castle looked on each other with 
 blank and dejected countenances, while Monthermer, raising 
 aloft his lance, exclaimed, as he turned his horse from the 
 castle gate, " When I next approach the Garde Doloureuse, 
 it will be not merely to intimate, but to execute, the man- 
 date of my sovereign." 
 
 As Eveline stood pensively to behold the retreat of Mon- 
 thermer and his associates, and to consider what was to be 
 done in this emergency, she heard one of the Flemings, in a 
 low tone, ask an Englishman who stood beside him what was 
 the meaning of a traitor. 
 
 " One who betray eth a trust reposed — a betrayer," said the 
 interpreter. 
 
 The phrase which he used recalled to Eveline's memory 
 her boding vision or dream. "^^ Alas !" she said, "the venge- 
 ance of the fiend is about to be accomplished. Widow'd 
 wife and wedded maid — these epithets have long been mine. 
 Betrothed ! — woe's me ! it is the keystone of my destiny. 
 Betrayer I am now denounced, though, thank God, 1 am clear 
 from the guilt ! It only follows that I should be betrayed, 
 and the evil prophecy will be fulfilled to the very letter." 
 
CHAPTEE XXIX 
 
 Out on ye, owls. Nothing but songs of death ? 
 
 Richard III. 
 
 Moke than three months had eLapsed since the event nar- 
 rated in the last chapter, and it had been the precursor of 
 others of still greater importance, which will evolve them- 
 selves in the course of our narrative. But, as we profess to 
 present to the reader not a precise detail of circumstances, ac- 
 cording to their order and date, but a series of pictures, en- 
 deavoring to exhibit the most striking incident before the eye 
 or imagination of those whom it may concern, we therefore 
 open a new scene, and bring other actors upon the stage. 
 
 Along a wasted tract of country, more than twelve miles 
 distant from the Garde Doloureuse, in the heat of a summer 
 noon, which shed a burning luster on the silent valley and the 
 blackened ruins of the cottages with which it had been once 
 graced, two travelers walked slowly, whose palmer cloaks, 
 pilgrims' staves, large slouched hats, with a scallop shell 
 bound on the front of each, above all, the cross, cut in red 
 cloth upon their shoulders, marked them as pilgrims who 
 had accomplished their vow, and had returned from that 
 fatal bourne from which, in those days, returned so few of ^ 
 the thousands who visited it, whether in the love of enter-' 
 prise or in the ardor of devotion. 
 
 The pilgrims had passed, that morning, through a scene] 
 of devastation similiar to, and scarce surpassed in misery by,j 
 those which they had often trod during the wars of the] 
 Cross. They had seen hamlets which appeared to have suf- 
 fered all the fury of military execution, the houses beingj 
 burned to the ground ; and in many cases the carcasses of 
 the miserable inhabitants, or rather relics of such objects,] 
 were suspended on temporary gibbets, or on the trees, whicl 
 had been allowed to remain standing only, it would seem,] 
 to serve the convenience of the executioners. Living crea-, 
 tures they saw none, excepting those wild denizens of nature 
 who seemed silently resuming the now wasted district, fror 
 which they might have been formerly expelled by the course 
 of civilization. Their ears were no less disagreeably occu- 
 
THE BETROTHED 259 
 
 Eied than their eyes. The pensive travelers might indeed 
 ear the screams of the raven, as if lamenting the decay of 
 the carnage on which he had been gorged, and now and then 
 the plaintive howl of some dog, deprived of his home and 
 master ; but no sounds which argued either labor or domes- 
 tication of any kind. 
 
 The sable figures who, with wearied steps, as it appeared, 
 traveled through these scenes of desolation and ravage, 
 seemed assimilated to them in appearance. They spoke not 
 with each other, they looked not to each other ; but one, 
 the shorter of the pair, keeping about half a pace in front 
 of his companion, they moved slowly, as priests returning 
 from a sinner's death-bed, or rather as specters flitting along 
 the precincts of a churchyard. 
 
 At length they reached a grassy mound, on the top of 
 which was placed one of those receptacles for the _ dead of 
 the ancient British chiefs of distinction, called " kistyaen," 
 which are composed of upright fragments of granite, so 
 placed as to form a stone coffin, or something bearing that 
 resemblance. The sepulcher had been long violated by the 
 victorious Saxons, either in scorn or in idle curiosity, or be- 
 cause treasures were supposed to be sometimes concealed in 
 such spots. The huge flat stone which had once been the 
 cover of the coffin, if so it might be termed, lay broken in two 
 pieces at some distance from the sepulcher, and, overgrown 
 as the fragments were with grass and lichens, showed plainly 
 that the lid had been removed to its present situation many 
 years before. A stunted and doddered oak still spread its 
 branches over the open and rude mausoleum, as if the 
 Druids' badge and emblem, shattered and storm-broken, was 
 still bending to offer its protection to the last remnants of 
 their worship, 
 
 " This then, is the kistvaen," said the shorter pilgrim ; 
 " and here we must abide tidings of our scout. But what, 
 Philip Guarine, have we to expect as an explanation of the 
 devastation which we have traversed ?" 
 
 " Some incursion of the Welsh wolves, my lord," replied 
 Guarine ; '^'and, by Our Lady, here lies a poor Saxon sheep 
 whom they have snapped up." 
 
 The Constable — for he was the pilgrim who had walked 
 foremost— turned as he heard his squire speak, and saw the 
 corpse of a man amongst the long grass ; by which, indeed, 
 it was so hidden that he himself had passed without notice 
 what the esquire, in less abstracted mood, had not failed to 
 observe. The leathern doublet of the slain bespoke him an 
 
260 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 English peasant ; the body lay on its face, and the arrow 
 which had caused his death still stuck in his back. 
 
 Philip Guarine, with the cool inditference of one accus- 
 tomed to such scenes, drew the shaft from the man's back 
 as composedly as he would have removed it from the body 
 of a deer. With similar indifference the Constable signed 
 to his esquire to give him the arrowy looked at it with indo- 
 lent curiosity, and then said, " Thou hast forgotten thy old 
 craft, Guarine, when thou callest that a Welsh shaft. Trust 
 me, it flew from a Xorman bow ; but why it should be found 
 in the body of that English churl, I can ill guess." 
 
 " Some runaway serf, I would warrant — some mongrel cur, 
 who had joined the Welsh pack of hounds," answered the 
 esquire. 
 
 " It may be so," said the Constable ; " but I rather augur 
 some civil war among the Lords Marchers themselves. The 
 Welsh, indeed, sweep the villages, and leave nothing behind 
 them but blood and ashes, but here even castles seem to have 
 been stormed and taken. May God send us good news of 
 the Garde Doloureuse ! " 
 
 " Amen ! " rei^lied his squire ; " but if Renault Vidal 
 brings it, 'twill be the first time he has proved a bird of good 
 omen." 
 
 " Philip," said the Constable, '' I have already told thee 
 thou art a jealous-pated fool. How many times has Vidal 
 shown his faith in doubt, his address in difficulty, his cour- 
 age in battle, his patience under suffering ? " 
 
 " It may be all very true, my lord," replied Guariue ; 
 *' yet — but what avails to speak ? I own he has done you 
 sometimes good service ; but loth were I that your life or 
 honor were at the mercy of Eenault Vidal." 
 
 " In the name of all the saints, thou peevish and suspi- 
 cious fool, what is it thou canst found upon to his prej- 
 udice ? " 
 
 ''Nothing, my lord," replied Guarine, "but instinctive 
 suspicion and aversion. The child that, for the first time, 
 sees a snake knows nothing of its evil properties, yet he will 
 not chase it and take it u^j as he would a butterfly ; such is 
 my dislike of Vidal, I cannot help it. I could pardon the 
 man his malicious and gloomy sidelong looks, w'hen he 
 thinks no one observes him ; but his sneering laugh I can- 
 not forgive : it is like the beast we heard of in Judea, who 
 laughs, they say, before he tears and destroys." 
 
 "Philip," said De Lacy, "I am sorry for thee — sorry, 
 from my soul, to see such a predominating and causeless 
 
THE BETROTHED 261 
 
 jealousy occupy the brain of a gallant old soldier. Here, in 
 this last misfortune, to call no more ancient proofs of his 
 fidelity, could he mean otherwise then well with us, when, 
 thrown by shipwreck upon the coast of Wales, we would 
 have been doomed to instant death, had the Cymry recog- 
 nized in me the Constable of Chester, and in thee his trusty 
 esquire, the executioner of his commands against the Welsh 
 in so many instances ? " 
 
 "I acknowledge," said Philip Guarine, "death had 
 surely been our fortune, had not that man's ingenuity repre- 
 sented us as pilgrims, and, under that character, acted as our 
 interpreter ; and in that character he entirely precluded us 
 from getting information from any one respecting the state of 
 things here, which it behoved your lordship much to know, 
 and which I must needs say looks gloomy and suspicious 
 enough." 
 
 '* Still art thou a fool, Guarine," said the Constable ; 
 ''for, look you, had Vital meant ill by us, why should he not 
 have betrayed us to the Welsh, or suffered us, by showing 
 such knowledge as thou and I may have of their gibberish, 
 to betray ourselves ? " 
 
 " Well, my lord," said Guarine, " I may be silenced, but 
 not satisfied. All the fair words he can speak, all the fine 
 tunes he can play, Renault Vidal will be to my eyes ever a dark 
 and suspicious man, with features always ready to mold 
 themselves into the fittest form to attract confidence ; with a 
 tongue framed to utter the most flattering and agreeable 
 words at one time, and at another to play shrewd plainness 
 or blunt honesty ; and an eye which, when he thinks himself 
 unobserved, contradicts every assumed expression of features, 
 every protestation of honesty, and every word of courtesy or 
 cordiality to which his tongue has given utterance. But I 
 speak not more on the subject ; only I am an old mastiff, of 
 the true breed : I love my master, but cannot endure some 
 of those whom he favors ; and yonder, as I judge, _ comes 
 Vidal, to give us such an account of our situation as it shall 
 please him." 
 
 A horseman was indeed seen advancing in the path towards 
 the kistvaen, with a hasty pace ; and his dress, in which some- 
 tliing of the Eastern fashion was manifest, with the fantastic 
 attire usually worn by men of his profession, made the Con- 
 stable aware that the minstrel, of whom they were speaking, 
 was rapidly approaching them. 
 
 Although Hugo de Lacy rendered his attendant no more 
 than what in justice he supposed his services demanded. 
 
262 WAVERLEY ^^OVELS 
 
 when he vindicated him from the suspicion thrown out by 
 Guarine, yet at the bottom of his heart he had sometimes 
 shared those susjaicious, and was often angry at himself, as a 
 just and honest man, for censuring, on the sliglit testimony 
 of loolis, and sometimes casual expressions, a fidelity which 
 seemed to be proved by many acts of zeal and integrity. 
 
 When Yidal approached and dismounted to make his obei- 
 sance, his master hasted to s^^eak to him in words of favor, 
 as if conscious he had been partly sharing Guarine's unjust 
 judgment upon him, by even listening to it. '-Welcome, 
 my trusty Vidal,'^ he said ; •'thou has been the raven that 
 fed us on the mountains of Wales, be now the dove that brings 
 us good tidings from the marches. Thou are silent. What 
 mean these downcast looks, that embarrassed carriage, that 
 cap plucked down o'er thine eyes ? In God's name, man, 
 speak ! Fear not for me ; I can bear worse than tongue of man 
 may tell. Thou hast seen me in the wars of Palestine, when 
 my brave followers fell, man by man, around me, and when 
 I was left wellnigh alone, and did I blench then ? Thou hast 
 seen me when the ship's keel lay grating on the rock, and 
 the billows flew in foam over her deck, did I blench then ? 
 No, nor will I now.'' 
 
 " Boast not," said the minstrel, looking fixedly upon the 
 Constable, as the former assumed the port and countenance 
 of one who sets Fortune and her utmost malice at defiance — ■ 
 "boast not, lest thy bands be made strong." 
 
 There was a pause of a minute, during which the group 
 formed at this instant a singular picture. 
 
 Afraid to ask, yet ashamed to seem to fear, the ill tidings 
 which impended, the Constable confronted his messenger 
 with person erect, arms folded, and brow expanded with res- 
 olution ; while the minstrel, carried beyond his usual and 
 guarded apathy by the interest of the moment, bent on his 
 master a keen fixed glance, as if to observe whether hisi 
 courage was real or assumed. ' 
 
 Philip Guarine, on the other hand, to whom Heaven, in 
 assigning him a rough exterior, had denied neither sense nor 
 observation, kept his eye in turn firmly fixed on Vidal, as if 
 endeavoring to determine what was the character of that deep 
 interest which gleamed in the minstrel's looks apparently, 
 and was unable to ascertain whether it was that of a faithful 
 domestic sympathetically agitated by the bad new^s with 
 which he was about to afflict his master, or that of an execu- 
 tioner standing with his knife suspended over his victim, 
 deferring his blow until he should discover where it would 
 
THE BETROTHED 263 
 
 be more sensibly felt. In Gaarine's mind, prejndiced, per- 
 haps, by the previous opinion he had entertained, the latter 
 sentiment so decidedly predominated, that he longed to raise 
 his staff and strike down to the earth the servant who seemed 
 thus to enjoy the protracted sufferings of their common 
 master. 
 
 At length a convulsive movement crossed the brow of the 
 Constable, and Guarine, when he beheld a sardonic smile 
 begin to curl Vidal's lip, could keep silence no longer. 
 " Vidal," he said, " thou art a " 
 
 " A bearer of bad tidings," said Vidal, interrupting him, 
 " therefore subject to the misconstruction of every fool who 
 cannot distinguish between the author of harm and him who 
 unwillingly reports it." 
 
 "To wiiat purpose this delay?" said the Constable. 
 " Come, sir minstrel, I will spare you a pang — Eveline has 
 forsaken and forgotten me ? " 
 
 The minstrel assented by a low inclination. 
 
 Hugo de Lacy paced a short turn before the stone monu- 
 ment, endeavoring to conquer the deep emotion which he 
 felt. " I forgive her," he said. " Forgive, did I say ? 
 Alas ! I liave nothing to forgive. She used but the right 
 I left in her hand. Yes, our date of engagement was out ; 
 she had heard of my losses, my defeats, the destruction of 
 my hopes, the expenditure of my wealth, and has taken the 
 first opportunity which strict law afforded to break off her 
 engagment with one bankrupt in fortune and fame. Many a 
 maiden would have done — perhaps in prudence should have 
 done — this ; but that woman's name should not have been 
 Eveline Berenger." 
 
 He leaned on his esquire's arm, and for an instant laid 
 his head on his shoulder with a depth of emotion which 
 Guarine had never before seen him betray, and which, in 
 awkward kindness, he could only attempt to console by 
 bidding his master, " Be of good courage ; he had lost but 
 a woman." 
 
 " This is no selfish emotion, Philip," said the Constable, 
 resuming self-command. "I grieve less that she has left 
 me than'^that she has misjudged me : that she has treated 
 me as the pawnbroker does his wretched creditor, who arrests 
 the pledge as the very moment elapses within which it might 
 have been relieved. Did she then think that I in my turn 
 would have been a creditor so rigid — that I, who, since I 
 knew her, scarce deemed myself worthy of her when I had 
 wealth and fame, should insist on her sharing my diminished 
 
264 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 and degraded fortunes ? How little she ever knew me, or 
 how selfish must she have supposed my misfortunes to have 
 made me ! But be it so ; she is gone, and may she be happy ! 
 The thought that she disturbed me shall pass from my mind ; 
 and I will think she has done that which I myself, as her 
 best friend, must in honor have advised/' 
 
 So saying, his countenance, to the surprise of his attend- 
 ants, resumed its usual firm composure. 
 
 " I give you Joy," said the esquire, in a whisper to the 
 minstrel ; ''your evil news have wounded less deeply than, 
 doubtless, you believed was possible." 
 
 "Alas !" replied the minstrel, ''I have others and worse 
 behind." 
 
 This answer was made in an equivocal tone of voice, corre- 
 sponding to the peculiarity of his manner, and, like that 
 seeming emotion, of a deep but very doubtful character. 
 
 " Eveline Berenger is then married," said the Constable ; 
 ''and. let me make a wild guess — she has not abandoned 
 the family, though she has forsaken the individual — she is 
 still a Lacy, ha ? Dolt that thou art, wilt thou not under- 
 stand me — she is married to Damian de Lacy — to my 
 nephew I" 
 
 The effort with which the Constable gave breath to this 
 supposition formed a strange contrast to the constrained 
 smile to which he compelled his features while he uttered it. 
 With such a smile a man about to drink poison might name 
 a health, as he put the fatal beverage to his lips. 
 
 " Xo, my lord, not married," answered the minstrel, with 
 an emphasis on the word, which the Constable knew how to 
 interpret. 
 
 " Xo — no," he replied quickly, " not married, perhaps, 
 but engaged — troth-plighted. Wherefore not ? The date 
 of her old affiance was out, why not enter into a new engage- 
 ment ? " 
 
 " The Lady Eveline and Sir Damian de Lacy are not 
 affianced that I know of," answered his attendant. 
 
 This reply drove De Lacy's patience to extremity. 
 
 " Dog ! dost thou trifle with me ! " he exclaimed. " Vile 
 wire pincher, thou torturest me ! Speak the worst at once, 
 or I will presently make thco minstrel to the household of 
 Satan." 
 
 Calm and collected did the minstrel reply — "The Lady 
 Eveline and Sir Damian are neither married nor affianced, 
 my lord. They haved loved and lived together — paf 
 amours." 
 
THE BETROTHED 285 
 
 '* Dog, and son of a dog," said De Lacy, ** thou liest ! ** 
 And, seizing the minstrel by the breast, the exasperated 
 baron shook him with his whole strength. Bnt, great as 
 that strength was, it was unable to stagger Vidal, a prac- 
 tised wrestler, in the firm posture which he had assumed, 
 any more than his master's wrath could disturb the compos- 
 ure oi the minstrel's bearing. 
 
 " Confess thou hast lied," said the Constable, releasing 
 him, after having effected by his violence no greater degree 
 of agitation than the exertion of human force produces upon 
 the rocking stones of the Druids, which may be shaken, 
 indeed, but not displaced. 
 
 " Were a lie to buy my own life, yea, the lives of all my 
 tribe," said the minstrel, " I would not tell one. But truth 
 itself is ever termed falsehood when it counteracts the train 
 of our passions." 
 
 " Hear him, Philip Guarine — hear him ! " exclaimed the 
 Constable, turning hastily to his squire. "He tells me oi 
 my disgrace — of the dishonor of my house — of the depravity 
 of those whom I have loved the best in the world — he tells 
 me of it with a calm look, an eye composed, an unfaltering 
 tongue. Is this — can it be natural ? Is De Lacy sunk so 
 low, that his dishonor shall be told by a common strolling 
 minstrel, as calmly as if it were a theme for a vain ballad ? 
 Perhaps thou wilt make it one, ha ! " as he concluded, dart- 
 ing a furious glance at the minstrel. 
 
 "" Perhaps I might, my lord," replied the minstrel, " were 
 it not that I must record therein the disgrace of Renault 
 Vidal, who served a lord without either patience to bear 
 insults and wrongs or spirit to reverge them on the authors 
 of his shame." 
 
 "Thou art right — thou art right, good fellow," said the 
 Constable, hastily: "it is vengeance now alone which is 
 left us. And yet upon whom ?" 
 
 As he spoke, he walked shortly and hastily to and fro ; 
 and, becoming suddenly silent, stood still and wrung his 
 hands with deep emotion. 
 
 "I told thee," said the minstrel to Guarine, "that my 
 muse would find a tender part at last. Dost thou remember 
 the bull-fight we saw in Spain ? A thousand little darts 
 perplexed and annoyed the noble animal ere he received 
 the last deadly thrust from the lance of the Moorish 
 cavalier." 
 
 " Man or fiend, be which thou wilt," replied Guarine, 
 ** that can thus drink in with pleasure and contemplate at 
 
266 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 your ease the misery of another, I bid thee beware of me. 
 Utter thy cold-blooded taunts in some other ear ; for if my 
 tongue be blunt, I wear a sword that is sharp enough." 
 
 " Thou hast seen me among swords," answered the min- 
 strel, "and knowest liow little terror they have for such as 
 I am," Yet as he spoke he drew off from the esquire. He 
 had, in fact, only addressed him in that sort of fulness of 
 heart which would have vented itself in soliloquy if alone, 
 and now poured itself out on the nearest auditor, without 
 the speaker being entirely conscious of the sentiments which 
 his speech excited. 
 
 Few minutes had elapsed before the Constable of Chester 
 had regained the calm external semblance with which, until 
 this last dreadful wound, he had borne all the inflictions of 
 fortune. He turned towards his followers, and addressed 
 the minstrel with his usual calmness, " Thou art right, good 
 fellow," he said, " in what thou saidst to me but now, and 
 I forgive thee the taunt which accompanied thy good coun- 
 sel. Speak out, in God's name, and speak to one prepared 
 to endure the evil which God hath sent him. Certes, a 
 good knight is best known in battle, and a Christian in the 
 time of trouble and adversity." 
 
 The tone in which the Constable spoke seemed to produce 
 a corresponding eifect upon the deportment of his followers. 
 The minstrel dropped at once the cynical and audacious 
 tone in which he had hitherto seemed to tamper with the 
 passions of his master ; and in language simple and respect- 
 ful, and which even approached to sympathy, informed him 
 of the evil news which he had collected during his absence. 
 It was indeed disastrous. 
 
 The refusal of the Lady Eveline Bereuger to admit Mont- 
 hermer and his forces into her castle had of course given 
 circulation and credence to all the calumnies which had 
 been ^circulated to her prejudice and that of Damian de 
 Lacy ; and there were many who, for various causes, were 
 interested in spreading and supporting these slanders. A 
 large force had been sent into the country to subdue the in- 
 surgent peasants, and the knights and nobles despatchei' 
 for that purpose failed not to avenge to the uttermost, upoi 
 the wretched plebeians, the noble blood which they ha( 
 spilled during tbeir temporary triumph. 
 
 The followers of the unfortunate AVenlock were infectei 
 with the same persuasion. Blamed by many for a hast; 
 and cowardly surrender of a post which might have been di 
 fended, they endeavored to vindicate themselves by alleginj 
 
THE BETROrUED 267 
 
 the hostile demonstrations of De Lacy's cavalry as the sole 
 cause of their premature submission. 
 
 These rumors, supported by such interested testimony, 
 spread wide and far through the land ; and, joined to 
 the undeniable fact that Daniian had sought refuge in the 
 strong castle of Garde Doloureuse, which was now defend- 
 ing itself against the royal arms, animated the numerous 
 enemies of the house of De Lacy, and drove its vassals and 
 friends almost to despair, as men reduced either to disown 
 their feudal allegiance or renounce that still more sacred 
 fealty which they owed to their sovereign. 
 
 At this crisis they received intelligence that the wi^e and 
 active monarch ,by whom the scepter of England was then 
 swayed was moving towards that part of England at the 
 head of a large body of soldiers, for the purpose at once of 
 pressing the siege of the Garde Doloureuse and completing 
 the suppression of the insurrection of the peasantry, which 
 Guy Monthermer had nearly accomplished. 
 
 In this emergency, and when the friends and dependants 
 of the house of Lacy scarcely knew which hand to turn to, 
 Randal, the Constable's kinsman, and, after Damian, his 
 heir, suddenly appeared amongst them Avith a royal commis- 
 sion to raise and command such followers of the family as 
 might not desire to be involved in the supposed treason of 
 the Constable's delegate. In troublesome times men's vices 
 are forgotten, provided they display activity, courage, and 
 prudence, the virtues then most required ; and the appear- 
 ance of Eandal, who was by no means deficient in any of 
 these attributes, was received as a good omen by the follow- 
 ers of his cousin. They quickly gathered around him, sur- 
 rendered to the royal mandate such strongholds as they 
 possessed, and, to vindicate themselves from any participa- 
 tion in the alleged crimes of Damian, they distinguished 
 themselves, under Randal's command, against such scattered 
 bodies of peasantry as still kept the field or lurked in the 
 mountains and passes ; and conducted themselves with such 
 severity after success as made the troops even of Monther- 
 mer appear gentle and clement in comparison of those of De 
 Lacy. Finally, with the banner of his ancient house dis- 
 played, and five hundred good men assembled under it, Ran- 
 dal appeared before the Garde Doloureuse and joined 
 Henry's camp there. 
 
 The castle was already hardly pressed, and the few de- 
 fenders, disabled by wounds, watching, and privation, had 
 now the additional discouragement to see displayed against 
 
268 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 their walls the only banner in England under which they 
 had lioped forces might be mustered for their aid. 
 
 The high-spirited entreaties of Eveline, unbent b}- adver- 
 sity and want, gradually lost effect on the defenders of the 
 castle ; and proposals for surrender were urged and discussed 
 by a tumultuary council, into which not only the inferior 
 officers, but many of the common men, had thrust them- 
 selves, as in a period of such general distress as unlooses all 
 the bonds of discipline, and leaves each man at liberty to 
 speak and act for himself. To their surprise, in the midst 
 of their discussions, Damian de Lacy, arisen from the sick- 
 bed to which he had been so long confined, appeared among 
 them, pale and feeble, his cheek tinged with the ghastly 
 look which is left by long illness ; he leaned on his page 
 Amelot. "Gentlemen," he said, "and soldiers — yet why 
 should I call you either ? Gentlemen are ever ready to die 
 in behalf of a lady, soldiers hold life in scorn compared to 
 their honor." 
 
 "Out upon him — out upon him !" exclaimed one of the 
 soldiers, interrupting him ; " he would have us, who are 
 innocent, die the death of traitors, and be hanged in our 
 armor over the walls, rather than part with his leman." 
 
 " Peace, irreverent slave !" said Damian, in a voice like 
 thunder, "or my last blow shall be a mean one, aimed 
 against such a caitiff as thou art. And yon," he continued, 
 addressing the rest — " you, who are shrinking from the toils 
 of your profession, because, if you persist in a course of 
 honor, death may close them a few years sooner than it 
 needs must — you, who are scared like children at the sight 
 of a death's-head, do not suppose that Damian de Lacy 
 would desire to shelter himself at the expense of tbose lives 
 which you hold so dear. Make your bargain with King 
 Henry. Deliver me up to his justice, or his severity ; or, if 
 you like it better, strike my head from my body, and hurl it, 
 as a peace-offering, from the walls of the castle. To God, 
 in His good time, will I trust for the clearance of mine 
 honor. In a word, surrender me, dead or alive, or o^Den the 
 gates and permit me to surrender myself. Only, as ye are 
 men, since I may not say better of ye, care at least for the 
 safety of your mistress, and make such terms as may secure 
 HER safety, and save yourselves from the dishonor of being 
 held cowardly and perjured caitiffs in your graves." 
 
 " Methinks the youth speaks well and reasonably,*' said 
 Wilkin Flammock. " Let us e'en make a grace of surrender- 
 ing his body up to the King, and assure thereby such terms 
 
THE BETROTHED 269 
 
 as we can for ourselves and the lady, ere the last morsel of 
 our provision is consumed." 
 
 " I would hardly have proposed this measure/' said, or 
 rather mumbled. Father Aldrovand, who had recently lost 
 four of his front teeth by a stone from a sling — "yet, being 
 so generously offered by the party principally concerned, I 
 hold with the learned scholiast. Volenti nonfit injuria." 
 
 '- Priest and Fleming," said the old bannerman, Ealph 
 Genvil, "I see how the wind stirreth you ; but you deceive 
 yourselves if you think to make our young master. Sir 
 Damian, a scapegoat for your light lady. Nay, never frown 
 nor fume. Sir Damian ; if you know not your safest course, 
 we know it for you. Followers of De Lacy, throw your- 
 selves on your horses, and two men on one, if it be neces- 
 sary ; we will take this stubborn boy in the midst of us, and 
 the dainty Squire Amelot shall be prisoner too, if he 
 trouble us with his peevish opposition. Then let us make a 
 fair sally upon the siegers. Those who can cut their way 
 through will shift well enough ; those who fall will be pro- 
 vided for." 
 
 A shout from the troopers of Lacy's band approved this 
 proposal. Whilst the followers of Berenger expostulated in 
 loud and angry tone, Eveline, summoned by the tumult, in 
 vain endeavored to appease it ; and the anger and entreaties 
 of Damian were equally lost on his followers. To each and 
 either the answer was the same. 
 
 " Have you no care of it. Because you \o\e par amours, 
 is it reasonable you should throw away your life and ours ? " 
 So exclaimed Genvil to De Lacy ; and in softer language, 
 but with equal obstinacy, the followers of Eaymond Beren- 
 ger refused on the present occasion to listen to the commands 
 or prayers of his daughter. 
 
 Wilkin Flammock had retreated from the tumult when 
 he saw the turn which matters had taken. He left the 
 castle by a sally-port, of which he had been entrusted with 
 the key, and proceeded without observation or opposition to 
 the royal camp, where he requested access to the sovereign. 
 This was easily obtained, and Wilkin speedily found him- 
 self in the presence of King Henry. The monarch was in 
 his royal pavilion, attended by two of his sons, Richard and, 
 John, who afterwards swayed the scepter of England with 
 very different auspices. 
 
 " How now ? What art thou ?" was the royal question. 
 
 "An honest man, from the castle of the Garde Dolour* 
 
270 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 " Thou mayst be honest," replied the sovereign, '" but 
 thou comest from a nest of traitors." 
 
 " Such as they are, my lord, it is my purpose to put them 
 at your royal disposal ; for they have no longer the wisdom 
 to guide themselves, and lack alike prudence to hold out 
 and grace to submit. But I would first know of your Grace 
 to what terms you will admit the defenders of yonder 
 garrison ?" 
 
 "To such as kings give to traitors," said Henry, sternly— 
 '''sharp knives and tough cords." 
 
 "Nay, my gracious lord, you must be kinder than that 
 amounts to, if the castle is to be rendered by my means ; 
 else will your cords and knives have only my poor body to 
 work upon, and you will be as far as ever from the inside of 
 the Garde Doloureuse." 
 
 The King looked at him fixedly. " Thou knowest," he, 
 said, " the law of arms ; here, provost-marshal, stands a 
 traitor and yonder stands a tree," 
 
 "And here is a throat," said the stout-hearted Fleming, 
 unbuttoning the collar of his doublet. 
 
 " By mine honor," said Prince Richard, "a sturdy and 
 faithful yeoman ! It were better send such fellows their 
 dinner, and then buffet it out with them for the castle, than 
 to starve them as the beggarly Frenchmen famish their 
 hounds." 
 
 " Peace, Pichard," said his father ; " thy wit is over 
 green, and thy blood over hot, to make thee my counselor 
 here. And you, knave, speak you some reasonable terms, 
 and we will not be over strict with thee." 
 
 "First, then," said the Fleming, "I stipulate full and 
 free pardon for life, limb, body, and goods to me, Wilkin 
 Flammock, and my daughter Rose." 
 
 " A true Fleming," said Prince John ; "he takes care of 
 himself in the first instance." 
 
 " His request," said the King, " is reasonable. What 
 next ?" 
 
 " Safety in life, honor, and land for the demoiselle Eve- 
 line Berenger." 
 
 "How, sir knave!" said the King, angrily, ''is it for 
 such as thou to dictate to our judgment or clemency in the 
 case of a noble Norman lady ? Confine thy mediation to 
 such as thyself ; or rather render us this castle without 
 farther delay, and be assured thy doing so will be of more 
 service to the traitors within than weeks more of resistance, 
 which must and shall be bootless." 
 
THE BETROTHED 271 
 
 The Fleming stood silent, unwilling to surrender without 
 some specific terms, yet half convinced, from the situation 
 in which he had left the garrison of the Garde Doloureuse, 
 that his admitting the king's forces would be, perhaps, the 
 best he could do for Lady Eveline. 
 
 " I like thy fidelity, fellow," said the King, whose acute 
 eye perceived the struggle in the Fleming's bosom ; " but 
 cr.rry not thy stubbornness too far. Have we not said we 
 will be gracious to yonder offenders, as far as our royal duty 
 will permit ? " 
 
 "And, royal father," said Prince John, interposing, "I 
 pray you let me have the grace to take first possesfion of 
 the Garde Doloureuse, and the wardsliip or forfeiture of the 
 offending lady." 
 
 " I pray you also, my royal father, to grant John's boon/' 
 said his brother Richard, in a tone of mockery. " Consider, 
 royal father, it is the first desire he hath shown to approach 
 the barriers of the castle, though we liave attacked them 
 forty times at least. Marry, cross-bow and mangonel were 
 busy on the former occasions, and it is like they will be 
 silent now." 
 
 "Peace, Richard," said the King; "your words, aimed 
 at thy brother's honor, pierce my heart. John, thou hast 
 thy boon as concerns the castle ; for this unhappy young 
 lady, we will take her in our own charge. Fleming, how 
 many men wilt thou undertake to admit ?" 
 
 Ere Flammock could answer, a squire approached Prince 
 Richard, and whispered in his ear, yet so as to be heard by 
 all present, " We have discovered that some internal dis- 
 turbance, or other cause unknown, has withdrawn many of 
 the warders from the castle walls and that a sudden attack 
 might " 
 
 " Dost thou hear that, John ?" exclaimed Richard. ''Lad- 
 ders, man — get ladders, and to the wall. How I should de- 
 light to see thee on the highest round — thy knees shaking, 
 thy hands grasping convulsively, like those of one in an ague 
 fit — all air around thee, save a baton or two of wood — the moat 
 below — half a dozen pikes at thy throat " 
 
 " Peace, Richard, for shame, if not for charity ! " said his 
 father, in a tone of anger, mingled with grief. "And thou, 
 John, get ready for the assault." 
 
 "As soon as I have put on my armor, father," answered 
 the prince ; and withdrew slowly, with a visage so blank as 
 to promise no speed in his preparations. 
 
 His brother laughed as he retired, and said to his squire. 
 
272 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 '' It were no bad jest, Alberick, to carry the place ere John 
 can change his silk doublet for a steel one." 
 
 So saying, he hastily withdrew, and his father exclaimed 
 in paternal distress, " Out, alas ! as much too hot as his 
 brother IS too cold ; but it is the manlier fault. Gloucester," 
 said he to that celebrated earl, "take sufficient strength 
 and follow Prince Eichard, to guard and sustain him. If 
 any one can rule him, it must be a knight of thy established 
 fame. Alas ! alas ! for what sin have I deserved the af- 
 fliction of these cruel family feuds ?" 
 
 '' Be comforted, my lord," said the chancellor, who was 
 also in attendance. 
 
 "Speak not of comfort to a father whose sons are at 
 discord with each other, and agree only in their disobedience 
 to him!" 
 
 Thus spoke Henry the Second, than whom no wiser, or, 
 generally speaking, more fortunate monarch ever sat upon 
 the throne of England ; yet whose life is a striking illus- 
 tration how family dissensions can tarnish the most brilliant 
 lot to which Heaven permits humanity to aspire, and how 
 little gratified ambition, extended power, and the highest 
 reputation in war and in peace can do towards curing the 
 wounds of domestic affliction. 
 
 The sudden and fiery attack of Richard, who hastened to 
 the escalade at the head of a score of followers, collected at 
 random, had the complete effect of surprise ; and having 
 surmounted the walls with their ladders, before the con- 
 tending parties within were almost aware of the assault, the 
 assailants burst open the gates, and admitted Glo'.icester, 
 Avho had hastily followed with a strong body of men-at-arms. 
 The garrison, in their state of surprise, confusion, and 
 disunion, offered but little resistance, and would hav 
 been put to the sword, and the place plundered, had not 
 Henry himself entered it, and, by his personal exertions 
 and authority, restrained the excesses of the dissolute sol- 
 di ei-y. 
 
 The King conducted himself, considering the times and 
 the provocation, with laudable moderation. He contented 
 himself with disarming and dismissing the common soldiers, 
 giving them some trifle to carry them out of the country, 
 lest want should lead them to form themselves into bands 
 of robbers. The officers were more severely treated, being 
 for the greater part thrown into dungeons, to abide the 
 course of the law. In particular, imprisonment was the lot 
 of Damian de Lacy, against whom, believing the various charges 
 
THE BET RO TEED 273 
 
 mth which he was loaded, Henry was so highly incensed, 
 that he proposed to make him an example to all false 
 knights and disloyal subjects. To the Lady Eveline Beren- 
 ger he assigned her own apartment as a prison, in which 
 she was honorably attended by Rose and Alice, but guarded 
 with the utmost strictness. It was generally reported that 
 her demesnes would be declared a forfeiture to the crown, 
 and bestowed, at least in part, upon Eandal de Lacy, who 
 had done good service during the siege. Her person, it 
 was thought, was destined to the seclusion of some distant 
 French nunnery, where she might at leisure repent her of 
 her follies and her rashness. 
 
 Father Aldrovand was delivered up to the discipline of 
 his convent, long experience having very effectually taught 
 Henry the imprudence of infringing on the privileges of the 
 church ; although, when the King first beheld him with a 
 rusty corslet clasped over his frock, he with difficulty re- 
 pressed the desire to cause him to be hanged over the battle- 
 ments, to preach to the ravens. 
 
 With Wilkin Flammock, Henry held much conference, 
 particularly on the subject of manufactures and commerce ; 
 on which the sound-headed, though blunt-spoken, Fleming 
 was well qualified to instruct an intelligent monarch. " Thy 
 intentions," he said, " shall not be forgotten, good fellow, 
 though they have been anticipated by the headlong valor of 
 my son Richard, which has cost some poor caitiffs their 
 lives : Richard loves not to sheathe a bloodless weapon. But 
 thou and thy countrymen shall return to thy mills yonder, 
 with a full pardon for past offenses, so that you meddle no 
 more with such treasonable matters." 
 
 "And our privileges and duties, my liege ?" said Flam- 
 mock. " Your Majesty knows well we are vassals to the 
 lord of this castle, and must follow him in battle." 
 
 " It shall no longer be so," said Henry : " 1 will form a 
 community of Flemings here, and thou, Flammock, shalt be 
 mayor, that thou mayst not plead feudal obedience for a 
 relapse into treason." 
 
 '' Treason, my liege ! " said Flammock, longing, yet scarce 
 venturing, to interpose a word in behalf of Lady Eveline, 
 for whom, despite the constitutional coolness of his tem- 
 perament, he really felt much interest — "I would that 
 vour Grace but justly knew how many threads went to that 
 woof.'' 
 
 '' Peace, sirrah ! meddle with your loom," said Henry ; 
 " aud if we deign to speak to thee concerning the mechani- 
 t8 
 
274 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 cal arts v/hich thou dost profess, take it for no warrant to 
 intrude farther on our privacy." 
 
 The Fleming retired, rebuked, and in silence ; and the 
 fate of the unhappy prisoners remained in the King's bosom. 
 He himself took up his lodging in the castle of the Garde 
 Doloureuse, as a convenient station for sending abroad par- 
 ties to suppress and extinguish all the embers of rebellion ; 
 and so active was Randal de Lacy on these occasions, that 
 he appeared daily to rise in the King's grace, and was grati- 
 fied with considerable grants out of the domains of Berenger 
 and Lacy, which the King seemed already to treat as for- 
 feited property. Most men considered this growing favor of 
 Randal as a perilous omen, both for the life of young De 
 Lacy and for the fate of the unfortunate Eveline. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 A vow, a vow— I have a vow in Heaven. 
 Shall I bring perjury upon my soul ? 
 No, not for Venice. 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 The conclusion of the last chapter contains the tidings with 
 which the minstrel greeted his unliappy master, Hugo de 
 L;icv ; not indeed with the same detail of circumstances 
 with which we have been able to invest the narrative, but so 
 as to infer the general and appalling facts, that his betrothed 
 bride and beloved and trusted kinsman had leagued together 
 for his dishonor, had raised the banner of rebellion against 
 their lawful sovereign, and, failing in their audacious at- 
 tempt, had brought tlie life of one of them, at least, into the 
 most imminent danger, and the fortunes of the house of 
 Lacy, unless some instant remedy could be found, to the 
 very verge of ruin. 
 
 Vidal marked the countenance of his master as he spoke, 
 with the same keen observation whicli the chirurgeon gives 
 to the progress of his dissecting-knife. There was grief on 
 the Coustable's features — deep grief, but without the ex- 
 pression of abasement or prostration wdiich usually accom- 
 panies it ; anger and shame were there, but they were both 
 of a noble character, seemingly excited by his bride and 
 nephew's transgressing the laws of allegiance, honor, and 
 virtue, rather tlian by the disgrace and damage which he 
 himself sustained through their crime. 
 
 The minstrel was so much astonished at this change of 
 deportment from the sensitive acuteness of agony whicli 
 attended the beginning of his narrative, that he stepped 
 back two paces, and gazing on the Constable with wonder, 
 mixed with admiration, exclaimed, " We have heard of 
 martyrs in Palestine, but this exceeds them ! " 
 
 " Wonder not so much, good friend," said the Constable, 
 patiently ; " it is the first blow of the lance or mace which 
 pierces or stuns ; those which follow are little felt." * 
 
 " Think, my lord," said Vidal, '' all is lost — love, domin- 
 ion, high office, and bright fame : so late a chief among 
 nobles, now a poor palmer \" 
 
 * See Sensibility to Pain. Note 18. 
 
 275 
 
276 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " Wouldst tliou make sport with my misery ? '* said Hugo, 
 sternly ; "but even that comes, of course, behind my back, 
 and why should it not be endured when said to my face ? 
 Know, then, minstrel, and jjut it in song if you list, that 
 Hugo de Lacy, having lost all he carried to Palestine, and 
 all which he left at home, is still lord of his own mind ; and 
 adversity can no more shake him than the breeze which 
 strips the oak of its leaves can tear up the trunk by the 
 roots." 
 
 " Now, by the tomb of my father,'' said the minstrel, rapt- 
 urously, " this man's nobleness is too much for my re- 
 solve I " and stepping hastily to the Constable, he kneeled on 
 one knee, and caught his hand more freely than the state 
 maintained by men of De Lacy's rank usually permitted. 
 
 " Here," said Vidal, " on this hand — this noble hand, I 
 renounce " 
 
 But, ere he could utter another word, Hugo de Lacy, 
 who, perhaps, felt the freedom of the action as an intrusion 
 on his fallen condition, pulled back his hand, and bid the 
 minstrel, with a stern frown, arise, and remember that mis- 
 fortune made not De Lacy a fit personage for a mummery. 
 
 Renault Vidai rose rebuked. "I had forgot," he said, 
 ''the distance between an Armorican violer and a high 
 Norman baron. I thought that the same depth of sorrow, 
 the same burst of joy, leveled, for a moment at least, those 
 artificial barriers by which men are divided. But it is well 
 as it is. Live within the limits of your rank, as heretofore 
 within your donjon tower and your fosses, my lord, undis- 
 turbed by the sympathy of any mean man like me. I, too, 
 have my duties to discharge." 
 
 "And now to the Garde Doloureuse," said the baron, 
 turning to Philip Guarine — " God knoweth how well it de- 
 serveth the name ' — there to learn, with our own eyes and 
 ears, the truth of these woful tidings. Dismount, minstrel, 
 and give me thy palfrey. I would, Guarine, that I had one 
 for thee ; as for Vidal, his attendance is less necessary. I 
 will face my foes, or my misfortunes, like a man — that be 
 assured of, violer ; and look not so sullen, knave — I will not 
 forget old adherents." 
 
 "One of them, at least, will not forget you, my lord," 
 replied the minstrel, with his usual dubious tone of look 
 and emphasis. 
 
 But, just as the Constable was about to prick forwards, 
 two persons appeared on the path, mounted on one horse, 
 who, hidden by some dwarf-wood, had come very near them 
 
 I: 
 
[ 
 
 THE BETROTHED 277 
 
 without being perceived. They were male and female ; and 
 tho man, who rode foremost, was such a picture of famine 
 as the eyes of the pilgrims had scarce witnessed in all the 
 wasted lands through which they had traveled. His feat- 
 ures, naturally sharp and thin, had disappeared almost 
 entirely among the uncombed gray beard and hnirs with 
 which they were overshadowed ; and it was but the glimpse 
 of a long iiose, that seemed as sharp as the edge of a knife, 
 and the twinkling sparkle of his gray eyes, which gave any 
 intimation of his lineaments. His leg, in the wide old boot 
 whicli inclosed it, looked like tlie handle of a mop left by 
 chance in a pail ; his arms were about the thickness of 
 ciding-rods ; and such parts of his person as were not con- 
 cealed by the tatters of a huntsman's cassock seemed rather 
 the appendages of a mummy than a live man. 
 
 The female who sat behind this specter exhibited also 
 some symptoms of extenuation ; but, being a brave, jolly 
 dame naturally, famine had not been able to render her a 
 spectacle so rueful as the anatomy behind which she rode. 
 Dame Gillian's cheek ( for it was reader's old acquaintance) 
 had indeed lost the rosy hue of good cheer and the smooth- 
 ness of complexion which art and easy living had formerly 
 substituted for the more delicate bloom of youth ; her eyes 
 were sunken, and had lost much of their bold and roguish 
 luster ; but she was still in some measure herself, and the 
 remnants of former finery, together with the tight-drawn 
 scarlet hose, tliough sorely faded, showed still a remnant of 
 coquettish pretension. 
 
 So soon as she came within sight of the pilgrims she began 
 to punch Raoul with the end of her riding-rod, ''Try thy 
 new trade, man, since thou art unfit for any other — to the 
 good men — to them, crave their charity." 
 
 "Beg from beggars!" muttered Kaoul ; ''that were 
 hawking at sparrows, dame." 
 
 " It will bring our hand in use though," said Gillian ; and 
 commenced, in a whining tone, " God love you, holy men 
 ! who have had the grace to go to the Holy Land, and, what 
 is more, have had the grace to come back again — I pray, 
 bestow some of your alms upon my poor old husband, who 
 is a miserable object, as you see, and upon one who has the 
 bad luck to be his wife — Heaven help me ! " 
 
 " Peace, woman, and hear what I have to say," said the 
 Constable, laying his hand upon the bridle of the horse. *' I 
 have present occasion for that horse and " 
 
 ** By the hunting-horn of St. Hubert, but thou gettest 
 
278 WAVEhLEY JSOVELS 
 
 him not without blows ! " answered the old huntsman. *• A 
 
 fine world it is, wlien palmers turn horse-stealers." 
 
 "Peace, fellow \" said the Constable, sternly. "I say I 
 have occasion presently for the service of thy horse. Here 
 be two gold bezants for a day's use of the brute ; it is well 
 worth the fee-simple of him, were he never returned." 
 
 " But the palfrey is an old acquaintance, master," said 
 Eaoul ; " and if perchance " 
 
 " Out upon ' if ' and ' perchance ' both/' said the dame, 
 giving her husband so determined a thrust as wellnigh pushed 
 him out of the saddle. "Off the horse! and thank God 
 and this worthy man for the help He has sent us in extremity. 
 What signifies the 2:)alfrey, when Ave have not enough to get 
 food either for the brute or ourselves, not though we would 
 eat grass and corn with him, like King Somebody, whom 
 the good father used to read us to sleep about ?" 
 
 " A truce with your prating, dame," said Raoul, offering 
 his assistance to help her from the croupe ; but she pre- 
 ferred that of Guarine, who, though advanced in years, 
 retained the advantage of his stout soldierly figure. 
 
 "I humbly thank your goodness," said she, as, having 
 first kissed her, the squire set her on the ground. "And 
 pray, sir, are ye come from the Holy Land ? Heard ye any 
 tidings there of him that was Constable of Chester ? " 
 
 De Lacy, who was engaged in removing the pillion from 
 behind the saddle, stopped short in his task, and said, " Ha, 
 dame ! wliat would you with him ? " 
 
 " A great deal, good palmer, an I could light on him, for 
 his lands and offices are all to be given, it's like, to that false 
 thief, his kinsman." 
 
 " What ! to Damian, his nephew ? " exclaimed the Con- 
 stable, in harsh and hasty tone. 
 
 " Lord, how you startle me, sir !" said Gillian ; then con- 
 tinued, turning to Philip Guarine, " Your friend is a hasty 
 man, belike." 
 
 "' It is the fault of the sun he has lived under so long," 
 said the squire ; " but look you answer his questions truly, 
 and he will make it the better for you." 
 
 Gillian instantly took the hint. " Was it Damian de Lac; 
 you asked after ? Alas ! poor young gentleman ! no offic 
 or lands for him ; more likely to have a gallows-cast, poo; 
 lad, and all for nought, as I am a true dame. Damian ! m 
 — no, it is not Damian, nor damson neither, but Eand 
 Lacy, that must rule the roast, and have all the old man 
 lands, and livings, and lordships." 
 
THE BETROTHED 279 
 
 " What ! " said the Constable, " before they know whether 
 the old man is dead or no ? Methinks that were against 
 law and reason both." 
 
 " Ay, but Randal Lacy has brought about less likely mat- 
 ters. Look you, he hath sAvorn to the King that they have 
 true tidings of the Constable's death ; ay, and let him alone 
 to make them soothfast enough, if the Constable were once 
 within his danger." 
 
 " Lideed !" said the Constable. "But you are forging 
 tales on a noble gentleman. Come — come, dame, you say 
 this because you like not Randal Lacy." 
 
 " Like him not ! And what reason have I to like him, I 
 trow ?" answered Gillian. " Is it because he seduced my 
 simplicity to let him into the castle of the Garde Doloureuse 
 — ay, oftener than once or twice either — when he was dis- 
 guised as a pedler, and told him all the secrets of the family, 
 and how the boy Damian and the girl Eveline were dying of 
 love with each other, but had not courage to say a word of 
 it for fear of the Constable, though he were a thousand miles 
 off? You seem concerned, worthy sir; may I offer your 
 reverend worship a trifling sup from my bottle, which is 
 sovereign for tremor cordis and fits of the spleen ?" 
 
 " No — no," ejaculated De Lacy ; "■ I was but grieved with 
 the shooting of an old wound. But, dame, I warrant me 
 this Damian and Eveline, as you call them, became better, 
 closer friends in time ?" 
 
 " They ! not they indeed, poor simpletons ! " answered the 
 dame; ''they wanted some wise counselor to go between 
 and advise them. For, look you, sir, if old Hugo be dead, 
 as is most like, it were more natural that his bride and his 
 nephew should inherit his lands than this same Randal, who 
 is but a distant kinsman, and a forsworn caitiff to boot. 
 Would you think it, reverend pilgrim, after the mountains 
 of gold he promised me, when the castle was taken, and he 
 saw I could serve him no more, he called me old beldame, 
 and spoke of the beadle and the cucking-stool ? Yes, 
 reverend sir, old beldame and cucking-stool were his best 
 words when he knew I had no one to take my part save old 
 Raoul, who cannot take his own. But if grim old Hugo 
 bring back his weather-beaten carcass from Palestine, and 
 have but half the devil in him which he had when he was 
 fool enough to go away, St. Mary, but I will do his kins- 
 man's office to him !" 
 
 There was a pause when she had done speaking. 
 
 ** Thou say'st," at length exclaimed the Constable, " that 
 
280 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 Damiaii de Lacy and Eveline love each otlier, yet are uncon- 
 scious of guilt, or falsehood, or ingratitude to me — I would 
 say, to their relative in Palestine ? " 
 
 " Love, sir ! in troth and so it is. They do love each 
 other," said Gillian, " but it is like angels, or like lambs — ■ 
 or like fools, if you will ; for they would never so much aa 
 have spoken together, but for a prank of that same Eandal 
 Lacy's." 
 
 "■ How ! " demanded the Constable — " a prank of Ean- 
 dal's ? What motive had he that these two should meet ?" 
 
 " Nay, their meeting was none of his seeking ; but he liad 
 formed a plan to carry off the Lady Eveline himself, for he 
 was a wild rover, this same Eandal, and so he came dis- 
 guised as a merchant of falcons, and trained out my old 
 stupid Eaoul, and the Lady Eveline, and all of us, as if to 
 have an hour's mirth in hawking at the heron. But he had 
 a band of Welsh kites in readiness to pounce upon us ; and, 
 but for the sudden making in a Damian to our rescue, it is 
 undescribable to think what might have come of us ; and 
 Damian, being hurt in the onslaught, was carried to the 
 Garde Doloureuse in mere necessity ; and but to save his 
 life, it is my belief my lady would never have asked him to 
 cross the drawbridge, even if he had offered." 
 
 '' Woman," said the Constable, " think what thou say'st ! 
 If thou hast done evil in these matters heretofore, as I 
 suspect from thine own story, thiiik not to put it right by a 
 train of new falsehoods, merely from spite at missing thy 
 reward." 
 
 " Palmer," said old Eaoul, with his broken-toned voice, 
 cracked by many a halloo, " I am wont to leave the business 
 of tale-bearing to my wife Gillian, who will tongue-pad it 
 with any shrew in Christendom. But thou speak'st like one 
 having some interest in these matters, and tlierefore I will 
 tell thee plainly, that, although this woman has published 
 her own shame in avowing her correspondence with that 
 same Eandal Lacy, yet what she has said is true as the 
 Gospel ; and, were it my last word, I wouldsay that Damian 
 and the Lady Eveline are innocent of all treason and all 
 dishonesty, as is the babe unborn. But what avails what 
 the like of us say, who are even driven to the very begging, 
 for mere support, after having lived at a good house and in 
 a good lord's service — blessing be with him ! " 
 
 "But hark you," continued the Constable, *^are there left 
 no ancient servants of the house, that could speak out 
 well as you ? " 
 
THE BETROTHED 281 
 
 " Humph !" answered the huntsman, " men are not will- 
 ing to babble when Eandal Lacy is cracking his thong above 
 their heads. Many are slain or starved to death, some dis- 
 ])osed of, some spirited away. But there are the weaver 
 Flammock and his daughter Rose, who know as much of 
 the matter as we do." 
 
 " What ! Wilkin Flammock, the stout Netherlander," 
 said the Constable — " he and his blunt but true daughter 
 Rose ? I will venture my life on their faith. Where dwell 
 they ? What has been their lot amidst tliese changes ? " 
 
 "And in God's name who are you that ask these ques- 
 tions ? " said Dame Gillian. " Husband — husband, we have 
 been too free ; there is something in that look and that tone 
 which I should remember." 
 
 " Yes, look at me more fixedly," said the Constable, 
 throwing back the hood which had hitherto in a great de- 
 gree obscured his features. 
 
 " On your knees — on your knees, Raoul," exclaimed Gil- 
 lian, dropping on her own at the same time; ''it is the 
 Constable himself, and he has heard me call him old Hugo ! " 
 
 '* It is all that is left of him who was the Constable, at 
 least," replied De Lacy ; ''and old Hugo willingly forgives 
 your freedom, in consideration of your good news. Where 
 are Flammock and his daughter ?" 
 
 "Rose is with the Lady Eveline," said Dame Gillian; 
 " her ladyship, belike, chose her for bower-woman in place 
 of me, although Rose was never fit to attire so much as a 
 Dutch doll." 
 
 " The faithful girl ! " said the Constable. " And where 
 is Flammock ? " 
 
 " Oh, for him, he has pardon and favor from the King," 
 said Raoul, "and is at his own house, with his rabble of 
 weavers, close beside the Battlebridge, as they now call the 
 place where your lordship quelled the Welsh." 
 
 " Thither will I then," said the Constable ; " and will 
 then see what welcome King Henry of Anjou has for an 
 old servant. You two must accompany me." 
 
 " My lord," said Gillian, with hesitation, " you know poor 
 folk are little thanked for interference with great men's af- 
 fairs. I trust your lordship will be able to protect us if we 
 leak the truth, and that you will not look back with dis- 
 
 easure on what I did, acting for the best." 
 
 " Peace, dame, with a wanion to ye ! " said Raoul. " Will 
 you think of your own old sinful carcass, when you should be 
 saving your sweet young mistress from shame and oppres- 
 
 sp 
 
282 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 sion ? And for thy ill tongue, and worse practises, his 
 lordship knows they are bred in the bone of thee/' 
 
 " Peace, good fellow ! "said the Constable ; " we will not 
 look back on thy wife's errors, and your fidelity shall be re- 
 warded. For you, my faithful followers," he said, turning 
 towards Guariue and Vidal, " when De Lacy shall receive 
 his rights, of which he doubts nothing, his first wish shall 
 be to reward your fidelity." 
 
 " Mine, such as it is, has been and shall be its own re- 
 ward," said Vidal. "I will not accept favors from him in 
 prosperity who in adversity refused me his hand : our ac- 
 count stands yet open." 
 
 "Go to, thou art a fool ; but thy profession hath a privi- 
 lege to be humorous," said the Constable, whose weather- 
 beaten and homely features looked even handsome when 
 animated by gratitude to Heaven and benevolence towards 
 mankind. " We will meet," he said "at Battlebridge, an 
 hour before [after] vespers ; I shall have much achieved 
 before that time." 
 
 " The space is short," said the esquire. 
 
 "I have won a battle in yet shorter," replied the Con- 
 stable. 
 
 " In which," said the minstrel, " many a man has died 
 that thought himself well assured of life and victory." 
 
 " Even so shall my dangerous cousin Eandal find his 
 schemes of ambition blighted," answered the Constable ; 
 and rode forwards, accompanied by Raoul and his wife, 
 who had remounted their palfrey, while the minstrel and 
 squire followed a-foot, and, of course, much more slowly. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 Oh, fear not, fear not, good Lord John, 
 
 That I would you betray, 
 Or sue requital for a debt, 
 
 Which nature cannot pay. 
 
 Bear witness, all ye sacred powers, 
 
 Ye lights that 'gin to shine, 
 This night shall prove the sacred tie 
 
 That binds your faith and mine. 
 
 Aiicient Scottish Ballad. 
 
 Left behind by their master, the two dependants of Hugo 
 de Lacy marched on in sullen silence, like men who dislike 
 and distrust each other, though bound to one common ser- 
 vice, and partners, therefore, in the same hopes and fears. 
 The dislike, indeed, was chiefly upon Guarine's side, for 
 nothing could be more indifferent to Eenault Vidal than 
 was his companion, farther than as he was conscious that 
 Philip loved him not, and was not unlikely, so far as lay in 
 his power, to thwart some plans which he had nearly at 
 heart. He took little notice of his companion, but hummed 
 over to himself, as for the exercise of his memory, romances 
 and songs, many of which were composed in languages 
 which Guarine, who had only an ear for his native Norman, 
 did not understand. 
 
 They had proceeded together in this sullen manner for 
 nearly two hours, when they were met by a groom on horse- 
 back, leading a saddled palfrey. " Pilgrims," said the man, 
 after looking at them with some attention, " which of you 
 is called Philip Guarine ?" 
 
 " I, for fault of a better,'* said the esquire, " reply to that 
 name." 
 
 " Thy lord, in that case, commends him to you,** said the 
 groom ; " and sends you this token, by which you shall 
 know that I am his true messenger.** 
 
 He showed the esquire a rosary, which Philip instantly 
 recognized as that used by the Constable. 
 
 "I acknowledge the token,** he said ; "speak my mas- 
 ter*s pleasure." 
 
 ** He bids me say,** replied the rider, **that his visit 
 
884 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 thrives as well as is possible, and that this very evening, by 
 time that the sun sets, he will be possessed of his own. He 
 desires, therefore, you will mount this palfrey, and come 
 with me to the Garde Doloureuse, as your presence will be 
 wanted there." 
 
 " It is well, and I obey him," said the esquire, much 
 pleased with the import of the message, and not dissatisfied 
 at being separated from his traveling companion. 
 
 "And what charge for me ?" said the minstrel, address- 
 ing the messenger. 
 
 " If you, as r guess, are the minstrel, Renault Vidal, yon 
 are to abide your master at the Battlebridge, according to 
 the charge formerly given." 
 
 " I Avill meet him, as in duty bound," was Vidal's answer; 
 and scarce was it uttered, ere the two horsemen, turning 
 their backs on him, rode briskly forward, and were speedily 
 out of sight. 
 
 It was now four hours past noon, and the sun was declin- 
 ing, yet there was more than three hours' space to the time 
 of rendezvous, and the distance from the place did not now 
 exceed four miles. Vidal, therefore, either for the sake of 
 rest or reflection, withdrew from the path into a thicket on 
 the left hand, from which gushed the waters of a stream- 
 let, fed by a small fountain that bubbled up amongst the 
 trees. Here the traveler sat liimself down, and with an air 
 which seemed unconscious of what he was doing, bent his 
 eye on the little sparkling font for more than half an hour, 
 without change of posture ; so that he might, in pagan 
 times, have represented the statue of a water-god bending 
 over his urn, and attentive only to the supplies which it was 
 pouring forth. At length, however, he seemed to recall 
 himself from this state of deep abstraction, drew himself 
 up, and took some coarse food from his pilgrim's scrip, as 
 if suddenly reminded that life is not supported without 
 means. But he had probably something at his heart which 
 affected his throat or appetite. After a vain attempt to 
 swallow a morsel, he threw it from him in disgust, and ap- 
 plied him to a small flask, in which he had some wine or 
 other liquor. But seemingly this also turned distasteful, 
 for he threw from him both scrip and bottle, and, bending 
 down to the spring, drank deeply of the pure element, 
 bathed in it his hands and face, and, arising from the foun- 
 tain apparently refreshed, moved slowly on his way, singing 
 as he went, but in a low and saddened tone, wild fragments 
 of ancient poetry, in a tongue equally ancient. 
 
THE BETROTHED 285 
 
 Journeying on in this melancholy manner, he at length 
 came in sight of the Battlebridge ; near to which arose, in 
 proud and gloomy strength, the celebrated castle of the Garde 
 Doloureuse. " Here, then,'' he said — " here, then, I am to 
 await the proud De Lacy. Be it so, in God's name ! he 
 shall know me better ere we part/' 
 
 " So saying, he strode, with long and resolved steps, across 
 the bridge, and ascending a mound which arose on the oppo- 
 site side at some distance, he gazed for a time upon the scene 
 beneath — the beautiful river, rich with the reflected tints of 
 the western sky ; the trees, which were already brightened 
 to the eye, and saddened to the fancy, with the hue of 
 autumn ; and the darksome walls and towers of the feudal 
 castle, from which, at times, flashed a glimpse of splendor, 
 as some sentinel's arms caught and gave back a transient ray 
 of the setting sun. 
 
 The countenance of the minstrel, which had hitherto been 
 dark and troubled, seemed softened by the quiet of the scene. 
 He threw loose his pilgrim's dress, yet suffering part of its 
 dark folds to hang around him mantle-wise ; under which 
 appeared his minstrel's tabard. He took from his side a rote, 
 and striking, from time to time, a Welsh descant, sung at 
 others a lay, of which we can offer only a few fragments, 
 literally translated from the ancient language in which they 
 were chanted, premising that they are in that excursive 
 symbolical style of poetry which Taliessin, Llewarch Hen, 
 and other bards had derived perhaps from the time of the 
 Druids. 
 
 I asked of my harp, " Who hath injured thy chords ? " 
 And she replied, " The crooked finger, which I mocked in my tune." 
 A blade of silver may be bended ; a blade of steel abideth. 
 Kindness fadeth away, but vengeance endui-eth. 
 
 The sweet taste of mead passeth from the lips ; 
 
 But they are long corroded by the juice of wormwood. 
 
 The lamb is brought to the shambles, but the wolf rangeth the 
 
 mountain. 
 Kindness fadeth away, but vengeance endm-eth. 
 
 I asked the red-hot iron, when it glimmered on the anvil, 
 " Wherefore glowest thou longer than the firebrand ? " 
 ' I was born in the dark mine, and the brand in the pleasant green- 
 wood." 
 Kindness fadeth away, but vengeance endureth. 
 
 T asked the green oak of the assembly, wherefore its boughs were 
 
 dry and seared like the horns of the stag, 
 Lnd it showed me that a small worm had gnawed its roots. 
 
286 iVA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 The boy who remembered the scourge, undid the wicket of the cas- 
 tle at midnight. 
 Kindness fadeth away, but vengeance endm-eth. 
 
 Lightning destroyeth temples, though their spires pierce the clouds ; 
 Storms destroy armadas, though their sails intercept the gale. 
 He that is in his glory falleth, and that by a contemptible enemy. 
 Kindness fadeth away, but vengeance endureth. 
 
 More of the same wild images were thrown out, each 
 bearing some analogy, however fanciful and remote, to the 
 theme which occurred like a chorus at the close of each 
 stanza ; so that the poetry resembled a j^iece of music, 
 which, after repeated excursions through fanciful variations, 
 returns ever and unon to the simple melody which is the sub- 
 ject of ornament. 
 
 As the minstrel sung, his eyes were fixed on the bridge 
 and its vicinity ; but when, near the close of his chant, he 
 raised up his eyes towards the distant towers of the Garde 
 Doloureuse, he saw that the gates were opened, and that 
 there was a mustering of guards and attendants without the 
 barriers, as if some expedition were about to set forth, or 
 some person of imjoortance to appear on the scene. At the 
 same time, glancing his eyes around, he discovered that the 
 landscape, so solitary when he first took his seat on the gray 
 stone from which he overlooked it, was now becoming filled 
 with figures. 
 
 During his reverie, several persons, solitary and in groups, 
 men, women, and children, had begun to assemble them- 
 selves on both sides of the river, and were loitering there, as 
 if expecting some spectacle. There was also much bustling 
 at the Flemings' mills, which, though at some distance, were 
 also completely under his eye. A procession seemed to be 
 arranging itself there, which soon began to move forward, 
 with pipe and tabor, and various other instruments of 
 music, and soon approached, in regular order, the place 
 where Vidal was seated. 
 
 It appeared the business in hand was of a pacific character ; 
 for the graybearded old men of the little settlement, in their 
 decent russet gowns, came first after the rustic band of 
 music, walking in ranks of three and three, supported by 
 their staves, and regulating the motion of the whole proces- 
 sion by their sober and staid pace. After these fathers of 
 the settlement came Wilkin Flammock, mounted on his 
 mighty war-horse, and in complete armor, save his head, like 
 a vassal prepared to do military service for his lord. After 
 
THE BETROTHED 287 
 
 him followed, and in battle rank, the flower of the little 
 colony, consisting of thirty men well armed and appointed, 
 wliose steady march, as well as their clean and glittering 
 armor, showed steadiness and discipline, although they lacked 
 alike the fiery glance of the French soldiery, or the look of 
 dogged defiance which characterized the English, or the 
 wild ecstatic impetuosity of eye which then distinguished the 
 Welsh. The mothers and the maidens of the colony came 
 next ; then followed the children, with faces as chubby, and 
 features as serious, and steps as grave, as their parents ; and 
 last, as a rearguard, came the youths from fourteen to twenty, 
 armed with light lances, bows, and similar weapons becoming 
 their age. 
 
 This procession wheeled around the base of the mound or 
 embankment on which the minstrel was seated, crossed the 
 bridge with the same slow and regular pace, and formed 
 themselves into a double line, facing inwards, as if to receive 
 some person of consequence, or witness some ceremonial. 
 Flammock remained at the extremity of the avenue thus 
 formed by his countrymen, and quietly, yet earnestly, en- 
 gaged in making arrangements and preparations. 
 
 In the meanwhile, stragglers of different countries began to 
 draw together, apparently brought there by mere curiosity, 
 and formed a motley assemblage at the farther end of the 
 bridge, which was that nearest to the castle. Two English 
 peasants passed very near the stone on which Vidal sat. 
 "Wilt thou sing us a song, minstrel," said one of them, ''and 
 here is a tester for thee ? " throwing into his hat a small 
 silver coin. 
 
 " I am under a vow," answered the minstrel, ''and maj 
 not practise the gay science at present." 
 
 "Or yon are too proud to play to English churls," said the 
 elder peasant, " for thy tongue smacks of the Norman." 
 
 "Keep the coin, nevertheless," said the younger man. 
 "Let the palmer have what the minstrel refuses to earn." 
 
 " I pray you reserve your bounty, kind friend," said Vidal, 
 "I need it not ; and tell me of your kindness, instead, what 
 matters are going forward here." 
 
 " W^hy, know you not that we have got our Constable De 
 Lacy again, and that he is to grant solemn investiture to the 
 Flemish weavers of all these fine things Harry of Aujou has 
 given ? Had Edward the Confessor been alive, to give the 
 Netherland knaves their guerdon, it would have been a cast 
 of the gallows-tree. But come, neighbor, we shall lose the 
 show." 
 
28i WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 So saying, they pressed down the hill. 
 
 Vidal fixed his eyes on the gates of the distant castle ; and 
 the remote waving of banners, and mustering of men on 
 horseback, though imperfectly seen at such a distance, ap- 
 prised him that one of note was about to set forth at the 
 head of a considerable train of military attendants. Dis- 
 tant flourishes of trumpets, which came faintly yet distinctly 
 on his ear, seemed to attest the same. Presently lie perceived, 
 by the dust which began to arise in columns betwixt the 
 castle and the bridge, as well as by the nearer sound of the 
 clarions, that the troop was advancing towards him in pro- 
 cession. 
 
 Vidal, on his own part, seemed as if irresolute whether to 
 retain his present position, where he commanded a full but 
 remote view of the whole scene, or to obtain a nearer but 
 more partial one by involving himself in the crowd which 
 now closed around on either liand of the bridge, unless where 
 the avenue was kept open by the armed and arrayed Flem- 
 
 A monk next hurried past Vidal, and on his inquiring as 
 formerly the cause of the assembly, answered, in a muttering 
 tone, from beneath his hood, that it was the Constable De 
 Lacy, who, as the first act of his authority, was then and 
 there to deliver to the Flemings a royal charter of their im- 
 munities. 
 
 "lie is in haste to exercise his authority, methinks," said 
 the minstrel. 
 
 " He that has just gotten a sword is impatient to draw it," 
 replied the monk, wlio added more which the minstrel un- 
 derstood imperfectly ; for Father Aldrovand had not recov- 
 ered the injury which he had received during the siege. 
 
 Vidal, however, understood him to say, that he was to 
 meet the Constable there, to beg his favorable intercession. 
 
 " I also will meet him," said Eenault Vidal, rising sud- 
 denly from the stone which he occupied. 
 
 "Follow me then," mumbled the priest ; ''the Flemings 
 know me, and will let me forward." 
 
 But Father Aldrovand being in disgrace, his influence was 
 not so potent as he had flattered himself ; and both he and 
 the minstrel were jostled to and fro in the crowd, and sepa- 
 rated from each other. 
 
 Vidal, however, was recognized by the English peasants 
 who had before spoke to him. " Canst thou do any jug- 
 glers' feats, minstrel ? " said one. " Thou mayst earn a 
 fair largesse, for our Norman masters low QJonglerie." 
 
THE BETROTHED 289 
 
 " I know but one," said Vidal, " and I will show it, if 
 you will yield me some room/' 
 
 They crowded a little off from him, and gave him time to 
 throw aside his bonnet, bare his legs and knees, by stripping 
 off the leathern buskins which swathed them, and retain- 
 ing only his sandals. He then tied a parti-colored hand- 
 kerchief around his swarthy and sunburnt hair, and, casting 
 off his upper doublet, showed his brawny and nervous arms, 
 naked to the shoulder. 
 
 But while he amused those immediately about him with 
 these preparations, a commotion and rush among the crowd, 
 together with the close sound of trumpets, answered by all 
 the Flemish instruments of music, as well as the sliouts in 
 Norman and English of " Long live the gallant Constable ! 
 Our Lady for the bold De Lacy ! " announced that the Con- 
 stable was close at hand. 
 
 Vidal made incredible exertions to approach the leader of 
 the procession, whose morion, distinguished by its lofty 
 plumes, and right hand holding his truncheon or leading- 
 staff, was all he could see, on account of the crowd of officers 
 and armed men around him. At length his exertions pre- 
 vailed, and he came within three yards of the Constable, 
 who was then in a small circle which had been with difficulty 
 kept clear for the purpose of the ceremonial of the day. 
 His back was towards the minstrel, and he was in the act of 
 bending from his horse to deliver the royal charter to Wilkin 
 Flammock, who had knelt on one knee to receive it the more 
 reverentially. His discharge of this duty occasioned the 
 Constable to stoop so low that his plume seemed in the act 
 of mixing with the flowing raane of his noble charger. 
 
 At this moment, Vidal threw himself with singular agility 
 over the heads of the Flemings who guarded the circle ; 
 and, ere an eye could twinkle, his right knee was on the 
 croupe of the Constable's horse, the grasp of his left hand 
 on the collar of De Lacy's buff-coat ; then, clinging to his 
 prey like a tiger after its leap^ he drew, in the same instant 
 of time, a short, sharp dagger, and buried it in the back of the 
 neck, just where the spine, which was severed by the stroke, 
 serves to convey to the trunk of the human body the mys- 
 terious influences of the brain. The blow was struck with 
 the utmost accuracy of aim and strength of arm. The un- 
 happy horseman dropped from his saddle without groan or 
 struggle, like a bull in the amphitheater, under the steel of 
 the tauridor ; and in the same saddle sat his murderer, brand- 
 ishing the bloody poni ard^ an4 UJging the horse to speed. 
 
290 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 There was indeed a possibility of his having achieved hia 
 escape, so much were those around paralyzed for the mo- 
 ment by the suddenness and audacity of the enterprise ; 
 but Flammock's presence of mind did not forsake him : 
 he seized the horse by the bridle, and, aided by those 
 who wanted but an example, made the rider prisoner, bound 
 his arms, and called aloud that he must be carried before 
 King Henry. This proposal, uttered in Flammock's strong 
 and decided tone of voice, silenced a thousand wild cries of 
 murder and treason, which had arisen while the different 
 and hostile natives, of which the crowd was composed, threw 
 upon each other reciprocally the charge of treachery. 
 
 All the streams, however, now assembled in one channel, 
 and poured with unanimous assent towards the Garde Do- 
 loureuse, excepting a few of the murdered nobleman's train, 
 who remained to transport their master's body, in decent 
 solemnity of mourning, from the spot which he had sought 
 with so much pomp and triumph. 
 
 When Flammock reached the Garde Doloureuse, he was 
 readily admitted with his prisoner, and with such witnesses 
 as he had selected to prove the execution of the crime. To 
 his request of an audience, he was answered that the King 
 had commanded that none should be admitted to him for 
 some time ; yet so singular were the tidings of the Con- 
 stable's slaughter, that the captain of the guard ventured to 
 interrupt Henry^s privacy, in order to communicate that 
 event, and returned with orders that Flammock and his 
 prisoner should be instantly admitted to the royal apart- 
 ment. Here they found Henry, attended by several persons, 
 who stood respectfully behind the royal seat in a darkened 
 part of the room. 
 
 When Flammock entered, his large bulk and massive 
 limbs were strangely contrasted with cheeks pale with horror 
 at what he just witnessed, and with awe at finding himself 
 in the royal presence-chamber. Beside him stood his 
 prisoner, undaunted by the situation in which he was 
 placed. The blood of his victim, which had spirted from 
 the wound, was visible on his bare limbs and his scanty 
 garments ; but particularly upon his brow and the hand- 
 kerchief with which it was bound. 
 
 Henry gazed on him with a stern look, which the other 
 not only endured without dismay, but seemed to return with 
 a frown of defiance. 
 
 "Does no one know this caitiff ?" said Henry, looking 
 around him. 
 
THE BETE THED 201 
 
 There was no immediate answer, until Philip Guariiie, 
 stepping from the group which stood behind the royal chair, 
 said, though with hesitation, " So please you, my liege, but 
 for the strange guise in which he is now arrayed, I should 
 say there was a household minstrel of my master, by name 
 Renault Vidal." 
 
 " Thou art deceived, Norman," replied the minstrel ; 
 ''my menial place and base lineage were but assumed. I am 
 Cadwallon the Briton — Cadwallon of the Nine Lays — Cad- 
 wallou, the chief bard of Gwenwyu of Powys Land — and his 
 avenger ! " 
 
 As he uttered the last word, his looks encountered those 
 of a palmer, who had gradually advanced from the recess in 
 which the attendants were stationed, and now confronted 
 him. 
 
 The Welshman's eyes looked so eagerly ghastly as if flying 
 from their sockets, while he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise, 
 mingled with horror, " Do the dead come before monarchs ? 
 Or, if thou art alive, wJtom have I slain ? I dreamed not, 
 surely, of that bound, and of that home blow, yet my victim 
 stands before me ! Have I not slain the Constable of 
 Chester?" 
 
 " Thou hast indeed slain the Constable," answered the 
 King ; *' but know, Welshman, it was Eandal de Lacy, on 
 whom that charge was this morning conferred, by our belief 
 of our loyal and faithful Hugo de Lacy's having been lost 
 upon his return from the Holy Land, as the vessel in which 
 he had taken passage was reported to have suffered ship- 
 wreck. Thou hast cut short Randal's brief elevation but by 
 a few hours ; for to-morrow's sun would have again seen him 
 without land or lordship." 
 
 The prisoner dropped his head on his bosom in evident 
 despair. "I thought," he murmured, "that he had 
 changed his slough and come forth so glorious all too soon. 
 May the eyes drop out that were cheated with those baubles, 
 a plumed cap and a lacquered baton ! " 
 
 " I will take care, Welshman, thine eyes cheat thee not 
 again," said the King, sternly ; " before the night is an hour 
 older, they shall be closed on all that is earthly." 
 
 *' May I request of your nobleness," said the Constable, ■ 
 " that you will permit me to ask the unhappy man a few 
 questions ? " 
 
 ** When I have demanded of him myself,*' said the King, 
 "why he has dipped his hands in the blood of a noble Nor- 
 
292 WAVTJTi'LET JiOrSLS 
 
 " Because he at whom I aimed my blow/* said the Briton, 
 his eye ghmcing fiercely from the King to De Lacy, and 
 back, " had spilled the blood of the descendant of a thousand 
 kings ; to which his own gore, or thine, proud Count of 
 Anjou, is but as the puddle of the highway to the silver 
 fountain," 
 
 Henry's eye menaced the audacious Speaker ; but the King 
 reined in his wrath when he beheld the imploring look of his 
 servant. " What wouldst thou ask of him ?" he said, " be 
 brief, for his time is short." 
 
 "So please you, my liege, I would but demand wherefore 
 he has for years forborne to take the life he aimed at, when 
 it was in his power — nay, when it must have been lost but 
 for his seemingly faithful service ? " 
 
 "Norman," said Cadwallon, " I will answer thee. When 
 I first took upon me thy service, it was well my purpose to 
 have slain thee that night. There stands the man," point- 
 ing to Philip Guarine, " to whose vigilance thou owed'stthy 
 safety." 
 
 " Indeed," said De Lacy, " I do remember some indica- 
 tions of such a purpose ; but why didst thou forego it, when 
 following opportunities put it in thy power ? " 
 
 '' When the slayer of my sovereign became God's soldier," 
 answered Cadwallon, "and served his cause in Palestine, he 
 was safe from my earthly vengeance." 
 
 " A wonderful forbearance on the part of a Welsh assas- 
 sin ! " said the King, scornfully. 
 
 "Ay," answered Cadwallon : "and which certain Chris- 
 tian princes have scarce attained to, who have never neg- 
 lected the chance of pillage or conquest afforded by the 
 absence of a rival in the Holy Crusade." 
 
 "Now, by the Holy Rood " said Henry, on the point 
 
 of bursting out, for the insult affected him peculiarly, but, 
 suddenly stopping, he said, with an air of contempt, " To 
 the gallows with the knave !" 
 
 " But one other question," said De Lacy, *' Renault, or by 
 whatever name thou art called. Ever since my return thou 
 hast rendered me service inconsistent with thy stern resolu- 
 tion upon my life : thou didst aid me in my shipwreck, and 
 didst guide me safely through Wales, where my name would 
 have ensured my death ; and all this after the crusade was 
 accomxplished ?" 
 
 "I could explain thy doubt," said the bard, " but that it 
 might be thought I was pleading for my life." 
 
 "Hesitate not for that," said the King; "for, were 
 
THE BETROTHED 288 
 
 our Holy Father to intercede for thee, his prayers were in 
 vain/' 
 
 *MVell, then," said the bard, ''know the truth: I was 
 too proud to permit either wave or AVelshman to share in my 
 revenge. Know also — what is perhaps Cadwallon's weak- 
 ness — use and habit had divided my feelings towards De 
 Lacy between aversion and admiration. I still contemplated 
 my revenge, but as something which I might never complete, 
 and which seemed rather an image in the clouds than an 
 object to which I must one day draw near. And when I 
 beheld thee," he said, turning to De Lacy, " this very day 
 so determined, so sternly resolved, to bear thy impending 
 fate like a man — that you seemed to me to resemble the last 
 tower of a ruined palace, still holding its head to heaven, 
 when its walls of splendor, and its bowers of delight, lay in 
 desolation around — " May I perish," I said to myself in 
 secret, "ere I perfect its ruin!" Yes, De Lacy, then — 
 even then, but some hours since, hadst thou accepted my 
 proffered hand, I had served thee as never follower served 
 master. You rejected it with scorn ; and yet, notwithstand- 
 ing that insult, it required that I should have seen you, as I 
 thought, trampling over the field in which you slew my 
 master, in the full pride of Norman insolence, to animate 
 my resolution to strike the blow which, meant for you, has 
 slain at least one of your usurping race. I will answer no 
 more questions. Lead on to ax or gallows — it is indifferent 
 to Cadwallon ; my soul will soon be with my free and noble 
 ancestry, and with my beloved and royal patron." 
 
 " My liege and prince," said De Lacy, bending his knee 
 to Henry, " can you hear this, and refuse your ancient 
 servant one request ? Spare this man. Extinguish not such 
 a light, because it is devious and wild." 
 
 " Kise — rise, De Lacy, and shame thee of thy petition," 
 said the King. " Thy kinsman's blood — the blood of a 
 noble Norman — is on the Welshman's hands and brow. As 
 I am crowned king, he shall die ere it is wiped off. Here ! 
 have him to present execution I " 
 
 Cadwallon was instantly withdrawn under a guard. The 
 Constable seemed, by action rather than words, to continue 
 his intercession. 
 
 " Thou art mad, De Lacy — thou art mad, mine old and 
 true friend, to urge me thus," said the King, compelling De 
 Lacy to rise, " Seest thou not that my care in this matter 
 is for thee ? This Randal, l>y largesses and promises, hath 
 made many friends, who will not, perhaps, easily again be 
 
294 WA VERLET NO VEL8 
 
 brought to your allegiance, returning, as thou dost, dimin- 
 ished in power and wealth. Had he lived, we might have 
 had hard work to deprive him entirely of the power which 
 he had acquired. We thank the Welsh assassin who hath rid 
 us of him ; but his adherents would cry foul play were the 
 murderer spared. When blood is paid for blood, all will be 
 forgotten, and their loyalty will once more flow in its proper 
 channel to thee, their lawful lord," 
 
 Hugo de Lacy arose from his knees, and endeavored 
 respectfully to combat the politic reasons of his wily sov- 
 ereign, which he plainly saw were resorted to less for his sake 
 than with the prudent purjoose of effecting the change of 
 feudal authority with the least possible trouble to the country 
 or sovereign. 
 
 Henry listened to De Lacy's arguments patiently, and 
 combated them with temper, until the death-drum began to 
 beat and the castle bell to toll. He then led De Lacy to the 
 window, on which, for it was now dark, a strong ruddy light 
 began to gleam from without. A body of men-at-arms, each 
 holding in his hand a blazing torch, were returning along 
 the terrace from the execution of the wild but high-souled 
 Briton, with cries of " Long live King Henry ! and go 
 perish all enemies of the gentle Norman men 1 " 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 A sun hath set — a star hath risen, 
 
 O, Geraldine ! since arms of thine 
 Have been the lovely lady's prison. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Popular fame had erred in assigning to Eveline Berenger, 
 after the capture of her castle, any confinement more severe 
 than that of her aunt the lady abhessof the Cistercians' con- 
 vent aiforded. Yet that was severe enough ; for maiden 
 aunts, whether abbesses or no, are not tolerant of the species 
 of errors of which Eveline was accused ; and the innocent 
 damosel was brought in many ways to eat her bread in shame 
 of countenance and bitterness of heart. Every day of her 
 confinement was rendered less and less endurable by taunts, 
 in the various forms of sympathy, consolation, and exhor- 
 tation ; but which, stripped of their assumed forms, were 
 undisguised anger and insult. Tlie company of Rose was 
 all which Eveline had to sustain lier under these inflictions, 
 and that was at length withdrawn on the very morning when 
 so many important events took place at the Garde Dolour- 
 euse. 
 
 The unfortunate young lady inquired in vain of a grim- 
 faced nun, who appeared in Rose's place to assist her to 
 dress, why her companion and friend was debarred attend- 
 ance. The nun observed on that score an obstinate silence, 
 but threw out many hints on the importance attached to the 
 vain ornaments of a frail child of clay, and on the hardship 
 that even a spouse of Heaven was compelled to divert her 
 thoughts from her higher duties, and condescend to fasten 
 clasps and adjust veils. 
 
 The lady abbess, however, told her niece after matins, 
 that her attendant had not been withdrawn from her for a 
 space only, but was likely to be shut up in a house of the 
 severest profession, for having afforded her mistress assist- 
 ance in receiving Damian de Lacy into her sleeping apart- 
 ment at the castle of Baldringham. 
 
 A soldier of De Lacy's band, wlio had hitherto kept what 
 he had observed a secret, being off his post that night, had 
 now in Damian's disgrace found he might benefit himself by 
 295 
 
296 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 telling the story. This new blow, so unexpected, so afflic- 
 tive — this new charge, which it was so difficult to explain, and 
 so impossible utterly to deny, seemed to Eveline to seal Da- 
 mian's fate and her own ; while the thought that she had 
 involved in ruin her single-hearted and high-souled attend- 
 ant was all that had been wanting to produce a state which 
 approached to the apathy of despair, " Think of me what 
 you will," she said to her aunt, " I will no longer defend 
 myself ; say what you will, I will no longer reply ; carry me 
 where you will, I will no longer resist. God will, in His 
 good time, clear my fame — may He forgive my persecutors ! " 
 
 After this, and during several hours of that unhappy day, 
 the Lady Eveline, pale, cold, silent, glided from chapel to 
 refectory, from refectory to chapel again, at the slightest 
 beck of the abbess or her official sisters, and seemed to 
 regard the various privations, penances, admonitions, and 
 reproaches, of which she, in the course of that day, was 
 subjected to an extraordinary share, no more than a marble 
 statue minds the inclemency of the external air, or the rain- 
 drops which fall upon it, though they must in time waste 
 and consume it. 
 
 The abbess, who loved her niece, although her affection 
 showed itself often in a vexatious manner, became at length 
 alarmed, countermanded her orders for removing Eveline to 
 an inferior cell, attended herself to see her laid in bed (in 
 which, as in everything else, the young lady seemed entirely 
 passive), and, with something like reviving tenderness, kissed 
 and blessed her on leaving the apartment. Slight as the mark 
 of kindness was, it was unexpected, and, like the rod of 
 Moses, opened the hidden fountains of waters. Eveline 
 wept, a resource which had been that day denied to her ; 
 she prayed ; and, finally, sobbed herself to sleep, like an in- 
 fant, with a mind somewhat tranquilized by having given 
 way to this tide of natural emotion. 
 
 She awoke more than once in the night to recall mingled 
 and gloomy dreams of cells and of castles, of funerals and of 
 bridals, of coronets and of racks and gibbets ; but towards 
 morning she fell into sleep more sound than she had hitherto 
 enjoyed, and her visions partook of its soothing character. 
 The Lady of the Garde Doloureuse seemed to smile on her 
 amid her dreams, and to promise her votaress protection. 
 The shade of her father was there also ; and, with the bold- 
 ness of a dreamer, she saw the j^aternal resemblance with 
 awe, but without fear. His lips moved, and she heard words ; 
 their import she did not fully comprehend, save that they 
 
THE BETROTHED 297 
 
 spoke of hope, consolation, and approaching happiness. 
 There also glided in, with bright blue eyes fixed upon hers, 
 dressed in a tunic of saffron-colored silk, with a mantle of 
 cerulean blue of antique fashion, the form of a female, re- 
 splendent in that delicate species of beauty -^hich attends 
 the fairest complexion. It was, she thought, the Britoness 
 Vanda ; but her countenance was no longer resentful ; her 
 long yellow hair flew not loose on her shoulders, but was 
 mysteriously braided with oak and mistletoe ; above all, her 
 ri^ht hand was gracefully disposed of under her mantle, and 
 it was an unmutilated, unspotted, and beautifully formed 
 hand which crossed the brow of Eveline. Yet, under these 
 assurances of favor, a thrill of fear passed over her as the 
 vision seemed to repeat or chant, 
 
 " Widow'd wife and wedded maid. 
 Betrothed, betrayer, and betray'd. 
 All is done that has been said I 
 Vanda's wrong has been y wroken ; 
 Take her pardon by this token." 
 
 She bent down as if to kiss Eveline, who started at that 
 instant, and then awoke. Her hand was indeed gently pressed 
 by one as pure and white as her own. The blue eyes and 
 fair hair of a lovely female face, with half-veiled bosom and 
 disheveled locks, flitted through her vision, and indeed its 
 lips approached to those of the lovely sleeper at the moment 
 of her awakening ; but it was Eose in whose arms her mis- 
 tress found herself pressed, and who moistened her face with 
 tears, as in a passion of affection she covered it with kisses." 
 
 " What means this, Rose ?" said Eveline ; " thank God, 
 you are restored to me ! But what mean these bursts of 
 weeping ? *' 
 
 " Let me weep-^let me weep," said Rose ; " it is long since 
 I have wept for joy, and long, I trust, it will be ere I again 
 weep for sorrow. News are come on the spur from_ the 
 Garde Doloureuse. Amelot has brought them ; he is at 
 liberty, so is his master, and in high favor with Henry. 
 Here yet more, but let me not tell it too hastily. You grow 
 pale." 
 
 " -^0 — no," said Eveline ; " go on — go on, I think I under- 
 stand you — I think I do." 
 
 " The villain Randal de Lacy, the master-mover of all our 
 sorrows, will plague you no more : he was slain by an honest 
 Welshman, and grieved am I that they have hanged the poor 
 man for his good service. Above all, the stout old Constable 
 
298 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 is liimself returned from Palestiue, as worthy, and somewhat 
 wiser, than he was ; for It is thought he will renounce his 
 contract with your ladyship." 
 
 "Silly girl," said Eveline, crimsoning as high as she had i 
 been before pale, "jest not amidst such a tale. But can 
 this be reality ? Is Randal indeed slain, and the Constable 
 returned ?" 
 
 These were hasty and hurried questions, answered as 
 hastily and confusedly, and broken with ejaculations of i 
 surprise, and thanks to Heaven and to Our Lady, until e 
 the ecstasy of delight sobered down into a sort of tranquil a 
 wonder. ti 
 
 Meanwhile Daraian Lacy also had his explanations to i) 
 receive, and the mode in which they were conveyed had w 
 something remarkable. Damian had for some time been fc 
 the inhabitant of wliat our age would have termed a dungeon, oj 
 but which, in the ancient days, they called a prison. We 
 are perhaps censurable in making the dwelling and the food 
 of acknowledged and convicted guilt more comfortable and 
 palatable than what the parties could have gained by any ex- 
 ertions when at large, and supporting themselves by honest 
 labor ; but this is a venial error compared to that of our 
 ancestors, who, considering a charge and a conviction as 
 synonymous, treated the accused before sentence in a manner j b 
 which would have been of itself a severe punishment after 
 he was found guilty. Damian, therefore, notwithstanding his 
 high birth and distinguished rank, was confined after tlie man- 
 ner of the most atrocious criminal, was heavily fettered, fed on 
 the coarsest food, and experienced only this alleviation, that he 
 was permitted to indulge his misery in a solitary and separate 
 cell, the wretched furniture of which was a mean bedstead, 
 and a broken table and chair. A coffin — and his own arms 
 and initials were painted upon it — stood in one corner, to 
 remind him of his approaching fate ; and a crucifix was 
 placed in another, to intimate to him that there was a world 
 beyond that which must soon close upon him. No noise 
 could penetrate into the iron silence of his prison — no rumor, 
 either touching his own fate or that of hisfriends. Charged 
 with being taken in open arms against the King, he was 
 subject to military law, and to be put to death even without 
 the formality of a hearing ; and he foresaw no milder conclu- 
 sion to his imprisonment. 
 
 This melancholy dwelling had been the abode of Damian 
 for nearly a month, when, strange as it may seem, his health, 
 
THE BETROTHED 299 
 
 which had suffered much from his wounds, began gradually 
 to improve, either benefited by the abstemious diet to which 
 he was reduced, or that certainty, however melancholy, is an 
 evil better endured by many constitutions than the feverish 
 contrast betwixt passion and duty. But the term of his im- 
 prisonment seemed drawing speedily to a close : his jailor, a 
 sullen Saxon, of the lowest order, in more words than he had 
 yet used to him, warned him to look to a speedy change of 
 dwelling, and the tone in wliich he spoke convinced the prison- 
 er there was no time to be lost. He demanded a confessor, 
 and the Jailer, though he withdrew without reply, seemed 
 to intimate by his manner that the boon would be g'-anted. 
 
 Next morning, at an unusually early hour, the chains and 
 bolts of the cell were heard to clash and groan, and Damian 
 was startled from a broken sleep, which he had not enjoyed 
 for above two hours. His eyes were bent on the slowly- 
 opening door, as if he had expected the headsman and his 
 assistants ; but the jailer ushered in a stout man in a pil- 
 grim's habit. 
 
 " Is it a priest whom yon bring me, warden ?" said the 
 unhappy prisoner. 
 
 "He can best answer the question himself ,** said the surly 
 oflRcial. and presently withdrew. 
 
 The pilgrim remained standing on the floor, with his back 
 to the small window, or rather loophole, by which the cell 
 was imperfectly lighted, and gazed intently upon Damian, 
 who was seated on the side of his bed, his pale cheek and 
 disheveled hair bearing a melancholy correspondence to his 
 heavy irons. He returned the pilgrim's gaze, but the im- 
 perfect light only showed him that his visitor was a stout 
 old man, who wore the scallop-shell on his bonnet, as a token 
 that he had passed the sea, and carried a palm-branch in his 
 hand, to show he had visited the Holy Land. 
 
 *' Benedicite, reverend father," said the unhappy young 
 Kian. " Are you a priest come to unburden my con- 
 science ? " 
 
 "I am not a priest," replied the palmer, *'but one who 
 brings you news of discomfort." 
 
 " You bring them to one to whom comfort has been long 
 a stranger, and to a place which perchance never knew it," 
 replied Damian. 
 
 " I may be the bolder in my communication," said the 
 palmer: "those in sorrow will better hear ill news than 
 those whom they surprise in the possession of content and 
 happiness." 
 
300 WA VERLE Y N VEL8 
 
 " Yet even the situation of the wretched," said Damian, 
 " can be rendered more wretched by suspense. I pray you, 
 reverend sir, to speak the worst at once. If you come to 
 announce tlie doom of this ])oor frame, may God be gracious 
 to the spirit which must be violently dismissed from it I" 
 
 " I have no such charge," said the palmer. " I come 
 from the Holy Land, and have the more grief in finding you 
 thus, because my message to you was one addressed to a free 
 man, and a wealthy one." 
 
 " For my freedom," said Damian, " let these fetters speak, 
 and this apartment for my wealth. But speak out thy news ; 
 should my uncle, for I fear thy tale regards him, want either 
 my arm or my fortune, this dungeon and my degradation have 
 further pangs than I had yet supposed, as they render me 
 unable to aid him." 
 
 " Your uncle, young man," said the palmer, "is prisoner 
 — I should rather- say skive — to the great Soldan, taken in a 
 battle in which he did his duty, though unable to avert the 
 defeat of the Christians, with which it was concluded. He 
 was made prisoner while covering the retreat, but not until 
 he had slain with his own hand, for his misfortune as it has 
 proved, Hassan Ali, a favorite of the Soldan. The cruel 
 
 Eagan has caused the worthy knight to be loaded with irons 
 eavier than tliose you wear, and the dungeon to which he 
 is confined would make this seem a palace. The infidel's first 
 resolution was to put the valiant Constable to the most dread- 
 ful death which his tormentors could devise. But fame told 
 him that Hugo de Lacy was a man of great power and wealth, 
 and he has demanded a ransom of ten thousand bezants of 
 gold. Your uncle replied that '• The payment would totally 
 impoverish him, and oblige him to dispose of his whole es- 
 tates ; even then," he pleaded, "time must be allowed him to 
 convert them into money." The Soldan replied, that " It 
 imported little to him whether a hound like the Constable 
 were fat or lean, and that he therefore insisted upon the full 
 amount of the ransom." But he so far relaxed as to make 
 it payable in three portions, on condition that, along with 
 the first portion of the price, the nearest of kin and heir of 
 De Lacy must be placed in his hands as a hostage for what 
 remained due. On these conditions he consented your uncle 
 should be put at liberty so soon as you arrive in Palestine 
 with the gold." 
 
 " Now may I indeed call myself unhappy," said Damian, 
 " that I cannot show my love and duty to my noble uncle, 
 who hath ever been a father to me in my orphan state." 
 
THE BETROTHED 301 
 
 ''It will be a heavy disappointment, doubtless, to the 
 Constable," said the palmer, "because he was eager to re- 
 curn to this happy country to fulfil a contract of marriage 
 which he had formed with a lady of great beauty and for- 
 tune." 
 
 Damian shrunk together in such sort that his fetters 
 clashed, but he made no answer. 
 
 " Were he not your uncle," continued the pilgrim, " and 
 well known as a wise man, I should think he is not quite 
 prudent in this matter. Whatever he was before he left 
 England, two summers spent in the wars of Palestine, and 
 another amid the tortures and restraints of a heathen prison, 
 have made him a sorry bridegoom." 
 
 " Peace, pilgrim," said De Lacy, with a commanding 
 tone. "It is not thy part to censure such a noble knight 
 as my uncle, nor is it meet that I should listen to your 
 strictures." 
 
 " I crave your pardon, young man," said the palmer. " I 
 spoke not without some view to your interest, which, me- 
 thinks, does not so well consort with thine uncle having an 
 heir of his body." 
 
 " Peace, base men ! " said Damian. " By Heaven, I think 
 worse of my cell then I did before, since its doors opened to 
 such a counselor, and of my chains, since they restrain me 
 from chastizing him. Depart, I pray thee," 
 
 " Not till I have your answer for your uncle," answered 
 the palmer. " My age scovns the anger of thy youth, as 
 the rock despises the foam of the rivulet dashed against 
 it." 
 
 " Then, say to my uncle," answered Damian, " I am a 
 prisoner, or I would have come to him ; I am a confiscated 
 beggar, or I would have sent him my all." 
 
 " Such virtuous purposes are easily and boldly announced," 
 said the palmer, " when he who speaks them knows that he 
 cannot be called upon to make good the boast of his tongue. 
 But could I tell thee of thy restoration to freedom and 
 wealth, I trow thou wouldst consider twice ere thy act con- 
 firmed the sacrifice thou hast in thy present state promised 
 BO glibly." 
 
 "Leave me, I prithee, old man," said Damian; "thy 
 thought cannot comprehend the tenor of mine — go, and add 
 not to my distress insults which I have not the means to 
 avenge." 
 
 " But what if I had it in my power to place thee in the 
 situation of a free and wealthy man, would it please thee 
 
302 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 then to be reminded of thy present boast ; for if not, thou 
 ma3'St rely on my discretion never to mention the difference 
 of sentiment between Damian bound and Damian at 
 liberty ? " 
 
 " How meanest thou ? or hast thou any meaning, save to 
 torment me ? " said the youth. 
 
 " Not so," seplied the old j^almer, plucking from his 
 bosom a parchment scroll to which a heavy seal was at- 
 tached. " Know that thy cousin Randal hath been strangely 
 slain, and his treacheries towards the Constable and thee as 
 strangely discovered. The King, in requital of thy suffer- 
 ings, hath sent thee this full pardon, and endowed thee with 
 a third part of those ample estates, vv^hich, by his death, 
 revert to the crown.'' 
 
 " And hath the King also restored my freedom and my 
 right of blood ? " exclaimed Damian. 
 
 ''From this moment, forthwith," said the palmer; 'Mook 
 upon the parchment — behold the royal hand and seal." 
 
 " I must have better proof. Here," he exclaimed, loudly 
 clashing his irons at the same time — "here, thou Dogget — 
 warder — son of a Saxon wolf-hound ! " 
 
 The palmer, striking on the door, seconded the previous 
 exertions for summoning the jailer, who entered accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Warder," said Damian de Lacy, in a stern tone, " am I 
 yet thy prisoner or no ? " 
 
 The sullen jailer consulted the palmer by a look, and then 
 answered to Damian that he was a free man. 
 
 " Then, death of thy heart, slave," said Damian, im- 
 patiently, " why hang these fetters on the free limbs of a 
 Norman noble ? Each moment they confine him are worth 
 a lifetime of bondage to such a serf as thou ! " 
 
 " They are soon rid of. Sir Damian," said the man ; " and 
 I pray you to take some patience, when you remember that 
 ten minutes since you had little right to think these brace- 
 lets would have been removed for any other purpose than 
 your progress to the scaffold." 
 
 " Peace, ban-dog," said Damian, "and be speedy ! And 
 thou, who hast brought me these good tidings, I forgive thy 
 former bearing : thou thoughtest, doubtless, that it was 
 prudent to extort from me professions during my bondage 
 which might in honor decide my conduct when at large. 
 The suspicion inferred in it somewhat offensive, but thy 
 motive was to ensure my uncle's liberty." 
 
 " And is it really your purpose," said the palmer, "■ to 
 
THE BETROTHED 80S 
 
 employ your newly-gained freeaom in a voyage to Syria, and 
 to exchange your English prison for the dungeon of the 
 Soldan?" 
 
 " If thou thyself wilt act as my guide," answered the un- 
 daunted youth, "' you shall not say I dally by the way." 
 
 " And the ransom," said the palmer, *' how is that to be 
 provided ? " 
 
 " How, but from the estates, which, nominally restored to 
 me, remain in truth and justice my uncle's, and must be ap- 
 plied to his use in the first instance ? If I mistake not 
 greatly, there is not a Jew or Lombard who would not ad- 
 vance the necessary sums on such security. Therefore, 
 dog," he continued, addressing the jailer, " hasten thy un- 
 clenching and undoing of rivets, and be not dainty of giving 
 me a little pain, so thou break no limb, for I cannot afford 
 to be stayed on my journey." 
 
 The palmer looked on a little while, as if surprised at 
 Damian's determination, then exclaimed, "lean keep the 
 old man's secret no longer ; such higli-souled generosity 
 must not be sacrificed. Hark thee, brave Sir Damian, I 
 have a mighty secret still to impart, and as this Saxon churl 
 understands no French, this is no unfit opportunity to com- 
 municate it. Know that thine uncle is a changed man in 
 mind, as he is debilitated and broken down in body. Peev- 
 ishness and jealousy have possessed themselves of a heart 
 which was once strong and generous ; his life is now on 
 the dregs, and, I grieve to speak it, these dregs are foul and 
 bitter." 
 
 " Is this thy mighty secret ?" said Damian. " That men 
 grow old, I know ; and if with infirmity of body comes 
 infirmity of temper and mind, their case the more strongly 
 claims the dutiful observance of those who are bound to 
 them in blood or affection," 
 
 "Ay," replied the pilgrim, "but the Constable's mind 
 has been poisoned against thee by rumors which have reached 
 his ear from England, that there have been thoughts of af- 
 fection betwixt thee and his betrothed bride, Eveline 
 Berenger. Ha ! have I touched you now ?" 
 
 "Not a whit," said Damian, putting on the strongest 
 resolution with which his virtue could supply him ; " it was 
 but this fellow who struck my shin-bone somewhat sharply 
 with his hammer. Proceed. My uncle heard such a report, 
 and believed it ? " 
 
 " He did," said the palmer ; " I can well aver it, since he 
 concealed no thought from me. But he prayed me care- 
 
304 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 fully to hide his suspicions from you. ' Otherwise/ said he, 
 ' the young wolf-cub will never thrust himself into the trap 
 for the deliverance of the old he-wolf. Were he once in my 
 prison-house/ your uncle continued to speak of you, 'he 
 should rot and die ere I sent one penny of ransom to set at 
 liberty the lover of my betrothed bride.'" 
 
 *' Could this be my uncle's sincere purpose ? " said Damian, 
 all aghast. " Could he plan so much treachery towards me 
 as to leave me in the captivity into which I threw myself for 
 his redemption ? Tush ! it cannot be/' 
 
 " Flatter not yourself with such a vain opinion/' said the 
 palmer: " if you go to Syria, you go to eternal captivity, 
 while your uncle returns to possession of wealth little dimin- 
 ished — and of Eveline Berenger." 
 
 "Ha!" ejaculated Damian; and, looking down for an 
 instant, demanded of the palmer, in a subdued voice, what 
 he would have him to do in such an extremity. 
 
 "The case is plain, according to my poor judgment," 
 replied the palmer. " No one is bound to faith with those 
 who mean to observe none with him. Anticipate this 
 treachery of your uncle, and let his now short and infirm 
 existence molder out in the pestiferous cell to which he 
 would condemn your youthful strength. The royal grant 
 has assigned you lands enough for your honorable support ; 
 and wherefore not unite with them those of the Garde 
 Doloureuse ? Eveline Berenger, if I do not greatly mis- 
 take, will scarcely say 'nay.' Ay, more — I vouch it on my 
 soul that she will say ' yes,' for I have sure information of 
 her mind ; and for her pre-contract, a word from Henry to 
 His Holiness, now that they are in the heyday of their rec- 
 onciliation, will obliterate the name ' Hugo' from the parch- 
 ment, and insert ' Damian' in its stead." 
 
 " JSTow, by my faith," said Damian, arising and placing 
 his foot upon the stool, that the warder might more easily 
 strike oK the last ring by which he was encumbered, " I 
 have heard of such things as this — I have heard of beings 
 who, with seeming gravity of word and aspect, with subtle 
 counsels, artfully applied to the frailties of human nature, 
 have haunted the cells of despairing men, and made them 
 many a fair promise, if they would but exchange for their 
 by-ways the paths of salvation. Such are the fiend's dearest 
 agents, and in such a guise hath the fiend himself been 
 known to appear. In the name of God, old man, if human 
 thou art, begone ! I like not thy words or thy presence — I 
 spit at thy counsels. And mark me," he added, with a 
 
THE BETROTHED 305 
 
 menacing gesture, "look to thine own safety ; I shall pres- 
 ently be at liberty !" 
 
 "Boy," replied the palmer, folding his arms contemptu- 
 ously in his cloak, " I scorn thy menaces ; I leave thee not 
 till we know each other better." 
 
 "I too," said Damian, "would fain know whether thou 
 be'st man or fiend ; and now for the trial." As he spoke, 
 the last shackle fell from his leg and clashed on the pave- 
 ment, and at the same moment he sprung on the palmer, 
 caught him by the waist, and exclaimed, as he made three 
 distinct and desperate attempts to lift him up and dash hmi 
 headlong to the earth, " This for maligning a nobleman, 
 this for doubting the honor of a knight, and this (with a yet 
 more violent exertion) for belying a lady ! " 
 
 Each effort of Damian seemed equal to have rooted up a 
 tree ; yet, though they staggered the old man, they over- 
 threw him not ; and while Damian panted with his last exer- 
 tion, he replied, "And take thou this, for so roughly 
 entreating thy father's brother." 
 
 As he spoke, Damian de Lacy, the best youthful Avrestler 
 in Cheshire, received no soft fall on the floor of the dun- 
 geon. He arose slowly and astounded ; but the palmer had 
 now thrown back both hood and dalmatique, and the fea- 
 tures, though bearing marks of age and climate, were those 
 of his uncle the Constable, who calmly observed, "I think, 
 Damian, thou art become stronger, or I weaker, since my 
 breast was last pressed against yours in our country's cele- 
 barted sport. Thou hadst nigh had me down in that last 
 turn, but that I knew the old De Lacy's back- trip as well as 
 thou. But wherefore kneel, man?" He raised him with 
 much kindness, kissed his cheek, and proceeded — " Think 
 not, my dearest nephew, that I meant in my late disguise 
 to try your faith, which I myself never doubted. But evil 
 tongues had been busy, and it was this which made me 
 resolve on an experiment, the result of which has been, as I 
 expected, most honorable for you. And know — for these 
 walls have sometimes ears, even according to the letter — 
 there are ears and eyes not far distant which have heard and 
 seen the whole. Marry, I wish, though, thy last hug had 
 not been so severe a one. My ribs still feel the impression 
 of thy knuckles." 
 
 " Dearest and honored uncle," said Damian, " excuse 
 
 " There is nothing to excuse," replied his uncle, inter- 
 rupting him. " Have we not wrestled a turn before now ? 
 
 20 
 
306 WA VERL EY NO VEL S 
 
 But there remains yet one trial for thee to go through. Get 
 thee out of this hole speedily ; don thy best array to accom- 
 pany me to the church at noon ; for, Uamian, thou must be 
 present at the marriage of the Lady Eveline Berenger." 
 
 This proposal at once struck to the earth the unhappy 
 young man. " For mercy's sake/' he exclaimed, " hold me 
 excused in this, my gracious uncle ! I have been of late 
 severely wounded, and am very weak." 
 
 " As my bones can testify," said his uncle. "Why, man, 
 thou hast the strength of a Xorway bear." 
 
 " Passion," answered Damian, "might give me strength 
 for a moment ; but, dearest uncle, ask anything of me 
 rather than this. Methinks, if I have been faulty, some 
 other punishment might suffice." 
 
 " I tell thee," said the Constable, "thy presence is neces- 
 sary — indispensably necessary. Strange reports have been 
 abroad, which thy absence on this occasion would go far to 
 confirm. Eveline's character and mine own are concerned 
 in this." 
 
 "If so," said Damien — "if it be indeed so, no task will 
 be too hard for me. But I trust, when the ceremony is 
 over, you will not refuse me your consent to take the cross, 
 unless you should prefer my joining the troops destined, as 
 I heard^, for tlie conquest of Ireland." 
 
 " Ay — ay," said the Constable ; " if Eveline grant you 
 permission, I will not withhold mine." 
 
 *' Uncle," said Damian, somewhat sternly, "you do not 
 know the feelings which you jest with." 
 
 "Nay," said the Constable, "I compel nothing; for, if 
 thou goest to the church and likest not the match, thou 
 may'st put a stop to it if thou wilt : the sacrament cannot 
 proceed without the bridegroom's consent." 
 
 " I understand you not, uncle," said Damian ; " you have 
 already consented." 
 
 "Yes, Damian," he said, "I have — to withdraw my 
 claim, and to relinquish it in thy favor ; for if Eveline 
 Berenger is wedded to-day, thou art her bridegroom. The 
 church has given her sanction, the King his approbation, 
 the lady says not ' nay,' and the question only now remains, 
 whether the bridegroom will say 'yes.'" 
 
 The nature of the answer may be easily conceived ; nor is 
 it necessary to dwell upon the splendor of the ceremonial, 
 which, to atone for his late unmerited severity, Henry hon- 
 ored with his own presence. Amelot and Eose were shortly 
 afterwards united, old Flammock having been previously 
 
THE BETROTHED 307 
 
 created a gentleman of coat armor, tliat the gentle Norman 
 blood might, without utter derogation, mingle with the 
 meaner stream which colored the cheek in crimson, and 
 meandered in azure over the lovely neck and bosom of the 
 fair Fleming. There was nothing in the manner of the 
 Constable towards his nephew and his bride which could 
 infer a regret of the generous self-denial which he had ex- 
 ercised in favor of their youthful passion ; but he soon after 
 accepted a high command in the troops destined to invade 
 Ireland, and his name is found among the highest in the 
 roll of the chivalrous Normans who first united that fair 
 island to the English crown. 
 
 Eveline, restored to her own fair castle and domains, 
 failed not to provide for her confessor, as well as for her old 
 soldiers, servants and retainers, forgetting their errors and 
 remembering their fidelity. The confessor was restored to 
 the flesh-pots, of Egypt, more congenial to his habits than 
 the meager fare of his convent. Even Gillian had the 
 means of subsistence, since to punish her would have been 
 to distress the faithful Raoul. They quarreled for the 
 future part of their lives in plenty, just as they had for- 
 merly quarreled in poverty ; for wrangling curs will fight 
 over a banquet as fiercely as over a bare bone. Eaoul died 
 first, and Gillian, having lost her whetstone, found that as 
 her youthful looks decayed her wit turned somewhat blunt. 
 She therefore prudently commenced devotee, and spent 
 hours in long panegyrics on her departed husband. 
 
 The only serious cause of vexation which I can trace the 
 Lady Eveline having been tried with arose from a visit of 
 her Saxon relative, made with much form, but, unfortu- 
 nately, at the very time which the lady abbess had selected 
 for that same purpose. The discord which arose between 
 these honored personages was of a double character, for they 
 Avere Norman and Saxon, and, moreover, differed in opinion 
 concerning the time of holding Easter. This, however, 
 was but a slight gale to disturb the general serenity of 
 Eveline ; for with her unhoped-for union with Damian 
 ended the trials and sorrows of The Betkothed. 
 
 E2fO OF THE BEIBOTHED. 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 
 
312 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Eastern tale ; and no doubt believed that I might venture, 
 without silly imprudence, to extend my personal expenditure 
 considerably beyond what I should have thought of had my 
 means been limited to the competence wliich I derived from 
 inheritance, with the moderate income of a professional 
 situation. I bought, and built, and planted, and was con- 
 sidered by myself, as by the rest of the world, in the safe 
 possession of an easy fortune. My riclies, however, like the 
 other riches of this world, were liable to accidents, under 
 which they were ultimately destined to make unto them- 
 selves wings and fly away. The year 1825, so disastrous to 
 many branches of industry and commerce, did not spare the 
 market of literature ; and the sudden ruin that fell on so 
 many of the booksellers could scarcely have been expected to 
 leave unscatlied one whose career had of necessity connected 
 him deeply and extensively with the pecuniary transactions 
 of that profession. In a word, almost without one note of 
 premonition, I found myself involved in the sweeping catas- 
 trophe of the unhappy time, and called on to meet the de- 
 mands of creditors upon commerci;ii establishments with 
 which my fortunes had long been bound up, to the extent 
 of no less a sum than one hundred and twenty thousand 
 pounds. 
 
 The Author having, however rashly, committed his pledges 
 thus largely to the hazards of trading companies, it behoved 
 him, of course, to abide the consequences of his conduct, 
 and, with whatever feelings, he surrendered on the instant 
 every shred of property which he had been accustomed to 
 call his own. It became vested in the hands of gentlemen, 
 whose integrity, prudence, and intelligence were combined 
 with all possible liberality and kindness of disposition, and 
 who readily afforded every assistance towards the execution 
 of plans in the success of wdiich the Author contemplated 
 the possibility of liis ultimate extrication, and which were 
 of such a nature that, had assistance of this sort been with- 
 held, he could have had little prospect of carrying them into 
 effect. Among other resources which occurred was the pro- 
 ject of that complete and corrected edition of his novels and 
 romances (whose real parentage had of necessity been dis- 
 closed at the moment of the commercial convulsions alluded 
 to), which has now advanced with unprecedented favor 
 nearly to its close ; but as he purj^osed also to continue, for 
 the behoof of those to whom he was indebted, the exercise 
 of his pen in the same pr.th of literature, so long as the taste 
 of his countrymen should seem to approve of his efforts, it 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 313 
 
 appeared to him that it would have been an idle piece of 
 affectation to attempt getting up a new incognito, after 
 his original visor had been thus dashed from his brow. 
 Hence the personal narrative prefixed to the first work 
 of fiction which he put forth after the isaternity of the 
 Waverley Novels had come to be publicly ascertained ; and 
 though many of the particulars originally avowed in that 
 notice have been unavoidably adverted to in the prefaces and 
 notes to some of the preceding volumes of the present collec- 
 tion, it is now reprinted as it stood at the time, because some 
 interest is generally attached to a coin or medal struck on a 
 special occasion, as expressing, perhaps, more faithfully than 
 the same artist could have afterwards conveyed the feelings 
 of the moment that gave it birth. 
 
 The Introduction to the First Series of Chronicles of the 
 Canongate [1827] ran, then, in these words : 
 
 All who are acquainted with the early history of the Italian 
 stage are aware that arlechino is not, in his original concep- 
 tion, a mere worker of marvels with his wooden sword, a 
 jumper in and out of windows, as upon our theater, but, as 
 his parti-colored jacket implies, a buffoon or clown, whose 
 mouth, far from being eternally closed, as amongst us, is 
 filled, like that of Touchstone, with quips, and cranks, and 
 witty devices, very often delivered extempore. It is not 
 easy to trace how he became possessed of his black vizard, 
 which was anciently made in the resemblance of the face of 
 a cat ; but it seems that the mask was essential to the per- 
 formance of the character, as will appear from the following 
 theatrical anecdote : — 
 
 An actor on the Italian stage permitted at i\\e foire du St. 
 Germain, in Paris, was renowned for the wild, venturous, 
 and extravagant wit, the brilliant sallies and fortunate rep- 
 artees, with which he prodigally seasoned the character of 
 the parti-colored jester. Some critics, whose good-will to- 
 wards a favorite performer was stronger than their judgment, 
 took occasion to remonstrate with the successful actor on 
 the subject of the grotesque vizard. They went wilily to 
 their purpose, observing, that his classical and Attic wit, his 
 delicate vein of humor, his happy turn for dialogue, were 
 rendered burlesque and ludicrous by this unmeaning and 
 bizarre disguise, and that those attributes would become far 
 more impressive if aided by the spirit of his eye and the ex- 
 pression of his natural features. The actor's vanity was 
 easily so far engaged as to induce him to make the experi- 
 
S14 WAVEBLET NOVELS 
 
 ment. He played harlequin barefaced, but was considered 
 on all hands as having made a total failure. He had lost 
 the audacity which a sense of incognito bestowed, and with 
 it all the reckless play of raillery which gave vivacity to his 
 original acting. He cursed his advisers, and resumed his 
 grotesque vizard ; but, it is said, without ever being able to 
 regain the careless and successful levity which the con- 
 sciousness of the disguise had formerly bestowed. 
 
 Perhaps the Author of Waverley is now about to incur a 
 risk of the same kind, and endanger his popularity by hav- 
 ing laid aside his incognito. It is certainly not a voluntary 
 experiment, like that of harlequin ; for it was my original 
 intention never to have avowed these works during my life- 
 time, and the original manuscripts were carefully preserved, 
 though by the care of others rather than mine, with the 
 purpose of supplying the necessary evidence of the truth 
 when the period of announcing it should arrive.* But the 
 affairs of my publishers having unfortunately passed into a 
 management different from tlieir own, I had no right any 
 longer to rely upon secrecy in that quarter ; and thus my 
 mask, like my Aunt Dinah's in Tristram Shandy, having 
 begun to wax a little threadbare about the chin, it became 
 time to lay it aside with a good grace, unless I desired it 
 should fall in pieces from my face, which was now become 
 likely. 
 
 Yet I had not the slightest intention of selecting the time 
 and place in which the disclosure was finally made ; nor was 
 there any concert betwixt my learned and respected friend 
 Lord Meadowbank f and myself upon that occasion. It was, 
 as the reader is probably aware, upon the 23d February last 
 [1827] , at a public meeting, called for establishing a pro- 
 fessional Theatrical Fund in Edinburgh, that the communi- 
 cation took place. \ Just before we sat down to table. 
 Lord Meadowbank asked me privately whether I was still 
 anxious to preserve my incognito on the subject of what 
 were called the Waverley Novels ? I did not immediately 
 see the purpose of his lordship's question, although I cer- 
 tainly might have been led to infer it, and replied that 
 the secret had now of necessity become known to so many 
 people that I was indifferent on the subject. Lord Meadow- 
 
 * These manuscripts are at present (August 1831) advertised for 
 public sale, which is an addition, though a small one, to other 
 annoyances 
 
 f One of the Supreme Judges of Scotland, termed Lords of Coun- 
 cil and Session. % See Appendix. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 315 
 
 bank was thus induced, while doing me the great honor 
 of proposing my health to the meeting, to say something 
 on the subject of these Novels, so strongly connecting them 
 with me as the author, that, by remaining silent, I must 
 have stood convicted, either of the actual paternity, or of 
 the still greater crime of being supposed willing to receive 
 indirectly praise to which I had no just title. 1 thus found 
 myself suddenly and unexpectedly placed in the confessional, 
 and had only time to recollect that I had been guided thither 
 by a most friendly hand, and could not, perhaps, find a bet- 
 ter public opportunity to lay down a disguise which began 
 to resemble that of a detected masquerader. I had .here- 
 fore the task of avowing myself, to the numerous and re- 
 spectable company assembled, as the sole and unaided author 
 of these Novels of Waverley, the paternity of which was 
 likely at one time to have formed a controversy of some 
 celebrity, for the ingenuity with which some instructors of 
 the public gave their assurance on the subject was extremely 
 persevering. 
 
 I now think it further necessary to say, that, while I take 
 on myself all the merits and demerits attending these com- 
 positions, I am bound to acknowledge with gratitude hints 
 of subjects and legends which I have received from various 
 quarters, and have occasionally used as a foundation of my 
 fictitious compositions, or woven up with them in the shape 
 of episodes. I am bound, in particular, to acknowledge the 
 unremitting kindness of Mr. Joseph Train, supervisor of ex- 
 cise at Dumfries, to whose unwearied industry I have been 
 indebted for many curious traditions and points of antiqua- 
 rian interest. It was Mr. Train, who brought to my recollec- 
 tion the history of Old Mortality, although I myself had had 
 a personal interview with that celebrated wanderer so far 
 back as about 1792, when I found him on his usual task. He 
 was then engaged in repairing the gravestones of the Cove- 
 nanters who had died while imprisoned in the Castle of Dun- 
 nottar, to which many of them were committed prisoners at 
 the period of Argyle's rising ; their place of confinement is 
 still called the Whigs' Vault. Mr. Train, however, pro- 
 cured for me far more extensive information concerning this 
 singular person, whose name was Paterson, than I had been 
 able to acquire during my own short conversation with him.* 
 He was, as I think I have somewhere already stated, a native 
 of the parish of Closeburn, in Dumfriesshire, and it is be- 
 
 * See, for some further particulars, the notes to Old Mortality. 
 
316 WAV ERLEY NOVELS 
 
 lieved that domestic affliction, as well as devotional feeling, 
 induced him to commence the wandering mode of life which 
 he pursued for a very long period. It is more than twenty 
 years since Robert Paterson's death, which took place on 
 the highroad near Lockerby, where he was found ex- 
 hausted and expiring. The white pony, the companion of 
 his pilgrimage, was standing by the side of its dying master, 
 the whole furnishing a scene not unfitted for the pencil. 
 These particulars I had from Mr. Train. 
 
 Another debt, which I pay most Avillingly, I owe to an un- 
 known correspondent, a lady,* who favored me Avith the 
 history of the upright and higli-priucipled female whom, in 
 in Tlie Heart of Midlothian, I have termed Jeanie Deans. 
 The circumstance of her refusing to save her sister's life by 
 an act of perjury, and undertaking a pilgrimage to London 
 to obtain her pardon, are both represented as true by my 
 fair and obliging correspondent ; and they led me to con- 
 sider the possibility of rendering a fictitious personage in- 
 teresting by mere dignity of mind and rectitude of prin- 
 ciple, assisted by unpretending good sense and temper, with' 
 out any of the beauty, grace, talent, accomplishment, and 
 Avit to which a heroine of romance is supposed to have a 
 prescriptive right. If the portrait was received with inter- 
 est by the public, I am conscious how much it was owing to 
 the truth and force of the original sketch, which I regret 
 that I am unable to present to the public, as it was written 
 with much feeling and spirit. 
 
 Old and odd books, and a considerable collection of family 
 legends, formed another quarry, so ample, that it was much 
 more likely that the strength 'of the laborer should be ex- 
 hausted than that materials should fail. I may mention, 
 for example's sake, that the terrible catastrophe of Tlie Bride 
 of Lammermoor actually occurred in a Scottish family of 
 rank. The female relative, by whom the melancholy tale 
 was communicated to me many years since, was a near con- 
 nection of the family in which the event happened, and 
 always told it with an appearance of melancholy mystery, 
 which enhanced the interest. She had known, in her youth, 
 the brother who rode before the unhappy victim to the fatal 
 altar, who, though then a mere boy, and occupied almost 
 entirely with tlie gaiety of his own appearance in the bridal 
 procession, could not but remark that the hand of his sister 
 was moist, and cold as that of a statue. It is unnecessary 
 
 • The late Mrs. Goldie. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 317 
 
 further to withdraw the veil from this scene of family dis- 
 tress, nor, although it occurred more than a hundred years 
 since, might it be altogether agreeable to the representa- 
 tives of the families concerned in the narrative. It may be 
 proper to say, that the events alone are imitated ; but I had 
 neither the means nor intention of copying the manners, or 
 tracing the characters, of the persons concerned in the real 
 story. 
 
 Indeed, I may here state generally, that, although I have 
 deemed historical personages free subjects of delineation, I 
 have never on any occasion violated the respect due to private 
 life. It was indeed impossible that traits proper to per- 
 sons, both living and dead, with whom I have had inter- 
 course in society, should not have risen to my pen in such 
 works as Waverley and those which followed it. But I have 
 always studied to generalize the portraits, so that they should 
 still seem, on the whole, the productions of fancy, though 
 possessing some resemblance to real individuals. Yet I 
 must own my attempts have not in this last particular been 
 uniformly successful. There are men whose characters are 
 so peculiarly marked, that the delineation of some leading 
 and principal feature inevitably places the whole person be- 
 fore you in his individuality. Thus, the character of Jon- 
 athan Oldbuck, in The Antiquary , was partly founded on 
 that of an old friend of my youth, to whom I am indebted 
 for introducing me to Shakspeare, and other invaluable 
 favors ; but Itliought I had so completely disguised the like- 
 ness that his features could not be recognized by any one 
 now alive. I was mistaken, however, and indeed had endan- 
 gered what I desired should be considered as a secret ; for I 
 afterwards learned that a highly respectable gentleman, one 
 of the few surviving friends of my father,* and an acute 
 critic, had said, upon the appearance of the work, that he 
 was now convinced who was the author of it, as he recog- 
 nized, in the Antiquary of Monkbarns, traces of the char- 
 acter of a very intimate friend of my father's family. 
 
 I may here also notice, that the sort of exchange of gallan- 
 try which is represented as taking place betwixt the baron of 
 Bradwardine [Waverley] and Colonel Talbot is a literal fact. 
 The real circumstances of the anecdote, alike honorable to 
 Whig and Tory, are these : — 
 
 Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle — a name which I can- 
 
 * James Chalmers, Esq., solicitor-at-la\v, London, who died 
 during tlie publication of the collected Edition of these novels, 
 (Aug. 1831.) 
 
318 WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 not write without the warmest recollections of gratitude to 
 the friend of my childhood, who first introduced me to the 
 Highlands, their traditions and their manners — had been en- 
 gaged actively in the troubles of 1745. As he charged at 
 the battle of Preston with his clan, the Stewarts of Appine, 
 he saw an officer of the opposite army standing alone by 
 a battery of four cannon, of which he discharged three on 
 the advancing Highlanders, and then drew his sword. In- 
 vernahyle rushed on him, and required him to surrender. 
 '' Never to rebels ! " was the undaunted reply, accompanied 
 with a lunge, which the Highlander received on his target ; 
 but instead of using his sword in cutting down his now de- 
 fenseless antagonist, he employed it in parrying the blow of 
 a Lochaber ax, aimed at the officer by the miller, one of his 
 own followers, a grim-looking old Highlander, whom I re- 
 member to have seen. Thus, overpowered, Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Allan Whitefoord, a gentleman of rank and conse- 
 quence, as well as a brave officer, gave up his sword, and 
 with it his purse and watch, which Invernahyle accepted, 
 to save them from his followers. After the affair was over, 
 Mr. Stewart sought out his prisoner, as they were introduced 
 to each other by the celebrated John Roy Stewart, who ac- 
 quainted Colonel Whitefoord with the quality of his captor, 
 and made him aware of the necessity of receiving back his 
 property, which he was inclined to leave in the hands into 
 which it had fallen. So great became the confidence estab- 
 lished betwixt them, that Invernahyle obtained from the 
 Chevalier his prisoner's freedom upon parole ; and soon after- 
 wards, having been sent back to the Highlands to raise men, 
 he visited Colonel Whitefoord at his own house, and spent 
 two happy days with him and his Whig friends, without 
 thinking, on either side, of the civil war which was then 
 raging. 
 
 When the battle of Culloden put an end to the hopes of 
 Charles Edward, Invernahyle, wounded and unable to move, 
 was borne from the field by the faithful zeal of his retainers. 
 But, as he had been a distinguished Jacobite, his family and 
 property were exposed to the system of vindictive destruc- 
 tion too generally carried into execution through the country 
 vt the insurgents. It was now Colonel Whitefoord's turn to 
 exert himself, and he wearied all the authorities, civil and 
 military, with his solicitations for pardon to the saver of his 
 life, or at least for a protection for his wife and family. His 
 applications were for a long time unsuccessful. ** I was 
 found with the mark of the beast upon me in every list," 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 3i9 
 
 was Invernahyle's expression. At length Colonel Wliitefoord 
 applied to the Duke of Cumberland, and urged his suit 
 with every argument which he could think of. Being still 
 repulsed, he took his commission from his bosom, and, having 
 said something of his own and his family's exertions in the 
 cause of the house of Hanover, begged to resign his situation 
 in their service, since he could not be permitted to show his 
 gratitude to the person to whom he owed his life. The Duke, 
 struck with his earnestness, desired him to take up his com- 
 mission, and granted the protection required for the family 
 of Invernahyle. 
 
 The chieftain himself lay concealed in a cave nCcir his 
 own house, before which a small body of regular soldiers 
 were encamped. He could hear their muster-roll called 
 every morning, and their drums beat to quarters at night, 
 and not a change of the sentinels escaped him. As it was 
 suspected that he was lurking somewhere on the property, 
 his family were closely watched, and compelled to use the 
 utmost precaution in supplying him with food. One of his 
 daughters, a child of eight or ten years old, was employed 
 as the agent least likely to be suspected. She was an instance 
 among others, that a time of danger and difficulty creates 
 a premature sharpness of intellect. She made herself ac- 
 quainted among the soldiers, till she became so familiar to 
 them that her motions escaped their notice ; and her prac- 
 tise was to stroll away into the neighborhood of the cave, 
 and leave what slender supply of food slie carried for that 
 purpose under some remarkable stone, or the root of some 
 tree, where her father might find it as he crept by night 
 from his lurking-place. Times became milder, and my ex- 
 cellent friend was relieved from proscription by the Act of 
 Indemnity. Such is the interesting story which ^ I have 
 rather injured than improved by the manner in which it is 
 told in Waverley. 
 
 This incident, with several other circumstances illustrat- 
 ing the Tales in question, was communicated by me to my 
 late lamented friend, William Erskine, a Scottish judge, by 
 the title of Lord Kinedder, who afterwards reviewed with 
 far too much partiality the Tales of my Landlord for the 
 Quarterly Review of January 1817.'* In the same article 
 are contained other illustrations of the Novels, with which 
 I supplied my accomplished friend, who took the trouble 
 to write the review. The reader who is desirous of such 
 
 * Lord Kinedder died in Augrist 1822, Eheu 1 (Aug. 1831.) 
 
320 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 iuformation will find the original of Meg Merrilies, and I 
 believe of one or two other personages of the same cast of 
 character, in the article referred to. 
 
 1 may also mention, that the tragic and savage circum- 
 stances which are represented as preceding the birth of 
 Allan M'Aulay, in The Legend of 31ontrose, really happened 
 in the family of Stewart of Ardvoirlich. The wager about 
 the candlesticks, whose place was supplied by Highland 
 torch-bearers, was laid and won by one of the MacDonalds 
 of Keppoch. 
 
 There can be but little amusement in winnowing out the 
 few grains of truth which are contained in this mass of 
 empty fiction. I may, however, before dismissing the sub- 
 ject, allude to the various localities which have been aflfixed 
 to some of the scenery introduced into these novels, by 
 which, for example. Wolf's Hope is identified with Fast 
 Castle in Berwickshire, Tillietudlem with Draphane in 
 Clydesdale, and the valley in The Monastery, called Glen- 
 dearg, with the dale of the river Allan, above Lord Somer- 
 ville's, villa, near Melrose. I can only say that, in these and 
 other instances, I had no purpose of describing any partic- 
 ular local spot ; and the resemblance must therefore be of 
 that general kind which necessarily exists between scenes of 
 the same character. The iron-bound coast of Scotland af- 
 fords upon its headlands and promontories fifty such castles 
 as Wolf's Hope ; every county has a valley more or less re- 
 sembling Glendearg ; and if castles like Tillietudlem, or 
 mansions like the Baron of Bradwardine's, are now less fre- 
 quently to be met with, it is owing to the rage of indiscrimi- 
 nate destruction, which has removed or ruined so many 
 monuments of antiquity, when they were not protected by 
 their inaccessible situation.* 
 
 The scraps of poetry which have been in most cases tacked 
 to the beginning of chapters in these novels are sometimes 
 quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the 
 general case, are pure invention. I found it too trouble- 
 some to turn to the collection of the British poets to dis- 
 cover apposite mottoes, and, in the situation of the theatrical 
 mechanist, who, when the white paper which represented 
 his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the storm by 
 snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, 
 
 * I would particularly intimate the Kaim of Urie, on the eastern 
 coast of Scotland, as having suggested an idea for the tower called 
 Wolf's Crag, which the public more generally identified with the 
 ancient tower of Fast Castle. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONG ATE 2,21 
 
 and, when that failed, eked it out with invention. I be- 
 lieve that, in some cases, where actual names are affixed to 
 the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to 
 seek them in the works of the authors referred to. In 
 some cases I have been entertained when Dr. Watts and 
 other graver authors have been ransacked in vain for stanzas 
 for which the novelist alone was responsible. 
 
 And now the reader may expect me, while in the confes- 
 sional, to explain the motives why 1 have so long persisted in 
 disclaiming the works of which I am now writing. To this 
 it would be difficult to give any other reply save that of Cor- 
 poral Nym : it was the Author's humor or caprice for the 
 time. I hope it will not be construed into ingratitude to the 
 public, to whose indulgence I have owed my sangfroid much 
 more than to any merit of my own, if I confess that I am, 
 and have been, more indifferent to success, or to failure, as 
 an author than may be the case with others, who feel more 
 strongly the passion for literary fame, probably because they 
 are justly conscious of a better title to it. It was not until 
 I had attained the age of thirty years that I made any serious 
 attempt at distinguishing myself as an author ; and at that 
 period men's hopes, desires, and wishes have usually acquired 
 something of a decisive character, and are not eagerly and 
 easily diverted into a new channel. When I made the dis- 
 covery — for to me it was one — that by amusing myself with 
 composition, which I felt a delightful occupation, I could 
 also give pleasure to others, and became aware that literary 
 pursuits were likely to engage in future a considerable por- 
 tion of my time, I felt some alarm that I might acquire those 
 habits of jealousy and fretfulness which have lessened, and 
 even degraded, the character even of great authors, and ren- 
 dered them, by their petty squabbles and mutual irritability, 
 the laughing-stock of the people of the world. I resolved, 
 therefore, in this respect to guard my breast, perhaps an un- 
 friendly critic may add, my brow, with triple brass,* and as 
 much as possible to avoid resting my thoughts and wishes 
 upon literary success, lest I should endanger my own peace 
 of mind and tranquillity by literary failure. It would argue 
 either stupid apathy or ridiculous affectation to say that I 
 have been insensible to the public applause, when I have 
 been honored with its testimonies ; and still more highly do 
 I prize the invaluable friendships which some temporary 
 
 * Not altogether impossible, when it is considered that I have 
 been at the bar since 1799. (Aug. 1831.) 
 
322 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 popularity lias enabled me to form among those of my contem- 
 poraries most distinguished by talents and genius, and which 
 I venture to hope now rest upon a basis more firm than the 
 circumstances which gave rise to them. Yet feeling all 
 these advantages as a man ouglit to do, and must do, 1 may 
 say, with truth and confidence, that I have, I think, tasted 
 of the intoxicating cup with moderation, and that I have 
 never, either in conversation or correspondence, encouraged 
 discussions respecting my own literary pursuits. On the con- 
 trary, I have usually found such topics, even when introduced 
 from motives most flattering to myself, rather embarrassing 
 and disagreeable. 
 
 I have now frankly told my motives for concealment, 
 so far as I am conscious of having any, and the public will 
 forgive the egotism of the detail as what is necessarily con- 
 nected with it. The author, so long and loudly called for, 
 has appeared on the stage and made his obeisance to the 
 audience. Thus far his conduct is a mark of respect. To 
 linger in their presence would be intrusion. 
 
 I have only to repeat that I avow myself in print, as for- 
 merly in words, the sole and unassisted author of all the 
 novels published as works of the "Author of Waverley." 
 I do this without shame, for I am unconscious that there is 
 anything in their composition Avhich deserves reproach, either 
 on the score of religion or morality, and without any feeling 
 of exultation, because, whatever may have been their tem- 
 porary success, I am well aware how much their reputation 
 depends upon the caprice of fashion ; and I have already 
 mentioned the precarious tenure by which it is held as a 
 reason for displaying no great avidity in grasping at the 
 possession. 
 
 I ought to mention, before concluding, that twenty per- 
 sons, at least, were, either from intimacy or from the confi- 
 dence which circumstances rendered necessary, participant 
 of this secret ; and as there was no instance, to my knowledge, 
 of any one of the number breaking faith, I am the more 
 obliged to them, because the slight and trivial character of 
 the mystery was not qualified to inspire much respect in 
 those entrusted with it. Nevertheless, like Jack the Giant- 
 Kill er, I was fully confident in the advantage of my " coat 
 of darkness," and liad it not been from compulsory circum- 
 stances, I would have indeed been very cautious how I parted 
 with it. 
 
 As for the work which follows, it was meditated, and in 
 part printed, long before the avowal of the novels took place. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 323 
 
 and originally commenced with a declaration that it was 
 neither to have introduction nor preface of any kind. This 
 long proem, prefixed to a work intended not to have any, 
 may, however, serve to show how human purposes, in the 
 most trifling as well as the most important affairs, are liable 
 to be conti-olled by the course of events. Thus, we begin to 
 cross a strong river with our eyes and our resolution fixed 
 on that point of the opposite shore on which we purpose to 
 land ; but, gradually giving way to the torrent, are glad, by 
 the aid perhaps of branch or bush, to extricate ourselves at 
 some distant, and perhaps dangerous, landing-place, much 
 farther down the stream than that on which we had fixed 
 our intentions. 
 
 Hoping that the courteous reader will afford to a known 
 and familiar acquaintance some portion of the favor w^hich 
 he extended to a disguised candidate for his applause, I beg 
 leave to subscribe myself his obliged humble servant, 
 
 Waltee Scott. 
 Abbotsford, October 1, 1837. 
 
 Such was the little narrative which I thought proper to 
 put forth in October 1827, nor have I much to add to it 
 now. About to appear for the first time in my own name 
 in this department of letters, it occurred to me that some- 
 tliing in the shape of a periodical publication might carry 
 with it a certain air of novelty, and I was willing to break, 
 if I may so express it, the abruptness of my personal forth- 
 coming by investing an imaginary coadjutor with at least 
 as much distinctness of individual existence as I had ever 
 previously thought it worth while to bestov on shadows of the 
 same convenient tribe. Of course, it had never been in my 
 contemplation to invite the assistance of any real person in 
 the sustaining of my quasi-editorial character and labors. 
 It had long been my opinion that anything like a literary 
 picnic is likely to end in suggesting comparisons, justly 
 termed odious, and therefore to be avoided ; and, indeed I 
 had also had some occasion to know that promises of assist- 
 ance, in efforts of that order, are apt to be more magnifi- 
 cent than the subsequent performance. I therefore planned 
 a miscellany, to be independent, after the old fashion, on 
 my own resources alone, and although conscious enough 
 that the moment which assigned to the Author of Waverley 
 " a local habitation and a name " had seriously endangered 
 his spell, I felt inclined to adopt the sentiment of my old hero 
 Montrose, and to say to myself, that in literature, as in war. 
 
■iU WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 He either fears his fate too mucb. 
 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 Who dares not put it to the touch. 
 
 To win or lose it all. 
 
 To the particulars explanatory of the plan of these Chroni- 
 cles, which the reader is presented with in chapter ii. by the 
 imaginary editor, Mr. Croftangry, I have now to add, that 
 the lady, termed in his narrative Mrs. Bethune Baliol, was 
 designed to shadow out in its leading points the interesting 
 character of a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Murray Keith,* 
 whose death occurring shortly before had saddened a wide 
 circle much attached to her, as well for her genuine virtue 
 and amiable qualities of disposition as for the extent of 
 information which she possessed, and the delightful man- 
 ner in which she was used to communicate it. In truth, 
 the Author had, on many occasions, been indebted to her 
 vivid memory for the substratum of his Scottish fictions ; 
 and she accordingly had been, from an early period, at no 
 loss to fix the Waverley novels on the right culprit. 
 
 In the sketch of Chrystal Croftangry 's own history, the 
 Author has been accused of introducing some not polite 
 allusions to respectable living individuals ; but he may safely, 
 he presumes, pass over such an insinuation. The first of 
 the narratives whicli Mr. Croftangry proceeds to lay before 
 the public. The Highland Widow, was derived from Mrs. 
 Murray Keith, f and is given, with the exception of a few 
 additional circumstances — the introduction of which I am 
 rather inclined to regret — very much as the excellent old 
 lady used to tell the story. Neither the Highland cicerone 
 MacTurk [MacLeish] nor the demure waiting-woman were 
 drawn from imagination ; and on re-reading my tale, after 
 the lapse of a few years, and comparing its effect with my 
 remembrance of my worthy friend's oral narration, which 
 was certainly extremely affecting, I cannot but suspect my- 
 self of having marred its simplicity by some of those inter- 
 polations which, at the time when I penned them, no doubt 
 passed with myself for embellishments. 
 
 The next tale, entitled 77ie Two Drovers, I learned from 
 another old friend, the late George Constable, Esg., of 
 Wallace Craigie, near Dundee, whom I have already mtro- 
 duced to my reader as the original Antiquary of Monkbarns. 
 He had been present, I think, at the trial at Carlisle, and 
 
 * See Keiths of Craig. Note 13. 
 
 t [See Lockhart's Life of Scott, voL ix. pp. 178, 174.1 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 325 
 
 seldom mentioned the venerable judge's charge to the jury 
 without shedding tears, which had peculiar pathos, as 
 flowing down features carrying rather a sarcastic or al- 
 most a cynical expression. 
 
 This worthy gentleman's reputation for shrewd Scottish 
 sense, knowledge of our national antiquities, and a racy 
 humor peculiar to himself, must be still remembered. For 
 myself, I have pride in recording that for many years we 
 were, in Wordsworth's language, 
 
 A pair of friends, though I was young. 
 And " George" was seventy-two. 
 
 w. s. 
 
 Abbotsford, Aug. 15, 1831. 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ME. CHRYSTAL CROFTANGRY'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 
 
 Sic itur ad astra. 
 
 *' This is the path to heaven." Such is the ancient motto 
 attached to the armorial bearings of the Canongate, and 
 which is inscribed, witii greater or less propriety, upon all 
 the public buildings, from the church to the pillory, in the 
 ancient quarter of Edinburgh which bears, or rather once 
 bore, the same relation to the Good Town that Westminster 
 does to London, being still possessed of the palace of the 
 sovereign, as it formerly was dignified by the residence of 
 the principal nobility and gentry. I may, therefore, with 
 some propriety, put the same motto at the head of the 
 literary undertaking by which I hope to illustrate the 
 hitherto undistinguished name of Chrystal Croftangry. 
 
 The public may desire to know something of an author 
 who pitches at such height his ambitious expectations. The 
 gentle reader, therefore — for I am much of Captain Bob- 
 adil's humor, and could to no other extend myself so far — 
 the gentle reader, then, will be pleased to understand, that 
 I am a Scottish gentleman of the old school, with a fortune, 
 temper, and person rather the worse for wear. I have known 
 the world for these forty years, having written myself man 
 nearly since that period, and I do not think it is much 
 mended. But this is an opinion which I keep to piyself 
 when I am among younger folk, for I recollect, m my 
 youth, quizzing the sexagenarians who carried back their ideas 
 of a perfect state of society to the days of laced coats and 
 triple ruffles, and some of them to the blood and blows of 
 the Forty-five. Therefore I am cautious in exercising the 
 right of censorship, which is supposed to be acquired bv 
 men arrived at, or approaching, the mysterious period of 
 
 327 
 
WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 life wlien the numbers of seven and nine multiplied into 
 each other form wliat sages have termed the grand cli- 
 macteric. 
 
 Of the earlier part of my life it is only necessary to say, 
 that I swept the boards of the Parliament House with tlie 
 skirts of my gown for the usual number of years during 
 which young lairds were in my time expected to keep term, 
 got no fees, laughed and made others laugh., drank claret 
 at Bayle's. Fortune's, and Walker's, and eat oysters in the 
 Covenant Close. 
 
 Becoming my own master, I flung my gown at the nar- 
 keeper, and commenced gay man on my own account. In 
 Edinburgh, I ran into all the expensive society which the 
 place then afforded. When I went to my house in the shire 
 of Lanark, I emulated to the utmost the expenses of men of 
 large fortune, and had my hunters, my first-rate pointers, 
 my game-cocks, and feeders. I can more easily forgive my- 
 self for these follies than for others of a still more blamable 
 kind, so indifferently cloaked over, that my jjoor mother 
 thought herself obliged to leave my habitation, and betake 
 herself to a small, inconvenient jointure-house, which she 
 occupied till her death. I think, however, 1 was not ex- 
 clusively to blame in this separation, and I believe my 
 mother afterwards condemned herself for being too hasty. 
 Thank God, the adversity which destroyed the means of 
 continuing my dissipation restored me to the affections of 
 my surviving parent ! 
 
 My course of life could not last. I ran too fast to run 
 long ; and when I would have checked my career, I was 
 perhaps too near the brink of the precipice. Some mishapa 
 I prepared by my own folly, others came upon me unawares. ^'^ 
 I put my estate out to nurse to a fat man of business, who 
 smothered the babe he should have brought back to me in 
 health and strength, and, in dispute with this honest 
 gentleman, I found, like a skilful general, that my position 
 would be most judiciously assumed by taking it up near the 
 Abbey of Holyrood.* It was then I first became acquainted 
 with the quarter, which my little work will, I hope, render 
 immortal, and grew familiar with those magnificent wilds, 
 through which the kings of Scotland once chased the dark- 
 brown deer, but which were chiefly recommended to me in 
 those days by their being inaccessible to those metaphysical 
 persons whom the law of the neighboring country terms 
 
 lipa! 
 
 Iffiiy 
 Da; 
 
 * See Sanctuary of Holyrood. Note 14. 
 
 ik 
 
 b: 
 k: 
 It; 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 329 
 
 John Doe and Richard Roe. In short, the precincts of the 
 pahice are now best known as being a place of refuge at any 
 time from all pursuit for civil debt. 
 
 Dire was the strife betwixt my quondam doer and my- 
 self ; during which my motions were circumscribed, like 
 those of some conjured demon, within a circle, which, be- 
 ginning "^at the northern gate of the King's Park, thence 
 running northward, is bounded on the left by the king's 
 garden-wall, and the gutter, or kennel, in a line wherewith 
 it crosses the High Street to the Water-gate, and passing 
 through the same, is bounded by the walls of the tennis- 
 court and physic-garden, etc. It then follows the wall of 
 the churchyard, joins the northwest wall of St. Ann's yards, 
 and going east to the clack mill-house, turns southward to 
 the turnstile in the king's park-wall, and includes the whole 
 King's Park within the sanctuary." 
 
 These limits, which I abridge from the accurate Maitland, 
 once marked the girth, or asylum, belonging to the Abbey 
 of Holyrood, and which, being still an appendage to the 
 royal palace, has retained the privilege of an asylum for 
 civil debt. One would think the space sufficiently extensive 
 for a man to stretch his limbs in, as, besides a reasonable 
 proportion of level ground, considering that the scene lies 
 in Scotland, it includes within its precincts the mountain 
 of Arthur's Seat, and the rocks and pasture land called Salis- 
 bury Crags. But yet it is inexpressible how, after a certain 
 time had elapsed, I used to long for Sunday, which per- 
 mitted me to extend my walk without limitation. During 
 the other six days of the week I felt a sickness of heart 
 which, but for the speedy approach of the hebdomadal day 
 of liberty, I could hardly have endured. I experienced the 
 impatience of a mastiff, who tugs in vain to extend the 
 limits which his chain permits. 
 
 Day after day I walked by the side of the kennel which 
 divides the sanctuary from the unprivileged part of the 
 Canongate ; and though the month was July, and the scene 
 the old town of Edinburgh, I jjreferred it to the fresh air 
 and verdant turf which I might have enjoyed in the King's 
 Park, or to tlae cool and solemn gloom of the portico which 
 surrounds the palace. To an indifferent person either side 
 of the gutter wonld have seemed much the same — the houses 
 equally mean, the children as ragged and dirty, the carmen 
 as brutal, the whole forming the same picture of low life in 
 a deserted and impoverished quarter of a large city. But 
 to me the gutter;, or kennel, was what the brook Kidron was 
 
330 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 to Shimei : death was denounced against him should he 
 cross it, doubtless because it was known to his wisdom who 
 pronounced the doom, that, from the time the crossing the 
 stream was debarred, the devoted man's desire to transgress 
 the precept would become irresistible, and be would be sure 
 to draw down on his head the penalty wbich he had already 
 justly incurred by cursing the anointed of God. For my 
 part, all Elysium seemed opening on tbe otber side of the 
 kennel, and I envied the little blackguards who, stopping 
 the current with their little dam-dikes of mud, had a right 
 to stand on either side of the nasty puddle wbich best pleased 
 them. I was so childish as even to make an occasional ex- 
 cursion across, were it only for a few yards, and felt the 
 triumph of a schoolboy, who, trespassing in an orchard, 
 hurries back again with a fluttering sensation of joy and 
 terror, betwixt the pleasure of having executed his purpose 
 and the fear of being taken or discovered. 
 
 I bave sometimes asked myself, wbat I should have done 
 in case of actual imprisonment, since I could not bear with- 
 out impatience a restriction wbich is comparatively a mere 
 trifle ; but I really could never answer tbe question to my 
 own satisfaction. I have all my life hated tbose treacherous 
 expedients called mezzo termini, and it is possible with this 
 disposition I might have endured more patiently an abso- 
 lute privation of liberty than the more modified restrictions 
 to which my residence in the sanctuary at this period sub- 
 jected me. If, however, the feelings I then experienced 
 were to increase in intensity according to the difference be 
 tween a jail and my actual condition. I must have hangec 
 myself, or pined to death ; there could have been no other 
 alternative. 
 
 Amongst many companions who forgot and neglected me 
 of course, when my difficulties seemed to be inextricable, I 
 had one true friend ; and that friend was a barrister, who 
 knew the laws of his country well, and, tracing them up to 
 the spirit of equity and justice in which they originate, had 
 repeatedly prevented, by his benevolent and manly exer- 
 tions, the triumphs of selfish cunning over simplicity and 
 folly. He undertook my cause, with the assistance of a 
 solicitor of a character similar to his own. My quondam 
 doer had ensconced himself chin-deep among legal trenches, 
 hornworks, and covered ways ; but my two protectors sliclled 
 him out of his defenses, and I Avas at length a free man, at 
 liberty to go or stay wheresoever my mind listed. 
 
 I left my lodgings as hastily as if it had been a pest-house; 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CAN ON GATE S^M 
 
 I did not even stop to receive some clumge that was due to 
 me on settling with my hindladj, and I saw the poor wo- 
 man stand at her door looking after my precipitate flight, 
 and shaking her head as she wrapped the silver which she 
 was counting for me in a separate piece of paper, apart from 
 the store in her own moleskin purse. An honest High- 
 landwoman was Janet MacEvoy, and deserved a greater 
 remnneration, had I possessed the power of bestowing it. 
 But my eagerness of delight was too extreme to pause for 
 explanation with Janet. On I pushed through the groups 
 of cliildren, of whose sports I had been so often a lazy loung- 
 ing spectator. I sprung over the gutter as if it had been the 
 fatal Styx, and I a ghost, which, eluding Pluto's authority, 
 v/as making its escape from Limbo Lake. My friend had 
 dilliculty to restrain me from running like a madman up the 
 street ; and in spite of his kindness and hospitality, which 
 i soothed me for a day or two, I was not quite happy until I 
 i found myself aboard of a Leith smack, and, standing down 
 ithe firth with a fair wind, might snap my fingers at the 
 I retreating outline of Arthur's Seat, to the vicinity of which 
 ' I had been so long confined. 
 
 It is not my purpose to trace my future progress through 
 
 life. I had extricated myself, or rather had been freed by 
 
 my friends, from the brambles and thickets of the law, but, 
 
 I as befell the sheep in the fable, a great part of my fleece was 
 
 I left behind me. Something remained, however : I was in 
 
 ! the season for exertion, and, as my good mother used to say, 
 
 ! there was always life for living folk. Stern necessity gave 
 
 my manhood that prudence which my youth was a stranger 
 
 to'. I faced danger, I endured fatigue, I sought foreign 
 
 climates, and proved that I belonged to the nation which is 
 
 proverbially patient of labor and prodigal of life. Lide- 
 
 pendence, like liberty to Virgil's shepherd, came late, but 
 
 j came at last, with no great affluence in its train, but bring- 
 
 ; ing enough to support a decent appearance for the rest of 
 
 my life, and to induce cousins to be civil, and gossips to say, 
 
 "I wonder who old Croft will make his heir ? He must 
 
 j have picked up something, and I should not be surprised if 
 
 i it prove more than folk think of." 
 
 ! My first impulse when I returned home was to rush to the 
 house of my benefactor, the oi\ly man who had in my dis- 
 i tress interested himself in my behalf. He was a snuff-taker, 
 and it had been the pride of my heart to save the ipsa cor- 
 pora of the first score of guineas I could hoard, and to have 
 : them converted into as tasteful a snuff-box as Rundell and 
 
WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Bridge could devise. This I had thrust for security into 
 the breast of ray waistcoat, while, impatient to transfer it to 
 the person for whom it was destined, I liastened to his house jki 
 in Brown's Square. When the front of the house became 
 visible, a feeling of alarm checked me. I had been long 
 absent from Scotland, my friend was some years older than 
 I ; he might have been called to the congregation of the 
 just. I jjaused, and gazed on the house, as if I had hoped » 
 to form some conjecture from the outward appearance con- rh 
 cerning the state of the family within. I know not how it 
 was, but the lower windows being all closed and no one 
 stirring, my sinister forebodings were rather strengthened. 
 I regretted now that I had not made inquiry before I left 
 the inn where I alighted from the mail-coach. But it was 
 too late ; so I hurried on, eager to know the best or the 
 worst which I could learn. 
 
 The brass-plate bearing my friend's name and designation 
 was still on the door, and, when it was opened, the old do- 
 mestic appeared a good deal older, I thought, tlian he ought 
 naturally to have looked, considering the period of my ab- 
 sence, ^'^Is Mr. Sommerville at home?'' said I pressing 
 forward. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said John, placing himself in opposition to 
 my entrance, " he is at hoiue, but " 
 
 ^' But he is not in," said I. " I remember your phrase of 
 old, John. Come, I will step into his room, and leave a line 
 for him." 
 
 John was obviously embarrassed by my familiarity. I was 
 some one, he saw, whom he ought to recollect, at the same 
 it was evident he remembered nothing about me. 
 
 " Ay, sir, my master is in, and in his own room, but '* 
 
 I would not hear him out, but passed before him towards 
 the well-known apartment. 
 
 A young lady came out of the room a little disturbed, as 
 it seemed, and said, "John, what is the matter ?" 
 
 " A gentleman. Miss Xelly, that insists on seeing my 
 master." 
 
 "Avery old and deeply indebted friend," said I, ''that 
 ventures to press myself on my much-respected benefactor 
 on my return from abroad." 
 
 ''Alas, sir," replied she, "my uncle would be happy to 
 see you, but " 
 
 At this moment, something was heard witliin the apart- 
 ment like the falling of a plate, or glass, and immediately 
 after my friend's voice called angrily and eagerly for his 
 
 kk 
 
 Ti 
 U 
 ipa 
 ki 
 
 It 
 h 
 
 1 
 i'.z 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 333 
 
 liece. She entered the room hastily, and so did 1. But it 
 ,vas to see a spectacle compared with which that of my bene- 
 'actor stretched on his bier would have been a happy one. 
 mi The easy-chair filled with cushions, the extended limb,'- 
 i')ii! Iswathed in flannel, the wide wrapping-gown and nightcap, 
 showed illness ; but the dimmed eye, once so replete with 
 living fire ; the blabber lip, whose dilation and compression 
 ised to give such character to his animated countenance ; 
 :he stammering tongue, that once poured forth such floods 
 )f masculine eloquence, and had often swayed the opinion of 
 ;lie sages whom he addressed — all these sad symptoms evinced 
 ;hat my friend was in the melancholy condition of those in 
 ivhom the principle of animal life has unfortunately sur- 
 ^•ived that of mental intelligence. He gazed a moment at 
 ne, but then seemed insensible of my presence, and went 
 )n — he, once the most courteous and well bred — to babble 
 Luiintelligible but violent reproaches against his niece and 
 servant, because he himself had dropped a tea-cup in 
 attempting to place it on a table at his elbow. His eyes 
 3aught a momentary fire from his irritation ; but he strug- 
 gled in vain for words to express himself adequately, as, 
 looking from his servant to his niece, and then to the table, 
 be labored to explain that they had placed it, though it 
 touched his chair, at too great a distance from him. 
 
 The young person, who had naturally a resigned, 
 Madonna-like expression of countenance, listened to his 
 impatient chiding with the most humble submission, 
 checked the servant, whose less delicate feelings would 
 have entered on his justification, and gradually, by the 
 5weet and soft tone of her voice, soothed to rest the spirit 
 - of causeless irritation. 
 
 She then cast a look towards me, which expressed, '' You 
 see all that remains of him whom you call friend." It 
 seemed also to say, " Your longer presence here can only be 
 distressing to us all." 
 
 " Forgive me, young lady,'* I said, as well as tears would 
 permit ; " I am a person deeply obliged to your uncle. My 
 name is Croftangry.'' 
 
 " Lord ! and that I should not hae minded ye, Maister 
 Croftangry/' said the servant. "Ay, I mind my master 
 had muckle fash about your job. I hae lieard him order in 
 fresh candles as midnight chappit, and till't again. Indeed, 
 ye had aye his gude word, Mr. Croftangry, for a' that folks 
 said about you.'' 
 "Hold your tongue, John," said the lady, somewhat 
 
334 WA VSBLEY NO VEL8 
 
 angrily ; and then continued, addressing herself to me, " I 
 
 am sure, sir, you must be sorry to see my uncle in this 
 state. I know you are his friend. I have heard him men- 
 tion your name, and wonder he never heard from you." A 
 new cut this, and it went to my heart. But she continued, 
 
 "' I really do not know if it is right that any should If 
 
 my uncle should know you, which I scarce think possible, 
 he would be much affected, and the doctor says that any 
 
 agitation But here comes Dr. to give his own 
 
 opinion." 
 
 Dr. entered. I had left him a middle-aged man ; 
 
 he was now an elderly one, but still the same benevolent 
 Samaritan, who went about doing good, and thought the 
 blessings of the poor as good a recompense of his profes- 
 sional skill as the gold of the rich. 
 
 He looked at me with surprise, but the young lady said a 
 word of introduction, and I, who was known to the doctor 
 formerly, hastened to complete it. He recollected me per- 
 fectly, and intimated that he was well acquainted with the 
 reasons I had for being deeply interested in the fate of his 
 patient. He gave me a very melancholy account of my poor 
 friend, drawing me for that purpose a little apart from the 
 lady. " The light of life," he said, " was trembling in the 
 socket ; he scarcely expected it would ever leap up even 
 into a momentary flash, but more was impossible." He 
 then stepped towards his patient, and put some questions, 
 to which the poor invalid, though he seemed to recognize 
 the friendly and familiar voice, answered only in a faltering, 
 and uncertain manner. 
 
 The young lady, in her turn, had drawn back when the_ 
 doctor approached his patient. " You see how it is with 
 him," said the doctor, addressing me ; " I have heard our 
 poor friend, in one of tlie most eloquent of his pleadings 
 give a description of this very disease, which he compared 
 to the tortures inflicted by Mezentius, when he chained the 
 dead to the living. ' The soul,' he said, * is imprisoned in 
 its dungeon of flesh, and, though retaining its natural and 
 unalienable properties, can no more exert them than the 
 captive inclosed within a prison-house can act as a free 
 agent.' Alas ! to see Jiim, who could so well describe 
 what this malady was in others, a prey himself to its in- 
 firmities ! I shall never forget the solemn tone of expres- 
 sion with which he summed up the incapacities of the 
 paralytic — the deafened ear, the dimmed eye, th© crippled 
 limbs — in the noble words of Juvenal : 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANON GATE 335 
 
 Omni 
 Membrorum darano, major dementia, quae nee 
 Nomina servorum nee vultum agnoscit amiei." 
 
 As the physician repeated these lines, a flash of intelli- 
 gence seemed to revive in the invalid's eye — sunk again — 
 again struggled, and he spoke more intelligibly than before, 
 and in the tone of one eager to say something which he felt 
 would escape him unless said instantly. " A question of 
 death-bed — a question of death-bed, doctor — a reduction ex 
 capite lecti — Withering against Wilibus — about the mor- 
 bus sonticus. I pleaded the cause for the pursuer — I, and 
 — and — why, I shall forget my own name — I, and — ho that 
 was the wittiest and the best-humored man living " 
 
 The description enabled the doctor to fill up the blank, 
 and the patient joyfully repeated the name suggested. *' Ay 
 
 — ay," he said, "just he — Harry — poor Harry " The 
 
 light in his eye died away, and he sunk back in his easy- 
 chair. 
 
 " You have now seen more of our poor friend, Mr. Croft- 
 angry," said the physician, " than I dared venture to promise 
 you ; and now I must take my professional authority on me, 
 and ask you to retire. Miss Sommerville will, 1 am sure, let 
 you know if a moment should by any chance occur when her 
 uncle can see you." 
 
 What could I do ? I gave my card to the young lady, and, 
 taking my offering from my bosom — "If my poor friend," I 
 said, with accents as broken almost as his own, " should ask 
 where this came from, name me ; and say from the most 
 obliged and most grateful man alive. Say, the gold of which 
 it is composed was saved by grains at a time, and was hoarded 
 with as much avarice as ever was a miser's. To bring it liere 
 I have come a thousand miles, and now, alas, I find him 
 thus!" 
 
 I laid the box on the table, and was retiring with a linger- 
 J["j[, ing step. The eye of the invalid was caught by it, as that of 
 a child by a glittering toy, and with infantine impatience he 
 faltered out inquiries of his niece. With gentle mildness she 
 repeated again and again who I was, and why I came, etc. 
 i was about to turn and hasten from a scene so painful, when 
 the physician laid his hand on my sleeve. " Stop," he said, 
 "there is a change." 
 
 There was, indeed, and a marked one. A faint glow spread 
 over his pallid features — they seemed to gain the look of in- 
 telligence which belongs to vitality — his eye once more kin- 
 dled, his lip colored, and, drawing himself up out of the 
 
336 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 listless posture he had hitherto maintained, he rose without 
 assistance. The doctor and the servant ran to give him their 
 support. He waved them aside, and they were contented to 
 place themselves in such a position behind as might ensure 
 against accident, should his newly-acquired strength decay 
 as suddenly as it had revived. 
 
 " My dear Croftangry/' he said, in the tone of kindness of 
 other days, " I am glad to see you returned. You find me 
 
 but poorly ; but my little niece here and Dr. are very 
 
 kind. God bless you, my dear friend ! we shall not meet 
 again till we meet in a better world." 
 
 I pressed his extended hand to my lips, I pressed it to my 
 bosom, I would fain have flung myself on my knees ; but the 
 doctor, leaving the patient to the young lady and the servant, 
 who wheeled forward his chair, and were replacing him in it, 
 hurried me out of the room. " My dear sir," he said, ''you 
 ought to be satisfied ; you have seen our poor invalid more 
 like his former self than he has been for months, or than he 
 may be perhaps again until all is over. The whole faculty Irea 
 could not have assured such an interval ; I must see whether lire 
 anything can be derived from it to improve the general health, i w 
 Pray, begone." The last argument hurried me from the i 
 spot, agitated by a crowd of feelings, all of them painful. 
 
 When I had overcome the shock of this great disappoint- i 
 ment, I renewed gradually my acquaintance with one or two ' 
 old companions, who, though of infinitely less interest to my 
 feelings than my unfortunate friend, served to relieve the 
 pressure of actual solitude, and who were not perhaps the less ^ ;,, 
 open to my advances, that I was a bachelor somewhat stricken 
 in years, newly arrived from foreign parts, and certainly in- 
 dependent, if not wealthy. 
 
 I was considered as a tolerable subject of speculation by 
 some, and I could not be burdensome to any ; I was, there- 
 fore, according to the ordinary rule of Edinburgh hospitality 
 a welcome guest in several respectable families ; but I found 
 no one who could replace the loss I had sustained in my beet 
 friend and benefactor. I wanted something more than mere 
 companionship could give me, and where was I to look for 
 it ? Among the scattered remnants of those that had been 
 my gay friends of yore ? Alas, 
 
 Many a lad I loved was dead, 
 And many a lass grown old. 
 
 Besides, all community of ties between us had ceased to exist, 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 337 
 
 and such of former friends as were still in the world held 
 their life in a different tenor from what I did. 
 
 Some had become misers, and were as eager in saving six- 
 pence as ever they had been in spending a guinea. Some had 
 turned agriculturists : their talk was of oxen, and they were 
 only fit companions for graziers. Some stuck to cards^ and 
 though no longer deep gamblers, rather played small game 
 than sat out. This I particularly despised. The strong im- 
 pulse of gaming, alas ! I had felt in my time ; it is as intense 
 as it is criminal, but it produces excitation and interest, and 
 I can conceive how it should become a passion with strong 
 and powerful minds. But to dribble away life in exchanging 
 bits of painted pasteboard round a green table, for the pid- 
 dling concern of a few shillings, can only be excused in folly 
 or superannuation. It is like riding on a rocking-horse, 
 where your utmost exertion never carries you a foot forward ; 
 it is a kind of mental treadmill, where you are perpetually 
 climbing, but can never rise an inch. From these hints, my 
 readers will perceive I am incapacitated for one of the pleas- 
 letlij ures of old age, which, though not mentioned by Cicero, is 
 ealti not the least frequent resource in the present day — the club- 
 room and the snug hand at whist. 
 
 To return to my old companions. Some frequented 
 poiii public assemblies, like the ghost of Beau Nash, or any other 
 beau of half a century back, thrust aside by tittering youth, 
 and pitied by those of their own age. In fine, some went 
 into devotion, as the French term it, and others, I fear, went 
 to the devil ; a few found resources in science and letters ; 
 one or two turned philosophers in a small way, peeped into 
 miscroscopes, and became familiar with the fashionable 
 experiments of the day. Some took to reading, and I was 
 one of them. 
 
 Some grains of repulsion towards the society around me, 
 "^ some painful recollections of early faults and follies, some 
 touch of displeasure with living minkind, inclined me rather 
 to a study of antiquities, and particularly those of my 
 own country. The reader, if I can prevail on myself to 
 continue the present work, will probably be able to judge, 
 in the course of it, whether I have made any useful progress 
 in the study of the olden times. 
 
 I owed this turn of study, in part, to the conversation of 
 my kind man of business, Mr. Fairscribe, whom I mentioned 
 as^having seconded the efforts of my invaluable friend, in 
 bringing the cause on which my liberty and the remnant of 
 my property depended to a favorable decision. He had 
 
338 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 given me a most kind reception on my return. He was too 
 much engaged in his profession for me to intrude on him 
 often, and perhaps his mind was too much trammeled with 
 its details to permit his being willingly withdrawn from 
 them. In short, he was not a jDersou of my poor friend 
 Sommerville's expanded spirit, and rather a lawyer of the 
 ordinary class of formalists, but a most able and excellent 
 man. When my estate was sold, he retained some of the 
 older title-deeds, arguing, from his own feelings, that they 
 would be of more consequence to the heir of the old family 
 than to the new purchaser. And when I returned to Edin- 
 burgh, and found him still in the exercise of the profession 
 to which he was an honor, he sent to my lodgings the old 
 family Bible, which lay always on my father's table, two or 
 three other moldy volumes, and a couple of sheepskin bags, 
 full of parchments and papers, whose appearance was by no 
 means inviting. 
 
 The next time I shared Mr. Fairscribe's hospitable dinner, 
 I failed not to return him due thanks for his kindness, which 
 acknowledgment, indeed, I proportioned rather to the idea 
 which I knew he entertained of the value of such things 
 than to the interest with which I myself regarded them. 
 But the conversation turning on my family who were old 
 proprietors in the Upper Ward of Clydesdale, gradually 
 excited some interest in my mind ; and when I retired to 
 my solitary parlor, the first thing I did was to look for a 
 pedigree, or sort of history of the family, or house of Crof- 
 tungry, once of that Ilk, latterly of Olentanner. The 
 discoveries which I made shall enrich the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IN WHICH MR. CROFTANGRY CONTINUES HIS STORY 
 
 What's property, dear Swift? I see it alter 
 From you to me, from me to Peter Walter. 
 
 Pope. 
 
 *' Croftangry — Croftandrew — Croftanridge — Croftangrey 
 — for sa mony wise hath the name been spellit — is weel 
 known to be ane house of grit antiquity; and it is said that 
 King Milcolumb, or Malcolm, being thelirst of our Scottish 
 princes quha removit across the Firth of Forth, did reside 
 and occupy ane palace at Edinburgh, and had there ane 
 valziant man, who did him man-service, by ?;eeping the 
 croft, or corn-land, which was tilled for the convenience of 
 the King's household, and was thence callit Croft-an-ri, that 
 is to say, the King his croft ; quhilk place, though now 
 coverit with biggings, is to this day called Croftangry, and 
 lyeth near to the royal palace. And whereas that some of 
 those who bear this auld and honorable name may take scorn 
 that it ariseth from the tilling of the ground, quhilk men 
 account a slavish occupation, yet we ought to honor the 
 pleugh and spade, seeing we all derive our being from our 
 father Adam, whose lot it became to cultivate the earth, in 
 respect of his fall and transgression. 
 
 " Also we have witness, as weel in holy writtas in profane 
 history, of the honor in quhilk husbandrie was held of old, 
 and how prophets have been taken from the pleugh, and 
 great captains raised up to defend their ain countries, sic as 
 Cincinnatus, and the like, who fought not the common 
 enemy with the less valiancy that their arms had been exer- 
 cised in balding the stilts of the pleugh, and their bellicose 
 skill in driving of yauds and owsen. 
 
 " Likewise there are sindry honorable families, qnhilk are 
 now of our native Scottish nobility, and have clombe higher 
 up the brae of preferment than what this house of Croftan- 
 gry hath done, quhilk shame not to carry in their warlike 
 shield and insignia of dignity the tools and implements the 
 quhilk their first forefathers exercised in laboring the croft- 
 rig, or, as the poet Virgilius calleth it eloquently, in subdu- 
 
340 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 ing the soil. And no doubt this ancient house of Croftan- 
 gry, while it continued to be called of that Ilk, produced 
 many worshipful and famous patriots, of quhoni I now 
 pretermit the names ; it being my purpose, if God shall 
 spare me life for sic ane pious officium, or duty, to resume 
 the first part of my narrative toucliing the house of Croftan- 
 gry, when I can set down at length the evidents and his- 
 torical witness anent the facts which I shall allege, seeing 
 that words, when they are unsupported by proofs, are like 
 seed sown on the naked rocks, or like an house biggit on the 
 flitting and faithless sands." 
 
 Here I stopped to draw breath ; for the style of my grand- 
 sire, the inditer of this goodly matter, was rather lengthy, 
 as our American friends say. Indeed, I reserve the rest of 
 the piece until I can obtain admission to the Bannatyne 
 Club,* when I propose to throw off an edition, limited 
 according to the rules of that erudite society, with a facsimile 
 of the manuscript, emblazonry of the family arms, sur- 
 rounded by their quartering, and a handsome disclamation 
 of family pride, with Hoec nos novimus esse nihil, or Vixeo 
 nostra voco. 
 
 In the meantime, to speak truth, I cannot but suspect 
 that, though my worthy ancestor puffed vigorously to swell 
 up the dignity of his family, we had never, in fact, risen 
 above the rank of middling proprietors. The estate of 
 Glentanner came to us by the intermarriage of my ancestor 
 Avith Tib Sommeril, termed by the southrons Sommerville, f 
 a daughter of that noble house, but I fear on whatmygreat- 
 grandsire calls " the wrong side of the blanket." Her hus- 
 band, Gilbert, was killed fighting, as the inquisitio j)Ost 
 mortem has it, " siih vexillo regis, apucl prcelium juxta 
 Branxton lie Flodden-jield." 
 
 We had our share in other national misfortunes ; were 
 forfeited, like Sir John Colville of the Dale, for following 
 our betters to the field of Langside ; and, in the contentious 
 times of the last Stuarts, we were severely fined for harbor- 
 ing and resetting iutercommuned ministers ; and narrowly 
 escaped giving a martyr to the calendar of the Covenant, in 
 the person of the father of our family historian. He " took 
 the sheaf from the mare," however, as the MS. expresses it, 
 and agreed to accept of the terms of pardon offered by 
 government, and sign the bond, in evidence he would give 
 no farther ground of offense. My grandsire glosses over his 
 father's backsliding as smoothly as he can, and comforts Bib; 
 * See Note 15. f See Sommerville Family. Note 16. *^i 
 
CHBONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 341 
 
 'limself with ascribing his want of resolution to his imwill- 
 ngness to wreck the ancient name and family, and to 
 )ermit his lands and lineage to fall under a doom of for- 
 eiture. 
 
 "And indeed/' said the venerable compiler, "as, praised 
 )e God, we seldom meet in Scotland with these belly-gods 
 md voluptuaries, whilk are unnatural enough to devour their 
 )atrimony bequeathed to them by their forbears in cham- 
 tki ! )ering and wantonness, so that they come, with the prodigal 
 on, to the husks and the swine-trough ; and as I have the 
 ess to dreid the existence of such unnatural Neroes in mine 
 WW family to devour the substance of their own house like 
 irute beasts out of mere gluttonie and ei^icurishnesse, so I 
 eed only warn mine descendants against over-hastily med- 
 ling with the mutations in state and in religion, which 
 lave been near-hand to the bringing this poor honse of 
 'roftangry to perdition, as we have shown more than once. 
 md albeit I would not that my successors sat still altogether 
 'hen called on by their duty to kirk and king ; yet I would 
 ave them wait till stronger and walthier men than them- 
 3lves were up, so that either they may have the better 
 hance of getting through the day ; or, failing of that, the 
 onquering party having some fatter quarry to live upon, 
 lay, like gorged hawks, spare the smaller game." 
 
 There Avas something in this conclusion which at first 
 
 ading piqued me extremely, and I was so unnatural as to 
 irse the whole concern, as poor, bald, pitiful trash, in 
 hich a silly old man was saying a great deal about nothing 
 
 "11. Nay, my first impression was to thrust it into the 
 the rather that it reminded me, in no very flattering 
 
 anner, of the loss of the family property, to which the 
 ompiler of the history was so much attached, in the very 
 lanner which he most severely reprobated. It even seemed 
 D my aggrieved feelings that his unprescient gaze on 
 aturity, in which he could not anticipate the folly of one 
 f his descendants, who should throw away the whole in- 
 eritance in a few years of idle expense and folly, was meant 
 s a personal incivility to myself, though written fifty or 
 ixty years before I was born. 
 
 A little reflection made me ashamed of this feeling of im- 
 atience, and as I looked at the even, concise, yet tremulous, 
 and in which the manuscript was written, I could not help 
 liinking. according to an opinion I have heard seriously 
 laintained, that something of a man's character may be 
 onjectured from his handwriting. That neat, but crowded 
 
342 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 and constrained, small hand argued a man of a good con- 
 science, well regulated passions, and, to use his own phrase, j 
 an upright Avalk in life ; but it also indicated narrowness of 
 spirit, inveterate prejudice, and hinted at some degree of 
 intolerance, which, though not natural to the disposition, 
 had arisen out of a limited education. The passages from 
 Scripture and the classics, rather profusely than happily in- 
 troduced, and written in a half-text character to mark their 
 importance, illustrated that peculiar sort of pedantry which 
 always considers the argument as gained if secured by a 
 quotation. Then the flourished capital letters, which or- 
 namented the commencement of each paragraph, and the 
 name of his family and of his ancestors, whenever these oc- 
 curred in the page, do they not express forcibly the pride 
 and sense of importance with which the author undertook 
 and accomplished his task ? I persuaded myself, the whole 
 was so complete a portrait of the man, that it would not 
 have been a more undutiful act to have defaced his picture, 
 or even to have disturbed his bones in his coffin, than to 
 destroy his manuscript. I thought, for a moment, of pre- 
 senting it to Mr. Fairscribe ; but that confounded passage 
 
 about the prodigal and swine-trough I settled at last it 
 
 was as well to lock it up in my own bureau, with the inten- 
 tion to look at it no more. 
 
 But I do not know how it was that the subject began to 
 sit nearer my heart than I was aware of, and I found my- 
 self repeatedly engaged in reading descriptions of farms 
 which were no longer mine, and boundaries which marked 
 the property of others. A love of the natal solion, if Swift 
 be right in translating these words "family estate,'' began /j-; 
 to awaken in my bosom ; the recollections of my own youth 
 adding little to it, save what was connected with field sports. 
 A career of pleasure is unfavorable for acquiring a taste for 
 natural beauty, and still more so for forming associations 
 of a sentimental kind, connecting us with the inanimate 
 objects around us. 
 
 I had thought little about my estate while I possessed and 
 was wasting it, unless as affording the rude materials out 
 of which a certain inferior race of creatures, called tenants, 
 were bound to produce, in a greater quantity than they 
 actually did, a certain return called rent, which was destined 
 to supply my expenses. This was my general view of the 
 matter. Of particular places, I recollected that Garval Hill 
 was a famous piece of rough upland pasture for rearing 
 young colts and teaching them to throw their feet ; that 
 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 843 
 
 Minion Burn had the finest yellow trout in the country ; 
 that Seggy Cleugh was unequaled for woodcocks ; that 
 Bengibert Moors afforded excellent moorfowl-shooting ; and 
 that thQ clear bubbling fouutain called the Harper's Well 
 was the best recipe in the world on the morning after a 
 * hard-go ' with my neighbor fox-hunters. Still these ideas 
 recalled, by degrees, pictures of which I had since learned 
 to appreciate the merit — scenes of silent loneliness, where 
 extensive moors, undulating into wild hills, were only dis- 
 turbed by the whistle of the plover or the crow of the heath- 
 cock ; Avild ravines creeping up into mountains, filled with 
 natural wood, and which, when traced dowuM^ards along the 
 path formed by shepherds and nutters, were found gradually 
 to enlarge and deepen, as each formed a channel to its own 
 brook, sometimes bordered by steep banks of earth, often 
 y,|with the more romantic boundary of naked rocks or cliffs, 
 J,,: crested with oak, mountain-ash, and hazel — all gratifying 
 the eye the more that the scenery was, from the bare nature 
 of the country around, totally unexpected. 
 
 I had recollections, too, of fair and fertile holms, or level 
 plains, extending between the wooded banks and the bold 
 stream of the Clyde, which, colored like pure amber, or 
 rather having the hue of the pebbles called cairngorm, 
 rushes over sheets of rock and beds of gravel, inspiring a 
 species of awe from the few and faithless fords which it 
 presents, and the frequency of fatal accidents, now dim- 
 inished by the number of bridges. These alluvial holms 
 were frequently bordered by triple and quadruple rows of 
 large trees, which gracefully marked their boundary, and 
 dipped their long arms into the foaming stream of the river. 
 Other places I remembered, which had been described by 
 the old huntsman as the lodge of tremendous wildcats, or 
 the spot where tradition stated the mighty stag to have been 
 brought to bay, or where heroes, whose might was now as 
 much forgotten, were said to have been slain by surprise, or 
 in battle. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that these finished landscapes 
 became visible before the eyes of my imagination, as the 
 scenery of the stage is disclosed by the rising of the curtain. 
 I have said, that 1 had looked upon the country around me, 
 during the hurried and dissipated period of my life, with 
 the eyes indeed of my body, but without those of my nnder- 
 standing. It was piece by piece, as a child picks out its 
 lesson, that I began to recollect the beauties of nature 
 which had once surrounded me in the home of my fore- 
 
 '1 
 
344 WA VERLET NO VEL8 
 
 fathers. A natural taste for them must have lurked at the 
 bottom of my heart, which awakened when I was in foreign 
 countries, and becoming by degrees a favorite passion, grad- 
 ually turned its eyes inwards, and ransacked the neglected 
 stores which my memory had involuntarily recorded, and, 
 when excited, exerted herself to collect and to comj^lete. 
 
 I began now to regret more bitterly tlian ever the having 
 fooled away my family property, the care and improvement 
 of which I saw might have afforded an agreeable employ- 
 ment for my leisure, which only went to brood on i^ast mis- 
 fortunes, and increase useless repining. " Had but a single 
 farm been reserved, however small," said I one day to Mr. 
 Fairscribe, "I should have had a place I could call my 
 home, and something that I could call business." 
 
 " It might have been managed," answered Fairscribe ; 
 " and for my part, I inclined to keep the mansion-house, 
 mains, and some of the old family acres together ; but both 
 
 Mr. and you were of opinion that the money would be 
 
 more useful." 
 
 " True — true, my good friend," said I ; "^ I was a fool 
 then, and did not think I could incline to be Glentanner 
 wath £200 or £300 a-year, instead of Glentanner with as 
 many thousands. I was then a haughty, pettish, ignorant, 
 dissipated, broken-down Scottish laird ; and thinking my 
 imaginary consequence altogether ruined, I cared not how 
 soon, or how absolutely, 1 was rid of everything that recalled 
 it to my own memory or that of others." 
 
 " And now it is like you have changed your mind ?" said 
 Fairscribe. " Well, fortune is apt to circumduce the term 
 upon us ; but I think she may allow you to revise your con- 
 descendence." 
 
 " How do you mean, my good friend ?" jr' ' 
 
 ''Nay," said Fairscribe, "there is ill luck in averring til" ^ 
 one is sure of his facts. I will look back on a file of news- 
 papers, and to-morrow you shall liear from me ; come, belj 
 yourself — I have seen you fill your glass higher." 
 
 ''And shall see it again," said I, pouring out what re 
 mained of our bottle of claret ; " the wine is capital, and & 
 shall our toast be. To your fireside, my good friend. Am 
 now we shall go beg a Scots song without foreign grace 
 from my little siren Miss Katie." 
 
 The next day accordingly I received a parcel from Mil 
 Fairscribe with a newspaper inclosed, among the advertis* 
 ments of which one was marked with a cross as requirin 
 my attention. I read to my surjprise — ^^ j 
 
 llr. 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 345 
 
 " DESIRABLE ESTATE FOR SALE 
 
 ** By order of the Lords of Council and Session, will be 
 exposed to sale iu the New Sessions House of Edinburgh, on 
 Wednesday the 25th November 18 — , all and whole the lands 
 and barony of Glentanner, now called Castle Treddles, lying 
 in the middle Ward of Clydesdale and shire of Lanark, with 
 the teinds, parsonage and vicarage, fishings in the Clyde, 
 woods, mosses, moors, and pasturages," etc., etc. 
 
 The advertisement went on to set forth the advantages of 
 the soil, situation, natural beauties, and capabilities of im- 
 provement, not forgetting its being a freehold estate, with 
 the particular polypus capacity of being sliced up into two, 
 three, or, with a little assistance, four freehold qualifica- 
 tions, and a hint that the county was likely to be eagerly 
 contested between two great families. The upset price at 
 which ''the said lands and barony and others "were to be 
 exposed was thirty years' purchase of the proven rental, 
 which was about a fourth more than the property had 
 fetched at the last sale. This, which was mentioned, I sup- 
 pose, to show the improvable character of the land, would 
 have given another some pain ; but let me speak truth of 
 myself in good as in evil — it pained not me. I was only 
 angry that Fairscribe, who knew something generally of the 
 extent of my funds, should have tantalized me by sending 
 me information that my family property was in the market, 
 since he must have known that the price was far out of my 
 reach. 
 
 But a letter dropped from the parcel on the floor, which 
 attracted my eye, and explained tlie riddle. A client of 
 Mr. Fairscribe's, a moneyed man, tliought of buying Glen- 
 tanner, merely as an investment of money — it was even un- 
 likely he would ever see it ; and so the price of the whole 
 being some thousand pounds beyond what cash he had on 
 hand, this accommodating Dives would gladly take a part- 
 ner in the sale for any detached farm, and would make no 
 to objection to its including the most desirable part of the es- 
 tate in point of beauty, provided the price was made ade- 
 quate. Mr. Fairscribe would take care I was not imposed 
 on in the matter, and said in his card, he believed, if I 
 really wished to make such a purchase, I had better go out 
 and look at the premises, advising me, at the same time, to 
 Ivf'' keep a strict incognito — an advice somewhat superfluous, 
 Bince I am naturally of a retired and reserved disposition. 
 
CHAPTER m 
 
 MB. CEOFTANGRY, INTER ALIA, REVISITS GLENTANNER 
 
 Then sing of stage-coaches, 
 And fear no reproaches 
 
 For riding in one ; 
 But daily be jogging, 
 Whilst, whistling and flogging, 
 Whilst, whistling and flogging, 
 
 The coachman drives on. 
 
 Farquhar. 
 
 Disguised in a gray surtout which had seen service, a white 
 castor on my head, and a stent Indian cane in my hand, the 
 next week saw me on the top of a mail-coacli driving to the 
 westward. 
 
 I like mail-coaches, and I hate them. I like them for ray 
 convenience, but I detest them for setting the whole world 
 a-gadding, instead of sitting quietly still minding their own 
 business, and preserving the stamp of originality of charac- 
 ter which nature or education may have impressed on them. 
 Off they go, jingling against each other in the rattling vehi- 
 cle till they have no more variety of stamp in them than so 
 many smooth shillings — the same even in their Welsh wigs 
 and greatcoats, each without more individuality than be- 
 longs to a partner of the company, as the waiter calls them, 
 of the Xorth coach. 
 
 Worthy J\Ir. Piper, best of contractors who ever furnished 
 four f rampal jades for public use, I bless you when I set out 
 on a journey myself ; the neat coaches under your contract 
 render the intercourse, from Johnnie Groat's House to 
 Ladykirk and Cornhill bridge, safe, pleasant, and cheap. 
 But, Mr. Piper, you, who are a shrewd arithmetician, did it 
 never occur to you to calculate how many fools' heads, 
 which might have produced an idea or two in the year, if 
 suffered to remain in quiet, get effectually addled by jolting 
 to and fro in these flying chariots of yours ; how many 
 decent countrymen become conceited bumpkins after a cat- 
 tle-show dinner in the capital, which they could not have at- 
 tended save for your means ; how many decent country par- 
 sons return critics and spouters, by way of importing the 
 34ti 
 
i 
 
 CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 347 
 
 newest taste from Edinburgh ? And how will your con- 
 science answer one day for carrying so many bonny lasses 
 to barter modesty for conceit and levity at the metropolitan 
 Vanity Fair ? 
 
 Consider, too, the low rate to which you reduce human 
 intellect. I do not believe your habitual customers have 
 their ideas more enlarged than one of your coach-horses. 
 They hnoius the road, like the English postilion, and they 
 know nothing beside. They date, like the carriers at Gads- 
 hill, from the death of John Ostler ; * the succession of 
 guards forms a dynasty in their eyes ; coachmen are their 
 ministers of state, and an upset is to them a greater incident 
 than a change of administration. Their only point of interest 
 on the road is to save the time, and see whether the coach 
 keeps the hour. This is surely a miserable degradation of 
 human intellect. Take my advice, my good sir, and disin- 
 terestedly contrive that once or twice a quarter your most 
 dexterous whip shall overturn a coachful of these superfluous 
 travelers, in terrorem to those who, as Horace says, ''de- 
 light in the dust raised by your chariots." 
 
 Your current and customury mail-coach passenger, too, 
 gets abominably selfish, schemes successfully for the best seat, 
 the freshest egg, the right cut of the sirloin. The mode of 
 traveling is death to all the courtesies and kindnesses of life, 
 and goes a great way to demoralize the character, and cause 
 it to retrograde to barbarism. You allow us excellent dinners, 
 but only twenty minutes to eat them ; and what is the con- 
 sequence ? Bashful beauty sits on the one side of us, timid 
 childhood on the other ; respectable, yet somewhat feeble, 
 old age is placed on our front ; and all require those acts of 
 politeness wliich ought to put every degree upon a level at 
 the convivial board. But have we time — we the strong and 
 active of the party — to perform the duties of the table to the 
 more retired and basliful, to whom these little attentions are 
 due ? The lady should be pressed to her chicken, the old 
 man helped to his favorite and tender slice, the child to his 
 'tart. But not a fraction of a minute have we to bestow on 
 any other person than ourselves ; and the prut-prut — tut-tut 
 of the guard's discordant note summons us to the coach, the 
 weaker party having gone without their dinner, and the able- 
 bodied and active threatened with indigestion, from having 
 swallowed victuals like a Lei'stershire clown bolting bacon. 
 
 On the memorable occasion I am speaking of, I lost my 
 
 * See the opening scene £of Act ii.] of the First Part of Shaks- 
 peare's Henry IV, 
 
0^*8 IVAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Uieakfast, sheerly from obeying the commands of a respect- 
 able-looking old lady, who once required me to ring the bell, 
 and another time to help the tea-kettle. I have some reason 
 to think she was literally an " old stager," who laughed in 
 her sleeve at my complaisance, so that I have sworn in my 
 secret soul revenge upon her sex, and all such errant damsels, 
 of whatever age and degree, whom I may encounter in mj 
 travels. I mean all this without the least ill-will to my friend 
 the contractor, who I think, has approached as near as any 
 one is like to do towards accomplishing the modest wish of 
 the amatus and amata of the Peri Bailious, 
 
 Ye gods, annihilate but time and space, 
 And make two lovers happy. 
 
 I intend to give Mr. P. his full revenge when I come to dis- 
 cuss the more recent enormity of steamboats ; meanwhile, I 
 shall only say of both these modes of conveyance, that 
 
 There is no living with them or without them, 
 
 I am perhaps more critical on the mail-coach on this 
 
 particular occasion, that I did not meet all the respect from 
 the worshipful company in his Majesty's carriage that I think 
 I was entitled to. I must say it for myself, that I bear, in my 
 own opinion at least, not a vulgar point about me. My face 
 has seen service, but there is still a good set of teeth, an 
 acquiline nose, and a quick gray eye, set a little too deep 
 under the eyebrow ; and a cue of the kind once called mili- 
 tary may serve to show that my civil occupations have been 
 sometimes mixed with those of war. Nevertheless, two idle 
 young fellows in the vehicle, or rather on the top of it, were 
 so much amused with the deliberation which I used in ascend- 
 ing to the same place of eminence, that I thought I should 
 have been obliged to poll them up a little. And I was in no 
 good-humor, at an unsuppressed laugh following my descent, 
 when set down at the angle where a cross-road, striking ofiE 
 from the main one, led me towards Glentanner, from which! 
 I was still nearly five miles distant. 
 
 It was an old-fashioned road, which, preferring ascents to 
 sloughs, was led in a straight line over height and hollow, 
 through moor and dale. Every object around me, as I passed 
 them in succession, reminded me of old days, and at the 
 same time formed the strongest contrast with them possible. 
 Unattended, on foot, with a small bundle in my hand, 
 deemed scarce sufficient good company for the two shabby 
 
 i 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 349 
 
 genteels with whom I had been lately perched on the top of 
 a mail-coach, I did not seem to be the same person with the 
 young prodigal who lived with the noblest and gayest in the 
 land, and who, thirty years before, would, in the same coun- 
 try, have been on the back of a horse that had been victor 
 for a plate, or smoking along in his traveling chaise-and- 
 four. My sentiments were not less changed than my con- 
 dition, i could quite well remember that my ruling sensa- 
 tion in the days of heady youth was a mere schoolboy's 
 eagerness to get farthest forward in the race in which I had 
 
 engaged, to drink as many bottles as , to be thought as 
 
 good a judge of a horse as , to have the knowing cut of 
 
 's jacket. These were thy gods, Israel ! 
 
 Now I was a mere looker-on, seldom an unmoved, and 
 sometimes an angr}^ spectator, but still a spectator only, of 
 the pursuits of mankind. I felt how little my opinion was 
 valued by those engaged in the busy turmoil, yet I exer- 
 cised it with the profusion of an old lawyer retired from his 
 profession, who thrusts himself into his neighbor's affairs, 
 and gives advice where it is not wanted, merely nnder the 
 pretense of loving the crack of the whip. 
 
 I came amid these reflections to the brow of a hill, from 
 which I expected to see Glentanner — a modest looking, yet 
 comfortable, house, its walls covered with the most produc- 
 tive fruit-trees in that part of the country, and screened 
 from the most stormy quarters of the horizon by a deep and 
 ancient wood: which overhung the neighboring hill. The 
 house was gone ; a great part of the wood was felled ; and 
 instead of the gentlemanlike mansion, shrouded and em- 
 bosomed among its old hereditary trees, stood Castle Tred- 
 dles, ahuge lumping four-square pile of freestone, as bare 
 as my nail, except for a paltry edging of decayed and linger- 
 ing exotics, with an impoverished lawn stretched before it, 
 which, instead of boasting deep green tapestry, enameled 
 with daisies and with crowsfoot and cowslips, showed an ex- 
 tent of nakedness, raked, indeed, and leveled, but, where 
 the sown grasses had failed with drought, and the earth re- 
 tained its natural complexion, seemed nearly as brown and 
 bare as when it was newly dug np. 
 
 The house was a large fabric, which pretended to its name 
 of castle only from the front windows being finished in acute 
 Gothic arches (being, by the way, the very reverse of the 
 castellated style), and each angle graced with a turret 
 about the size of a pepper-box. In every other respect it re- 
 sembled a large town house, which like a fat burgess, had 
 
350 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 taken a walk to the country ou a holiday, and climbed to 
 the top of an eminence to look around it. The bright red 
 color of the freestone, the size of the building, the formal- 
 ity of its shajDC, and awkwardness of its position, harmon- 
 ized as ill with the sweeping Clyde in front, and the bub- 
 bling brook which danced down on the right, as the fat civic 
 form, with bushy wig, gold-headed cane, maroon-colored 
 coat, and mottled silk stockings, Avould have accorded with 
 the wild and magnificent scenery of Corehouse Linn. 
 
 I went up to the house. It was in that state of desertion 
 which is perhaps the most unpleasant to look on, for the 
 place was going to decay, without having been inhabitated. 
 There were about the mansion, though deserted, none of 
 the slow moldering touches of time, which communicate to 
 buildings, as to the human frame, a sort of reverence, while 
 depriving them of beauty and of strength. The disconcert- 
 ed schemes of the laird of Castle Treddles had resembled 
 fruit that becomes decayed without ever having ripened. 
 Some windows broken, others patched, others blocked up 
 with deals, gave a disconsolate air to all around, and seemed 
 to say, " There, vanity had purposed to fix her seat, but 
 was anticipated by poverty." 
 
 To the inside, after many a vain summons, I was at 
 length admitted by an old laborer. The house contained 
 'every contrivance for luxury and accommodation : the 
 kitchens were a model, and there were hot closets on the 
 office staircase, that the dishes might not cool, as our 
 Scottish phrase goes, between the kitchen and the hall. 
 But instead of the genial smell of good cheer, these temples 
 of Comus emitted the damp odor of sepulchral vaults, and 
 the large cabinets of cast-iron looked like the cages of some 
 feudal bastille. The eating-room and drawing-room, with 
 an interior boudoir, were magnificent apartments, the ceil- 
 ings fretted and adorned with stucco-work, which already 
 was broken in many places, and looked in others damp and 
 moldering; the wood paneling was shrunk, and warped, 
 and cracked ; the doors, which had not been hung for more 
 than two years, were, nevertheless, already swinging loose 
 from their hinges. Desolation, in short, was where enjoy- 
 ment had never been; and the want of all the usual means 
 to preserve was fast performing the Avork of decay. 
 
 The story was a common one, and told in a few words. 
 Mr. Treddles, senior, who bought the estate, was a cautious, 
 money-making person ; his son, still embarked in commer- 
 cial speculations, desired at the same time to enjoy his 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANON GATE 361 
 
 opulence and to increase it. He incurred great expenses, 
 amongst which this edifice was to be numbered. To support 
 these he speculated boldly and unfortunately ; and thus the 
 whole history is told, which may serve for more places than 
 Glentanner. 
 
 Strange and various feelings ran through my bosom as I 
 loitered ii^ these deserted apartments, scarce hearing what 
 my guide said to me about the size and destination of each 
 room. The first sentiment, I am ashamed to say, was one 
 of gratified spite. My patrician pride was pleased that the 
 mechanic, who had not thought the house of theCroftangiys 
 sufficiently good for him, had now experienced a fall in his 
 turn. My next thought was as mean, though not so malici- 
 ous. " I have had the better of this fellow," thought I : 
 " if I lost the estate, I at least spent the price ; and Mr. 
 Treddles has lost his among paltry commercial engagements." 
 
 "Wretch !" said the secret voice within, " darest thou 
 exult in thy shame ? Recollect how thy youth and fortune 
 were wasted in those years, and triumph not in the enjoy- 
 ment of an existence which leveled thee with the beasts that 
 perish. Bethink thee, how this poor man's_ vanity gave at 
 least bread to the laborer, peasant, and citizen ; and his 
 profuse expenditure, like water spilt on the ground, refreshed 
 the lowly herbs and plants where it fell. But thou — whom 
 hast thou enriched, during thy career of extravagance, save 
 those brokers of the devil — vintners, panders, gamblers, and 
 horse-jockeys ?" The anguish produced by this self-reproof 
 was so strong, that I put my hand suddenly to my forehead, 
 and was obliged to allege a sudden megrim to my attendant, 
 in apology for the action, and a slight groan with which it 
 was accompanied. 
 
 I then made an effort to turn my thoughts into a more 
 philosophical current, and muttered half aloud, as a charm 
 to lull any more painful thoughts to rest — 
 
 Nunc agar Umbreni sub nomine, nuper Ofelli 
 Dictus erat, nulli proprius ; sed cedit in usum 
 Nunc mihi, nunc alii. Quocirca vivite fortes, 
 Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus.* 
 
 In my anxiety to fix the philosophical precept in my mind, I 
 recited the last line aloud, which joined to my previous 
 agitation, I afterwards found became tlie cause of a report 
 that a mad schoolmaster had come from Edinburgh with 
 the idea in his head of buying Castle Treddles. 
 
 * See Lines from Horace. Note 17. 
 
352 WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 As I saw my companiou was desirous of getting rid of me, 
 I asked where I was to find the person in whose hands were 
 left the map of the estate and other particulars connected 
 with the sale. The agent who had this in possession, I was 
 
 told, lived at the town of ; which, I was informed, and 
 
 indeed knew well, was distant five miles and a bittock, which 
 may pass in a country where they are less lavish of their 
 land for two or three more. Being somewhat afraid of the 
 fatigue of walking so far, I inquired if a horse or any sort of 
 carriage was to be had, and was answered in the negative. 
 
 " But," said my cicerone, "you may halt a blink till next 
 morning at the Treddles Arms, a very decent house, scarce 
 a mile off." 
 
 " A new house, I suppose ?" replied I. 
 
 " Na, it's a new public, but it's an auld house : it was aye 
 the leddy's jointure-house in the Croftangry folks' time ; but 
 Mr. Treddles has fitted it up for the convenience of the 
 country. Poor man, he was a public-spirited man, when he 
 had the means." 
 
 " Duntarkin a public-house ! " I exclaimed, 
 
 " Ay," said the fellow, surprised at my naming the place, 
 by its former title ; " ye'U hae been in this country before, 
 I'm thinking ? " 
 
 " Long since," I replied. ''And there is good accommo- 
 dation at the what-d'ye-call-'em arras, and a civil landlord ?" 
 This 1 said by way of saying something, for the man stared 
 very hard at me. 
 
 " Very decent accommodation. Ye'll no be for fashing 
 wi' wine, I'm thinking, and there's walth o' porter, ale, and 
 a drap gude whisky — (in an undertone) Fairntosh, if you 
 can get on the lee-side of the gudewife, for there is nae 
 gudeman. They ca' her Christie Steele." 
 
 I almost started at the sound. Christie Steele ! Christie 
 Steele was my mother's body-servant, her very right hand, 
 and, between ourselves, something like a viceroy over her. 
 I recollected her perfectly ; and though she had, in former 
 times, been no favorite of mine, her name now sounded in 
 my ear like that of a friend, and was the first word I had 
 heard somewhat in unison with the associations around me. 
 I sallied from Castle Treddles, determined to make the best 
 of my way to Duntarkin, and my cicerone hung by me for a 
 little way, giving loose to his love of talking— an opportunity 
 which, situated as he was, the seneschal of a deserted castle, 
 was not likely to occur frequently. 
 
 **Some folk think," said my companion, ''that Mr 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 353 
 
 Treddles might as weel have put my wife as 'Christie Steele 
 into the Treddles Arms, for Christie had been aye in service, 
 and never in the public line, and so it's like she is ganging 
 back in the world, as I hear ; now, my wife had keepit a vic- 
 tualling office." 
 
 "■ That would have been an advantage, certainly," I re- 
 plied. 
 
 '' But I am no sure that I wad ha' looten Eppie take it, if 
 they had put it in her offer." 
 
 " That's a different consideration." 
 
 " Ony way, I wadna ha' liked to have offended Mr. Tred- 
 dles ; he was a wee toustie when you rubbed him again the 
 hair, but a kind, weel-meaning man." 
 
 I wanted to get rid of this species of chat, and finding 
 myself near the entrance of a footpath which made a short 
 cut to Duntarkin, I put half-a-crown into my guide's hand, 
 bade him good-evening, and plunged into the woods. 
 
 " Hout, sir — fie, sir — no from the like of you. Stay, sir, 
 ye wunna find the way that gate. Odd's mercy, he maun 
 ken the gate as weel as I do mysell. Weel, I wad like to ken 
 wha the chield is." 
 
 Such Avere the last words of my guide's drowsy, uninter- 
 esting tone of voice ; and, glad to be rid of him, I strode out 
 stoutly, in despite of large stones, briers, and ''bad steps," 
 which abounded in the road I had chosen. In the interim, 
 I tried as much as I could, with verses from Horace and Prior, 
 and all wlio have lauded the mixture of literary with rural 
 life, to call back the visions of last night and this morning, 
 imagining myself settled in some detached farm of the 
 estate of Glentanner, 
 
 Which sloping hills around inclose ; 
 Where many a birch and brown oak grows ; 
 
 when I should have a cottage with a small library, a small 
 cellar, a spare bed for a friend, and live more happy and 
 more honored than when I had the whole barony. But the 
 sight of Castle Treddles had disturbed all my own castles in 
 the air. The realities of the matter, like a stone plashed 
 into a limpid fountain, had destroyed the reflection of the 
 objects around, which, till this act of violence, lay slumber- 
 ing on the crystal surface, and I tried in vain to re-establish 
 the picture which had been so rudely broken. Well, then I 
 would try it another way : I would try to get Christie Steele 
 out of her public, sinoe she was not thriving in it, and she 
 23 
 
354 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 who had been my mother's governante should be mine. 1 
 knew all her faults, and I told her history over to myself. 
 
 She was a grand-daughter, I believe, at least some relative, 
 of the famous Covenanter of the name, whom Dean Swift's 
 friend, Captain Creichton shot on his own staircase in the 
 times of the persecutions,* and had perhaps derived from 
 her native stock much both of its good and evil properties. 
 No one could say of her that she was the life and spirit of 
 the family, though, in my mother's time, she directed all 
 family afhairs ; her look was austere and gloomy, and when 
 she was not displeased with yon, you could only find it out 
 by her silence. If there was cause for complaint, real or 
 imaginary, Christie was loud enough. She loved my mother 
 with the devoted attachment of a younger sister, but she 
 was as jealous of her favor to any one else as if she had been 
 the aged husband of a coquettish wife, and as severe in her 
 reprehensions as an abbess over her nuns. The command 
 which she exercised over her was that, I fear, of a strong 
 and determined over a feeble and more nervous disposition ; 
 and though it was used with rigor, yet, to the best of Christie 
 Steele's belief, she was urging her mistress to her best and 
 most becoming course, and would have died rather than have 
 recommended any other. The attachment of this woman 
 was limited to the family of Croftangry, for she had few re-' 
 lations ; and a dissolute cousin, whom late in life she had 
 taken as a husband, had long left her a widow. 
 
 To me she had ever a strong dislike. Even from my early 
 childhood she was jealous, strange as it may seem, of my 
 interest in my mother's affections ; she saw my foibles and 
 voices with abhorrence, and without a grain of allowance : nor 
 did she pardon the weakness of maternal affection, even when, 
 by the death of two brothers, I came to be the only child of 
 a widowed parent. At the time my disorderly conduct in- 
 duced my mother to leave Glentanner and retreat to her 
 jointure-house, I always blamed Chriistie Steele for having 
 influenced her resentment, and prevented her from listen- 
 ing to my vows of amendment, which at times were real and 
 serious, and might, perhaps, have accelerated that change of 
 disposition which has since, I trust, taken place. But 
 Christie regarded me as altogether a doomed and predesti- 
 nated child of perdition, who was sure to hold on my course, 
 and drag downwards whosoever might attempt to afford me 
 support. 
 
 Still, though I knew such had been Christie's prejudices 
 
 * See Steele, the Covenanter. Note 18. 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 355 
 
 against me in otlier days, yet I thought enough of time had 
 since passed away to destroy all of them. I knew, that when, 
 through the disorder of my affairs, my mother underwent 
 some temi:)orary inconvenience about money matters, Christie 
 as a thing of course, stood in the gap, and having sold a 
 small inheritance which had descended to her, brought the 
 purchase money to her mistress, with a sense of devotion as 
 deep as that which inspired the Christians of the first age, 
 when they sold all they had and followed the apostles of the 
 church. I therefore thought that we might, in old Scottish 
 phrase, " let byeganes be byeganes," and begin upon a new 
 account. Yet I resolved, like a skilful general, to recon- 
 noiter a little before laying down any precise scheme of 
 proceeding, and in the interim I determined to preserve my 
 incognito. 
 
CHAPTER rV 
 
 MR. CROFTANGRT BIDS ADIEU TO CLYDESDJLLB 
 
 Alas, how changed from what it once had been I 
 'Twas now degraded to a common inn. 
 
 Gay. 
 
 An hour's brisk walking, or thereabouts, placed me in front 
 of Duntarkiu, which had also, I found, undergone consider- 
 able alterations, though it had not been altogether demolished 
 like the principal mansion. An inn-yard extended before 
 the door of the decent little jointure-house, even amidst 
 the remnants of the holly hedges which had screened the 
 lady's garden. Then a broad, raw-looking, new-made road 
 intruded itself up the little glen, instead of the old horseway, 
 so seldom used that it was almost entirely covered with grass. 
 It is a great enormity of which gentlemen trustees on the 
 highways are sometimes guilty, in adopting the breadth nec- 
 essary for an avenue to the metropolis, where all that is 
 required is an access to some sequestered and unpopulous 
 district. 1 do not say anything of the expense, that the 
 trustees and their constituents may settle as they please. 
 But the destruction of sylvan beauty is great, when the 
 breadth of the road is more than proportioned to the vale 
 through which it runs, and lowers of course the consequence 
 of any objects of wood or water, or broken and varied ground, 
 which might otherwise attract notice and give pleasure. A 
 bubbling runnel by the side of one of these modern Appian 
 or Flaminian highways is but like a kennel, the little hill is 
 diminished to a hillock, the romantic hillock to a mole-hill, 
 almost too small for sight. 
 
 Such an enormity, however, had destroyed the quiet loneli- 
 ness of Duntarkin,* and intruded its breadth of dust and 
 gravel, and its associations of " pochays" and mail-coaches, 
 upon one of the most sequestered spots in the Middle Ward 
 of Clydesdale. The house was old and dilapidated, and 
 
 * Mr. Lockhart informs us that this demesne is sketched from 
 that of Carmichael, the ancient mansion of the noble family of 
 Hyndford {Laing). 
 
 U6 
 
 i 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 35'' 
 
 looked sorry for itself, as if sensible of a derogation ; but 
 the sign was strong and new, and brightly painted, display- 
 ing a heraldic shield, three shuttles in a field diapre, a web 
 partly unfolded for crest, and two stout giants for supporters, 
 each "one holding a weaver's beam proper. To have display- 
 ed this monstrous emblem on the front of the house might 
 have hazarded bringing down the wall, but for certain would 
 have blocked up one or two windows. It was therefore es- 
 tablished independent of the mansion, being displayed in an 
 iron framework, and suspended upon two posts, with_ as 
 much wood and iron about it as would have builded a brig ; 
 and there it hung, creaking, groaning and screaming in 
 every blast of wind, and frightening for five miles' distance, 
 for aught I know, the nests of thrushes and linnets, the 
 ancient denizens of the little glen. 
 
 When I entered the place I was received by Christie Steele 
 herself, who seemed uncertain whether to drop me in the 
 kitchen or usher me into a separate apartment. As I called 
 for tea, with something rather more substantial than bread and 
 butter, and spoke of supping and sleeping, Christie at last 
 inducted me into the room where she herself had been sitting, 
 probably the only one which had a fire, though the mouth 
 was October. This answered my plan ; and, as she was 
 about to remove her spinning-wheel, I beggid she would 
 have the goodness to remain and make my tea, adding, that 
 I liked the sound of the wheel, and desired not to disturb 
 her housewife thrift in the least. 
 
 f '' I dinna ken, sir," she replied, in a dry j'evecJieione, which 
 
 ^ carried me back twenty years, " I am nane of thae heartsome 
 landleddies that can tell country cracks, and make themsells 
 agreeable ; and I was ganging to pit on a fire for you in the 
 Ked Room ; but if it is your will to stay here, he that pays 
 
 '1 1 the lawing maun choose the lodging.'^ 
 
 ,1' I endeavored to engage her in conversation ; but though 
 
 she answered with a kind of stiff civility, I could get her 
 into no freedom of discourse, and she began to look at her 
 wheel and at the door more than once, as if she meditated a 
 retreat. I was obliged therefore to proceed to some special 
 questions that might have interest for a person whose ideas 
 were probably of a very bounded description. 
 
 I looked round the apartment, being the same in which I 
 had last seen my poor mother. The author of the family 
 history, formerly mentioned, had taken great credit to him- 
 self for the improvements he had made in this same joint- 
 urehouse of Duntarkin, and how, upon his marriage, when 
 
368 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 his mother took possession of the same as her jointure-house, 
 " to his great charges and expenses he caused box the 
 walls of the great parlor (in which I was now sitting), em- 
 panel the same, and plaster the roof, finishing the apartment 
 with ane concave chimney, and decorating the same with 
 pictures, and a barometer and thermometer." And in par- 
 ticular, which his good mother used to say she prized above 
 all the rest, he had caused his own portraiture be limned over 
 the mantelpiece by a skilful hand. And in good faith, there 
 he remained still, liaving much the visage which I was dis- 
 posed to ascribe to him on the evidence of his handwriting — 
 grim and austere, yet not without a cast of shrewdness 
 and determination ; in armor, though he never wore it, I 
 fancy ; one hand on an open book, and one resting on the 
 hilt of his sword, though I daresay his head never ached 
 with reading nor his limbs with fencing. 
 
 '' That picture is painted on the wood, madam," said I. 
 
 "Ay, sir, or its like it would not have been left there. 
 They took a' they could." 
 
 " Mr. Treddle's creditors, you mean ?" said I. 
 
 " Na," replied she drily, " the creditors of another family, 
 that sweepit cleaner than this poor man's, because I fancy 
 there was less to gather." 
 
 " An older family, perhaps, and probably more remembered 
 and regretted than later possessors." 
 
 Christie here settled herself in her seat, and pulled her 
 wheel towards her. I had given her something interesting 
 for her thoughts to dwell upon, and her wheel was a mechani- 
 cal accompaniment on such occasions, the revolutions of 
 which assisted her in the explanation of her ideas. 
 
 "Mair regretted — mair missed ! I liked ane of the auld 
 family very weel, but I winna say that for them a'. How should 
 they be mair missed than the Treddleses ? The cotton mill 
 was such a thing for the country ! The mair bairns a cottar 
 body had the better : they would make their awn keep frae the 
 time they were five years auld ; and a widow wi' three or 
 four bairns was a wealthy woman in the time of the Tred- 
 dleses." 
 
 " But the health of these poor children, my good friend — 
 their education and religious instruction " 
 
 " For healtli," said Christie, looking gloomily at me, ''ye 
 maun ken little of the warld, sir, if ye dinna ken that the 
 nealth of the poor man's body, as weel as his youth and his 
 3trength, are all at the command of the rich man's purse. 
 There never was a trade so unhealthy yet, but men would 
 
10| 
 
 1 
 
 CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 359 
 
 fight to get wark ut it, for twa pennies a day aboon the com- 
 mon wage. But the bairns were reasonably weel cared for 
 in the way of air and exercise, and a very responsible youth 
 heard them their carritch, and gied them lessons in Eeed- 
 iemadeasy.* Now, what did they ever get before ? Maybe 
 on a winter day they wad be called out to beat the wood for 
 cocks or sic-like, and then the starving weans would maybe 
 get a bite of broken bread, and maybe no, just as the butler 
 was in humor — that was a' they got." 
 
 " They were not, then, a very kind family to the poor, 
 these old possessors ? " said I, somewhat bitterly ; for I had 
 expected to hear my ancestors' praises recorded, though I 
 certainly despaired of being regaled with my own. 
 
 "They werena ill to them, sir, and that is aye something. 
 They were just decent bien bodies : ony poor creature that 
 had face to beg got an awmous and welcome ; they that 
 were shame-faced gaed by, and twice as welcome. But they 
 keepit an honest walk before God and man, the Croftangrys, 
 and, as I said before, if they did little good, they did as lit- 
 tle ill. They lifted their rents and spent them, called in 
 their kain and eat them, gaed to the kirk of a Sunday, 
 bowed civilly if folk took aff their bannets as they gaed by, 
 and lookit as black as sin at them that keepit them on." 
 " These are their arms that you have on the sign ?" 
 "What ! on the painted board that is skirling and groan- 
 ing at the door ? Na, these are Mr. Treddles's arms, though 
 they look as like legs as arms ; ill-pleased I was at the tule 
 thing, that cost as muckle as would hae repaired the house 
 from the wa' stane to the rigging-tree. But if I am to bide 
 here, I'll hae a decent board wi' a pnnch-bowl on it." 
 " Is there a doubt of your staying here, Mrs. Steele ?" 
 " Dinna mistress me," said the cross old woman, whose 
 fingers were now plying their thrift in a manner which indi- 
 cated nervous irritation : " there was nae luck in the land 
 since Luckie turned Mistress, and Mistress my Leddy ; 
 and as for staying here, if it concern you to ken, I may stay 
 if I can pay a hundred pund sterling for the lease, and I 
 may flit if I canna, and so gude-e'en to you, Christie," and 
 round went the wheel with much activity. 
 
 " And you like the trade of keeping a public-house ?" 
 "I can scarce say that," she replied. "But worthy Mr. 
 Prendergast is clear of its lawfulness, and I hae gotten used 
 to it, and made a decent living, though I never make out a 
 
 * *' Reading made Easy," usually so pronounced in Scotland. 
 
360 WAV^BLEY NOVELS 
 
 fause reckoning, or give ony ane the means to disorder rea- 
 son in my house." 
 
 " Indeed I" said I ; ''in that case there is no wonder you 
 have not made up the hundred pounds to purchase the 
 lease." 
 
 " How do you ken," said she, sharply, "that I might not 
 have had a hundred punds of my ain fee ? If I have it not, 
 I am sure it is my ain faut ; and I wuuna ca' it faut neither, 
 for it gaed to her wha was weel entitled to a' my service." 
 Again she pulled stoutly at the flax, and the wheel went 
 smartly round. 
 
 " This old gentlemen," said I, fixing my eye on the 
 painted panel, seems to have had his arms painted as well as 
 Mr. Treddles — that is, if that painting in the corner be a 
 scutcheon." 
 
 " Ay — ay, cushion, just sae, they maun a' hae their cush- 
 ions : there's sma' gentry without that ; and so the arms, as 
 they ca' them, of the house of Glentauner may be seen on 
 an auld stane in the west end of the house. But to do them 
 justice, they didna propale sae muckle about them as poor 
 Mr. Treddles did; it's like they were better used to them." 
 
 '' Very likely. Are there any of the old family in life, 
 good wife ?" 
 
 " No," she replied ; then added, after a moment's hesita- 
 tion — " not that I know of," and the wheel, which had in- 
 termitted, began again to revolve. 
 
 " Gone abroad, perhaps ? " I suggested. 
 
 She now looked up and faced me. " No, sir. There were 
 three sons of the last laird of Glentanner, as he was then 
 called ; John and William were hopeful young gentlemen, 
 but they died early — one of a decline, brought on by the 
 mizzles, the other lost his life in a fever. It would hae been 
 lucky for mony ane that Chrystal had gane the same gate." 
 
 " (3h ! he must have been the young spendthrift that sold 
 the property ? Well, but you should not have such an ill- 
 will against him : remember, necessity has no law ; and then, 
 good wife, he was not more culpable than Mr. Treddles, 
 whom you are so sorry for." 
 
 " I wish I could think sae, sir, for his mother's sake ; but 
 Mr. Treddles was in trade, and though he had no preceese 
 right to do so, yet tliere was some warrant for a man being 
 expensive that imagined he was making a mint of money. 
 But this unhappy lad devoured his patrimony, when he 
 kenned that he was living like a ratten in a Dunlap cheese, 
 and diminishing his means at a' hands, I cauna bide tO' 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 361 
 
 think on't." With this she broke out into a snatch of a 
 ballad ; but little of mirth was there either iu the tone or 
 the expression : — 
 
 " For he did spend, and make an end 
 
 Of gear that his forefathers wan ; 
 Of land and ware he made him bare, 
 So speak nae mair of the auld gudeman." 
 
 "Come, dame," said I/'' it is a long lane that has no 
 turning. I will not keep from you that I have heard some- 
 thing of this poor fellow, Chrystal Croftangry. He has 
 sown his wild oats, as they say, and has settled into a steady 
 respectable man." 
 
 "And wha tell'd ye that tidings?'' said she, looking 
 sharply at me. 
 
 " Not perhaps the best judge in the world of his char- 
 acter, for it was himself, dame." 
 
 "And if he tell'd you truth, it was a virtue he did not aye 
 nse to practise," said Christie. 
 
 "The devil!" said I, considerably nettled; "all the 
 world held him to be a man of honor." 
 
 "Ay — ay ! he would hae shot onybody wi' his pistols and 
 his guns that have evened him to be a liar. But if he 
 promised to pay an honest tradesman the next term-day, did 
 he keep his word then ? And if he promised a puir silly 
 lass to make gude her shame, did he speak truth then ? 
 And what is that but being a liar, and a black-hearted 
 deceitful liar to boot ?" 
 
 My indignation was rising, but' I strove to suppress it ; in- 
 deed, I should only have afforded my tormentor a triumph 
 by an angry reply. I partly suspected she began to recog- 
 nize me ; yet she testified so little emotion, that I could not 
 think my suspicion well founded. I went on, therefore, to 
 say, in a tone as indifferent as I could command, "Well, 
 goodwife, I see you will believe no good of this Chrystal of 
 , yours till he comes back and buys a good farm on the estate, 
 and makes you his housekeeper." 
 
 The old woman dropped her thread, folded her hands, as 
 she looked up to heaven with a face of apprehension. 
 "The Lord," she exclaimed, "forbid! The Lord in His 
 mercy forbid ! Oh, sir ! if you really know this unlucky 
 man, persuade him to settle where folk ken the good that 
 you say he has come to, and dinna ken the evil of his former 
 days. He used to be proud enough — dinna let him come 
 here, even for his own sake. He used auce to have some 
 pride." 
 
362 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Here she ouce more drew the wheel close to her, and began 
 to pull at the flax with both hands. " Dinna let him come 
 here, to be looked down upon by ony that may be left of his 
 aiild reiving companions, and to see the decent folk that he 
 looked over his nose at look over their noses at him, baith at 
 kirk and market. Dinna let him come to his ain country 
 to be made a tale about when ony neighbor points him out 
 to another, and tells what he is, and what he was, and how 
 he wrecked a dainty estate, and brought harlots to the door- 
 cheek of his father's house, till he made it nae residence for* 
 his mother ; and how it had been foretauld by a servant of 
 his ain house that he was a ne'er-do weel, and a child of 
 perdition, and how her words were made good, and " 
 
 "Stop there, goodwife, if you please," said I; "you 
 have said as much as I can well remember, and more than it 
 may be safe to repeat. I can use a great deal of freedom 
 with the gentleman we speak of ; but I think, were any 
 other person to carry him half of your message, I would 
 scarce ensure his personal safety. And now, as I see the 
 
 night is settled to be a fine one, I will walk on to , 
 
 where I must meet a coach to-morrow, as it passes to Edin- 
 burgh." 
 
 So saying, I paid my moderate reckoning, and took my 
 leave, without being able to discover whether the prejudiced 
 and hard-hearted old woman did, or did not, suspect the 
 identity of her guest with the Chrystal Croftangry against 
 whom she harbored so much dislike. 
 
 The night was fine and frosty, though, when I pretended 
 to see what its character was, it might have rained like the [, 
 deluge. I only made the excuse to escape from old Christie 
 Steele. The horses which run races in the Corso at Eome 
 without any riders, in order to stimulate their exertion, 
 carry each his own spurs, namely, small balls of steel, with 
 sharp projecting spikes, which are attached to loose straps 
 of leather, and, flying about in the violence of the agitation, 
 keep the horse to his speed by pricking him as they strike 
 against his flanks. The old woman's reproaches had the 
 same effect on me, and urged me to a rapid pace, as if it 
 had been possible to escaf)e from my own recollections. 
 In the best days of my life, when I won one or two hard — 
 walking-matches, I doubt if I ever walked so fast as I didj 
 betwixt the Treddles Arms and the borough town for which] 
 I was bound. Though the night was cold, I was warm 
 enough by the time I got to my inn ; and it required a 
 refreshing draught of porter, with half an hour's repose, 
 
 ioBe 
 spp 
 
 Id 
 
 M 
 
 tins 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 363 
 
 ere I could determine to give no farther thought to Christie 
 and her opinions than those of any other vulgar, preju- 
 diced old woman. I resolved at last to treat the thing en 
 bagatelle, and, calling for writing-materials, I folded up a 
 check for £100, with these lines on the envelope: 
 
 " Chrystal, the ne'er-do-weel, 
 Child destined to the dell, 
 Sends this to Christie Steele." 
 
 And I was so much pleased with this new mode of viewing 
 the subject, that I regretted the lateness of the hour pre- 
 vented my finding a person to carry the letter express to its 
 destination. 
 
 But with the morning cool reflection came. 
 
 I considered that the money, and probably more, was 
 actually due by me on my mother's account to Christie, who 
 had lent it in a moment of great necessity, and that the re- 
 turning it in a light or ludicrous manner was not unlikely to 
 prevent so touchy and punctilious a person from accepting a 
 debt which was most justly her due, and which it became me 
 particularly to see satisfied. Sacrificing, then, my triad 
 with little regret, for it looked better by candlelight, and 
 through the medium of a pot of porter, than it did by day- 
 light, and with bohea for a menstruum, I determined to em- 
 ploy Mr. Fairscribe's mediation in buying up the lease of 
 the little inn, and conferring it upon Christie in the way 
 which should make it most acceptable to her feelings. It is 
 only necessary to add, that my plan succeeded, and that 
 Widow Steele even yet keeps the Treddles Arms. Do not 
 say, therefore, that 1 have been disingenuous with you, read- 
 er ; since, if I have not told all the ill of myself I might have 
 done, I have indicated to you a person able and willing to 
 supply the blank, by relating all my delinquencies, as well 
 as my misfortunes. 
 
 In the mean time, I totally abandoned the idea of redeem- 
 ing any part of my paternal property, and resolved to take 
 Christie Steele's advice, as young Nerval does Glenalvon's, 
 *' although it sounded harshly/' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MR. CEOFTANGRY SETTLES IN THE CANOGATB 
 
 If you will know my house, 
 " Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by. 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 By a revolution of humor which I am unable to account foi, 
 I changed my mind entirely on my plan3 of life, in conse- 
 quence of the disa2)pointmeiit the history of which fills the 
 last chapter. I began to discover that the country would 
 not at all suit me; for I had relinquished field-sports, and 
 felt no inclination whatever to farming, the ordinary voca- 
 tion of country gentlemen ; besides that, I had no talent for 
 assisting either candidate in case of an expected election, 
 and saw no amusement in the duties of a road trustee, a 
 commissioner of supply, or even in the magisterial functions 
 of the bench. I had begun to take some taste for reading ; 
 and a domiciliation in the country must remove me from the 
 use of books, excepting the small subscription library, in 
 which the very book which you want is uniformly sure to be 
 engaged. 
 
 I resolved, therefore, to make the Scottish metropolis my 
 regular resting-place, reserving to myself to take occasion- 
 ally those excursions which, spite of all I have said against 
 mail-coaches, Mr. Piper has rendered so easy. Friend of our' 
 life and of our leisure, he secures by despatch against loss of 
 time, and by the best of coaches, cattle, and steadiest of dri- 
 vers against hazard of limb, and wafts us, as well as our let- 
 ters, from Edinburgh to Cape Wrath in the penning of a 
 paragraph. 
 
 When my mind was quite made up to make Auld Reekie 
 my headquarters, reserving the privilege of exploring in all 
 directions, I began to explore in good earnest for the pur- 
 pose of discovering a suitable habitation. ' ' And whare trew 
 ye I gaed ? " as Sir Pertinax says. Not to George's Square, 
 nor to Charlotte Square, nor to the old New Town, nor to 
 the new New Town, nor to the Calton Hill — I went to the 
 Canongate, and to the very portion of the Canongate in which 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 3Q5 
 
 I had formerly been immured, like the errant knight, pris- 
 oner in some enchanted castle, where spells have made the 
 ambient air impervious to the unhappy captive, although the 
 organs of sight encountered no obstacle to his free passage. 
 
 Why I should have thouglit of pitching my tent here I 
 cannot tell. Perhaps it was to enjoy the pleasures of free- 
 dom, where I had so long endured the bitterness of restraint ; 
 on the principle of the officer who, after he had retired from 
 the army, ordered his servant to continue to call him at 
 the hour of parade, simply that he might have the pleasure 
 of saying — " D — n the parade !" and turning to the other 
 side to enjoy his slumbers. Or perhaps I expected to find 
 in the vicinity some little old-fashioned house, having some- 
 what of the rus in urbe which I was ambitious of enjoying. 
 Enough, I went, as aforesaid, to the Canongate. 
 
 I stood by the kennel, of which I have formerly spoken, 
 and, my mind being at ease, my bodily organs were more 
 delicate. I was more sensible than heretofoie that, like the 
 trade of Pompey in Measitre for Measure, it did in some 
 sort '' pah, an ounce of civet, good apothecary !" Turn- 
 ing from thence, my steps naturally directed themselves to 
 my own humble apartment, where my little Highland land- 
 lady, as dapper and as tight as ever (for old women wear a 
 hundred times better than the hard-wrought seniors of the 
 masculine sex), stood at the door, " teedling "' to herself a 
 Highland song as she shook a table-napkin over the fore- 
 stair, and then proceeded to fold it up neatly for future 
 service. 
 
 ■' How do you, Janet ?" 
 
 '' Thank ye, good sir," answered my old friend, without 
 looking at me ; ''but ye might as weel say Mrs. MacEvoy, 
 for she is na a'body's Shanet — umph." 
 
 ■' You must be yny Janet, though, for all that. Have 
 (you forgot me ? Do you not remember Chrystal Croft- 
 angry ? " , 
 
 The light kind-hearted creature threw her napkin into 
 the opin door, skipped down the stair like a fairy, three 
 steps at once, seized me by the hands — both hands — jumped 
 np, and actually kissed me. I was a little ashamed ; but 
 what swain, of somewhere inclining to sixty, could resist 
 the ^advances of a fair contemporary ? So we allowed the 
 full degree of kindness to the meeting — Jioiii soit qui mal y 
 fense — and then Janet entered instantly upon business. 
 "An' ye'll gae in, man, and see your auld lodgings, nae 
 doubt, and Shanet will pay ye the fifteen shillings of change 
 
!t. 
 
 366 WAVERLET N0V£L8 
 
 that ye ran away without, and without bidding Shanet goo^ = 
 day. But never mind (nodding good-humoredly), Shanet 
 saw you were carried for the time." 
 
 By this time we were in my old quarters, and Janet, witl 
 her bottle of cordial in one hand and the glass in the other , 
 had forced on me a dram of usqebaugh, distilled with saf 
 fron and other herbs, after some old-fashioned Highlan( 
 receipt. Then was unfolded, out of many a little scrap o 
 paper, the reserved sum of fifteen shillings, which Jane 
 had treasured for twenty years and upwards. i 
 
 "Here they are," she said, in honest triumph, ''just thJEi 
 same I was holding out to ye when ye ran as if ye had bee: ]i 
 fey. Shanet has had siller, and Shanet has wanted silleiji, 
 mony a time since that ; and the ganger has come, and thi 
 factor has come, and the butcher and baker — Cot bless us 
 — just like to tear poor auld Shanet to pieces, but she toolii 
 good care of Mr, Croftangry's fifteen shillings. , m 
 
 " But what if I had never come back, Janet ?" 
 
 " Och, if Shanet had heard you were dead, she would ha 
 gien it to the poor of the chapel, to pray for Mr. Crof 
 angry," said Janet, crossing herself, for she was a Catholii 
 " You maybe do not think it would do you cood, but tl 
 blessing of the poor can never do no harm." 
 
 I agreed heartily in Janet's conclusion ; and, as to hai 
 desired her to consider the hoard as her own properj 
 would have been an indelicate return to her for the uprigh 
 ness of her conduct, I requested her to dispose of it as si 
 had proposed to do in the event of my death — that is. 
 she knew any poor people of merit to whom it might 
 useful. 
 
 " Ower mony of them," raising the corner of her check 
 apron to her eyes — "e'en ower mony of them, Mr. Croj ^ 
 angry. Och, ay, there is the puir Highland creatures fr ,pj| 
 Glenshee, that cam down for the harvest, and are lyi) ^. 
 wi' the fever — five shillings to them ; and half-a-crown 
 Bessie MacEvoy, whose coodman, puir creature, died of tj 
 frost, being a shairman, for a' the whiskey he could drill 
 to keep it out o' his stamoch ; and " 
 
 But she suddenly interrupted the bead-roll of her p: 
 posed charities, and assuming a very sage look, and pri; 
 ming up her little chattering mouth, she went on in| 
 different tone — "But, och, Mr. Croftangry, betJiink 
 whether ye will not need a' this siller yoursell, and ma; 
 look back and think lang for ha'en kiven it away, whilki 
 a creat sin to forthink a wark o' charity, and also is unlucl 
 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 367 
 
 -' md moreover is not the thought of a shentleman's son like 
 
 ^oursell, dear. And I say this, that ye may think a bit, for 
 
 'our mother's son kens that ye are no so careful as you 
 
 hould be of the gear, and I hae tauld ye of it before, 
 
 ewel/' 
 
 ■' -^ I assured her I could easily spare the money, without risk 
 
 ™ )f future repentance ; and she went on to infer that, in such 
 
 ■"P i case, " Mr. Croftangry had grown a rich man in foreign 
 
 J'"' )arts, and was free of his troubles with messengers and sheriff- 
 
 )fficers, and sic-like scum of the earth ; and Shanet Mac- 
 
 !ttl Savoy's mothers daughter be a blythe woman to hear it. 
 
 '^;|* 3ut if Mr. Croftangry was in trouble, there was his room, 
 
 ^|''s md his pod, and Shanet to Avait on him, and tak payment 
 
 ^''i'i vhen it was quite convenient." 
 
 «" I explained to Janet my situation, in which she expressed 
 
 ^t« inqualified delight. I then proceeded to inquire into her 
 
 )wn circumstances, and, though she spoke cheerfully and 
 
 iontentedly, I could see they were precarious. I had paid 
 
 '' l>|nore than was due ; other lodgers fell into an opposite error, 
 
 ' md forgot to pay Janet at all. Then, Janet being ignorant 
 
 )f all indirect modes of screwing money out of her lodgers, 
 
 )thers in the same line of life, who were sharper than the 
 
 loor simple Highlandwoman, were enabled to let their apart- 
 
 nents cheaper in appearnce, though the inmates usually 
 
 'ound them twice as dear in the long run. 
 
 As I had already destined my old landlady to be my house- 
 
 • ceeper and governante, knowing her honesty, good-nature, 
 
 rad, although a Scotchwoman, her cleanliness and excellent 
 
 - ;emper, saving the short and hasty expressions of anger which 
 
 Highlanders call a •'* fuff," I now proposed the plan to her 
 
 - n such a way as was likely to make it most acceptable. Very 
 
 icceptable as the proposal was, as I could plainly see, Janet, 
 
 lowever, took a day to consider upon it ; and her reflections 
 
 igainst our next meeting had suggested only one objection, 
 
 vhich was singular enough. 
 
 lo:i ' " My honor," so she now termed me, '' would pe for biding 
 
 1 dtiiij.n some fine street apout the town ; now Shanet wad ill like 
 
 ■-o live in a place where polish, and sheriffs, and bailiffs, and 
 
 tic thieves and trash of the world, could tak puir shentle- 
 
 nen by the throat, just because they wanted a wheen dollars 
 
 ill 13 |.n the sporran. She had lived in the bonny glen of Toman- 
 
 iiii;'l;houlick — Cot, an ony of the vermint had come there, her 
 
 '' "ather wad hae wared a shot on them, and he could hit a 
 
 ; 3uck within as mony measured yards as e'er a man of his 
 
 .; )lan. And the place here was so quiet frae them, they durst 
 
m WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 na put tlieir nose ower the gutter. Shanet owed nobody a 
 boddle, put she couldna pide to see honest folk and pretty 
 shentlemen forced away to prison whether they would or 
 no ; and then if Shanet was to lay her tangs ower ane of the 
 ragamutfins' heads, it would be, maybe, that the law would 
 gie't a hard name." 
 
 One thing I have learned in life — never to speak sense 
 when nonsense will answer the purpose as well. I should 
 have had great difficulty to convince this practical and dis- 
 interested admirer and vindicator of liberty that arrests 
 seldom or never were to be seen in the streets of Edinburgh, 
 and to satisfy her of their justice and necessity would have 
 been as difficult as to convert her to the Protestant faith. I 
 therefore assured her, my intention, if I could get a suitable 
 habitation, was to remain in the quarter where she at present 
 dwelt. Janet gave three skips on the floor, and uttered asi 
 many short, shrill yells of joy ; yet doubt almost instantly' 
 returned, and she insisted on knowing what jiossible reasoi ' 
 I could have for making my residence where few lived, savi 
 those whose misfortunes drove them thither. It occurred 
 me to answer her by recounting the legend of the rise of my 
 family, and of our deriving our name from a particular place 
 near Holyrood Palace. This, which would have appearec 
 to most people a very absurd reason for choosing a residence, 
 was entirely satisfactory to Janet MacEvoy. 
 
 " Ocli, nae doubt ! ii' it was the land of her fathers, thai 
 was nae mair to be said. Put it was queer that her famil; 
 estate should just lie at the town tail, and covered wit 
 houses, where the king's cows. Cot bless them hide ar 
 horn ! used to craze upon. It was strange changes." Sh 
 mused a little, and then added, " Put it is something bette 
 wd' Croftangry when the changes is frae the field to tl 
 habited place, and not from the place of habitation to th 
 desert ; for Shanet, her nainsell, kent a glen wdiere thei 
 were men as weel as there may be in Croftangry, and if thei 
 werena altogether sae mony of them, they were as good me 
 iA their tartan as the others in their broadcloth. And thei 
 were houses too, and if they were not biggit with stane ai 
 lime, and lofted like the honses at Croftangry, yet the 
 served the purpose of them that lived there; and mony™' 
 braw bonnet, and mony a silk snood, and comely whi; 
 curch would come out to gang to kirk or chapel on tl 
 Lord's day, and little bairns toddling after ; and now — ocj 
 och, ohellany, ohonari ! the glen is desolate, and the bra 
 snoods and bonnets are gane, and the Saxon's house stant 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 
 
 ■liull and lonely, like the single bare-breasted rock that the 
 falcon builds on— the falcon that drives the heath-bird frae 
 :he glen." 
 
 Janet, like many Highlanders, was full of imagination ; 
 md, when melancholy themes came upon her, expressed her- 
 self almost poetically, owing to the genius of the Celtic 
 anguage in which she thought, and in which, doubtless, she 
 »voLild have spoken, had I understood Gaelic. In two 
 iiinutes the shade of gloom and regret had passed from her 
 rood-humored features, and she was again the little busy, 
 prating, important old woman, undisputed owner of one flat 
 3f a small tenement in the Abbey Yard, and about to be 
 promoted to be housekeeper to an elderly bachelor gentle- 
 (iian, Ohrystal Croftangry, Esq. 
 
 It was not long before Janet's local researches found out 
 3xactly the sort of place I wanted, and there we settled. 
 Janet was afraid I would not be satisfied, because it is not 
 exactly part of Croftangry ; but I stopped her doubts, by 
 assuring her it had been part and pendicle thereof in my 
 forefathers' time, which passed very well. 
 
 I do not intend to possess any one with an exact knowl- 
 edge of my lodging ; though, as Bobadil says, " I care not 
 who knows it, since the cabin is convenient." But I may 
 state in general, that it is a house " within itself," or, ac- 
 cording to a newer phraseology in advertisements, "self- 
 contained," has a garden of near half an acre, and a patch 
 of ground with trees in front. It boasts five rooms and ser- 
 vants' apartments, looks in front upon the palace, and 
 from behind towards the hill and crags of the King's Park. 
 Fortunately the place had a name, which, with a little im- 
 provement, served to countenance the legend which I had 
 imposed on Janet, and would not perhaps have been sorry if 
 I had been able to impose on myself. It was called Little- 
 croft ; we have dubbed it Little Croftangry, and the men of 
 letters belonging to the Post-Office have sanctioned the 
 change, and deliver letters so addressed. Thus I am to all 
 intents and purposes Chrystal Croftangry of that Ilk. 
 
 My establishment consists of Janet, an under maid-servant, 
 and a Highland wench for Janet to exercise her Gaelic upon, 
 with a handy lad who can lay the cloth, and take care be- 
 sides of a pony, on which I find my way to Portobello sands, 
 especially when the cavalry have a drill ; for, like an old 
 ' fool as I am, I have not altogether become indifferent to the 
 tramp of horses and the flash of weapons, of which, though 
 no professional soldier, it has been my fate to see something 
 
S70 WAVERLEY NOVELS j 
 
 in my youtli. For wet mornings, I have my book ; is it fine;i,j 
 weather, I visit, or I wander on the Crags, as the humor ,, 
 dictates. My dinner is indeed solitary, yet not quite so nei- ' 
 ther ; for, though Andrew waits, Janet, or — as she is to all 
 the world but her master and certain old Highland gossips 
 — Mrs. MacEvoy, attends, bustles about, and desires to see 
 everything is in first-rate order, and to tell me. Cot pless us, 
 the wonderful news of the palace for the day. When tht 
 cloth is removed, and I light my cigar, and begin to bus 
 band a pint of port, or a g-lass of old whisky and water, it is 
 the rule of the house that Janet takes a chair at some dis- 
 tance, and nods or works her stocking, as she may be diS' 
 posed ; ready to speak if I am in the talking humor, anc 
 sitting quiet as a mouse if I am rather inclined to study j 
 book or the newspaper. At six precisely she makes my tea 
 and leaves me to drink it ; and then occurs an interval o 
 time which most old bachelors find heavy on their hands 
 The theater is a good occasional resource, especial if Wil 
 Murray acts, or a bright star of eminence shines forth ; bu j| 
 it is distant, and so are one or two public societies to whicl j, 
 I belong ; besides, these evening walks are all incompatibl y 
 with the elbow-chair feeling, which desires some emploj 
 ment that may divert the mind without fatiguing the body 
 Under the influence of these impressions, I have som( 
 times thought of this literary undertaking. I must ha^ 
 been the Bonassus himself to have mistaken myself for 
 genius, yet I have leisure and reflections like my neighbor 
 lam a borderer also between two generations, and can poi 
 out more perhaps than others of those fading traces of ant 
 quity which are daily vanishing ; and I know many a moi 
 ern instance and many an old tradition, and therefore 
 ask — 
 
 What ails me, I may not, as well as they, 
 Rake up some threadbare tales, that moldering lay 
 In chimney corners, wont by Christmas fires 
 To read and rock to sleep our ancient sires? 
 No man his threshold better knows than I 
 Brute's first arrival and first victory, 
 St. George's sorrel and his cross of blood, 
 Arthur's round board and Caledonian wood. 
 
 No shop is so easily set up as an antiquary's. Like the 
 of the lowest order of pawnbrokers, a commodity of ru£ 
 iron, a bag or two of hobnails, a few odd shoe-buckles, cs 
 iered kail-pots, and fire-irons declared incapable of servij 
 are quite sufficient to set him up. If he add a sheaf or t'l 
 
 Hi 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 371 
 
 ''"' )f penny ballads and broadsides, lie is a great man — an ex- 
 lensive trader. And then, like the pawnbrokers aforesaid, 
 f the author understands a little legerdemain, he may, by 
 '\ftint of a little picking and stealing, make the inside of his 
 ^"'i ihop a great deal richer than the out, and be able to show 
 "''§^ou things which cause those who do not understand the an- 
 iquarian trick of clean conveyance to wonder how the devil 
 -","^6 came by them. 
 
 It may be said, that antiquarian articles interest but few 
 justomers, and that we may bawl ourselves as rusty as the 
 vares we deal in without any one asking the price of our 
 nerchandise. But I do not rest my hopes upon this de- 
 lartment of my labors only. I propose also to have a cor- 
 ■esponding shop for sentiment, and dialogues, and disquisi- 
 ion, which may captivate the fancy of those who have no 
 •elish, as the established phrase goes, for pure antiquity— a 
 iort of greengrocer's stall erected in front of my ironmon- 
 gery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of ancient times 
 vith cresses, cabbages, leeks, and water-purpie. 
 
 As I have some idea that I am writing too well to be under- 
 stood, I humble myself to ordinary language, and aver, with 
 becoming modesty, that I do think myself capable of sus- 
 ;aining a publication of a miscellaneous nature, as like to 
 77/e Spectator or Tlie Guardian, Tlie Mirror or TJie Loun- 
 jer, as my poor abilities may be able to accomplish. Not 
 Lhat I have any purpose of imitating Johnson, whose general 
 learning and power of expression I do not deny, but many 
 Df whose Rambles are little better than a sort of pageant, 
 where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty 
 and mystic language, and get some credit only because they 
 . are not easily understood. There are some of the great 
 moralist's papers which I cannot peruse without thinking 
 on a second-rate masquerade, where the _ best-known and 
 1- least-esteemed characters in town march in as heroes, and 
 Bultans, and so forth, and, by dint of tawdry dresses, get 
 some consideration until they are found out. It is not, 
 however, prudent to commence with throwing stones, just 
 when I am striking out windows of my own, 
 I I think even the local situation of Little Croftaugry may 
 Ibe considered as favorable to my undertaking. A nobler 
 VfliHcontrast there can hardly exist than that of the huge city, 
 dark with the smoke of ages, and groaning with the various 
 ■- sounds of active industry or idle revel, and the lofty and 
 [0- Icraggy hill, silent and solitary as the grave ; one exhibiting 
 iforH the full tide of existence, pressing and precipitating itself 
 
372 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 forward with the force of an iuundation ; the other resem- 
 bhng some time-worn anchorite, whose life passes as silent 
 and unobserved as the slender rill which escapes unheard, 
 and scarce seen, from the fountain of his patron saint. The 
 city resembles the busy temple, where the modern Comus 
 and Mammon hold their courts, and thousands sacrifice 
 ease, independence, and virtue itself at their shrine ; the 
 misty and lonely mountain seems as a throne to the majestic 
 but terrible genius of feudal times, when the same divinities 
 dispensed coronets and domains to those who had heads to 
 devise and arms to execute bold enterprises. 
 
 I have, as it were, the two extremities of the moral world 
 at my threshold. From the front door, a few minutes' walk 
 brings me into the heart of a wealthy and populous city ; as 
 many paces from my opposite entrance place me in a soli- 
 tude as complete as Zimmermann could have desired. 
 Surely, with such aids to my imagination, I may write better 
 than if I were in a lodging in the New Town or a garret in 
 the old. As the Spaniard says, " Viamos, caracco ! " 
 
 I have not chosen to publish periodically, my reason for 
 which was twofold. In the first place, I don't like to be i'«l 
 hurried, and have had enough of duns in an early part of|~ 
 my life to make me reluctant to hear of or see one, even in; 
 the less awful shape of a printer's devil. But, secondly, 
 periodical paper is not easily extended in circulation beyou' 
 the quarter in which it is published. This work, if puh 
 lished in fugitive numbers, would scarce, without a hi 
 pressure on the part of the bookseller, be raised above th 
 Netherbrow, and never could be expected to ascend to theBflii 
 level of Princess Street. Now I am ambitious that mjj 
 compositions, though having their origin in this valley o:' 
 Ilolyrood, should not only be extended into those exaltd 
 regions I have mentioned, but also that they should crosi 
 the Forth, astonish the long town of Kirkcaldy, enchan 
 the skippers and colliers of the east of Fife, venture eve: 
 into the classic arcades of St. Andrews, and travel as mucl 
 farther to the north as the breath of applause will carr' 
 their sails. As for a southward direction, it is not to b( 
 hoped for in my fondest dreams. I am informed tlia 
 Scottish literature, like Scottish whisky, will be presentl;' 
 laid under a prohibitory duty. But enough of this. If an; 
 reader is dull enough not to comprehend the advantag 
 which, in point of circulation, a compact book has over 
 collection of fugitive numbers, let him try the range of 
 gun loaded with hail-shot, against that of the same piec 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 37 
 
 charged with an equal weight of lead consolidated in a sin- 
 gle bullet. 
 
 Besides, it was of less consequence that I should have 
 published periodically, since I did not mean to solicit or 
 accept of the contributions of friends, or the criticisms of 
 those who may be less kindly disposed. Notwithstanding 
 the excellent examples which might be quoted, I will 
 establish no begging-box, either under the name of a lion's 
 head or an ass's. What is good or ill sliall be mine own, or 
 the contribution of friends to whom I may have private 
 access. Many of my voluntary assistants might be cleverer 
 than myself, and then I should have a brilliant article 
 appear among my chiller effusions, like a jaatch of lace on a 
 Scottish cloak of Galashiels gray. Some might be worse, 
 and then I must reject them, to the injury of the feelings 
 of the writer, or else insert them, to make my own dark- 
 r ness yet more opaque and palpable. " Let every herring,'* 
 a says our old-fashioned proverb, "hang by its own head." 
 
 One person, however, I may distinguish, as she is now no 
 ,: more, who, living to the utmost term of human life, hon- 
 ored me with a great share of her friendship, as indeed we 
 were blood-relatives in the Scottish sense — Heaven knows 
 : how many degrees removed — and friends in the sense of Old 
 a England. I mean the late excellent and regretted Mrs. 
 I Bethune Baliol. But as I design this admirable picture of 
 1. the olden time for a principal character in my work, I will 
 : only say here, that she knew and approved of my present 
 i, purpose ; and though she declined to contribute to it while 
 ,, she lived, from a sense of dignified retirement, which she 
 ,,15 i thought became her age, sex, and condition in life, she left 
 me some materials for carrying on my proposed work, which 
 I coveted when I heard her detail them in conversation, and 
 which now, when I have their substance in her own hand- 
 writing, I account far more valuable than anything I have 
 myself to offer. I hope the mentioning her name in con- 
 junction with my own will give no offense to any of her 
 numerous friends, as it was her own express pleasure that I 
 should employ the manuscripts, which she did me the 
 honor to bequeath me, in the manner in which I have now 
 used them. It must be added, however, that in most cases 
 I have disguised names, and in some have added shading 
 and coloring to bring out the narrative. 
 
 Much of my materials, besides these, are derived from 
 friends, living or dead. The accuracy of some of these may 
 be doubtful, in which case I shall be happy to receive, from 
 
374 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 sufficient authorit}', the correction of the errors which must 
 creep into traditional documents. The object of the wliole 
 publication is, to throw some light on the manners of Scot- 
 land as they were, and to contrast them, occasionally, with 
 those of the present day. My own opinions are in favor of 
 our own times in many respects, but not in so far as affords 
 means for exercising the imagination, or exciting the inter- 
 est which attaches to other times. I am glad to be a writer 
 or a reader in 1826, but I would be most interested in read- 
 ing or relating Avhat happened from half a century to a cen- 
 tury before. We have the best of it. Scenes in which our 
 ancestors thought deeply, acted fiercely, and died desper- 
 ately are to us tales to divert the tedium of a winter's even- 
 ing, when we are engaged to no party, or beguile a sum- 
 mer's morning, when it is too scorching to ride or walk. 
 
 Yet I do not mean that my essays and narratives should 
 be limited to Scotland. I pledge myself to no particular 
 line of subjects ; but, on the contrary, say with Burns, 
 
 Perhaps it may turn out a sang, 
 Perhaps turn out a sermon. 
 
 I have only to add, by way of postscript to these prelimi-j 
 nary chapters, that I have had recourse to Moliere's recipe,: 
 and read my manuscript over to my old woman, Janet 
 MacEvoy. 
 
 The dignity of being consulted delighted Janet ; anc 
 Wilkie or Allan would have made a capital sketch of heri 
 as she sat upright in her chair, instead of her ordinal 
 lounging posture, knitting her stocking systematically, as 
 she meant every twist of her thread and inclination of th^ 
 wires to bear burden to the cadence of my voice. I 
 afraid, too, that I myself felt more delight than I ought tJ 
 have done in my own composition, and read a little mor| 
 oratorically than I should have ventured to do before 
 auditor of whose apjilause I was not so secure. And tl 
 result did not entirely encourage my plan of censorshijl 
 Janet did indeed seriously incline to the account of mji 
 previous life, and bestowed some Highland maledictiorji 
 more emphatic than courteous on Christie Steele's receptio' 
 of a " shentlemans in distress," and of her own mistress 
 house too. I omitted for certain reasons, or great 
 abridged, Avhat related to herself. But when I came 
 treat of my general views in publication, I saw poor Jan 
 was entirefy thrown out, though, like a jaded hunter, par: 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 375 
 
 ing, puffing, and short of wind, she endeavored at least to 
 keep up with the chase. Or rather her perplexity made her 
 look all the while like a deaf person ashamed of his infirm- 
 ity, who does not understand a word you are saying, yet 
 desires you to believe that he does understand you, and who 
 is extremely jealous that you suspect his incapacity. When 
 she saw that some remark was necessary, she resembled 
 exactly in her criticism the devotee who pitched on the 
 " sweet word Mesopotamia'^ as the most edifying note which 
 she could bring away from a sermon. She indeed hastened 
 to bestow general praise on what she said was "all very 
 fine " ; but chiefly dwelt on what I had said about Mr. 
 Timmerman, as she was pleased to call the German philoso- 
 pher, and supposed he must be of the same descent with 
 the Higliland clan of M'Intyre, which signifies Son of the 
 Carpenter. "And a fery honorable name too — Shanet's 
 own mither was a M'Intyre." 
 
 In short, it was plain the latter part of my introduction 
 was altogether lost on poor Janet ; and so, to have acted up 
 to Moliere's system, I should have canceled the whole, and 
 written it anew. But I do not know how it is ; I retained, 
 I suppose, some tolerable opinion of my own composition, 
 though Janet did not comprehend it, and felt loth to re- 
 '3 *^®^^*^''i tl^os® delilahs of the imagination, as Dryden calls 
 them, the tropes and figures of which are caviar to the mul- 
 titude. Besides, I hate rewriting as much as Falstaff did 
 paying back : it is a double labor. So I determined with 
 1;,!1 ^y^^^^ ^^ consult Janet, in future, only on such tilings as 
 '■'"T! were within the limits uf her comprehension, and hazard 
 niy arguments and my rhetoric on the public without her 
 imprimatur. I am pretty sure she will " applaud it done.'' 
 And in such narratives as come within her range of thought 
 and feeling, I shall, as I first intended, take the benefit of 
 her unsophisticated judgment, and attend to it deferentially 
 — that is, when it happens not to be in peculiar opposition 
 to my own ; for, after all, I say with Almanzor — 
 
 Know that I alone am king of me. 
 
 The reader has now my who and my whereabout, the pur- 
 rpbse of the work, and the circumstances under which it is 
 undertaken. He has also a specimen of tlie author's talents, 
 and may judge for himself, and proceed or send back the 
 volume to the bookseller, as hig own taste shall determine. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MR. CROFTANGRY's ACCOUNT OF MRS. BETHUNE BALIOL 
 
 The moon, were she earthly, no nobler. 
 
 Coriola7ius. 
 
 When we set out on the jolly voyage of life, what a brave 
 fleet there is around us, as, stretching our fresh canvas to 
 the breeze, all " shipshape and Bristol fashion,'* pennons 
 flying, music playing, cheering each other as we pass, we 
 are rather amused than alarmed when some awkward com- 
 rade goes right ashore for Avant of pilotage I Alas ! when 
 the voyage is well spent, and we look about us, toil-worn 
 mariners, how few of our ancient consorts still remain in 
 sight, and they, how torn and wasted, and, like ourselves, 
 struggling to keep as long as possible off the fatal shore 
 against which we are all finally drifting ! 
 
 I felt this very trite but melancholy truth in all its force 
 the other day, when a packet with a black seal arrived, con- 
 taining a letter addressed to me by my late excellent friend 
 Mrs. Martha Bethune Baliol, and marked with the fatal in-, 
 dorsation, "To be delivered according to address, after I 
 shall be no more." A letter from her executors accom 
 panied the packet, mentioning that they had found in heri 
 will a bequest to me of a painting of some value, which shel 
 stated would just fit the space above my cupboard, and fift 
 guineas to buy a ring. And thus I separated, with all th 
 kindness which we had maintained for many years, from 
 friend who, though old enough to have been the com2ianior| 
 of my mother, was yet, in gaiety of spirits and admirabl 
 sweetness of temper, capable of being agreeable, and ever 
 animating, society for those who write themselves in th 
 vaward of youth — an advantage which I have lost fo 
 these five-and-thirty years. The contents of the packet 
 had no difficulty in guessing, and have partly hinted at then' 
 in the last chapter. But to instruct the reader in the pa; 
 ticulars, and at the same time to indulge myself with recal 
 ing the virtues and agreeable qualities of my late friend, 
 will give a short sketch of her manners and habits. 
 376 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 377 
 
 Mrs. Martha Bethune Baliol was a person of quality and 
 fortune, as these are esteemed in Scothmd. Her family was 
 ancient, and her connections honorable. She was not fond 
 of specially indicating her exact age, but her juvenile recol- 
 lections stretched backwards till before the eventful year 
 1745 ; and she remembered the Highland clans being in pos- 
 session of the Scottish capital, though probably only as an 
 indistinct vision. Her fortune, independent by her father's 
 bequest, was rendered opulent by the death of more than 
 one brave brother, who fell successively in the service of their 
 country ; so that the family estates became vested in the 
 only surviving child of the ancient house of Bethune Baiiol. 
 My intimacy was formed with the excellent lady after thii 
 event, and when she was already something advanced in age. 
 
 She inhabited, when in Edinburgh, where she regularl} 
 spent the winter season, one of those old hotels, which, tilF 
 of late, were to be found in the neighborhood of the Canon- 
 gate and of the palace of Holy rood House, and which> 
 separated from the street, now dirty and vulgar, by paved 
 courts and gardens of some extent, made amends for an in- 
 different access, by showing something of aristocratic state 
 and seclusion, when you were once admitted within their 
 precincts. They have pulled her house down ; for, indeed, 
 betwixt building and burning, every ancient monument of 
 the Scottish capital is now likely to be utterly demolished. 
 I pause on the recollections of the place, however ; and since 
 nature has denied a pencil when she placed a pen in my 
 hand, I will endeavor to make words answer the purpose of 
 delineation. 
 
 Baliol's Lodging, so was the mansion named, reared its 
 high stack of chimneys, among which were seen a turret or 
 two, and one of those small projecting platforms called bar- 
 tizans, above the mean and modern buildings which line the 
 south side of the Canongate, towards the lower end of that 
 street, and not distant from the palace, A porte cochere, 
 having a wicket for foot-passengers, was, upon due occasion, 
 unfolded by a lame old man, tall, grave, and thin, who 
 tenanted a hovel beside the gate, and acted as porter. To 
 this office he had been promoted by my friend's charitable 
 feelings for an old soldier, and partly by an idea that his 
 head, which was a very fine one, bore some resemblance to 
 that of Garrick in the character of Lusignan. He was a 
 man saturnine, silent, and slow in his proceedings, and 
 would never open the porte cochere to a hackney coach in- 
 dicating the wicket with his finger, as the proper passage 
 
878 WA VERLET NO VELS 
 
 for all who came in that obscure vehicle, which was not per- 
 mitted to degrade with its ticketed presence the dignity of 
 Baliol's Lodging. I do not think this peculiarity would 
 have met with his ladv's approbation, any more than the 
 occasional partiality of Lusignan, or, as mortals called him, 
 Archy Macready, to a dram. But Mrs. Martha Bethune 
 Baliol, conscious that, in case of conviction, slie could never 
 have prevailed upon herself to dethrone the King of Pales- 
 tine from tlie stone bench on whicli lie sat for liours, knit- 
 ting his stocking; refused, by accrediting tlie intelligence, 
 even to jaut him upon liis trial ; well judging that he would 
 observe more wholesome caution if he conceived his charac- 
 ter unsuspected than if he were detected, and suffered to 
 pass unpunished. For, after all, she said, it would be cruel 
 to dismiss an old Highland soldier for a peccadillo so a^jpro- 
 priate to his country and profession. 
 
 The stately gate for carriages, or the humble accommoda- 
 tion for foot-passengers, admitted into a narrow and short 
 passage, running between two rows of lime-trees, whose green 
 foliage during the spring contrasted strangely with the swart 
 complexion of the two walls by the side of which they grew. 
 This access led to the front of the house, which was formed 
 by two gable ends, notched, and having their windows 
 adorned with heavy architectural ornaments ; they joined 
 each other at right angles, and a half-circular tower, which 
 contained the entrance and the staircase, occupied the point 
 of junction and rounded the acute angle. One of other two 
 sides of the little court, in which there was just sufficient 
 room to turn a carriage, was occupied by some low buildings 
 answering the purpose of offices ; the other, by a parapet 
 surrounded by a highly-ornamented iron railing, twined 
 round with honeysuckle and other parasitical shrubs, which 
 permitted the eye to peep into a pretty suburban garden, 
 extending down to the road called the South Back of the 
 Canongate, and boasting a number of old trees, many flowers, 
 and even some fruit. AVe must not forget to state, that the 
 extreme cleanliness of the courtyard was such as intimated 
 that mop and pail had done their utmost in that favored 
 spot to atone for the general dirt and dinginess of the quarte 
 where the premises were situated. 
 
 Over the doorway were the arms of Bethune and Baliol 
 
 with various other devices carved in stone ; the door itselfj 
 
 was studded with iron nails, and formed of black oak ; an iro 
 
 rasp,* as it was called, was placed on it, instead of a knocker, 
 
 * See Note 19. 
 
'tperJ 
 
 CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 379 
 
 for the purpose of summoning the attendants. He who usu- 
 ally appeared at the summons was a smart lad, in a hand- 
 some liver}^ the son of Mrs. Martha's gardener at -Mount 
 Baliol. Now and then a servant-girl, nicely but plainly 
 dressed, and fully accoutered with stockings and shoes, would 
 perform this duty ; and twice or thrice I remember being 
 admitted by Beauffet himself, whose exterior looked as much 
 like that of a clergyman of rank as the butler of a gentle- 
 man's family. He had been valet-de-cliam'bre to the last Sir 
 Richard Bethune Baliol, and was a person highly trusted by 
 the present lady. A full stand, as it is called in Scotland, of 
 garments of a dark color, gold buckles in his shoes and at 
 the. knees of his breeches, with his hair regularly dressed and 
 powdered, announced hira to be a domestic of trust and im- 
 portance. His mistress used to say of him. 
 
 He's sad and civil, 
 And suits well for a servant with my fortunes. 
 
 As no one can escape scandal, some said that Beauffet 
 made a rather better thing of the place than the modesty of 
 his old-fashioned wages would, unassisted, have amounted 
 to. But the man was always very civil to me. He had 
 been long in the family, had enjoyed legacies, and laid by a 
 something of his own, upon which he now enjoys ease with 
 dignity, in as far as his newly-married wife, Tibbie Short- 
 acres, will permit him. 
 
 The Lodging — dearest readers, if you are tired, pray pass 
 
 over the next four or five pages — was not by any means so 
 
 large as its external appearance led people to conjecture. 
 
 The interior accommodation was much cut up by cross walls 
 
 and long i:)assages, and that neglect of economizing space 
 
 which characterizes old Scottish architecture. But there 
 
 M'as far more room than my old friend required, even when 
 
 she had, as was often the case, four or five young cousins 
 
 under her protection : and I believe much of the house was 
 
 unoccupied. Mrs. Bethune Baliol never, in my presence, 
 
 showed herself so much offended, as once with a meddling 
 
 person who advised her to have the windows of these super- 
 
 ' numerary apartments built up, to save the tax. She said in 
 
 ,|f} ire that, while she lived, the light of God should visit the 
 
 ,j)f house of her fathers ; and while she had a penny, the king 
 
 ^ j and country should have their due. Indeed, she was punctili- 
 
 "^^n ously loyal, even in that most staggering test of loyalty, the 
 
 '■■ payment of imposts. Mr. Beauffet told me he was ordered 
 
 to offer a glass of wine to the person who collected the in- 
 
380 ]VA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 come-tax, and that the poor man was so overcome by a recep- 
 tion so unwontedly generous, that he had wellnigh fainted 
 on the spot. 
 
 You entered by a matted ante-room into the eating-parlor, 
 filled with old-fashioned furniture, and hung with family por- 
 traits, which, excepting one of Sir Bernard Bethune, in James 
 the Sixth's time, said to be by Jameson, were exceedingly 
 frightful. A saloon, as it was called, a long narrow cliam- 
 ber, led out of the clining-parlor, and served for a drawing- 
 room. It was a pleasant apartment, looking out upon the 
 south flank of Holyrood House, the gigantic slope of Ar- 
 thur's Seat, and the girdle of lofty rocks called Salisbury 
 Crags* — objects so rudely wild, that the mind can hardly 
 conceive them to exist in the vicinage of a populous metrop- 
 olis. The paintings of the saloon came from abroad, and 
 had some of them much merit. To see the best of them, 
 however, you must be admitted into the very penetralia of 
 the temple, and allowed to draw the tapestry at the upper 
 end of the saloon, and enter Mrs. Martha's ow^n special 
 dressing-room. This was a charming ajiartment, of which it 
 would be difficult to describe the form, it had so many re- 
 cesses which were filled wp with shelves of ebony, and cabi- 
 nets of japan and ormolu ; some for holding books, of which 
 Mrs. Martha had an admirable collection, some for a display 
 of ornamental china, others for shells and similar curiosities 
 In a little niche, half screened by a curtain of crimson silk, 
 was disposed a suit of tilting armor of bright steel, inlaid 
 Avitli silver, which had been worn on some memorable occa- 
 sion by Sir Bernard Eethune, already mentioned ; while over 
 the canopy of the niche hung the broadsword with Avhich 
 lier father had attempted to change the fortunes of Britain 
 in 1715, and the spontoon which her elder brother bore when 
 he was leading on a company of the Black Watch f at Fon- 
 tenoy. 
 
 There were some Italian and Flemish pictures of admitted 
 authenticity, a few genuine bronzes and other objects of 
 curiosity, which her brothers or herself had picked up while 
 abroad. In short, it was a place where the idle were tempted 
 to become studious, the studious to grow idle, where the grave 
 might find matter to make them gay, and the gay subjects 
 for gravity. 
 
 That it might maintain some title toils name, I must not 
 forget to say, that the lady's dressing-room exhibited a superb 
 
 • See Note 30 t See Note 21. 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 381 
 
 mirror, framed in silver filigree work ; a beautiful toilet, 
 the cover of which was of Flanders lace ; and a set of boxes 
 corresponding in materials and work to the frame of the 
 mirror. 
 
 This dressing apparatus, however, was mere matter of 
 parade : Mrs. Martha Bethune Baliol always went through 
 the actual duties of the toilet in an inner apartment, which 
 corresponded with her sleeping-room by a small detached 
 staircase. There were, I believe, more than one of those 
 " turnpike stairs," as they were called, about the house, by 
 which the public rooms, all of which entered through each 
 other, were accommodated with separate and independent 
 modes of access. In the little boudoir we have described, 
 Mrs. Martha Baliol had her choicest meetings. She kept 
 early hours ; and if you went in the morning, you must not 
 reckon that space of day as extending beyond three o'clock, 
 or four at the utmost. These vigilant habits were attended 
 with some restraint on her visitors, but they were-indemnified 
 by your always finding the best society, and the best informa- 
 tion, which was to be had for the day in the Scottish cap- 
 ital. Without at all affecting the blue stocking, she liked 
 books ; they amused her, and if the authors were persons of 
 character, she thought she owed them a debt of civility, 
 which she loved to discharge by personal kindness. When 
 she gave a dinner to a small party, which she did now and 
 then, she had the good nature to look for, and the good 
 luck to discover, what sort of people suited each other best, 
 and chose her company as Duke Theseus did his hounds. 
 
 Matched in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each,* 
 
 so that every guest could take his part in the cry ; instead 
 of one mighty Tom of a fellow, like Dr. Johnson, silencing 
 all besides by the tremendous depth of his diapason. On 
 such occasions she afforded chere exqiiise ; and every now 
 and then there was some dish of French, or even Scottish 
 derivation, which, as well as the numerous assortment of vins 
 extraordinaires produced by Mr. Beauffet, gave a sort of an- 
 tique and foreign air to the entertainment, which rendered 
 it more interesting. 
 
 It was a great thing to be asked to such parties, and not 
 less so to be invited to the early conversazione, which, in spite 
 of fashion, by dint of the best coffee, the finest tea, and chassn' 
 
 *Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iv. so. 1. 
 
383 WA VERL EY NO VEL S 
 
 cafe that would have called the dead to life, she contrived 
 now and then to assemble in her saloon already mentioned, 
 at the unnatural hour of eight in the evening. At such 
 times, the cheerful old lady seemed to enjoy herself so much 
 in the happiness of her guests, that they exerted themselves 
 in turn to j^rolong her amusement and their own ; and a 
 certain charm was excited around, seldom to be met with 
 in parties of pleasure, and which was founded on the general 
 desire of every one present to contribute something to the 
 common amusement. 
 
 But although it was a great privilege to be admitted to 
 wait on my excellent friend in the morning, or be invited to 
 her dinner or evening parties, I prized still higher the right 
 which I had acquired, by old acquaintance, of visiting 
 Baliol's Lodging, upon the chance of finding its venerable 
 inhabitant preparing for tea, just about six o'clock in the 
 evening. It was only to two or three old friends that she 
 permitted this freedom, nor was this sort of chance-party 
 ever allowed to extend itself beyond five in number. The 
 answer to those who came later announced that the com- 
 pany was filled up for the evening ; which had the double 
 effect of making those who waited on Mrs. Bethune Balioi 
 in this unceremonious manner punctual in observing her hour, 
 and of adding the zest of a little difficulty to the enjoyment 
 of the party. 
 
 It more frequently happened that only one or two j^ersons 
 partook of this refreshment on the same evening ; or, sup- 
 posing the case of a single gentleman, Mrs. Martha, though 
 she did not hesitate to admit him to her boudoir, after the 
 privilege of the French and the old Scottish school, took 
 care, as she used to say, to preserve all possible propriety, 
 by commanding the attendance of her principal female at- 
 tendant, Mrs. Alice Lambskin, who might, from the gravity 
 and dignity of her appearance, have sufficed to matronize a 
 whole boarding-school, instead of one maiden lady of eighty 
 and upwards. As the weather permitted, Mrs. Alice sat 
 duly remote from the company in a fauteuil behind the pro- 
 jecting chimney-piece, or in the embrasure of a window, 
 and prosecuted in Carthusian silence, with indefatigable 
 zeal, a piece of embroidery, which seemed no bad emblem 
 of eternity. 
 
 But I have neglected all this while to introduce my friend 
 herself to the reader, at least so far as words can convey the 
 peculiarities by which her appearance and conversation were 
 distingaished. 
 
CHEONICLES OF THE CANON GATE 383 
 
 A little woman, with ordinary features, and an ordinary 
 form, and hair which in youth had no decided color, we 
 may believe Mrs. Martha, when she said of herself that she 
 was never remarkable for personal charms — a modest admis- 
 sion, which was readily confirmed by certain old ladies, her 
 contemporaries, who, whatever might have been the youth- 
 ful advantages whicli they more than hinted had been 
 formerly their own share, were now, in personal appearance, 
 as well as in everything else, far inferior to my accomplished 
 friend. Mrs. Martha's features had been of a kind which 
 might be said to wear well ; their irregularity was now of 
 little consequence, animated as they were by the vivacity of 
 her conversation ; her teeth were excellent ; and her eyes, 
 although inclining to gray, were lively, laughing, and un- 
 dimmed by time. A slight shade of complexion, more bril- 
 liant than her years promised, subjected my friend amongst 
 strangers to the suspicion of having stretched her foreign 
 habits as far as the prudent touch of the rouge. But it was 
 a calumny ; for, when telling or listening to an interesting 
 and affecting story, I have seen her color come and go as if 
 it played on the cheek of eighteen. 
 
 Her hair, whatever its former deficiencies, was now the 
 most beautiful white that time could bleach, and was dis- 
 posed with some degree of pretension, though in the sim- 
 plest manner possible, so as to appear neatly smoothed under 
 a cap of Flanders lace, of an old-fashioned, but, as I thought, 
 of a very handsome form, which undoubtedly has a name, 
 .and I would endeavor to recur to it, if I thought it would 
 make my description a bit more intelligible. I think I have 
 •■ heard her say these favorite caps had been her mother's, 
 and had come in fashion with a peculiar kind of wig used 
 ■ by the gentlemen about the time of the battle of Eamillies. 
 The rest of her dress was always rather costly and distin- 
 guished, especially in the evening. A silk or satin gown of 
 some color becoming her age, and of a form which, though 
 complying to a certain degree with the present fashion, had 
 always a reference to some more distant period, was garnished 
 with triple ruffles ; her shoes had diamond buckles, and 
 were raised a little at heel, an advantage which, possessed 
 in her youth, she alleged her size would not permit her to 
 forego in her old age. She always wore rings, bracelets, and 
 other ornaments of value, either for the materials or the 
 workmanship ; nay, perhaps she was a little profuse in this 
 species of display. But she wore them as subordinate mat- 
 ters, to which the habits of being constantly in high life 
 
384 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 rendered her indifferent : she wore them because her rank 
 required it, and thought no more of them as articles of finery 
 than a gentleman dressed for dinner thinks of his clean linen 
 and well-brushed coat, the consciousness of which embar- 
 rasses the rustic beau on a Sunday. 
 
 Now and then, however, if a gem or ornament chanced 
 to be noticed for its beauty or singularity, the observation 
 usually led the way to an entertaining account of the manner 
 in which it had been acquired, or the person from whom it 
 had descended to its present possessor. On such and similar 
 occasions my old friend spoke willingly, which is not un- 
 common, but she also, which is more rare, spoke remark- 
 ably well, and had in her little narratives concerning foreign 
 parts, or former days, which formed an interesting part of 
 her conversation, the singular art of dismissing all the usual 
 protracted tautology respecting time, place, and circum- 
 stances, which is apt to settle like a mist upon the cold and 
 languid tales of age, and at the same time of bringing 
 forward, dwelling upon, and illustrating those incidents and 
 characters which give point and interest to the story. 
 
 She had, as we have hinted, traveled a good deal in foreign 
 countries ; for a brother, to whom she was much attached, 
 had been sent upon various missions of national importance 
 to the continent, and she had more than once embraced the 
 opportunity of accompanying him. This furnished a great 
 addition to the information which she could supply, es- 
 pecially during the last war, when the continent was for so 
 many years hermetically sealed against the English nation. 
 But, besides, Mrs. Bethune Baliol visited distant countries, 
 not in the modern fashion, when English travel in caravans 
 together, and see in France and Italy little besides the same 
 society which they might have enjoyed at home. On the 
 contrary, she mingled when abroad with the natives of 
 those countries she visited, and enjoyed at once the advan-. 
 tage of their society and the pleasure of comparing it with 
 that of Britain. 
 
 In the course of her becoming habituated with foreign 
 manners, Mrs. Bethune Baliol had, perhaps, acquired some 
 slight tincture of them herself. Yet I was always persuaded 
 that the peculiar vivacity of look and manner, the pointed 
 and appropriate action with which she accompanied what 
 she said, the use of the gold and gemmed tabatiere, or rather 
 I should say bonhonniere (for she took no snuff, and the 
 little box contained only a few pieces of candied angelica, 
 or some such ladylike sweetmeat), were of real old-fashioned 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONOATE 385 
 
 Scottish growth, and such as might have graced the tea- 
 table of Susannah Countess of Egliuton,* the patroness of 
 Allan Ramsay, or of the Hon. Mrs. Colonel Ogilvy, who 
 was another mirror by whom the maidens of Auld Reekie 
 were required to dress themselves. Although well acquainted 
 with the customs of other countries, her manners had been 
 chiefly formed in her own, at a time when great folk lived 
 within little space, and when the distinguished names of 
 the highest society gave to Edinburgh the eclai which we 
 now endeavor to derive from the unbounded expense and 
 extended circle of our pleasures. 
 
 I was more confirmed in this opinion by the peculiarity of 
 the dialect which Mrs. Baliol used. It was Scottish — 
 decidedly Scottish, often containing phrases and words little 
 used in the present day. But then her tone and mode of 
 pronunciation were as different from the usual accent of the 
 / ordinary Scotch patois as the accent of St. James's is from 
 that of 'Billingsgate. The vowels were not pronounced much 
 broader than in the Italian language, and there was none of 
 the disagreeable drawl which is so offensive to southern ears. 
 In shoi-t, it seemed to be the Scottish as spoken by the 
 ancient court of Scotland, to which no idea of vulgarity 
 could be attached ; and the lively manner and gestures with 
 which it was accompanied were so completely in accord with 
 the sound of the voice and the style of talking that I cannot 
 assign them a different origin. In long derivation, perhaps 
 ^ the manner of the Scottish court might have been originally 
 ! formed on that of France, to which it had certainly some 
 : affinity ; but I will live and die in the belief that those of 
 ]\[rs. Baliol, as pleasing as they were peculiar, came to her 
 by direct descent from the high dames who anciently adorned 
 with their presence the royal halls of Holyrood. 
 
 *See Note 22. 
 25 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 MRS. BALIOL ASSISTS MR. CROFTANGRY IK HIS LITERARl 
 SPECULATIONS 
 
 Such as I have described Mrs. Bethune Baliol, the reader 
 will easily believe that, when I thought of the miscellaneous 
 nature of my work, I rested upon the information she 
 possessed, and her communicative disposition, as one of the 
 principal supports of my enterprise. Indeed, she by no 
 means disapproved of my proposed publication, though ex- 
 pressing herself very doubtful how far she could personally 
 assist it — a doubt which might be perhaps set down to a little 
 ladylike coquetry, which required to be sued for the boon 
 she was not unwilling to grant. Or, perhaps, the good old 
 lady, conscious that her unusual term of years must soon 
 draw to a close, preferred bequeathing the materials in the 
 shape of a legacy to subjecting them to the judgment of a 
 critical public during her lifetime. 
 
 Many a time I used, in our conversations of the Canon- 
 gate, to resume my request of assistance, from a sense that 
 my friend was the most valuable depository of Scottish 
 traditions that was probably now to be found. This was a 
 subject on which my mind was so much made up, that when 
 I heard her carry her description of manners so far back be- 
 yond her own time, and describe how Fletcher of Salton 
 spoke, how Graham of Claverhouse danced, what were the 
 jewels worn by the famous Duchess of Lauderdale, and how 
 she came by them, I could not help telling her I thought her 
 some fairy, who cheated us by retaining the appearance of a 
 mortal of our own day, when, in fact, she had witnessed the 
 revolutions of centuries. She was much diverted when I 
 required her to take some solemn oath that she had not 
 danced at the balls given by Mary of Este, when her unhappy 
 husband * occupied Holyrood in a species of honorable ban- 
 ishment ; or asked whether she could not recollect Charles 
 the Second, when he came to Scotland in 1650, and did not 
 
 * The Duke of York, afterwards James II., frequently resided in 
 flolyrood House, when his religion rendered him an object of sus- 
 picion to the English Parliament. 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 387 
 
 possess some slight recollections of the bold usurper who 
 drove him beyond the Forth. 
 
 "Beau cousin," she said, laughing, "'none of these do I 
 remember personally ; but you must know there has been 
 wonderfully little change on my natural temper from youth 
 to age. From which it follows, cousin, that, being even 
 now something too young in spirit for the years which 
 Time has marked me in his calendar, I was, when a girl, a 
 little too old for those of my own standing, and as much in- 
 clined at that period to keep the society of elder persons as 
 I am now disposed to admit the company of gay young fellows 
 of fifty or sixty like yourself, rather than collect about me all 
 the octogenarians. Now, although I do not actually come 
 from elfland, and therefore cannot boast any personal knowl- 
 edge of the great personages you inquire about, yet I have 
 seen and heard those who knew them well, and who have 
 given me as distinct an account of them as I could give you 
 myself of the Empress-Queen or Frederick of Prussia ; and 
 I will frankly add," said she, laughing and offering her 
 honbonniere, ''that / have heard so much of the years 
 which immediately succeeded the Eevolution, that I some- 
 times am apt to confuse the vivid descriptions fixed on my 
 memory by the frequent and animated recitation of others 
 for things which I myself have actually witnessed. I 
 
 caught myself but yesterday describing to Lord M the 
 
 riding of the last Scottish Parliament, with as much minute- 
 ness as if I had seen it, as my mother did, from the balcony 
 in front of Lord Moray's lodging in the Canongate." 
 
 " I am sure you must have given Lord M a high treat.'* 
 
 " I treated him to a hearty laugh, I believe," she replied ; 
 "but it is you, you vile seducer of youth, who lead me into 
 such follies. But I will be on my guard against my own 
 weakness. I do not well know if the Wandering Jew is 
 supposed to have a wife, but I should be sorry a decent 
 middle-aged Scottish gentlewoman should be suspected of 
 identity with such a supernatural person." 
 
 " For all that, I must torture you a little more, ma belle 
 cousine, with my interrogatories ; for how shall 1 ever turn 
 author unless on the strength of the information which you 
 have so often procured me on the ancient state of manners ? " 
 
 " Stay, I cannot allow you to give your points of inquiry a 
 name so very venerable, if I am expected to answer them. 
 Ancient is a term for antediluvians. You may catechize me 
 about the battle of Flodden, or ask particulars about Bruce 
 and Wallace, under pretext of curiosity after ancient man- 
 
388 WAVEULEY NOVELS 
 
 ners ; and that last subject would wake my Baliol blood, you 
 know/' 
 
 " Well, but, Mrs. Baliol, suppose we settle our era. You 
 do not call the accession of James the Sixth to the kingdom 
 of Britain very ancient ? " 
 
 " Ilmph ! no, cousin. I think I could tell you more of 
 that than folk nowadays remember ; for instance, that, as 
 James was trooping towards England, bag and baggage, his 
 journey was stopped near Cockenzie by meeting the funeral 
 of the Earl of Win ton,* the old and faithful servant and 
 follower of his ill-fated mother, poor Mary. It was an ill 
 omen for the ^infare,' and so was seen of it, cousin." 
 
 I did not choose to prosecute this subject, well know- 
 ing Mrs. Bethune Baliol did not like to be much pressed 
 on the subject of the Stuarts, whose misfortunes she 
 pitied, the rather that her father had espoused their cause. 
 And yet her attachment to the present dynasty being very 
 sincere, and even ardent, more especially as her family 
 had served his late Majesty both in peace and war, she 
 experienced a little embarrassment in reconciling her opin- 
 ions respecting the exiled family with those she entertained 
 for the present. In fact, like many an old Jacobite, she 
 was contented to be somewhat inconsistent on the subject, 
 comforting herself that noio everything stood as it ought 
 to do, and that there was no use in looking back narrowly 
 on the right or wrong of the matter half a century ago. 
 
 " The Highlands," I suggested, "should furnish you with 
 ample subjects of recollection. You have witnessed the 
 complete change of that primeval country, and have seen 
 a race not far removed from the earliest period of society 
 melted down into the great mass of civilization ; and that 
 could not happen without incidents striking in themselves, 
 and curious as chapters in the history of the human race." 
 
 "It is very true," said Mrs. Baliol; "one would think 
 it should have struck the observers greatly, and yet it 
 scarcely did so. For me, I was no Highlander myself, 
 and the Highland chiefs of old, of whom I certainly knew 
 several, had little in their manners to distinguish them 
 from the lowland gentry when they mixed in society in 
 Edinburgh, and assumed the lowland dress. Their peculiar 
 character was for the clansmen at home ; and you must not 
 imagine that they swaggered about in plaids and broad- 
 swords at the Cross, or came to the Assembly Rooms in 
 bonnets and kilts." 
 
 * See Note 33. 
 
CHRONICLES OF TEE CANONGATE 389 
 
 *'l remember," said I, that Swift, in his Journal, tells 
 Stella he had dined in the house of a Scots nobleiiian, with 
 two Highhind chiefs, whom he had found as well-bred men 
 as he hud ever met with/^ * 
 
 " Very likely," said my friend. '' The extremes of society 
 approach much more closely to each other than perhaps the 
 Dean of St. Patrick's expected. The savage is always to a 
 certain degree polite. Besides, going always armed, and 
 having a very punctilious idea of their own gentility and 
 consequence, they usually behaved to each other and to the 
 Lowlanders with a good deal of formal politeness, which 
 sometimes even procured them the character of insincerity. " 
 
 " Falsehood belongs to an early period of society, as well 
 as the deferential forms which we style politeness," I replied. 
 "A child does not see the least moral beauty in truth until 
 he has been flogged half a dozen times. It is so easy, and 
 apparently so natural, to deny what you cannot be easily 
 convicted of, that a savage as well as a child lies to excuse 
 himself, almost as instinctively as he raises his hand to 
 protect his head. The old saying, " confess and be hanged," 
 carries much argument in it. I observed a remark the other 
 day in old Birrell. He mentions that M'Gregor of Glenstrae f 
 and some of his people had surrendered themselves to one 
 of the Earls of Argyle, upon the express condition that they 
 should be conveyed safe into England. The MacCallan 
 Mhor of the day kept the word of promise, but it was only 
 to the ear. He indeed sent his captives to Berwick, where 
 they had an airing on the other side of the Tweed, but it 
 was under the custody of a strong guard, by whom they 
 were brought back to Edinburgh and delivered to the 
 executioner. This Birrell calls "keeping a Highlandman's 
 promise." 
 
 " Well," replied Mrs. Baliol, " I might add, that many of 
 the Highland chiefs whom I knew in former days had been 
 brought up in France, which might improve their politeness, 
 though perluips it did not amend their sincerity. But, con- 
 sidering that, belonging to the depressed and defeated fac- 
 tion in the state, they were compelled sometimes to use 
 dissimulation, you must set their uniform fidelity to their 
 friends against their occasional falsehood to their enemies, 
 
 * Extract op Journal to Stella. — " I dined to-daj' (12th March 
 1712) with Lord Treasurer and two gentlemen of the Highlands of 
 Scotland, yet very polite men."— Swift's Works, vol. iii. p. 7, Edin. 
 1824. 
 
 t See Note 34 
 
3W0 WAVERLEV NOVELS 
 
 and then you will not judge poor John Highlandman too 
 severely. They were in a state of society where hright lights 
 are strongly contrasted with deep shadows." 
 
 " It is to that point I would bring you, ma belle cousine, 
 and therefore they are most proper subjects for composition." 
 
 " And you want to turn composer, my good friend, and 
 set my old tales to some popular tune ? But there have 
 been too many composers, if that be the word, in the field 
 before. The Highlands were indeed a rich mine ; but they 
 have, I think, been fairly wrought out, as a good tune is 
 grinded into vulgarity when it descends to the hurdy-gurdy 
 and the barrel-organ." 
 
 '' If it be really tune," I replied, " it will recover its better 
 qualities when it gets into the hands of better artists." 
 
 "Umph!"said Mrs. Baliol, tapping her box, "we are 
 happy in our own good opinion this evening, Mr. Croftan- 
 gry. And so you think you can restore the gloss to the 
 tartan, which it has lost by being dragged through so many 
 fingers ? " 
 
 " With your assistance to procure materials, my dear lady, 
 much, I think, may be done." 
 
 '* Well, I must do my best, I suppose ; though all I know 
 about the Gael is but of little consequence. Indeed, I 
 gathered if chiefly from Donald MacLeish." 
 
 " And who might Donald MacLeish be ? " 
 
 ** Neither bard nor seannachie, I assure you, nor monk 
 nor hermit, the approved authorities for old traditions. 
 Donald was as good a postilion as ever drove a chaise and 
 pair between Glencroe and Inverary. I assure you, when I 
 give you my Highland anecdotes, you will hear much of 
 Donald MacLeish. He was Alice Lambskin's beau and mine 
 through a long Highland tour." 
 
 " But when am I to possess these anecdotes ? Y"ou answer 
 me as Harley did poor Prior — 
 
 Let that be done which Mat doth say. 
 " Yea," quoth the earl, " but not to-day." 
 
 " Well, monheati cousin, if you begin to remind me of my 
 cruelty, I must remind yon it has struck nine on the Abbey 
 clock, and it is time you were going home to Little Croftan- 
 gry. For my promise to assist your antiquarian researches, 
 be assured I will one day keep it to the utmost extent. It 
 shall not be a Highlandman's promise, as your old citizen 
 calls it." 
 
CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 391 
 
 I by this time suspected the purpose of my friend's pro- 
 crastination ; and it saddened my heart to reflect that I was 
 not to get the information which I desired, excepting in the 
 shape of a legacy. I found, accordingly, in the packet 
 transmitted to me after the excellent lady's death, several 
 anecdotes respecting the Highlands, from which I have 
 selected that which follows, chiefly on account of its possess- 
 ing great power over the feelings of my critical house- 
 keeper, Janet M'Evoy, who wept most bitterly when I read 
 it to her. It is, however, but a very simple tale, and may 
 have no interest for persons beyond Janet's rank of life of 
 understanding. 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 It wound as near as near could be, 
 
 But what it is she cannot tell ; 
 
 On tlie other side it seemed to be 
 
 Of the huge broad- breasted old oak-tree. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Mrs. Bethun"e Baliol's memorandum begins thus : — 
 
 It is five-and-thirty, or perhaps nearer forty, years ago, 
 since, to relieve the dejection of spirits occasioned by a 
 great family loss sustained two or three montlis before, I 
 undertook what was called the short Highland tour. This 
 had become in some degree fashionable ; but though the 
 military roads were excellent, yet the accommodation was so 
 indifferent, that it was reckoned a little adventure to ac- 
 complish it. Besides, the Highlands, though now as peace- 
 able as any part of King George's dominions, was a sound 
 which still carried terror, while so many survived who had 
 Avitnessed the insurrection of 1745 ; and a vague idea of fear 
 was impressed on many, as they looked from the towers of 
 Stirling northward to the huge chain of mountains, which 
 rises like a dusky rampart to conceal in its recesses a people 
 whose dress, manners, and language differed still very much 
 from those of their Lowland countrymen. For my part, I 
 come of a race not greatly subject to apprehensions arising 
 from imagination only. I had some Highland relatives, 
 knew several of their families of distinction ; and, though 
 only having the company of my bower-maiden, Mrs. Alice 
 Lambskin, I went on my journey fearless. 
 
 But then I had a guide and cicerone almost equal to Great- 
 heart in the Pilgrim's Progress, in no less a person than 
 Donald MacLeish, the postilion whom I hired at Stirling, 
 with a pair of able-bodied horses, as steady as Donald him- 
 self, to drag my carriage, my duenna, and myself, whereso- 
 ever it was my pleasure to go. 
 
39^'. WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Donald MacLeisli was one of a race of post-boys whom, I 
 suppose, mail-coaches and steam-boats have put out of 
 fashion. They were to be found chiefly at Perth, Stirling, 
 or Glasgow, where they and their horses were usually hired 
 by travelers, or tourists, to accomplish such journeys of 
 business or pleasure as they might have to perform in the 
 land of the Gael. This class of persons approached to the 
 character of what is called abroad a conthicteur ; or might 
 be compared to the sailing-master on board a British ship of 
 war, who follows out after his own manner the course vhich 
 the captain commands him to observe. You explained to 
 your postilion the length of your tour, and the objects you 
 were desirous it should embrace ; and you found him perfectly 
 competent to fix the places of rest or refreshment, with due 
 attention that those should be chosen with reference to your 
 convenience, and to any points of interest which you might 
 desire to visit. 
 
 The qualifications of such a person were necessarily much 
 superior to those of the "' first ready," who gallops thrice a 
 day over the same ten miles. Donald MacLeish, besides 
 being quite alert at repairing all ordinary accidents to his 
 horses and carriage, and in making shift to support them, 
 where forage was scarce, with such substitutes as bannocks 
 and cakes, was likewise a man of intellectual resources. He 
 had acquired a general knowledge of the traditional stories 
 of the country which he had traversed so often ; and, if 
 encouraged (for Donald was a man of the most decorous 
 reserve), he would willingly point out to you the site of the 
 principal clan-battles, and recount the most remarkable 
 legends by which the road, and the objects which occurred 
 in traveling it, had been distinguished. There was some 
 originality in the man's habits of thinking and expressing 
 himself, his turn for legendary lore strangely contrasting 
 with a portion of the knowing shrewdness belonging to his 
 actual occupation, which made his conversation amuse the 
 way well enough. 
 
 Add to this, Donald knew all his peculiar duties in the 
 country which he traversed so frequently. He could tell, to 
 a day, when they would be " killing lamb " at Tyndrum or 
 Glenuilt, so that the stranger would have some chance of 
 being fed like a Christian ; and knew to a mile the last 
 village where it was possible to procure a wheaten loaf, for 
 the guidance of those who were little familiar with the 
 Land of Cakes. He was acquainted with the road every 
 mile, and could tell to an inch which side of a Highland 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW %. 
 
 bridge was passable, which decidedly dangerous.* In short, 
 Donald MacLeish was not only our faithful attendant and 
 steady servant, but our humble and obliging friend ; and 
 though I have known the half-classical cicerone of Italy, the 
 talkative French valet-de-place, and even the muleteer of 
 Spain, who piques himself on being a maize-eater, and whose 
 honor is not to be questioned without danger, I do not think 
 I have ever had so sensible and intelligent a guide. 
 
 Our motions were, of course, under Donald's direction •• 
 and it frequently happened, when the weather was serene, 
 that we preferred halting to rest his horses even where there 
 was no established stage, and taking our refreshment under 
 a crag, from which leaped a waterfall, or beside the verge of 
 a fountain, enamelled with verdant turf and wild-flowers. 
 Donald had an eye for such spots, and though he had, I 
 daresay, never read Gil Bias or Don Quixote, yet he chose 
 such halting-places as Le Sage or Cervantes would have de- 
 scribed. Very often, as he observed the pleasure I took in 
 conversing with the country people, he would manage to fix 
 our place of rest near a cottage where there was some old 
 Gael whose broadsword had blazed at Falkirk or Preston, 
 and who seemed the frail yet faithful record of times which 
 had passed away. Or he would contrive to quarter us, as 
 far as a cup of tea went, upon the hospitality of some parish 
 minister of worth and intelligence, or some country family 
 of the better class, who mingled with the wild simplicity of 
 their original manners, and their ready and hospitable wel- 
 come, a sort of courtesy belonging to a people the lowest of 
 whom are accustomed to consider themselves as being, ac- 
 cording to the Spanish phrase, *' as good gentlemen as the 
 king, only not quite so rich." 
 
 To all "^such persons Donald MacLeish was well known, 
 and his introduction passed as current as if we had brought 
 letters from some high chief of the country. 
 
 Sometimes it happened that the Highland hospitality, 
 which welcomed us with all the variety of mountain fare, 
 preparations of milk and eggs, and girdle-cakes of various 
 kinds, as well as more substantial dainties, according to the 
 inhabitant's means of regaling the passenger, descended 
 rather too exuberantly on Donald MacLeish in the shape of 
 mountain dew. Poor Donald ! he was on such occasions 
 Uke Gideon's fleece, moist with the noble element, which, 
 of course, fell not on us. But it was his only fault, and 
 
 *See Highland Bridges. Note 25. 
 
ms WA VERLEY N VEL S 
 
 when pressed to drink doch-an-dorroch to my ladyship's 
 good health, it would have been ill taken to have refused the i 
 pledge, nor was he willing to do such discourtesy. It was, i 
 I repeat, his only fault, nor had we any great right to com- s 
 plain ; for if it rendered him a little more talkative, it aug- i 
 mented his ordinary share of punctilious civility, and he only r 
 drove slower, and talked longer and more jjompously, than 
 when he had not come by a drop of usquebaugh. It was, 
 we remarked, only on such occasions that Donald talked 
 with an air of importance of the family of MacLeish ; and a 
 we had no title to be scrupulous in censuring a foible the ai 
 consequences of which were confined within such innocent I of 
 limits. j'let 
 
 AVe became so much accustomed to Donald's mode of '• ¥■ 
 managing us, that we observed with some interest the art 
 which he used to produce a little agreeable surprise, by con- 
 cealing from us the spot where he proposed our halt to be i 
 made, when it was of an unusual and interesting character. 
 This was so much his wont, that, when he made apologies at 
 setting oif, for being obliged to stop in some strange, soli- 
 tary place till the horses should eat the corn which he 
 brought on with them for that purpose, our imagination 
 used to be on the stretch to guess what romantic retreat he 
 had secretly fixed upon for our noontide baiting-place. 
 
 We had spent the greater part of the morning at the de- 
 lightful village of Dalmally, and had gone upon the lake 
 under the guidance of the excellent clergyman who was then 
 incumbent at Glenorquhy,* and had heard an hundred 
 legends of the stern chiefs of Loch Awe,f Duncan with the 
 thrum bonnet, and the other lords of the now moldering '^i 
 towers of Kilchurn. Thus it was later than usual when we 
 set out on our journey, after a hint or two from Donald con- 
 cerning the length of the way to the next stage, as there 
 was no good halting-place between Dalmally and Oban. 
 
 Having bid adieu to our venerable and kind cicerone, 
 we proceeded on our tour, winding round the tremendous 
 mountain called Ben Cruachan, which rushes down in all its 
 majesty of rocks and wilderness on the lake, leaving only aj 
 pass, in which, notwithstanding its extreme strength, the] len 
 warlike clan of MacDougal of Lorn were almost destroyed! 
 by the sagacious Robert Bruce. That king, the WellingtoEjPlttio 
 of his day, had accomplished by a forced march, the unex-' 
 pected maneuver of forcing a body of troops round th 
 
 * This venerable and hospitable gentleman's name was Maolut^ t™,im., 
 
 t See Note 26. m^l 
 
 m. 
 lie I 
 iicel 
 
 fwh 
 
 k\ 
 
 th( 'Seel 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 399 
 
 other side of the mountain, and thus placed them in the flank 
 and in the rear of the men of Lorn, whom at the same time 
 he attacked in front. The great number of cairns yet visible, 
 as you descend the pass on the westward side, shows the ex- 
 tent of the vengeance which Bruce exhausted on his invet- 
 erate and personal enemies. I am, you know, the sister of 
 soldiers, and it has since struck me forcibly that the maneu- 
 ver which Donald described resembled those of Wellington 
 or of Bonaparte. He was a great man Robert Bruce, even 
 a Baliol must admit that ; although it begins now to be 
 allowed that his title to the crown was scarce so good as that 
 of the unfortunate family with whom he contended. But 
 let that pass. The slaughter had been the greater, as the 
 deep and raj^id river Awe is disgorged from the lake, just ir 
 the rear of the fugitives, and encircles the base of the tre- 
 mendous mountain ; so that the retreat of the unfortunate 
 fliers was intercepted on all sides by the inaccessible charac- 
 ter of the country, which had seemed to promise them de- 
 fense and protection.* 
 
 Musing, like the Irish lady in the song, " upon things 
 which are long enough a-gone," f we felt no impatience at 
 the slow, and almost creeping, pace with which our con- 
 ductor proceeded along General Wade's military road, which 
 never or rarely condescends to turn aside from the steepest 
 ascent, but proceeds right up and down hill, with the indif- 
 ference to height and hollow, steep or level, indicated by 
 the old Roman engineers. Still, however, the substantial 
 excellence of these great works — for such are the military 
 highways in the Highlands — deserved the compliment of the 
 poet, who, whether he came from our sister kingdom, and 
 spoke in his own dialect, or whether he supposed those 
 whom he addressed might have some national pretension to 
 the second sight, produced the celebrated couplet — 
 
 Had you but seen these roads before they were made, 
 You would hold up your hands, and bless General Wade. 
 
 1 Nothing indeed can be more wonderful than to see these 
 . wildernesses penetrated and pervious in every quarter by 
 broad accesses of the best possible construction, and so 
 superior to what the country could have demanded for many 
 
 * See Battle betwixt Bruce and Macdougal of Lorn. Note 27. 
 
 t This is a line from a very pathetic ballad which I heard sung 
 by one of the young ladies of Edgeworthstown in 1825. I do not 
 know that it has been printed. 
 
400 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 centuries for any pacific purpose of commercial interconrse. 
 Thus the traces of war are sometimes happily accommodated 
 to the purposes of peace. The victories of Bonaparte have 
 been without results ; but his road over the Simplon will 
 long be the communication betwixt peaceful countries, who 
 will apply to the ends of commerce and friendly intercourse 
 that gigantic work which was formed for the ambitious pur- 
 pose of warlike invasion. 
 
 While we were thus stealing along, we gradually turned 
 round the shoulder of Ben Cruachan, and descending the 
 course of the foaming and rapid Awe, left behind us the ex- 
 panse of the majestic lake which gives birth to that impetuous 
 river. The rocks and precipices which stooped down per- 
 pendicularly on our path on the right hand exhibited a few 
 remains of the wood which once clothed them, but which 
 had, in latter times, been felled to supply, Donald MacLeish 
 informed us, the iron founderies at the Bunawe. This made 
 us fix our eyes with interest on one large oak, which grew 
 on the left hand towards the river. It seemed a tree of ex- 
 traordinary magnitude and picturesque beauty, and stood 
 just where there appeared to be a few roods of open ground 
 lying among huge stones, which had rolled down from tha 
 mountain. To add to the romance of the situation, the spot 
 of clear gronnd extended round the foot of a proud-browed 
 rock, from the summit of which leaped a mountain stream 
 in a fall of sixty feet, in which it was dissolved into foam 
 and dew. At the bottom of the fall the rivulet with diffi^ 
 cnlty collected, like a routed general, its dispersed forces, 
 and, as if tamed by its descent, found a noiseless passage, 
 through the heath to join the Awe. 
 
 I was much struck with the tree and waterfall, and wishe(J 
 myself nearer them ; not that I thought of sketch-book or 
 portfolio — for, in my younger days, misses were not accuS' 
 tomed to black-lead pencils, unless they could use them to 
 some good purpose — but merely to indulge myself with a 
 closer view. Donald immediately opened the chaise door, 
 but observed it was rough walking down the brae, and that 
 I would see the tree better by keeping the road for a hun^ 
 dred yards farther, when it passed closer to the spot, foi 
 which he seemed, however, to have no predilection. " Hf 
 knew," he said, " a far bigger tree than that nearer Bunawe 
 and it was a place where there was flat ground for the car 
 riage to stand, which it could jimply do on these braes ; b 
 just as my leddyship liked." 
 
 My ladyship did choose rather to look at the fine tree be 
 
 U( Jwi, 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 4UI 
 
 fore me than to pass it by in hopes of a finer ; so we walked 
 beside the carriage till we should come to a point from 
 which, Donald assured us, we might, without scrambling, 
 go as near the tree as we chose, '' though he wadna advise 
 us to go nearer than the highroad." 
 
 There was something grave and mysterious in Donald's 
 snn-browned countenance when he gave us this intimation, 
 and his manner was so different from his usual frankness, 
 that my female curiosity was set in motion. We walked on 
 the whilst, and I found the tree, of which we had now lost 
 sight by the intervention of some rising ground, was really 
 more distant than I had at first supposed. " I could have 
 sworn now," said I to my cicerone, " that yon tree and water- 
 fall was the very place where you intended to make a stop 
 to-day." 
 
 "The Lord forbid !" said Donald, hastily. 
 
 " And for what, Donald ? why should you be willing to 
 pass so pleasant a spot ? " 
 
 " It's ower near Dalmally, my leddy, to corn the beasts : 
 it would bring their dinner ower near their breakfast, poor 
 things ; an,' besides, the place is not canny." 
 
 "Oh ! then the mystery is out. There is a bogle or a 
 brownie, a witch or a gyre-carlin, a bodacli or a fairy in the 
 
 case 
 
 " The ne'er a bit, my leddy : ye are clean aff the road, as 
 I may say. But if your leddyship will just hae patience, 
 and wait till we are by the place and out of the glen, I'll tell 
 ye all about it. There is no much luck in speaking of such 
 things in the place they chanced in." 
 
 •I was obliged to suspend my curiosity, observing, that if 
 I persisted in twisting the discourse one way while Donald 
 was twining it another, I should make his objection, like a 
 hempen cord, just so much the tougher. At length the 
 promised turn of the road brought us within fifty paces of 
 the tree which I desired to admire, and I now saw to my 
 surprise that there was a human habitation among the cliffs 
 which surrounded it. It was a hut of the least dimensions, 
 and most miserable description, that I ever saw even in the 
 Highlands. The walls of sod, or " divot," as the Scotch 
 call it, were not four feet high ; the roof was of turf, re- 
 paired with reeds and sedges ; the chimney was composed 
 of clay, bound round by straw ropes ; and the whole walls, 
 roof, and chimney were alike covered with the vegetation of 
 house-leek, rye-grass, and moss, common to decayed cot- 
 tages formed of such materials. There was not the slightest 
 
402 WA VERLE T NO VEL S 
 
 vestige of a kale-yard, the usual accompaniment of the very 
 worst huts ; and of living things we saw nothing, save a kid 
 which was browsing on the roof of the hut, and a goat, its 
 mother, at some distance, feeding betwixt the oak and the 
 river Awe. 
 
 " What man," I could not help exclaiming, " can have 
 committed sin deep enough to deserve such a miserable 
 dwelling ! " 
 
 " Sin enough," said Donald MacLeish, with a half-sup- 
 pressed groan ; " and God He knoweth, misery enough 
 too ; and it is no man's dwelling neither, but a woman's." 
 
 "'A woman's!'' I repeated, "and in so lonely a place. 
 What sort of a woman can she be ? " 
 
 " Come this w^ay, my leddy, and you may judge that for 
 yourself," said Donald. And by advancing a few steps, and 
 making a sharp turn to the left, we gained a sight of the 
 side of the great broad-breasted oak, in the direction op- 
 posed to that in which we had hitherto seen it. 
 
 " If she keeps her old Avont, she will be there at this hour 
 of the day," said Donald ; but immediately became silent, 
 and pointed with his finger, as one afraid' of being over- 
 heard. I looked, and beheld, not without some sense of 
 awe, a female form seated by the stem of the oak, with her 
 head drooping, her hands clasped, and a dark-colored man- 
 tle drawn over her head, exactly as Jndah is represented in 
 the Syrian medals as seated under her palm-tree. I was in- 
 fected with the fear and reverence which my guide seemed 
 to entertain towards this solitary being, nor did I think of 
 advancing towards her to obtain a nearer view until I had 
 cast an inquiring look on Donald ; to w^hich he replied iji a 
 half- whisper — " She has been a fearfu' bad woman, my 
 leddy." 
 
 '' Mad women, said you," replied I, hearing him perfectly ; 
 " then she is perhaps dangerous ? " 
 
 " No, she is not mad," replied Donald ; " for then it may 
 be she would be happier than she is ; though when she 
 thinks on what she has done, and caused to be done, rather 
 than yield up a hair-breadth of her ain wicked will, it is not 
 likely she can be very well settled. But she neither is mad 
 nor mischievous ; and yet, my leddy, I think you had best 
 not go nearer to her." And then, in a few hurried words, 
 he made me acquainted with the story which I am now to 
 tell more in detail. I heard the narrative with a mixture 
 of horror and sympathy, which at once impelled me to ap- 
 proach the sufferer, and speak to her the words of comfort. 
 
 
 \ 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 403 
 
 or rather of pity, and at the same time made me afraid to do 
 
 This indeed was the feeling with which she was regarded 
 "by the Highhinders in the neighborhood, who looked upon 
 Elspat MacTavish, or the Woman of the Tree, as they called 
 her, as the Greeks considered those who were pursued by 
 the Furies, and endured the mental torment consequent on 
 great criminal actions. They regarded such unhappy beings 
 as Orestes and (Edipus as being less the voluntary per- 
 petrators of their crimes than as the passive instruments by 
 which the terrible decrees of Destiny had been accomplished ; 
 and the fear with which they beheld them was not un- 
 niiiigled with veneration. 
 
 I ;dso learned farther from Donald MacLeish, that there 
 was some apprehenison of ill luck attending those who had 
 ithe boldness to approach too near, or disturb the awful 
 'Solitude of a being so unutterably miserable : that it was 
 isupposed that whomsoever approached her must experience 
 in some respect the contagion of her wretchedness. 
 
 It was therefore with some reluctance that Donald saw 
 me prepare to obtain a nearer view of the sufferer, and that 
 he himself followed to assist me in the descent down a very 
 rough path. I believe his regard for me conquered some 
 ominous feelings in his own breast, which connected his 
 duty on this occasion with the presaging fear of lame 
 horses, lost linch-pins, overturns, and other perilous chances 
 ;of the postilion's life. 
 
 i I am not sure if my own courage would have carried me 
 ■so close to Elspat, had he not followed. There was in her 
 countenance the stern abstraction of hopeless and over- 
 powering sorrow, mixed with the contending feelings of 
 remorse, and of the pride which struggled to conceal it. 
 She guessed, perhaps, that it was curiosity, arising out of 
 her uncommon story, which induced me to intrude on her 
 solitude ; and she could not be pleased that a fate like hers 
 had been the theme of a traveler's amusement. Yet the 
 look with which she regarded me was one of scorn instead 
 of embarrassment. The opinion of the world and all its 
 children could not add or take an iota from her load of 
 misery ; and, save from the half-smile that seemed to in- 
 timate the contempt of a being rapt by the very intensity of 
 her affliction above the sphere of ordinary humanities, she 
 seemed as indifferent to my gaze as if she had been a dead 
 corpse or a marble statute. 
 
 Elspat was above the middle stature j her hair, now 
 
40^ WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 grizzled, was still profuse, and it had been of the most decided 
 black. So were her eyes, in which, contradicting the stern 
 and rigid features of her countenance, there shone the wild 
 and troubled light that indicates an unsettled mind. Her 
 hair was wrapped round a silver bodkin with some attention to 
 neatness, and her dark mantle was disposed around her with 
 a degree of taste, though the materials were of the most 
 ordinary sort. 
 
 After gazing on this victim of guilt and calamity till I 
 was ashamed to remain silent, though uncertain how I 
 ought to address her, I began to express my surprise at 
 her choosing such a desert and deplorable dwelling. She 
 cut short these expressions of sympathy, by answering in a 
 stern voice, without the least change of countenance or pos- 
 ture — "Daughter of the stranger, he has told you my 
 story." I was silenced at once, and felt how little all 
 earthly accommodation must seem to the mind which had 
 such subjects as hers for rumination. Without again at- 
 tempting to open the conversation, I took a piece of gold 
 from my purse, for Donald had intimated she lived on alms, 
 expecting she would at least stretch her hand to receive it. 
 But she neither accepted nor rejected the gift ; she did not 
 even seem to notice it, though twenty times as valuable, 
 probably, as was usually offered. I was obliged to place it 
 on her knee, saying involuntarily, as I did so, " May God 
 pardon you, and relieve you ! " I shall never forget the 
 look which she cast up to Heaven, nor the tone in which 
 she exclaimed, in the very words of my old friend, John 
 Home — 
 
 " My beautiful— my brave ! " 
 
 It was the language of nature, and arose from the heart of 
 the deprived mother, as it did from that gifted imaginative 
 poet, while furnishing with appropriate expressions the 
 ideal grief of Lady Randolph. 
 
 Ions 
 'hi 
 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 O, I'm come to the Low Country, 
 
 Och, och, ohonochie, 
 Without a penny in my pouch 
 
 To buy a meal for me. 
 I was the proudest of my clan, 
 
 Long, long may I repine ; 
 And Donald was the bravest man, 
 
 And Donald he was mine. 
 
 Old Song. 
 
 ;Elspat had enjoyed liappy days, though her age had sunk 
 into hopeless and inconsolable sorrow and distress. She was 
 once the beautiful and happy wife of Hamish MacTavish, for 
 whom his strength and feats of prowess had gained tlie title 
 of MacTavish Mhor. His life was turbulent and dangerous, 
 his habits being of the old Highland stamp, which esteemed 
 it shame to want anything that could be had for the taking, 
 'Tliose in the Lowland line who lay near him, and desired to 
 ! enjoy their lives and property in quiet, were contented to 
 pav him a small composition, in name of protection-money, 
 and comforted themselves with the old proverb, that it was 
 " better to fleech the deil than fight him." Others, who 
 accounted such composition dishonorable, were often sur- 
 prised by MacTavish Mhor and his associates and followers, 
 who usually inflicted an adequate penalty, either in person 
 or property, or both. The creagh is yet remembered in 
 Avliich he swept one hundred and fifty cows from Monteith 
 in one drove ; and how he placed the laird of Ballybught 
 naked in a slough, for having threatened to send for a party 
 of the Highland Watch to protect liis property. 
 
 Wlmtever were occasionally the triumphs of this daring 
 cateran, they were often exchanged for reverses ; and his 
 narrow escapes, rapid flights, and the ingenious stratagems 
 with which he extricated himself from imminent danger, 
 were no less remembered and admired than the exploits in 
 which he had been successful. In weal or woe, through 
 every species of fatigue, difficulty and danger, Elspat was 
 his faithful companion. She enjoyed with him the fits of 
 occasional prosperity ; and when adversity pressed them 
 405 
 
406 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 hard, her strength of mind, readiness of wit, and courageous 
 endurance of danger and toil are said often to have stimulated 
 the exertions of lier husband. 
 
 Their morality was of the old Highland caste, faithful 
 friends and fierce enemies : the Lowland herds and harvests 
 they accounted their own, whenever they had the means of 
 driving off the one or of seizing upon the other ; nor did the 
 least scruple on the right of property interfere on such oc= 
 casions. Hamisli Mhor argued like the old Cretan warrior i 
 
 My sword, my spear, my shaggy shield, 
 
 They make me lord of all below ; 
 For he who dreads the lance to wield 
 
 Before my shaggy shield must bow ; 
 His lands, his vineyards, must resign, 
 And all that cowards have is mine. 
 
 But those days of perilous, though frequently successful, 
 depredation oegan to be abridged after the failure of the ex- 
 pedition of Prince Charles Edward. MacTavish Mhor had 
 not sat still on that occasion, and he was outlawed, both as 
 a traitor to the state and as a robber and cateran. Garrisons 
 were now settled in many places where a redcoat had never 
 before been seen, and tlie Saxon war-drum resounded among 
 the most hidden recesses of the Highland mountains. The 
 fate of MacTavish became every day more inevitable ; and it 
 was the more difficult for him to make his exertions for de- 
 fense or escape, that Elspat, amid his evil days, had increased 
 his family with an infant child, which was a considerable 
 encumbrance upon the necessary rapidity of their motions. 
 
 At length the fatal day arrived. In a strong pass on the 
 skirts of Ben Cruachan the celebrated MacTavish Mhor was 
 surprised by a detachment of the "sidier roy.*' His wife 
 assisted him heroically, charging his piece from time to time ; 
 and as they were in possession of a post that was nearly un 
 assailable, he might have perhaps escaped if his ammunition 
 had lasted. But at length his balls were expended, although 
 it was not until he had fired off most of the silver buttons 
 from his waistcoat, and the soldiers, no longer deterred by *^'ii 
 fear of the unerring marksman, who had slain three and! 
 wounded more of their number, approached his stronghold.) 
 and, unable to take him alive, slew him, after a most des 
 perate resistance. 
 
 All this Elspat witnessed and survived, for she had, in thfj )\\ 
 child which relied on her for support, a motive for strengtl 
 and exertion. In what manner she maintained herself i 
 
 la 
 
 i 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 407 
 
 is not easy to say. Her only ostensible moans of support 
 were a flock of three or four goats, which she fed wherever 
 she pleased on the mountain pastures, no one challenging 
 the intrusion. In the general distress of the country, her 
 ancient acquaintances had little to bestow ; but what they 
 could part with from their own necessities they willingly 
 devoted to the relief of others. From Lqwlanders she some- 
 times demanded tribute, rather than requested alms. She 
 had not forgotten slie was the widow of MacTavish Mhor, 
 or that the child who trotted by her knee might, such were 
 her imaginations, emulate one day the fame of his father, 
 and command the same influence which he had once ex'^rted 
 without control. She associated so little with others, went 
 so seldom and so unwillingly from the wildest recesses of 
 the mountains, where she usually dwelt with lier goa^s, that 
 she was quite unconscious of the great change which had 
 taken place in the country around her, the substitution of 
 j civil order for military violence, and the strength gained by 
 ithe law and its adherents over those who were called in 
 Gaelic song *'tlie stormy sons of the sword." Her own 
 ■diminished consequence and straitened circumstances she 
 indeed felt, but for this the death of MacTavish Mhor was, 
 in her apprehension, a sufficing reason ; and she doubted 
 iQot that she should rise to her former state of importance 
 I when Hamish Bean (or Fair-haired James) should be able 
 }to wield the arms of his father. If, then, Elspat was re- 
 pelled rudely when she demanded anything necessary for her 
 wants, or the accommodation of her "little flock, by a churl- 
 ish farmer, her threats of vengeance, obscurely expressed, 
 yet terrible in their tenor, used frequently to extort, through 
 fear of her maledictions, the relief which was denied to her 
 iuecessities ; and the trembling goodwife who gave meal or 
 money to the widow of MacTavish Mhor wished in her heart 
 that the stern old carline had been burned on the day her 
 husband had his due. 
 
 Years thus ran on, and Hamish Bean grew up, not indeed 
 to be of his father's size or strength, but to become an ac- 
 tive, high-spirited, fair-haired youth, with a ruddy cheek, 
 an eye like an eagle, and all the agility, if not all the 
 strength, of his formidable father, upon whose history and 
 achievements his mother dwelt, in order to form her son's 
 mind to a similar course of adventures. But the young see 
 the present state of this changeful world more keenly than 
 the old. Much attached to his mother, and disposed to do 
 all in his power ior her support^ Hamish yet perceived. 
 
408 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 when lie mixed with the world, that the trade of the cateran 
 was now alike dangerous and discreditable, and that, if he 
 were to emulate his fathers prowess, it must be in some 
 other line of warfare, more consonant to the opinions of the 
 present day. 
 
 As the faculties of mind and body began to expand, he 
 became more sensible of the precarious nature of his situa- 
 tion, of the erroneous views of his mother, and her ignor^ 
 ance respecting the clianges of tlie society with which she 
 mingled so little. In visiting friends and neighbors, he be- 
 came aware of the extremely reduced scale to which his 
 parent was limited, and learned that she possessed little or 
 nothing more than the absolute necessaries of life, and that 
 these were sometimes on the point of failing. At times his 
 snccess in fishing and the chase was able to add something 
 to her subsistence ; but he saw no regular means of con- 
 tributing to her support, unless by stooping to servile labor, 
 which, if he himself could have endured it, would, he knew% 
 have been like a death's-wound to the pride of his mother. 
 
 Elspat, meanwhile, saw with surprise that Hamish Bean, 
 although now tall and fit for the field, showed no disposi- 
 tion to enter on his father's scene of action. There was 
 something of the mother at her heart, which prevented hei 
 from urging him in plain terms to take the field 
 cateran ; for the fear occurred of the perils into which tht 
 trade must conduct him, and when she would have spoker 
 to him on the subject, it seemed to her heated imaginatior 
 as if the ghost of her husband arose between them in hi 
 bloody tartans, and, hiying his finger on his lips, appeared 
 to prohibit the topic. Yet she wondered at what seeme< 
 his want of spirit, sighed as she saw him from day to da;| 
 lounging about in the long-skirted Lowland coat, which thf 
 legislature had imposed upon the Gael instead of their ow: 
 romantic garb, and thonght how much nearer he would hav 
 resembled her husband had he been clad in the belted plai 
 and short hose, with his polished arms gleaming at his side. 
 
 Besides these subjects for anxiety, Elspat had others arii 
 ing from the engrossing impetuosity of her temper. H« 
 love of MacTavish Mhor had been qualified by respect, a; 
 sometimes even by fear, for the cateran was not the sped 
 of man who submits to female government ; but over 
 son she had exerted, at first during childhood, and afte 
 wards in early youth, an imperious authority, which gas 
 her maternal love a character of jealousy. She could ni 
 bear when Hamish, with advancing life, made repeated stei 
 
 anf 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 409 
 
 towards independence, absented himself from her cottage at 
 such season, and for such length of time, as he chose, and 
 seemed to consider, although maintaining towards her every 
 possible degree of respect and kindness, that the control and 
 responsibility of his actions rested on himself alone. This 
 would have been of little consequence could she have con- 
 cealed her feelings within her own bosom; but the ardor 
 and impatience of her passions made her frequently show 
 her son that she conceived herself neglected and ill-used. 
 When he was absent for any length of time from her cot- 
 tage, without giving intimation of his purpose, her resent- 
 ment on his return used to be so unreasonable, that it nat- 
 urally suggested to a young man fond of independence, and 
 desirous to amend his situation in the world, to leave her, 
 even for the very purpose of enabling him to provide for the 
 parent whose egotistical demands on his filial attention tended 
 to confine him to a desert, in which both were starving in 
 hopeless and helpless indigence. 
 
 Upon one occasion, the son having been guilty of some in- 
 dependent excursion, by which the mother felt herself af- 
 fronted and disobliged, she had been more than usually violent 
 on his return, and awakened in Hamish a sense of displeasure, 
 which clouded his brow and cheek. At length, as she per' 
 sevreed in her unreasonable resentment, his patience became 
 exhausted, and, taking his gun from the chimney-corner, 
 and muttering to himself the reply which his respect for his 
 mother prevented him from speaking aloud, he was about to 
 leave the hut which he had but barely entered. 
 
 " Hamish," said his mother, " are you again about to leave 
 me ?" 
 
 But Hamish only replied by looking at and rubbing the 
 lock of his gun. 
 
 " Ay, rub the lock of your gun," said his parent, bitterly ; 
 " I am glad you have courage enough to fire it, though it be 
 but at a roe-deer." 
 
 Hamish started at this undeserved taunt, and cast a look 
 of auger at her in reply. 
 
 She saw that she had found the means of giving him pain. 
 " Yes," she said, " look fierce as you will at an old woman, 
 and your mother ; it would be long ere you bent your brow 
 on the angry countenance of a bearded man." 
 
 " Be silent, mother, or speak of what you understand," 
 said Hamish, much irritated, "and that is of the distaff and 
 the spindle." 
 
 " And was it of spindle and distaff that I was thinking 
 
4iu WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 when I bore you away on my back, through the fire of six of 
 the Saxon soldiers, and you a wailing child ? I tell you, 
 Hamish, I know a hundredfold more of swords and guns 
 than ever you will ; and you will never learn so much of no- 
 ble war by yourself as you have seen when you were wrapped 
 up in my plaid/' 
 
 " You are determined at least to allow me no peace at 
 home, motlier ; but this shall have an end," said Hamish, 
 as, resuming his purpose of leaving the hut, he rose and went 
 towards the door. 
 
 '" Stay, I command you," said his mother — " stay I or may 
 the gun you carry be "the means of your ruin — may the road 
 you are going be the track of your funeral 1 " 
 
 " What makes you use such words, mother ? " said the 
 young man, turning a little back ; " they are not good, and 
 good cannot come of them. Farewell just now, we are too 
 angry to speak together — farewell ; it will be long ere you 
 see me again." And he departed, his mother, in the nrst 
 burst of her impatience, showering after him her maledic- 
 tions, and in the next invoking them on her own head, so 
 that they might spare her son's. She passed that day and 
 the next in all the vehemence of impotent and yet unre- 
 strained passion, now entreating Heaven, and such powers as 
 were familiar to her by rude tradition, to restore her dear 
 son, " the calf of her heart " ; now in impatient resentment, 
 meditating with what bitter terms she should rebuke his 
 filial disobedience upon his return ; and now studying the I *)» 
 most tender language to attach him to the cottage, which, ■ Hf' 
 when her boy was present, she would not, in the rapture of 
 her affection, have exchanged for the apartments of Tay- 
 mouth Castle. 
 
 Two days passed, during which, neglecting even the slen- 
 der means of supporting nature which her situation afforded, 
 nothing but the strength of a frame accustomed to hard- 
 ships and privations of every kind could have kept her in exis- 
 tence, notwithstanding the anguish of her mind prevented 
 her being sensible of her personal weakness. Her dwelling, 
 at this period, was the same cottage near which I had found 
 her, but then more habitable by the exertions of Hamish, ■ 
 by whom it had been in a great measure built and repaired, j 
 
 It was on the third day after her son had disappeared, aa.| 
 she sat at the door rocking herself, after the fashion of heri 
 countrywomen when in distress or in pain, that the thenj 
 unwonted circumstance occurred of a passenger being seea; 
 on the highroad above the cottage. She cast but one glanc© 
 
 it 
 % 
 
THE HIGHLA^Hb WIDOW 411 
 
 at him ; he was on horseback, so that it could not be 
 JIamish, and Elspat cared not enough for any other being 
 on earth to make her turn her eyes towards him a second 
 time. 
 
 The stranger, however, paused opj)osite to her cottage, 
 and dismounting from his pony, led it down the steep and 
 broken path which conducted to her door. 
 
 " God bless you, Elspat MacTavish I" She looked at the 
 man, as he addressed her in her native language, with the 
 displeased air of one whose reverie is interrupted ; but the 
 traveler went on to say, " I bring you tidings of your son 
 Hamisli." At once, from being the most uninteresting 
 object, in respect to Elspat, that could exist, the form of 
 the stranger became awful in her eyes, as that of a messenger 
 descended from Heaven, expressly to pronounce upon her 
 death or life. She started from her seat, and wdth hands 
 convulsively clasped together, and held up to Heaven, eyes 
 fixed on the stranger's countenance, and person stooping 
 forward to him, she looked those inquiries which her falter- 
 ing tongue could not articulate. " Your son sends you his 
 dutiful remembrance and this," said the messenger, putting 
 into Elspat's hands a small purse containing four or five 
 dollars. 
 
 " He is gone — he is gone !" exclaimed Elspat : "he has 
 sold himself to be the servant of the Saxons, and I shall 
 never more behold him ! Tell me. Miles MacPhadraick, for 
 now I know you, is it the price of the son's blood that you 
 have put into the mother's hand ?" 
 
 " Now God forbid ! " answered MacPhadraick, who was a 
 tacksman, and had possession of a considerable tract of 
 ground under his chief, a proprietor who lived about twenty 
 miles off — "' God forbid I should do wrong, or say wrong, to 
 you, or to the son of MacTavish Mhor ! I swear to you by 
 the hand of my chief that your son is well, and will soon see 
 you; and the rest he will tell you himself." So saying, 
 MacPhadraick hastened back up the pathway, gained the 
 the road, mounted his pony, and rode upon his way. 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 Elspat MacTavish remained gazing on the money, as if 
 the impress of the coin could have conveyed information how 
 it was procured. 
 
 " I love not tliis MacPhadraick/' she said to herself ; ''it 
 was his race of whom the bard hath spoken, saying, ' Fear 
 them not when their words are loud as the winter's wind, 
 but fear them when they fall on you like the sound of the 
 thrush's song/ And yet this riddle can be read but one 
 way : my son hath taken the sword, to win that with strength 
 like a man which churls would keep him from with the words 
 that frighten children/ This idea, wlien once it occurred 
 to her, seemed the more reasonable, that MacPhadraick, as 
 she well knew, himself a cautious man, had so far encouraged 
 her husband's practises as occasionally to buy cattle of Mac- 
 Tavish, although he must have well known how they were 
 come by, taking care, however, that the transaction was so 
 made as to be accompanied with great profit and absolute 
 safety. Who so likely as MacPhadraick to indicate to 
 young cateran the glen in which he could commence his 
 perilous trade with most prospect of success, who so likely 
 to convert his booty into money ? The feelings which an- 
 other might have experienced on believing that an only son 
 had rushed forward on the same path in which his father 
 had perislied were scarce known to the Highland mothers of 
 that day. She thought of the death of MacTavish Mhor 
 that of a hero who had fallen in his proper trade of war, and; 
 who had not fallen unavenged. She feared less for her son's 
 life than for his dishonor. She dreaded on his account the 
 subjection of strangers, and the death-sleep of the soul which 
 is brought on by what she regarded as slavery. 
 
 The moral principle which so naturally and so justly occurs 
 to the mind of those who have been educated under a settled 
 government of laws, that protect the property of the weak 
 against the incursions of the strong, was to poor Elspat a 
 book sealed and a fountain closed. She had been taught tC 
 consider those whom they called Saxons as a race with whon:' 
 the Gael were constantly at war, and she regarded everj 
 settlement of theirs within the reach of Highland incursior 
 412 
 
 I 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 41H 
 
 as affording a legitimate object of attack and plunder. Her 
 feelings on this point liad been strengthened and confirmed, 
 not only by the desire of revenge for the death of her hus- 
 band, but by the sense of general indignation entertained, 
 not unjustly, through the Highlands of Scotland on account 
 of the barbarous and violent conduct of the victors after the 
 battle of Culloden. Other Highland clans, too, she regarded 
 as the fair objects of plunder when that was possible, upon 
 the score of ancient enmities and deadly feuds. 
 
 The prudence that might have weighed the slender means 
 which the times afforded for resisting the efforts of a ccm- 
 bined government, which had, in its less compact and es- 
 tablished authority, been unable to put down the ravages of 
 such lawless caterans as MacTavish Mhor, was unknown to 
 a solitary woman, whose ideas still dwelt upon her own early 
 times. She imagined that her son had only to proclaim 
 himself his father's successor in adventure and enterprise, 
 and that a force of men as gallant as those who had followed 
 his father's banner would crowd around to support it when 
 again displayed. To her, Hamish was the eagle who had 
 only to soar aloft and resume his native place in the skies, 
 without her being able to comprehend how many additional 
 eyes would have watched his flight, how many additional 
 bullets would have been directed at his bosom. To be brief, 
 Elspat was one who viewed the present state of society with 
 the same feelings with which she regarded the times that 
 had passed away. She had been indigent, neglected, op- 
 pressed, since the day that her husband had no longer been 
 feared and powerful, and she thought that the term of her 
 ascendance would return when her son had determined to 
 play the part of his father. If she permitted her eye to 
 glance farther into futurity, it was but to anticipate that she 
 must be for many a day cold in the grave, with the coronach 
 of her tribe cried duly over her, before her fair-haired 
 Hamish could, according to her calculation, die with his 
 hand on the basket-hilt of the red claymore. His father's 
 hair was gray ere, after a hundred dangers, he had fallen 
 with his arms in his hands. That she should have seen and 
 survived the sight was a natural consequence of the manners 
 of that age. And better it was, such was her proud thought, 
 that she had seen him so die than to have witnessed his 
 departure from life in a smoky hovel. On a bed of rotten 
 straw, like an over-worn hound, or a bullock which died of 
 disease. But the hour of her young — her brave Hamish was 
 yet far distant. He must succeed — he must conquer, like 
 
iU WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 his father. And when he fell at length, for she anticipated 
 for him no bloodless death, Elspat would ere then have lain 
 long in the grave, and could neither see his death-struggle 
 nor mourn over his grave-sod. 
 
 AVith such wild notions working in her brain, the spirit ot 
 Elspat rose to its usual pitch, or rather to one which seemed 
 higher. In the emphatic language of Scripture, which in 
 that idiom does not greatly differ from her own, she arose, 
 she washed and changed her apparel, and ate bread, and was 
 refreshed. 
 
 She longed eagerly for the return of her son, but she now 
 longed not with the bitter anxiety of doubt and apprehen- 
 sion. She said to herself, that much must be done ere he 
 could in these times arise to be an eminent and dreaded 
 leader. Yet when she saw him again, she almost expected 
 him at the head of a daring band, with jDipes playing, and 
 banners flying, the noble tartans fluttering free in the wind, 
 in despite of the laws which had suppressed, under severe 
 penalties, tlie use of the national garb, and all the appurte- 
 nances of Highland chivalry. For all this, her eager imagi- 
 nation was content only to allow the interval of some days. 
 
 From the moment this opinion had taken deep and seri- 
 ous possession of her mind, her thoughts were bent upon 
 receiving her son at the head of his adherents in the manner 
 in which she used to adorn her hut for the return of his 
 father. 
 
 The substantial means of subsistence she had not the 
 power of providing, nor did she consider that of importance. 
 The successful caterans would bring with them herds and 
 flocks. But the interior of her hut was arranged for their 
 reception ; the usquebaugh was brewed or distilled in a larger 
 quantity than it could have been supposed one lone woman 
 could have made ready. Her hut was put into such order! 
 as might, in some degree, give it the appearance of a day 
 of rejoicing. It was swept and decorated with boughs of 
 various kinds, like the house of a Jewess, upon what is 
 termed the Feast of the Tabernacles. The produce of the 
 milk of her little flock was prepared in as great variety of | 
 forms as her skill admitted, to entertain her son and his as- 
 sociates whom she expected to receive along with him. 
 
 But the principal decoration, which she sought with the: 
 greatest toil, was the cloudberry, a scarlet fruit, which is only: 
 found on very high hills, and there only in small quantities. 
 Her husband, or perhaps one of his forefathers, had chosenj 
 this as the emblem of his family, because it seemed at once 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 415 
 
 to imply by its scarcity the smallness of their clan, and by 
 the places in which it was found the ambitious height of 
 their pretensions. 
 
 For the time that these simple preparations of welcome 
 endured, Elspat was in a state of troubled happiness. In 
 fact, her only anxiety was that she might be able to complete 
 all that she could do to welcome Hamish and the friends 
 who she supposed must have attached themselves to his band 
 before they should arrive, and find her unprovided for their 
 reception. 
 
 But when such efforts as she could make had been accom- 
 plished, she once more had nothing left to engage her save 
 the trifling care of her goats ; and when these had been at- 
 tended to, she had only to review her little preparations, 
 renew such as were of a transitory nature, replace decayed 
 branches and fading boughs, and then to sit down at her 
 cottage door and watch the road, as it ascended on the one 
 side from the banks of the Awe, and on the other wound 
 round the heights of the mountain, with such a degree of 
 accommodation to hill and level, as the plan of the military 
 engineer permitted. While so occupied, her imagination, 
 anticipating the future from recollections of the past, formed 
 out of the morning mist or the evening cloud the wild forms 
 of an advancing band, which were then called " sidier dhu" 
 (dark soldiers), dressed in their native tartan, and so named 
 to distinguish them from the scarlet ranks of the British 
 army. In this occupation she spent many hours of each 
 morning and evening. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 It was in vain that Elspat's eyes surveyed the distant path, 
 by the earliest liglit of the dawn, and the latest glimmer of 
 the twilight. No rising dust awakened the expectation of 
 nodding plumes or flashing arms ; the solitary traveler 
 trudged listlessly along in his brown Lowland greatcoat, his 
 tartaiis dyed black or purple, to comply with or to evade the 
 law which prohibited their being worn in their variegated 
 hues. The spirit of the Gael, sunk and broken by the 
 severe though peehaps necessary laws that proscribed the 
 dress and arms which he considered as his birthright, was 
 intimated by his drooping head aud dejected appearance. 
 Not in such depressed wanderers did Elspat recognize the 
 light and free step of her son, now, as she concluded, regen- 
 erated from every sign of Saxon thraldom. Night by night, 
 as darkness came, she removed from her unclosed door to 
 throw herself on her restless pallet, not to sleep, but to 
 watch. " The brave and the terrible," she said, " walk byf 
 night : their steps are heard in darkness, when all is silent 
 save the whirlwind and the cataract ; the timid deer comes 
 only forth when the sun is upon the mountain's peak, butb 
 the bold wolf walks in the red light of the harvest moon."! 
 She reasoned in vain : her son's expected summons did not' 
 call her from the lowly couch whore she lay dreaming of his 
 approach. Hamish came not, 
 
 " Hope deferred," saith the royal sage, " maketh the heart 
 sick;'* and, strong as was Elspat's constitution, she began tc 
 experience that it was unequal to the toils to which her 
 anxious and immoderate affection subjected her, when early 
 one morning the appearance of a traveler on the lonely 
 mountain-road revived hopes which had begun to sink intc 
 listless despair. There was no sign of Saxon subjugatior 
 about the stranger. At a distance she could see the fluttei 
 of the belted plaid, that drooped in graceful folds behint: 
 him, and the plume that, placed in the bonnet, showed ranl<j 
 and gentle birth. He carried a gun over his shoulder, th4 
 claymore was swinging by his side, with its usual appendages^ 
 the dirk, the pistol and the spoi'van molloch. Ere yet he; 
 eye had scanned all these particulars, the light step of th( 
 416 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 417 
 
 traveler was hastened, his arm was waved in token of recog- 
 nition ; a moment more and Elspat held in her arms her 
 darling son, dressed in the garb of his ancestors, and looking, 
 in her maternal eyes, the fairest among ten thousand ! 
 
 The first outpouring of affection it would be impossible to 
 describe. Blessings mingled with the most endearing 
 epithets which her energetic language affords, in striving to 
 express the wild rapture of Elspat's joy. Her board was 
 heaped hastily with all she had to offer ; and the mother 
 watched the young soldier, as he partook of the refreshment, 
 with feelings how similar to, yet how different from, those 
 with which she had seen him draw his first sustenance from 
 her bosom ! 
 
 When the tumult of joy was appeased, Elspat became 
 anxious to know her son's adventures since they parted, and 
 could not help greatly censuring his rashness for traversing 
 the hills in the Highland dress in the broad sunshine, when 
 the penalty was so heavy, and so many red soldiers were 
 abroad in the country. 
 
 " Fear not for me, mother," said Hamish, in a tone de- 
 signed to relieve her anxiety, and yet somewhat embarrassed ; 
 " I may wear the breacan at the gate of Fort- Augustus, if I 
 like it." 
 
 " Oh, be not too daring, my beloved Hamish, though it 
 be the fault which best becomes thy father's son — yet be not 
 too daring ! Alas ! they fight not now as in former days, 
 with fair weapons and on equal terms, but take odds of 
 numbers and of arms, so that the feeble and the strong are 
 alike leveled by the shot of a boy. And do not think me 
 unworthy to be called your father's widow, and your mother, 
 because 1 speak thus ; for God knoweth that, man to man, 
 I would peril thee against the best in Breadalbane and 
 broad Lorn besides." 
 
 "I assure you, my dearest mother," replied Hamish, 
 " that I am in no danger. But have you seen MacPhadraick, 
 mother, and what has he said to you on my account ? " 
 
 " Silver he left me in plenty, Hamish ; but the best of his 
 comfort was, that you were well, and would see me soon. 
 But beware of MacPhadraick, my son ; for when he called 
 himself the friend of your father, he better loved the most 
 worthless stirk in his herd than he did the life-blood of Mac- 
 Tavish Mhor. Use his services, therefore, and pay him for 
 them ; for it is thus we should deal with the unworthy. 
 But take my counsel, and trust him not." 
 
 Hamish could not suppre^g a sigh, which seemed to Elspat 
 
418 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 to intimate that the caution came too late. '^What have 
 you clone with him ? " she continued, eager and alarmed. 
 ''1 had money of him, and he gives not that without value : 
 he is none of those who exchange barley for chaff. Oh, if 
 you repent you of your bargain, and if it be one which you 
 may break off without disgrace to your truth or your 
 manhood, take back his silver, and trust not to his fair 
 words.'' 
 
 " It may not be, mother," said Hamish ; "I do not repent 
 my engagement, unless that it must make me leave you 
 soon." 
 
 " Leave me ! how leave me ? Silly boy, think you I 
 know not what duty belongs to the wife or mother of a dar- 
 ing man ? Thou art but a boy yet ; and when thy father 
 had been the dread of the country for twenty years, he did 
 not despise my company and assistance, but often said my 
 help was worth that of two strong gillies." 
 
 " It is not on that score, mother ; but since I must leave 
 the country " 
 
 " Leave the country!" replied his mother, interrupting 
 him ; '' and think you that I am like a bush, that is rooted 
 to the soil where it grows, and must die if carried else- 
 where ? I have breathed other winds than these of Ben 
 Cruachan. I have followed your father to the wilds of Ross 
 and the impenetrable deserts of Y Mac Y Mhor. Tush, 
 man, my limbs, old as they are, will bear me as far as your 
 young feet can trace the way." 
 
 ''Alas, mother," said the young man, with a faltering 
 accent ; ''but to cross the sea " 
 
 " The sea ! Who am I that I should fear the sea ? Have 
 I never been in a birling in my life — never known the Sound 
 of Mull, the Isles of Treshormish, and the rough rocks of 
 Harris ?" 
 
 " Alas, mother, I go far, far from all of these. I am 
 enlisted in one of the new regiments, and we go against the 
 French in America." 
 
 " Enlisted ! " uttered the astonished mother — " against 
 mt/ will — without my consent ? You could not — you would 
 not " — then rising up, and assuming a posture of almost 
 imperial command, "Hamish, you dared not !" 
 
 "Despair, mother, dares everything," answered Hamish, 
 in a tone of melancholy resolution. " What should I do 
 here, where I can scarce get bread for myself and you, 
 and when the times are growing daily worse ? Would 
 you but sit down and listen, I would convince you I har? 
 acted for tJie best." 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 419 
 
 Witli a bitter smile Elspat sat down, and the same severe, 
 ironical expression was on her features as, with her lips 
 firmly closed, she listened to his vindication. 
 
 Hamish went on, without being disconcerted by her ex- 
 pected displeasure. " When I left you, dearest mother, it 
 was to go to MacPhadraick's house ; for, although I knew 
 he is crafty and worldly, after the fashion of the Sassenach, 
 yet he is wise, and I thought how he would teach me, as it 
 would cost him nothing, in which way I could mend our 
 estate in the world." 
 
 " Our estate in the world \" said Elspat, losing patience 
 at the word ; " and went you to a base fellow with a soul 
 no better than that of a cowherd to ask counsel about your 
 conduct ? Your father asked none, save of his courage and 
 his sword." 
 
 "Dearest mother," answered Hamish, "how shall I con- 
 vince you that you live in this land of our fathers as if our 
 fathers were yet living ? You walk as it were in a dream, 
 surrounded by the phantoms of those who have been long 
 with the dead. When my father lived and fought, the great 
 respected the man of the strong right hand, and the rich 
 feared him. He had protection from MacCallan Mhor and 
 from Caberfae,* and tribute from meaner men. That is 
 ended, and his son would only earn a disgraceful and un- 
 pitied death by the practises which gave his father credit 
 and power among those who wear the breacan. The land 
 is conquered, its lights are quenched — Glengarry, Lochiel, 
 Perth, Lord Lewis, all the high chiefs, are dead or in exile. 
 We may mourn for it, but we cannot help it. Bonnet, 
 broadsword, and sporran, power, strength, and wealth, were 
 all lost on Drummossie Muir. f 
 
 "It is false ! " said Elspat, fiercely ; " you, and such-like 
 dastardly spirits, are quelled by your own faint hearts, not 
 by the strength of the enemy : you are like the fearful water- 
 fowl, to whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow 
 of the eagle." 
 
 "Mother," said Hamish, proudly, "lay not faint heart 
 to my charge. I go where men are wanted who have strong 
 arms and bold hearts too. I leave a desert for a land where 
 I may gather fame." 
 
 " And you leave your mother to perish in want, age, and 
 solitude," said Elspat, essaying successively every means of 
 
 * Caberfae — Anglice, the Stag's head, the Celtic designation for 
 the arms of the family of the high chief of Seaforth. 
 t The battlefield of Culloden {Laing) . 
 
i20 WAVURLEY NOVELS 
 
 moving a resolution which she began to see was more deeply 
 rooted than she had at first thought. 
 
 " Not so, neither," he answered ; '' I leave you to com- 
 fort and certainty, which you have yet never known. Bar- 
 caldine's son is made a leader, and with him I have enrolled 
 myself ; ]\IacPhadraick acts for him, and raises men, and 
 finds his own in doing it." 
 
 " That is the truest word of the tale, were all the rest as 
 false as hell," said the old woman, bitterly. 
 
 " But we are to find our good in it also," continued 
 Hamish ; " for Barcaldine is to give you a shielding in his 
 wood of Letterfindreight, with grass for your goats, and a 
 cow, when you please to have one, on the common ; and my 
 own pay, dearest mother, though I am far away, will do 
 more than provide you with meal, and with all else you can 
 want. Do not fear for me. I enter a private gentleman ; 
 but I will return, if hard fighting and regular duty can 
 deserve it, an officer, and with half a dollar a day. " 
 
 "Poor child I" replied Elspat, in a tone of pity mingled 
 with contempt, "and you trust MacPiiadraick ?" 
 
 " I might, mother," said Hamish, the dark red color of 
 his race crossing his forehead and cheeks, " for MacPha- 
 draick knows the blood which flows in my veins, and is aware 
 that, should he break trust with you, he might count the 
 days which could bring Hamish back to Breadalbane, and 
 number those of his life within three suns more. I would 
 kill him at his own hearth, did he break his word with me 
 — I would, by the great Being who made us both I " 
 
 The look and attitude of the young soldier for a moment 
 overawed Elspat ; she was unused to see him express a deep 
 and bitter mood, which reminded her so strongly of his 
 father, but she resumed her remonstrances in the same 
 taunting manner in which she had commenced them. 
 
 " Poor boy ! " she said ; " and you think that at the dis- 
 tance of half the world your threats will be heard or thought 
 of ! But, go — go — place your neck under him of Hanover's 
 yoke.against whom every true Gael fought to the death. 
 Go, disown the royal Stuart, for whom your father, and his 
 fathers, and your mother's fathers, have crimsoned many a I 
 field with their blood. Go, put your head under the belt 
 
 of one of the race of Dermid, whose children murdered . 
 
 Yes," she added, with a wild shriek, " murdered your 
 mother's fathers in their peaceful dwellings in Glencoe ! 
 Yes," she again exclaimed, with a wilder and shriller scream, 
 " I was then unborn, but my mother has told me, and I 
 
 I: 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 421 
 
 attended to the voice of my mother— well I remember lier 
 words ! They came in peace, and were received in friend- 
 ship, and blood and fire arose, and screams and murder ! " * 
 
 " Mother," answered Hamish, mournfully, but with a de- 
 cided tone, " all that I have thought over ; there is not a 
 drop of the blood of Glencoe on the noble hand of Barcal- 
 dine — with the unhappy house of Glenlyon the curse remains, 
 and on them God hath avenged it." 
 
 " You speak like the Saxon priest already," replied his 
 mother ; '■ will you not better stay, and ask a kirk from Mac- 
 Callan Mlior, that you may preach forgiveness to the race of 
 Derm id ? " 
 
 " Yesterday was yesterday," answered Hamish, " and to- 
 day is to-day. When the clans are crushed and confounded 
 together, it is well and wise that their hatreds and their feuds 
 should not survive their independence and their power. He 
 that cannot execute vengeance like a man should not harbor 
 useless enmity like a craven. Mother, young Barcaldine is 
 true and brave ; I know that MacPhadraick counseled him 
 that he should not let me take leave of you, lest you dissuaded 
 me from my purpose ; but he said, ' Hamish McTavish is 
 the son of a brave man, and he will not break his word.' 
 Mother, Barcaldine leads an hundred of the bravest of the 
 sons of the Gael in their native dress, and with their fathers' 
 arms, heart to heart, shoulder to shoulder. I have sworn 
 to go with him. He has trusted me, and I will trust him." 
 
 At this reply, so firmly and resolvedly pronounced, Elspat 
 remained like one thunderstruck and sunk in despair. The 
 arguments which she had considered so irresistibly conclu- 
 sive had recoiled like a wave from a rock. After a long 
 pause, she filled her son's quaigh, and presented it to him 
 with an air of dejected deference and submission. 
 
 "Drink," she said, ''to thy father's roof-tree ere you 
 leave it forever ; and tell me, since the chains of anew king, 
 and of a new chief, whom your fathers knew not save as 
 mortal enemies, are fastened upon the limbs of your father's 
 son — tell me how many links you count upon them ? " 
 
 Hamish took the cup, but looked at her as if uncertain of 
 her meaning. She proceeded in a raised voice. " Tell me, 
 she said, "■ for I have a right to know, for how many days 
 the will of those you have made your masters permits me to 
 look upon you ? In other words, how many are the days of 
 my life ; for, when you leave me, the earth has nought be- 
 sides worth living for." 
 
 * See Massacre of Glencoe. Note 28. 
 
422 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 " Mother," replied Hamish McTavish, " for six days 1 may 
 remain with you, and if you will set out with me on the fifth, 1 
 will conduct you in safety to your new dwelling. But if you 
 remain here, then I will depart on the seventh by daybreak 
 then, as at the last moment, I must set out for Dunbarton, 
 for if I appear not on the eighth day, I am subject to pun- 
 ishment as a deserter, and am dishonored as a soldier and 
 a gentleman." 
 
 "Your father's foot," she answered, ''was free as the 
 wind on the heatli ; it were as vain to say to him, ' Where 
 goest thou ? * as to ask that viewless driver of the clouds, 
 ' Wherefore blowest thou ? ' Tell me under what penalty 
 thou must — since go thou must and go thou wilt — return to 
 thy thraldom ? " 
 
 "Call it not thraldom, mother ; it is the service of an 
 honorable soldier — the only service which is now open to the 
 son of MacTavish Mhor." 
 
 " Yet say what is the penalty if thou shouldst not return?*' 
 replied Elspat. 
 
 " Military punishment as a deserter," answered Hamish, 
 writhing, however, as his m.other failed not to observe, under 
 some internal feelings, which she resolved to probe to the 
 uttermost. 
 
 "And that," she said, with assumed calmness, which her 
 glancing eye disowned, " is the punishment of a disobedient 
 hound, is it not ? " 
 
 " Ask me no more, mother," said Hamish ; " the punish 
 ment is nothing to one who will never deserve it." 
 
 " To me it is something," replied Elspat, "since I know 
 better than thou, that, where there is power to inflict, there is 
 often the will to do so Avithout cause. I would pray for theej 
 Hamish, and I must know against what evils I should be 
 seech Him who leaves none unguarded to protect thy youtF' 
 and simplicity." 
 
 " Mother," said Hamish, " it signifies little to what a crim 
 inal may be exposed, if a man is determined not to be suchi 
 Our highland chiefs used also to punish their vassals, and 
 as I have heard, severely. Was it not Lachlan Maclan 
 whom we remember of old, whose head was struck off b; 
 order of his chieftain for shooting at the stag before him ?' 
 
 " Ay," said Elspat, "and right he had to lose it, since h 
 dishonored the father of tke people even in the face of th 
 assembled clan. But the chiefs were noble in their ire 
 they punished with the sharp blade, and not with tin 
 baton. Their punishments drew blood, but they did not infe^ 
 
 \l 
 
THE HIGH LAND WIDOW 428 
 
 dishonor. Canst thou say the same for the laws under 
 whose yoke thou hast phiced thy freeborn neck ?" 
 
 " I cannot, mother — I cannot/' said Hamish, mourn- 
 fully. " I saw them punish a Sassenach for deserting, as 
 they called it, his banner. He was scourged, I own it — 
 scourged like a hound who has offended an imperious master. 
 I was sick at the sight, I confess it. But the punishment 
 of dogs is only for those worse than dogs, who know not 
 how to keep their faith." 
 
 " To this infamy, however, thou hast subjected thyself, 
 Hamish," replied Elspat, " if thou shouldst give, or thy 
 officers take, measure of offense against thee. I speak no 
 more to thee on thy purpose. Were the sixth day from this 
 morning's sun my dying day, and thou wert to stay to close 
 mine eyes, thou wouldst run the risk of being lashed like a 
 dog at a post — yes ! unless thou hadst the gallant heart to 
 leave me to die alone, and upon my desolate hearth, the last 
 spark of thy father's fire and of thy forsaken mother's life 
 to be extinguished together ! " 
 
 Hamish traversed the hut with an impatient and angry 
 pace, " Mother," he said at length, " concern not yourself 
 about such things. I cannot be subjected to such infamy, 
 for never will I deserve it ; and were I threatened with it, I 
 should know how to die before I was so far dishonored." 
 
 *' There spoke the son of the husband of my heart ! " re- 
 plied Elsi^at ; and she changed the discourse, and seemed to 
 listen in melancholy acquiescence when her son reminded 
 her how short the time was which they were permitted to 
 pass in each other's society, and entreated that it might be 
 spent without useless and uni3leasant recollections respecting 
 the circumstances under which they must soon be separated. 
 Elspat was now satisfied that her son, with some of his 
 father's other properties, preserved the haughty masculine 
 spirit which rendered it impossible to divert him from a res- 
 olution which he had deliberately adopted. She assumed, 
 therefore, an exterior of apparent submission to their in- 
 evitable separation ; and if she now and then broke out into 
 complaints and murmurs, it was either that she could not 
 by altogether suppress the natural impetuosity of her temper, 
 or because she had the wit to consider that a total and 
 \\ unreserved acquiescence might have seemed to her son 
 list constrained and suspicious, and induced him to watch and 
 defeat the means by which she still hoped to prevent his leav- 
 li^ ing her. Her ardent, thougli selfish, aiTection for her son, 
 ;ej incapable of being qualified by a regard for the true interests 
 
424 WAVER LEY NOVELS 
 
 of the unfortunate object of her attachment, resembled the 
 instinctive fondness of the animal race for their otfspring ; 
 and diving little farther into futurity than one of the in- 
 ferior creatures, she only felt that to be separated from 
 Hamish was to die. 
 
 In the brief interval that permitted them, Elspat ex- 
 hausted every art which affection could devise to render 
 agreeable to him the space which they were apparently to 
 spend with each other. Her memory carried her far back 
 into former days, and her stores of legendary history, which 
 furnish at all times a principal amusement of the High- 
 lander in his moments of repose, were augmented by an 
 unusual acquaintance with the songs of ancient bards, and 
 traditions of the most approved seannachies and tellers of 
 tales. Her officious attentions to her son's accommodation, 
 indeed, were so unremitted as almost to give him pain ; and 
 he endeavored quietly to prevent her from taking so much 
 personal toil in selecting the blooming heath for his bed, 
 or preparing the meal for his refreshment. " Let me alone, 
 Hamish," she would reply on such occasions ; '' you follow 
 your own will in departing from your mother, let your 
 mother have hers in doing what gives her pleasure while 
 you remain." 
 
 So much she seemed to be reconciled to the arrangements 
 which he had made in her behalf, that she could hear him 
 speak to her of her removing to the lands of Green Colin, 
 as the gentleman was called on whose estate he had provided 
 her an asylum. In truth, however, nothing could be farther 
 from her thoughts. From what he had said during tbeii 
 first violent dispute, Elspat had gathered that, if Hamist 
 returned not by the appointed time permitted by bis fur 
 lough, he would incur the hazard of corporal ijunishment 
 Were he placed within the risk of being thus dishonored 
 she was well aware that he would never submit to the dis 
 grace by a return to the regiment where it miglit be in 
 flicted. Whether she looked to any farther probable corL 
 sequences of her unhappy scheme cannot be known ; bu 
 the partner of MacTavish Mhor, in all his perils and wan 
 derings, was familiar with an hundred instances of resistanc, 
 or escape, by which one brave man, amidst a land of rocks'- 
 lakes, and mountains, dangerous passes, and dark forests 
 might bafHe the pursuit of hundreds. For the futurt 
 therefore, she feared nothing ; her sole engrossing objec 
 was to prevent her son from keeping his word with his con 
 manding-officer. 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 425 
 
 With this secret purpose, she evaded the proposal which 
 Hamish repeatedly made, that they should set out together 
 to take possession! of her new abode ; and she resisted it upon 
 grounds apparently so natural to her character that her son 
 was neither alarmed nor displeased. *' Let me not," she said, 
 " in the same short week, bid farewell to my only son and to 
 the glen in which I have so long dwelt. Let my eye, when 
 dimmed with weeping for thee, still look around, for awhile 
 at least, upon Loch Awe and on Ben Cruachan." 
 
 Hamish yielded the more willingly to his mother's humor 
 in this particular, that one or two persons who resided in a 
 neighboring glen, and had given their sons to Barcaldine's 
 levy, were also to be provided for on the estate of the chief- 
 tain, and it was apparently settled that Elspat was to take her 
 journey along with them Vhen they should remove to their 
 new residence. Thus, Hamish believed that he had at once 
 indulged his mother's humor and ensured her safety and ac- 
 commodation. But she nourished in her mind very different 
 thoughts and projects ! 
 
 The period of Hamish's leave of absence was fast approach- 
 ing, and more than once he proposed to depart, in such time 
 as to ensure his gaining easily and early Dunbarton, the town 
 where Avere the headquarters of his regiment. But still his 
 mother's entreaties, his own natural disposition to linger 
 among scenes long dear to him, and, above all, his firm reli- 
 ance in his speed and activity, induced him to protract his 
 departure till the sixth day, being the very last which he 
 could possibly afford to spend with his mother, if indeed he 
 meant to comply with the conditions of his furlough. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 But for your son, believe it — oli, believe it — 
 Most dangerously you have with him prevailed, 
 If not most mortal to him. 
 
 Coriolanus. 
 
 On the evening which preceded his proposed departure, Ham' 
 ish walked down to the river withliis fishing-rod, to practise 
 in the Awe, for the last time, a sport in which he excelled, 
 and to find, at the same time, the means for making one 
 social meal with his mother on something better than their 
 ordinary cheer. He was as successful as usual, and soon 
 killed a fine salmon. On his return homeward an incident 
 befell him, which he afterwards related as ominous, though 
 probably his heated imagination, joined to the universal turn 
 of his countrymen for the marvelous, exaggerated into su- 
 perstitious importance some very ordinary and accidental 
 circumstance. 
 
 In the piitli which he pursued homeward, he was surprised 
 to observe a person, who, like himself, was dressed and armed i 
 after the old Highland fashion. The first idea that struck f t| 
 him was, that the passenger belonged to his own corps, who, 
 levied by government, and bearing arms under royal author- 
 ity, were not amenable for breach of the statutes against the 
 use of the Highland garb or weapons. But he was struck on 
 perceiving, as he mended his pace to make up to his supposedi 
 comrade meaning to request his company for the next day's 
 journey, that the stranger wore a white cockade, the fatal 
 badge which was proscribed in the Highlands. The stature 
 of the man was tall, and there was something shadowy in the 
 outline, which added to his size ; and his mode of motion, 
 which rather resembled gliding than walking, impressed 
 Hamish with superstitious fears concerning the character of 
 the being which thus passed before him in the twilight. He 
 no longer strove to make up to the stranger, but contented 
 himself with keeping liiui in view, under the superstition 
 common to the Highlanders, that you ought neither to in- 
 trude yourself on such supernatural apparitions as you may 
 witness, nor avoid their presence, but leave it to themselves 
 to withhold or extend their communication, as their power 
 may permit, or the purpose of their commission require. 
 426 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 42 
 
 Jpon an elevated knoll by the side of the road, just where 
 t.he pathway turned down to Elspat's hut, the stranger made 
 a pause, and seemed to await Hamish's coming up. Hamish, 
 on his part, seeing it was necessary he should pass the object 
 of his suspicion, mustered up his courage, and approached 
 the spot where the stranger had placed himself, who first 
 pointed to IClspat's hut, and made, with arm and head, a 
 gesture prohibiting Hamish to approach it, then stretched 
 his liand to the road which led to the southward, with a 
 motion which seemed to enjoin his instant departure in that 
 direction. In a moment afterwards the plaided form v/as 
 gone — Hamish did not exactly say vanished, because there 
 were rocks and stunted trees enough to have concealed him ; 
 but it was his own opinion tliat he had seen the spirit of 
 .MacTavish Mhor, warning him to commence his instant 
 journey to Dunbarton, without waiting till morning, or 
 again visiting his mother's hut. 
 
 In fact, so many accidents might arise to delay his jour- 
 ney, especially where there many ferries, that it became his 
 settled purpose, though he could notdepart without bidding 
 his mother adieu, that he neither could nor would abide 
 longer tlian for that object ; and that the first glimpse of 
 next day's sun should see him many miles advanced towards 
 Dunbarton. He descended the path, therefore, and entering 
 the cottage, he communicated, in a hasty and troubled voice, 
 which indicated mental agitation, his determination to take 
 his instant departure. Somewhat to his surprise, Elspat 
 appeared not to combat his purpose, but she urged him to 
 take some refreshment ere he left her forever. He did so 
 hastily, and in silence, thinking on the approaching separa- 
 tion, and scarce yet believing it would take place without a 
 final struggle with his mother's fondness. To his surprise, 
 she filled the quaigh with liquor for his parting cup. 
 
 " Go," she said, " my son, since such is thy settled pur- 
 pose ; but first stand once more on thy mother's hearth, the 
 flame on which will be extinguished long ere thy foot shall 
 again be placed there." 
 
 " To your health, mother !" said Hamish, "and may we 
 meet again in happiness, in spite of your ominous words." 
 
 _ " It were better not to part," said his mother, watching 
 him as he quaffed the liquor, of which he would have held 
 it ominous to have left a drop. 
 
 "And now," she said, muttering the words to herself, '• go 
 —if thou canst go." 
 
 " Mother," said Hamish. as he replaced on the table the 
 
428 tVAVERLET NOVELS. 
 
 empty quaigh, " tli}' drink is pleasant to the taste, but it 
 takes away the strength which it ought to give." 
 
 " Such is its first effect, my son,"'' replied Elspat ; "but 
 lie down on that soft heather couch, shut your eyes but for 
 a moment, and, in the sleep of an hour, you shall have more 
 refreshment than in the ordinary repose of three whole 
 nights, could they be blended into one.'* 
 
 " Mother," sand Hamish, upon whose brain tlie potion was 
 now taking rapid effect, "give me my bonnet, I must kiss 
 Tou and begone ; yet it seems as if my feet were nailed to 
 the floor." 
 
 " Indeed," said his mother, " you wnll be instantly well, if 
 you will sit down for half an hour — but half an hour ; it is 
 eight hours to dawn, and dawn were time enough for your 
 father's son to begin such a journey." 
 
 " I must obey you, mother — I feel I must," said Hamish, 
 inarticulately ; "but call me when the moon rises." 
 
 He sat down on the bed, reclined back, and almost in- 
 stantly was fast asleep. With tlie throbbing glee of one 
 who has brought to an end a difficult and troublesome enter- 
 prise, Elspat proceeded tenderly to arrange the plaid of the 
 unconscious slumberer, to whom her extravagant affection 
 was doomed to be so fatal, expressing, while busied in her 
 office, her delight in tones of mingled tenderness and tri- 
 umph. " Yes," she said, " calf of my heart, the moon shall 
 arise and set to thee, and so shall the sun ; but not to light 
 thee from the land of thy fathers, or tempt thee to serve the 
 foreign prince or the feudal enemy. To no son of Dermid 
 shall I be delivered, to be fed like a bondswoman ; but he 
 who is my pleasure and my pride shall be my guard and 
 my protector. They say the Highlands are changed ; but I 
 see Ben Cruachan rear his crest as high as ever into the 
 evening sky, no one hath yet herded his kine on the depth 
 of Loch Awe, and yonder oak does not yet bend like a 
 willow. The children of the mountains will be such as their 
 fathers, until the mountains themselves shall be leveled with 
 the strath. In these wild forests, which used to support 
 thousands of the brave, there is still surely subsistence and 
 refuge left for one aged woman and one gallant youth, of 
 the ancient race and the ancient manners." 
 
 While the misjudging mother thus exulted in the success 
 of her stratagem, we may mention to the reader, that it was 
 founded on the acquaintance with drugs and simples which 
 Elspat, accomplished in all things belonging to the wild life 
 which she had led, possessed in an uncommon degree, and; 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 42a 
 
 which she exercised for various purposes. With the herbs, 
 which she know how to select as well as how to distil, she 
 could relieve more diseases than a regular medical person 
 could easily believe. She applied some to dye the bright 
 colors of the tartan, from others she compounded draughts 
 of various powers, and unhappily possessed the secret of one 
 which was strongly soporific. Upon the effects of this last 
 concoction, as the reader doubtless has anticipated, she reck- 
 oned with security on delaying Hamish beyond the period 
 for which his return was appointed ; and she trusted to his 
 horror for the apprehended punishment to which he was thus 
 rendered liable to prevent him from returning at all. 
 
 Sound and deep, beyond natural rest, was the sleep of 
 Hamish MacTavish on that eventful evening, but not sucii 
 the repose of his mother. Scarce did she close her eyes from 
 time to time, but she awakened again with a start, in the 
 terror that her son had arisen and departed ; and it was only 
 on approaching his couch, and hearing his deep-drawn and 
 regular breathing, that she reassured herself of the security 
 of the repose in which he was plunged. 
 
 Still, dawning, she feared, might awaken him, notwith- 
 standing the unusual strength of the potion with which she 
 had drugged his cup. If there remained a hope of mortal 
 man accomplishing the journey, she was aware that Hamish 
 would attempt it, though he were to die from fatigue upon 
 the road. Animated by this new fear, she studied to exclude 
 the light, by stopping all the crannies and crevices through 
 which, rather than through any regular entrance, the morn- 
 ning beams might find access to her miserable dwelling ; and 
 this in order to detain amid its wants and wretchedness the 
 being on whom, if the world itself had been at her disposal, 
 she would have joyfully conferred it. 
 
 Her pains were bestowed unnecessarily. The sun rose high 
 above the heavens, and not the fleetest stag in Breadalbane, 
 were the hounds at his heels, could have sped, to save his 
 life, so fast as would have been necessary to keep Hamish's 
 appointment. Her purpose was fully attained : her son's 
 return within the period assigned was impossible. She 
 deemed it equally impossible that he would ever dream of 
 returning, standing, as he must now do, in the danger of an 
 infamous punishment. By degrees, and at different times, 
 she had gained from him a full acquaintance with the pre- 
 dicament in which he would be placed by failing to appear 
 on the day appointed, and the very small hope he could en- 
 tertain of being treated with lenity. 
 
i-6 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 It is well known, that the great and wise Earl of Chat- 
 ham iirided himself on the scheme by which he drew together 
 for the defense of the colonies those hardly Highlanders who, 
 until his time, had been the objects of doubt, fear and sus- 
 picion on the part of each successive administration. But 
 some obstacles occurred, from the peculiar habits and temper 
 of this people, to the execution of his patriotic project. By 
 nature and habit, every Highlander was accustomed to the 
 use of arms, but at the same time totally unaccustomed to, 
 and impatient of, the restraints imposed by discipline upon 
 regular troops. They were a species of militia, who had no 
 conception of a camp as their only home. If a battle was 
 lost, they dispersed to save themselves, and look out for the 
 safety of their families ; if won, they went back to their glens 
 to hoard up their booty, and attend to their cattle and their 
 farms. The privilege of going and coming at pleasure they 
 would not be deprived of even by their chiefs, whose au- 
 thority was in most other respects so despotic. It followed as 
 a matter of course that the new-levied Highland recruits 
 could scarce be made to comprehend the nature of a military 
 engagement which compelled a man to serve in the army 
 longer than he pleased ; and perhaps, in many instances, 
 sufficient care was not taken at enlisting to explain to them 
 the permanency of the engagement which they came under, 
 lest such a disclosure should induce them to change theii 
 mind. Desertions were therefore become numerous from tluu 
 newly-raised regiment, and the veteran general who com-| 
 manded at Dunbarton saw no better way of checking them^ 
 than by causing an unusually severe example to be made of i 
 deserter from an English corps. The young Highland regii 
 ment was obliged to attend upon the punishment, whicl 
 struck a people peculiarly jealous of personal honor witl 
 equal horror and disgust, and not unnaturally indispose* 
 some of them to the service. The old general, however, nrh^ 
 had been regularly bred in the German wars, stuck to hi 
 own opinion, and gave out in orders that the first Highlande 
 who might either desert or fail to appear at the expiry ox hi 
 furlough should be brought to the halberds, and punishe| 
 like the culprit whom they had seen in that condition. Nj| 
 
 man doubted that General would keep his word rigor 
 
 ously whatever severity was required ; and Elspat, therefore' 
 knew that her son, when he perceived that due compliant 
 with his orders was impossible, must at the same time coi 
 sider the degrading punishment denounced against h 
 
 I 
 
TEE HIGHLAND WIDOW 431 
 
 defection as inevitable, should he place himself within the 
 general's power.* 
 
 When noon was well passed, new apprehensions came on 
 the mind of tlie lonely woman. Her son still slept under 
 the influence of the draught ; but what if, being stronger 
 than she liad ever known it administered, his health or his 
 reason should be affected by its potency ? For the first 
 time, .likewise, notwithstanding her high ideas on the sub- 
 ject of parental authority, she began to dread the resent- 
 ment of her son, whom her heart told her she had wronged. 
 Of late, she had observed that his temper was less docile, 
 and his determinations, especially upon this late occasion 
 of his enlistment, independently formed, and then boldly 
 carried through. She remembered the stern wilfulness of 
 his father when he accounted himself ill-used, and began to 
 dread that llamish, upon finding the deceit she had put 
 upon him, might resent it even to the extent of casting her 
 off, and pursuing his own course through the world alone. 
 Such were the alarming and yet the reasonable apprehensions 
 which began to crowd upon the unfortunate woman, after 
 the apparent success of her ill-advised stratagem. 
 
 It was near the evening when Hamish first awoke, and 
 then he was far from being in the full possession either of 
 \ his mental or bodily powers. From his vague expressions 
 and disordered pulse, Elspat at first experienced much ap- 
 prehension ; but she used such expedients as her medical 
 knowledge suggested ; and in the course of the night she 
 had the satisfaction to see him sink once more into a deep 
 sleep, which probably carried off the greater part of the 
 effects of the drug, for about sunrising she heard him arise 
 and call to her for his bonnet. This she had purposely re- 
 moved, from a fear that he might awaken and depart in the 
 night-time, without her knowledge. 
 
 "My bonnet — my bonnet," cried Hamish; "it is time 
 to take farewell. Mother, your drink was too strong. The 
 sun is up ; but with the next morning I will still see the 
 double summit of the ancient dun. My bonnet — my bon- 
 net ! mother, I must be instant in my departure." These 
 expressions made it plain that poor Hamish was unconscious 
 that two nights and a day had passed since he had drained the 
 fatal quaigh, and Elspat had now to venture on what she 
 felt as the almost perilous, as well as painful, task of ex- 
 plaining her machinations. 
 
 * See naelity of the Highlanders. Note 39. 
 
132 WA VERLET NO VEL8 
 
 " Forgive me, my son," she said, approaching Hamish, 
 and taking him by the hand with an air of deferential awe, 
 which perhaps she had not always used to his father, even 
 when in his moody fits. 
 
 "Forgive you, mother — for what?" said Hamish, laugh- 
 ing ; " for giving me a dram that was too strong, and which 
 my head still feels tins morning, or for hiding my bonnet to 
 keep me an instant longer ? Nay, do you forgive me. Give 
 me the bonnet, and let that be done which now must be 
 done. Give me my bonnet, or I go without it ; surely I am 
 not to be delayed by so trifling a want as that — I, who have 
 gone for years with only a strap of deer's hide to tie back 
 my hair. Trifle not, but give it me, or I must go bare- 
 headed, since to stay is impossible." 
 
 " My son," said Elspat, keeping fast hold of his hand, 
 " what is done cannot be recalled: could you borrow the 
 wings of yonder eagle, you would arrive at the dun too late 
 for what you propose — too soon for what awaits you there;, 
 You believe you see the sun rising for the first time sinci 
 you have seen him set, but yesterday beheld him climb Be: 
 Cruachan, though your eyes were closed to his light." 
 
 Hamish cast upon his mother a wild glance of extremi 
 terror, then instantly recovering himself, said, " I am ni 
 child to be cheated out of my purpose by such tricks 
 these. Farewell, mother, each moment is worth a lifi 
 time.'* 
 
 ** Stay," she said, *' my dear — my deceived son ! rush n 
 on infamy and ruin. Yonder I see the priest upon th 
 highroad on his white horse ; ask him the day of the month 
 and week — let him decide between us. 
 
 With the speed of an eagle, Hamish darted up the ac- 
 clivity, and stood by the minister of Glenorquhy, who was 
 pacing out thus early to administer consolation to a dis^' 
 tressed family near Bunawe. 
 
 The good man was somewhat startled to behold an armed; 
 Highlander, then so unusual a sight, and apparently mucl:! 
 agitated, stop his horse by the bridle, and ask him with £] 
 faltering voice the day of the week and month. " Had yorl 
 been where you should have been yesterday, young man,i 
 replied the clergyman, " you would have known that it wafi \i 
 God's Sabbath ; and that this is Monday, the second day o:.;I li- 
 the week, and twenty-first of the month." 
 
 "And this is true ?" said Hamish. 
 
 " As true," answered the surprised minister, ** as that 
 yesterday preached the Word of God to this parish. Wha 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 43 
 
 ails you, young man ? are you sick ? are you in your right 
 mind ? " 
 
 Hainish made no answer, only repeated to himself the first 
 expression of the clergyman — " Had you been where you 
 should have been yesterday ; " and so saying, he let go the 
 bridle, turned from the road, and descended the path towards 
 the hut, with the look and j^ace of one who was going to exe- 
 cution. The minister looked after him with surprise ; but 
 although he knew the inhabitant of the hovel, the character 
 of Elspat had not invited him to open any communication 
 with her, because she was generally reputed a Papist, or 
 rather one indifferent to all religion, except some supersti- 
 tious observances which had been handed doAvn from her 
 parents. On Hamish the Eeverend Mr. Tyrie had bestowed 
 instructions when he was occasionally thrown in his way, 
 and if the seed fell among the brambles and thorns of a wild 
 and uncultivated dis2Josition, it had not yet been entirely 
 checked or destroyed. There was something so ghastly in 
 the present expression of the youth's features, that the good 
 man was tempted to go down to the hovel, and inquire 
 whether any distress had befallen tlie inhabitants, in which 
 his presence might be consoling and his ministry useful. 
 , Unhappily he did not persevere in this resolution, which 
 ; might have saved a great misfortune, as he would have prob- 
 ably become a mediator for the unfortunate young man ; 
 ' but a recollection of the wild moods of such Highlanders as 
 ! had been educated after the old fashion of the country pre- 
 i vented his interesting liimself in the widow and son of the 
 ; far-dreaded robber MacTavish Mhor ; and he thus missed an 
 opportunity, which he afterwards sorely repented, of doing 
 ; much good. 
 
 When Hamish MacTavish entered his mother's hut, it was 
 only to throw himself on the bed lie had left, and exclaiming, 
 "Undone — undone !" to give vent, in cries of grief and 
 t anger, to his deep sense of the deceit which had been prac- 
 tised on him, and of the cruel predicament to which he was 
 reduced. 
 Elspat was prepared for the first explosion of her son's 
 I passion, and said to herself, *'It is but the mountain torrent 
 ! swelled by the thunder-shower. Let us sit and rest us by the 
 bank ; for all its present tumult, the time will soon come 
 when we may pass it dryshod." She suffered his complaints 
 and his reproaches, which were, even in the midst of his 
 : agony, respectful and affectionate, to die away without re- 
 turning any answer ; and when, at length, having exhausted 
 28 
 
m WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 all the exclamations of sorrow which his language, copious in , 
 expressing the feelings of the heart, affords to the sufferer, • 
 he sunk into a gloomy silence, slie sutt'ered the interval to 
 continue near an hour ere she approached her son's couch. 
 
 " And now," she said at length, with a voice in which the 
 authority of the mother was qualified by her tenderness, 
 " have you exhausted your idle sorrows, and are you able to 
 place what you have gained against what you have lost ? Is 
 the false son of Dermid your brother, or the father of your 
 tribe, that you Vicep because you cannot bind yourself to his 
 belt, and become one of those who must do his bidding : 
 Could you find in your yonder distant country the lakes and 
 the mountains that you leave behind you h.ere ? Can yoi. 
 hunt the deer of Breadalbane in the forests of America^ oi 
 will the ocean afford you the silver-scaled salmon of the Awe; 
 Consider, then, what is your loss, and, like a wise man, sei 
 it against what you have won." 
 
 "I have lost all, mother," replied Hamish, ''since I hav( 
 broken my word and lost my honor. I might tell my tale 
 but who — oh, who would believe me?" The unfortunatt 
 young man again clasped his hands together, and, pressin; 
 them to his forehead, hid his face upon the bed. 
 
 Elspat was now really alarmed, and perhaps wished th 
 fatal deceit had been left unattempted. She had no hopeo 
 refuge saving in the eloquence of persuasion, of which sh 
 possessed no small share, though her total ignorance of th 
 world as it actually existed rendered its energy unavailing 
 She urged her son, by every tender epithet which a parer 
 could bestow, to take care for his own safety. 
 
 ** Leave me," she said, " to baffle your pursuers. I Avi 
 save your life — I will save your honor. I will tell them thj* 
 my fair-haired Hamish fell from the ' corrie dhu' (blaci j. 
 precipice) into the gulf, of which human eye never behel 
 the bottom. I will tell them this, and I will fling your plai 
 on the thorns which grow on the brink of the precipice, thi 
 they may believe my words. They will believe, and thel j". 
 will return to the dun of the double-crest ; for though tlM. ti 
 Saxon drum can call the living to die, it cannot recall the de^l ^' 
 to their slavish standard. Then will we travel together iif ' 
 northward to the salt lakes of Kintail, and place glens arj 
 mountains betwixt us and the sons of Dermid. We wi 
 visit the shores of the dark lake, and my kinsmen — for w^ 
 not my mother of the children of Kenneth, and will th ' 
 not remember us with the old love ? — my kinsmen will i' 
 ceive us with the affection of the olden time, which lives i 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIBOW 43^ 
 
 those distant glens, where the Gael still dwell in their noble- 
 ness, uuniiiigled with the churl Saxons, or with the base 
 brood that are their tools and their slaves/' 
 
 The energy of the language, somewhat allied to hyperbole, 
 even in its most ordinary expressions, now seemed almost too 
 weak to afford Elspat the means of bringing out the splendid 
 picture which she presented to her son of the land in which 
 she proposed to him to take refuge. Yet the colors were 
 few with which she could paint her Highland paradise. 
 " The hills," she said, ''were higher and more magnificent 
 than those of Breadalbane ; Ben Cruachan was but a dw?rf 
 to Skooroora. The lakes were broader and larger, and 
 abounded not only with fish, but with the enchanted and 
 ampliibious animal which gives oil to the lamp.* The deer 
 were larger and more numerous ; the white-tusked boar, the 
 chase of which the brave loved best, was yet to be roused in 
 those western solitudes ; the men were nobler, wiser, and 
 stronger than the degenerate brood who lived under the 
 Saxon banner. The daughters of the land were beautiful, 
 with blue eyes and fair hair, and bosoms of snow, and out 
 cf these she would choose a wife for Hamish, of blameless 
 descent, spotless fame, fixed and true affection, who should 
 be in their summer bothy as a beam of the sun, and in their 
 winter abode as the warm.th of the needful fire." 
 
 Such were the topics with which Elspat strove to soothe 
 the despair of her son, and to determine him, if possible, to 
 leave the fatal spot, on which he seemed resolved to linger. 
 The style of her rhetoric was poetical, but in other respects 
 resembled that which, like other fond mothers, she had 
 lavished on Hamish while a child or a boy, in order to gain 
 his consent to do something he had no mind to ; and she 
 spoke louder, quicker, and more earnestly, in proportion as 
 she began to despair of her words carrying conviction. 
 
 On the mind of Hamish her eloquence made no impression. 
 He knew far better than she did the actual situation of the 
 country, and was sensible that, though it might be possible 
 to hide himself as a fugitive among more distant mountains, 
 there was now no corner in the Highlands in which his father's 
 profession could be practised, even if he had not adopted, from 
 the improved ideas of the time when he lived, the opinion 
 that the trade of the cateran was no longer the road to honor 
 and distinction. Her words were therefore poured into re- 
 gardless ears, and she exhausted herself in vain in the attemj^t 
 
 *The seals are considered by the Highlanders as enchanted princj©?. 
 
436 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 to paint the regions of her mother's kinsmen in such terms 
 as might tempt Hamish to accompany her thither. She 
 spoke for hours, but she spoke in vain. She could extort no 
 answer save groans, and sighs, and ejaculations expressing 
 the extremit}' of despair. 
 
 At length, starting on her feet, and changing the monot- 
 onous tone in which she had chanted, as it were, the praises 
 of the province of refuge into the short, stern language of 
 eager passion — " I am a fool," she said, " to spend my words 
 upon an idle, poor-spirited, unintelligent boy, who crouches 
 like a hound to the lash. Wait here, and receive your task- 
 masters, and abide your chastisement at their hands ; but 
 do not think your mother's eyes will behold it, I could not 
 see it and live. My eyes have looked often upon death, but 
 never upon dishonor. Farewell, Hamish ! We never meet 
 again." She dashed from the hut like a lapwing, and perhaps 
 for the moment actually entertained the purpose which she 
 expressed, of parting with her son forever. 
 
 A fearful sight she Avould have been that evening to any 
 who might have met her wandering through the wilderness 
 like a restless spirit, and speaking to herself in language 
 which will endure no translation. She rambled for hours, 
 seeking rather than shunning the most dangerous paths, 
 The precarious track through the morass, the dizzy path: 
 along the edge of the precipice, or by the banks of the gulf- 
 ing river, were the roads which, far from avoiding, sh 
 60ught with eagerness, and traversed with reckless haste. 
 But the courage arising from despair was the means of savin 
 the life which (though deliberate suicide was rarely practise 
 in the Highlands) she was perhaps desirous of terrainatingj 
 Her step on the verge of the precipice was firm as that o' 
 the wild goat. Her eye, in that state of excitation, was s< 
 keen as to discern, even amid darkness, the perils which 
 noon would not have enabled a stranger to avoid. 
 
 Elspat's course was not directly forward, else she had. 
 soon been far from the bothy in which she had left her son.; 
 It was circuitous, for that hut was the center to which her 
 heartstrings were chained, and though she wandered around 
 it, she felt it impossible to leave the vicinity. With the 
 first beams of morning, she returned to the hut, Awhilej 
 she paused at the wattled door, as if shamed that lingering! 
 fondness should have brought her back to the spot which' 
 she had left with the purpose of never returning ; but there 
 was yet more of fear than anxiety in her hesitation — of anx- 
 iety, lest her fair-haired son had suffered from the effects Oj 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 437 
 
 her potion; of fear, lest his enemies had come npon him 
 in the night. She opened the door of the hut gently, and 
 entered with noiseless step. Exhausted with his sorrow and 
 anxiety, and not entirely relieved, perhaps, from the in- 
 fluence of the powerful opiate, Hamish Bean again slept the 
 stern sound sleep by which the Indians are said to be over- 
 come during the interval of their torments. His mother 
 was scarcely sure that she actually discerned his form on the 
 bed, scarce certain that her ear caught the sound of his 
 breathing. With a throbbing heart, Elspat went to the 
 fireplace in the center of the hut, where slumbered, covered 
 with a piece of turf, the glimmering embers of the tire, 
 never extinguished on a Scottish hearth until the indwellers 
 leave the mansion forever. 
 
 " Feeble greishogh," she said, as she lighted, by the help of 
 a match, a splinter of bog-pine which was to serve the place 
 of a candle — " weak greishogh, soon shalt thou be put out 
 forever, and may Heaven grant that the life of Elspat Mac- 
 Tavish have no longer duration than thine I" 
 
 While she spoke, she raised the blazing light towards the 
 bed, on which still laid the prostrate limbs of her son, in a 
 posture that left it doubtful whether he slept or swooned. 
 As she advanced towards him, the light flashed upon his 
 eyes ; he started up in an instant, made a stride forward 
 with his naked dirk in his hand, like a man armed to meet 
 a mortal enemy, and exclaimed, '* Stand off !— on thy life, 
 stand off ! " 
 
 " It is the word and the action of my husband," answered 
 Elspat ; " and I know by his speech and his step the son of 
 MacTavish Mhor." 
 
 " Mother," said Hamish, relapsing from his tone of des- 
 perate firmness into one of melancholy expostulation — '*oh, 
 dearest mother, wherefore have you returned hither ?" 
 
 " Ask why the hind comes back to the fawn," said Els- 
 pat — *^why the cat of the mountain returns to her lodge 
 and her young. Know you, Hamish, that the heart of the 
 mother only lives in the bosom of the child." 
 
 " Then will it soon cease to throb," said Hamish, '' unless 
 it can beat within a bosom that lies beneath the turf. 
 Mother, do not blame me ; if I weep, it is not for myself but 
 
 for you, for my sufferings will soon be over ; but yours 
 
 0, who but Heaven shall set a boundary to them ! " 
 
 Elspat shuddered and stepped backward, but almost 
 instantly resumed her firm and upright position and her 
 dauntless bearing. 
 
438 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " 1 thought thou wert a man but even now," she said, 
 '■'and thou art again a child. Hearken to me yet, and let ub 
 leave this place together. Have I done tliee wrong or 
 injury ? if so, yet do not avenge it so cruelly. See, Elspat 
 MacTavish, who never kneeled before even to a priest, falls 
 prostrate before her own son, and craves his forgiveness." 
 And at once she threw herself on her knees before the young 
 man, seized on his hand, and kissing it an hundred times, 
 repeated as often, in heartbreaking accents, tlie most ear- 
 nest entreaties for forgiveness. "Pardon," she exclaimed — 
 "pardon, for the sake of your father's ashes — pardon, for 
 the sake of the pain with which I bore thee, the care with 
 which I nurtured thee ! Hear it. Heaven, and behold it, 
 earth — the mother asks pardon of her child, and she is 
 refused l" ^ 
 
 It was in vain that Hamish endeavored to stem this tide of 
 passion, by assuring his mother, with the most solid assev- 
 erations, that he forgave entirely the fatal deceit which she 
 had practised upon him. 
 
 ' ' Empty words," she said — " idle protestations, which 
 are but used to hide the obduracy of your resentment. 
 Would you have me believe you, then leave tlie hut this 
 instant, and retire from a country which every hour renders 
 more dangerous. Do this, and I may think you have for- 
 given me ; refuse it, and again I call on moon and stars. 
 Heaven and earth, to witness the unrelenting resentment 
 with which you prosecute your mother for a fault which, 
 if it be one, arose out of love to you." 
 
 " Mother," said Hamish, "on this subject you move me 
 not. I will fly before no man. If Barcaldine should send 
 every Gael that is under his banner, here and in this place will 
 I abide them ; and when you bid me fly, you may as well com- 
 mand yonder mountain to be loosened from its foundations. 
 Had I been sure of they road by which the are coming hither 
 I had spared them the pains of seeking me ; but I might go 
 by the mountain, while they perchance came by the lake. 
 Here I will abide my fate ; nor is there in Scotland a voice 
 of power enough to bid me stir from hence, and be obeyed.'' 
 
 " Here, then, I also stay," said Elspa,t, rising up and speak- 
 ing with assumed composure. " I have seen my husband's 
 death ; my eyelids shall not grieve to look on the fall of myi 
 son. But MacTavish Mhor died as became the brave, witl' 
 his good sword in his right hand ; my son will perish like' 
 the bullock that is driven to the shambles by the Saxor 
 owner who has bought him for a price." 
 
 1) 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 430 
 
 "Mother/* said the unhappy young man, **you have 
 taken my life — to that you have a right, for you gave it ; 
 but touch not my honor. It came to me from a brave train 
 of ancestors, and should be sullied neither by man's deed 
 nor woman's speech. What I shall do, perhaps I myself yet 
 know not ; but tempt me no farther by reproachful words ; 
 you have already made wounds more than you can ever 
 heal." _ 
 
 '' It is well, my son,'* said Elspat, in reply, " Expect 
 neither farther complaint nor remonstrance from me ; but 
 let us be silent, and wi?it the chance which Heaven shall 
 send us." 
 
 The sun arose on the next morning, and found the bothy 
 silent as the grave. The mother and son had arisen, and 
 were engaoed each in their separate task — Ilamish in pre- 
 paring and cleaning his arms with the greatest accuracy, 
 but with an air of deep dejection. Elspat, more restless in 
 her agony of spirit, employed herself in making ready the 
 food which the distress of yesterday had induced them both 
 to dispense with for an unusual number of hours. She 
 placed it on the board before her son so soon as it was pre- 
 pared, with the word of a Gaelic poet — ''Without daily food, 
 the husbandman's plowshare stands still in the furrow ; 
 without daily food, the sword of the warrior is too heavy for 
 his hand. Our bodies are our slaves, yet they must be fed 
 if we would have their service. So spake in ancient days 
 the Blind Bard to the warriors of Fion." 
 
 The young man made no reply, but he fed on what was 
 placed before him, as if to gather strength for the scene 
 which he was to undergo. When his mother saw that he had 
 eaten what sufficed him, she again filled the fatal quaigh, 
 and proffered it as the conclusion of the repast. But he 
 started aside with a convulsive gesture, expressive at once 
 of fear and abhorrence. 
 
 " Nay, my son," she said, *' this time surely thou hast no 
 cause of fear." 
 
 " Urge me not, mother," answered Hamish ; '' or put the 
 leprous toad into a flagon, and I will drink ; but from that 
 accursed cup, and of that mind-destroying potion, never 
 will I taste more ! " 
 
 " At your pleasure, my son," said Elspat, haughtily, and 
 began, \vith much apparent assiduity, the various domestic 
 tasks which had been interrupted during the preceding day. 
 Whatever was at her heart, all anxiety seemed- banished 
 from her looks and demeanor. It was but from an over- 
 
440 IV A VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 activity of bustling exertion that it might have been per- 
 ceived, by a close observer, that her actions were spurred 
 by some internal cause of painful excitement ; and such a 
 spectator, too, might also have observed how often she broke 
 off the snatches of songs or tunes which she hummed, ap- 
 parently without knowing what she was doing, in order to 
 cast a hasty glance from the door of the hut. Whatever 
 might be in the mind of Hamish, his demeanor was directly 
 the reverse of that adopted by his mother. Having finished 
 the task of cleaning and preparing his arms, which he ar- 
 ranged within the hut, he sat himself down before the door 
 of the bothy, and watched the opposite hill, like the fixed 
 sentinel who expects the approach of an enemy. Noon 
 found him in the same unchanged posture, and it was an 
 hour after that period, when his mother, standing beside 
 him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and said, in a tone in- 
 different, as if she had been talking of some friendly visit, 
 *' When dost thou expect them ?'* 
 
 " They cannot be here till the shadows fall long to the 
 eastwardV^ replied Hamish ; ** that is, even supposing the 
 nearest party, commanded by Sergeant Allen Breack Cam- 
 eron, has been commanded hither by exjDress from Dun- 
 barton, as it is most likely they will.'* 
 
 " Then enter beneath your mother's roof once more ; 
 partake the last time of the food which she has prepared ; 
 after this, let them come, and thou shalt see if thy mother 
 is an useless encumbrance in the day of strife. Thy hand, 
 practised as it is, cannot fire these arms so fast as I can load, 
 them ; nay, if it is necessay, I do not myself fear the flash j 
 or the report, and my aim has been held fatal." 
 
 *'In the name of Heaven, mother, meddle not with this 
 matter ! " said Hamish. " Allan Breack is a wise man and 
 a kind one, and comes of a good stem. It may be, he can 
 promise for our officers, that they will touch me with no 
 infamous jjunishment ; and if they offer me confinement in 
 the dungeon, or death by the musket, to that I may notl 
 object." 
 
 "Alas, and wilt thou trust to their word, my foolish! 
 child ? Eemember the race of Dermid were ever fair and i 
 false, and no sooner shall they have gyves on thy hands than] 
 tliey will strip thy shoulders for tlie scourge." 
 
 " Save your advice, mother," said Hamish, sternly ; "forj 
 me, my mind is made up." 
 
 But though he spoke thus, to escape the almost persecut-j 
 ing urgency of his mother, Hamish would have found it, at] 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 441 
 
 that moment, impossible to say upon what course of conduct 
 he had thus fixed. On one point alone he was determined 
 — namely to abide his destiny, be [it] what it might, and 
 not to add to the breach of his word, of wliich he had been 
 involuntarily rendered guilty, by attempting to escape from 
 punishment. This act of self-devotion he conceived to be 
 due to his own honor and that of his countrymen. Which 
 of his comrades would in future be trusted, if he should be 
 considered as liaving broken his word, and betrayed the 
 confidence of his officers ? and whom but Hamish Bean 
 MacTavish would the Gael accuse, for having verified and 
 ''onfirmed the suspicions which the Saxon general was 
 well known to entertain against the good faith of the High- 
 landers ? He was, therefore, bent firmly to abide his fate. 
 But whether his intention was to yield himself peaceably 
 into the hands of the party who should come to apprehend 
 him, or whether he purposed, by a show of resistance, to 
 provoke them to kill him on the spot, was a question which 
 he could not himself have answered. His desire to see Bar- 
 caldine, and explain the cause of his absence at the appointed 
 time, urged him to the one course ; his fear of the degrad- 
 ing punishment, and of his mother's bitter upbraidings, 
 strongly instigated the latter and the more dangerous pur- 
 pose. He left it to chance to decide when the crisis should 
 arrive ; nor did he tarry long in expectation of the catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 Evening approached, the gigantic shadows of the moun- 
 tains streamed in darkness towards the east, while their 
 western peaks were still glowing with crimson and gold. 
 The road which winds round Ben Cruachan was fully visible 
 from the door of the bothy, when a party of five Highland 
 soldiers, whose arms glanced in the sun, wheeled suddenly 
 into sight from the most distant extremity, where the high- 
 way is hidden behind the mountain. One of the party walked 
 a little before the other four, who marched regularly and in 
 files, according to the rules of military discipline. There 
 was no dispute, from the firelocks which they carried, and 
 the plaids and bonnets which they wore, that they were a 
 party of Hamish's regiment, under a non-commissioned of- 
 ficer ; and there could be as little doubt of the purpose of 
 their appearance on the banks of Loch Awe. 
 
 " They come briskly forward," said the widow of Mac- 
 Tavish Mhor ; " I wonder how fast or how slow some of 
 them will return again ! But they are five, and it is too 
 much odds for a fair field. Step Isack within the hut, my 
 
442 WAVERLEF NOVELS 
 
 son, and shoot from the loophole beside the door. Two you 
 may bring down ere they quit the highroad for the footpath ; 
 there will remain but three, and your father, with my aid, 
 has often stood against that number." 
 
 Hamish Bean took the gun which his mother offered, but 
 did not stir from the door of the hut. He was soon visible 
 to the party on the highroad, as was evident from their in- 
 creasing their pace to a run ; the files, however, still keep- 
 ing together like coupled greyhounds, and advajicing with 
 great rapidity. In far less time than would have been ac- 
 complished by men less accustomed to the mountains, they 
 had left the highroad, traversed the narrow path, and ap- 
 proached within pistol-shot of the bothy, at the door ot 
 which stood Hamish, fixed like a statue of stone, with his 
 firelock in his hand ; while his mother, placed behind him, 
 and almost driven to frenzy by the violence of her passions, 
 reproached him in the strongest terms which despair could 
 invent for his want of resolution and faintness of heart. Her 
 words increased the bitter gall whicli was arising in the 
 young man's own spirit, as he observed the unfriendly speed 
 with which his late comrades were eagerly making towards 
 him, like hounds towards the stag when he is at bay. The 
 untamed and angry passions which he inherited from father 
 and mother were awakened by the supposed hostility of those 
 who pursued him ; and the restraint under which these pas- 
 sions had been hitherto held by his sober judgment began 
 gradually to give way. 
 
 The sergeant now called to him, ''Hamish Bean Mac- 
 Tavish, lay down your arms and surrender." 
 
 "Do you stand, Allan Breack Cameron, and command 
 your men to stand, or it will be the worse for us all." 
 
 " Halt, men," said the sergeant, but continuing himself 
 to advance. "' Hamish, think what you do, and give u_ 
 your gun ; you may spill blood, but you cannot escape pun- 
 ishment." 
 
 " The scourge — the scourge, my son — beware the scourge ! 
 whispered his mother. 
 
 "Take heed, Allan Breack," said Hamish. "I would 
 not hurt you willingly, but I will not be taken unless you 
 can assure me against the Saxon lash." 
 
 " Fool ! " answered Cameron, "you know I cannot. Yet 
 I will do all I can. I will say I met you on your return, and 
 the punishment will be light ; but give up your musket. 
 Come on, men." 
 
 Instantly he rushed forward, extending his arm as if tc; 
 
 h 
 
 1 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 443 
 
 push aside the young man's leveled firelock. Elspat ex- 
 ilainied, " Now, spare not your father's blood to defend your 
 father's hearth ! " Hamish fired liis piece, and Cameron 
 dropped dead. All these things happened, it might be said, 
 in the same moment of time. The soldiers rushed forward 
 and seized Hamish, who, seeming petrified with what he 
 had done, offered not the least resistance. Not so his 
 mother, who, seeing the men about to put handcuffs on her 
 son, threw herself on the soldiers with such fury that it 
 required two of them to hold her, while the rest secured the 
 prisoner. 
 
 •' Are you not an accursed creature," said one of thp men 
 to Hamish, " to have slain your best friend, who was con- 
 triving, during the whole march, how he could find some 
 way of getting you off without punishment for your deser- 
 tion ? " 
 
 " Do you hear that, mother ?" said Hamish, turning him- 
 self as much towards her as his bonds would permit ; but the 
 mother heard nothing, and saw nothing. She had fainted 
 on the floor of her hut. Without waiting for her recovery, 
 the party almost immediately began their homeward march 
 towards'Dunbarton, leading' along with them their prisoner. 
 They thought it necessary ,"however, to stay for a little space 
 at tiie village of Dalmally, from which they despatched a 
 party of the inhabitants to bring away the body of their un- 
 fortunate leader, while they themselves repaired to a magis- 
 trate to state what had happened, and require his instructions 
 as to the farther course to be pursued. The crime being of 
 a military character, they were instructed to march the 
 prisoner to Dunbarton without delay. 
 
 The swoon of the mother of Hamish lasted for a length of 
 time, the longer perhaps that her constitution, strong as it 
 was, must have been much exhausted by her previous agita- 
 tion of three days' endurance. She was roused from her 
 stupor at length by female voices, which cried the coronach, 
 or lament for the dead, with clapping of hands and loud 
 exclamations ; while the melancholy note of a lament, appro- 
 priate to the clan Cameron, played on the bagpipe, was heard 
 from time to time. 
 
 Elspat started up like one awakened from the dead, and 
 without any accurate recollection of the scene which had 
 passed before her eyes. There were females in the hut, who 
 were swathing the corpse in its bloody plaid before carrying 
 it from the fatal spot. " Women," she said, starting up and 
 interrupting their chant at once and their labor — " Tell me. 
 
iU WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 women, why sing you the dirge of MacDhonuil Dhu in the 
 house of MacTavish Mhor ?" 
 
 " She-wolf, be silent with thine ill-omened yell," answered 
 one of the females, a relation of the deceased, "and let us 
 do our duty to our beloved kinsman ! There shall never be 
 coronach cried or dirge played for thee or thy bloody wolf- 
 burd. The ravens shall eat him from the gibbet, and the 
 foxes and wildcats shall tear thy corpse upon the hill. Cursed 
 be he that would sain your bones, or add a stone to your 
 cairn ! " 
 
 " Daughter of a foolish mother," answered the widow of 
 MacTavish Mhor, " know that the gibbet with which you 
 threaten us is no portion of our inheritance. For thirty 
 years the ' black tree of the law,^ whose apples are dead men's 
 bodies, hungered after the beloved husband of my heart ; but 
 he died like a brave man, with the sword in his hand, and 
 defrauded it of its hopes and its fruit." 
 
 " So shall it not be with thy child, bloody sorceress," 
 replied the female mourner, whose passions were as violent 
 as those of Elspat herself: "the ravens shall tear his fair 
 hair to line their nests, before the sun sinks beneath the 
 Treshornish islands." 
 
 These words recalled to Elspat's mind the whole history 
 of the last three dreadful days. At first, she stood fixed as 
 if the extremity of distress had converted her into stone; 
 but in a minute the pride and violence of her temper, out- 
 braved as she thought herself on her own threshold, enabled 
 her to reply — " Yes, insulting hag, my fair-haired boy may 
 die, but it will not be with a white hand : it has been dyed 
 in the blood of his enemy, in the best blood of a Cameron — 
 remember that — ■ ; and when you lay your dead in his grave, 
 let it be his best epitaph, that he was killed by Ilamish Bean 
 for essaying to lay hands on the son of MacTavish Mhor on 
 his own threshold. Farewell ; the shame of defeat, loss, and 
 slaughter remain with the clan that has endured it ! " 
 
 The relative of the slaughtered Cameron raised her voice I 
 in reply ; but Elspat, disdaining to continue the objurgation, 
 or perhaps feeling her grief likely to overmaster her power- 
 of expressing her resentment, had left the hut, and was walk- 
 ing forth in the bright moonshine. 
 
 The females who were arranging the corpse of the- 
 slaughtered man hurried from their melancholy labor tc 
 look after her tall figure as it glided away among the clifPs. 
 "I am glad she is gone," said one of the younger persons 
 who assisted. " I would as soon dress a corpse when the 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 445 
 
 great Fiend himself — God sain us ! — stood visibly before us, 
 iis when Elspat of the Tree is amongst us. Ay — ay, even 
 overmuch intercourse hath she had with the Enemy in her 
 day/' 
 
 " Silly woman/' answered the female who had maintained 
 the dialogue with the departed Elspat, " thinkest thou that 
 there is a worse fiend on earth, or beneath it, than the pride 
 ;ind fury of an offended woman, like yonder bloody-minded 
 hag ? Know that blood has been as familiar to her as the 
 dew to the mountain-daisy. Many and many a brave man 
 has she caused to breathe their last for little wrong they had 
 done to her or hers. But her hough-sinews are cut, now 
 that her wolf-burd must, like a murderer as he is, make a 
 murderer's end." 
 
 Whilst the women thus discoursed together, as they watched 
 the corpse of Allan Breack Cameron, the unhappy cause of 
 his death pursued her lonely way across the mountain. 
 While she remained within sight of the bothy, she put a 
 strong constraint on herself, that by no alteration of pace or 
 gesture she might afford to her enemies the triumph of 
 calculating the excess of her mental agitation, nay, despair. 
 She stalked, therefore, with a slow rather than a swift step, 
 and, holding herself upright, seemed at once to endure with 
 Tirmness that woe which was passed and bid defiance to that 
 which was about to come. But when she was beyond the 
 sight of those who remained in the hut, she could no longer 
 suppress the extremity of her agitation. Drawing her 
 mantle wildly round her, she stopped at the first knoll, and 
 climbing to its summit, extended her arms up to the bright 
 moon, as if accusing Heaven and earth for her misfortunes, 
 and uttered scream on scream, like those of an eagle whose 
 nest has been plundered of her brood. Awhile she vented her 
 grief in these inarticulate cries, then rushed on her way with 
 a hasty and unequal step, in the vain hope of overtaking the 
 party which was conveying her son a prisoner to Dunbarton, 
 But her strength, superhuman as it seemed, failed her in the 
 trial, nor was it possible for her, with her utmost efforts, to 
 accomplish her purpose. 
 
 Yet she pressed onward, with all the speed which her 
 exhausted frame could exert. When food became indis- 
 pensable, she entered the first cottage, " Give me to eat/' 
 she said ; " I am the widow of MacTavish Mhor, I am the 
 mother of Hamish MacTavish Bean — give me to eat, that I 
 may once more see my fair-haired son," Her demand was 
 never refused, though granted in many cases with a kind 
 
446 WA VEhl K r NO VELS 
 
 of struggle between compassion and aversion in some of those 
 to whom she aj^jjlied, which was in others qualified by fear. 
 The sliare she had had in occasioning the death of Allan 
 Breack Cameron, which must probabl}^ involve that of her 
 own son, was not accurate^ known ; but, from a knowledge 
 of her violent passions and former habits of life, no one 
 doubted that in one way or other she had been the cause of 
 the catastrophe ; and Hamish Bean was considered, in the 
 slaughter which he had committed, rather as the instrument 
 than as the accomplice of his mother. 
 
 This general opinion of his countrymen was of little 
 service to the unfortunate Hamish. As his captain. Green 
 Colin, understood the manners and habits of his country, he 
 had no difficulty in collecting from Hamish the particulars 
 accompanying his supposed desertion, and the subsequent 
 death of the non-commissioned officer. He felt the utmost 
 compassion for a youth who had thus fallen a victim to the 
 extravagant and fatal fondness of a parent. But he had no 
 excuse to plead which could rescue his unhappy recruit 
 from the doom which military discipline and the award of a 
 court-martial denounced against him for the crime he had 
 committed. 
 
 No time had been lost in their proceedings, and as little 
 was interposed betwixt sentence and execution. General 
 
 had determined to make a severe example of the first 
 
 deserter who should fall into his power, and here was one 
 who had defended himself by main force, and slain in the 
 affray the officer sent to take him into custody. A fitter 
 subject for punishment could not have occurred, and Hamish 
 was sentenced to immediate execution. All which the inter- 
 ference of his captain in his favor could procure was that he 
 should die a soldier's death ; for there had been a purpose 
 of executing him upon the gibbet. 
 
 The worthy clergyman of Glenorquhy chanced to be at 
 Dunbarton, in attendance upon some church-courts, at the 
 time of this catastrophe. He visited his unfortunate parish- 
 ioner in his dungeon, found him ignorant indeed, but not 
 obstinate, and the answers which he received from him, 
 when conversing on religious topics, were such as induced 
 him doubly to regret that a mind naturally pure and noble 
 should have remained unhappily so wild and uncultivated. 
 
 When he ascertained the real character and disposition ol 
 the young man, the worthy pastor made deep and painful 
 reflections on his own shyness and timidity, whicb, arising 
 out of the evil fame that attached to the lineage of Hamish, 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 447 
 
 had restrained him from charitably endeavoring to bring 
 this strayed sheep within the great fold. While the good 
 minister blamed his cowardice in times past, which had 
 deterred him from risking his person, to save, perhaps, an 
 immortal soul, he resolved no longer to be governed by such 
 timid counsels, but to endeavor, by application to his offi- 
 cers, to obtain a reprieve, at least, if not a pardon, for the 
 criminal, in whom he felt so unusually interested, at once 
 from his docility of temper and his generosity of disposition. 
 
 Accordingly the divine sought out Captain Campbell at 
 the barracks within the garrison. There was a gloomy mel- 
 ancholy on the brow of Green Colin, which was not lessened, 
 but increased, when the clergyman stated his name, quality, 
 and errand. '^ You cannot tell me better of the young man 
 than I am disposed to believe," answered the Highland 
 officer ; "you cannot ask me to do more in his behalf than I 
 am of myself inclined, and have already endeavored to do. 
 
 But it is all in vain. General is half a Lowlander, 
 
 half an Englishman. He has no idea of the high and 
 enthusiastic character which in these mountains often 
 brings exalted virtues in contact with great crimes, which, 
 however, are less offenses of the heart than errors of the 
 understanding. I have gone so far as to tell him, that in 
 this young man he was putting to death the best and the 
 bravest of my company, where all, or almost all, are good 
 and brave. I explained to him by what strange delusion 
 the culprit's apparent desertion was occasioned, and how 
 little his heart was accessory to the crime which his hand 
 unhappily committed. His answer was, ' These are High- 
 land visions. Captain Campbell, as unsatisfactory and vain 
 as those of the second-sight. An act of gross desertion 
 may, in any case, be palliated under the plea of intoxica- 
 tion ; the murder of an officer may be as easily colored over 
 with that of temporory insanity. The example must be 
 made, and if it has fallen on a man otherwise a good recruit, 
 it will have the greater effect.' Such being the general's 
 unalterable purpose," continued Captain Campbell, with a 
 sigh, "be it your care, reverend sir, that your penitent pre- 
 pare by break of day to-morrow for that great change which 
 we shall all one day be subjected to." 
 
 " And for which," said the clergyman, " may God preptire 
 us all, as I in my duty will not be wanting to this poor 
 youth." 
 
 Next morning, as the very earliest beams of sunrise sa- 
 luted the gray towers which crown the summit of that singu- 
 
448 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 lar and tremendous rock, the soldiers of the new Highland 
 regiment appeared on the parade, within the Castle of Dun- 
 barton, and having fallen into order, began to move down- 
 ward by steep staircases and narrow passages towards the 
 external barrief-gate, which is at the very bottom of the 
 rock. The wild wailings of the pibroch were heard at times, 
 interchanged with the drums and fifes, which beat the 
 *'Dead March." 
 
 The unhappy criminal's fate did not, at first, excite that 
 general sympathy in the regiment which would probably 
 have arisen had he been executed for desertion alone. The 
 slaughter of the unfortunate Allan Breack had given a dif- 
 ferent color to Hamish's offense ; for the deceased was much 
 beloved, and besides belonged to a numerous and powerful 
 clan, of whom there were many in the ranks. The unfor- 
 tunate criminal, on the contrary, was little known to, and 
 scarcely connected with, any of his regimental companions. 
 His father had been, indeed, distinguished for his strength 
 and manhood ; but he was of a broken clan, as those names 
 were called who had no chief to lead them to battle. 
 
 It would have been almost impossible in another case to 
 have turned out of the ranks of the regiment the party 
 necessary for execution of the sentence ; but the six indi- 
 viduals selected for that purpose were friends of the de- 
 ceased, descended, like him, from the race of MacDhonuil 
 Dhu ; and while they prepared for the dismal task which 
 their duty imposed, it was not without a stern feeling of 
 gratified revenge. The leading comiDany of the regiment 
 began now to defile from the barrier-gate, and was followed 
 by the others, each successively moving and halting accord- 
 ing to the orders of the adjutant, so as to form three sides 
 of an oblong square, with the ranks faced inwards. The 
 fourth or blank side of the square was closed up by the 
 huge and lofty precipice on which the castle rises. About 
 the center of the procession, bare-headed, disarmed, and 
 with his hands bound, came the unfortunate victim of mili- 
 tary law. He was deadly pale, but his step was firm and 
 his eye as bright as ever. The clergyman walked by his 
 side ; the coffin which was to receive his mortal remains was 
 borne before him. The looks of his comrades were still,, 
 composed, and solemn. They felt for the youth, whos 
 handsome form and manly yet submissive deportment had, 
 as soon as he was distinctly visi])le to them, softened the 
 hearts of many, even of some who had been actuated b 
 vindictive feelings. 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 449 
 
 The coffin destined for the yet living body of Hamish Bean 
 tvas placed at the bottom of the hollow square, about two 
 yards distant from the foot of the precipice, which rises in 
 that place as steep as a stone wall to the height of three or 
 lOur hundred feet. Thitlier the prisoner was also led, the 
 clergyman still continuing by his side, pouring forth exhor- 
 tations of courage and consolation, to which the youth ap- 
 peared to listen with respectful devotion. With slow, and, 
 it seemed, almost unwilling, steps the firing party entered 
 the square, and were drawn up facing the prisoner, about ten 
 yards distant. The clergyman was now about to retire. 
 " Think, my son," he said, " on what I have told ycu, and 
 let your hope be rested on the anchor which I have given. 
 You will then exchange a short and miserable existence here 
 for a life in which you will experience neither sorrow nor 
 pain. Is there aught else which you can entrust to me to 
 execute for you ? " 
 
 The youth looked at his sleeve-buttons. They were of 
 gold, booty perhaps which his father had taken from some 
 English officer during the civil wars. The clergyman dis- 
 engaged them from his sleeves. 
 
 " My mother ! " he said with some effort — **give them to 
 my poor mother ! See her, good father, and teach her what 
 slie should think of all this. Tell her Hamish ^^ean is more 
 glad to die than ever he was to rest after the longest day's 
 hunting. Farewell, sir — farewell!" 
 
 The good man could scarce retire from the fatal spot. An 
 officer afforded him the support of his arm. At his last 
 look towards Hamish, he beheld him alive and kneeling on 
 the coffin ; the few that were around him had all withdrawn. 
 The fatal word was given, the rock rung sharp to the sound 
 of the discharge, and Hamish, falling forward with a groan, 
 died, it may be supposed, without almost a sense of the 
 passing agony. 
 
 Ten or twelve of his own company then came forward, 
 and laid with solemn reverence the remains of their com- 
 rade in the coffin, while the " Dead March " was again struck 
 up, and the several companies, marching in single files, 
 passed the coffin one by one, in order that all might receive 
 from the awful spectacle the warning which it was peculiarly 
 intended to afford. The regiment was then marched off the 
 ground, and re-ascended the ancient cliff, their music, as 
 usual on such occasions, striking lively strains, as if sorrow, 
 or even deep thought, should as short a while as possible be 
 the tenant of the soldier's bosom. 
 
i30 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 At the same time the small party which we before men- 
 tioned bore the bier of the ill-fated Hamish to his humble 
 grave in a corner of the churchyard of Dunbarton, usually 
 assigned to criminals. Here, among the dust of the guilty, 
 lies a youth whose name, had he survived the ruin of the 
 fatal events by which he was hurried into crime, might have 
 adorned the annals of the brave. 
 
 The minister of Glenorquhy left Dunbarton immediately 
 after he had witnessed the last scene of this melancholy 
 catastrophe. His reason acquiesced in the justice of the 
 sentence, which required blood for blood, and he acknowl- 
 edged that the vindictive character of his countrymen re- 
 quired to be powerfully restrained by the strong curb of 
 social law. But still he mourned over the individual vic- 
 tim. Who may arraign the bolt of Heaven when it bursts 
 among the sons of the forest ; yet Avho can refrain from 
 mourning when it selects for the object of its blighting aim 
 the fair stem of a young oak, that promised to be the pride 
 of the dell in which it flourished ? Musing on these melan- 
 choly events, noon found him engaged in the mountain 
 passes, by which he was to return to his still distant home. 
 
 Confident in his knowledge of the country, the clergyman 
 had left the main road, to seek one of those shorter paths 
 which are only used by pedestrians, or by men, like the min- 
 ister, mounted on the small, but sure-footed, hardy, and 
 sagacious horses of the country. The place which he now 
 traversed was in itself gloomy and desolate, and tradition 
 had added to it the terror of superstition, by affirming it was 
 haunted by an evil spirit, termed Cloght-dearg, that is, 
 Eedmantle, who at all times, but especially at noon and at 
 midnight, traversed the glen, in emnity both to man and the 
 inferior creation, did such evil as her power was permitted 
 to extend to, and afflicted with ghostly terrors those whom 
 she had not license otherwise to hurt. 
 
 The minister of Glenorquhy had set his face in opposi- 
 tion to many of these superstitions, which he justly thought 
 were derived from the dark ages of Popery, jjerhaps even 
 from those of paganism, and unfit to be entertained or be- 
 lieved by the Christians of an enlightened age. Some of his 
 more attached parishioners considered him as too rash in 
 opposing the ancient faith of their fathers ; and though they 
 honored the moral intrepidity of their pastor, they could not 
 avoid entertaining and expressing fears that he would one 
 day fall a victim to his temerity^ and be torn to pieces in 
 the glen of the Cloght-dearg, or some of those other haunted 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 451 
 
 wilds -vvliich he appeared rather to have a pride and pleasure 
 in traversing alone, on the days and liours when the wicked 
 spirits were supposed to have especial power over man and 
 beast. 
 
 These legends came across the mind of the clergyman ; and, 
 solitary as he was, a melancholy smile shaded his cheek, as 
 he thought of the inconsistency of human nature, and re- 
 flected how many brave men, whom the yell of the pibroch 
 would have sent headlong against fixed bayonets, as the wild 
 bull rushes on his enemy, might have yet feared to encounter 
 those visionary terrors, which he himself, a man of peace, 
 and in ordinary perils no way remarkable for the firmness of 
 his nerves, was now risking without hesitation. 
 
 As he looked around the scene of desolation, he could not 
 but acknowledge, in his own mind, that it was not ill-choseu 
 for the haunt of those spirits which are said to delight in 
 solitude and desolation. The glen was so steep and narrow, 
 that there was but just room for the meridian sun to dart a 
 few scattered rays upon the gloomy and precarious stream 
 which stole through its recesses, for the most part in silence, 
 but occasionally murmuring sullenly against the rocks and 
 large stones, which seemed determined to bar its further 
 progress. In winter, or in the rainy season, this small stream 
 was a foaming torrent of the most formidable magnitude, 
 and it was at such periods that it had torn open and laid 
 bare the broad-faced and huge fragments of rock which, at 
 the season of which we speak, hid its course from the eye, 
 and seemed disposed totally to interrupt its course. "Un- 
 doubtedly," thought the clergyman, " this mountain rivulet, 
 suddenly swelled by a water-spout or thunderstorm, has 
 often been the cause of those accidents which, happening in 
 the glen called by her name, have been ascribed to the agency 
 of the Cloght-dearg." 
 
 Just as this idea crossed his mind, he heard a female voice 
 exclaim, in a wild and thrilling accent, " Michael Tyrie — 
 Michael Tyrie I " He looked round in astonishment, and not 
 without some fear. It seemed for an instant as if the evil 
 being, whose existence he had disowned, was about to appear 
 for the punishment of his incredulity. This alarm did not 
 hold him more than an instant, nor did it prevent his reply- 
 ing in a firm voice, "Who calls, and where are you ? " 
 
 " One who journeys in wretchedness, between life and 
 death," answered the voice ; and the speaker, a tall female, 
 appeared from among the fragments of rocks which had co*i« 
 cealed her from view. 
 
ib2 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 As she approached more closely, her mantle of bright tar- 
 tan, in which the red color much predominated, her stature, 
 the long stride with which she advanced, and the writhen 
 features and wild eyes which were visible from under her 
 curch, would have made her no inadequate representative of 
 the spirit which gave name to the valley. But Mr, Tyrie 
 instantly knew her as the Woman of the Tree, the widow of 
 MacTavish Mhor, the now childless mother of Hamish Bean. 
 I am not sure whether the minister would not have endured 
 the visitation of the Cloght-dearg herself, rather than the 
 shock of Elspat's presence, considering her crime and her 
 misery. He drew up his horse instinctively, and stood en- 
 deavoring to collect his ideas, while a few paces brought her 
 up to his horse's head. 
 
 " Michael Tyrie," said she, ** the foolish women of the 
 clachan hold thee as a god ; be one to me, and say that my 
 son lives. Say this, and I too will be of thy worship : I will 
 bend my knees on the seventh day in thy house of worship, 
 and thy God shall be my God." 
 
 " Unhappy woman," replied the clergyman, " man forms 
 not pactions with his Maker as with a creature of clay like 
 himself. Thinkest thou to chaffer with Him who formed 
 the earth and spread out the heavens, or that thou canst 
 offer aught of homage or devotion that can be worth accept- 
 ance in His eyes ? He hath asked obedience, not sacrifice 
 patience under the trials with which he afflicts us, instead of 
 vain bribes, such as man offers to his changeful brother of 
 clay, that he may be moved from his purpose." 
 
 " Be silent, priest ! " answered the desperate woman 
 " speak not to me the words of thy white book. Elspat'i 
 kindred were of those who crossed themselves, and knelt 
 when the saering bell was rung ; and she knows that atone- 
 ment can be made on the altar for deeds done in the field. 
 Elspat had once flocks and herds, goats upon the cliffs, and 
 cattle in the strath. She wore gold around her neck and on 
 her hair — thick twists as those worn by the heroes of old. 
 All these would she have resigned to the priest — all these ; 
 and if he wished for the ornaments of a gentle lady, or thei 
 sporran of a high chief, though they had been great as] 
 MacCalhm Mhor himself, MacTavish Mhor would have pro- 
 cured them if Elspat had promised them, Elspat is now! 
 poor, and has nothing to give. But the Black Abbot of j 
 Inchaffray would have bidden her scourge her shoulders andl 
 macerate her feet by pilgrimage, and he would have granted' 
 his pardon to her when he saw that her blood had flowed, 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 453 
 
 and that her flesh had been torn. These were the priests 
 who had indeed power even with the most powerful ; they 
 threatened the great men of the earth with the word of their 
 mouth, the sentence of their book, the blaze of their torch, 
 the sound of their sacring bell. The mighty bent to their 
 will, and unloosed at the word of the priests those whom 
 they had bound in their wrath, and set at liberty, unharmed, 
 him whom they had sentenced to death, and for whose blood 
 they had thirsted. These were a powerful race, and might 
 well ask the poor to kneel, since their power could humble 
 the proud. But you ! against whom are ye strong, but 
 against women who have been guilty of folly and m^n who 
 never wore sword ? The priests of old were like the winter 
 torrent which fills this hollow valley, and rolls these massive 
 rocks against each other as easily as the boy plays with the 
 ball which he casts before him. But you ! you do but re- 
 semble the summer-stricken stream, which is turned aside by 
 the rushes, and stemmed by a bush of sedges. Woe worth 
 you, for there is no help in you ! " 
 
 The clergyman was at no loss to conceive that Elspat had 
 lost the Roman Catholic faith without gaining any other, 
 and that she still retained a vague and confused idea of the 
 composition with the priesthood, by confession, alms, and 
 penance, and of their extensive power, which, according to 
 her notion, was adequate, if duly propitiated, even to effect- 
 ing her son's safety. 
 
 Compassionating her situation, and allowing for her errors 
 and ignorance, he answered her with mildness. " Alas, un- 
 happy woman ! Would to God I could convince thee as 
 easily where thou onghtest to seek, and art sure to find, con- 
 solation as I can assure you with a single word that, were 
 Rome and all her priesthood once more in the plentitude of 
 their power, they could not, for largesse or penance, afford 
 to thy misery an atom of aid or comfort. Elspat MacTavish, 
 I grieve to tell you the news.'' 
 
 "I know them without thy speech,** said the unhappy 
 woman. " My son is doomed to die.** 
 
 *' Elspat," resumed the clergyman, "he was doomed, and 
 the sentence has been executed.** 
 
 The hapless mother threw her eyes up to heaven, and 
 uttered a shriek so unlike the voice of a human being, that 
 the eagle which soared in middle air answered it as she would 
 have done the call of her mate. 
 
 "It is impossible!" she exclaimed — "it is impossible! 
 Men do not condemn and kill on the same day ! Thou art 
 
154 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 deceiving me. The people call thee holy, hast thou the 
 heart to tell a mother she has murdered her only child ?" 
 
 " God knows," said the priest, the tears falling fast from 
 his eyes, "that, were it in my power, 1 would gladly tell 
 better tidings. But these which I bear are as certain as 
 they are fatal. My own ears heard the death-shot, my own 
 eyes beheld thy son's death — thy sou's funeral. My tongue 
 bears witness to what my ears lieard and my eyes saw." 
 
 The wretched female clasped her hands close together, and 
 held them ujo tov/ards heaven like a sibyl announcing war 
 and desolation, while, in imjDotent yet frightful rage, she 
 poured forth a tide of the deepest imprecations. " Base 
 Saxon churl ! " she exclaimed — " vile, hypocritical juggler ! 
 May the eyes that looked tamely on the death of my fair- 
 haired boy be melted in their sockets with ceaseless tears, 
 shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee ! May 
 the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter k) all 
 other sounds save the screech of the raven and the hissing 
 of the adder ! May the tongue that tells me of his death 
 and of my own crime be withered in thy mouth ; or better, 
 when thou wouldst pray with thy people, may the Evil One 
 guide it, and give voice to blasphemies instead of blessings, 
 until men shall fly in terror from thy presence, and the 
 thunder of heaven be launched against thy head, and stop 
 forever thy cursing and accursed voice ! Begone, with this 
 malison ! Elspat will never, never again bestow so many 
 words upon living man." 
 
 She kept her word : from that day the world was to her 
 a wilderness, in which she remained without thought, care, 
 or interest, absorbed in her own grief, indifferent to every- 
 thing else. 
 
 With her mode of life, or rather of existence, the reader 
 is already as far acquainted as I have the power of making 
 him. Of her death, I can tell him nothing. It is supposed 
 to have happened several years after she had attracted the 
 attention of my excellent friend Mrs. Bethune Baliol. Her 
 benevolence, which was never satisfied with dropping a sen- 
 timental tear when there was rootm for the operation of 
 efi'ective charity, induced her to make various attempts to 
 alleviate the condition of this most wretched woman. But 
 all her exertions could only render Elspat's means of sub- 
 sistence less precarious — a circumstance which, though 
 generally interesting even to the most wretched outcasts, 
 seemed to her a matter of total indifference. Every attempt 
 to place any person in her hut to take charge of her mis- 
 
THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 465 
 
 carried, through the extreme resentment with which she 
 regarded all intrusion on her solitude, or by the timidity of 
 those who had been pitched upon to be inmates with the 
 terrible Woman of the Tree. At length, when Elspat 
 became totally unable (in appearance at least) to turn her- 
 self on the wretched settle which served her for a couch, 
 the humanity of Mr. Tyrie's successor sent two women to 
 attend upon the last moments of the solitary, which could 
 not, it was judged, be far distant, and to avert the possibility 
 that she might perish for want of assistance or food before 
 she sunk under the effects of extreme age or mortal malady. 
 
 It was on a November evening that the two women ap- 
 pointed for this melancholy purpose arrived at the misera- 
 ble cottage which we have already described. Its wretclied 
 inmate lay stretched ujDon the bed, and seemed almost al- 
 ready a lifeless corpse, save for the wandering of the fierce 
 dark eyes, which rolled in their sockets in a manner terrible 
 to look upon, and seemed to watch with surprise and indig- 
 nation the motions of the strangers, as persons whose presence 
 was alike unexpected and unwelcome. They were frightened 
 at her looks ; but, assured in each other's comj)any, they kin- 
 dled a fire, lighted a candle, prepared food, and made other 
 arrangements for the discharge of the duty assigned them. > 
 
 The assistants agreed they should watch the bedside of 
 the sick person by turns ; but, about midnight, overcome 
 by fatigue, for they had walked far that morning, both of 
 them fell fast asleep. When they awoke, which was not 
 till after the interval of some hours, the hut was empty and 
 the patient gone. They rose in terror, and went to the 
 door of the cottage, which was latched as it had been at 
 night. They looked out into the darkness, and called upon 
 their charge by her name. The night-raven screamed from 
 the old oak-tree, the fox howled on the hill, the hoarse water- 
 fall replied with its echoes ; but there was no human answer. 
 The terrified women did not dare to make further search till 
 morning should appear ; for the sudden disappearance of a 
 crature so frail as Elspat, together with the wild tenor of 
 her history, intimidated them from stirring from the hut. 
 They remained, therefore, in dreadful terror, sometimea 
 thinking they heard her voice without, and at other times, 
 that sounds of a different description were mingled witt 
 the mournful sigh of the night-breeze, or the dash of the 
 cascade. Sometimes, too, the latch rattled, as if some fraii 
 and impotent hand were in vain attempting to lift it, and ever 
 and anon they expected the entrance of their terrible patient. 
 
456 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 animated by supernatural strength, and in the company, 
 perhaps, of some being more dreadful than herself. Morn- 
 ing came at length. They souglit brake, rock, and thicket 
 in vain. Two hours after daylight, the minister himself 
 appeared, and, on the report of the watchers, caused the 
 country to be alarmed, and a general and exact search to 
 be made through the whole neighborhood of the cottage and 
 the oak-tree. But it was all in vain. Elspat MacTavish 
 was never found, whether dead or alive ; nor could there 
 ever be traced the slightest circumstance to indicate her 
 fate. 
 
 The neighborhood was divided concerning the cause ot 
 her disappearance. The credulous thought that the evil 
 spirit, under whose influence she seemed to have acted, had 
 carried her away in the body ; and there are many who are 
 still unwilling, at untimely hours, to pass the oak-tree, 
 beneath which, as they allege, she may still be seen seated 
 according to her wont. Others less superstitious supposed 
 that, had it been possible to search the gulf of the " corrie 
 dhu," the profound deeps of the lake, or the whelming ed- 
 dies of the river, the remains of Elspat MacTavish might 
 have been discovered ; as nothing was more natural, con- 
 sidering her state of body and mind, than that she should 
 have fallen in by accident, or precipitated herself intentionally 
 Into one or other of those places of sure destruction. The 
 clergyman entertained an opinion of his own. He thought 
 that, impatient of the watch which was placed over her, this 
 unhappy woman's instinct had tauglit her, as it directs vari- 
 ous domestic animals, to withdraw herself from the sight of 
 her own race, that the death-struggle might take place in 
 some secret den, where, in all probability, her mortal relics 
 would never meet the eyes of mortal. This species of in- 
 stinctive feeling seemed to him of a tenor with the Avhole 
 course of her unhappy life, and most likely to influence hei 
 Then it drew to a conclusion. 
 
APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO THE 
 
 CHRONICLES OP THE CANONGATB 
 
 ii has been suggested to the Author, that it might be well to reprint he'"© a 
 detailed account of the public dinner alluded to in the Introduction, as given 
 in the newspapers of the time; and the reader is accordingly presen'ed with 
 the following extract from the Edinburgh Weekly Journal for Wednesday 
 28th February, 1827. 
 
 THEATRICAL FUND DINNER 
 
 Before proceeding with our acoount of this very interesting festival— for so 
 it may be termed— it is our duty to present to our readers the following letter, 
 which we have received from the president. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE EDINBURGH WEEKLY JOURNAL 
 
 Sir— I am extremely sorry I have not leisure to correct the copy you sent rae 
 of what I am stated to have said at the Dinner for the Theatrical Fund. I am 
 no orator, and upon such occasions as are alluded to I say as well as I can 
 what the time requires. 
 
 However, I hope your reporter has been more accurate in other instances 
 than in mine. I have corrected one passage, in which I am made to speak 
 with great impropriety and petulance respecting the opinions of those who 
 do not approve of dramatic entertainments. I have restored what I said, 
 which was meant to be respectful, as every objection founded in conscience 
 is, in my opinion, entitled to be so treated. Other errors I left as I found 
 them, it being of little consequence whether I spoke sense or nonsense, in 
 what was merely intended for the purpose of the hour. 
 I am, sir. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Edniburgh, Monday. WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 The Theatrical Fund Dinner, which took place on Friday in the Assembly 
 Rooms, was conducted with admirable spirit. The Chairman, Sir Walter 
 Scott, among his other great qualifications, is well fitted to enliven such an 
 entertainment. His manners are extremely easy, and his style of speaking 
 simple and natuial, yet full of vivacity and point ; and he has the art, if it be 
 arts of relaxing into a certain homeliness of manner, without losing one 
 particle of his dignity. He thus takes off some of that solemn formality which 
 belongs to such meetings, and, by his easy and graceful familiawty, imparts 
 to them somewhat of the pleasing character of a private entertainment. Near 
 Sir W. Scott sat the Earl of Fife, Lord Meadowbank, Sir John Hope of 
 Pinkie, Bart., Admiral Adam, Baron Clerk Rattray, Gilbert Innes, Esq., James 
 Walker, Esq., Robert Dundas,'Esq.. Alexander Smith, Esq.. etc. 
 
 The cloth being removed, "Non Nobis Domine" was sung by Messrs. Thome, 
 Swift, Collier, and Hartley, after which the following toasts were given from 
 the chair : — 
 
 " The King "—all the honors. 
 
 " The Duke of Clarence and the Royal Family." 
 
 The Chairman, in proposing the next toast, which he wished to be drunk 
 
 in solemn silence, said it was to the memory of a regretted prince whom we 
 
 had lately lost. Every individual would at once conjecture to whom he 
 
 alluded. He had no intention to dwell on his military merits. They had been 
 
 457 
 
458 APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 told in the senate ; they had been repeated in the cottage ; and whenever a 
 Boldier was tlie theme, his name was never far distant. But it was chiefly in con 
 nection with the business of this meeting, which his late Royal Highness had 
 condescended in a particular manner to patronize, that they were called on to 
 drink his health. To that charity he had often sacrificed his time, and had 
 given up the little leisure which he had from important business. He was 
 always ready to att.^nd on 3very occasion of this kind, and it was in that view 
 that he proposed to drmk to the memory of his late Royal Highness the Duke 
 of York.— Drunk in solemn silence. 
 
 The Chairman then requested that gentlemen would fill a bumper as full 
 as it would hold, while he would say only a few words. He was in the habit 
 of hearing speeches, and he knew the feeling with which long ones were 
 regarded. He was sure that it was perfectly unnecessary for him to enter 
 into any vindication of the dramatic art, which they had come here to sup- 
 port. This, however, he considered to be the proper time and proper occa- 
 sion for him to say a few words on that love of representation wiliich was an 
 innate feeling in human nature. It was the first amusement that the child 
 had ; it grew greater as he grew up ; and, even in the decline of life, nothing 
 amused so much as when a common tale is told ■\\ ith appropriate personifica- 
 tion. The first thing a child does is to ape his schoolmaster by floggmg a chair. 
 The assuming a character ourselves, or the seeing others assume an imaginary 
 character, is an enjoyment natural to humanity. It was implanted in our very 
 nature to take pleasure from such representations, at proper times and on 
 pi-oper occasions. In all ages the theatrical art had kept pace with the improve- 
 ment of mankind, and with the progress of letters and the fine arts. As man has 
 advanced from the ruder stages of society, the love of dramatic representations 
 has increased, and all works of this nature have been improved in character and 
 in structure. The3' had only to turn their eyes to the history of ancient Greece, 
 although he did not pretend to very deeply versed in its ancient drama. Its 
 first tragic poet commanded a body of troops at the battle of Marathon. 
 Sophocles and Euripides were men of rank in Athens, when Athens was in its 
 highest renown. They shook Athens with their discourses, as their theatrical 
 works shook the theatre itself. If they turned to France in the time of Louis Ji 
 ihe Fourteenth, that era which is the classical history of that country, they 
 would find that it was referred to by all Frenchmen as the golden age* of the 
 drama there. And also in England, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the drama 
 ivas at its highest pitch when the nation began to mingle deeply and wisely in 
 the general politics of Europe, not only not receiving laws from others, but 
 giving laws to the world, and vindicating the rights of mankind. (Cheers.) 
 There have been various times when the dramatic art subsequently fell into 
 oisrepute. Its professors have been stigmatized : and laws have been passed 
 against t'hem, less dishonorable to them than to the statesmen by whom they 
 'vere propos3d, and to the legislators by whom they were adopted. What were 
 the times in which these laws were passed ? Was it not when virtue was seldtan 
 inculcated as a moral duty that we were requiied to relinquish the most raticnal 
 of all our aniusenu'iits, when the clergy were enjoined celibacy, and when the laity 
 were denied the riicht to read their Bibles ? He thought that it must have been 
 ^roni a not inn of jifnance that they erected the drama into an ideal place of 
 profaneness, and spoke of the theater as of the tents of sin. He did not mean 
 to dispute that there were many excellent persons who thought differently 
 from him, and he disclaimed the slightest idea of charging them with bigotry 
 or hypocrisy on that account. He gave them full credit for their tender con- 
 sciences in making these objections, although they did not appear relevant to 
 him. But to these persons, being, as he believed them, men of worth and piety, 
 he was sure the purpose of this meeting would furnish some apology for an 
 error, if there be any, in the opinions of those who attend. They would ajn'rove 
 
 the gift, although they might differ in other points. Sucli might not apjU'ovi 
 going to the theater," but at least could not deny that they might give a\va.\ 
 from their superfluity what was required for the relief of the sicK, the support 
 of the aged, and the comfort of the afflicted. These were duties enjoined by 
 our religion itself. (Loud cheers.^ 
 
 The performers are in a particular manner entitled to the support or regard, 
 when in old age or distress, of those who had partaken of the amusements of 
 those places which they render an ornament to society. Their art was of a 
 pecidiarly delicate and precarious nature. They had to serve a long apprentice- 
 ship. It was very long before even the first-rate geniuses could acquire the 
 mechanical knowledge of the stage business. They must langiu'sh long in 
 obscurity before they can avail themselves of their natural talents ; and after 
 that they have but a" short space of time, during which they are fortunate if 
 they can provide the means of comfort in the decline of life. That comes late, 
 and lasts but a short time ; after which they are left dependent. Their limbs 
 fail, their teeth are loosened, their voice is lost, and they are left, after giving 
 
TO THE CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 450 
 
 happiness to others, in a most disconsolate state. The public were liberal and 
 generous to those deserving their protection. It was a sad thing to be de- 
 pendent on the favor, or, he might .say, in plain terms, on the caprice, of the 
 public ; and this more particularly for a class of persons of whom extreme 
 prudence is not the character. There might be instances of opportunities being 
 neglected ; but let each gentleman tax himself, and consider the opportunities 
 they had neglected, and the sums of money they had wasted ; let every gentle- 
 man look into his own bosom, and say whether these were circumstances which 
 would soften his own feelings, were he to be plunged into distress. He put it to 
 every generous bosom— to every better feeling— to say what consolation was it 
 to old age to be told that you might have made provision at a time which had 
 been neglected (loud cheers) ; and to find it objected, that if you had pleased 
 you might have been wealthy. He had hitherto been speaking of what, in 
 theatrical language, was called "stars," but they were sometimes falling ones. 
 There were another class of sufferers naturally and necessarily connected with 
 the theater, without whom it was impossible to go on. The sailors have a say- 
 ing, "Every man cannot be a boatswain." If there must be a great actor to 
 act' Hamlet, there must also be people to act Laertes, the King, Rosencrantz, 
 and Guildenstern, otherwise a drama cannot go on. If even Garrick himself 
 were to rise from the dead, he could not act Hamlet alone. There must be 
 generals, colonels, commanding-officers, subalterns. But what are the private 
 soldiers to do ? Many have mistaken their own talents, and have been driven in 
 early youth to try the stage, to which they were not competent. Be would 
 know what to say to the indifferent poet and to the bad artist. He would say 
 that it was foolish, and he would recommend to the poet to become a scribe, and 
 the artist to paint sign-posts. (Loud laughter.) But you could not send the 
 player adrift, for if he cannot play Hamlet, he must play Guildenstern. Where 
 there are many laborers, wages must be low, and no man in such a situation can 
 decently support a wife and family and save something off his income for old 
 age. What is this man to do in latter life ? Are you to cast him off like an old 
 hinge or a piece of useless machinery which has done its work? To a person 
 who had contributed to our amusement this would be unkind, ungrateful, and 
 unchristian. His wants are not of his own making, but arise from the natural 
 sources of sickness and old age. It cannot be denied that there is one class of 
 sufferers to whom no imprudence can be ascribed, except on first entering on 
 the profession. After putting his hand to the dramatic plow he cannot draw 
 back ; but must continue at it, and toil, till death release him from want, or 
 charity, by its milder influence, steps in to render that want more tolerable. He 
 had little more to say, except that he sincerely hoped that the collection to-day, 
 from the number of respectable gentlemen present, would meet the views enter- 
 tained by the patrons. He hoped it would do so. They should not be disheart- 
 ened. Though they could not do a great deal, they might do something. They 
 had this consolation, that everything they parted with from their superfluity 
 would do some good. They would sleep the better themselves when they have 
 been the means of giving sleep to others. It was ungrateful and unkind that 
 those who had sacrificed their youth to our amusement should not receive the 
 reward due to them, but should be reduced to hard fare in their old age. We 
 cannot think of poor Falstaff going to bed without his cup of sack, or Macbeth 
 fed on bones as marrowless as those of Banquo. (Loud cheers and laughter.) 
 As he believed that they were all as fond of the dramatic art as he was in his 
 younger days, he would propose that they should drink " The Theatrical Fund," 
 with three times three. 
 
 Mr. Mackay rose, on behalf of his brethren, to return their thanks for the 
 toast just drunk. Many of the gentlemen present, he said, were perhaps not 
 fully acquainted with the nature and intention of the institution, and it might 
 not be amiss to enter into some explanations on the subject. With whomso- 
 ever the idea of a Theatrical Fund might have originated (and it had been 
 disputed by the surviving relatives of two or three individuals,) certain it was 
 that the first legally constituted Theatrical Fund owned its origin to one of the 
 brightest ornaments of the profession, the late David Garrick. That eminent 
 actor conceived that, by a weekly subscription in the theater, a fund might 
 be raised among its members, from which a portion might be given to those 
 of his less fortunate brethren, and thus an opportunity would be offered for 
 prudence to provide what fortune had denied — a comfortable provision for 
 the winter of life. With the welfare of his profession constantly at heart, the 
 zeal with which he labored to uphold its respectability, and to impress upon 
 the minds of his brethren not only the necessity, but the blessing, of independ- 
 ence, the fund became his peculiar care. He drew up a form of laws for its 
 government, procured, at his own expense, the passing of an Act of Parlia- 
 ment for its confirmation, bequeathed to it a handsome legacy, and thus be- 
 came the father of the Drury Lane Fund. So constant was his" attachment to 
 this infant establishment, that he chose to grace the close of the brightest 
 
460 APPENDIX TO INTROBUCTIOS 
 
 theatrical life on record by the last display of his transcendent talent on the 
 occasion of a benefit for this child of his adoption, whicli ever since has ^one 
 by the name of the Garrick Fund. In imitation of his noble example, funds had 
 been established in several provincial theatres in England ; but it remained for 
 Mrs. Henry Siddons and Mr. William Murray to become the founders of the first 
 Theatrical Fund in Scotland. (Cheers.) This Fund commenced under the 
 luiist favorable auspices : it was liberally supported by the management, and 
 hi^^hly patronized by the public. Notwithstanding, it fell short in the accom- 
 plislu'iient of its intentions. What those intentions were, he (Mr. Mackay) need 
 not recapitulate ; but tliey failed, and he did not hesitate to confess that a want 
 of energy on the part of the performers was the probable cause. A new set of 
 rules and regulations were lately drawn up, submitted to and approved of at a 
 general meeting of the members of the theater ; and accordingly the fund was 
 remodelled on the 1st of January last. And here he thought he did but echo the 
 feelings of his brethren by publicly acknowledging the obligations they were 
 under to the management for the aid given, and the warm interest they had all 
 along taken in the welfare of the fund. (Cheers. ) The nature and object of the 
 profession had been so well treated of by the president, that he would say noth- 
 ing ; but of the numerous offsprings of science and genius that court precarious 
 fame, the actor boasts the slenderest claim of all : the sport of fortune, the 
 creatures of fashion, and the victims of caprice, they are seen, heard, and admired, 
 but to be forgot. They leave no trace, no memorial of their existence ; they 
 "come like shadows, so depart." (Cheers.) Yet, humble though their pre- 
 tentions be, there was no profession, trade, or calling where such a combination 
 of requisites, mental and bodily, were indispensable. In all others the principal] 
 may practise after he has been visited by the afflicting hand of Providence— i 
 some by the loss of limb, some of voice, and many, when the faculty of thai 
 mind is on the wane, may be assisted by dutiful children or devoted servants. 
 Not so the actor ; he must retain all he ever did possess, or sink dejected to a 
 mournfulhome. (Applause.) Yet, while they are toiling forephemeral theatrici 
 fame, how very few ever possess the means of hoarding in their youth thatl 
 which would give bread in old age ! But now a brighter prospect dawned upon 
 them, and to the success of this their infant establishment they looked with 
 hope, as to a comfortable and peaceful home in their declining years. He con- 
 cluded by tendering to the meeting, in the name of his brethren and sisters, 
 their unfeigned thanks for their liberal support and begged to propose the 
 health of the patrons of the Ediburgh Theatrical Fund. (Cheers). 
 
 Lord Meadowbank said, that by desire of his hon. friend in the chair, and of 
 his noble friend at his right hand, he begged leave to return thanks for the honor; ae 
 which had been conferred on the patrons of this excellent institution. He could 
 answer for himself— he could answer for them all— that they were deeply im 
 pressed with the meritorious objects which it has in view, and of their anxious 
 wish to promote its interests. For himself, he hoped he might be permitted to 
 say that he was rather surprised at finding his own name as one of the patrons, 
 associated with so many individuals of high rank and powerful influence. But 
 it was an excuse for those who had placed him in a situation so honorable and so 
 distinguished, that when this charity was instituted he happened to hold a high 
 and responsible station under the crown, when he might have been of use in as- 
 sisting and promoting its objects. His lordship much feared that he could have 
 little expectation, situated as he now was, of doing either ; but he could confi- 
 dently assert that few things would give him greater gratification than being able 
 to contribute to its prosperity and support ; and, indeed, when one recollects th( 
 pleasure which at all periods" of life he has received from the exhibitions of the 
 stage, and the exertions of the meritorious individuals for whose aid this fund has 
 been established, he must be divested both of gratitude and feehng who would 
 not give his best endeavors to promote its welfare. And now, that he might ii 
 some measure repay the gratification which had been afforded himself, he woulc 
 beg leave to propose a toast, the health of one of the patrons, a great and disj 
 tingui.shed individual, whose name must always stand by itself, and which, ii 
 an assembly such as this, or in any other assembly of Scotsmen, can never be re 
 ceived, (not, he would say, with ordinary feelings of pleasure or of delight), bu 
 with those of rapture and "enthusiasm. In doing so, he felt thathestood in a some 
 what new situation. Whoever had been called upon to propose the health of hi! 
 hon. friend to whom he nllmlod, some time ago, would have found himself en 
 abled, from the mystery in wliich certain matters were involved, to gratify him 
 self and his auditors by allusions which found a responding chord in their owi 
 fselings. and to deal in the language— the sincere language, of panegyric, withou 
 intruding on the modesty of the great individual to whom he referred. But 1 
 was no longpr possible, consistently with the respect to one's auditors, to uS' 
 upon this subject terms either of mystification or of obscure or indirect allusion 
 The clouds have been dispelled, the darkness visible has been cleared away, ani 
 the Great Unknown— the minstrel of our native land— the mighty magician whJ 
 
TO THE CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 401 
 
 das rolled back the current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the 
 men and the manners of days which have long passed away, stands revealed to 
 the hearts and the eyes of his affectionate and admiring countrymen. If he him- 
 self were capable of imagining all that belonged to this mighty subject, were he 
 even able to give utterance to all that as a friend, as a man, and as a Scotsman 
 he must feel regarding it, yet knowing, as he well did, that this illustrious in- 
 dividual was not more distinguished for his towering talents than for those feel- 
 ings which rendered such allusions ungrateful to himself, however sparingly in- 
 troduced, he would, on that account, still refrain from doing that which would 
 otherwise be no less pleasing to him than to his audience. But this his lordship 
 hoped he would be allowed to say (his auditors would not pardon him were he to 
 say less), we owe to him, as a people, a large and heavy debt of gratitude. He it 
 is who has opened to foreigners the grand and characterisic beauties of our 
 country. It is to him that we owe that our gallant ancestors and the struggles 
 of our illustrious patriots, who fought and bled in order to obtain and secure that 
 independence and that liberty we now enjoy, have obtained a fame no longer 
 confined to the boundaries of a remote and comparatively obscure nation, and 
 who has called down upon their struggles for glory and freedom the admiration 
 of foreign countries. He it is who has conferred anew reputation on our national 
 character, and bestowed on Scotland an imperishable name, were it only oy her 
 having given birth to himself. (Loud and rapturous applause.) 
 
 Sir Walter Scott certainly did not think that, in coming here to-day, he would 
 have the task of acknowledging, before 300 gentlemen, a secret which, consider- 
 ing that it was communicated to more than twenty people, had been remarkably 
 well kept. He was now before the bar of his country, and might be understood 
 to be on trial before Lord Meadowbank as an offender ; yet he was sure that 
 every impartial jury would bring in a verdict of Not Proven. He did not now 
 think it necessary to enter into the reasons of his long silence. Perhaps caprice 
 might have a considerable share in it. He had now to say, however, that the 
 merits of these works, if they had any, and their faults, were entirely imputable 
 to himself. (Long and loud cheering.) He was afraid to think on what he had 
 done. " Look on't again I dare not." He had thus far unbosomed himself, and 
 he knew that it would be reported to the public. He meant, then, seriously to 
 state, that when he said he was the author, he was the total and undivided 
 author. With the exception of quotations, there was not a single word that was 
 not derived from himself, or suggested in the course of his reading. The wand 
 was now broken, and the book buried. You will allow me further to say, with 
 Prospero. it is your breath that has filled my sails, and to crave one single toast 
 in the capacity of the author of these novels ; and he would dedicate a bumper to 
 the health of one who has represented some of those characters, of which he had 
 endeavored to give the skeleton, with a degree of liveliness which rendered him 
 grateful. He would propose the health of his friend Bailie Nicol Jarvie— (loud 
 applause)— and he was— sure that, when the Author of Waverley and Rob Roy 
 drinks to Nicol Jarvie. it would be received with that degree of applause to which 
 that gentleman has always been accustomed, and that they would take care that 
 on the present occasion it should be prodigious ! (Long and vehement ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 Mr. Macay, who here spoke with great humor in the character of Bailie Jarvie. 
 —My conscience ! My worthy father the deacon could not have believed that 
 his son could hae had sic a compliment paid to him by the Great Unknown 1 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. — The Small Known, now, Mr. Bailie. 
 
 Mr. Mackay.— He had been long identified with the Bailie, and he was vain of 
 the cognomen which he had now worn for eight years ; and he questioned if any 
 of his brethren in the council had given such universal satisfaction. (Loud 
 laughter and applajise.) Before he sat down he begged to propose "The Lord 
 Provost and the (Jity of Edinburgh." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott apologized for the absence of the Lord Provost, who had 
 gone to London on public business. 
 
 Tune—" Within a mile of Edinburgh town." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott gave " The Duke of Wellington and the army." 
 
 Glee — " How merrily we live." 
 
 " Lord Melville and the Navy, that fought till they left nobody to fight with, 
 like an arch sportsman who clears all and goes after the game." 
 ■It Mr. Pat. Robertson.— They had heard this evening a toast which had been re- 
 in eeived with intense delight, which will be published in every newspaper, and will 
 r be hailed with joy by all Europe. He had one toast assigned him which he had 
 great pleasure in giving. He was sure that the stage had in all ages a great ef- 
 : feet on the morals and manners of the people. It was very desirable that the 
 .stage should be well regulated ; and there was no criterion by which its regula- 
 : tion could be better determined than by the moral character and personal re- 
 :! spectability of the performers. He was not one of those stern moralists who ob- 
 i Jected to the theatre. The most fastidious moraUst could not possibly apprehend 
 
462 APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 any injury from the stage of Edinburgh, as it was presently managed, and so 
 long as it was adorned by that illustrious individual, Mrs. Henry Siddons, whosej 
 public exhibitions were not more remarkable for feminine grace and delicacyi 
 than was her private character for every virtue which could be admired in do- 
 mestic life. He would conclude with reciting a few words from Shakspeare, in a 
 spirit not of contradiction to those stern moralists who disliked the theater, init 
 of meekness : — "Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed ? do yoi: 
 hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of tlu 
 time." He then gave " Mrs. Henry Siddons, and success to the Theater-Royal <>1 
 Edinburgh." 
 
 Mr. Murray.— Gentlemen, I rise to return thanks for the honor you have doiu 
 Mrs. Siddons, in doing which I am somewhat difticuited, from the extreme deli 
 cacy which attends a brother's expatiating upon a sister's claims to honor; 
 publicly paid — (hear, hear) — yet, gentlemen, your kindness emboldens me to sav 
 that were I to give utterance" to all a brother's feelings, I should not exaggerate 
 those claims. (Loud applause.) I therefore, gentlemen, thank you most cordi 
 ally for the honor you have done her, and shall now request permission to make ai 
 observation on the establishment of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund. Mr. Macka> 
 has done Mrs. Heni-y Siddons and myself the honor to ascribe the establishment t< 
 us ; but no, gentlemen, it owes its origin to a higher source— the publication of tin 
 novel Rob Roy — the unprecedented success of the opera adapted from that popu 
 lar production. (Hear, hear. ) It was that success which reheved the Edinburprl 
 Theater from its ditificulties and enabled Mrs. Siddons to carry into elTect the estab 
 lishment of a fund she had long desired, but was prevented from effecting, fron 
 the unsettled state of her theatrical concerns. I therefore hope that, in futun 
 years, when the aged and infirm actor deiives relief from this fund, he will, ii 
 the language of the gallant Highlander, " Cast his eye to good old Scotland, auc 
 not forget Rob Roy." (Loud applause.) 
 
 Sir Walter Scott here stated, that Mrs. Siddons wanted the means but not Uv 
 will of beginning the Theatrical Fund. He here alluded to the great merits o 
 Mr. Murray's management, and to his merits as an actor, which were of the firs 
 order, and of which every person who attends the theater must be sensible ; am 
 after alluding to the embarrassments with which the theater had been at on 
 period threatened, he concluded by giving the health of Mr. Murray, which wa 
 drunk with three times three. 
 
 Mr. Murray.— Gentlemen, I wish I could believe that, in any degree, I meritei 
 the compliments with which it has pleased Sir Walter Scott to preface the pn 
 posal of my health, or the very flattering manner in which you have done ni 
 the honor to receive it. The approbation of such an assembly 'is most gratifyin; 
 to me, and might encourage feelings of vanity, were not such feelings crushed b 
 my conviction, that no man holding the situation I have so long held in Edinburg 
 could have failed, placed in the peculiar circumstances in which I have bees: 
 placed. Gentlemen, I shall not insult your good taste by eulogiums upon youk 
 judgment or kindly feeling ; though to the first I owe any improvement 1 may havl 
 made as an actor, and certainly my success as a manager to the second. (Aff 
 plause.) When, upon the death of my dear brother, the late Mr. Siddons, it wa 
 proposed that I should undertake the management of the Edinburgh Theater, 
 confess I drew back, doubting my capability to free it from the load of debt an 
 difficulty with which it was surrounded. In this state of anxiety, I solicited th 
 advice of one who had ever honored me with his kindest regard, and whose nam 
 no member of my profession can pronounce without feelings of the deepest r( 
 spect and gratitude— I allude to the late Mr. John Kemble. (Great applause 
 To him I applied ; and with the repetition of his advice I shall cease to trespas 
 upon your time— (hear, hear), — "My dear William, fear not; integrity and a: 
 siduity must prove an overmatch for all difficulty ; and though I approve yoi 
 not indulging a vain confidence in your own ability, and viewing with respectfi 
 apprehension the judgment of the audience you have to act before, yet be assure 
 that judgment will ever be tempered by the feeling that you are acting fc 
 the widow and the fatherless." (Loud applause.) Gentlemen, those words ha\ 
 never passed from my mind ; and I feel convinced that you have pardoned m 
 many errors from the feeling that I was striving for the widow and the fatherles 
 (Long and enthusiastic applause followed Mr. Murray's address.) 
 
 Sir Walter Scott gave the health of the Stewards. 
 
 Mr. Vandenhofp.— Mr. Presidentand gentlemen, the honor conferred upon tl 
 Stewards, in the very flattering compliment you have just paid us, calls fort 
 our warmest acknowledgments. In tendering you our thanks for the approb 
 tion you have been pleased to express of our humble exertions, I would beg leai 
 to advert to the cause in which we have been engaged. Yet, surrounded as I a 
 by the genius, the eloquence of this enlightened city, I cannot but feel the pr 
 sumption which ventures to address you on so interesting a subject. Accustom* 
 to speak in the language of others, I feel quite at a loss for terms wherein 
 clothe the sentiments excited by the present occasion. (Applause.) The natu: 
 
TO THE CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 46 
 
 of the institution whicii has sought your fostering patronage, and the objects 
 which it contemplates, have been fully explained to you. But, gentlemen, the 
 relief which it proposes is not a gratuitous relief, but to be purchased by the 
 individual contribution of its members towards the general good. This fund 
 lends no encouragement to idleness or improvidence ; but it offers an opportun- 
 ity to prudence, in vigor and youth, to make provision against the evening of 
 Ufe and its attendant infirmity. A period is fixed, at which we admit the plea of 
 age as an exemption from professional labor. It is painful to behold the veteran 
 on the stage (compelled by necessity) contending against physical decay, mock- 
 ing the joyousness of mirth with the feebleness of age, when the energies decline, 
 when the memory fails, and " the big manly voice, turning again towards child- 
 ish treble, pipes and whistles in the sound." We would remove him from the 
 mimic scene, where fiction constitutes the charm ; we would not view old age 
 caricaturing itself . (Applause.) But as our means may be found, in time of 
 need, inadequate to the fulfilment of our wishes— fearful of raising expectations 
 which we may be unable to gratify— desirous not " to keep the word of promise 
 to the ear and break it to the hope "—we have presumed to court the assistance 
 of tlie friends of the drama to strengthen our infant institution. Our appeal has 
 been successful beyond our most sanguine expectations. The distinj-uished 
 patronage conferred on us by your presence on this occasion, and the substan- 
 tial support which your benevolence has so liberally afforded to our institution, 
 must impress evei-y member of the fund with the most grateful sentiments- 
 sentiments which no language can express, no time obliterate. (Applause.) I 
 will not trespass longer on your attention. I would the task of acknowledging 
 our obligation had fallen into abler hands. (Hear, hear.) In the name of the 
 Stewards, I most respectfully and cordially thank you for the honor you have 
 done us, which greatly overpays our poor endeavors. (Applause.) 
 
 This speech, though rather inadequately reported, was one of the best deliv- 
 ered on this occasion. That it was creditable to Mr. Vandenhoff's taste and feel- 
 ings, the preceding sketch will show ; but how much it was so, it does not show. 
 , Mr. J. Cay gave " Professor Wilson and the University of Edinburgh, of which 
 ^j he was one of the brightest ornaments." 
 
 Lord Meadowbank, after a suitable eulogium, gave " The Earl of Fife," which 
 was drunk with three times three. 
 
 Earl Fife expressed his high gratification at the honor conferred on him. He 
 intimated his approbation of the institution, and his readiness to promote its suc- 
 ^1 cess by every means in his power. He concluded with giving " The health of the 
 "'■ Company of Edinburgh." 
 
 Mr. Jones, on rising to return thanks, being received with considerable ap- 
 
 J plause, said he was truly grateful for the kind encouragement he had experi- 
 
 'J enced, but the novelty of the situation in which he now was renewed all the feel- 
 
 j" ings he experienced when he first saw himself announced in the bills as a young 
 
 J" gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage. (Laughter and applause). 
 
 Although in the presence of those whose indulgence had, in another sphere, so 
 
 often shielded him from the penalties of inability, he was unable to execute the 
 
 task which had so unexpectedly devolved upon him in behalf of his brethren and 
 
 himself. He therefore begged the company to imagine all that grateful hearts 
 
 f could prompt the most eloquent to utter, and that would be a copy of their feel- 
 
 "t ings. (Applause.) He begged to trespass another moment on their attention, 
 
 for the purpose of expressing the thanks of the members of the fund to the 
 
 gentlemen of the Edinburgh Professional Society of Musicians, who, finding that 
 
 this meeting was appointed to take place on the same evening with their con- 
 
 "i cert, had in the handsomest manner agreed to postpone it. Although it was his 
 
 '' duty thus to preface the toast he had to propose, he was certain the meeting 
 
 j"i required no farther inducement than the recollection of the pleasure the exer- 
 
 '" tions of those gentlemen had often afforded them within those walls, to join 
 
 f} heartily in drinking " Health and prosperity to the Edinburgh Professional Soc- 
 
 "■ iety of Musicians." (Applause.) 
 
 ''■ Mr. Pat. Robertson proposed " The health of Mr. Jeffrey," whose absence was 
 ■?! owing to indisposition. The public was well aware that he was the most distin- 
 ct guished advocate at the bar; he was likewise distinguished for the kindness, 
 frankness, and cordial manner in which he communicated with the junior 
 members of the profession, to the esteem of whom his splendid talents would 
 always entitle him. 
 ■■ ■ Mr. J. Maconochie gave " The health of Mrs. Siddons, senior— the most distin- 
 w guished ornament of the stage." 
 
 * Sir W. Scott said, that if anything could reconcile him to old age, it was the 
 M reflection that he had seen the rising as well as the setting sun of Mrs. Siddons. 
 ?' He remembered well their breakfasting near to the theater, waiting the whole 
 ■ day, the crushing at the doors at six o'clock, and their going in and counting 
 - their fingers till seven o'clock. But the very first step, the very first word 
 • ' which she uttered, was sufficient to overpay him for all his labors. The house 
 
464 APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 was literally electrified ; and it was only from w itnessing the effects of her geniui 
 that he could guess to what a pitch theatrical excellence could be carried 
 Those young gentlemen who have only seen the setting sun of this distinguishec 
 performer, beautiful and serene as that was, must give us old fellows, who havi 
 seen its rise and its meridian, leave to hold our heads a little higher. 
 
 Mr. DuNDAs gave " The memory of Home, the author of Douglas.'''' 
 
 Mr. Mackay here announced that the subscription for the night amounted ti 
 £280 ; and he expressed gratitude for this substantial proof of their kindness. 
 
 We are happy to state that subscriptions have since flowed in very liberally. 
 
 Mr. Mackay here entertained the company with a pathetic song. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott apologized for having so long forgotten their native land 
 He would now give " Scotland, the land of Cakes." He would give every river 
 every loch, every hill, from Tweed to Johnnie Groat's house ; every lass in hej 
 cottage and countess in her castle ; and may her sons stand by her. as thei 
 fathers did before them, and he who would not drink a bumper to his toast, ma; 
 he never drink whisky more ! 
 
 Sir AValter Scott here gave " Lord Meadowbank." who returned thanks. 
 
 Mr. H. G. Bell said, that he should not have ventured to intrude himself upc 
 the attention of ths assembly, did he not feel confident that the toast he beggC' 
 to have the honor to propose would make amends of the very imperfect manne; 
 in which he might express his sentiments regarding it. It had been said thai- 
 notwithstanding the mental supremacy of the present age, notwithstanding tha: 
 the page of our liistory was studded with names destined also for the page of in 
 mortility — that tlie genius of Shakspeare was extinct, and the fountain of his ii 
 spiratiori dried up. It might be that these observations were unfortunately coi 
 rect, or it might be that we were bewildered with a name, not disappointed of th 
 reality ; for though Shakspeare had brought a Hamlet, an Othello, and a Mai 
 beth, an Ariel, a Juliet, and a Rosalind upon the stage, were there not authoi 
 living who had brought as varied, as exquisitely painted, and as undying a rang 
 of characters into our hearts ? The shape of the mere mould into which genii 
 poured its golden treasures was surely a matter of little moment — let it be calle 
 a tragedy, a comedy, or a Waverley novel. But, even among the dramatic a) 
 thors of the present day, he was unwilling to allow that there was a great an 
 palpable decline from the glory of preceding ages, and his toast alone woul 
 bear him out in denying the truth of the proposition. After eulogizing the nami 
 of BaiMe, Byron, Coleridge, Maturin, and othei-s, he begged to have the honor ( 
 proposing the health of James Sheridan Knowles. 
 
 Sir V\'alter Scott. — Gentlemen, I crave a bumper all over. The last toast r 
 minds me of a neglect of duty. Unaccustomed to a public dutj- of this kind, e 
 rors in conducting the ceremonial of it may be excused and omissions pardone 
 Perhaps I have made one or two omissions in the course of the evening, f( 
 which I trust you will grant me your pardon and indulgence. One thing in pa 
 ticular I have omitted, and I would now wish to make amends for it, by a lib 
 tion of reverence and respect to the memory of Shakspeare. He was a man 
 universal genius, and from a period soon after his own era to the present day ) 
 has been universally idolized. When I come to his honored name, I am like" tl 
 sick man who hung' up his crutches at the shrine, and was obliged to confess th 
 he did not walk better than before. It is indeed difficult, gentlemen, to coi 
 pare him to any other individual. The only one to whom I can at all compa 
 him is the wonderful Arabian dervise, who dived into the body of each, and 
 this way became familiar witli the thoughts and secrets of their hearts. He w 
 a man of obscure origin, and. as a player, limited in his acquirements, but 
 was born evidently with a universal genius. His eyes glanced at all the vari 
 aspects of life, and his fancy portrayed with equal talents the king on the thro 
 and the clown who crackles his chestnuts at a Christmas fire. Whatever note 
 takes, he strikes it just and true, and awakens a corresponding chord in our oi 
 bosoms. Gentlemen, I propose " The memory of William Shakspeare." 
 
 Glse — "Lightly tread, 'tis hallowed ground." 
 
 After the glae. Sir Walter rose, and begged to propose as a toast the health 
 a lady whose living merit is not a Httle honorable to Scotland. The toast (si 
 he) is also flattering to the national vanity of a Scotchman, as the lady when 
 intend to propose is a native of this country. From the public her works ha 
 met with the most favorable reception. One piece of hers, in particular, w ; 
 often acted here of late years, and gave pleasure of no mean kind to many bri ■ 
 ant and fashionable audiences. In her private character she (he begged let! 
 to say) is as remarkable as in a public sense she is for her genius. In short, ; 
 would in one word name — "Joanna Baillie." 
 
 This health being drunk, Mr. Thorne was called on for a song, and sung, w i 
 great taste and feeling, "The Anchor's weighed."' 
 
 W. Menzies. Esq. advocate, rose to propose the health of a gentleman for ma' 
 years connected at intervals with the dramatic art in Scotland. Whether J 
 look at the range of characters he performs or at the capacity which he evin J 
 
TO THE CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 465 
 
 in executing those which he undertakes, he is equally to be admired. In all his 
 parts he is unrivalled. The individual to whom he alluded is (said he) well 
 known to the gentlemen present, in the characters of Malvolio, Lord Ogleby, and 
 the Green Man ; and, in addition to his other qualities, he merits, for his pertec- 
 tion in these characters, the grateful sense of this meeting. He would wish, in 
 the first place, to drink his health as an actor : but he was not less estimable in 
 domestic life, and as a private gentleman ; and when he announced him as one 
 whom the Chairman had honored with his friendship, he was sure that all pres- 
 ent would cordially join him in drinking " The health of Mr. Terry." 
 
 Mr William Allen, banker, said, that he did not rise with the intention of 
 making a speech. He merely wished to contribute in a few words to the mirth of 
 the evening— an evening which certainly had not passed off without some 
 blunders It had been understood— at least he had learned or supposed, from 
 the expressions of Mr. Pritchard— tliat it would be sufficient to put a paper, with 
 the name of the contributor, into the box, and that the gentleman thus contrib- 
 uting would be called on for the money next morning. He, for his part, had 
 committed a blunder, but it might serve as a caution to those who may be pres- 
 ent at the dinner of next year. He had merely put in his name, written on a slip 
 of paper, without the money. But he would recommend that, as some of the 
 gentlemen might be in the same situation, the box should be again sen*^ round, 
 and he was confident that they, as well as he, would redeem their error. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott said, that the meeting was somewhat in the situation or 
 Mrs. Anne Page, who had £300 and possibilities. We have already got (said he) 
 £280, but I should like, I confess, to have the £300. He would gratify himself by 
 proposing the health of an honorable person, the Lord Chief Baron, whom Eng- 
 land has sent to us, and connecting with it that of his " yokefellow on the bench," 
 as Shakspeare says, Mr. Baron Clerk—" The Court of Exchequer." 
 
 Mr. Baron Clark regretted the absence of his learned brother. None, he was 
 sure, could be more generous in his nature, or more ready to help a Scottish 
 purpose. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott.— There is one who ought to be remembered on this occa- 
 sion. He is, indeed, well entitled to our grateful recollection— one, in short, to 
 whom the drama in this city owes much. He succeeded, not without trouble, 
 and perhaps at some considerable sacrifice, in establishing a theater. The 
 younger part of the company may not recollect the theater to which I allude ; 
 but there are some who with me may remember by name a place called Car- 
 rubber's Close. There .\llan Ramsay established his little theater. His own 
 pastoral was not fit for the stage, but it has its admirers in those who love the 
 Doric language in which it is written ; and it is not without merits of a very pecu- 
 liar kind. But, laying aside all considerations of his literary merit, Allan was a 
 good, jovial, honest fellow, who could crack a bottle with the best. " The mem- 
 ory of Allan Ramsay." 
 
 Mr. Murray, on being requested, sung, " 'Twas merry in the hall," and at the 
 conclusion was greeted with repeated rounds of applause. 
 
 Mr. Jones.— One omission I conceive has been made. The cause of the fund 
 has been ably advocated, but it is still susceptible, in my opinion, of an additional 
 charm- 
 Without the smile from partial beauty won, 
 Oh, what were man ?— a world without a sun 1 
 
 And there would not be a darker spot in poetry than would be the corner in 
 Shakespeare Square if, like its fellow, the Register Office, the theater were de- 
 serted by the ladies. They are, in fact, our most attractive stars. " The Patron- 
 esses of the theater— the ladies of the city of Edinburgh." This toast I ask leave 
 to drink with all the honors which conviviality can confer. 
 
 Mr. Patrick Robertson would be the last man willingly to introduce any topic 
 calculated to interrupt the harmony of the evening ; yet he felt himself treading 
 upon ticklish ground when he approached the region of the Nor' Loch. He as- 
 sured the company, however, that he was not about to enter on the subject of 
 ■*he improvement bill. They all knew, that if the public were unanimous— if the 
 jonsent of all parties were obtaised- if the rights and interests of everybody 
 vere therein attended to, saved, reserved, respected, and excepted— if everybody 
 igreed to it— and finally, a most essential point, if nobody opposed it— then, and 
 to that cnse, and provided also that due intimation were given— the bill in ques- 
 tion might pass— would pass, or might, could, would, or should pass— all ex- 
 penses being defrayed. (Laughter.) He was the advocate of neither champion, 
 and would neither avail himself of the absence of the Right Hon. the Lord Pro- 
 vost nor take advantage of the non-appearance of his friend, Mr. Cockburn. 
 (Laughter.) But, in the midst of these civic broils, there had been elicited a ray 
 of hope, that, at some future period, in Berefonl i'ark. or some other place, if 
 all parties were consulted and satisfied, and if intimation were duly made at 
 the kirk doors of all the parishes in Scotland, in terms of the statute in that be- 
 
466 APPENDIX TO INTBODUCTION 
 
 balf provided, the people of Edinburgh might by possibiHty get a new theatre. 
 (Cheers and laughter.) But wherever the belligerent powers might be pleased 
 to set down this new theatre, he was sure they all hoped to meet the Old Com- 
 pany in it. He should therefore propose, " Better accommodation to the Old 
 Company m the new theatre, site unknown." Mr. Robertsons speech was most 
 humorously given, and he sat down amidst loud cheers and laughter. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott.— Wherever the new theater is built, I hope it will not be 
 large. There are two errors which we commonly commit— the one arising from 
 our pride, the other from our poverty. If there are twelve plans, it is odds but 
 the largest, without any regard to comfort, or an eye to the probable expense, is 
 adopted. There was the College projected on this scale, and undertaken in the 
 same manner, and who shall see the end of it ? It has been building all my life, 
 and may probably last during the lives of my children, and my children's chil- 
 dren. Let not the same prophetic hymn be sung, when we commence a new 
 theater, which was performed on the occasion of laying the foundation-stone of 
 a certain edifice, '• Behold the endless work begun." Play -going folks should at- 
 tend somewhat to con\enience. The new theater should, in the first place, be 
 such as may be finished in eighteen months or two years ; and, in the second 
 place, it should be one in which we can hear our old friends with comfort. It is 
 better that a moderate-sized house ^ould be crowded now and then than to have 
 a large theater with benches continually empty, to the discouragement of the 
 actors and the discomfort of the spectators. (Applause.) He then commented 
 in ttattering terms on the genius of Mackenzie and his private worth, and con- 
 cluded by proposing " The health of Henry Mackenzie, Esq." 
 
 Immediately afterwards he said : Gentlemen, it is now wearing late and I 
 shall request permission to retire. Like Partridge I may sav, " non sum gualis 
 
 era III. At m\' ■ "^lo ,^f rir.,, t «„ — ,..:n, t — .j ^_, ..-i^ _ - ; ,. , ^.. 
 
 and say. " Ther 
 the chair. 
 
 Ri 
 
 i\- time of day, 1 can agree with Lord Ogleby as' to his rheumatism^ 
 ere s a twinge." I hope, therefore, you will excuse me for leaving 
 
 The worthy baronet then retired amidst Ions', loud, and rapturous cheering 
 Mr. Patrick Robertson was then called to the chair bv common acclamation. 
 Gentlemen, said Mr. Robertson, I take the liberty of asking vou to fill a bumper 
 lo the very brim. There is not one of us who will not remember while he lives 
 being: present at this day's festival, and the declaration made this night bv the 
 gentleman who has .lUst left the chair. That declaration has rent the veil "from 
 the features of the Great Unknown— a name which must now mer^e in the name 
 of the Great Known. It will be henceforth coupled with the name of Scott, 
 which will become familiar like a household word. We have heard the confes- 
 sion from his own immortal lips (cheering), and we cannot dwell 'with too much 
 or too fervent, praise on the merits of the greatest man whom Scotland has pro- 
 After which, several other toasts were given, and Mr. Robertson left the room 
 about half-past eWem A few choice spirits, however, rallied round Captain 
 Broadhead of the <th Hussars, who was called to the chair and the festivity was 
 prolonged till an early hour on Saturday morning. 
 
 The band of the theater occupied the gallerv. and that of the 7th Hussars the 
 end of the room, opposite the chair, whose performances were greatly admired 
 It is but justice to Mr Gibb to state, that the dinner was very handsome, though 
 slow y served in. and the wines good. The attention of the stewards was ex- 
 ^"'^v'l^- ^I'-- Murray and Mr. Vandenhoff with great good taste, attended on 
 Sir A\ alter Scott s right and left, and we know that he has expressed himself, 
 much gratified by their anxious politeness and sedulity. '' 
 
 !wj 
 
NOTES 
 
 Note 1— Taunt of Effeminacy, p. 7 
 
 R is said in Highland tradition that one of the Macdonalds of the Isles, who 
 had suffered his broadsword to remain sheathed for some months after his mar- 
 riage with a beautiful woman, was stirred to a sudden and furious expedition 
 against the mainland by hearing conversation to the same purpose [as in the 
 text] among his body-guard. 
 
 Note 2.— Welsh Houses, p. 8 
 
 The Welsh houses, like those of the cognate tribes in Ireland and in the High- 
 lands of Scotland, were very imperfectly supplied with chimneys. Hence, in the 
 History of the Gwydir Family, the strilcing expression of a Welsh chieftain, who, 
 I the house being assaulted and set on fire by his enemies, exhorted his friends to 
 stand to their defence, saying, he had seen as much smoke in the hall upon a 
 Christmas even. 
 
 Note 3.— Eudorchawg, p. 8 
 
 These were the distinguished marks of rank and valor among the numerous 
 tribes of Celtic extraction. Manlius, the Roman Champion, gained the name of 
 Torquatus, or He of the Chain, on account of an ornament of this kind, won in 
 single combat from a gigantic Gaul. Aneurin, the Welsh bard, mentions, in his 
 poem on the battle of Cattreath, that no less than three hundred of the British 
 who fell there had their necks wreathed with the eudorchawg. This seems to 
 infer that the chain was a badge of distinction, and valor perhaps, but not of 
 royalty ; otherwise there would scarce have been so many kings present in one 
 battle. This chain has been found accordingly in Ireland and Wales, and some- 
 times, though more rarely, in Scotland. Doubtless it was of too precious mater- 
 ials not to be usually converted into money by the enemy into whose hands it 
 feU. 
 
 Note 4.— Foot-pages, p. 9 
 
 See Madoc [Part 1. 1] for this literal foot-page's office and duties. Mr. Southey's 
 notes inform us : " The foot-bearer shall hold the feet of the king in his lap, 
 from the time when he reclines at the board till he goes to rest, and he shall 
 chafe them with a towel ; and during all that time he shall watch that no hurt 
 shall happen to the king. He shall eat of the same dish from which the king 
 takes his food ... he shall light the first candle before the king at his meal." 
 Such are the instructions given for this part of royal ceremonial in the laws of 
 Howell Dha. It may be added, that probably upon this Celtic custom was.founded 
 one of those absurd and incredible representations which were propagated at 
 the time of the French Revolution, to stir up the peasants against their feudal 
 superiors. It was pretended that some feudal seigneurs asserted their right to 
 kill and disembowel a peasant, in order to put their own feet within the expiring 
 body, and so recover them from the chill. 
 
 Note 5.— Courage op the Welsh, p. 34 
 
 This is by no means exaggerated in the text. A very honorable testimony 
 was given to their valor by King Henry I. in a letter to the Greek Emperor, 
 Emanuel Comnenus. This prince having desired that an account might be sent 
 him of all that was remarkable in the island of Great Britain, Henry, in answer 
 to that request, was pleased to take notice, among other particulars, of the ex- 
 traordinary courage and fierceness of the Welsh, who were not afraid to_ fight 
 unarmed with enemies armed at all points, valiantly shedding their blood in the 
 cause of their country, and purchasing glory at the expense of their lives. 
 467 
 
408 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Note 6.— Selling Meat by Measure, p. 55 
 
 Old Henry Jenkins, in his recollections of the abbacies before their dissolution 
 has preserved the fact that roast-beef was delivei'ed out to the guests not by 
 weight, but by measure. 
 
 Note 7.— Welsh Bowmen, p.65 
 
 The Welsh were excellent bowmen ; but, under favor of Lord Lyttleton, thev 
 probably did not use the long-bow, the formidable weapon of the Normans, and 
 afterwards of the English yeonten. That of the Welsh most likely rather re- 
 sembled the bow of the cognate Celtic tribes of Ireland and of the Highlands of 
 Scotland. It was shorter than the Norman long-bow, as being drawn to the 
 breast, not to the ear, more loosely strung, and the arrow having a heavy iron 
 head ; altogether, in short, a less effective weapon. It appears from the follow- 
 ing anecdote that there was a difference between the Welsh arrows and those of 
 the English. 
 
 In 112a [112]]. Henry I., marching into Powys Land to chastise Meredyth tip 
 Blethyn and certain rebels, in passing a defile was struck by an arrow" on the 
 breast. Repelled by the excellence of his breastplate, the shaft fell to the 
 ground. When the King felt the blow and saw the shaft, he swore his usual 
 oath, by the death of our Lord, that the arrow came not from a Welsh, but an 
 English bow ; and, influenced by this belief, hastily put an end to the war. 
 
 Note 8.— Rattle of Armor, p. 75 
 
 Even the sharp and angry clang made by the iron scabbards of modern cavalry 
 ringing against the steel-tipped saddles and stirrup betrays their approach from 
 a distance. The clash of the armor of knights, armed cap-a-pie, voMSt have been 
 much more easily discernible. 
 
 Note 9.— Cruelties of the Welsh, p. 87 
 
 The AVelsh, a fierce and barbarous people, were often accused of mangling 
 the bodies of their slain antagonists. Every one must remember Shakespeare's 
 account, how 
 
 Tlie noble Mortimer. 
 Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight 
 Against the irregular and wild Glendower, 
 Was, by the rude hands of that Welshman, taken, 
 And a thousand of his people butcher'd ; 
 Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse, 
 Such beastly shameless transformation. 
 By those Welshwomen done, as may not be, 
 Without much shame, retold or spoken of. 
 
 Note 10.— Bahr-geist, p. 126 
 
 The idea of the bahr-geist was taken from a passage in the Memoirs fpp. 83-86, 
 1839] of Lady Fanshavv, which have since been given to the public, and received 
 with deserved approbation. 
 
 The original runs as follows. Lady Fanshaw, shifting among her friends in 
 Ireland, like other sound loyalists of the period, tells her story thus :— 
 
 From hence we went to the Lady Honor O'Brien's, a lady that went for a maid, 
 but few believed it. She was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Thomond. 
 There we stayed three nights— the fir.st of which I was surprised by being laid in a 
 chamber, when about one o'clock, I heard a voice that wakened me. I drev,- 
 the curtain, and in the casement of the window, I saw, by the light of the moon, . 
 a woman leaning through the casement into the window, in white, with red hair 
 and pale and ghastly complexion. She spoke loud, and in a tone I had never heard, 
 thrice, " A horse" ; and then, with a sigh more like the wind than breath, she 
 vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I 
 was so much frightened that my hair stood on end, and my night-clothes fell 
 off. I pulled and pinched your father, who never woke during the disorder I 
 was in, but at last was much stirprised to soe me in this fright, and more so 
 when I related the story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us 
 slept any more that night ; but he entertained me with telling me how much 
 
NOTES 469 
 
 more these apparitions were usual in this country than in England ; and we 
 concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the want of 
 that knowing faith which should defend them from the power of the devil, 
 which he exercises among them very much. About five o'clock the lady of the 
 house came to see us, saying she had not been in bed all night, because a cousin 
 O'Brien of hers, whose ancestors had owned that house, had desired her to stay 
 with him in his chamber, and that he died at two o'clock ; and she said, " I wish 
 you to have had no disturbance, for 'tis the custom of the place that, when any of 
 the family are dying, the shape of a woman appears every night in the window 
 till they be dead. This woman was many ages ago got with child by the owner 
 of this place, who miurdered her in his garden, and flung her into the river under 
 the window ; but truly I thought not of it when I lodged you here, it being the 
 best room in the house." We made little reply to her speech, but disposed our- 
 selves to be gone suddenly. 
 
 Note 11.— Knight's Pennon, p. 246 
 
 The pennon of a knight was, in shape, a long streamer, and forked like a 
 swallow's tail ; the banner of a banneret was square, and was formed into the 
 other by cutting the ends from the pennon. It was thus the ceremony was per- 
 formed on the pennon of John Chandos, by the Black Prince, before the battle 
 of Najara. 
 
 I Note 12.— Sensibility to Pain, p. 275 
 
 I Such an expression is said to have been used by Mandrin, the celebrated 
 
 y j smuggler, while in the act of being broken upon the wheel. This dreadful pun- 
 
 j, ishment consists in the executioner, with a bar of iron, breaking the shoulder- 
 
 ,j ! bones, arms, thigh-bones, and legs of the criminal, taking his alternate sides. 
 
 I The punishment is concluded by a blow across the breast, called the conp de 
 
 i grace, because it removes the sufferer from his agony. When Mandrin i-eceived 
 
 I the second blow over the left shoulder-bone, he laughed. His confessor inquired 
 
 the reason of demeanor so unbecoming his situation. " 1 only laugh at my 
 
 own folly, my father," answered Mandrin, " who could suppose that sensibility 
 
 of pain should continue after the nervous system had been completely deranged 
 
 by the first blow." 
 
 Note 13.— Keiths op Craig, p. 324 
 
 The Keiths of Craig, in Kincardineshire, descended from John Keith, fourth 
 
 son of William, second Earl Marischal, who got from his father, about 1480, the 
 
 lands of Craig, and part of Garvoek, in that country. In Douglas's Baronage, 
 
 443 to 445, is a pedigree of that family. Colonel Robert Keith of Craig (the 
 
 ! seventh in descent from John), by his wife, Agnes, daughter of Robert Murray 
 
 '. of Murrayshall, of the family of Blackbarony, widow of Colonel Stirling, of the 
 
 family of Keir, had one son, viz. Robert Keith of Craig, ambassador to the court 
 
 of Vienna, afterwards to St. Petersburgh— which latter situation he held at the 
 
 1 accession of King George III. — who died at Edinburgh in 1774. He married 
 
 i Margaret, second daughter of Sir William Cunningham of Caprington, by Janet, 
 
 I only child and heiress of Sir James Dick of Prestonfleld ; and, among other 
 
 , I children of this marriage, were the well-known diplomatist. Sir Robert Murray 
 
 'i I Keith, K. B., a general in the army, and for some time ambassador at Vienna; 
 
 ™ I Sir Basil Keith, Knight, captain in the navy, who died governor of Jamaica ; and 
 
 i my excellent friend, Anne Murray Keith, who ultimately came into possession 
 
 i» i of ti.c family estates and died not long before the date of the Introduction 
 
 I (1831). 
 
 Ij' Note 14.— Sanctuary of Holyrood, p. 328 
 
 The reader may be gratified with Hector Boece's narrative of the original 
 foundation of the famous abbey of Holyrood, or the Holy Cross, as given in 
 ^ ! Bellenden's translation :— 
 
 '; Etfir deith of Alexander the First, his brothir David come out of Ingland, and 
 
 I wes crounit at Scone, the yeir of God mcxsiv yeiris, and did gret justice, eftir 
 
 J, his coronation, in all partis of his realme. He had na weris during the time of 
 
 ;, King Hary, and wes sa pietuous, that he sat daylie in .iugement, to cans his 
 pure comonis to have justice : and causit the actionis of his noblis to be decidit 
 
 ; he his othir jugis. He gart ilk juge redres the skaithis that come to the party 
 
 ' be his wrang sentence ; throw quhilk, he decorit his realm with mony nobil actis, 
 
 ' and ejeckit the vennomus custome of riotus cheir, quhilk wes inducit afore be 
 
470 WA VERLET NO VELS 
 
 Inglismen, quhen thai com with Quene Margaret ; for the samin wee nolsiun tc 
 al gud maneris, makand his pepil tender and effeminat. 
 
 In the fourt yeir of his regne, this nobill prince come to visie the madin Castell 
 of Edinburgh. At this time, all the boundis of Scotland wer ful of woddis, 
 lesouris, and niedois ; for the countre wes more gevin to store of bestiall than 
 ony productioun of cornis ; and about this castell was ane gret forest, full of 
 haris, hindis, toddis, and siclike maner of beistis. Now was the Rude Day 
 cumin, callit the exaltation of the croee ; and, becaus the samin wes ane hie 
 solempne day, the king past to his contemplation. Eftir that the messis wer 
 done with maist solempnite and reverence, comperit afore him mony young and 
 insolent baronis of Scotland, richt desirus to half sum pleseir and solace, be 
 chace of hundis in the said forest. At this time wes with the king ane man of 
 singulare and devoit life, namit Alkwine, chanuon eftir the ordour of Sanct vm 
 Augustine, quhilk wes lang time eonfessoure, afore, to King David in Ingland, 
 the time that he wes Erie of Huntingtoun and Northumbirland. This religious 
 man dissuadit the king, be mony reasonis, to pas to this huntis ; and allegit the 
 day wes so solempne, be reverence of the haly croce, that he suld gif him erar, 
 for that day, to contemplation than ony othir exercition. Nochtheles, his dis- 
 suasionis litill avalit ; for the king wes flnalie so provokit, be inoportune solicita 
 tioun of his baronis, that he past, nochtwithstanding the solempnite of this day, 
 to his hountis. At last, quhen he wes cumin throw the vail that lyis to the gret 
 eist fra the said castell, quhare now lyis the Cannongait, the staill past throw 
 the wod with sic noyis and din of rachis and bugillis, that all the bestis were rasit 
 fra thair dennis. Now wes the king cumin to the f ute of the crag, and all his noblis 
 severit, heir and thair. fra him at thair game and solace ; quhen suddanlie ap- 
 perit to his sicht the farist hart that evir wes sene afore with levand creatour. 
 The noyis and din of this hart rinnand, as apperit, with auful and braid tindis, 
 maid the kingis hors so eftrayit, that na renyeis miclit hald him ; bot ran, per- 
 force, ouir mire and mossis, away with the king. Nochtheles, the hart followit 
 so fast, that he dang baith the king and his hors to the ground. Than the king 
 kest abak his handis betuix the tin. lis of this hart, to haif savit him fra the strak 
 tliairof ; and the Imly croce slaid, incontinent, in his handis. The hart fled away 
 with great violence, and evanist in the same place quhare now springis the Rud( 
 Well. The pepyll, richt aflfrayitly, returnit to him out of all partis of the wod 
 to comfort him ef ter his trubill, and fell on kneis, devotly adoring the haly croce 
 for it was not cumin but sum hevinly providence, as we'ill apperis, for thair is ns 
 man can schaw of quhat mater it is of, metal or tre. Sone eftir, the king returnit 
 to his castel ; and in the nicht following, he was admonist, be ane vision in his 
 sleip, to big ane abbay of channonis regular in the same place quhare he gat th€ 
 croce. Als sone as lie was awalkinnit, he schew his vision to Alkwine, his con' 
 fessour ; and he na thing suspendit his gud mind, bot erar inflammit him wit] 
 maist fervent devotion thairto. The king, incontinent, send his traist servandi 
 in France and Flanderis, and broeht richt crafty masonis to big this abbay 
 syne dedicat it in the honour of this lialy croce. The croce remanitcontinewallj 
 in the said abbay, to the time of King I)avid Bruce ; quhilk was unhappely tan' 
 with it at Durame, quhare it is haldin yit in gret veneration,— Boece, Book XI" 
 cb. xvi. 
 
 It is by no means clear what Scottish prince first built a palace, properly 
 called, in the precincts of this renowned seat of sanctity. The abbey, endow: 
 by successive sovereigns and many powerful nobles with munificent gifts 
 lands and tithes, came, in process of time, to be one of the most important of thi 
 ecclesiastical corporations of Scotland ; and as early as the days of Robert Bruc< 
 parliaments were held occasionally within its buildings. We have evidence tha 
 James IV. had a royal lodging adjoining to the cloister ; but it is general! 
 agreed that the first considerable edifice for the accommodation of the royj 
 family erected here was that of James V., anno 1525, great part of which still r« 
 mains, and forms the northwestern side oi the existing palace. The mor 
 modern buildings which complete the quadrangle were erected by King Charle 
 II. The name of the old conventual church was used as the parish church of tb 
 Canongate from the period of the Reformation, until James II. claimed it fc 
 his chapel royal, and had it fitted up accordingly in a style of splendor whic 
 grievously outraged the feelings of his Presbyterian subjects. The roof of tt 
 fragment of a once magnificent church fell in in the year 1768. and it has i 
 mained ever since in a state of desolation. For fuller particulars, see the Pr 
 vincial Antiquities of Scotland [by Sir W. Scott, Miscellaneous Prose Worii 
 ia34, vol. vii]., or the Historij of Hohjroodhonse [1829]. by Mr. Charles Jlackie 
 
 The greater part of this ancient palace is now [l&3li, again occupied by 
 Majesty Charles the Tenth of France, and the rest of that illustrious faiiU 
 which, in former ages so closely connected by marriage and alliance with t 
 house of Stuart, seems to have been destined to run a similar career of misfi 
 tune. Regviescant in pace I 
 
NOTES 471 
 
 Note 15.— Bannatynk Club, p. 340 
 
 This club of which the Author of Waverley has tlie honor to be president, was 
 Instituted in February, 1833, for the purpose of printing and publishing works 
 ilhistrativo of the history, literature, and antiquities of Scotland. It continues 
 to prosper, and has already rescued from oblivion many curious materials of 
 Scottish history.— The club was dissolved in 1861. See the volume of Adversaria 
 presented in 1867 to the members by Mr. Laing, the secretary (^Laing). 
 
 '. Note 16.— Sommervillb Family, p. 338 
 
 The ancient Norman family of the Sommervilles came into this island with 
 ; A\ i 11 iam the Conqueror, and established one branch in Gloucestershire, another 
 
 I in Scotland. After the lapse of seven hundred years, the remaining possessions 
 of t liese two branches were united in the person of the late Lord Sommerville, 
 on the death of his English kinsman, the well-known author of The Chase. 
 
 INoTE 17.— Lines from Horace, p. 851 
 Horace, Sat., bk. ii. 2. The meaning will be best conveyed to the English 
 reader in Pope's imitation :— 
 
 ■. I What's property, dear Swift ? you see it alter 
 
 i ' From you to me, from me to Peter Walter, 
 
 ' Or in a mortgage prove a lawyer's share, 
 
 II Or in a jointure vanish from the heir. 
 
 Shades, that to Bacon could retreat afford. 
 
 Become the portion of a booby lord ; 
 
 And Helmsley, once proud Buckingham's delight. 
 
 Slides to a scrivener or to a city knight. 
 
 Let lands and houses have what lords they will. 
 
 Let us be flx'd, and our own masters stilL 
 
 Note 18.— Steele, the Covenanter, p. 854 
 
 * I The following extract from Swift's Life Of Creichton gives the particulars of 
 I' j the bloody scene alluded to in the text :— 
 
 lij Having drank hard one night, I [Creichton] dreamed that I had found Captain 
 * ! David Steele, a notorious rebel, in one of the five farmers' houses on a mountain 
 II ; in the shire of Clydesdale, and parish of Lismahago, within eight miles of Ham- 
 ilton, a place that I was well acquainted with. This man was head of the rebels 
 since the affair of Airs Moss, having succeeded to Hackston, who had been 
 s ■• taken, and afterward hanged, as the reader has already heard ; for. as to Robert 
 » ': Hamilton, who was their commander-in-chief at Bothwell Bridge, he appeared 
 •■ no more among them, but fled, as it was believed, to Holland. 
 - Steele, and his father before him, held a farm in the estate of Hamilton, within 
 ' two or three miles of that town. When he betook himself to arms, the farm lay 
 
 * waste, and the Duke could find no other person who would venture to take it ; 
 li) 1 whereupon his Grace sent several messages to Steele, to know the reason why 
 fi I he kept the farm waste. The Duke received no other answer than that he would 
 ■» 'keep it waste, in spite of him and the king too ; whereupon his Grace, at whose 
 jB i table I had always the honor to be a welcome guest, desired I would use my en- 
 » I aeavors to destroy that rogue, and I would oblige him for ever. 
 
 * ' To return to my story. When I awaked out of my dream, as I had done before 
 
 , In the affair of Wilson (and I desire the same apology I made in the introduction 
 
 to these Memoirs may serve for both,) I presently rose, and ordered thirty-six 
 
 dragoons to be at the place appointed by break of day. When we arrived thither, 
 
 I sent a party to each of the five farmers' houses. This villain Steele had mur- 
 
 r^ered above forty of the king's subjects in cold blood, and, as I was informed, 
 
 I had often laid snares to entrap me ; but it happened that, although he usually 
 
 kept a gang to attend him, yet at this time he had none, when he stood in the 
 
 :' greatest need. One of the party found him in one of the farmers' houses, just 
 
 : asl liappened to dream. The dragoons first searched all the rooms below with- 
 
 » out success, till two of them., hearing somebody stirring over their heads, went 
 
 up a pair of turppike stairs, Steele had put on his clothes while the search waa 
 
472 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 making below ; the chamber where he lay was called the Chamber of Depsp. 
 which is the name given to a room where the laird lies, when he comes to a ten 
 ant's house. Steele, suddenly opening the door, tired a blunderbuss down at tbe 
 two dragoons as they were coming up the stairs : but the bullets grazing against 
 the side of the turnpike, only wounded, and did not kill, them. Then Slt^ 1^ 
 violently threw himself down the stairs among them, and made towards the (.h - 
 to save his life, but lost it upon the spot ; for the dragoons who guarded i ^ 
 house despatched him with their broadswords.t I was not with the party wIj- - 
 he was killed, being at that time employed in searching at one of the other fom 
 houses, but I soon found what had happened, by hearing the noise of the shoi 
 made with the blunderbuss ; from whence I returned straight to Lanark, and 
 immediately sent one of the dragoons express to General Drummond at Ediu. 
 buTgh.—SwifVs Woi-ks, vol. xii. i^Memoirs of Captain John Creichton,) pasef 
 57-59, edit. Edinb. 1834. ^ ^ 
 
 Note 19.— Iron Rasp, p. 378 
 
 The ingenious Mr. R. Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh give the following 
 account of the forgotten rasp or risp :— 
 
 This house had a pin or risp at the door, instead of the more modern conven 
 ience, a knocker. The pin canonized [rendered interesting by the figure whic' 
 it makes] in Scottish song was formed of a small rod of iron, twisted or othei 
 wise notched, which was placed perpendicularly, starting out a little from th 
 door, bearing a small ring of the same metal, which an applicant for admittanc 
 drew rapidly up and down the nicks, so as to produce a grating sound. Somt 
 times the rod was simply stretched across the vizzying hole, a convenient apei 
 ture through which the porter could take cognizance of the person applying ; if 
 which case it acted also as a stanchion. These were almost all disused aboul 
 sixty years ago, when knockers were generally substituted as more genteel 
 But knockers at that time did not long remain in repute, though they have neve 
 been altogether superseded, rven by bells, in the Old Town. The comparativ! 
 merits of knockers and pins was for a long time a subject of doubt, and manl 
 knockers got their heads twisted off in the course of the dispute [vol. i, pp. "~ 
 235, ed. 1825.] 
 
 Note 20.— Sallsbury Crags, p. 378 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Bowls derives the name of these crags, as of the episcopal city i 
 the west of England, from the same root ; both, in his opinion, which he v€ 
 ably defends and illustrates, having been the sites of druidical temples. 
 
 Note 21.— Black Watch, p. 378 
 
 The well-known original designation of the gallant 42d Regiment. Being 
 first corps raised for the royal service in the Highlands, and allowed to ret 
 their national garb, they were thus named from the contrast which their 
 tartans furnished to the scarlet and white of the other regiments. 
 
 Note 22.— Countess op Eglinton, p. 385 
 
 Susannah Kennedy, daughter of Sir Archibald Kennedy of Cullean. Bart.. 
 Elizabeth Lesly, daughter of David Lord Newark, third wife of Alexander nil 
 Earl of Eglinton, and mother of the tenth and eleventh earls. She survived t 
 husband, who died 1729, no less than fifty- seven [one] years, and died March 17 
 in her ninety-first year. Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, published 1726, is dfl 
 icated to her. in verse, by Hamilton of Bangour. 1 
 
 The following account of this distinguished lady is taken from Boswell's £«| 
 of Johnson by Mr. Croker :— 
 
 Lady Margaret Dalrymple, only daughter of John Earl of Stair, married j 
 
 * Or chamber of state ; so called from the dais, or canopy and elevation 
 floor, which distinguished the part of old halls which was occupied by thosej 
 high rank. Hence the phrase was obliquely used to signify state in general. 
 
 t Wodrow gives a different account of this exploit. "In December this ; 
 (1686,) David Steil, in the parish of Lismahagow, was surprised in the fleldsl 
 Lieutenant Creichton, and after his surrender of himself on quarters, he wasi 
 a very little time most barbarously shot, and lies buried in the churchy;! 
 
NOTES 478 
 
 1700, to Hugh, third Earl of Loudoun. She died in 1777, aged [nearly] one hun- 
 dred. Of this venerable lady, and of the Countess of Eglintoune, whom Johnson 
 visited next day, he thus speaks in his Journey .•— '• Length of life is distributed 
 impartially to very different modes of life, ib very different climates ; and the 
 mountains have no greater examples of age and health than the Lowlands, 
 where I was introduced to two ladies of high quality, one of whom (Lady Lou- 
 doun,) in her ninety-fourth year, presided at her table with the full exercise of 
 all her powers, and the other (Lady Eglintoun) had attained her eighty-fourth 
 year, without any diminution of her vivacity, and little reason to accuse time of 
 depredation on her beauty. . . . 
 
 " Lady Eglintoune, though she was now in her eighty-fifth year, and had lived 
 in the retirement of the country for almost half a century, was still a very 
 agreeable woman. She was of the noble house of Kennedy, and had all the 
 elevation which the consciousness of such birth inspires. Her figure was ma- 
 jestic, her manners high-bred, ' her reading extensive, and her conversation 
 elegant. She had been the admiration of the gay circles of life, and the patron- 
 ess of poets. Dr. Johnson was delighted with his reception here. Her princi- 
 gles in church and state were congenial with his. She knew all his merits, and 
 ad heard much of him from her son. Earl Alexander, who loved to cultivate the 
 acquaintance of men of talents in every department. . . . 
 
 " In the course of our conversation this day it came out that Lady Eglintoune 
 was married the year before Dr. Johnson was born ; upon which she graciously 
 said to him that she might have been his mother, and that she now adopted him ; 
 and when we were going away, she embraced him, saying, ' My dear son, fare- 
 well ! ' My friend was much pleased with this day's entertainment, and owned 
 tiiat I had done well to force him out. . . . 
 
 " At Sir Alexander Dick's, from that absence of mind to which every man is at 
 times subject, I told, in a blundering manner. Lady Eglintoune's complimentary 
 adoption of Dr. Johnson as her son ; for I unfortunately stated that her ladyship 
 adopted him as her son, in consequence of her having been married the year 
 aftt'i-he was born. Dr. Johnson instantly corrected me. " Sir, don't you per- 
 ceive that you are defaming the Countess? For, supposing me to be "her son, 
 an. I that she was not married till the year after my birth, I must have been her 
 initiiral son." A young lady of quality who was present very handsomely said, 
 • :\Iight not the son have justified the fault ? ' My friend was much flattered by 
 tliis compliment, which he never forgot. When in more than ordinary spirits, 
 and talking of his journey in Scotland, he has called to me, " Boswell, what was 
 t it that the young lady of quality said of me at Sir Alexander Dick's ? ' Nobody 
 '.[ will doubt that I was happy in repeating it." 
 
 Note 23.— Earl of Winton, p. 388 
 
 The incident here alluded to is thus narrated in Nichols's Progresses of James 
 1., vol. iii. p. 306. 
 
 J I The family (of Winton) owed its first elevation to the union of Sir Christopher 
 
 ,.j Seton with a sister of King Robert Bruce. With King James VI. they acquired 
 
 great favor, who, having created his brother Earl of Dunfermline in 1599, made 
 
 i Robert, seventh Lord Seton, Earl of Wintoun in 1600. Before the King's acces- 
 
 ; sion to the English throne, his Majesty and the Queen were frequently at Seton, 
 
 ,; where the Earl ever kept a very hospitable table, at which all foreigners of quality 
 
 were entertained on their visits to Scotland. His lordship died in 1603, and was 
 
 ; j buried on the 5th of April, on the very day the King left Edinburgh for England. 
 
 i! 1 His Majesty, we are told, was pleased to rest himself at the south-west round of 
 
 : I the orchard of Seton, on the highway, till the funeral was over, that he might 
 
 ;: \ not withdraw the noble company ; and he said that he had lost a good, faithful, 
 
 ■ and loyal subject. 
 
 Note 24.— MacGregor of Glenstrae, p. 389 
 
 The 2 of Octr : (1603) Allaster MacGregor of Glanstrae tane be the laird Arkyn- 
 • I les, hot escapit againe ; bot after taken be the Earle of Argyll the 4 of 
 , ; Januarii, and brocht to Edr : the 9 of Januar : 1604, wt : 18 mae of hes friendes 
 ,. '. MacGregors. He wes convoyit to Berwick be the gaird, conform to the Earle's 
 : ; promes ; for he promesit to put him out of Scottis grund. Sua he keipit ane 
 
 Hielandman's promes, in respect he sent the gaird to convoy him out of Scottis 
 , . grund ; bot yai wer not directit to pairt wt: him, bot to fetche him bak againe 
 : I The 18 of Januar, he came at evin againe to Edinburghe ; and upone the 20 day, 
 ■ 1 he wes hangit at the crosse, and ij of his freindes and name, upone ane gallows : 
 j^ i himself being chieff, he wes hangit his awin hight above the rest of hes freindig. 
 
 "-Birrell's Diary, in Dalzell's Fragments of Scottish History, pp. 60, 61. 
 
474 WA VEELEY NOVELS 
 
 Note 25.— Highland Bridges, p. 397 
 
 This is, or was at least, a necessary accomplishment. In one of the most 
 beautiful districts of the Highlands was, not many years since, a bridge bearing 
 this startling caution, " Keep to the right side, the left being dangerous. 
 
 Note 36.— Loch Awe, p. 898 
 
 Loch Awe, upon the banks of which the scene of action took place, is thirty- 
 four miles In length. The north side is bounded by wide muirs and inconsider- 
 able hills, which occupy an extent of country from twelve to twenty miles in 
 breadth, and the whole of this space is enclosed as by a circumvallation. Upon 
 the north it is barred by Loch Eitive, on the south by Loch Awe, and on the east 
 by the deep and dreadful pass of Brandir, through which an arm of the latter 
 lake opens, afc about four miles from its eastern extremity, and discharges the 
 river Awe into the former. The pass is about three miles in length ; its east side 
 is bounded by the almost inaccessible steeps which form the base of the vast 
 and rugged mountain of Cruachan, The craigs rise in some places almost per- 
 pendicularly from the water, and for their chief extent show no space nor level 
 at their feet, but a rough and narrow edge of stony beach. Upon the whole of 
 these cliiTs grew a thick and interwoven wood of all kinds of trees, both timber, 
 dwarf, and coppice ; no track existed through the wilderness, but a winding 
 path, which sometimes crept along the precipitous height, and sometimes des- 
 cended in a straight pass along the margin of the water. Near the extremity of 
 the defile, a narrow level opened between the water and the crag ; but a great 
 part of this, as well as the preceding steeps, was formerly enveloped in a thicket, 
 which showed little faciUty to the feet of any but the martins and wild-cats. 
 Along the west side of the pass lies a wall of sheer and barren crags. From 
 behind they rise in rough, uneven, and heathy declivities, out of the wide muir 
 before mentioned, between Loch Eitive aad Loch Awe ; but in front they ter- 
 minate abruptly in the most frightful precipices, which form the whole side of 
 the pass, and descend at one fall into the water which fills its trough. At the 
 north end of this barrier, and at the termination of the pass, lies that part of the 
 cliff which is called Craiganuni ; at its foot the arm of the lake gradually con- 
 tracts its water to a very narrow space, and at length terminates at two rocks 
 called the Rocks of Brandir, which form a straight channel, something resembl- 
 ing the lock of a canal. From this outlet there is a continual descent towards 
 Loch Eitive, and from hence the river Awe pours out its current in a furious 
 stream, foaming over a bed broken with holes, and cumbered with masses of 
 granite and whinstone. 
 
 If ever there was a bridge near Craiganuni in ancient times, it must have been 
 at the Rocks of Brandir. From the days of Wallace to those of General Wade, 
 there were never passes of this kind but in places of great necessity, too narrow ^, 
 for a boat and too wide for a leap ;; even then they were but an unsafe footway j ff? 
 formed of the trunks of trees placed transversely from rock to rock, unstripped 
 of their bark, and destitute of either plank or rail. For such a structure, there 
 is no place in the neighborhood of Craiganuni but at the rocks above mentioned. 
 In the lake and on the river, the water is far too wide ; but at the strait, the 
 space is not greater than might be crossed by a tall mountain pine, and the rocks 
 on either side are formed by nature like a pier. That this point was always a 
 place of passage is rendered probable by its facility, and the use of recent times. 
 It is not long since it was the common gate of the country on either side the i 
 river and the pass : the mode of crossing is yet in the memory of people i^. 
 living, and was performed by a little currach moored on either side the water, ■J«f 
 and a stout cable fixed across the stream from bank to bank, by which the M'fe 
 passengers drew themselves across in the manner still practised in places of the I 
 same nature. It is no argument against the existence of a bridge in former MJithe 
 times, that the above method only existed in ours, rather than a passage of that Wjf"' 
 kind which would seem the more improved expedient. The contradiction is suflR- K^ 
 ciently accounted for by the decay of timber in the neighborhood. Of old. both Bj*"' 
 oaks and firs of an immense size abounded within a very inconsiderable distance ; ^pte 
 but it is now many years since the destruction of the iforests of Glen Eitive and '] 
 Glen Urcha has deprived the country of all the trees of sufficient size to 
 the strait of Brandir ; and it is probable that the currach was not introduced till(Bt H 
 the want of timber had disenabled the inhabitants of the country from maintain ^Vil 
 ing a bridge. It only further remains to be noticed that, at some distance below ^Pfki 
 the Rocks of Brandir, there was formerly a ford, which was used for cattle in^^' 
 the memory of people yet living ; from the narrowness of the passage, the force] 
 of the stream, and the broken bed of the river, it was, however, a dangerous! 
 pass, and could only be attempted with safety at leisure and by experience.— 1 
 Notes to The. Bridal of Caolchaii-n [pp. 277-279, by John Hay Allan.] 
 
 iltl 
 Btl; 
 
NOTES 475 
 
 Note 27.— Battle betwixt Bruce and Macdougal of Lorn. p. 3P9 
 
 But the King, whose dear-bought experience in war had taught him extreme 
 caution, remained in the Braes of Balquliidder till he had acquired by his spies, 
 and outskirrers a perfect knowledge of the disposition of the army of Lorn, and 
 the intention of its leader. He then divided his force into two columns, entrust- 
 ing the command of the first, in which he placed his archers and lightest armed 
 troops, to Sir James Douglas, whilst he him.self took the leading of the other, 
 which consisted principally of his knights and barons. On aii]>roai'iiiiiq- the de- 
 file. Bruce despatched Sir James Douglas by a pathway wlii.h tlie fii^my had 
 neglected to occupy, with directions to advance silently, and Kain tlic lieights 
 above and in front of the hilly ground where the men of Lorn \vi-vi- t om-ealed ; 
 and, having ascertained that this movement had been executed with success, he 
 put himself at the head of his own division, and fearlessly letl his men into the 
 defile. Here, prepared as he was for what was to take place, it was diftii-ult to 
 prevent a temporary panic, when the yell, which, to this day, invariably pre- 
 cedes the assault of the mountaineer, burst from the rugged bosom of Beii Cru- 
 achan ; and the woods which, the moment before, had waved in silence and .soli- 
 tude, gave forth their birth of steel-clad warriors, and, in an instant, became in- 
 stinct with the dreadful vitality of war. But, although appalled and checked for 
 a brief space by the suddenness of tlie assault, and the masses of rock which the 
 enemy rolled down from the precipices, Bruce, at the head of his division, pressed 
 up the side of the mountain. Whilst this party assaulted the men of Lorn with 
 the utmost fury, Sir James Douglas and his party shouted suddenly upon the 
 heights in their front, showering down their arrows upon them, and, when these 
 missiles were exhausted, attacking them with their swords and laattle-axes. The 
 consequence of such an attack, both in front and rear, was the total discomfiture 
 of the army of Lorn ; and the circumstances to which this chief had so confid- 
 ently looked forward, as rendering the destruction of Bruce almost inevitable, 
 were now turned with fatal effect against himself. His great superiority of 
 numbers cumbered and impeded his movements. Thrust, by the double as- 
 sault, and by the peculiar nature of the ground, into such narrow room as the 
 pass afforded, and driven to fury by finding themselves cut to pieces in detail, 
 without the power of resistance, the men of Lorn fled towards Loch Eitive, where 
 a bridge thrown over the Awe, and supported upon two immense rocks, known 
 by the name of the Rocks of Brandir, formed the solitary communication between 
 the side of the river where the battle took place and the country of Lorn. Their 
 object was to gain tlie bridge, which was composed entirely of wood, and, hav- 
 ing availed themselves of it in their retreat, to destroy it, and thus throw the im- 
 passable torrent of the Awe between them and their enemies. But their inten- 
 tion was instantly detected by Douglas, who, rushing down from the high 
 grounds at the head of his archers and light-armed foresters, attacked the body 
 of the mountaineers, which had occupied the bridge, and drove them from it 
 with great slaughter, so that Bruce and his division, on coming up, passed it 
 without molestation ; and, this last resource being taken from them, the army of 
 Lorn were, in a few hours, literally cut to pieces, whilst their chief, who occupied 
 Loch Eitive vvith his fleet, saw, from his ships, the discomfiture of his men, and 
 found it impossible to give them the least assistance. — [Patrick Eraser] Tytler's 
 "Life of Bruce" [in Scottish Worthies (1831-33), vol. i. 413-415]. 
 
 Note 28.— Massacre op Glencoe, p. 421. 
 
 The following succinct account of this too celebrated event may be suflacient 
 for this place :— 
 
 In the beginning of the year 1693, an action of unexanipled barbarity disgraced 
 the government of King William III. in Scotland. In the August preceding, a 
 proclamation had been issued, offering an indemnity to such insurgents as should 
 take the oaths to the king and queen, on or before the last day of December ; 
 and the chiefs of such tribes as had been in arms for James soon after took ad- 
 vantage of the proclamation. But Macdonakl of Glencoe was prevented by ac- 
 cident, rather than design, from tendering his submission within the limited 
 time. In the end of December he went to Colonel Hill, who commanded the gar- 
 rison in Fort William, to take the oaths of allegiance to the government ; and the 
 latter having furnished him with a letter to Sir Colin Campbell, sheriff of the 
 county of Argyll, directed him to repair immediately to Inverary, to make his 
 submission in a legal manner before that magistrate. But the way to Inverary 
 lay through almost impassable mountains, the season was extremely rigorous, 
 and the whole country was covered with a deep snow. So eager, however, was 
 Macdonald to take the oaths before the limited time should expire, that, though 
 the road lay within half a mile of his own house, he stopped not to visit his fam- 
 
476 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ily, and, after various obstructions, arrived at Inverary. The time had elapsed, 
 and the sheriff hesitated tr receive his submission ; but Macdonald prevailed by 
 his importunities, and even tears, in inducing that functionary to administer to 
 him the oath of allegiance, and to certify the cause of his delay. At this time Sir^ 
 John Dalrymple, afterwards Earl of Stair, being in attendance upon William aS' 
 Secretary of State for Scotland, took advantage of Macdonald's neglecting to take 
 the oaths within the time prescribed, and procured from the king a warrant off 
 military execution against that chief and his wliole clan. This was done at the 
 ^stigation of the Earl of Breadalbane, whose lands the Glencoe men had plun- 
 dered, and whose treachery to government in negotiating with the Highland clans 
 Macdonald himself had exposed. The king was accordingly persuaded that; 
 Glencoe was the main obstacle to the pacittcation of the Highlands ; and the fact 
 of the unfortunate chief's submission having been concealed, the sanguinary 
 orders for proceeding to military execution against his clan were in consequence 
 obtained. The warrant was both signed and countersigned by the king's own 
 hand, and the Secretary urged the officers who commanded in the Highlands to 
 execute their orders with the utmost rigor. Campbell of Glenlyon, a captain in 
 Argyll's regiment, and two subalterns, were ordered to repair to Glencoe on the 
 first of February with a hundred and twenty men. Campbell, being uncle to 
 young Macdonald's wife, was received by the father with all manner of friend- 
 ship and hospitality. The men were lodged at free quarters in the houses of his 
 tenants, and received the kindest entertainment. Till the 13th of the month thi 
 troops lived in the utmost harmony and familiarity with the people ; and on th( 
 very night of the massacre the officers passed the evening at cards in Mac 
 donald's house. In the night Lieutenant Lindsay, with a party of .soldiers, calle(' 
 in a friendly manner at his door, and was instantly admitted. Blacdonakl, whil 
 in the act of rising to receive his guest, was shot dead through the back with two 
 bullets. His wife had already dressed ; but she was stripped naked by the 
 soldiers, who tore the rings off her fingers with their teeth. The slaughter now 
 became general, and neither age nor infirmity was spared. Some women, in de^ 
 fending their children, were killed ; boys, imploring mercy, were shot dead by 
 officers on whose knees they hung. In one place nine persons, as they sat enjoy 
 ing themselves at table, were butchered by the soldiers. In Inverriggon, Camp 
 bell's own quarters, nine men were first bound by the soldiers, and then shot a1 
 intervals, one by one. Nearly forty persons were massacred by the troops ; anc 
 several who fled to the mountains perished by famine and the inclemency of the 
 season. Those who escaped owed their lives to a tempestuous night. Lieuten 
 ant-Colonel Hamilton, who had received the charge of the execution from Dal 
 rymple, was on his march with four hundred men, to guard all the passes front 
 the valley of Glencoe ; but he was obliged to stop by the severity of the weather 
 which proved the safety of the unfortunate clan. Next day he entered the valley 
 laid the houses in ashes, and carried away the cattle and spoil, which were divi 
 ded among the officers and soldiers.— Article " Britain," Encyclopaedia Britan 
 nica. Eighth Edition. 
 
 Note 29 — Fidelity of the Highlanders, p. 431 
 
 Of the strong, undeviating attachment of the Highlanders to the person, am 
 their deference to the will or commands, of their chiefs and superiors, tliei 
 rigid adherence to duty and principle, and their chivalrous acts of self-devotioi 
 to these in the face of danger and death, there are many instances recorded ii 
 General Stewart of Garth's interesting Sketches of the Highlander and Highla.ru 
 Regiments, which might not inaptly supply parallels to the deeds of the Roman 
 themselves, at the era when Rome was in "her glory. The following instances o 
 such are worthy of being here quoted : 
 
 In the year 1795, a serious disturbance broke out in Glasgow among the Brei 
 albane Fencibles. Several men having boon confino.l an<l throatened with coi 
 poral puni-shment, considerable discniitont and irrilaliun wiro excited amoi 
 their comrades, which increased t<i su.h vi..iciioo. that, \v\fn some men wei 
 confined in the guard-house, a great iiroiiorl i.ni c,f tlio ro-iniont rushed out 
 forcibly released the prisoners. This violation of military discipline was not 
 be passed over, and accordingly measures were immediately taken to secure t 
 ringleaders. But so many were equally concerned, that it was difficult, if m 
 impossible, to fix the crimeon any, as being more prominently guilty. And he; 
 was shown a trait of character worthy of a hotter cause, and which orii::' 
 from a feeling alive to the disgrace of a degrading punislunont. Tho soMj: 
 ing made sensible of the nature of their misocinduct, and llio o. .riso(iuont 
 sity of public example, several men voluntnrihj offered thrinsvh-is to stand trial 
 and suffer the sentence of the law as an atonement for the whole. These mei 
 were accordingly marched to Edinburgh Castle, tried, and four condemned to b 
 
NOTES 471 
 
 shot Three of them were afterwards reprieved, and the fourth, Alexander 
 Sutherland, was shot on Musselburgh aauds. . ^ ^ j- 
 
 The following semi-official account of this unfortunate misunderstandmg was 
 published at the time : — „ , ,. , » it. 
 
 " During the afternoon of Monday, when a private of the hght company of the 
 Breadaibane Fencibles, who had been confined for a military offence, was re- 
 leased by that company, and some other companies who had assembled m a 
 tumultuous manner before the guard-house, uo person whatever was hurt, and 
 no violence offered ; and however unjustifiable the proceedmgs, it ongmatednot 
 from any disrespect or ill-will to their ottlcers, but from a mistaken point of 
 honor iu a particular set of men in the battalion, who thought themselves dis- 
 graced by the impending punishment of one of their number. The men have, 
 in every respect, since that period conducted themselves with the greatest regu- 
 larity and strict subordination. The whole of the battalion seemed extremely 
 sensible of the improper conduct of such as were concerned, whatever regret 
 they might feel for the fate of the few individuals who had so readily given 
 themselves up as prisoners, to be tried for their own and others' misconduct." 
 
 On the march to Edinburgh, a circumstance occurred, the more worthy of 
 notice, as it shows a strong principle of honor and lidelity to his word and to his 
 officer in a common Highland soldier. One of the men stated to the officer com- 
 manding the party, that he knew what his fate would be, but that he had left 
 business of the utmost importance to a friend in Glasgow, which he wished to 
 transact before his death ; that, as to himself, he was fully prepared to meet his 
 fato ; but with regard to his friend, he could not die in peace unless the business 
 was settled ; and that, if the officer would suffer him to return to Glasgow, a 
 few hours there would be sufficient, and he would join him before he reached 
 Edinburgh, and march as a prisoner with the party. Tlie soldier added. "You 
 have known me since I was a child ; you know my country and kindred, and you 
 may believe I shall never bring you to any blame by a breach of the promise I 
 now make, to be with you in full time to be delivered up in the Castle." This 
 was a startling proposal to the officer, who was a judicious, humane man, and 
 knew perfectly his risk and responsibility in yielding to such an extraordinary 
 application. However, his confidence was such, that he complied with the re- 
 quest of the prisoner, who returned to Glasgow at night, settled his business, 
 and left the town before daylight to redeem his pledge. He took a long circuit 
 to avoid being seen, apprehended as a deserter, and sent back to Glasgow, as 
 probably his account of his officer's indulsrence would not have been credited. 
 In consequence of this caution, and the lengthened march through woods and 
 over hills by an unfrequented route, there was no appearance of him at the hour 
 appointed. The perplexity of the officer when he reached the neighborhood of 
 Edinburgh mav be easily imagined. He moved forward slowly indeed, but no 
 soldier appeared : and unable to delay any longer, he marched up to the Castle, 
 and as he was delivering over the prisoners, but before any report was given in, 
 Macmartin the absent soldier, rushed in among his fellow-prisoners, a'l pale 
 with anxiety and fatigue, and breathless with apprehension of the consequences 
 in which his delay might have involved his benefactor. 
 
 In whatever light the conduct of the officer (my respectable friend. Major 
 Colin Campbell) may be considered, either bv military men or others, in this 
 memorable exemplification of the characteristic principle of his countrymen, 
 fidelity to their word, it cannot but be wished that the soldier's magnanimous 
 self-devotion had been taken as an atonement for his own misconduct and that 
 of the whole, who also had made a high sacrifice, in the voluntary offer of their 
 lives for the conduct of their brother soldiers. Are these a people to be treated 
 as malefactors, without regard to their feelings and principles; and might not 
 a discipline somewhat different from the usual mode be, with advantage, applied 
 to them ?— Vol. II. pp. 413-11.5, 3d edit. 
 
 A soldier of this regiment (the Argyllshire Highlanders) deserted, and emi- 
 grated to America, where he settled. Several years after his desertion, a letter 
 was received from him, with a sum of money, for the purpose of procuring one 
 at two men to supply his place in the regiment, as the only recompense he could 
 make for "breaking his oath to his God and his allpciance to his king, which 
 preyed on his conscience in such a manner, that he had no rest night nor day." 
 
 This man had had good principles early instilh^d into his mind, and the disgrace 
 which he had been originally tauerht to believp would attach to a breach of faith 
 now operated with full effect. The soldier who desprted from the 42d Regiment 
 at Gibraltar, in 1707, exhibited the same remorse of conscience after he had vio- 
 lated his allegiance. In countries where such principles prevail, and resrnlate 
 the character of a people, the mass of the population may, on occasions of trial, 
 be reckoned on as sound and trustworthy. — Vol. II. p. 218. 
 
 The late James Menzies of Culdares, having engaged in the rebellion of 171£i 
 
478 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 and been taken at Preston, in Lancashire, was carried to London, where he was 
 tried and condemned, but afterwards reprieved. Grateful for this clemency, he 
 remained at home in 1745, but, retaining a predilection for the old cause, he sent a 
 handsome charger as a present to Prince Charles, when advancing through Eng- 
 land. The servant who led and delivered the horse was taken prisoner, and car- 
 ried to Carlisle, where he was tried and condemned. To extort a discovery of 
 the person who sent the horse, threats of immediate execution in case of refusal, 
 and olf ers of pardon on his giving information, were held out ineffectually to the 
 faithful messenger. He knew, he said, what the consequence of a disclosure 
 would be to his master, and his own life was nothing in the comparison. When 
 brought out for execution, he was again pressed to inform on his master. He 
 asked if they were serious in supposing him such a villain. If he did what they 
 desired, and forgot his master and his trust, he could not return to his native 
 country, for Glenlyon would be no home or country for him, as he would be de- 
 spised "and hunted out of the glen. Accordingly "he kept steady to his trust, 
 and was executed. This trusty servant's name was John Macnaughton, from 
 Glenlyon, in Perthshire ; he deserves to be mentioned, both on account of his in- 
 corruptible fidelity, and of his testimony to the honorable principles of the 
 people, and to their detestation of a breach of trust to a kind and honorable 
 master, however great might be the risk, or however fatal the consequences, t<p 
 the individual himself .—Vol. I, pp. 58, 53. 
 
GLOSSARr 
 
 OF 
 
 WORDS, PHRASES, AND ALLUSIONS 
 
 dboon, above 
 
 Absolute, Sir Anthony, 
 a character in Sheridan's 
 Rivals (1775) 
 
 Ad Ch-cecas kalendas, to 
 the Greek Calends (an 
 indefinite period; 
 
 Allan, Sir WilUam, Scot> 
 tish painter (1. 8:^-1050), 
 and a personal friend of 
 Sir Walter Scott 
 
 Almanzor, a character in 
 Dryden's tragedy, The 
 Conquest of Granada 
 (1670) 
 
 Amatiisand amata, lover, 
 male and female 
 
 Amourettes, love affairs, 
 intrigues 
 
 "■And !ohare treio ye I 
 gaed"}" (p. 364), from 
 C. Macklin's il/a?i of the 
 World (1781), a satire on 
 the Scots 
 
 Aneurin, a Welsh bard, 
 cele' rated the battle of 
 Cattraeth (q.v.) in a 
 poem entitled Oodo- 
 din 
 
 Angelica, ribs of the leaves 
 of dwarf gentian, can- 
 died or preserved 
 
 Appian (highway), con- 
 nected Rome with the 
 chief towns in the south 
 of Italy, was made in 
 part by Appi..s Claudius 
 Caecus in 313 B.C. 
 
 Arblast. cross-bow 
 
 Argyle's rising, in support 
 of the Duke of Mon- 
 mouth, against James 
 II. of England, in 1685 
 
 Arlechino, or Arlecchino, 
 harlequin. The harle- 
 quin of the old Italian 
 stage was a clown, or 
 jest-maker and prank- 
 player 
 
 Armorican, a native of 
 Brittany or Normandy 
 
 Assoilzie, to absolve, ac- 
 quit of sin 
 
 Aught, possession, prop- 
 erty 
 
 Auld Reekie, Old Smoky, 
 a popular name for Ed- 
 inburgh 
 
 Ave Regina Cceli, hail, 
 Queen of Heaven 1 
 
 Awen, flow of poetic in- 
 spiration 
 
 Awmous, alms 
 
 BacJcspeir, to cross-ques- 
 tion, trace back a story, 
 statement 
 
 Bail:y, the space between 
 the outer and inner walls 
 of a castle 
 
 Baillie, Joanna, author 
 of a series of Plays on 
 the Passions (1798-1836) 
 
 Banquette, a stone bench 
 running along the in- 
 side of the ramparts 
 
 Bastille, a fortress prison 
 
 Bauld, bold 
 
 Bayle's, or BayWs, a tav- 
 ern in Shakespeare 
 Square (now disap- 
 peared) near the present 
 General Post Office, Ed- 
 inburgh 
 
 Beast who laughs (p. 260), 
 the striped hyaena 
 
 Bell-the-cat, to undertake 
 a dangerous work. In 
 the reign of James III. 
 of Scotland, Archibald 
 Douglas, Earl of Angus, 
 " belled-the-cat " by put- 
 ting to death the king's 
 unworthy favorite Coch- 
 rane. See Scott's Tales 
 of a Grandfather, chap, 
 xxii. 
 
 Benedicite, bless you! 
 
 Bereford, or Bear ford. 
 Park, now George Street, 
 Edinburgh 
 
 Bestially cattle 
 470 
 
 Beverage, vioi ? elegant 
 and costly (p. 8), wine 
 
 Bezant or byzant, a gold 
 coin == 10s. to 20s., widely 
 current In the Middle 
 Ages 
 
 Bide, to endure, bear ; to 
 stay, remain 
 
 Bien, frugal, comfortable 
 
 Big, to build ; biggit, built ; 
 bigqing, a building 
 
 Birling, a boat with six or 
 eight oars, used on the 
 west coast of Scotland 
 
 Bittock, a short distance, 
 but proverbially an ex- 
 tra long distance 
 
 Blink, a moment, brief 
 space of time 
 
 Bobadil, Captain, a char- 
 acter in Ben Jonson's 
 Every Man in his Humor 
 (1598) 
 
 Bodach, a spirit, specter 
 
 Boddle, a Scotch copper 
 coin = l-6th penny Eng> 
 lish 
 
 Bodesman, one who makes 
 a bode, bid, offer to buy 
 
 Bogle, specter 
 
 Bonassus (p. 370). Com- 
 pare the French word 
 bonasse, an extremely 
 simple, almost childish, 
 person 
 
 Bonbonniire, sweetmeat- 
 box 
 
 Bon gr^, mal gre, willy 
 nilly, whether one is 
 willing or not 
 
 Borrel, rustic, rude 
 
 Bowles, Rev. Mr. (William 
 Lisle Bowles); poet and 
 antiquary, author of 
 the antiquarian work, 
 Hermes Bntannicua 
 (1828) 
 
 Brach, a dog that hunts 
 by scent 
 
 Breacan, that which is 
 variegated,t.e.the tartan 
 
180 
 
 tVAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Broumie, a gnome or 
 dwarf of supernatural 
 character 
 
 Broion's Sqtiare, in Edin- 
 burgh. See Redgaunt- 
 let. Note 10, p. 435 
 
 Cader-Idris, meaning the 
 " chair of Idris," a moun- 
 tain about 3000 feet high 
 in North Wales 
 
 Cairleon. or Caerleon, on 
 the Usk in Monmouth- 
 shire, closely associated 
 with the history of King 
 Arthur 
 
 Canceller, to turn sud- 
 denly on the wing before 
 striking 
 
 Canny, safe, lucky 
 
 Carcanet, a jeweled neck- 
 lace 
 
 Carhne, an old woman 
 
 Carritch, the catechism 
 
 Carthusian silence. The 
 monks of the Carthusian 
 order were bound to pre- 
 serve almost unbroken 
 silence 
 
 Cateran, a Highland rob- 
 ber 
 
 Cattraeth, a battle fought 
 In 603 A.D. between the 
 Britons of Strathclyde 
 (southwest of Scotland) 
 and the Saxons, cele- 
 brated by Aueurin (q.v.) 
 
 Chandos, Jchn, a distin- 
 guished soldier and fol- 
 lower of Edward the 
 Black Prince, died in 
 
 isro 
 
 Chap2:>e, a large military 
 cloak 
 
 Chappit, struck 
 
 Chasse - cafe, more cor- 
 rectly, pousse - cafe, a 
 small glass of brandy or 
 liquor taken after coffee 
 
 Cheir, (riotous), cheer, 
 entertainment 
 
 Chere exquise, exquisite 
 cheer, fare 
 
 Chield, fellow 
 
 Cistercians, a branch or 
 offshoot from the Bene- 
 dictines ; they aimed at 
 a stricter observance of 
 their common rules than 
 the mother order 
 
 Clachan. hamlet 
 
 Clack, the clapper of a 
 mill ; clack-mill, a wind- 
 mill rattle for frighten- 
 ing birds 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, Edward 
 Hyde, author of History 
 of the Rebellion in Eng- 
 land (1704-7) 
 
 Cloudberry, is not scarlet 
 (p. 41,^), hut of a pale 
 orange color, and in ap- 
 
 pearance resembles a 
 large raspberry 
 
 Cnicht, a servant, follower 
 
 Cockade, white. See White 
 cockade 
 
 Cockburn. Mr., afterwards 
 Lord Cockburn (1779- 
 1854), took a warm in- 
 terest in preserving the 
 natural beauties of Ed- 
 inburgh 
 
 Coistrel, an inferior 
 groom, base varlet, 
 knave 
 
 Coliir.e, or Columvy, Gas 
 tie of, Colwyn Castle in 
 Radnorshire, has now 
 almost entirely disap- 
 peared 
 
 Comperit, summoned to 
 attend court 
 
 Comus, the god of revelry, 
 in ancient Greek myth- 
 ology 
 
 Confessor, royal and holy. 
 King Edward the Con- 
 fessor 
 
 Conjuro vos, etc. (p. 68), I 
 conjure you, spirits of 
 evil, great and small 
 
 Corehouse Linn, a water- 
 fall in the Clyde, about 
 2 miles above Lanark 
 
 Cornage, the obligation 
 to blow a horn (cornu) 
 on the approach of an 
 enemy 
 
 Cnrnhifl. on the Tweed, 
 2 miles from Coldstream 
 
 Coronach, the Highland 
 lament for the dead 
 
 Corps de garde, the guards 
 
 Corso, a wide, straight 
 street ia Italian towns 
 
 Cottar, a peasant or cot- 
 tager living on a farm 
 
 Couchee, a levee or audi- 
 ence held just before re- 
 tiring to sleep 
 
 Counter, hunt. See Hunt 
 counter 
 
 Crack, gossip 
 
 Crags, presumably Salis- 
 bury Crags, a part of 
 the mountainous mass 
 of Arthur's Seat, over- 
 looking the Canongate. 
 See Note 20, p. 478 
 
 Cramer, a small merchant, 
 chapman 
 
 Creagh, a cattle - lifting 
 raid, foray 
 
 Cretan wa r /• m r, pr obabl y 
 Minos the Younger, king 
 of Crete, who demanded 
 the human tribute from 
 Athens for the Minotaur 
 
 Croce, cross 
 
 Crogan, a somewhat con- 
 tumelious epithet ap- 
 plied by the Welsh to 
 the English 
 
 Crush a cup, drink a cup 
 of wine, perhaps from 
 the practice of crushing 
 grapes into a cup in wine 
 countries. Comp. the 
 phrase " crack a bottle " 
 
 Criv, or cwrw, ale, beer 
 
 Curatio est canonica, non 
 coacta, the cure is af 
 fected by following the 
 rules of art, not by using 
 violence 
 
 Carch, a kerchief for cov- 
 ering the head 
 
 Currach. or curragh, a 
 small skiff, consisting of 
 a slight framework cov- 
 ered with hide or canvas 
 
 Cymmorodion, a Welsh 
 society for promoting 
 the native literature and 
 arts, re - established in 
 1877 
 
 Cyprus, a thin, transpar- 
 ent kind of crape 
 
 Dahnatique, a long eccle- 
 siastical robe with wide 
 sleeves 
 
 Dang, knocked down, 
 struck violently 
 
 Deheuburth, the old Brit- 
 ish name for South 
 Wales 
 
 Der alter Herr ist verriickt, 
 the old lord is frantic 
 
 Dermid. sons of, the clan 
 Campbell 
 
 Destrier, a steed, war- 
 horse 
 
 Deus vobiscum, God be 
 with you 
 
 Diapre, diapered, varie- 
 gated—a heraldic term 
 
 Doch-an-dorroch, the part- 
 ing-cup 
 
 Doddered, overgrown with 
 parasitic plants 
 
 Doe, John, and Richard 
 Roe, the fictitious claim- 
 ant and defendant in an 
 old English law process 
 (ejectment) foi recover- 
 ing possession of land 
 
 Doer, agent, attorney—a 
 Scots law term 
 
 Dole, sorro;^' 
 
 Door-cheek, the door-post 
 
 Do veniam, I give pardon 
 or leave 
 
 Dun, a fortified hill 
 
 Dunlap cheese, made at 
 Dunlop, a village on the 
 borders of Ayrshire and 
 Renfrewshire 
 
 Durame, Durham 
 
 Eathe, easy 
 
 Edgeworthstown, young 
 ladies of, the family of 
 which Maxia Edgewortb 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 481 
 
 the novelist, was the 
 briglitest ornament 
 
 Elf land, fairyland 
 
 Elf-stricken, bewitched 
 
 Empress - Queen, Maria 
 Theresa, Empress of 
 Austria, Queen of Hun- 
 gary 
 
 En bagatelle, as a trifling 
 matter 
 
 Epic poem, receipt for 
 making. See Pope's 
 paper in The Guardian, 
 No 78 
 
 Erar, rather, sooner 
 
 Es spuckt, specters are 
 abroad 
 
 Ethnic, heathen, not 
 Christian 
 
 Ettrick Shepherd, James 
 Hogg, a Scottish poet 
 (1770-1835) 
 
 Eudorchawg, a chain of 
 twisted gold links, a 
 mark of chieftainship 
 amongst the Welsh 
 
 Evened, compared, low- 
 ered 
 
 Ex capite lecti, from the 
 head of the bed 
 
 Ex cathedra, from the 
 chair 
 
 Fablicmix, tales in verse, 
 peculiar to France, 12th 
 to 14th century, and 
 generally satirical in 
 character 
 
 Falkirk, where Prince 
 Charles's Highlanders 
 defeated General Haw- 
 ley in 1746 
 
 Fash trouble 
 
 Fey, predestined to death, 
 doomed 
 
 Fiangailles, solemn be- 
 trothal 
 
 Fion, Fingal, the hero of 
 Macpherson's Ossian 
 
 Flam inian (highway), con- 
 nected Rome with Ri- 
 mini on the Adriatic, was 
 made by C. Flaminius in 
 
 Fleam, a kind of lancet 
 Fleech, to flatter, cajole 
 Flemings in Pembroke- 
 shire. See Pembroke- 
 shire, Flemings in 
 Fletcher of Salton, one of 
 the most accomplished 
 Scotsmen of his time, a 
 supporter of Monmouth 
 in 1685, and an ardent 
 politician 
 Foire. a fair 
 
 Fontenoy. near Tournai, 
 in Belgium, where the 
 Allies under the Duke 
 of Cumberland were de- 
 leated by the French 
 
 under Marshal Saxe in 
 1745 
 
 Forbears, ancestors 
 
 Forthink, to repent of, re- 
 gret 
 
 Fortune's, a tavern in Old 
 Stanip Office Close, off 
 the High Street, Edin- 
 burgh 
 
 Frampal, unruly 
 
 Franklin, a freeholder, 
 yeoman 
 
 Fi-ay, to frighten 
 
 Prayings, peelings of a 
 deer's horn 
 
 Frederick of Prussia, sur- 
 named the " Great," 
 king of Prussia (1740- 
 1786) 
 
 Ganging back, losing 
 money 
 
 Garde Doloureuse, the 
 castle of sorrow or 
 mourning 
 
 Gart, caused, made 
 
 Gate, way road, manner 
 
 Gaud, an ornament, trin- 
 ket 
 
 Gear, business, affair ; 
 property, goods 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, an 
 English chronicler or 
 historian of the 12th 
 century 
 
 Gillian of Croydon, should 
 be Marian, if the old 
 story of Grim the Collier 
 of Croydon is referred to 
 
 Giraldus de Barri, or Gi- 
 raldus Cambrensis, a 
 Welsh ecclesiastic and 
 historian of the reign of 
 Henry II. 
 
 Glenalvon, a reference to 
 John Home's tragedy of 
 Douglas (1756) 
 
 Glengarry, Macdonnell of, 
 a supporter of Prince 
 Charles in 1745 
 
 Glenlyon, Captain Camp- 
 bell of, who commanded 
 the party that perpe- 
 trated the Massacre of 
 Glencoe 
 
 Glenshee, in the northeast 
 of Perthshire 
 
 Gloucester (p. 276), no 
 doubt the half-brother 
 of Matilda and uncle of 
 Henry II. is meant, al- 
 though he died in 1147, 
 more than forty years 
 before the events of this 
 story 
 
 Green Man, the title of a 
 comedy, by one Jones, 
 produced at the Hay- 
 market Theater, Lon- 
 don, in 1818, in which 
 Daniel Terry acted " Mr. 
 Green " 
 
 Greishogh, a glowing em- 
 ber 
 
 Qreiv, a greyhound 
 
 Groningen, a town in the 
 north of Holland 
 
 Guardian, the periodical 
 written by Steele, Addi- 
 son, etc. (1713) 
 
 Guidon, a small flag or 
 standard 
 
 Guilder, a Dutch florin =- 
 Is. 8d. 
 
 Gwentland, correspond- 
 to the south-east parts 
 of Wales 
 
 Gwydir, or Gwedir, Fam- 
 ily. See History of the 
 Gwydir Family 
 
 Gyre-carlin, a witch 
 
 Habergeon, a short coat of 
 mail without sleeves 
 
 " Had you but seen,'" etc. 
 (p. 401), inscribed on an 
 obelisk near Fort Wil- 
 liam. See Captain E. 
 Burt's Letters from the 
 North of Scotland, Let- 
 ter xxvi. 
 
 Hcec nos novimus esse 
 ■nihil, this we understood 
 to be nothing 
 
 Haggard, an untrained or 
 refractory hawk 
 
 Hamilton of Bavgour, 
 William, Scottish Jacob- 
 ite poet (1704-1754) 
 
 Harley, Fdtrard, second 
 Earl of Oxford, the pat- 
 ron of Prior, Pope, and 
 other writers of his day 
 (1689-1741 ) 
 
 Hengisi. See Horsa 
 
 Heresy of the mountain- 
 eers. See Mountaineers, 
 heresy of 
 
 Herr Keller -master, Mr. 
 Cellarer. See Keller- 
 master 
 
 Hinc nice lachrymce, hence 
 these tears, that's where 
 the shoe pinches 
 
 Hippocras, wine seasoned 
 with spices 
 
 Hippocrates, one of the 
 most celebrated physi- 
 cians of the ancien< 
 Greeks, lived in the 5th 
 century B.C. 
 
 History of the Gv-ydir 
 Family, by Sir John 
 Wynne (1770) 
 
 Home, John, Scottish 
 pastor and dramatist 
 (172!3-1808) 
 
 Horsa, the brother of 
 Hengist, who led the 
 Saxons when they in- 
 vaded England in the 
 5th century 
 
 Eoundsfoot, or hundtfott. 
 
WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 a mean scoundrel, vil- 
 lain 
 
 Hoivell Dha. Howel the 
 Gtood, king of Wales dur- 
 ing the first half of the 
 10th century 
 
 Hunt counter, to run back- 
 wards on the scent, in- 
 stead of following it up 
 
 Hydromel, a drink made 
 of honey, diluted with 
 water 
 
 '•I care not." etc. (p. 371), 
 from Ben Jonson, Every 
 Man in his Humor, Act 
 i. sc. 4 
 
 Iconoclast, a religious sect 
 of the Eastern (Roman) 
 Empire, in the 8th cent- 
 ury, specially opposed 
 to the use of sacred im- 
 ages 
 
 J7fc, each 
 
 Inchaffray, a ruined ab- 
 bey, about 8 miles west 
 of Perth 
 
 Infare. or infair, an enter- 
 tainment given to cele- 
 brate entering into a 
 new house ; a wedding 
 reception 
 
 Inqxiisitio post mortem, 
 the inquiry made as to 
 the cause of death 
 
 In terrorem, as a warning, 
 deterrent to 
 
 Inundation, great. Flan- 
 ders was inundated in 
 1100 or 1108, and Holland 
 in 1170 and 1173 ; on this 
 last occasion, to which 
 Rose Flammock may be 
 supposed to refer (p. 66), 
 the Zuyder Zee was 
 greatly enlarged 
 
 Ipsa corpora, the very 
 pieces 
 
 Jameson, or Jamesone, 
 George, a portrait- 
 painter of the 17th cent- 
 ury, sometimes called 
 " the Scottish Van 
 Dyke " 
 
 Jangler, an idls talker 
 
 Jenkins, Henry, reputed 
 to have been 169 years 
 old at the time of his 
 death in 1670 
 
 Jerfalcon, or gyrfalcon, 
 the noble falcon used for 
 hawking 
 
 Jimply, . carcely 
 
 Jongleric, jugglei-y 
 
 Judas Mi . ccabceiis, a patri- 
 otic priest of the Jews, 
 who encieavored to rouse 
 his ppoi le against their 
 conquer'^rs, the kings of 
 Syria, in the 2d century 
 B.a See " First Book of 
 
 Maccabees," chaps, iii.- 
 ix., in The Apocrypha 
 
 Kail-pot, cooking-pot 
 
 Kaim of Urie, or Ury, 
 near Stonehaven, in Kin- 
 cardineshire 
 
 Kain, a tax payable to the 
 landlord in kind, such as 
 I poultry, eggs, etc. 
 I Kaiser, emperor 
 
 Kale-yard, vegetable gar- 
 den 
 
 Kammerer, the head of 
 any domestic depart- 
 ment in a large house- 
 hold 
 
 Keller-master, more cor- 
 rectly kellermeister, cel- 
 larer, butler 
 
 Kennel, gutter 
 
 Kenneth, children of, the 
 clan Mackenzie 
 
 Kestril, or kestrel, an in- 
 ferior kind of hawk — a 
 term of contempt 
 
 Kidron and Shimei. See 
 1 Kings ii. 37 
 
 King Somebody (p. 282), 
 Nebuchadnezzar, king of 
 Babylon 
 
 Kintail, the headquarters 
 of the Mackenzie clan in 
 the south-west of Ross- 
 shire 
 
 Kirkcaldy, in Fifeshire, is 
 called the " long town," 
 because it stretches 4 
 miles along the coast 
 
 Kistvaen, a monumental 
 arrangement of stones 
 marking the burial- 
 place of an ancient Brit- 
 ish chief 
 
 Knight of the Swayi, the 
 hero of the French medi- 
 aeval romance. The His- 
 tory of Helyas, Knight of 
 the Swan 
 
 Ladykirk, on the Tweed, 
 6 miles from Cold-stream 
 
 Lai, a short legendary tale 
 in verse, song, lay 
 
 Langside, a suburb of 
 Glasgow, where Queen 
 Mary's forces were de- 
 feated by those of the 
 Regent Murray on 13th 
 May 1568. See the ac- 
 count in T)ie Abbot, 
 chap, xxxvii. 
 
 Laputa, sage of, an allu- 
 sion to Swift's Oulliver's 
 Travels, "Voyage to La- 
 puta," chap. V. 
 
 Latten, a kind of brass or 
 bronze 
 
 Lauderdale, Duchess of. 
 Lady Dysart, the .second 
 wife or John Duke of 
 Lauderdale, in Charles 
 
 II. 's relgo, an ambitious 
 
 and extravagant woman 
 
 Lawing, an inn reckoning 
 
 Legate a latere, an am- 
 bassador of the Pope of 
 the highest rank 
 
 Lesouris, grazing- 
 
 grounds, pastures 
 
 Lewis, Lord, i.e. Gordon, 
 son of the second Duke 
 of Gordon, supported 
 Prince Charles in 1745 
 
 Lewis's History. The His- 
 tory of Great Britain, 
 by John Lewis (1729) 
 
 Limbo Lake, hades, the in- 
 fernal or lower world 
 
 Lithe-alos, mild but good 
 Saxon ale 
 
 Llhuyd, or Lhuud, Ed- 
 ward, a Welsh anti- 
 quary, author of Archce- 
 ologia Britannica (1707), 
 a learned philological 
 work 
 
 Locluiber axe, a sort of 
 halberd, a bill-like blade 
 and a hook, both at one 
 end of a long shaft 
 
 Lochiel, Cameron of, a 
 supporter of Prince 
 Charles in 1745 
 
 Lollard, a religious sect 
 in England, in the 14th 
 century, who were op- 
 posed to the use of sa- 
 cred images 
 
 Lombard, a merchant or 
 banker from one of the 
 North Italian cities ; 
 these so-called Lon- 
 bards were very active 
 traders from the 12th to 
 the 14th century 
 
 Looten, let, perniitted 
 
 Lounger, the periodical 
 written by Macke»zie, 
 Craig, Abercromby, and 
 others (1785-87) 
 
 Lower Empire, the Byzan- 
 tine, Greek, or Eastern 
 (Roman) Empire 
 
 Luckie, a title of respect 
 given to old women in 
 Scotland 
 
 Z,Mrda?ie, worthless, stupid 
 
 Lusignan, a character in 
 Aaron Hill's Zara (1736), 
 an adaptation of Vol- 
 taire's Zaire 
 
 MacCallan Mhor, the Earl 
 (Duke) of Argyle, the 
 head of the clan Camp- 
 bell 
 
 Macdhonuil Dhu or,Duibh, 
 the patronymic of the 
 clan Cameron 
 
 Mackenzie, Henry, author 
 of The Man of Feeling 
 (17n) 
 
 Madifiy 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 48S 
 
 been brought to surren- 
 der 
 
 Mains, the home farm and 
 its buildings 
 
 MaitlandyWilUam, author 
 of Hisiory of Edinburgh 
 (1753) and other works 
 
 Malvolio, a character in 
 Shakespeare's Twelfth 
 Night 
 
 Man. Reginald of. See 
 Reginald of Man 
 
 Manchet, a small loaf of 
 fine white bread 
 
 Mandeuille, Sir John, a 
 reputed traveler of the 
 14th century, who re- 
 corded astonishing mar- 
 vels ; but he really 
 copied most of his book 
 from other sources 
 (Friar Odoric, etc ), and 
 so is doubly an unvera- 
 cious narrator 
 
 Mandrin, Louis, cele- 
 brated smuggler and 
 bandit of the south of 
 France, broken on the 
 wheel at Valence in 1755 
 
 Mangonel, an engine for 
 throwing huge stones 
 
 Mara, in ancient Norse 
 mythology, the night- 
 mare 
 
 Marry guep, i.e. " marry 
 go up "—an expression 
 of contempt 
 
 Mathrnvel, or Mathrafal, 
 a district of Montgom- 
 eryshire 
 
 Maturin, Charles BoheH, 
 author of a tragedy, 
 Bertram (1816) 
 
 Maugre, in spite of 
 
 Maun, must 
 
 Medicum. physician 
 
 Medois, meadows 
 
 Meister Keller - master. 
 Master Cellarer. See 
 Keller-master 
 
 Menf<truum,, a fluid sub- 
 stance that acts as a 
 solvent 
 
 Mezentius, an allusion to 
 Virgil's Mneid, Bk. viii. 
 485 
 
 Mezzo termini, half -meas- 
 ures 
 
 Minivair, or miniver, a 
 mixed or spotted fur, 
 used for trimmings, in 
 the Middle Ages 
 
 Mirror, the periodical 
 written by Mackenzie, 
 Craig, Abercromby, and 
 others (1179-1780) 
 
 Miserere me, Domine, 
 Lord, have mercy upon 
 
 Mithridnte. an antidote 
 against poison. Mithri- 
 dates, kmg of Poutus, 
 
 was celebrated for his 
 knowledge of poisons 
 and their antidotes 
 
 Mizzles, measles 
 
 Moliire's recipe, an allu- 
 sion to a legend that the 
 comedy - writer Moli6re 
 read his plays in MS. to 
 an old woman to whose 
 judgment and opinion 
 he attached great value 
 
 Monmouth, Geoffrey of. 
 See Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth 
 
 Morbus sonticus, a serious 
 disease, affording a valid 
 legal excuse for absence 
 
 Moringer, a family name. 
 The use of the article 
 " the " before Moringer 
 conforms to a German 
 practice (or habit) of 
 speaking and writing 
 
 Mort, the flourish of the 
 trumpet that intimates 
 the death of the game 
 
 Mortier, a knight's bon- 
 net, made of velvet 
 
 Moss, a marshy, boggy 
 place 
 
 Mountaineers, heresy of 
 the, most probably the 
 Waldenses, who dwelt 
 amongst the Alps of 
 Piedmont and Provence, 
 though their movement 
 did not originate until 
 late in the l5th century 
 
 Murray, Will, manager of 
 the Theater- Royal, Ed- 
 inburgh. See Appendix, 
 p. 465 
 
 Muscadine,a, sweet,strong 
 Italian wine 
 
 Mystery, a sort of religious 
 play or drama of the 
 Middle Ages 
 
 Nainsell, own self 
 
 Najara, or rather Navar- 
 ette, fought between Ed- 
 ward the Black Prince 
 and Henry de Trastam- 
 are of Castile in 1367 
 
 Nakei; a kmd of kettle- 
 drum 
 
 Nares, nostrils 
 
 Netherboiv, an old city 
 gate of Edinburgh, 
 standing across the 
 High Street half-way 
 between Holyrood and 
 St. Giles's 
 
 Nominis unilrra, under the 
 shelter of the name 
 
 " Non audet,'" etc. (p. 156), 
 no one dares to give who 
 has not studied ; physi- 
 cians prescribe medi- 
 cines and artifleers la- 
 bor at their own craft. 
 
 Quoted from Horace, 
 Epistles, Bk. ii. 1, 115 
 
 Non sum qualis eram, 1 
 am not wnat I once was 
 
 Nor' Loch, a deep depres- 
 sion below the Castle of 
 Edinburgh, where the 
 Princes Street Gardens 
 now are, was " im- 
 proved " in 1763, and 
 again through an Act of 
 Parliament obtained in 
 1816 
 
 Norval, a reference to 
 John Home's tragedy of 
 Douglas (1756) 
 
 Nym, Corporal, in Shake- 
 speare's Merry Wives of 
 Windsor 
 
 Odor lucri, the savor of 
 gain 
 
 CEdipus, son of the king 
 of Thebes (Greece), 
 killed his own father and 
 committed incest with 
 his mother, not knowing 
 either of them 
 
 Ogilvy, Hon. Mrg. Colonel, 
 a lady who " finished 
 off " the education of 
 young ladies, amongst 
 others Scott's mother 
 
 Ogleby, Lord, a character 
 in Clandestine Marriage 
 (1766), by Garrick and 
 Coleman 
 
 ''''Omni membrorum 
 dnmno," etc. (p. 335), 
 with the loss of all his 
 members, and worse, 
 the loss of mind, which 
 prevents him from rec- 
 ognizing either the 
 names of his servants or 
 the faces of his friends. 
 From Juvenal, Satires, 
 
 Orestes, slew his mother, 
 who had murdered his 
 father Agamemnon, for 
 which he was seized with 
 madness and haunted by 
 the Furies 
 
 Outskiri-er, outscourer, 
 scout 
 
 Owsen, oxen 
 
 " Pah, an ounce of civet," 
 etc. (p. 365), from Lear. 
 Act iv. sc. 6 
 
 Pantler, the servant who 
 had charge of the bread 
 
 Par amours, in illicit love, 
 for love's sake 
 
 Paritor, the summoner of 
 an ecclesiastical court 
 
 Parsonage, money paid 
 for the support of a par- 
 son, the greater tithes 
 
 Partridge, a character in 
 
484 
 
 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Fielding's novel, Tom 
 Jones (174'.)) 
 
 Payni7n, pagan, heathen 
 
 Pembrokeshire, Flemings I 
 in, colonies of the people i 
 were settled in that ! 
 county by both Henry I. ! 
 and Henry II. of England 
 
 Pendicle, appendage, de- 
 pendency 
 
 Pennonceile, a small pen- 
 non or streamer fixed to 
 a spear 
 
 Per ambages, by ambigu- 
 ous methods 
 
 Peri Bathous, or in full 
 Martinus Scriblerus, 
 Peri Bathous, or the Art 
 of Sinking in Poetry, 
 chap, xi., by Pope and 
 others 
 
 Persona standi in judicio, 
 legal status, recognition 
 and i-esponsibility 
 
 Perth, Duke of, of the 
 Drummoud family, a 
 supporter of Prince 
 Charles in 1745 
 
 Periinax, Sir. See Sir 
 Pertinax 
 
 Pigment, highly - spiced 
 wme sweetened with 
 honey 
 
 PitscoHie, Robert Lindsay 
 of, author of Chronicles 
 of Scotland (down to 
 15G5) 
 
 Placket, a pocket 
 
 Pochay, a post-chaise 
 
 Poet (on General Wade's 
 roads, p. 309), Captain 
 Burt, author of Letters 
 from the North of Scot- 
 land (17.5'1), was believed 
 to be of Irish origin 
 
 Povinragrains. See Guy 
 Mannering, chap, xxxvi. 
 p. 246 
 
 Pompey in MEASURE FOR 
 Meas^VRE. in Act iii. so. 
 2. Pompey is the name 
 of the clown 
 
 Porte cochere, the carriage 
 gate and entrance 
 
 Pottle, a two-quart mea- 
 sure, a large tankard 
 
 Powell, David, translated 
 into English Caradoc's 
 (Welsh) History of 
 Wales (1774) 
 
 Pou-ys Castle, the seat, not 
 of the Duke of Beaufort, 
 but of the Earl of Powis ; 
 
 Poirys Land, a former 
 kingdom in the south of 
 Wales 
 
 Preses, or presses, the 
 president, chairman 
 
 Preston, or Prestnnpans, 
 where Prince Charles's 
 Highlanders defeated 
 General Cope in 1745 
 
 Prior. Matthew, English 
 poet (1604-1721), author 
 of Henry and Emmcu, 
 etc. 
 
 Propalc, to publish, dis- 
 close 
 
 Prospero, a character in 
 Shakespeare's Tempest 
 
 Ptolemais, Acre, or St. 
 Jean d'Acre, on the 
 coast of Syria. There 
 Archbishop Baldwin 
 died in 1190 ; he left his 
 private property to be 
 expended for the recov- 
 ery of Palestine from 
 the Saracens 
 
 Quaigh, a small drinking- 
 cup 
 
 Quarrel, a square-headed 
 bolt hurled from a mili- 
 tary engine 
 ?uhen, when 
 uhilk, which 
 
 Qui jurat, etc. (p. 56), he 
 who sweareth to his 
 neighbor and deceiveth 
 him not 
 
 Quis habitabit, etc. (p. 56), 
 Who shall sojourn in 
 Thy tabernacle, who 
 shall dwell in Thy holy 
 hiU? 
 
 Rachis, or raches, dogs 
 that hunt by scent 
 
 Rambler, the periodical 
 conducted and written 
 (17.50-52) by Dr. Johnson 
 
 Ramillies O'-ig), ended in 
 a long plait, which had 
 a large bow of ribbon at 
 the top and a smaller one 
 at the bottom 
 
 Randolph, Lady (p. 404), 
 a character in John 
 Home's tragedy, Doug- 
 las (1756) 
 
 Rappee, a strong kind of 
 snuff 
 
 Rascaille, base, ignoble 
 
 Ratten, a rat 
 
 Receipt for making epic 
 poem. See Epic poem, 
 etc. 
 
 Reginald of Man. this 
 king, a descendant of 
 the Norse chief, Goddard 
 Crovan, mentioned in 
 Pevcril of the Peak, 
 reigned forty years, 
 from 1187 
 
 Reiving, pillaging 
 
 Renyeis, reins 
 
 Requiescant in pace, peace 
 be to their ashes 
 
 Resetting, giving shelter 
 to persons pro.scribed 
 by, or obnoxious to, the 
 law 
 
 Reveche, tart, crabbed 
 
 Riding of the Scottiih 
 
 Farliament, the formal 
 opening of it by a 
 mounted procession of 
 high dignitaries and con- 
 stituent members. The 
 last riding, marked by 
 unusual pomp, took 
 place on 6th May 1703 
 I Rigging-tree, the principal 
 , beam in the roof 
 j Roast, rule the (p. 278). a 
 less common form of the 
 I saying " rule the roost " 
 
 Roe, Richard. See Doe, 
 John, etc. 
 
 Rote, a small lute, the 
 strings of which were 
 played by turning a 
 wheel 
 
 Rowing, rocking, rolling 
 
 Rudel, Geoffrey, a Gascon 
 troubadour of the 12th 
 century, who is said to 
 have died for love of the 
 Countess of Tripoli (in 
 Syria) 
 
 Rus in urbe, the country 
 in the midst of the towu 
 
 Sacring bell, the bell rung 
 at the elevation of the 
 host in high mass 
 
 Sain, to pray f or a bless- 
 sing on, bless 
 
 St. Andrews, the seat of a 
 university in Fif eshire 
 
 St. Clemenrs day, 23d No- 
 vember, the festival of 
 St. Clement the Pope 
 
 St. Dunstan's clock, fig^tres 
 on (p. xxiii.), two half- 
 clad giants, armed with 
 clubs, with which they 
 struck the quarters. St. 
 Dunstan's was in Fleet 
 Street, London 
 
 St. Hubert, the patron 
 saint of those who follow 
 the chase. See Quentin 
 Duru-nrd. Note 4, p. 435 
 
 St. Martin's tide, 11th No- 
 vember 
 
 Sarsnet, or sarsenet, a 
 kind of tliin, soft woven 
 silk 
 
 Sassenach, Saxon, i.e. 
 Lowland Scotch or Eng- 
 lish 
 
 Satis est, mi fill, enough, 
 my son 
 
 Scandalum magnatum, an 
 offence against those in 
 authority 
 
 Schelm, rascal, scoundrel 
 
 Scooroora, or Scui-uran, 
 a conspicuous mountain 
 overlooking Glenshiel, in 
 the extreme south-west 
 of Ross-shire 
 
 Scottish Parliament, rid 
 ing of. See Riding, etc 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 185 
 
 Sederunt, a meeting' 
 Sennachie, or seannachie, 
 a Highland chronicler or 
 
 Seiver, the officer who had 
 charge of the viands at a 
 feast, and provided wa- 
 ter for the guests to 
 wash their fingers with 
 
 Shairman, chairman, por- 
 ter to carry a sedan 
 chair, in old Edinburgh 
 generally Highlanders 
 
 Shieling, a Highland 
 hut 
 
 Shimei and Kidron. See 
 1 Kings ii. 37 
 
 Sic itur ad astra, this is 
 the path to heaven 
 
 Sidier roy, the red soldier, 
 a private of the English 
 army 
 
 Sir Pertinax, i.e. Sir Per- 
 tinax MacSycophant, in 
 Macklin's Man of the 
 World (1781) 
 
 Sir Tristrem, Tristram, 
 or Tristan, one of the 
 knights of King Arthur's 
 Round Table, nephew of 
 King Mark of Cornwall, 
 and a famous hunter 
 
 Skaithis, scathes, hurts, 
 harm 
 
 Skirl, to screech, creak 
 
 Slaid. slid ; or perhaps 
 staid, remained behind 
 
 Snood, a fillet or ribbon to 
 bind the hair, worn by 
 unmarried young 
 women in Scotland 
 
 Societas mater discordiar- 
 um. partnership is the 
 mother of discord 
 
 Soldan, sultan, particu- 
 larly Saladin. the enemy 
 of the Crusader 
 
 Spectator, the periodical 
 written by Addison, 
 Steele, etc. (1711-1712) 
 
 Spoilt oon, a sort of half- 
 pike carried by certain 
 officers in the British 
 army 
 
 Sporran, or sporran mol- 
 lach, the goat-skin pouch 
 worn by Highlanders 
 suspended from the 
 waist 
 
 fpringald, a youth 
 taill, the main body of 
 the hunting-party 
 
 Stewart. John Roy, a sup- 
 porter of Prince Charles 
 in 1745 
 
 Stilts (of a plough), 
 handles 
 
 Stirk, a young bullock 
 
 Strath, a valley 
 
 Sub vexillo, etc. (p. 342), 
 under the royal stand- 
 ard in the battle near 
 
 Branxton, i.e. Flodden 
 Field 
 
 Surquedry, self-impor- 
 tance, assumption, arro- 
 gance 
 
 Susannah (chaste). See 
 in The Apocrypha the 
 book entitled " The His- 
 tory of Susanna" 
 
 Swan, Knight of. See 
 Knight of tlie Swan 
 
 Tabatiere, a snuff-box 
 
 Tacksman, a higher class 
 of tenant 
 
 Taliessin, one of the most 
 renowned of the ancient 
 Welsh bards 
 
 Tanridor, or toreador, a 
 Spanish bull-fighter, es- 
 pecially one who fights 
 on horseback 
 
 Taymouth Castle, near the 
 north end of Loch Tay 
 in Perthshire, the seat 
 of the Earl of Breadal- 
 bane 
 
 Teedling, humming 
 
 Teinds, tithes 
 
 Tester, sixpenny piece 
 
 " The liable Mortimer,^'' 
 etc. (p. 474), from Henry 
 TV., Part I. Act i. sc. 1 
 
 Threave, two dozen, or an 
 indefinitely large num- 
 ber 
 
 Thrum bonnet, a cap made 
 of waste yarn 
 
 Tieck, Johann Litdwig, 
 one of the chiefs (1773- 
 1853) of the Romantic 
 School of Literature in 
 Germany 
 
 Ti miner man. Timmer 
 (Danish, tommer) is Scot- 
 tish for timber, wood 
 
 Tindis. horns of a stag 
 
 Tintadgel, or Tintagel, 
 King Arthur's castle on 
 the west coast of Corn- 
 wall 
 
 Toddis, or tods, foxes 
 
 Tongue- pad, keep (her) 
 tongue trotting, going 
 
 Touchstone, the clown in 
 Shakespeare's As You 
 Like It 
 
 Toustie, testy, irascible 
 
 Train, the tail of a hawk 
 
 Traist servandis, trusty 
 servants 
 
 Tre, wood 
 
 Trebuchet, a military en- 
 gine for hurling stones 
 and bolts 
 
 Tremor cordis, palpita- 
 tions of the heart 
 
 Ti-es faciunt collegium, it 
 takes three (monks) to 
 make a college 
 
 Treshornish, more cor- 
 rectly Treshinish, a 
 
 group of small islands 
 
 off the west coast of 
 
 Mull 
 Trew, to trow, think 
 Tristrem, Sir. See Sir 
 
 Tristrem 
 Turnpike stairs, a winding 
 
 or spiral staircase 
 Twelfth Day, Epiphany, 
 
 the twelfth day after 
 
 Christmas Day 
 Tyne, to lose 
 
 Uckeluryr, men of high 
 stature, noble chiefs 
 
 Urie, Kaim og. See Kaim 
 of Urie 
 
 Usquebaugh, whisky 
 
 Valet-de-place, one who 
 acts temporarily as valet 
 to a stranger staying in 
 a town 
 
 Vatcard, the van, front or 
 early part 
 
 Viamos, caracco ! presum- 
 ably for Veamos carac- 
 co, let us see, old man 
 
 Vicarage, the smaller 
 tithes 
 
 Vins extra ordin aires, 
 rare, uncommon wines 
 
 VirgiVs shepherd (p. 333), 
 an allusion to Eclogues, 
 i. 28-30 
 
 Vis unita fortior, united 
 strength is stronger 
 
 Vix ea nostra voco, declare 
 this is hardly our own 
 
 Volenti non fit injuria, to 
 him who is willing there 
 is no injury done 
 
 Vortigern, the British 
 prince who invited over 
 Hengist and married his 
 daughter Rowena 
 
 Wade, General, his mili- 
 tary road. In the years 
 1720-1730 General Wade 
 laid out and made sev- 
 eral good roads through 
 the Highlands as a 
 means of pacification 
 
 W alk er''s, a tavern in 
 Writers' Court, off the 
 High Street, Edinburgh 
 
 Walladmor, by G. W. H. 
 Haring, better known as 
 Wilibald Alexis, a Ger- 
 man novelist (1797-1870) 
 
 Wan, won, gained 
 
 Wanion, with a. mischief 
 befall thee 1 with a male- 
 diction upon thee ! 
 
 Water - purpie, common 
 brook-lime, a species of 
 Veronica 
 
 Wean, infant, little child 
 
 Weissenhorn, a small Ba- 
 varian town, about 10 
 
WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 miles south-east of Ulm 
 on the Danube 
 
 Wlieeu, a few 
 
 Whilk, which 
 
 White cockade, the badge 
 of the Stuarts and their 
 adherents 
 
 Vilkie, Sir David, Scot- 
 tish painter, a friend of 
 Sir Walter Scott's 
 
 Wi)jdows, tax on, the fore- 
 runner of the inhabited 
 house duty, was levied 
 from 1795 to 1851 
 
 Wolf-btird, wolf-brood, i.e. 
 wolf-cub 
 
 Wunna, will not 
 
 Taud, a mare 
 
 YMac YJiihor, the coun- 
 
 try of the Mackenzies of 
 Seaforth, in the south- 
 west of Ross-shire 
 Ywroken. wreaked, ac- 
 complished 
 
 Zimmermann, a German- 
 Swiss writer, author of 
 a celebrated book oa 
 Solitude (1755) 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABBess, Eveline's aunt, 176 ; resentment 
 against De Lacy, 177 
 
 Aldrovand, Fatlier, 27 ; suspects Flam- 
 moclc, 38 ; accuses him ot treacliery, 
 49 ; entrapped by him, 55 ; discharges 
 the catapult, 66 ; acts as guide to Vi- 
 dal, ^88 
 
 Amelot, Damian's page, 239 ; his autlior- 
 ity resisted, 243 ; marriage to Rose 
 Flammock, 307 
 
 Archers, Welsh, 85, 468 
 
 Armor, rattle of, 75, 468 
 
 Author, his Introduction to The Be- 
 trothed, V ; to Chronicles of the Can- 
 origate, 311 ; his eidolon presides at 
 the Waverley Novel meeting, xiii ; 
 resolves to write history, xx 
 
 Bahr-geist, 126, 134, 468 
 Baldric, the Saxon chief, 185 
 Baldringham House, 110 ; specter of, 
 
 115, 131: evening at, 116; haunted 
 
 room, 125 
 Baldwin of Canterbury, 1, 143, 163 ; cites 
 
 De Lacy before him, 158 ; interview 
 
 with him, 1G4 ; explains to the abbess, 
 
 170 
 Bards, Welsh, 9 
 Barri, Giraldus de. See Giraldus de 
 
 Bereuger, Eveline, 4 ; refused to Gwen- 
 wyn, 13 ; on the battlements, 27 ; wit- 
 nesses her father's death, 82 ; her 
 prayer and vow, 47 ; rebukes Rose, 
 50 ; encourages the defenders, 61 ; 
 watches by night, 68 ; gives way to 
 grief, 72 ; hears the coming succor, 
 73 ; receives Damian, 81, 89 ; meets the 
 Constable, 93 ; combats Rose's advice, 
 98 ; sets out for Gloucester, 108 ; in- 
 vited to Baldringham, 108; arrival 
 there, 110 ; reproved by her great- 
 aunt, 112 ; conducted to the haunted 
 chamber, 119; rescued from the 
 specter, 124: her hasty departure, 
 130 ; the story of the bahr-geist, 134 ; 
 her encounter with the specter, 137; 
 supplicated by Randal de Lacy, 145 ; 
 betrothed to the Constable, 149 ; her 
 concern at Damian's illness, 156 ; holds 
 to her engagement. 181 : returns to 
 Garde Dolou reuse, 200 ; manner of life 
 there, 202; thoughts regarding Da- 
 mian. 207: goes out hawking, 212: 
 seized by the banditti, 217; thrust 
 into the cave, 221 ; makes her situa- 
 
 487 
 
 tion known, 223 ; liberated by Wilkin 
 
 Flammock, 225 ; carries Damian to 
 Garde Doloureuse, 237 ; attends him 
 sick, 289, 252 ; questions Amelot, 239 ; 
 proposes to lead the soldiers, 244 ; 
 refuses to give up Damian, 256 ; a 
 prisoner in the convent, 295; her 
 dream of Vanda, 296 ; given up to 
 Damian, 306 
 
 Berenger, Sir Raymond, 3; refuses 
 Gwenwyn's suit, 13 ; prepares to de- 
 fend his castle, 16 ; his rash promise, 
 19; gives battle to the Welsh, 29 ; his 
 death, 82 ; funeral, 83 
 
 Berwine, 112 ; conducts Eveline to the 
 haunted chamber, 119 
 
 Betrothed, the novel, Author's Intro- 
 duction to, V ; Dr. Dryasdust's opinion 
 of, xvi 
 
 Bradshaigh of Haigh Hall, x 
 
 Brengvvain, wife of Gwenwyn, 4 
 
 British. See Welsh 
 
 Cadwallon, the bard, 8 ; declines to 
 play, 10 ; his war-song, 15 ; brings 
 good tidings of Damian, 170 ; his 
 songs, 173, 188. 285 ; asks leave to fol- 
 low De Lacy, 174 ; brings bad tidings, 
 262 ; asked to perform, 287 ; stabs 
 Randal, 289 ; before Henry II., 290 ; 
 execution, 294 
 
 Caradoc, the minstrel, 10 
 
 Cargill, Rev. Josiah, at Waverley Novel 
 meeting, xvi 
 
 Castell-Coch, 6; feast at, 8 
 
 Clutterbuck, Captain, at Waverely 
 Novel meeting, xvi 
 
 Commons, insurrection of, 241, 849 
 
 Constable of Chester. See Lacy, 
 Hugo de 
 
 Crusaders, Tales of, v 
 
 Crusaders, preaching of, 1; Baldwin's 
 enthusiasm for, 1, 163; Flammock's 
 views of, 284 
 
 De Lacy. See Lacy, Damian de, Hugo 
 de, and Randal de 
 
 Dinmont, Dandle, his son at Waverley 
 Novel meeting, xiv 
 
 Dousterswivel, his proposal at Waver- 
 ley Novel meeting, xiv 
 
 Drummelzier, family of, vii 
 
 Dryasdust, Dr., at Waverley Novel 
 meeting, xvi 
 
 Fnais OP thb Gk>BLBTS, cave of, 221, 227 
 
dse 
 
 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 EflPeminacy, taunt of, 7, 487 
 
 Einion, Father, 12 
 
 Ermengarde of Baldringham, 108, 111 ; 
 reproves Eveline, ll'i ; insists on the 
 ordeal, 115 ; angry parting from Eve- 
 Une, 130 
 
 Eudorchawg chains, 8, 167 
 
 Falcons. See Hawks 
 Fanshaw, Lady, Memoirs, quoted, 468 
 Flammock, Rose, 23 ; defends her 
 father, 49 ; drags him before Eveline, 
 51 ; on the battlements with Eveline, 
 
 68 ; comforts her, 72 ; rejects the Con- 
 stable's gift, 96 ; her p.dvice to Eve- 
 line, 98, 253 ; concern for her, 122 ; 
 warns the Norman sentinel, 122 ; sum- 
 mons him, 124 ; watches over Eve- 
 line, 125 ; criticises the specter story, 
 137 ; expostulates with Eveline. 232 ; 
 begs her father to shelter Damian, 
 232 ; marriage to Amelot, 307 
 
 Flammock, Wilkin, 17 ; commands the 
 castle, 22; demands wine, 24; pre- 
 pares for the Welsh envoy, 37 ; treats 
 with him, 41 ; charged with treachery, 
 49, 52 : entraps Aldrovand, 55 ; out- 
 wits Jorworth, 58 ; works the man- 
 gonel, 63 ; sleeps on the battlements, 
 
 69 ; asked to take charge of Eveline, 
 192 ; liberates her, 225 ; his attack on 
 the Welsh, 229 ; persuaded to take in 
 Damian,233 ; his conference with King 
 Henry, 269 ; obtains special privi- 
 leges for his people, 273, 286 
 
 Flemings, in England, 18; privileges 
 granted to them, 273, 286. See also 
 Flammock, Rose and Flammock, 
 Wilkin 
 
 Foot-pages, 9, 467 
 
 Garde Doloureuse. castle of, 27 ; fight 
 before, 29 ; Welsh assault upon, 65 ; 
 relief of, 75 ; the plain before, after 
 the battle, 82 ; life in. 202 ; summoned 
 bv the roval pursuivant, 255; taken 
 by Prince Richard, 272 
 
 Garde Doloureuse, Our Lady of, Eve- 
 line's prayer and vow to, 47 ; sup- 
 plication to, 237 
 
 Genvil, Ralph, refuses to serve under 
 Amelot, 243 ; reconciled to him, 247 ; 
 his advice to the mutineers, 269 
 
 Gillian, Dame, praises Damian, 78 : in- 
 trigues with the pedler, 86 ; her panic 
 terror, 124 ; watches the wedding- 
 guests, 150 : praises Randal, 152 ; an- 
 nounces the hawk-merchant, 209 ; 
 attends Eveline a-hawking, 214; de- 
 fends Damian and Eveline, 277 ; last 
 days of, 307 
 
 Giraldus de Barri, 1 
 
 Gleichen, Count, lay of, 206 
 
 Glossary, 479 
 
 Gryffyth ap Edwin's wars, xi 
 
 Guarine, Philip, De Lacy's squire, 138, 
 190 ; disguised as a palmer, 259 ; his 
 suspicions of Vidal, 260 ; met by the 
 groom. 284 
 
 Gwenwyn of Pcwis Land, 2 ; sues for 
 Eveline's hand, 4; is taunted with 
 eflfeminacy, 7 ; is told of Berenger's 
 
 refusal, 13 ; battle with him, 29 ; slaya 
 him, 32 ; assaults Garde Doloureuse, 
 65 ; death of, 81 
 
 Hawks and hawking, 210, 215 
 
 Henrv L, before Garde Doloureuse, 269 ; 
 
 on the Welsh, 468 
 Heron, hunting of, 215 
 
 " I ASKED of my harp," 285 
 
 Jenkins. Henry, 468 
 John, Prince, 271 
 Joint-stock companies, xiv, yviii 
 Jorworth, Welsh envoy, 11 ; treats with 
 Flammock, 41 ; outwitted, 58 
 
 KiSTAVEN, 259 
 
 Knight's pennon, 246, 269 
 
 Lacy, Damian de, 78 ; delivers his mes- 
 sage to Eveline. 80 ; asks her to meet 
 the Constable, 89 ; warned by Rose, 
 122 ; rescues Eveline, 125 ; his rest- 
 lessness, 144 ; at Eveline's betrothal, 
 153 : his illness, 155, 161 ; entrusted 
 with the charge of Eveline, 197; his 
 watchful care of her, 202, 228 ; lies 
 wounded, 223 ; taken to Garde Dol- 
 oureuse, 2:37 ; on the sick-bed, 239, 
 252 ; appeals to the mutineers, 268 ; 
 interview in the dungeon, 298 ; Eve- 
 line given up to him, 306 
 
 Lacy, Hugo de. 4, 32- delivers Garde 
 Doloureuse, 75 ; makes peace with the 
 Welsh, 88 ; his interview with Eve- 
 line, 93; escorts her to Gloucester, 
 103 ; progress of his suit, 141 ; re- 
 quests a delay, 14;3 ; betrothed to 
 Eveline, 149 ; his distress at Damian s 
 illness, 155, 161 ; summoned before the 
 Archbishop, 158 ; accepts Vidal's ser- 
 vices, 174 ; seeks to propitiate the 
 abbess, 177; interview with Eveline, 
 179 ; desires Flammock to take charge 
 of her, 192 ; entrusts her to Damian, 
 197 ; in the garb of a palmer, 259 ; is 
 told bad tidings, 262 ; his bearing in 
 adversity, 275 ; learns the real facts 
 from Gillian, 277 . questions Vidal, 
 292 ; interview with Damian, 298 ; re- 
 signs Eveline to him. 306 
 
 Lacy, Randal de, at Berenger's funeral, 
 84 ; craves Eveline's mediation, 145 ; 
 praised by Dame Gillian, 152 ; as a 
 hawk-merchant, 210 ; attempts t c 
 carry otf Eveline, 220 ; usurps head- 
 ship of the family, 267 ; stabbed by 
 Vidal, 289 
 
 Lyttleton, History of England, quoted, 
 xi 
 
 Macdonald of the Isles, anecdote of, 467 
 
 Mandrin, French smuggler, 469 j 
 
 Margery, Mrs.. 79 : scorns the pedlar's 
 overtures, 85 
 
 Meat sold by measure, 55, 468 
 
 Monthemer. Guy, 255 
 
 3Ioringer, the noble, tale of, vii 
 
 Morolt. Dennis, 17 : objects to leave his 
 master, 21 ; his death, 32 
 
 Noble Moringer. tale of, vii 
 
 I 
 
INDEX 
 
 Normans, taste of, 8 ; elegance in dress, 
 112; pride of blood, 306 
 
 Oldbuck, Jonathan, at Waverley Novel 
 meeting, xiii 
 
 Pain, sensibility to, 376, 469 
 
 Palmers, 259. See also Guarine, Philip, 
 
 and Lacy, Hugo de 
 Paritor, or archbishop's summoner, 158 
 Pennon, knights, 240, 469 
 Pontoys, Stephen, 246, 248 
 Powis Castle. See Castell-Coch 
 
 Raodl, the huntsman, 23, 79 ; his re- 
 venge on the steward, 104 ; watches 
 the wedding-guests, 150 ; his affection 
 for Damian, 153 ; bargains with the 
 hawlt-merchant, 210 ; meets the pil- 
 grims, 277 
 
 Red-Finger, haunted chamber of, 135 ; 
 legend of, 134 
 
 Red Pool, 214 
 
 Reinold, the butler, 24 
 
 Richard, Prince, 271 ; captures Garde 
 Doloureuse, 272 
 
 " Soldier, wake 1 The day is peeping," 
 178 
 
 Southey, Madoc, quoted, 467 
 Steward, RaouPs revenge upon, 10^ 
 
 Tales of the Crusaders, Author's ex- 
 planation of, V 
 
 Talisman, the novel, xvi 
 
 Templeton, Laurence, at Waverley 
 Novel meeting, xv 
 
 Tweedie, family of, vi 
 
 Vanda, Saxon lady, 135 ; appears ia 
 
 Eveline's dream, 296 
 Vidal, Renault. See CadwaUon 
 Vorst, Peterkin, 69 
 
 Walladmor, novel by Haring, xvi 
 
 Waverley Novels, joint-stock comoany 
 for writing, xiii 
 
 Welsh, Gwenwyn's force, before Garde 
 Doloureuse, 28 ; fight with Berenger's 
 men, 29 ; assault Garde Doloureuse, 
 65 ; surprised by De Lacy, 75 
 
 Welsh, nation, wars of, xv, 1 ; banquet, 
 8 ; houses, 9, 467 ; gold chains, 8, 467 •, 
 bards, 9 ; courage, 34, 467 ; archers, 
 65, 468 ; cruelties of, 88, 468 
 
 Wenlock, Wild, 241,245, 250 
 
 " Widow'd wife and married raaid," 189 
 
 '• Woman's faith and woman's tnist," 
 186 
 
INDEX TO CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE HIGHLAND WIDOW 
 
 Allan, Mr. William, at Theatrical Fund 
 Dinner, 465 
 
 Arlecliio, or harlequin, 313 
 
 Author, his Introduction to Ghronicles 
 uf the Canongate, 311 ; his financial 
 misfortunes, 312 ; his anonymity, 314, 
 323 ; motives for it, 330 ; presides at 
 Theatrical Fund Dinner, 457 ; on the 
 drama. 458; acknowledges author- 
 ship of Waverley Novels, 461 
 
 Awe, Loch, 398, 474 ; battle beside, 475 
 
 Baliol. Mrs. Bethune, prototype of, 323; 
 description of, 377, 383 ; her enter- 
 tainments, 383 ; her Scottish accent, 
 3K5 ; reminiscences of former days, 
 886 ; story of TJie Highland Widow, 
 395 ; her interview with the Highland 
 Widow, 401 
 
 Bailors Lodging, Edinburgh, 377 
 
 Bannatyne Club, 340,471 
 
 Barcaldine, 420 
 
 Beauffet, Mrs. Baliol's butler, 879 
 
 Bell, Mr. H. G., speech at Theatrical 
 Fund Dinner, 464 
 
 Bellenden, translation of Boece quoted, 
 469 
 
 Ben Cruachan, .398 
 
 Birrell. Diary, quoted, 473 
 
 Black Watch, 380, 473 
 
 Boece, quoted, 469 
 
 Boswell's Johnson, quoted, 472 
 
 Bowles, Rev. Mr., on Salisbury Crags, 
 473 
 
 Brandir, rocks of, in Loch Awe, 474 
 
 Bride of LamTnermoor, source of, 316 
 
 Bruce, battle with Macdougal of Lorn, 
 398, 475 
 
 339 : revisits Glentanner, 346 ; visits 
 Christie Steele, 356 ; her bad opinion 
 of him, 361 ; looks up Janet MacEvoy, 
 365; settles in the Canongate, 369; 
 proposes to publish, 371 ; his rela- 
 tions with Mrs. Bethune Baliol, 386 
 
 Deans, Jeanie, Mrs. Goldie on, 316 
 Drama and stage. Author on, 458 
 Dunbarton, Castle of, 448 
 Duntarkin, house and ion, 352, 356 
 
 Edinburgh, Canongate, 337 ; Holyrood 
 asylum, 328 ; King's Park, 329 ;■ Salis- 
 bury Crags. 380, 472 
 Eglinton, Countess of, 385. 472 
 Encyclopcedia Britannica, quoted, 475 
 
 Fairscribe, Mr., 337, 344 
 
 Glencoe, Massacre of, 431, 475 
 
 Glentanner, estate of, 340, 342 ; adver- 
 tisement of sale of, 345 ; revisited by 
 Mr. Croftangry, »46 
 
 Glossary, 479 
 
 Goldie, Mrs., 816 
 
 Harlequin, 313 
 
 Highlanders military habits of, 430: 
 fldelitv of, 431, 476 
 
 Highlands, chiefs, 389 ; bi'idges, 397, 
 474 ; regiments, 430 ; roads, 399 
 
 Highland Widow, origin of, 324 ; nar- 
 rative, 395. See also MacTavish, 
 Elspat 
 
 Holyrood, asylum for debtors, 328, 469 
 
 Horace, Satires, quoted, 351 ; Pope's imi- 
 tation of, 471 
 
 John, Mr. Sommerville's servant, 332 
 Jones, Mr., a<. Theatrical Fund Dinner, 
 
 Caderfae, or Seaforth, 419 
 
 Cameron, Sergeant Allan Breack, shot 
 
 dead, 442 
 Campbell, Captain Colin, 446 
 Canongate, Edinburgh, 337 
 Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 
 
 quoted, 472 
 Chronicles of the Canongate, Author's 
 
 Introduction to, 311 ; narrative of Mr. 
 
 Croftangry, 327 
 Cloght-dearg, or Redmantle, 450 
 Colin, Green. See Campbell, Captain Macdougal of Lorn, battle with Bruce, 
 
 Colin ! 399, 475 
 
 Croftangry, Chrystal. Author on, 324 ; i MacEvoy, Janet, 319 ; delight to sea 
 
 his account of himself, 327 ; in the j Croftangry again, 365 ; made hit 
 
 sanctuary of Holyrood, 328 ; visits I housekeeper, 368 
 
 Mr. Sommerville, 332 ; his pedigree, ' MacGregor of Glenstrae, 389, 47& 
 490 
 
 Keith, Mrs. Murray, 323, 469 
 Keiths of Craig, 469 
 Kinedder, Lord, 319 
 
 Lambskin, Mrs. Alice, 383 
 
 Legend of Montrose, remarks on, 819 
 
INDEX 
 
 491 
 
 Mackay, Mr. , at Theatrical Fund Dinner, 
 
 459, 401 
 
 3IacLeish, Donald, postilion, 390, 395 ; 
 points out Elspat's hut, 401 
 
 MacPhadraick, Miles, 411, 417 
 
 MacTavish, Elspat, 401, 403 ; her affec- 
 tion for her son, 408, 412 ; grief at his 
 enlistment, 417 ; incites him to desert, 
 422 ; drugs him, 428 ; urges him to 
 flight, 434 ; kneels for his pardon, 438 ; 
 taunts the Cameron women, 444; hears 
 of her son's execution, 454 ; disap- 
 pears, 455 
 
 MacTavish, Hamish Bean, 407 ; leaves 
 home, 410 ; returns, 417 ; explains his 
 enlistment, 418 ; horror of the lash, 
 423 ; sees apparition of his father, 
 426 ; takes the drugged draught, 438 ; 
 awakens too late, 431 ; questions Rev. 
 Mr. Tyrie, 433 ; hi.s resolve, 438 ; shoots 
 Sergeant Cameron, 442; his arrest, 
 443: execiition, 448 
 
 MacTavish Mhor, Hamish, 405 
 
 Maitland, William, cited, 329 
 
 Meadowbank, Lord, reveals the Au- 
 thor's secret, 314, 460 
 
 Menzies, Mr,, at Theatrical Fund Dinner, 
 464 
 
 Mottoes, Author's remark on his, 320 
 
 Murray, Mr. William, at Theatrical 
 Fund Dinner, 462 
 
 Nichols, Progresses of James L, quoted, 
 
 Oldbuck, Jonathan, prototype of, 817 
 Old Mortality, Mr. Train's notes for, 315 
 
 Piper, Mr., stage-coach contractor, 346 
 Pope, imitation of Horace, 471 
 
 Rasp, iron, on doors. 379. 472 
 Robertson. Patrick, at Theatrical Fund 
 Dinner, 461, 4«i3, 465 
 
 Salisbury Crags, Kdinburgh, 880, 478 
 
 Scotch accent, Mrs. BalioPs, 385 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter. See Author 
 
 Sic itur ad astra, 327 
 
 Sommerville, Miss Nelly, 332 
 
 Sommerviile, Mr., helps Croftangry, 
 330 ; his last illness, 332 
 
 Sommerville family, 340, iV. 
 
 Stage-coaches, 346 
 
 Steele, Christie, at Duntarkin, 352 ; ac- 
 count of her, 354 ; her reception of 
 Croftangry, 357 ; discourses on the 
 Crof tangrys, 359 ; ill opinion of Chrys- 
 tal Croftangry, 361 
 
 Steele, the Covenanter, 354, 471 
 
 Stewart of Garth, Sketches oj High- 
 landers, quoted, 476 
 
 Stewart of Invernahyle, 317 
 
 Swift, Dean, Journal to Stella, quoted, 
 389 ; Life of Cieichton, quoted, 471 
 
 Talbot, Colonel, prototype of, 317 
 
 Theatrical Fund Dinner, Edinburgh, 
 314, 457 
 
 Train. Joseph, his assistance to the Au- 
 thor, 315 
 
 Treddles, Castle, 349 
 
 Treddles, Mr., 851, 858 ; arms of, 859 
 
 Treddles Arms, inn, 357 
 
 Tico Drovers, origin of, 824 
 
 Tyrie, Rev. Mi.hael, questioned by 
 Hamish Bean, 4.3::! ; intervenes on his 
 behalf, 446 ; carries his last message 
 to his mother. 449 ; meeting with her, 
 451 
 
 Vandenhoff, Mr., at Theatrical Fund 
 Dinner, 462 
 
 Wade, General, Highland roads of, 399 
 Waverley, explanation regarding, 817 
 " What ails me," etc , 370 
 Whitefoord, Colonel, 317 
 Winton. Earl of, his funeral, 388, 478 
 Wolf's Hope, prototypes of, 880 
 
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INTRODUCTION TO THE TALISMAN 
 
 The Betrothed did not greatly please one or two friends, 
 who thought that it did not well correspond to the general 
 title of The Crusaders. They urged, therefore, that, with- 
 out direct allusion to the manners of the Eastern tribes, and 
 to the romantic conflicts of the period, the title of a Tale of 
 the Crusaders would resemble the playbill which is said to 
 have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the 
 Prince of Denmark being left out. On the other hand, I 
 felt the difficulty of giving a vivid picture of a part of the 
 world with which I was almost totally unacquainted, unless 
 by early recollections of the ArahiaJi Nights' Entertain- 
 ments ; and not only did I labor under the incapacity of 
 ignorance, in which, as far as regards Eastern manners, I 
 was as thickly wrapped as an Egyptian in his fog ; but my 
 contemporaries were, many of them, as much enlightened 
 upon the subject as if they had been inhabitants of the 
 favored land of Goshen. The love of traveling had pervaded 
 all ranks, and carried the subject of Britain into all quarters 
 of the world. Greece, so attractive by its remains of art, by 
 its struggles for freedom against a Mohammedan tyrant, by 
 its very name, where every fountain had its classical legend 
 — Palestine, endeared to the imagination by yet more sacred 
 remembrances, had been of late surveyed by British eyes, 
 and described by recent travelers. Had 1, therefore, at- 
 tempted the difficult task of substituting manners of my 
 own invention, instead of the genuine costume of the East, 
 almost every traveler I met, who had extended his route 
 beyond what was anciently called '' the grand tour," had 
 acquired a right, by ocular inspection, to chastise me for my 
 presumption. Every member of the Travelers' Club, who 
 could pretend to have thrown his shoe over Edom, was, by 
 having done so, constituted my lawful critic and corrector. 
 It occurred, therefore, that, where the author of Anastasius, 
 as well as he of Hadji Baba, had described the manners and 
 vices of the Eastern nations, not only with fidelity, but with 
 the humor of Le Sage and the ludicrous power of Fielding 
 himself, one who was a perfect stranger to the subject must 
 
 T 
 
?1 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 necessarily produce an unfavorable contrast. The Poet 
 Laureate also, in the charming tale of T/udaba, had shown 
 how extensive might be the researches of a person of acquire- 
 ments and talent, by dint of investigation alone, into the 
 ancient doctrines, history, and manners of the Eastern coun- 
 tries, in which we are probably to look for the cradle of 
 mankind ; Moore, in his Lalla Rookh, had successfully trod 
 the same path ; in which, too, Byron, joining ocular experi- 
 ence to extensive reading, had written some of his most 
 attractive poems. Tn a word, the Eastern themes had been 
 already so snccessfully handled by those who were acknowl- 
 edged to be masters of their craft, that I was diffident of 
 making the attempt. 
 
 These were powerful objections, nor did they lose force 
 when they became the subject of anxious reflection, although 
 they did not finally prevail. The arguments on the other 
 side were, that though I had no hope of rivaling the con- 
 temporaries Avhom 1 have mentioned, yet it occurred to me 
 as possible to acquit myself of the task 1 was engaged in 
 without entering into competition with them. 
 
 The period relating more immediately to the Crusades 
 which I at last fixed upon was that at which the warlike 
 character of Richard I., wild and generous, a pattern of 
 chivalry, with all its extravagant virtues and its no less ab- 
 surd errors, was opposed to that of Saladin, in which the 
 Christian and English monarch showed all the cruelty and 
 violence of an Eastern sultan, and Saladin, on the other 
 hand, disj^layed the deep policy and prudence of a European 
 sovereign, whilst each contended which should excel the 
 other in the knightly qualities of bravery and generosity. 
 This singular contrast afforded, as the Author conceived, 
 materials for a work of fiction possessing peculiar interest. 
 One of the inferior characters introduced was a supposed 
 relation of Eichard Coeur-de-Lion — a violation of the truth 
 of history which gave offense to Mr. Mills, the author of the 
 History of Chivahy and the Crusades, who was not, it may 
 be presumed, aware that romantic fiction naturally includes 
 the power of such invention, which is indeed one of the 
 requisites of the art. 
 
 Prince David of Scotland, who was actually in the host, 
 fend was the hero of some very romantic adventures on his 
 way home, was also pressed into my service, and constitutes 
 one of my dramatis pe?-son(s. 
 
 It is true I had already brought upon the field him of the 
 Lion Heart. But it was in a more private capacity than he 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE TALISMAN vn 
 
 was here to be exhibited in Tlie Talisman : then as a dis- 
 guised knight, now in the avowed character of a conquering 
 monarch ; so that I doubted not a name so dear to English- 
 men as that of King Kichard I. might contribute to their 
 amusement for more than once.* 
 
 I had access to all which antiquity believed, whether of 
 reality or fable on the subject of that magnificent warrior, 
 who was the proudest boast of Europe and their chivalry, 
 and with whose dreadful name the Saracens, according to a 
 liistorian of their own country, were wont to rebuke their 
 startled horses. " Do you think," said they, " that King 
 Richard is on the track, that you spring so wildly from it ?" 
 Tlie most curious register of the history of King Eichard is 
 an ancient romance, translated originally from the Norman, 
 and at first certainly having a pretense to be termed a work 
 of chivalry, but latterly becoming stuffed with the most as- 
 tonishing and monstrous fables. There is perhaps no met- 
 rical romance upon record where, along with curious and 
 genuine history, are mingled more absurd and exaggerated 
 incidents. We have placed in the Appendix the passage of 
 the romance in which Richard figures as an ogre, or literal 
 cannibal. 
 
 A principal incident in the story is that from which the 
 title is derived. Of all people who ever lived, the Persians 
 were perhaps most remarkable for their unshaken credulity 
 in amulets, spells, periapts, and similar charms, framed, it 
 was said, under the influence of particular planets, and be- 
 stowing high medical powers, as well as the means of ad- 
 vancing men's fortuned in various manners. A story of this 
 kind, relating to a crusader of eminence, is often told in the 
 west of Scotland, and the relic alluded to is still in existence, 
 and even yet held in veneration. 
 
 Sir Simon Lockhart of Lee and Cartland made a consider- 
 able figure in the reigns of Eobert the Bruce and of his son 
 David. He was one of the chief of that band of Scottish 
 chivalry who accompanied James, the Good Lord Douglas, 
 on his expedition to the Holy Land, with the heart of King 
 Eobert Bruce. Douglas, impatient to get at the Saracens, 
 entered into war with those of Spain, and was killed there. 
 Lockhart proceeded to the Holy Land with such Scottish 
 knights as had escaped the fate of their leader, and assisted 
 for some time in the wars against the Saracens. 
 
 The following adventure is said by tradition to have be- 
 fallen him. He made prisoner in battle an emir of consider- 
 * [See Lockhart, Life of Scott, vol. vii. p. 386.] 
 
^^ WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 able wealth and consequence. The aged mother of the cap- 
 tive came to tlie Christian camp, to redeem her son from his 
 state of captivity. Lockhart is said to have fixed the price 
 at which his prisoner should ransom himself ; and the lady, 
 pulling out a large embroidered purse, proceeded to tell down 
 the ransom, like a mother who pays little respect to gold ia 
 comparison of her son's liberty. In this operation, a pebble 
 inserted in a coin, some say of the Lower Empire, fell out of 
 the purse, and the Saracen matron testified so much haste 
 to recover it as gave the Scottish knight a high idea of its 
 value, when compared with gold or silver. " I will not con- 
 sent," he said, " to grant your son's liberty, unless that 
 amulet be added to his ransom." The lady not only con- 
 sented to this, but explained to Sir Simon Lockhart the 
 mode in which the talisman was to be used, and the uses to 
 which it might be put. The water in which it was dipt 
 operated as a styptic, as a febrifuge, and possessed several 
 other properties as a medical talisman. 
 
 Sir Simon Lockhart, after much experience of the wonders 
 which it wrought, brought it to his own country, and left it 
 to his heirs, by whom, and by Clydesdale in general, it was, 
 and is still distinguished by the name of the Lee Penny,* 
 from the name of his native seat of Lee. 
 
 The most remarkable part of its history, perhaps, was, 
 that it so especially escaped condemnation when the Church 
 of Scotland chose to impeach many other cures which savored 
 of the miraculous, as occasioned by sorcery, and censured 
 the appeal to them, " excepting only that to the amulet 
 called the Lee Penny, to which it had pleased God to annex 
 certain healing virtues which the Church did not presume 
 to condemn." It still, as has been said, exists, and its powers 
 are sometimes resorted to. Of late they have been chiefly 
 restricted to the cure of persons bitten by mad dogs ; and as 
 the illness in such cases frequently arise from imagination, 
 there can be no reason for doubting that water which has 
 been poured on the Lee Penny furnishes a congenial cure. 
 
 Such is the tradition concerning the talisman, which the 
 Author has taken the liberty to vary in applying it to his own 
 purposes. 
 
 Considerable liberties have also been taken with the truth 
 of history, both with respect to Conrade of Montserrat's life 
 as well as his death. That Conrade, however, was reckoned 
 the enemy of Richard is agreed both in history and romance. 
 The general opinion of the terms upon which they stood 
 * See Note 1. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE TALISMAN it 
 
 may be guessed from the proposal of the Saracens, that the 
 Marquis of Montserrat should be invested with certain parts 
 of Syria, which they were to yield to the Christians. 
 Richard, according to the romance which bears his name, 
 "could no longer repress his fury. "^ The Marquis," he 
 said, " was a traitor, who had robbed the Knights Hospi- 
 tallers of sixty thousand pounds, the present of his father 
 Henry ; that he was a renegade, whose treachery had occa- 
 sioned the loss of Acre"; and he concluded by a solemn 
 oath, that he would cause him to be drawn to pieces by wild 
 horses, if he should ever venture to pollute the Chrisiian 
 camp by his presence. Philip attempted to intercede in 
 favor of the Marquis, and throwing down his glove, offered 
 to become a pledge for his fidelity to the Christians ; but his 
 offer was rejected, and he was obliged to give way to Richard's 
 impetuosity." — [Ellis, Specimens of Early English Metrical 
 Romances, 1805, vol. ii. p. 230.] 
 
 Conrade of Montserrat makes a considerable figure in those 
 wars, and was at length put to death by one of the follow- 
 ers of the Scheik, or Old Man of the Mountain ; nor did 
 Richard remain free of the suspicion of having instigated 
 his death. 
 
 It may be said, in general, that most of the incidents in- 
 troduced in the following tale are fictitious ; and that reality, 
 where it exists, is oulv retained in the characters of the 
 piece. 
 
 Ut July, 1833. 
 
Mi 
 
 Cri 
 
 ki 
 
 eai: 
 
 pot 
 k 
 
 1 
 k 
 fror 
 tlal 
 ciec 
 potf 
 
 T 
 ast; 
 
 CODV 
 
 fert: 
 
 Cr 
 
 ni^i 
 lib, 
 these 
 
 mi 
 
 eves 
 bear; 
 fere; 
 lite r, 
 
THE TALISMAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 They, too, retired 
 To the wilderness, but 'twas with arms. 
 
 Paradise Regaired. 
 
 The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest 
 point in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who 
 had left his distant northern home and joined the host of the 
 Crusaders in Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy 
 deserts which lie in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, or, as it is 
 called, the Lake Asphaltites, where the waves of the Jordan 
 pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no 
 discharge of waters. 
 
 The warlike pilgrim had toiled among cliffs and precipices 
 during the earlier part of the morning ; more lately, issuing 
 from those rocky and dangerous defiles, he had entered upon 
 that great plain, where the accursed cities provoked, in an- 
 cient days, the direct and dreadful vengeance of the Omni- 
 potent. 
 
 The toil, the thirst, the dangers of the way were forgotten, 
 as the traveler recalled the fearful catastrophe which had 
 converted into an arid and dismal wilderness the fair and 
 fertile valley of Siddira, once well watered, even as the gar- 
 den of the Lord, now a parched and blighted waste, con- 
 demned to eternal sterility. 
 
 Crossing himself as he viewed the dark mass of rolling 
 waters, in color as in quality unlike those of every other 
 lake, the traveler shuddered as he remembered that beneath 
 these sluggish waves lay the once proud cities of the plain, 
 whose grave was dug by the thunder of the heavens, or the 
 eruption of subterraneous fire, and whose remains were hid, 
 even by that sea which holds no living fish in its bosom, 
 bears no skiff on its surface, and, as if its own dreadful bed 
 were the only fit receptacle for its sullen waters, sends not, 
 like other lakes, a tribute to the ocean. The whole land 
 around, as in the days of Moses, was " brimstone and salt ; 
 
2 WA VERLEY NO \ 'ELS 
 
 it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon *' ; 
 the land as well as the lake might be termed dead, as pro- 
 ducing nothing having resemblance to vegetation ; and even 
 the very air was entirely devoid of its ordinary winged in- 
 habitants, deterred probably by the odor of bitumen and siil- 
 f)hur, which the burning sun exhaled from the waters of the 
 ake in steaming clouds, frequently assuming the appearance 
 of waterspouts. Masses of the slimy and sulphureous sub- 
 stance called naphtha, which floated idly on the sluggish 
 and sullen waves, supplied those rolling clouds with new 
 vapors, and afl'orded awful testimony to the truth of the 
 Mosaic history. 
 
 Upon this scene of desolation the sun shone with almost 
 intolerable splendor, and all living nature seemed to have 
 hidden itself from the rays, excepting the solitary figure which 
 moved through the flit.tmg sand at a foot's pace, and ap- 
 peared the sole breathing thing on the wide surface of the 
 plain. The dress of the rider and the accouterments of his 
 horse were peculiarly unfit for the traveler in such a country. 
 A coat of linked mail, with long sleeves, plated gauntlets, 
 and a steel breastplate, had not been esteemed a sufficient 
 weight of armor : there was also his triangular shield sus- 
 pended round his neck, and his barred helmet of steel, over 
 which he had a hood and collar of mail, which was drawn 
 around the warrior's shoulders and throat, and filled up the 
 vacancy between the hauberk and the headpiece. His lower 
 limbs were sheathed, like his body, in flexible mail, securing 
 the legs and thighs, while the feet rested in plated shoes, 
 which corresponded with the gauntlets. A long, broad, 
 straight-shaped, double-edged falchion, with a handle formed 
 like a cross, corresponded with a stout poniard on the other 
 side. The knight also bore, secured to his saddle, with one 
 end resting on his stirrup, the long steel-headed lance, his 
 own proper weapon, which, as he rode, projected backwards, 
 and displayed its little pennoncelle, to dally with the faint 
 breeze, or drop in the dead calm. To this cumbrous equip- 
 ment must be added a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much 
 frayed and worn, which was thus far useful, that it excluded 
 the burning rays of the sun from the armor, which they 
 would otherwase have rendered intolerable to the wearer. 
 The surcoat bore, in several places, the arms of the owner, 
 although much defaced. These seemed to be a couchant 
 leopard, with the motto, "I sleep — wakemf not." An out- 
 line of the same device might be traced on his shield, though 
 many a blow had almost effaced the painting. The flat top 
 
THE TALISMAN 3 
 
 of his cumbrous cylindrical helmet was unadorned with any 
 crest. In retaining tlieir own unwieldy defensive armor, 
 the northern Crusaders seemed to set at defiance the nature 
 of the climate and country to which they had come to 
 war. 
 
 The accouterments of the horse were scarcely less massive 
 and unwieldy than those of the rider. The animal had a 
 heavy saddle plated with steel, uniting in front with a species 
 of breast-plate, and behind with defensive armor made to 
 cover the loins. Then there was a steel ax, or hammer, 
 called a mace-of-arms, and which hung to the saddle-bow ; 
 the reins were secured by chain-work, and the front-stall of 
 the bridle was a steel plate, with apertures for the eyes and 
 nostrils, having in the midst a short, sharp pike, projecting 
 from the forehead of the horse like the horn of the fabulous 
 unicorn. 
 
 But habit had made the endurance of this load of panoply 
 a second nature both to the knight and his gallant charger. 
 Numbers, indeed, of the Western warriors who hurried to 
 Palestine died ere they became inured to the burning climate ; 
 but there were others to whom that climate became innocent 
 and even friendly, and amongst this fortunate number was 
 the solitary horseman who now traversed the border of the 
 Dead Sea. 
 
 Nature, which cast his limbs in a mold of uncommon 
 strength, fitted to wear his linked hauberk with as much 
 ease as if the meshes had been formed of cobwebs, had en- 
 dowed him with a constitution as strong as his limbs, and 
 which bade defiance to almost all changes of climate, as well 
 as to fatigue and privations of every kind. His disposition 
 seemed, in some degree, to partake of the qualities of his 
 bodily frame ; and as the one possessed great strength and 
 endurance, united with the power of violent exertion, the 
 other, under a calm and undisturbed semblance, had much 
 of the fiery and enthusiastic love of glory which constituted 
 the principal attribute of the renowned Norman line, and 
 had rendered them sovereigns in every corner of Europe 
 where they had drawn their adventurous swords. 
 
 It was not, however, to all the race that fortune proposed 
 such tempting rewards ; and those obtained by the solitary 
 knight during two years' campaign in Palestine had been only 
 temporal fame, and, as he was taught to believe, spiritual 
 privileges. Meantime, his slender stock of money had melted 
 away, the rather that he did not pursue any of the ordinary 
 modes by which the followers of the Crusade condescended 
 
4 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 to recruit their diminished resources at the expense of the 
 people of Palestine : he exacted no gifts from the wretched 
 natives for sparing their possessions when engaged in war- 
 fare with the Saracens, and he had not availed himself of any 
 opportunity of enriching himself by the ransom of prisoners 
 of consequence. The small train which had followed him 
 from his native country had been gradually diminished, as 
 the means of maintaining them disappeared, and his only re- 
 maining squire was at present on a sick-bed, and unable to 
 attend his master, who traveled, as we have seen, singly and 
 alone. This was of little consequence to the Crusader, who 
 was accustomed to consider his good sword as his safest 
 escort, and devout thoughts as his best companion. 
 
 Nature had, however, her demands for refreshment and 
 repose, even on the iron frame and patient disposition of the 
 Knight of the Sleeping Leopard ; and at noon, when the 
 Dead Sea lay at some distance on his right, he joyfully hailed 
 the sight of two or three palm-trees, which arose beside the 
 well which was assigned for his midday station. His good 
 horse, too, which had plodded forward with the steady en- 
 durance of his master, now lifted his head, expanded his 
 nostrils, and quickened his pace, as if he snuffed afar off the 
 living waters, which marked the place of repose and refresh- 
 ment. But labor and danger were doomed to intervene ere 
 the horse or horseman reached the desired spot. 
 
 As the Knight of the Couchant Leopard continued to fix 
 his eyes attentively on the yet distant cluster of palm-trees, 
 it seemed to him as if some object was moving among them. 
 The distant form separated itself from the trees, which partly 
 hid its motions, and advanced towards the knight with a 
 speed which soon shov/ed a mounted horseman, whom his 
 turban, long spear, and green caftan floating in the wind, on 
 his nearer approach, showed to be a Saracen cavalier. ''In 
 the desert," saith an Eastern proverb, "no man meets a 
 friend." The Crusader was totally indifferent whether the 
 infidel, who now approached on his gallant barb, as if borne 
 on the wings of an eagle, came as friend or foe ; perhaps as a 
 vowed champion of the Cross, he might rather have pre- 
 ferred the latter. He disengaged his lance from his saddle, 
 seized it with the right hand, placed it in rest with its point 
 half elevated, gathered up the reins in the left, waked hisj 
 horse's mettle with the spur, and prepared to encounter the j 
 stranger with the calm self-confidence belonging to the' 
 victor in many contests. 
 
 The Saracen came on at the speedy gallop of an Arab 
 
I 
 
 THE TALISMAN 5 
 
 horseman, managing his steed more by liis limbs and the in- 
 flection of his bod}^ than by any use of the reins, which hung 
 loose in iiis left hand ; so that he was enabled to wield the 
 light round buckler of the skin of the rhinoceros, orna- 
 mented with silver loops, which he wore on liis arm, swing- 
 ing it as if he meant to oppose its slender circle to the for- 
 midable thrust of the Western lance. His own long spear 
 was not couched or leveled like that of his antagonist, but 
 grasped by the middle with his right hand, and'brandished 
 at arm's length above his head. As the cavalier approached 
 his enemy at full career, he seemed to expect that the Knight 
 of the Leopard should put his horse to the gallop to encounter 
 him. But the Christian kniglit, well acquainted with the 
 customs of Eastern warriors, did not mean to exhaust his 
 good horse by any unnecessary exertion ; and, on the con- 
 trary, made a dead halt, confident that, if the enemy ad- 
 vanced to the actual shock, his own weight, and that of his 
 powerful charger, would give him sufficient advantage, with- 
 out the additional momentum of rapid motion. Equally 
 sensible and apprehensive of such a probable result, the Sar- 
 acen cavalier, when he had approached towards tlie Chris- 
 tian within twice the length of his lance, wheeled his steed 
 to the left with inimitable dexterity, and rode twice around 
 his antagonist, who, turning without quitting his ground, 
 and presenting his front constantly to his enemy, frustrated 
 his attempts to attack him on an unguarded point ; so that 
 the Saracen, wheeling his horse, was fain to retreat to the 
 distance of aii hundred yards. A second time, like a hawk 
 attacking a heron, the Heathen renewed the charge, and a 
 second time was fain to retreat without coming to a close 
 struggle, A third time he approached in the same manner, 
 when the Christian knight, desirous to terminate this illusory 
 warfare, in which he might at length have been worn out by 
 the activity of his foeman, suddenly seized the mace which 
 hung at his saddle-bow, and, with a strong hand and un- 
 erring aim, hurled it against the head of the Emir, for such 
 and not less his enemy appeared. The Saracen was just 
 aware of the formidable missile in time to interpose his light 
 buckler betwixt tlie mace and his head ; but the violence of 
 the blow forced the buckler down on his turban, and though 
 that defense also contributed to deaden its violence, the 
 Saracen was beaten from his horse. Ere the Christian could 
 avail himself of this mishap, his nimble foeman sprung from 
 the ground, and, calling ou his steed, which instantly re- 
 turned to his side, he leaped into his seat without touching 
 
6 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 the stirrup, and regained all the advantage of which the 
 Knight of the Leopard hoped to deprive him. But the 
 latter had in the meanwhile recovered his mace, and the 
 Eastern cavalier, who remembered the strength and dexterity 
 with which his antagonist had aimed it, seemed to keep 
 cautiously out of reach of that weapon, of which he had so 
 lately felt the force, while he showed his purpose of waging 
 a distant warfare with missile weapons of his own. Planting 
 his long spear in the sand at a distance from the scene of 
 combat, he strung, with great address, a short bow, which 
 he carried at his back, and putting his horse to the gallop, 
 once more described two or three circles of a wider extent 
 than formerly, in the course of which he discharged six 
 arrows at the Christian with such unerring skill that the 
 goodness of his harness alone saved him from being wounded 
 in as many places. The seventh shaft apparently found a 
 less perfect part of the armor, and the Christian dropped 
 heavily from his horse. But what was the surprise of the 
 Saracen, when, dismounting to examine the condition of his 
 prostrate enemy, he found himself suddenly within the grasp 
 of the European, who had had recourse to this artifice to 
 bring his enemy within his reach ! Even in this deadly 
 grapple the Saracen was saved by his agility and presence of 
 mind. He unloosed the sword-belt, in which the Knight of 
 the Leopard had fixed his hold, and, thus eluding his fatal 
 grasp, mounted his horse, which seemed to watch his motions 
 with the intelligence of a human being, and again rode off. 
 But in the last encounter the Saracen had lost his sword 
 and his quiver of arrows, both of wliich were attached to thej 
 girdle, which he was obliged to abandon. He had also lost] 
 his turban in the struggle. These disadvantages seemed to 
 incline the Moslem to a truce : he approached the Christian/ 
 with his right hand extended, but no longer in a menacing 
 attitude. 
 
 *•' There is truce betwixt our nations," he said, in th 
 lingua franca commonly used for the purpose of communicaj 
 tion with the Crusaders ; " wherefore should there be w; 
 betwixt thee and me ? Let there be peace betwixt us," 
 
 '* I am well contented," answered he of the Couchanj 
 Leopard ; " but what security dost thou offer that thou wilj 
 observe the truce ? " 
 
 " The word of a follower of the Prophet was never broken 
 answered the Emir. " It is thou, brave Kazarene, fror| 
 whom I should demand security, did I not know that treasoij 
 seldom dwells with courage." 
 
THE TALISMAN 7 
 
 The Crusader felt that the confidence of the Moslem made 
 him ashamed of his own douhts. 
 
 " By the cross of my sword/' he said, laying his hand on 
 the weapon as he spoke, " I will be true companion to thee, 
 Saracen, while our fortune wills that we remain in company 
 together." 
 
 " By Mahommed, Prophet of God, and by Allah, God of 
 the Prophet," replied his late foeman, " there is not treach- 
 ery in my heart toward thee. And now wend we to yonder 
 fountain, for the hour of rest is at hand, and the stream had 
 hardly touched my lip when 1 was called to battle by thy 
 approach." 
 
 The Knight of the Couchant Leopard yielded a ready and 
 courteous assent ; and the late foes, without an angry look or 
 gesture of doubt, rode side by side to the little cluster oi 
 palm-trees. 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 Times of danger have always, and in a peculiar degree, their 
 seasons of good-will and of security ; and this was particularly 
 so in the ancient feudal ages, in which, as the manners of 
 the period had assigned war to be the chief and most worthy 
 occupation of mankind, the intervals of peace, or rather of 
 truce, were highly relished by those warriors to whom they 
 were seldom granted, and endeared by the very circumstances 
 which rendered them transitory. It is not worth while pre- 
 serving any permanent enmity against a foe whom a champion 
 has fought with to-day, and may again stand in bloody op- 
 position to on the next morning. The time and situation 
 afforded so much room for the ebullition of violent passions, 
 that men, unless when peculiarly opposed to each other, or 
 provoked by the recollection of private and individual wrongs, 
 cheerfully enjoyed in each other's society the brief intervals 
 of pacific intercourse which a warlike life admitted. 
 
 The distinction of religions, nay, the fanatical zeal which 
 animated the followers of the Cross and of the Crescent 
 against each other, was much softened by a feeling so natural 
 to generous combatants, and especially cherished by the spirit 
 of chivalry. This last strong impulse had extended itself 
 gradually from the Christians to their mortal enemies the 
 Saracens, both of Spain and of Palestine. The latter were 
 indeed no longer the fanatical savages who had burst from 
 the center of Arabian deserts, with the saber in one hand 
 and the Koran in the other, to inflict death or the faith of 
 Mahommed, or, at the best, slavery and tribute, upon all who 
 dared to oppose the belief of the prophet of Mecca. These 
 alternatives indeed had been offered to the unwarlike Greeks 
 and Syrians ; but in contending with the western Christians, 
 animated by a zeal as fiery as their own, and possessed of as 
 unconquerable courage, address, and success in arms, the 
 Saracens gradually caught a part of their manners, and es- 
 pecially of those chivalrous observances which were so well 
 calculated to charm the minds of a proud and conquering 
 people. They had their tournaments and games of chivalry ; 
 they had even their knights, or some rank analogous ; and, 
 above all, the Saracens observed their plighted faith with an 
 8 
 
THE TALISMAN 9 
 
 accuracy wliich might sometimes put to shame those who 
 owned a better religion. Their truces, whether national or 
 betwixt individuals, were faithfully observed ; and thus it 
 was that war, in itself perhaps the greatest of evils, yet gave 
 occasion for display of good faith, generosity, clemency, and 
 even kindly affections, which less frequently occur in more 
 tranquil periods, where the passions of men, experiencing 
 wrongs or entertaining quarrels which cannot be brought to 
 instant decision, are apt to smolder for a length of time in 
 the bosoms of those who are so unhappy as to be their prey. 
 
 It was under the influence of these milder feelings, which 
 soften the horrors of warfare, that the Christian and Saracen, 
 who had so lately done their best for each other's mutual 
 destruction, rode at a slow pace towards the fountain of palm- 
 trees, to which the Knight of the Couchant Leopard had been 
 tending, when interrupted in mid-passage by his fleet and 
 dangerous- adversary. Each was wrapt for some time in his 
 own reflections, and took breath after an encounter which had 
 threatened to be fatal to one or both ; and their good horses 
 seemed no less to enjoy the interval of repose. That of the 
 Saracen, however, though he had been forced into much the 
 more vio-lent and extended sphere of motion, appeared to have 
 suffered less from fatigue than the charger of the European 
 knight. The sweat hung still clammy on the limbs of the last, 
 when those of the noble Arab were completely dried by the 
 interval of tranquil exercise, all saving the foam-flakes which 
 were still visible on his bridle and housings. The loose soil 
 on which he trode so much augmented the distress of the 
 Christian's horse, heavily loaded by his own armor and the 
 weight of his rider, that the latter jumped from his saddle, 
 and^led his charger along the deep dust of the loamy soil, 
 'which was burnt in the sun into a substance more impalpable 
 than the finest sand, and thus gave thefaithful horse refresh- 
 ment at the expense of his own additional toil ; for, iron- 
 sheathed as he was, he sunk over the mailed shoes at every 
 step which he placed on a surface so light and unresisting. 
 
 " You are right," said the Saracen, and it was the first 
 word that either had spoken since their truce was concluded 
 — " your strong horse deserves your care ; but what do you 
 in the desert wUh an animal which sinks over the fetlock at 
 every step, as if he would plant each foot deep as the root of 
 a date-tree ?" 
 
 "' Thou speakest rightly, Saracen," said the Christian 
 knight, not delighted at the tone with which the infidel criti- 
 cised his favorite steed— " rightly, according to thy knowl- 
 
10 WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 edge and observation. But my good horse hath ere now 
 borne me, in mine own land, over as wide a lake as thon 
 seest yonder spread out behind us, yetnotwet one hair above 
 his hoof." 
 
 The Saracen looked at him with as much surprise as his 
 manners permitted him to testify, which was only expressed 
 by a slight approach to a disdainful smile, that hardly curled 
 perceptibly the broad thick mustachio which enveloped his 
 upper lip. 
 
 " It is justly spoken," he said, instantly composing himself 
 to his usual serene gravity : ''list to a Frank, and hear a 
 fable." 
 
 " Thou art not courteous, misbeliever," replied the Cru- 
 sader, " to doubt the word of a dubbed knight ; and were it 
 not that thou speakest in ignorance, and not in malice, our 
 truce had its ending ere it is well begun. Thinkest thou I 
 tell thee an untruth when I say that I, one of five hundred 
 horsemen, armed in complete mail, have ridden — ay, and 
 ridden for miles, upon water as solid as the crystal and ten 
 times less brittle ? " 
 
 " What wouldst thou tell me?" answered the Moslem. 
 " Yonder inland sea thou dost point at is peculiar in this, 
 that, by the especial curse of God, it sutfereth nothing to 
 sink in its waves, but wafts them away, and casts them on its 
 margin ; but neither the Dead Sea nor any of the seven 
 oceans which environ the earth will endure on their surface 
 the pressure of a horse's foot, more than the Red Sea endured 
 to sustain the advance of Pharaoh and his host." 
 
 ''You speak truth after your knowledge, Saracen," said 
 the Christian knight ; " and yet, trust me, I fable not, ac- 
 cording to mine. Heat in this climate converts the soil into 
 something almost as unstable as water ; and in my land cold 
 often converts the water itself into a substance as hard as 
 rock. Let us speak of this no longer ; for the thoughts of 
 the calm, clear., blue refulgence of a winter's lake, glimmer- 
 ing to stars and moonbeam, aggravate the horrors of this 
 fiery desert, where, methinks, the very air which we breathe 
 is like the vapor of a fiery furnace seven times heated.'' 
 
 The Saracen looked on him with some attention, as if to 
 discover in what sense he was to understand words which to 
 him must have appeared either to contain something of 
 mystery or of imposition. At length he seemed determined 
 in what manner to receive the language of his new companion. 
 
 " You are," he said, " of a nation that loves to laugh, and 
 you make sport with yourselves and with others by telling 
 
THE TALISMAN 11 
 
 jvhat is impossible, and reporting wliat never chanced. Thou 
 art one of tlie knights of France, who liohi it for glee and 
 pastime to ' gab,' * as they term it, of ex})loits that are be- 
 yond liuman power. I were wrong to ciiallenge, for the 
 time, the privilege of thy speech, since boasting is more nat- 
 uml to thee than truth." 
 
 "I am not of their land, neither of their fashion," said 
 the knight, " which is, as thou well sayest, to 'gab' of that 
 which they dare not undertake, or undertaking cannot per- 
 fect. But in this I have intimated their folly, brave Saracen, 
 that, in talking to thee of what thou canst not comprehend, 
 I have, even in speaking most simple truth, fully incurred 
 the character of a braggart in thy eyes ; so, I pray yon, let 
 my words pass." 
 
 They had now arrived at the knot of jDalm-trees, and the 
 fountain which welled out from beneath their shade in spark- 
 ling profusion. 
 
 We have spoken of a moment of truce in the midst of war ; 
 and this, a spot of beauty in the midst of a sterile desert, was 
 scarce less dear to the imagination. It was a scene which, 
 perhaps, would elsewhere have deserved little notice ; but as 
 the single speck, in a boundless horizon, which promised the 
 refreshment of shade and living water, these blessings held 
 cheap where they are common, rendered the fountain and 
 its neighborhood a little paradise. Some generous or chari- 
 table hand, ere yet the evil days of Palestine began, had 
 walled in and arched over the fountain, to preserve it from 
 being absorbed in the earth, or choked by the flitting clouds 
 of dust with which the least breath of wind covered the des- 
 ert. The arch was now broken and partly ruinous ; but it 
 still so far projected over and covered in the fountain, that 
 it excluded the sun in a great measure from its waters, which, 
 hardly touched by a straggling beam, while all around was 
 blazing, lay in a steady repose, alike delightful to the eye 
 and the imagination. Stealing from under the arch, they 
 were first received in a marble basin, much defaced indeed, 
 but still cheering the eye, by showing that the place was an- 
 ciently considered as a station, that the hand of man had 
 been there, and that man's accommoda tion had been in some 
 measure attended to. The thirsty and weary traveler was 
 reminded by these signs that others had suffered similar 
 difficulties, reposed in the same spot, and, doubtless, found 
 their way in safety to a more fertile country. Again, the 
 icarce visible current which escaped from the basin served 
 See Gab, Gaber. Note 3. 
 
12 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 to nourish the few trees which surrounded the fountain, and 
 where it sunk into the ground and disappeared its refreshing 
 presence was acknowledged by a carpet of velvet verdure. 
 
 In this delightful spot the two warriors halted, and each, 
 after his own fashion, proceeded to relieve his horse from 
 saddle, bit, and rein, and permitted the animals to drink at 
 the basin, ere they refreshed themselves from the fountain- 
 head, which arose under the vault. They then suffered the 
 steeds to go loose^ confident that their interest, as well as 
 their domesticated habits, would prevent their straying from 
 the pure water and fresh grass. 
 
 Christian and Saracen next sat down together on the turf, 
 and produced each the small allowance of store which they 
 carried for their own refres-hment. Yet, ere they severally 
 proceeded to their scanty meal, they eyed each other with that 
 curiosity which the close and doubtful conflict in which they 
 had been so lately engaged was calculated to inspire. Each 
 was desirous to measure the strength, and form some estimate 
 of the character, of an adversary so formidable ; and each 
 was compelled to acknowledge that, had he fallen in the con- 
 flict, it had been by a noble hand. 
 
 The champions formed a striking contrast to each other 
 in person and features, and might have formed no inaccurate 
 representatives of their difl'erent nations. The Frank seemed 
 a powerful man, built after the ancient Gothic cast of form, 
 with light brown hair, which, on the removal of his helmet, 
 was seen to curl thick and j^rofusely over his head. His fea- 
 tures had acquired, from the hot climate, a huge much 
 darker than those jDarts of his neck which were less fre- 
 quently exposed to view, or than was warranted by his full 
 and well-opened blue eye, the color of his hair, and of the 
 mustachios which thickly shaded his upper lip, while his chin 
 was carefully divested of beard, after the Xorman fashion. 
 His nose was Grecian and well formed ; his mouth, rather 
 large in proportion, but filled with well-set, strong, and 
 beautifully white teeth ; his head small, and set upon 
 the neck with much grace. His age could not exceed thirty, 
 but if the effects of toil and climate were allowed for, might 
 be three or four years under that period. His form was 
 tall, powerful, and athletic, like that of a man whose strength 
 might, in later life, become unwieldy, but which was hitherto 
 united with lightness and activity. His hands, when he 
 withdrew the mailed gloves, were long, fair and well-propor- 
 tioned ; the wrist-bones peculiarly large and strong, and the 
 arms remarkably well-shaped and brawny. A military 
 
TBE TALISMAN IS 
 
 hardihood, and careless frankness of expression, characterized 
 his hwij^uajj^e and liis motions; anil his voice had the tone of one 
 more iiecustomed to command than to obey, and who was in 
 the liabit of expressing his sentiments aloud and boldly, 
 whenever he was called upon to announce them. 
 
 The Saracen Emir formed a marked and striking contrast 
 with the Western Crusader. His stature was indeed above 
 the middle size, but he was at least three inches shorter than 
 the European, whose size approached the gigantic. His 
 slender limbs, and long spare hands and arms, though well 
 proportioned to his person, and suited to the style of his 
 countenance, did not at first aspect promise the display of 
 vigor and elasticity which the Emir had lately exhibited. 
 But, on looking more closely, his limbs, where exposed to 
 view, seemed divested of all that was fleshy or cumbersome ; 
 so that nothing being left but bone, braAvn, and sinew, it 
 w^as a frame fitted for exertion and fatigue, far beyond that 
 of a bulky champion, whose strength and size are counter- 
 balanced by weight, and who is exhausted by his own exer- 
 :ions. The countenance of the Saracen naturally bore a 
 general national resemblance to the Eastern tribe from whom 
 he descended, and was as unlike as possible to the exagger- 
 ated terms in which tlie minstrels of the day were wont to 
 represent the infidel champions, and the fabulous description 
 which a sister art still presents as the Saracen's Head upon 
 sign-posts. His features were small, well formed and del- 
 icate, though deeply embrowaied by the Eastern sun, and 
 terminated by a flowing and curled black beard, which 
 seemed trimmed wath peculiar care. The nose w^as straight 
 and regular, the eyes keen, deep-set, black, and glowing, and 
 his teeth equaled in beauty the ivory of his deserts. The 
 person and proportions of the Saracen, in short, stretched 
 on the turf near to his powerful antagonist, might have been 
 compared to his sheeny and crescent-formed saber, with its 
 narrow and light, but bright and keen, Damascus blade, 
 contrasted with the long and ponderous Gothic war-sword 
 which was flung unbuckled on the same sod. The Emir w^as 
 in the very flower of his age, and might perhaps have been 
 termed eminently beautiful, but for the narrowness of his 
 forehead, and something of too much thinness and sharp- 
 
 ss of feature, or at least what might have seemed sucli in 
 a European estimate of beauty. 
 
 The manners of the Eastern warrior were grave, graceful, 
 and decorous ; indicating, however, in some particulars, the 
 habitual restraint which men of warm and choleric tempei-s 
 
14 WA VEELEY NO VEL S 
 
 often set as a guard, upon their native impetuosity of dispo- 
 sition, and at the same time a sense of his own dignity, which 
 seemed to impose a certain formality of behavior in him who 
 entertained it. 
 
 This haughty feeling of superiority was perhaps equally 
 entertained by his new European acquaintance, but the 
 "effect was different ; and the same feeling which dictated to 
 the Christian knight a bold, blunt, and somewhat careless 
 bearing, as one too conscious of his own importance to be 
 anxious about the opinions of others, appeared to prescribe 
 to the Saracen a style of courtesy more studiously and for- 
 mally observant of ceremony. Both were courteous ; but the 
 courtesy of the Christian seemed to flow rather from a good- 
 humored sense of what was due to others ; that of the 
 Moslem from a high feeling of what was to be expected from 
 himself. 
 
 The provision which each had made for his refreshment 
 was simple, but the meal of the Saracen was abstemious. A 
 handful of dates, and a morsel of coarse barley-bread, sufficed 
 to relieve the hunger of the latter, whose education had 
 habituated him to the fare of the desert, although, since 
 their Syrian conquests, the Arabian simplicity of life fre- 
 quently gave place to the most unbounded profusion of 
 luxury. A few draughts from the lovely fountain by which 
 they reposed completed his meal. That of the Christian, 
 though coarse, was more genial. Dried hog's-flesh, the 
 abomination of the Moslemah, was the chief part of his repast ; 
 and his drink, derived from a leathern bottle, contained 
 something better than pure element. He fed with more dis- 
 play of appetite, and drank with more appearance of satis- 
 faction, than the Saracen judged it oecoming to show in 
 the performance of a mere bodily function ; and, doubtless, 
 the secret contempt which each entertained for the other, as 
 the follower of a false religion, was considerably increased by 
 the marked difference of their diet and manners. But each 
 had found the weight of his opponent's arm, and the mutual 
 respect which the bold struggle had created was sufficient 
 to subdue other and inferior considerations. Yet the Saracen 
 could not help remarking the circumstances which displeased 
 him in the Christian's conduct and manners ; and, after he 
 had witnessed for some time in silence the keen appetite 
 which protracted the knight's banquet long after his own 
 was concluded, he thus addressed him : 
 
 " Valiant Nazarene, is it fitting that one who can fight 
 like a man should feed like a dog or a wolf ? Even a misb«- 
 
THE TALISMAN 15 
 
 lieving Jew would shudder ;it the food which you seem to eat 
 with as much relish as if it were fruit from the trees of Para- 
 dise." 
 
 " Valiant Saracen/' answered the Christian, looking up 
 with some surprise at the accusation thus unexpectedly 
 brought, " know thou that I exercise my Christian freedom, 
 in using that which is forbidden to the Jews, being, as they 
 esteem themselves, under the bondage of tlie old law of 
 Moses. We, Saracens, be it known to thee, have a better Avar- 
 rant for what we do. Ave Maria ! be we thankful." And, 
 as if in defiance of his companion's scruples, he concluded a 
 short Latin grace with a long draught from the leathern 
 bottle. 
 
 "That, too, you call a part of your liberty," said the Sar- 
 acen ; " and as yon feed like the brutes, so you degrade 
 yourself to the bestial condition by drinking a poisonous 
 liquor which even they refuse." 
 
 " Know, foolish Saracen," replied the Christian, without 
 hesitation, " that thou blasphemest the gifts of God, even 
 with the blasphemy of thy father Ishmael. The juice of the 
 grape is given to him that will use it wisely, as that which 
 cheers the heart of man after toil, refreshes him in sickness, 
 and comforts him in sorrow. He who so enjoyeth it may 
 thank God for his Avine-cup as for his daily bread ; and he 
 who abuseth the gift of Heaven is not a greater fool in his 
 intoxication than thou in thine abstinence." 
 
 The keen eye of the Saracen kindled at this sarcasm, and 
 his hand sought the hilt of his poniard. It Avas but a mo- 
 mentary thought, however, and died away in the recollection 
 of the powerful champion with Avhom he had to deal, and 
 the desperate grapple, the impression of Avhich still throbbed 
 in his limbs and veins ; and he contented himself with pur- 
 suing the contest in colloquy, as more convenient for the time. 
 
 " Thy Avords," he said, " Nazarene, might create anger, 
 did not thy ignorance raise compassion. Seest thou not, O 
 thou more blind than any Avho asks alms at the door of the 
 mosque, that the liberty thou dost boast of is restrained 
 even in that Avhich is dearest to man's happiness and to his 
 household ; and that thy law, if thou dost practise it, binds 
 thee in marriage to one single mate, be she sick or healthy, 
 be she fruitful or barren, bring she comfort and joy or cla- 
 mor and strife, to thy table and to thy bed ? Tliis, Naz- 
 arene, I do indeed call slavery ; Avhereas, to the faithful hath 
 the Prophet assigned upon earth the patriarchal privileges 
 of Abraham our father and of Solomon, the Avisest of man- 
 
16 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 kind, having given us here a succession of beauty at our 
 pleasure, and beyond the grave the black-eyed houris of 
 Paradise." 
 
 '•' Now, by His name that I most reverence in Heaven," 
 said the Christian, " and by hers whom I most worship on 
 earth, thou art but a blinded and a bewildered infidel. That 
 diamond signet which thou wearest on thy finger, thou bold- 
 est it, doubtless, as of inestimable value ?" 
 
 " Balsora and Bagdad cannot show the like,'* replied the 
 Saracen ; '• but what avails it to our purpose ? " 
 
 " Much," replied the Frank, " as thou shalt thyself con- 
 fess. Take my war-ax and dash the stone into twenty 
 shivers ; would each fragment be as valuable as the original 
 gem, or would they, all collected, bear the tenth jjart of its 
 estimation ? " 
 
 " That is a child's question," answered the Saracen ; " the 
 fragments of such a stone would not equal the entire jewel 
 in the degree of hundreds to one." 
 
 '• Saracen," replied the Christian warrior, " the love which 
 a true knight binds on one only, fair and faithful, is the gem 
 entire ; the affection thou flingest among thy enslaved wives 
 and half-wedded slaves is worthless, comparatively, as the 
 sparkling shivers of the broken diamond." 
 
 ''Now, by the Holy Caaba," said the Emir, "thou art a 
 madman, who hugs his chain of iron as if it were of gold ! 
 Look more closely. This ring of mine would lose half its 
 beauty were not the signet encircled and enchased w^ith these 
 lesser brilliants, which grace it and set it off. The central 
 diamond is man, firm and entire, his value depending on 
 himself alone ; and this circle of lesser jewels are women, 
 borrowing his luster, which he deals out to them as best 
 suits his pleasure or his convenience. Take the central stone 
 from the signet, and the diamond itself remains as valuable 
 as ever, while the lesser gems are comparatively of little value. 
 And this is the true reading of thy parable ; for what sayeth 
 the poet Mausour : " It is the favor of man which giveth 
 beauty and comeliness to woman, as the stream glitters no 
 longer when the sun ceaseth to shine." 
 
 " Saracen," replied the Crusader, " thou speakest like one 
 who never saw a woman worthy the affection of a soldier. 
 Believe me, couldst thou look upon those of Europe, to 
 whom, after Heaven, w^e of the order of knighthood vow 
 fealty and devotion, thou wouldst loathe forever the poor 
 sensual slaves who form thy harem. The beauty of our fair 
 pnes gives point to our spears and edge to our swords ; their 
 
I THE TALISMAN 17 
 
 ■ words are onr law ; and as soon will a lamp shed luster when 
 unkindled, as a knight distinguish liimself by feats of arms, 
 having no mistress of his affection." 
 
 "1 have heard ot this frenzy among tlie warriors of the 
 West/'' said the Emir, '"and iuive ever accounted it one of 
 the. accompanying symptoms of tliat insanity which brings 
 you hither to obtain possession of an empty sepulcher. But 
 yet, methinks, so highly have the Franks whom I have met 
 with extolled the beauty of their women, I could be well 
 contented to behold with mine own eyes those charms which 
 can transform such brave warriors into the tools of their 
 pleasure." 
 
 " Brave Saracen/' said the Knight, '*\i I were not on a 
 pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher, it should be my pride to 
 conduct you, on assurance of safety, to the camp of Richard 
 of England, than whom none knows better how to do honor 
 to a noble foe ; and though I be poor and unattended, yet 
 have I interest to secure for thee, or any such as thou 
 seemest, not safety only, but respect and esteem. There 
 shouldst thou see several of the fairest beauties of France 
 and Britain form a small circle, the brilliancy of which 
 exceeds ten-thousandfold the luster of mines of diamonds 
 such as thine." 
 
 " ]S[ow,by the corner-stone of the Caaba ! " said the Saracen, 
 " I will accept thy invitation as freely as it is given, if thou 
 wilt postpone thy present intent ; and, credit me, brave 
 Nazarene, it were better for thyself to turn back thy horse's 
 head towards the camp of thy people, for to travel towards 
 Jerusalem without a passport is but a wilful casting away of 
 thy life." 
 
 " I have a pass," answered the Knight, producing a 
 parchment, "under Saladin's hand and signet." 
 
 The Saracen bent liis head to the dust as he recognized 
 the seal and handwriting of the renowned soldan of Egypt 
 and Syria ; and having kissed the paper with profound 
 respect, he pressed it to his forehead, then returned it to 
 the_ Christian, saying, "Eash Frank, thou hast sinned 
 against thine own blood and mine, for not showing this to 
 me when we met." 
 
 " You came with leveled spear," said the Knight ; " had 
 a troop of Saracens so assailed me, it might liave stood witli 
 my honor to have shown the soldan's j^ass, but never to one 
 man/* 
 
 " And yet one man," said the Saracen, haughtily, " was 
 enough to interrupt your journey/' 
 3 
 
18 WA VER LEY NOVELS. 
 
 " True, brave Moslem," replied the Christian ; '' but there 
 are few such as thou art. Such falcons fly not in flocks, or, 
 if they do, they pounce not in numbers upon one." 
 
 ''Thou dost us but justice," said the Saracen, evidently 
 gratified by the comjiliment, as he had been touched by the 
 implied scorn of the European's previous boast ; " from us 
 thou shouldst have had no wrong ; but well was it for me 
 that I failed to slay thee, with the safeguard of the king of 
 kings upon thy person. Certain it were, that the cord or 
 the saber had justly avenged such guilt." 
 
 "1 am glad to hear that its influence shall be availing to 
 me," said the Knight, " for I have heard that the road is 
 infested with robber tribes, Avho regard nothing in comparison 
 of an opportunity of plunder." 
 
 " The truth has been told to thee, brave Christian," said 
 the Saracen ; " but I swear to thee, by the turban of the 
 Prophet, that shouldst thou miscarry in any haunt of such 
 villains, I will myself undertake thy revenge with five thou- 
 sand horse : I will slay every male of them, and send their 
 women into such distant captivity that the name of their 
 tribe shall never again be heard within five hundred miles 
 of Damascus. I will sow with salt the foundations of their 
 village, and there shall never live thing dwell there, even 
 from that time forward." 
 
 "1 had rather the trouble which you design for yourself 
 were in revenge of some other more important person than 
 of me, noble Emir," replied the Knight ; " but my vow is 
 recorded in Heaven, for good or for evil, and I must be in- 
 debted to you for pointing me out the way to my resting- 
 place for this evening." 
 
 "That," said the Saracen, "must be under the black 
 covering of my father's tent." 
 
 " This night," answered the Christian, " I must pass in 
 prayer and penitence with a holy man, Theodorick of 
 Engaddi, who dwells amongst these wilds, and spends his 
 life in the service of God." 
 
 " I will at least see you safe thither," said the Saracen. 
 
 "That would be pleasant convoy for me," said the Chris- 
 tian, " yet might endanger the future security of the good 
 father ; for the cruel hand of your people has been red with 
 the blood of the servants of the Lord, and therefore do we 
 come hither in plate and mail, with sword and lance, to open 
 the road to the Holy Sepulcher, and protect the chosen saints 
 and anchorites who yet dwell in this land of promise and of 
 miracle." 
 
THE TALISMAN 19 
 
 '* Nazarene/* said the Moslem, "in this the Greeks and 
 Syrians liave much belied us, seeing we do but after the 
 word of Abubeker Ahvakel, the successor of the Prophet, 
 and, after liim, the first commander of true believers. ' Go 
 forth/ he said, ' Yezed ben Sophian,' when he sent that re- 
 nowned general to take Syria from the infidels, ' quit your- 
 selves like men in battle, but slay neither the aged, the infirm, 
 the women, nor the children. Waste not the land, neither 
 destroy corn and fruit-trees, they are the gifts of Allah. 
 Keep faith when you have made any covenant, even if it be 
 to vour own harm. If ye find holy men laboring with their 
 hands, and serving God in the desert, hurt them not, neither 
 destroy their dwellings. But when you find them with sha- 
 ven crowns, they are of the synagogue of Satan — smite with 
 the saber, slay, cease not till they become believers or tribu- 
 taries." As the Caliph, companion of the Propiiec, Jiacn 
 told us, so have we done, and those whom our justice has 
 smitten are but the priests of Satan. But unto the good 
 men who, without stirring up nation against nation, worship 
 sincerely in the faith of Issa ben Mariam, we are a shadow ; 
 and a shield ; and such being he whom you seek, even though 
 the light of the Prophet hath not reached him, from me he 
 will only have love, favor, and regard." 
 
 " The anchorite whom I would now visit," said the war- 
 like pilgrim, '*is, I have heard, no priest ; but were he of 
 that arointed and sacred order, I would prove with my good 
 
 lance, against paynim and infidel " 
 
 " Let us not defy each other, brother," interrupted the 
 Saracen ; " we shall find, either of us, enough of Franks or 
 of Moslemah on -whom to exercise both sword and lance. 
 This Theodorick is protected both by Turk and Arab ; and, 
 though one of strange conditions at intervals, yet, on the 
 I whole, he bears himself so well as the follower of his own 
 prophet, that he merits the protection of him who was 
 
 sent " 
 
 •• Xow, by Our Lady, Saracen," exclaimed the Christian, 
 '' if thou darest name in the same breath the camel-driver of 
 
 Mecca with " 
 
 An electrical shock of passion thrilled through the form 
 of tlie Emir ; but it was only momentary, and the calmness 
 .of his reply had both dignity and reason in it, when he said, 
 P" Slander not him whom thou knowest not, the rather that 
 we venerate the founder of thy religion, while we condemn 
 • the doctrine which your priests have spun from it. I will 
 ; myself guide thee to the cavern of the hermit, which, me- 
 
20 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 thinks, without my help, thou "wouldst find it a hard matter 
 to reach. And, on the way, let us leave to mollalis and to 
 monks to dispute about the divinity of our faith, and spe; " 
 on themes which belong to youthful warriors — upon battles, 
 upon beautiful women, upon sharp swords, and upon bright 
 grmor/* 
 
 III 
 ii 
 
 ^o: 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The warriors arose from their place of brief rest and 
 simple refreshment, and courteously aided each other while 
 they carefully replaced and adjusted theliarness from wliich 
 they had relieved for the time their trusty steeds. Each 
 seemed familiar with an employment which at tluit time 
 was a part of necessary, and, indeed, of indispensable, duty. 
 Each also seemed to possess, as far as the difference be- 
 twixt the animal and rational species admitted, the confi- 
 dence and affection of the horse which was the constant com- 
 panion of his travels and his warfare. With the Saracen, 
 this familiar intimacy was a part of his early habits ; for, in 
 the tents of the Eastern military tribes, the horse of the 
 soldier ranks next to, and almost equal in importance with, 
 his wife and his family ; and, with the European warrior, 
 circumstances, and indeed necessity, rendered liis war-horse 
 scarcely less than his brother-in-arms. The steeds, there- 
 fore, suffered themselves quietly to be taken from their food 
 and liberty, and neighed and snuffled fondly around their 
 masters, while they were adjusting their accouterments for 
 farther travel and additional toil. And each warrior, as he 
 prosecuted his own task, or assisted with courtesy his com- 
 panion, looked with observant curiosity at the equipments 
 of his fellow-traveler, and noted particularly what struck 
 him as peculiar in the fashion in which he arranged his 
 riding accouterments. 
 
 Ere they remounted to resume their journey, the Christian 
 knight again moistened his lips and dipt his hands in the 
 living fountain, and said to his pagan associate of the 
 journey, "I would I knew the name of this delicious 
 fountain, that I might hold it in my grateful remembrance ; 
 for never did water slake more deliciously a more oppressive 
 thirst than I liave tliis day experienced."' 
 
 ' It is called in the Arabic language," answered the Sar- 
 acen, " by a name which signifies the Diamond of the 
 Desert." 
 
 " And well is it so named," replied the Cliristian. '' My 
 Inative valley hath a thousand springs, but not to one of 
 ithem shall I attach hereafter such precious recollection aa 
 21 
 
22 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 to this solitary fount, which bestows its liquid treasures 
 where they are not only delightful, but nearly indispen- 
 sable." 
 
 *'You say truth," said the Saracen ; "for the curse is 
 still on yonder sea of death, and neither man nor beast 
 drink of its waves, nor of the river which feeds without fill- 
 ing it, until this inhospitable desert be passed." 
 
 They mounted, and pursued their journey across the sandy 
 waste. The ardor of noon was now past, and a light breeze 
 somewhat alleviated the terrors of the desert, though not 
 without bearing on its wings an impalpable dust, which the 
 Saracen little hoeded, though his heavily-armed companion 
 felt it as such an annoyance, that he hung his iron casque 
 at his saddlebow, and substituted the light riding-cap, 
 termed m the language of the time a mortier, from its re- 
 semblance in shape to an ordinary mortar. They rode to- 
 gether for some time in silence, the Saracen performing the 
 part of director and guide of the journey, which he did by 
 observing minute marks and bearings of the distant rocks, 
 to a ridge of which they Avere gradually approaching. For 
 a little time he seemed absorbed in the task, as a pilot when 
 navigating a vessel through a difficult channel ; but they 
 had not proceeded half a league when he seemed secure of 
 his route, and disposed, with more frankness than was usual 
 to his nation, to enter into conversation. 
 
 ''You have asked the name," he said, ''of a mute 
 fountain, which hath the semblance, but not the reality, of 
 a living tiling. Let me be pardoned to ask the name of the 
 companion with whom I have this day encountered, both in 
 danger and in repose, and which I cannot fancy unknown, 
 even here among the deserts of Palestine ? " 
 
 " It is not yet worth publishing,"_ said the Christian. 
 " Know, however, that among the soldiers of the Cross I am 
 called Kenneth— Kenneth of the Couching Leopard ; at 
 home I have other titles, but they would sound harsh in anJ 
 Eastern ear. Brave Saracen, let me ask which of the tribes!" 
 of Arabia claims your descent, and by what name you are 
 known." 
 
 " Sir Kenneth," said the Moslem, " I joy that your name 
 is such as my lips can easily utter. For me, I am no Arab, 
 yet derive my descent from a line neither less wild nor less 
 warlike. Know, Sir Knight of the Leopard, that I am 
 Sheerkohf, the Lion of the Mountain, and that Kurdistan, 
 from which I derive my descent, holds no family more nobl« 
 than that of Seljook." 
 
THE TALISMAN 23 
 
 '- 1 have heard," answered the Christian, " that your great 
 loldan chiims his blood from the same source ?" 
 
 " Thanks to the Prophet, that hath so far honored our 
 mountains as to send from their bosom him whose word is 
 victory." answered the Paynim. "I am but as a worm be- 
 fore the King of Egypt and Syria, and yet in my own land 
 Bometliing my name may avail. Stranger, witli liow many 
 men didst thou come on this warfare ?" 
 
 " By my faitli," said Sir Kenneth, ''with aid of friends 
 and kinsmen, I was hardly pinched to furnish forth ten well- 
 appointed lances, with maybe some fifty more men, archers 
 and varlets included. Some have deserted my unlucky pen- 
 non, some liave fallen in battle, several have died of disease, 
 and one trusty armor-bearer, for whose life I am now doing 
 my pilgrimage, lies on the bed of sickness." 
 
 '• Christian," said Sheerkohf, ''here I have five arrows in 
 my quiver, each feathered from the wing of an eagle. When 
 1 send one of them to my tents, a thousand warriors mount 
 on horseback ; when I send another, an equal force will 
 arise : for the five, I can command five thousand men ; and 
 if I send my bow, ten thousand mounted riders will shakr 
 the desert. And with thy fifty followers thou hast come tj 
 invade a land in which I am one of the meanest ! " 
 
 "■ Xow, by the rood, Saracen," retorted the Western war- 
 rior, " thou shouldst know, ere thou vauntest thyself, that 
 one steel glove can crush a whole handful of hornets." 
 
 '• Ay, but it must first inclose them within its grasp," said 
 the Saracen, with a smile which might have endangered 
 their new alliance, had he not changed the subject by add 
 ing, " And is bravery so much esteemed amongst the Chris 
 tian princes, that thou, thus void of means and of men, 
 canst offer, as thou didst of late, to be my ^n-otector and 
 security in the camp of thy brethren ?" 
 
 '• Know, Saracen," said the Christian, "since such is thy 
 style, that the name of a knigi. t, and the blood of a gentle- 
 nan, entitle Ip'n to place himself on the same rank with 
 iovi-reigns eveu of the first degree, in so far as regards all 
 Kit regal authoiity and dominion. Were Richard of Eng- 
 land iiimself to wound the honor of a knight as poor as I 
 im, he could not, by the law of chivalry, deny him thf 
 iombat." 
 
 '' Methinks I should like to look upon so strange a 
 cene," said the Emir, " in which a leathern belt and a pair 
 •f spurs put the poorest on a level with the most power- 
 uL" 
 
WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 ** You must add free blood and a fearless heart/' said the 
 Christian ; " then, perhaps, you will not have spoken untruly 
 of the dignity of knighthood/' 
 
 " And mix you as boldly amongst the females of your 
 chiefs and leaders ?" asked the Saracen, 
 
 "■ God forbid," said the Knight of the Leopard, " that the 
 poorest knight in Christendom should not be free, in all 
 honorable service, to devote his hand and sword, the fame oi 
 his actions, and the fixed devotion of his heart, to the fairest 
 princess who ever wore coronet on her brow ! " 
 
 "^ But a little while since," said the Saracen, "and yon 
 described love as the highest treasure of tlie heart — thine 
 hath undoubtedly been high and nobly bestowed ?" 
 
 ''Stranger," answered the Christian, blushing deeply as 
 he spoke, "we tell not rashly where it is we have bestowed 
 our choicest treasures ; it is enongli for thee to know that. 
 as thou sayest, my love is highly and nobly bestowed — mos1 
 higlily, most nobly ; but if thou wouldst hear of love and 
 broken lances, venture thyself, as thou sayest, to the camj^: 
 of tiie Crusaders, and thou wilt find exercise for thine ears, 
 and, if thou wilt, for thy hands too/' 
 
 The Eastern warrior, raising himself in his stirrups and 
 shaking aloft his lance, replied, "Hardly, I fear, shall ] 
 find one with a crossed shoulder who will exchange with nu 
 the cast of the jerrid/' 
 
 " I will not promise for that," replied the Knight, " thougl 
 there be in the camp certain Spaniards, who have right goo( 
 skill in your Eastern game of hurling the javelin/' 
 
 " Dogs and sons of dogs !" ejacuiated the Saracen ; " wlia 
 have these Spaniards to do to come hither to combat tin 
 true believers, who, in their own land, are their lords am 
 task-masters ? AVith them I would mix in no warlike pas 
 time/' 
 
 "■ Let not the knights of Leon or Asturias hear you speal 
 thus of them," said the Knight of the Leopard ; " but,' 
 added he, smiling at the recollection of the morning's com' 
 bat, *' if, instead of a reed, you were inclined to stand th 
 cast of a battle-ax, there are enough of Western warrior 
 who would gratify your longing." 
 
 " By the beard of my father, sir," said the Saracen, wit: 
 an approach to laughter, " the game is too rough for mer 
 sport ; I will never shun them in battle, but my head (press- 
 ing his hand to his brow), will not, for a while, permit me t 
 seek them in sport." 
 
 *' I would you saw the ax of King Eichard/' answered 
 
p 
 
 THE TALISMAN 
 
 the Western warrier, "to which that wliich hangs at my 
 Baddle-bow weighs but as a feather." 
 
 ** We hear nuu'li of that island sovereign/' said the Sara- 
 cen, " art thou one of his subjects ?" 
 
 " One of his followers I am, for this expedition," answer- 
 ed the Knight, "and honored in the service : but not born 
 his subject, although a native of the island in which he 
 reiugs." 
 
 "How mean you ?" said the eastern soldier ; "have you 
 then two kings in one poor island ? " 
 
 "' As thou sayost," said the Scot, for such was Sir Kenneth 
 by birth — " it is even so ; and yet, although the inhabitants 
 of the two extremities of that island are engaged in frequent 
 war, the country can, as thou seest, furnish forth such a 
 body of men-at-arms as may go far to shake the unholy hold 
 which your master hath laid on the cities of Zion. 
 
 "' By the beard of Saladin, Nazarene, but that it is a 
 thoughtless and boyish folly, I could laugh at the simj^licity 
 of your great sultan, who comes hither to make conquests 
 of deserts and rocks, and dispute the possession of them with 
 those who have tenfold numbers at command, while he leaves 
 a });irt of his narrow islet, in which he was born a sovereign, 
 to the dominion of another scepter than his. Surely, Sir 
 Kenneth, you and the other good men of your country 
 sliould have submitted yourselves to the dominion of this 
 King Richard, ere you left your native land, divided against 
 itself, to set forth on this expedition ? " 
 
 Hasty and fierce was Kenneth's answer. "No, by the 
 
 bright light of Heaven ! If the King of England had not 
 
 5et"forth to the Crusade till he was sovereign of Scotland, 
 
 ! the crescent might, for me, and all true-hearted Scots, glim- 
 
 iier forever on the walls of Zion." 
 
 Thus far he had proceeded, when, suddenly recollecting 
 limself, he muttered, " Mea culpa — mea culpa! what have 
 [, a soldier of the Cross, to do with recollection of war be- 
 ;\vixt Christian nations ?" 
 
 The rapid expression of feeling corrected by the dictates 
 )f duty did not escape the Moslem, who, if he did not en- 
 irrly understand all which it conveyed, saw enough to con- 
 inre him with the assurance that Christians, as well as 
 \Ioslemah, had private feelings of persojial pique and na- 
 ional quarrel which were not entirely reconcilable. But the 
 kracens were a race polished, perhaps, to the utmost extent 
 vdiich their religion permitted, and particularly capable of 
 intertaining high ideas of courtesy and politeness ; and such 
 
26 WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 sentiments prevented his taking any notice of the incon- 
 sistency of Sir Kenneth's feelings, in the opposite charac- 
 ters of a Scot and Crusader. 
 
 Meanwhile, as they advanced, the scene began to change 
 around them. They were now turning to the eastward, and 
 had reached the range of steep and barren hills which binds 
 in that quarter the naked plain, and varies the surface ol 
 the country, without changing its sterile character. Sharp 
 rocky eminences began to arise around them, and, in a short 
 time, deep declivities, and ascents, both formidable in 
 height and difhcult from the narrowness of the path, offered 
 to the travelers obstacles of a different kind from those with 
 which they had recently contended. Dark caverns and 
 chasms amongst the rocks, those grottoes so often alluded 
 to in Scripture, yawned fearfully on either side as they pro- 
 ceeded, and the Scottish knight was informed by the Emir 
 that these were often the refuge of beasts of prey, or of nu'n 
 still more ferocious, who, driven to desperation by the con- 
 stant war, and the oppression exercised by the soldiery, as 
 well of the Cross as of the Crescent, had become robbers, 
 and spared neither rank nor religion, neither sex nor age, 
 in their depredations. 
 
 The Scottish kn ight listened with indifference to the ac- 
 counts of ravages committed by wild beasts or wicked men. 
 secure as he felt himself in his own valor and personal 
 strength ; but he was struck with mysterious dread when he 
 recollected that he was now in the awful w^ilderness of the 
 forty days' fast, and the scene of the actual personal temp- 
 tation, wherewith the Evil Principle was permitted to as- 
 sail the Son of Man. He withdrew his attention gradually 
 from the light and worldly conversation of the infidel war- 
 rior beside him, and, however, acceptable his gay and 
 gallant bravery would have rendered him as a companion 
 elsewhere. Sir Kenneth f :lt as if, in those wildernesses — the 
 waste and dry places, in which the foul spirits were wont to 
 wander when expelled the mortals whose forms they pos- 
 sessed — a bare-footed friar w^ould have been a better asso- 
 ciate than the gay but unbelieving paynim. 
 
 These feelings embarrassed him the rather that the Sara- 
 cen's spirits appeared to rise with the journey, and be- 
 cause tlie farther he penetrated into the gloomy recesses of the 
 mountains, the lighter became his conversation, and when 
 he found that unanswered, the louder grew his song. Sir 
 Kenneth knew enough of the Eastern languages to be as- 
 sured that he chanted sonnets of lore, containing all the 
 
THE TALISMAN 27 
 
 glowing praises of beauty in wliicli tlie Oriental poets are so 
 fond of luxuriating, and which, therefore, were peculiarly 
 unfitted for a serious or devotional strain of thouglit, the 
 feeling best becoming the Wilderness of the I'einptation. 
 With inconsistency enough, the Saracen also sung lays in 
 ])raise of wine, the liquid ruby of the Persian poets, and his 
 gaiety at length became so unsuitable to the Christian 
 knight's contrary train of sentiments, as, but for the promise 
 of amity which they had exchanged, would most likely have 
 made Sir Kenneth take measures to change his note. As 
 it was. the Crusader felt as if he had by his side some gay 
 licentious fiend, who endeavored to ensnare his soul, and en- 
 danger his immortal salvation, by inspiring loose thoughts 
 of oartiily pleasures, and thus polluting his devotion, at a 
 time when his faith as a Christian and his vow as a pilgrim 
 called on him for a serious and penitential state of mind. 
 He was thus greatly perplexed, and undecided how to act ; 
 and it was in a tone of hasty displeasure that, at length 
 breaking silence, be interrupted the lay of the celebrated 
 Rudpiki, in which he prefers the mole on his mistress's 
 bosom to all the wealth of Bokhara and Samarcand. 
 
 '"' Saracen," said the Crusader, sternly, '' blinded as thou art, 
 and plunged amidst the errors of a false law, thou shouldst 
 yet comprehend that there are some places more holy than 
 others, and that there are some scenes also in which the Evil 
 One hath more than ordinary power over sinful mortals. I 
 will not tell thee for what awful reason this place — these 
 rocks, these caverns with their gloomy arches, leading as it 
 were to the central abyss — are held an especial haunt of 
 Satan and his angels. It is enough, that I have been long 
 warned to beware of this place by wise and holy men, to 
 whom the qualities of the unholy region are well known. 
 Wherefore, Saracen, forbear thy foolish and ill-timed levity, 
 and turn thy thoughts to things more suited to the spot ; 
 although, alas for thee ! thy best prayers are but as blas- 
 phemy and sin." 
 
 The Saracen listened with some surprise, and then replied, 
 ■with good-humor and gaiety, only so far repressed as court- 
 esy required, " Good Sir Kenneth, methinks you deal un- 
 equally by your com}ninion, or else ceremony is but indif- 
 ferently taught amongst your W\^stern tribes. I took no 
 offense when I saw you gorge hog's flesh and drink wine, 
 and permitted you to enjoy a treat which you called your 
 Christian liberty, only pitying in my heart your foul pas- 
 times. Wherefore, then, shouldst thou take scandal because 
 
28 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 I cheer, to the best of my power, a gloomy road with a 
 cheerful verse ? What saith the poet — ' Song is like the 
 dews of Heaven on the bosom of the desert : it cools the 
 path of the traveler.''^ 
 
 " Friend Saracen," said the Christian, " I blame not the 
 love of minstrelsy and of the gaie science ; albeit we yield 
 unto it even too much room in our thoughts, when they 
 should be bent on better things. But prayers and holy 
 psalms are better fitting than ' lais ' of love, or of wine-cups, 
 when men walk in this Valley of the Shadow of Death, full 
 of fiends and demons, whom the prayers of holy men have 
 driven forth from the haunts of humanity to wander amidst 
 scenes as accursed as themselves.'" 
 
 " Speak not thus of the genii, Christian," answered the 
 Saracen, " for know, thou speak est to one whose line and 
 nation drew their origin from the immortal race which your 
 sect fear and blaspheme." 
 
 *'Iwell thought," answered the Crusader, *' that your 
 blinded race had their descent from the foul fiend, without 
 whose aid you would never have been able to maintain this 
 blessed land of Palestine against so many valiant soldiers of 
 God. I speak not thus of thee in particular, Saracen, but 
 generally of thy people and religion. Strange is it to me, 
 however, not that you should have the descent from the Evil 
 One, but that you should boast of it." 
 
 ''From Avhom should the bravest boast of descending sav- 
 ing from him that is bravest?" said the Saracen ; "from 
 whom should the proudest trace their line so well as from 
 the Dark Spirit which would rather fall headlong by force 
 than bend the knee by his will ? Eblis may be hated, stran- 
 ger, but he must be feared ; and snch as Eblis are his de- 
 scendants of Kurdistan." 
 
 Tales of magic and of necromancy were the learning of 
 the period, and Sir Kenneth heard his companion's confes- 
 sion of diabolical descent without any disbelief, and without: 
 much wonder; yet not without a secret shudder at finding 
 himself in this fearful place, in the company of one who 
 avouched himself to belong to such a lineage. Naturally 
 unsusceptible, however, of fear, he crossed himself, and 
 stoutly demanded of the Saracen an account of the pedigree 
 which" he had boasted. The latter readily complied. 
 
 "Know, brave stranger," he said, "that when the cruel 
 Zohauk.oneof the descendants of Giamschid,* held tlie throne' 
 of Persia, he formed a league with the Powers of Darkness, 
 * See Note 3. 
 
THE TALISMAN 29 
 
 amidst the secret vaults of Istakliar — vaults which the hands 
 of the elementary spirits had hewn out of tlie living rock, long 
 before Adam himself had an existence. Here he fed, with 
 daily oblations of human blood, two devouring serpents,which 
 had become, according to the poets, a part of himself, and to. 
 sustain whom he levied a tax of daily human sacrifices, till 
 the exhausted patience of his subjects caused some to raise 
 up the scimitar of resistance, like the valiant Blacksmith and 
 the victorious Feridoun, by whom the tyrant was at length 
 dethroned, and imprisoned forever in the dismal caverns of 
 the mountain Damavend. But ere that deliverance had 
 taken place, and whilst the power of the bloodthirsty tyrant 
 was at its height, the band of ravening slaves whom he had 
 sent forth to purvey victims for his daily sacrifice brought to 
 the vaults of the palace of Istakhar seven sisters so beautiful 
 that they seemed seven houris. These seven maidens were 
 the daughters of a sage, who had no treasures save those 
 beauties and his own wisdom. The last was not sufficient to 
 foresee this misfortune, the former seemed ineffectual to 
 prevent it. The eldest exceeded not her twentieth year, the 
 youngest had scarce attained her thirteenth ; and so like 
 were they to each other, that they could not have been dis- 
 tinguished but for the difference of height, in which they 
 gradually rose in easy gradation above each other, like the 
 ascent which leads to the gates of Paradise. So lovely were 
 these seven sisters when they stood in the darksome vault, 
 disrobed of all clothing saving a cymar of white silk, that 
 their charms moved the hearts of those who were not mortal. 
 Thunder muttered, the earth shook, the wall of the vault 
 was rent, and at the chasm entered one dressed like a hunter, 
 with bow and shafts, and followed by six others, his breth- 
 ren. They were tall men, and though dark, yet comely to 
 behold, but their eyes had more the glare of those of the 
 dead than the light which lives under the eyelids of the living. 
 *Zeineb,' said the leader of the band, and as he spoke he 
 took the eldest sister by the hand, and his voice was soft, 
 low, and melancholy, 'I am Cothrob, king of the subter- 
 ranean world, and supreme chief of Ginnistan. I and my 
 brethren are of those who, created out of the pure element- 
 ary fire, disdained, even at the command of Omnipotence, 
 to do homage to a clod of earth, because it was called man. 
 Thou mayst have heard of us as cruel, unrelenting, and per- 
 cuting. It is false. AVe are by nature kind and gener- 
 us ; only vengeful when insulted, only cruel when affronted, 
 e are true to those who trust us ; and we have heard the 
 
80 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 invocations of thy father, the sage Mithrasp, who wisely wor- 
 ships not alone tlie Origin of Good, but that which is called 
 the Source of Evil. You and your sisters are on the eve of 
 death ; but let each give to us one hair from your fair tresses 
 in token of fealty, and we will carry you many miles from 
 hence to a phice of safety, where you may bid defiance to 
 Zohauk and his ministers." The fear of instant death, saith 
 the poet, is like the rod of the prophet Haroun, which de- 
 voured, all other rods, when transformed into snakes before 
 the King of Pharaoh ; and the daughters of the Persian sage 
 were less apt than others to be afraid of the addresses of a 
 spirit. They gave the tribute which Cothrob demanded, 
 and in an instant the sisters were transported to an enchanted 
 castle on the mountains of Tugrut, in Kurdistan, and were 
 never again seen by mortal eye. But in process of time 
 seven youths, distinguished in the Avar and in the chase, ap- 
 peared in the environs of the castle of the demons. They 
 were darker, taller, fiercer, and more resolute than any of the 
 scattered inhabitants of the valleys of Kurdistan ; and they 
 took to themselves wives, and became fathers of the seven 
 tribes of the Kurdmans, whose valor is known throughout 
 the universe." 
 
 The Christian knight heard with wonder the wild tale, ot 
 which Kurdistan still possesses the traces, and, after a mo- 
 ment's thought, replied, " Verily, sir knight, you have spoken 
 well : your genealogy may be dreaded and hated, but it can- 
 not be contemned. Neither do I any longer wonder at your 
 obstinacy in a false faith ; since, doubtless, it is part of the 
 fiendish disposition which hath descended from your ances- 
 tors, those infernal huntsmen, as you have described them, 
 to love falsehood rather than truth ; and I no longer marvel 
 that your spirits become high and exalted, and vent them- 
 selves in verse and in tunes, when you approach to the places 
 encumbered by the Iiaunting of evil spirits, which must ex- 
 cite in you that joyous feeling which others experience when 
 approaching the land of their human ancestry." 
 
 " By my father's beard, I think thou hast the right,*' said 
 the Saracen, rather amused than offended by the freedom 
 with which the Christian had uttered his reflections ; *' for, 
 though the Prophet — blessed be his name ! — hath sown 
 amongst us the seed of a better faith than our ancestors 
 learned in the ghostly halls of Tugrut, yet we are not will- 
 ing, like other Moslemah, to pass hasty doom on the lofty and 
 powerful elementary spirits from whom we claim our origin. 
 These genii, according to our belief and hope, are not al- 
 
THE TALISMAN tr 
 
 together reprobate, but are still in the way of probation, and 
 may hereafter be ])unishecl or rewarded. Leave we this to 
 the mollahs and the imautns. Enough tliat with us the 
 reverence for these spirits is not altogether effaced by what 
 we have learned from the Koran, and that many of us still 
 sing, in memorial of our fathers more ancient faith, such 
 verses as these." So saying, he proceeded to chant verses, 
 very ancient in the language and structure, which some have 
 thought derive their source from the worshipers of Ari- 
 toaues, the Evil Principle. 
 
 Bbrfman. 
 
 Dark Ahriman, whom Irak still 
 Holds origin of woe and ill, 
 
 When, bending at thy shrine. 
 We view the world with troubled eye. 
 Where see we 'neath the extended sky, 
 
 An empire matching tliine ? 
 
 If tlie Benigner Power can j^ield 
 A fountain in tlie desert field. 
 
 Wliere weary pilgrims drink : 
 Thine are the waves that lash the rock, 
 Thine the tornado's deadly shock, 
 
 Where countless navies sink. 
 
 Or if He bid tl ? soil dispense 
 Balsams to cheer the sinking sense, 
 
 How few can tliey deliver 
 From lingering pains, or pang intense, 
 Red fever, spotted pestilence, 
 
 The arrows of thy quiver ? 
 
 Chief in man's bosom sits thy sway, 
 And frequent, while in words we pray 
 
 Before another throne, 
 Whate'er of specious form be there. 
 The secret meaning of the prayer 
 
 Is, Ahriman, thine own. 
 
 Say, hast thou feeling, sense, and form. 
 Tliunder thy voice, thy garments storm. 
 
 As Eastern magi say ; 
 With sentient soul of hate and wrath, 
 And wings to sweep thy deadly path, 
 
 And fangs to tear thy prey? 
 
 Or art tliou mix'd in Nature's source, 
 An ever-operating force, 
 Converting good to ill ; 
 
as WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 An evil jjrinciple innate, 
 Contending with our better fate, 
 And oh 1 victorious still ? 
 
 Howe'er it be, dispute is vain. 
 
 On all without thou hold'st thy reign 
 
 Nor less on all within ; 
 Each mortal passion's fierce career. 
 Love, hate, ambition, joy, and fear, 
 
 Thou goadest into sin. 
 
 Whene'er a sunny gleam appears, 
 To brighten up our vale of tears. 
 
 Thou art not distant far ; 
 'Mid such brief solace of our lives. 
 Thou whett'st our very banquet-knives 
 
 To tools of death and war. 
 
 Tlius, from the moment of our birth. 
 Long as we linger on the earth, 
 
 Thou rulest tlie fate of men ; 
 Thine are the pangs of life's last hour, 
 And — who dare answer ?— is thy power. 
 
 Dark Spirit ! ended Then?* 
 
 These verses may perhaps have been the not unnatural 
 effusion of some half-enlightened philosopher, who, in the 
 fabled deity, Arimanes, saw but the prevalence of moral and 
 physical evil ; but in the ears of Sir Kenneth of the Leop- 
 ard they had a different effect, and, sung as they were by 
 one who had just boasted himself a descendant of demons, 
 sounded very like an address of worship to the Arcli-fiend 
 himself. He weighed within himself whether, on hearing 
 such blasphemy in the very desert where Satan had stood 
 rebuked for demanding homage, taking an abrupt leave of 
 the Saracen was sufficient to testify his abhorreuce ; or 
 whether he was not rather constrained by his vow as a Crusader 
 to defy the infidel to combat on the spot, and leave him food 
 for the beasts of the wilderness, when his attention was 
 suddenly caught by an unexpected apparition. 
 
 The light was now verging low, yet served the Knight 
 still to discern that they two were no longer alone in the 
 forest, but were closely watched by a figure of great height 
 and very thin, which skipped over rocks and bushes with so 
 much agility as, added to the wild and hirsute appearance 
 of the individual, reminded him of tlie fauns and silvaus 
 whose images he had seen in the ancient temples of Eome. 
 As the single-hearted Scotchman had never for a moment 
 
 * See Hymn to Ahriman. Note 4. 
 
TEE TALISMAN 33 
 
 doubted these gods of the ancient Gentiles to be actually 
 devils, so he now hesitated not to believe that the blas- 
 phemous hymn of the iSaracen had raised np an infernal 
 spirit. 
 
 " But what recks it ? " said stout Sir Kenneth to himself ; 
 "down with the fiend and his worshipers I" 
 
 He did not, however, think it necessary to give the same 
 warning of detiance to two enemies as he would unquestion- 
 ably have afforded to one. His hand was upon his mace, 
 and perhaps the unwary Saracen would have been paid for 
 his Persian poetry by having his brains dashed out on the 
 spot, without any reason assigned for it ; but the Scottish 
 knight was spared from committing what would have been 
 a sore blot in his shield of arms. The apparition, on which 
 his eyes had been fixed for some time, had at first appeared 
 to dog their path by concealing itself behind rocks and 
 shrubs, using those advantages of the ground with great ad- 
 dress, and surmonnting its irregularities with surprising 
 agility. At length, just as the Saracen paused in his song, 
 the figure, which was that of a tall man clothed in goat- 
 skins, sprung into the midst of the path, and seized a rein 
 of the Saracen's bridle in either hand, confronting thus 
 md bearing back the noble horse, which, unable to endure 
 the manner in which this sudden assailant pressed the long- 
 armed bit and the severe curb, which, according to the 
 Eastern fashion, was a solid ring of iron, reared npright, 
 and finally fell backwards on his master, who, however, 
 avoided the peril of the fall by lightly throwing himself to 
 one side. 
 
 The assailant then shifted his grasp from the bridle of the 
 horse to the throat of the rider, flung himself above the 
 struggling Saracen, and, despite of his youth and activity, 
 kept him undermost, wreathing his long arms above those 
 of his prisoner, who called out angrily, and yet half-laugh- 
 ing at the same time — '• Hamako — fool — unloose me — this 
 thy privilege — unloose me, or I will use my dagger." 
 Thy dagger, infidel dog!" said the figure in the goat- 
 skins, '" hold it in thy gripe if thon canst ! " and in an instant 
 he wrenched the Saracen's weapon out of its owner's hand 
 and brandished it over his head. 
 
 "Help, Nuzarene!" cried vSheerkohf, now seriously 
 alarmed — "help, or the Hanuiko will slay me." 
 
 "Slay thee I" replied tlie dweller of tlie desert; "and 
 well hast thou merited death, for singing thy blasphemous 
 hymns, not only to the praise of thy false prophet, vho ia 
 3 
 
34 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 the foul fiend's harbinger, but to that of the Author of Evil 
 himself." 
 
 The Christian knight had hitherto looked on as one stupi- 
 fied, so strangely had this rencontre contradicted, in its prog- 
 ress and event, all tliat he had previously conjectured. He 
 felt, however, at length, that it touched his honor to inter- 
 fere in behalf of his discomfited comjoanion ; and therefore 
 addressed himself to the victorious figure in the goat-skins. 
 
 "Whosoe'er thou art," he said, "and whether of good or 
 of evil, know that I am sworn for the time to be true com- 
 panion to the Saracen whom thou boldest under thee ; there- 
 fore, I pray thee to let him arise, else I will do battle with 
 thee in his behalf." 
 
 " And a proper quarrel it were," answered the Bamako, 
 ** for a Crusader to do battle in — for the sake of an un- 
 baptized dog to combat one of his own holy faith ! Art thou 
 come forth to the wilderness to fight for the Crescent against 
 the Cross ? A goodly soldier of God art thou, to listen to 
 those who sing the praises of Satan ! " 
 
 Yet, while he spoke thus, he arose himself, and, suffering 
 the Saracen to arise also, returned him his cangiar or 
 poniard. 
 
 **Thou seest to what a point of peril thy presumption 
 hath brought thee," continued he of the goat-skins, now ad- 
 dressing Sheerkohf, ''and by what weak means thy practised 
 skill and boasted agility can be foiled, when such is Heaven's 
 pleasure. Wherefore, beware, Ilderim ! for know that, 
 were there not a twinkle in the star of thy nativity which 
 promises for thee something that is good and gracious in 
 Heaven's good time, we two had not parted till I had torn 
 asunder the throat which so lately trilled forth blasphemies." 
 
 " Humako," said the Saracen, without any appearance of 
 resenting the violent language, and yet more violent assault, 
 to which he had been subjected — " I pray thee, good Ham- 
 ako, to beware how thou dost again urge thy privilege over 
 far ; for though, as a good jVIoslem, I respect those whom 
 Heaven hath dej^rived of ordinary reason, in order to endow 
 them with the spirit of prophecy, yet I like not other men's 
 hands on the bridle of my horse, neither upon my own person. 
 Speak, therefore, wliat thou wilt, secure of any resentment 
 fro' 1 me ; but gather so much sense as to apprehend that, if 
 thou shalt again proffer me any violence, I Avill strike thy 
 shagged head from thy meager shoulders. And to thee, 
 friend Kenneth," he added, as he remounted his steed, "I 
 must needs say that, in a companion through the desert, i 
 
THE TALISMAN 33 
 
 love frieiully deeds better tluiii fair words. Of tlie Itist tliou 
 hast given me enough ; hut it liad been l)etter to have aided 
 me more speedily iu my struggle with this llaniako, who had 
 well-nigh taken my life in his frenzy." 
 
 " By my faith," said the Knight, '' I did somewhat fail — • 
 was somewhat tardy in rendering thee instant help ; but the 
 strangeness of the assailant, tlie suddenness of the scene — ■ 
 it was as if thy wild and wicked lay had raised the devil 
 among us, and such was my confusion, that two or three 
 minutes elapsed ere I could take to my weapon." 
 
 " Thou art but a cold and considerate friend," said the 
 Saracen ; " and, had the Hamako been one grain more 
 frantic, thy companion had been slain by thy side, to thy 
 eternal dishonor, without thy stirring a finger in his aid, 
 although thou satest by, mounted and in arms." 
 
 "By my word, Saracen," said the Christian, ''if thou wilt 
 have it in plain terms, I thought that strange figure was the 
 devil ; and being of thy lineage, I knew not what family 
 secret you might be communicating to each other, as you lay 
 lovingly rolling together on the sand." 
 
 " Thy gibe is no answer, brother Kenneth," said the Sar- 
 acen ; "for know that, had my assailant been in very deed 
 the Prince of Darkness, thou wert bound not the less to enter 
 into combat with him in thy comrade's behalf. Know, also, 
 that -whatever there may be of foul or of fiendish about the 
 Hamako belongs more to your lineage than to mine, this 
 Hamako being, in truth, the anchorite whom thou art come 
 hither to visit." 
 
 " This ! " said Sir Kenneth, looking at the athletic yet 
 wasted figure before him — " this ? Thou mockest, Saracen : 
 this cannot be the venerable Theodorick !" 
 
 " Ask himself, if thou wilt not believe me," answered 
 Sheerkohf ; and ere the w^ords had left his mouth the hermit 
 gave evidence in his own behalf. 
 
 " I am Theodorick of Engaddi," he said — " I am the walker 
 of the desert — I am friend of the cross, and flail of all infidels, 
 heretics, and devil-worshipers. Avoid ye — avoid ye ! Down 
 with Mahound, Termagaunt, and -all their adherents !" So 
 saying, he pulled from under his shaggy garment a sort of 
 flail or jointed club, bound with iron, which he brandished 
 round his head with singular dexterity. 
 
 " Thou seest thy saint," said the Saracen, laughing for the 
 first time at the unmitigated astonishment with which Sir 
 Kenneth looked on the wild gestures and heard the wayward 
 Eautteriii^ of Theodorick, who, after swinging his flail in 
 
86 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 every direction, apparently quite reckless whether it en- 
 countered the head of either of his companions, finally showed 
 his own strength and the soundness of the weapon by strik- 
 ing into fragments a large stone which lay near him. 
 
 " This is a madman," said Sir Kenneth. 
 
 " Not the worse saint," returned the Moslem, speaking 
 according to the well-know Eastern belief that madmen are 
 under the influence of immediate inspiration. ''Know, 
 Christian, that when one eye is extinguished the other be- 
 comes more keen, when one hand is cut off the other becomes 
 more posverful ; so, when our reason in human things is dis- 
 turbed or destroyed, our view heavenward becomes more 
 acute and perfect." 
 
 Here the voice of the Saracen was drowned in that of the 
 hermit, who began to halloo aloud in a wild chanting tone 
 — " I am Theodorick of Engaddi — I am the torch-brand of 
 the desert — I am the flail of the infidels. The lion and the 
 leopard shall be my comrades, and draw nigh to my cell for 
 shelter, neither shall the goat be afraid of their fangs. I am 
 the torch and the lantern. Kyrie eleison! " 
 
 He closed his song by a short race, and ended that again 
 by three forward bounds, which would have done him great 
 credit in a gymnastic academy, but became his character of 
 hermit so indifferently, that the Scottish knight was alto- 
 gether confounded and bewildered. 
 
 The Saracen seemed to understand him better. ''You 
 see," he said, "that he expects us to follow him to his cell, 
 which, indeed, is our only place of refuge for the night. You 
 are the leopard, from the portrait on your shield ; I am the 
 lion, as my name imports , and, by the goat, alluding to his 
 garb of goatskins, he means himself. We must keep him 
 in sight, however, for he is as fleet as a dromedary." 
 
 In fact, the task Avas a difficult one, for though the rev- 
 erend guide stopped from time to time and waved his hand, 
 as if to encourage them to come on, yet, well acquainted witli 
 all the winding dells and passes of the desert, and gifted 
 with uncommon activity, which, perhaps, an unsettled state 
 of mind kept in constant exercise, he led the knights through 
 chasms and along footpaths where even the light-armed 
 Saracen, with his well-trained barb, was in considerable risk, 
 and where the iron-sheathed European and his over-burdened 
 horse found themselves in such imminent peril as the rider 
 would gladly have exchanged for the dangers of a general 
 action. Glad he was, when, at length, after his wild race, 
 he beheld the holy man who had led it standing in front of 
 
THE TALISMAN 37 
 
 a cavern, with a large torch in his hand, composed of a 
 piece of wood dipt in bitumen, which cast a broad and flick- 
 ering light, and emitted a strong sulpliureous smell. 
 
 Undeterred by the stifling vapor, tlie Knight threw him- 
 self from his liorse and entered the cavern, which afforded 
 small appearance of accommodation. The cell was divided 
 into two parts, in the outward of which were an altar of 
 stone and a crucifix made of reeds : this served the anchorite 
 for his chapel. On one side of this outward cave the Chris- 
 tian knight, though not without scruple, arising from re- 
 ligious reverence to the objects around, fastened up his horse 
 and arranged him for the night, in imitation of the Saracen, 
 who gave him to understand that such was the custom of 
 tlie place. Tlie hermit, meanwhile, was busied putting his 
 inner apertment in order to receive his guests, and there 
 they soon joined him. At the bottom of the outer cave, a 
 small aperture, closed with a door of rough plank, led into 
 the sleeping-apartment of the hermit, which was more com- 
 modious. The floor had been brought to a rough level by 
 tlie labor of the inhabitant, and then strewed with white 
 sand, which he daily sprinkled with water from a small foun- 
 tain which bubbled out of the rock in one corner, affording, 
 in that stifling climate, refresiiment alike to the ear and the 
 taste. Mattrasses, wrought of twisted flags lay by the side 
 of the cell ; the sides, like the floor, had been roughly brought 
 to shape, and several herbs and flowers were hung around 
 them. Two waxen torches, which the hermit lighted, gave 
 a cheerful air to the place, which was rendered agreeable by 
 its fragrance and coolness. 
 
 There were implements of labor in one corner of the apart- 
 ment, in the other was a niche for a rude statue of the Vir- 
 gin. A table and two chairs showed that they must be the 
 luindiwork of the anchorite, being different in their form 
 from Oriental accommodations. The former was covered, 
 not only with reeds and pulse, but also with dried flesh, 
 which Theodorick assiduously placed in such arrangement 
 as should invite the appetite of his guests. This appearance 
 of courtesy, though mute, and expressed by gesture only, 
 seemed to Sir Kenneth something entirely irreconcilable 
 with his former wild and violent demeanor. The movements 
 of the hermit were now become composed, and apparently 
 it was only a sense of religious humiliation which prevented 
 Ills features, emaciated as they were by his austere mode of 
 life, from being majestic and noble. He trode his cell as 
 -^ne who seemed born to rule over men, but who had 
 
38 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 abdicated his empire to become the servant of Heaven. Still, 
 it must be allowed that his gigantic size, the length of his 
 unshaven locks and beard, and the fire of a deep-set and 
 wild eye were rather attributes of a soldier than of a recluse. 
 
 Even the Saracen seemed to regard the anchorite with 
 some veneration while he was thus employed, and he whis- 
 pered in a low tone to Sir Kenneth, "The Hamako is now 
 in his better mind ; but he will not speak until we have 
 eaten — such is his vow." 
 
 It was in silence, accordingly, that Theodorick motioned 
 to the Scot to take his place on one of the low chairs, while 
 Sheerkohf placed himself, after the custom of his nation, 
 upon a cushion of mats. The hermit then lield up both 
 hands, as if blessing the refreshment which he had placed 
 before his guests, and they proceeded to eat in silence as 
 profound as his own. To the Saracen this gravity was na- 
 tural, and the Christian imitated his taciturnity, while he 
 employed his thoughts on the singularity of his own situa- 
 tion, and tbe contrast betwixt the wild, furious gesticula- 
 tions, loud cries, and fierce actions of Theodorick, when they 
 first met him, and the demure, solemn, decorous assiduity 
 with which he now performed the duties of hospitality. 
 
 When their meal was ended, the hermit, who had not him- 
 self eaten a morsel, removed the fragments from the table, 
 and placing before the Saracen a pitcher of sherbet, assigned 
 to the Scot a flask of wine. 
 
 " Drink," he said, " my children," they were the first 
 words he had spoken ; " the gifts of God are to be enjoyed, 
 when the Giver is remembered." 
 
 Having said this, he retired to the outward cell, probably 
 for performance of his devotions, and left his guests together 
 in the inner apartment ; when Sir Kenneth endeavored, by 
 various questions, to draw from Sheerkohf what that Emir 
 knew concerning his host. He was interested by more than 
 mere curiosity in these inquiries. Difficult a sit was to rec- 
 oncile the outrageous demeanor of the recluse at his first 
 appearance to his present humble and placid behavior, it 
 seemed yet more impossible to think it consistent with the 
 high consideration in which, according to what Sir Kenneth 
 had learned, this hermit was held by the most enlightened 
 divines of the Christian world. Theodorick, the hermit of 
 Engaddi, had, in that character, been the correspondent of 
 popes and councils ; to wliom his letters, full of elequent 
 fervor, had described the miseries imjiosed by the unbelievers 
 upon the Latin Christians in the Holy Land, in colors scarce 
 
THE TALISMAN 80 
 
 inferior to those employed at the Couucil of Clermont by 
 tlie Hermit Peter, when lie preuclied the first Crusade. To 
 find, in a person so reverend and so much revered, the frantic 
 gestures of a mad fakir, induced tlie Christian knight to 
 pause ere he could resolve to communicate to him certain 
 important matters which he had in charge from some of the 
 leaders of the Crusade. 
 
 It had been a main object of Sir Kenneth's pilgrimage, 
 attempted by a route so unusual, to make such communica- 
 tions ; but what he had that night seen induced him to 
 pause and reflect ere he proceeded to the execution of his 
 commission. From the Emir he could not extract much in- 
 formation, but the general tenor was as follows : — That, as 
 he had heard, the hermit had been once a brave and valiant 
 soldier, wise in council and fortunate in battle, which last 
 he could easily believe from the great strength and agility 
 which he had often seen him display ; that he had appeared 
 at Jerusalem in the character not of a pilgrim, but in that 
 of one who had devoted himself to dwell for the remainder 
 of his life in the Holy Land. Shortly afterwards, he fixed 
 his residence amid the scenes of desolation where they now 
 found him, respected by the Latins for his austere devotion, 
 and by the Turks and Arabs on account of the symptoms of 
 insanity which he displayed, and which they ascribed to in- 
 spiration. It was from them he had the name of Hamako, 
 which expresses such a character in the Turkish language. 
 Sheerkohf himself seemed at a loss how to rank their host. 
 He had been, he said, a wise man, and could often for many 
 hours together speak lessons of virtue or wisdom, without 
 the slightest appearance of inaccuracy. At other times he 
 was wild and violent, but never before had he seen him so 
 mischievously disposed as he had that day appeared to be. 
 His rage was chiefly provoked by any afi'ront to his religion ; 
 and there was a story of some wandering Arabs who had in- 
 sulted his worship and defaced his altar, and whom he had 
 on that account attacked and slain with the short flail, 
 which he carried with him in lieu of all other weapons. 
 This incident had made a great noise, and it was as much 
 the fear of the hermit's iron flail as regard for his charcter 
 as a hamako which caused the roving tribes to respect his 
 dwelling and his chapel. His fame had spread so far, that 
 Saladin had issued particular orders that he should be spared 
 and protected. He himself, and other Moslem lords of 
 rank, had visited the cell more than once, partly from curi- 
 osity, partly that they expected from a man so learned as 
 
40 ^AVMtiLEr NOVELS. 
 
 the Christian hamako some insight into the secrets of futu- 
 rity. "He had," continued the Saracen, "a. rashid, or ob- 
 servatory, of great height, contrived to view the heavenly 
 bodies, and particularly the planetary system ; by whose 
 movements and influences, as both Christian and Moslem 
 believed, the course of human events was regulated, and 
 might be predicted." 
 
 This was the substance of the Emir Sheerkohf 's informa- 
 tion, and it left Sir Kenneth in doubt whether the charac- 
 ter of insanity arose from the occasional excessive fervor of 
 the hermit's zeal, or whether it was not altogether fictitious, 
 and assumed for the sake of the immunities which it 
 afforded. Yet it seemed that the infidels had carried their 
 complaisance towards him to an uncommon length, consid- 
 ering the fanaticism of the followers of Mohammed, in the 
 midst of whom he was living, though the professed enemy 
 of their faith. He thought also there was more intimacy of 
 acquaintance betwixt the hermit and the Saracen than the 
 words of the latter had induced him to anticipate ; and it 
 had not escaped him that the former had called the latter 
 by a name dilferent from that which he himself had as- 
 sumed. All these considerations authorized caution, if not 
 suspicion. He determined to observe his host closely, and 
 not to be over-hasty in communicating with him on the im- 
 portant charge entrusted to him. 
 
 "Beware, Saracen," he said ; "methinks our host's im- 
 agination wanders as well on the subject of names as upon 
 other matters. Thy name is Sheerkohf, and he called thee 
 but now by another." 
 
 " My name, when in the tent of my father," replied the 
 Kurdman, " was Ilderim, and by this I am still distin- 
 guished by many. In the field, and to soldiers, I am known 
 as the Lion of the Mountain, being the name my good 
 sword hath won for me. But hush, the Hamako comes ; it 
 is to warn us to rest. I know his custom : none must watch 
 him at his vigils." 
 
 The anchorite accordingly entered, and folding his arms 
 on his bosom as he stood before them, said with a solemn 
 voice, " Blessed be His name, who hath appointed the quiet 
 night to follow the busy day, and the calm sleep to refresh 
 the wearied limbs, and to compose the troubled spirit ! " 
 
 Both warriors replied " Amen ! " and, arising from the 
 table, prepared to betake themselves to the couches which 
 their host indicated by waving his hand, as, making a rever- 
 ence to each, he agaiu withdrew from the apartment. 
 
• hich warrior prayed, ere lie addressed himself to his place of rest. 
 
THE TALISMAN 41 
 
 The Knight of the Leopard then disarmed himself of his 
 heavy panoply, his Saracen companion kindly assisting him 
 to undo his buckler and clasps, until he remained in the 
 close dress of chamois leather which knights and men-at- 
 arms used to wear under their harness. The Saracen, if he 
 had admired the strength of his adversary when sheathed in 
 steel, was now no less struck with- the accuracy of proportion 
 displayed in his nervous and well-compacted figure. The 
 knight, on the other hand, as, in exchange of courtesy, he 
 assisted the Saracen to disrobe himself of his upper gar- 
 ments, that he might sleep with more convenience, was on 
 his side at a loss to conceive how such slender proportions 
 and slimness of figure could be reconciled with the vigor he 
 had displayed ?n personal contest. 
 
 Each warrior prayed, ere he addressed himself to his place 
 of rest. The Moslem turned towards iiis kehla, the point to 
 which the prayer of each follower of the Prophet was to be 
 addressed, and murmured his heathen orisons ; while the 
 Christian, withdrawing from the contamination of the in- 
 fidel's neighborhood, placed his huge cross-handled sword 
 upright, and kneeling before it as the sign of salvation, told 
 his rosary with a devotion which was enhanced by the recol- 
 lection of the scenes through which he had passed, and the 
 dangers from which he had been rescued in the course of the 
 day. Both warriors, worn by toll and travel, were soon fast 
 asleep, eacii on his separate pallet. 
 
CHAPTEE rV 
 
 Kenneth, the Scot, was uncertain how long his senses had 
 been lost in profound repose, when he was roused to recol- 
 lection by a sense of oppression on his chest, which at first 
 suggested a flitting dream of struggling with a powerful op- 
 ponent, and at length recalled him fully to his senses. He 
 was about to demand who was there, when, opening his 
 eyes, he beheld the figure of the anchorite, wild and savage- 
 looking as we have described, him, standing by his bedside, 
 and pressing his right hand upon his breast, while he held a 
 small silver lamp in the other. 
 
 " Be silent," said the hermit, as the prostrate knight 
 looked up in surprise ; " I have that to say to you which 
 yonder infidel must not hear." 
 
 These words he spoke in the French language, and not in 
 the lingua franca, or compound of Eastern and European 
 dialects, wliicli had hitherto been used amongst them. 
 
 " Arise,'^ he continued, '' put on thy mantle ; speak not, 
 but tread lightly, and follow me." 
 
 Sir Kenneth arose and took his sword. 
 
 " It needs not," answered the anchorite, in a whisper ; 
 ** we are going where spiritual arms avail much, and fleshly 
 weapons are but as the reed and the decayed gourd." 
 
 The knight deposited his sword by the bedside as before, 
 and, armed only with his dagger, from which in this perilous 
 country he never parted, pre^Dared to attend his mysterious 
 host. 
 
 The hermit then moved slowly forwards, and was followed 
 by the knight, still under some uncertainty whether the 
 dark form which glided on before to show him the path was 
 not, in fact, the creation of a disturbed dream. They 
 passed, like shadows, into the outer apartment, without dis- 
 turbing the paynim emir, who lay still buried in repose. 
 Before the cross and altar, in the outward room, a lamp was 
 still burning, a missal was displayed, and on the floor lay a 
 discipline or penitential scourge of small cord and wire, the 
 lashes of which were recently stained with blood — a token, 
 no doubt, of the severe penance of the recluse. Here Theo- 
 dorick k-^eeled down, and pointed to the knight to take his 
 42 
 
THE TALISMAN 43 
 
 place beside him upon the sharp flijits, which seemed pL'iced 
 for the purpose of rendering the posture of reverential devo- 
 tion as uneasy as possible ; he read many prayers of the 
 Catholic Church, and chanted, in a low but earnest voice, 
 three of the penitential psalms. These last he intermixed 
 with sighs, and tears, and convulsive throbs, which bore 
 witness how deeply he felt the divine poetry which he recited. 
 The Scottish knight assisted with profound sincerity at 
 these acts of devotion, his opinions of his host beginning, in 
 the meantime, to be so much changed that he doubted 
 iwhether, from the severity of his penance and the ardor of 
 his prayers, he ought not to regard him as a saint ; and 
 when they arose from the ground, he stood with reverence 
 before liim, as a pupil before an honored master. The 
 Liermit was on his side silent and abstracted for the space of 
 1 few minutes. 
 
 " Look into yonder recess, my son,^' he said, pointing to 
 the farther corner of the cell ; '^ there thou wilt find a veil 
 —bring it hither." 
 
 The knight obeyed ; and in a small aperture cut out of 
 :he wall, and secured with a door of wicker, he found the 
 veil inquired for. When he brought it to the light, he dis- 
 covered that it was torn, and soiled in some places with some 
 dark substance. The anchorite looked at it with a deep but 
 smothered emotion, and, ere he could speak to the Scottish 
 tnight, was compelled to vent his feelings in a convulsive 
 i^roan. 
 
 i " Thou art now about to look upon the richest treasure 
 Ithat the earth possess," he at length said ; " wo is me, that 
 my eyes are unworthy to be lifted towards it ! Alas ! I am 
 but the vile and despised sign, which points out to the 
 iWearied traveler a harbor of rest and security, but must itself 
 remain forever without doors. In vain have I fled to the 
 very depths of the rocks and the very bosom of the thirsty 
 desert. Mine enemy hath found me — even he whom I have 
 denied has pursued me to my fortresses \" 
 j He paused again for a moment, and turning to the Scot- 
 tish knight, said, in a firmer tone of voice, " You bring me 
 a greeting from Kichard of England ? " 
 
 '• I come from the council of Christian princes," said the 
 knight ; ''but the King of England being indisposed, I am 
 not honored with his Majesty's commands." 
 
 ''Your token ?" demanded the recluse. 
 
 Sir Kenneth hesitated ; former suspicions, and the marks 
 of insanity which the hermit had formerly exhibited, rushed 
 
44 n'A VERLE Y N O VEL S 
 
 suddenly on liis thoughts ; but how suspect a man whose 
 manners were so saintly ? " My password," he said at 
 length, is this — ' Kings begged of a beggar.'" 
 
 " It is right," said the hermit, while he paused ; " I know 
 you well, but the sentinel upon his post — and mine is an im- 
 portant one — challenges friend as well as foe. " 
 
 He then moved forward with the lamp, leading the way 
 into the room which they had left. The Saracen lay on hia 
 couch, still fast asleep. The hermit paused by his side an 
 looked down on him. 
 
 ''He sleeps," he said, "in darkness, and must not be 
 awakened." 
 
 The attitude of the Emir did indeed convey the idea of 
 profound repose. One arm, flung across his body, as he lay 
 with his face half turned to the wall, concealed, with its 
 loose and long sleeve, the greater part of his face ; but the 
 high forehead was yet visible. Its nerves, which during his 
 waking hours were so uncommonly active, were now motion 
 less, as if the face had been composed of dark marble, and 
 his long silken eyelashes closed over his piercing and hawk 
 like eyes. The open and relaxed hand, and the deep 
 regular, and soft breathing, gave all tokens of the most pro- 
 found repose. The slumberer formed a singular group along 
 with the tall forms of the hermit in his shaggy dress of goat- 
 skins, bearing the lamp, and the knight in his close leathern 
 coat ; tlie former with an austere expression of ascetic gloom, 
 the latter with anxious curiosity deeply impressed on his J™ 
 manly features. 
 
 " He sleeps soundly," said the hermit, in the same low, 
 tone as before, and repeating the words, though he had|"I^' 
 changed the meaning from that which is literal to a meta-'ff^' 
 phorical sense — " he sleeps in darkness, but there shall be f 
 for him a dayspring. 0, Ilderim, thy waking thoughts are 
 yet as vain and wild as those which are wheeling their giddy 
 dance through thy sleeping brain ; but the trumpet shall be^ 
 heard, and the dream shall be dissolved." 
 
 So saying, and making the knight a sign to follow him, 
 the hermit went towards the altar, and, jjassing behind it, 
 pressed a spring, which, opening without noise, showed a 
 small iron door wrought in the side of the cavern, so as to be 
 almost imperceptible, unless upon the most severe scrutiny, 
 
 m 
 
 Olii 
 
 jit, 
 fliol 
 ecL'il 
 lool; 
 ionit 
 
 ISCeli 
 
 irDiiu 
 iiid( 
 ffif'! ; 
 kb. 
 
 W' 
 .p 
 
 (TOlIli 
 
 nnen 
 mk' 
 lilt 
 iiidi 
 ritlii 
 
 ik 
 
 bster 
 ioiii: 
 Kiiji: 
 
 Iroiu ■ 
 
 The hermit, ere he ventured fully to open the door, dropped ^^''i- 
 
 some oil on the hinges, which the lamp supplied. A small 
 staircase, hewn in the rock, was discovered when the ironf'"^ ^ 
 door was at length completely opened. 
 
 Ken 
 
 mi 
 
 lOlllDi; 
 
THE TALISMAN 45 
 
 *' Take the veil whicli I hold/' said the hermit, in a mel- 
 ncholy tone, " and blind mine eyes ; for I may not looli on 
 he treasure which thou art presently to behold, without sin 
 nd presumption/' 
 
 Without reply, the knight hastily muffled the recluse's 
 lead in the veil, and the latter began to ascend the staircase 
 
 one too much accustomed to the way to require the use of 
 ight, while at the same time he held tlie lamp to the Scot, 
 ^ho followed him for many steps up the narrow ascent. At 
 3ngth they rested in a small vault of irregular form, in one 
 lOok of which the staircase terminated, while in another 
 orner a corresponding stair was seen to continue the 
 scent. In a third angle was a Gotliic door, very rudely 
 rnamented with the usual attributes of clustered columns 
 nd carving, and defended by a wicket, strongly guarded 
 nth iron, and studded with large nails. To this last point 
 he hermit directed his steps, which seemed to falter as he 
 .pproached it. 
 
 " Put oS thy shoes," he said to his attendant ; '' the 
 ;round on which thou standest is holy. Banish from thy 
 nnermost heart each profane and carnal- thought, for to 
 arbor such wliile in this place were a deadly impiety." 
 
 Tlie knight laid aside his shoes as he was commanded, 
 nd the hermit stood in the meanwhile as if communing 
 irith his soul in secret prayer, and when he again moved, 
 ommanded the knight to knock at the wicket three times. 
 le did so. The door opened spontaneously, at least Sir 
 lenneth beheld no one, and his senses were at once assailed 
 )y a stream of the purest light, and by a strong and almost 
 ppressive sense of the richest perfumes. He stepped two 
 )r three paces back, and it was the space of a minute ere 
 le recovered the dazzling and overpowering effects of the 
 .ndden change from darkness to light. 
 
 When he entered the apartment in which this brilliant 
 uster was displayed, he perceived that the light proceeded 
 rom a combination of silver lamps, fed with purest oil, and 
 .ending forth the richest odors, hanging by silver chains 
 'roni the roof of a small Gothic chapel, hewn, like most 
 jart of the hermit's singular mansion, out of the sound and 
 lolid rock. But, whereas, in every other place which Sir 
 Kenneth had seen, the labor employed upon the_ rock liad 
 Deen of the simplest and coarsest description, it had in 
 ihis chapel employed the invention and the chisels of the 
 nost able architects. The groined roofs rose from six 
 jolumns on each side, carved with the rarest skill ; and 
 
46 WAVEttLEY NOVELS 
 
 the manner in which the crossings of the concave archea 
 were bound together, as it were, with appropriate orna- 
 ments, was all in the finest tone of the architecture and 
 of the age. Corresponding to the line of pillars, there 
 were on each side six richly wrought niches, each of which 
 contained the image of one of the twelve apostles. 
 
 At the upper and eastern end of the chapel stood the 
 altar, behind which a very rich curtain of Persian silk, em- 
 broidered deeply with gold, covered a recess, containing, 
 unquestionably, some image or relic of no ordinary sanc- 
 tity, in honor of whom this singular place of worship had 
 been erected. Under the persuasion that this must be the 
 case, the knight advanced to the shrine, and, kneeling 
 down before it, repeated his devotions with fervency, dur- 
 ing which his attention was disturbed by the curtain being 
 suddenly raised, or rather pulled aside, how or by whom 
 he saw not ; but in the niche which was thus disclosed he 
 beheld a cabinet of silver and ebony with a double fold- 
 ing-door, the whole formed into the miniature resemblance 
 of a Gothic church. 
 
 As he gazed with anxious curiosity on the shrine, the 
 two folding-doors also flew open, discovering a large piece 
 of wood, on which were blazoned the words " Vera Crux " 
 at the same time a choir of female voices sung Gloria 
 Patri. The instant the strain had ceased, the shrine waf 
 closed and the curtain again drawn, and the knight whc 
 knelt at the altar might now continue his devotions un 
 disturbed in honor of the holy relic which had been jusi y 
 disclosed to his view. He did this under the profounc 
 impression of one who had witnessed, with his own ey 
 an awful evidence of the truth of his religion, and it waj 
 some time ere, concluding his orisons, he arose and ven 
 tured to look around him for the hermit, who had guidec 
 him to this sacred and mysterious spot. He beheld him 
 his head still muffled in the veil which he had himsel 
 wrapped around it, couching, like a rated hound, upon th( 
 tlireshold of the chapel, but, apparently, without ventur 
 ing to cross it : the holiest reverence, the most penitentia 
 remorse was expressed by his posture, which seemed tha 
 of a man borne down arid crushed to the earth by the bur| 
 den of his inward feelings. It seemed to the Scot that onl 
 the sense of the deepest penitence, remorse, and humiliatio 
 could have thus prostrated a frame so strong and a spirit s 
 fiery. 
 
 He approached him as if to speak, but the recluse antic: 
 
 !fri 
 iJBh 
 Hi 
 bale 
 lejii 
 Hire' 
 
 'fco:, 
 feiitij 
 
 ilicli't, 
 K. 
 kit 
 
THE TALISMAN 47 
 
 pating his purpose, murmuring in stifled tones from beneath 
 the fold in which his head was muffled, and which sounded 
 like a voice proceeding from the cerements of a corpse — 
 " Abide — abide ; happy thou that mayst — the vision is not 
 yet ended." So saying, he reared himself from the ground, 
 drew back from the tlireshold on which he had hitherto Iain 
 prostrate, and closed the door of the chapel, which, secured 
 by a spring bolt within, the snap of which resounded through 
 the place, appeared so much like a part of the living rock 
 from which the cavern was hewn that Kenneth could hardly 
 discern whore the aperture had been. He was now alone in 
 the lighted chapel, which contained the relic to which lie 
 had lately rendered his homage, without other arms than his 
 dauger, or other companion than his pious thoughts and 
 dauntless courage. 
 
 Uncertain what was next to happen, but resolved to abide 
 the course of events. Sir Kenneth paced the solitary chapel 
 till about the time of the earliest cock-crowing. At this dead 
 season, when night and morning met together, he heard, but 
 :from what quarter he could not discover, the sound of such 
 ,a small silver bell as is rung at the elevation of the host, in 
 I the ceremony, or sacrifice, as it has been called, of the mass. 
 The hour and the place rendered the sound fearfully solemn, 
 and. bold as he was, the knight withdrew himself into the 
 farther nook of the chapel, at the end opposite to the altar, 
 in order to observe, without interruption, the consequences 
 of this unexpected signal. 
 
 He did not wait long ere the silken curtain was again with- 
 drawn, and the relic again presented to his view. As he 
 sunk reverentially on his knee, he heard the sound of the 
 lauds, or earliest office of the Catholic Church, sung by 
 female voices, which united together in the performance as 
 they had done in the former service. The knight was soon 
 aware that the voices were no longer stationary in the dis- 
 tance, but approached the chapel and became louder, when 
 a door, imperceptible wheii closed, like that by which had he 
 himself entered, opened on the other side of the vault, and 
 gave the tones of the choir more room to swell along the 
 ribbed arches of the roof. 
 
 The knight fixed his eyes on the opening with breathless 
 anxiety, and, continuing to kneel in the attitude of devotion 
 which the place and scene required, expected the consequence 
 of these preparations. A procession appeared about to issue 
 from the door. First, four beautiful boys, whose arms, neck, 
 and legs were bare, showing the bronze complexion of the 
 
48 W A VERLEY N O VEL S 
 
 East, and contrasting with tlie snow-white tunics which they 
 wore, entered the chapel by two and two. The first pair 
 bore censers, which they swung from side to side, adding 
 double fragrance to the odors with which the chapel already 
 was impregnated. The second pair scattered flowers. 
 
 After these followed, in due and majestic order, the 
 females who composed the choir — six, who, from their black 
 scapularies and black veils over their white garments, ap- 
 peared to be professed nuns of the order of Mount Carmel, 
 and as many whose veils, being white, argued them to be 
 novices, or occasional inhabitants in the cloister, who were 
 not as yet bound to it by vows. The former held in their 
 hands large rosaries, while the younger and lighter figures 
 who followed carried each a chaplet of red and white roses. 
 They moved in procession around the chapel without appear- 
 ing to take the slightest notice of Kenneth, although passing 
 so near him that their robes almost touched him ; while they 
 continued to sing, the knight doubted not that he was in 
 one of those cloisters where the noble Christian maidens had 
 formerly openly devoted themselves to the services of the 
 church. Most of them had been suppressed since the Ma- 
 hometans had reconquered Palestine, but many, purchasing 
 connivance by presents, or receiving it from the clemency or 
 contempt of the victors, still continued to observe in j)rivate 
 the ritual to which their vows had consecrated them. Yet, 
 though Kenneth knew this to be the case, the solemnity of 
 the place and hour, the surprise at the sudden appearance of 
 these votresses, and the visionary manner in which tliey moved 
 past him, had such influence on his imagination, that he 
 could scarce conceive that the fair procession which he beheld 
 was formed of creatures of this world, so much did they re- 
 semble a choir of supernatural beings rendering homage to 
 the universal object of adoration. ' 
 
 Such was the knight's first idea, as the procession passed 
 him, scarce moving, save just sufficiently to continue their 
 progress ; so that, seen by the shadowy and religious light 
 which the lamps shed through the clouds of incense which 
 darkened the apartment, they aiJpeared rather to glide than 
 to walk. 
 
 But as a second time, in surrounding the chapel, they 
 passed the spot on which he kneeled, one of the white-stoled 
 maidens, as she glided by him, detached from the chaplet 
 ■which she carried a rosebud, which dropped from her fingers, 
 perhaps unconsciously, on the foot of Sir Kenneth. The 
 knight started as if a dart had suddenly struck his person ; 
 
THE TALISMAN 49 
 
 for, when the mind is wound up to a high pitch of feeling 
 and expectation, the slightest incident, if unexpected, gives 
 fire to the train which imagination has already laid. But 
 he suppressed his emotion, recollecting how easily an incident 
 Bo indifferent might have happened, and that it was only the 
 uniform monotony of the movement of the choristers which 
 made the incident in the slightest degree remarkable. 
 
 Still, while the procession for the third time surrounded 
 the chapel, the thoughts and the eyes of Kenneth followed 
 exclusively the one among the novices who had dropped the 
 rosebud. Her step, her face, her form was so completely 
 assimilated to the rest of the choristers, that it was impos- 
 ^ sible to perceive the least marks of individuality, and yet 
 ; Kenneth's heart throbbed like a bird that would burst from 
 : its cage, as if to assure him, by his sympathetic suggestions, 
 that the female who held the right file on the second rank of 
 ' the novices was dearer to him, no t only than all the rest that were 
 j present, but than the whole sex besides. The romantic passion 
 1 of love, as it was cherished, and indeed enjoyed, by the 
 rules of chivalry, associated well with no less romantic feel- 
 ings of devotion ; and they might be said much more to 
 enliance than to counteract each other. It was, therefore, 
 ' Wxth a glow of expectation that had something even of a 
 j religious character that Sir Kenneth, his sensations thrilling 
 [from his heart to the ends of his fingers, expected some sec- 
 j ond sign of the presence of one who, he strongly fancied, 
 I had already bestowed on him the first. Short as the space 
 was during which the procession again completed a third 
 I perambulation of the chapel, it seemed an eternity to Ken- 
 neth. At length the form which he had watched with such 
 devoted attention drew nigh ; there was no difference be- 
 twixt that shrouded figure and the others with whom it 
 moved in concert and in unison, until, just as she passed for 
 the third time the kneeling Crusader, a part of a little and 
 well-proportioned hand, so beautifully formed as to give 
 the highest idea of the perfect proportions of the form to 
 which it belonged, stole through the folds of the gauze, 
 like a moonbeam through the fleecy cloud of a summer 
 ] night, and again a rosebud lay at the feet of the Knight of 
 ; the Leopard. 
 
 This second intimation could not be accidental : it could 
 not be fortuitous — the resemblance of that half-seen, but 
 beautiful, female hand with one which his lips had once 
 touched, and, while they touched it, had internally sworn 
 allegiance to the lovely owner. Had farther proof beer 
 
 I ' 
 
60 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 wanting, there was the glimmer of that matchless ruby ring 
 on that snow-white finger, whose invaluable wortli Kenneth 
 would yet have prized less than the slightest sign which that 
 finger could have made ; and, veiled too, as she was, he 
 might see, by chance or by favor, a stray curl of the dark 
 tresses, each hair of which was dearer to him a hundred 
 times than a chain of massive gold. It was the lady of his 
 love ! But that she should be here, in the savage and se- 
 questered desert, among vestals who rendered themselves 
 habitants of wilds and of caverns that they might perform 
 in secret those Christian rites which they dared not assist 
 in openly — that this should be so, in truth and in reality, 
 seemed too incredible : it must be a dream — a delusive trance 
 of the imagination. While these thoughts passed through 
 the mind of Kenneth, the same passage by which the pro- 
 cession had entered the chapel received them on their re- 
 turn. The you7ig sacristans, the sable nuns vanished suc- 
 cessively through the open door ; at length she from whom 
 he had received this double intimation passed also ; yet, in 
 passing, turned her head, slightly indeed, but perceptibly, 
 towards the place where he remained fixed as an image. He 
 marked the last wave of her veil ; it was gone — and a dark- 
 ness sank upon his soul, scarce less palpable than that Avhich 
 almost immediately enveloped his external sense ; for the last 
 chorister had no sooner crossed the threshold of the door 
 than it shut with a loud sound, and at the same instant the 
 voices of the choir were silent, the lights of the chapel were 
 at once extinguished, and Sir Kenneth remained solitary 
 and in total darkness. But to Kenneth solitude and dark- 
 ness, and the uncertainty of his mysterious situation, were 
 as nothing : he thought not of them — cared not for them — 
 cared for nought in the world save the flitting vision which 
 had just glided past him, and the tokens of her favor which 
 she had bestowed. To grope on the floor for the buds which 
 she had dropped — to press them to his lips — to his bosom — 
 now alternately, now together — to rivet his lips to the cold 
 stones on which, as near as he could judge, she had so lately 
 stepped — to play all the extravagances which strong affection 
 suggests and vindicates to those who yield themselves up to it, 
 were but the tokens of passionate love common- to all ages. 
 But it was peculiar to the times of chivalry, that in his 
 wildest rapture the knight imagined of no attempt to follow 
 or to chase the object of such romantic attachment ; that he 
 thought of her as of a deity, who, having deigned to show 
 herself for an instant to her devoted worshiper, had again 
 
 eicej 
 
THE TALISMAN 51 
 
 eturned to the darkness of her sanctuary, or as an in- 
 luential phmet, which, having darted in some auspicious 
 ainute one favorable ray, wrapped itself again in its veil of 
 nist. The motions of the lady of his love were to him those 
 if a superior being, who was to move witliout watch or 
 ontrol, rejoice him by her appearance or depress him by 
 ler absence, animate him by her kindness or drive him to 
 lespair by her cruelty — all at her own free-will, and without 
 ither importunity or remonstrance than that expressed by 
 he most devoted services of the heart and sword of the 
 hampion, whose sole object in life was to fulfil her com- 
 [lands, and by the splehdor of his own achievement'', to 
 xalt her fame. 
 
 I Such were the rules of chivalry, and of the love which was 
 ts ruling principle. But Sir Kenneth's attachment was 
 endercd romantic by other and still more peculiar circuin- 
 itances. He had never even heard the sound of his lady's 
 joice, though he had often beheld her beauty with rapture. 
 ;5he moved in a circle which his rank of knighthood permit- 
 ed him indeed to approach, but not to mingle with ; and 
 lighly as he stood distinguished for warlike skill and enter- 
 »rise, still the poor Scottish soldier was compelled to worship 
 ds divinity at a distance almost as great as divides the Persian 
 rom the sun which he adores. But when was the pride of 
 liroman too lofty to overlook the passionate devotion of a 
 j, lover, however Inferior in degree ? Her eye had been on 
 lim in the tournament, her ear had heard his praises in the 
 'eport of the battles which were daily fought ; and while 
 ount, duke, and lord contended for her grace, it flowed, 
 mwillingly perhaps at first, or even unconsciously, towards 
 he poor Kniglit of the Leopard, who, to support his rank, 
 lad little besides his sword. When she looked, and when 
 he listened, the lady saw and heard enough to encourage 
 'ler in a partiality which had at first crept on her unawares. 
 !f a knight's personal beauty was praised, even the most 
 irudish dames of the military court of England would make 
 n exception in favor of the Scottish Kenneth ; and it of ten- 
 imes happened that, notwithstanding the very considerable 
 'irgesses which princes and peers bestowed on the minstrels, 
 n impartial spirit of independence would seize the poet, and 
 he harp was swept to the heroism of one who had neither 
 alfreys nor garments to bestow in guerdon of his applause. 
 The moments when she listened to the praises of her 
 3ver became gradually more and more dear to the high-born 
 jldith, relieving the flattery with which her ear was weary, 
 
52 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 and presenting to her a subject of secret contemplation, 
 more worthy, as he seemed by general report, than those 
 who surpassed him in ranic and in the gifts of fortune. As 
 her attention became constantly, though cautiously, fixed on 
 Sir Kenneth, she grew more and more convinced of his per- 
 sonal devotion to herself, and more and more certain in her 
 mind that in Kenneth of Scotland she beheld the fated 
 knight doomed to share with her through weal and woe — 
 and the prospect looked gloomy and dangerous — the passion- 
 ate attachment to which the poets of the age ascribed such 
 universal dominion, and which its manners and morals placed 
 nearly on the same rank with devotion itself. 
 
 Let us not disguise the truth from our readers. When 
 Edith became aware of the state of her own sentiments, chiv- 
 alrous as were her sentiments, becoming a maiden not distant 
 from the throne of England, gratified as her pride must have 
 been with the mute though unceasing homage rendered to 
 her by the knight whom she had distinguished, there were 
 moments when the feelingfs of the woman, loving and be- 
 loved, murmured against the restraints of state and form by 
 which she was surrounded, and when she almost blamed the 
 timidity of her lover, who seemed resolved not to infringe 
 them. The etiquette, to use a modern phrase, of birth and 
 rank, had drawn around her a magical circle, beyond which 
 Sir Kenneth might indeed bow and gaze, but within which 
 he could no more pass than an evoked spirit can transgress 
 the boundaries prescribed by the rod of a powerful enchanter. 
 The thought involuntarily pressed on her, that she herself 
 must venture, were it but the point of her fairy foot, beyond 
 the prescribed boundary, if she ever hoped to give a lover so 
 reserved and bashful an opportunity of so slight a favor as 
 but to salute her shoe-tie. There was an example, the 
 noted precedent of the " king's daughter of Hungary," who 
 thus generously encouraged the " squire of low degree " ; and 
 Edith, though of kingly blood, was no king's daughter, any 
 more than her lover was of low degree : fortune had put no 
 such extreme barrier in obstacle to their afllections. Some- 
 thing, however, within the maiden's bosom — that modest 
 pride which throws fetters even on love itself — forbade her, 
 notwithstanding the superiority of her condition, to make | j*"* 
 those advances which, in every case, delicacy assigns > ■ "^ 
 to the other sex ; above all. Sir Kenneth was a knight so }i 
 gentle and honorable, so highly accomplished, as her im- 
 agination at least suggested, together with the strictest feel- 
 ings of what was due to himself and to her, that, however 
 
 foni 
 iliac 
 stied 
 
THE TALISMAN 53 
 
 constrained her attitude might be while receiving his adora- 
 tions, like the image of some deity, who is neither supposed 
 to feel nor to reply to tlie homage of its votaries, still the idol 
 feared that to step prematurely from her pedestal would be 
 to degrade herself in the eyes of her devoted worshiper. 
 
 Yet the devout adorer of an actual idol can even discover 
 signs of approbation in the rigid and immovable features of 
 a marble image, and it is no wonder tliat something, wliich 
 could be as favorably interpreted, glanced from the bright 
 eye of the lovely Edith, whose beauty, indeed, consisted 
 rather more in that very power of expression than on abso- 
 lute regularity of contour or brilliancy of complexion. Some 
 slight marks of distinction had escaped from her, notwith- 
 standing her own jealous vigilance, else how could Sir Ken- 
 neth have so readily, and so undoubtingly, recognized the 
 lovely hand, of which scarce two fingers were visible from 
 under the veil, or how could he have rested so thoroughly 
 assured that two flowers, successively dropped on the spot, 
 were intended as a recognition on the part of his lady love ? 
 By what train of observation, by what secret signs, looks, or 
 igestures, by what instinctive freemasonry of love, this degree 
 ;of intelligence came to subsist between Edith and her lover, 
 iwe cannot attempt to trace ; for we are old, and such slight 
 'Vestiges of affection, quickly discovered by younger eyes, 
 defy the power of ours. Enough, that such' affection Vlid 
 .subsist between parties who had never even spoken to one 
 ianother, though, on the side of Edith, it was checked by a 
 !deep sense of the difficulties and dangers which must nec- 
 essarily attend the further progress of tlieir attachment, and 
 upon that of the knight by a thousand doubts and fears, lest 
 he had overestimated the slight tokens of tlie lady's notice, 
 varied as they necessarily were, by long intervals of apparent 
 coldness, during which either the fear of exciting the observa- 
 tion of others, and thus drawing danger uponher lover, or 
 that of sinking in his esteem by seeming too willing to be 
 won, made her behave with indifference, and as if unobservant 
 of his presence. 
 
 This narrative, tedious perhaps, but which the story ren- 
 ders necessary, may serve to explain the state of intelligence, 
 if it deserves so strong a name, betwixt the lovers, v/hen 
 Edith's unexpected appearance in the chapel produced so 
 powerful an effect on the feelings of her knight. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Their necromantic forms in vain 
 Haunt us on the tented plain ; 
 We bid these specter shapes avaunt, 
 Ashtarotli and Termagaunt. 
 
 Waeton. 
 
 The most profound silence, the deepest darkness continued 
 to brood for more tlum an hour over the chapel in which we 
 left the Knight of the Leopard still kneeling, alternately ex- 
 pressing thanks to Heaven and gratitude to his lady, for the 
 boon which had been vouchsafed, to him. His own safety 
 his own destiny, for which he was at all times little anxious, 
 had not now the weight of a grain of dust in his reflectiona 
 He was in the neighborhood of Lady Edith, he had received 
 tokens of her grace, he was in a place hallowed by relics o' 
 the most awful sanctity. A Cbristian soldier, a devoted 
 lover could fear nothing, think of nothing, but his duty to 
 Heaven and his devoir to his lady. 
 
 At the lapse of the space of time which we have noticed, a 
 shrill whistle, like that Avith which a falconer calls his hawk 
 was heard to ring sharply through the vaulted chapel. It 
 was a sound ill suited to the place, and reminded Sir Ken- 
 neth how necessary it was he sliould be upon his guard. H( ""^ 
 started from his knee, and laid his hand upon his poniard 
 A creaking sound, as of a screw or pulleys succeeded, and jj 
 light streaming upwards, as from an opening in the floor 
 showed that a trap-door had been raised or depressed. Ii |,'-'' 
 less than a minute, a long skinny arm, partly naked, parti; 
 clothed in a sleeve of red samite, arose out of the aperture 
 holding a lamp as high as it could stretch upwards, and th 
 figure to which the arm belonged ascended step by step tw. 
 the level of the chape'l floor. The form and face of th! ijdj 
 being who thus presented himself were those of a frightfu 'if 
 dwarf, with a large head, a cap fantastically adorned wit] ^ai 
 three peacock-feathers, a dress of red samite, the richness cj 
 which rendered his ugliness more conspicuous, distinguishej 
 by gold bracelets and armlets, and a white silk sash, in whic 
 he wore a gold-bilted dagger. This singular figure had il 
 his left hand a kind of broom. So soon as he had steppe' 
 64 
 
 lani 
 ista 
 jiilt 
 11 
 
 itib 
 lich 
 
 'tte 
 
TEE TALISMAN 35 
 
 Tom the aperture through which he arose, he stood still, 
 md, as if to show himself moro distinctly, moved the lamp 
 vhich he held slowly over his face and person, successively 
 lluminating his wild and' fantastic features, and his mis- 
 hapen, but nervous, limbs. Though disproportioned in }ier- 
 on, the dwarf was not so distorted as to argue any want of 
 ;trength or activity. While Sir Kenneth gazed on this dis- 
 igreeable object, the popular creed occurred to his remem- 
 brance, concerning the gnomes, or earthly spirits, which 
 nake their abode in the caverns of the earth ; and so much 
 lid this figure correspond with ideas he had formed of their 
 iippearance, that he looked on it with disgust, mingled not in- 
 leed with fear, but that sort of awe which the presence of 
 I supernatural creature may infuse in the most steady bosom. 
 
 The dwarf again whistled, and summoned from beneath 
 I companion. This second figure ascended in the same 
 iianner as the first ; but it Avas a female arm, in this second 
 nstance, which upheld the lamp from the subterranean 
 /ault out of which these presentments arose, and it was a 
 ilemale form much resembling the first in shape and propor- 
 :ions which slowly emerged from the floor. Her dress was 
 ilso of red samite, fantastically cut and flounced, as if she 
 tiad been dressed for some exhibition of mimes or jugglers ; 
 md with the same minuteness which her predecessor had 
 jxhibited, she passed the lamp over her face and person, 
 w^hich seemed to rival the male's in ugliness. But. with all 
 this most unfavorable exterior, there was one trait in the 
 features of both which argued alertness and intelligence in 
 the most uncommon degree. This arose from the brilliancy 
 of their eyes, which, deep-set beneath black and shaggy 
 brows, gleamed with a luster which, like that in the eye of 
 the toad, seemed to make some amends for the extreme 
 'ugliness of countenance and person. 
 
 Sir Kenneth remained as if spellbound, while this unlovely 
 pair, moving round the chapel close to each other, appeared 
 to perform the duty of sweeping it, like menials ; but, as 
 they used only one hand, the floor was not much benefited 
 by the exercise, which they plied with such oddity of ges- 
 tures and manner as befitted their bizarre and fantastic ap- 
 pearance. When they approached near to the knight, in the 
 course of their occupation, they ceased to use their brooms, 
 and placing themselves side by side, directly opposite to Sir 
 Kenneth, they again slowly shifted the lights which they 
 held, so as to allow him distinctly to survey features which 
 were not rendered more agreeable^by being brought nearer. 
 
56 WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 and to observe the extreme quickness and keenness with 
 which their black and glittering eyes flashed back the light 
 of the lamps. They then turned the gleam of both lights 
 upon the knight, and having Accurately surveyed him, 
 turned their faces to each other, and set up a loud yelling 
 laugh, which resounded in his ears. The sound was so 
 ghastly, that Sir Kenneth started at hearing it, and hastily 
 demanded, in the name of God, who they were who profaned 
 that holy place with such antic gestures and elritch ex- 
 clamations. 
 
 " I am the dwarf Nectabanus," said the abortion-seeming 
 male, in a voice corresponding to his figure, and resembling 
 the voice of the night-crow more than any sound which is 
 heard by daylight. 
 
 " And I am Guenevra, his lady and his love," replied the 
 female, in tones which, being shriller, were yet wilder than 
 those of her companion. 
 
 " Wherefore are you here ?" again demanded the knight, 
 scarcely yet assured that it was human beings which he saw 
 before him. 
 
 "1 am," replied the male dwarf, with much assumed 
 gravity and dignity, *''the twelfth imaum — I am Mohammed 
 Mohadi, the guide and the conductor of the faithful. An 
 hundred horses stand ready saddled for me and my train at 
 the Holy City, and as many at the City of Eefuge. I am he 
 who shall bear witness, and this is one of my houris." 
 
 " Thou liest," answered the female, interrupting her com- 
 panion, in tones yet shriller than his own : "I am none at 
 thy houris, and tliou art no such infidel trash as the Mo- 
 hammed of whom thou speakest. May my curse rest upon 
 his coffin ! I tell thee, thou ass of Issachar, tliou art King 
 Arthur of Britain, whom the fairies stole away from the, 
 field of Avalon ; and I am Dame Guenevra, famed for her 
 beauty." 
 
 "But, in truth, noble sir," said the male, "we are dis^ 
 tressed princes, dwelling under the wing of King Guy of 
 Jerusalem, until he was driven out from his own nest by the 
 foul infidels — Heaven's bolts consume them !" 
 
 " Hush," said a voice from the side upon which the knight] ij^ 
 had entered — "hush, fools, and begone; your ministry is 
 ended." 
 
 The dwarfs had no sooner heard the command than, gib 
 bering in discordant whispers to each other, they blew oul 
 their lights at once, and left the knight in utter darkness, 
 which, when the pattering of their retiring feet had diec 
 
 k 
 ajai 
 ipo 
 
 illOl 
 
 m 
 m 
 post 
 rii( 
 lisf 
 
 »PF 
 litD 
 
 fi\i. 
 
 
THE TALISMAN 5t 
 
 away, was soon accompanied by its fittest companion, total 
 silence. 
 
 The knight felt the departure of these unfortunate crea- 
 tures a relief. He could not, from their language, manners, 
 and appearance, doubt that they belonged to the degraded 
 class of beings whom deformity of person and weakness of 
 intellect recommended to the painful situation of appendages 
 to great families, where their personal appearance and imbe- 
 cility were food for merriment to the household. Superior 
 in no respect to the ideas and manners of his time, the 
 Scottish knight might, at another period, have been much 
 amused by the mummery of these poor effigies of humanity ; 
 but now their appearance, gesticulations, and language 
 broke the train of deep and solemn feeling with which he 
 was impressed, and he rejoiced in the disappearance of the 
 unhappy objects. 
 
 A few minutes after they had retired, the door at which 
 they [the knight] had entered opened slowly, and, remaining 
 ajar, discovered a faint light arising from a lantern placed 
 upon the threshold. Its doubtful and wavering gleam 
 showed a dark form reclined beside the entrance, but with- 
 out its precincts, which, on approaching it more nearly, lie 
 recognized to be the hermit, couching in tlie same humble 
 posture in which he had at first laid himself down, and 
 which doubtless he had retained during the whole time of 
 his guest's continuing in the chapel. 
 
 " All is over," said the hermit, as he heard the knight 
 approaching, ''and the most wretched of earthly sinners, 
 with him who should think himself most honored and most 
 happy among the race of humanity, must retire from this 
 place. Take the light, and guide me down the descent, for 
 1 may not uncover my eyes until I am far from this hallowed 
 spot." 
 
 The Scottish knight obeyed in silence, for a solemn and 
 yet ecstatic sense of what he had seen had silenced even the 
 eager workings of curiosity. He led the way, with consider- 
 able accuracy, through the various secret passages and stairs 
 by which they had ascended, until at length they found 
 themselves in the outward cell of the hermit's cavern. 
 
 "The condemned criminal is restored to his dungeon, re- 
 prieved from one miserable day to another, until his awful 
 Judge shall at lengtli appoint the well-deserved sentence to 
 be carried into execution." 
 
 As the hermit spoke these words, he laid aside the veil 
 with which his eyes had been bound, and looked at it with 
 
58 WA VERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 a suppressed and hollow sigh. No sooner had he restored 
 it to the crypt from which he had caused the Scot to bring 
 it than he said hastily and sternly to his companion — 
 " Begone — begone ! to rest — to rest ! You may sleep — you 
 can sleep ; I neither can nor may." 
 
 Eespecting the profound agitation with which this was 
 spoken, the knight retired into the inner cell ; but, casting 
 back his eye as he left the exterior grotto, he beheld the 
 anchorite stripping his shoulders with frantic haste of their 
 shaggy mantle, and ere he could shut the frail door which 
 separated the two compartments of the cavern, he heard the 
 clang of the scourge, and the groans of tlie penitent under 
 his self-inflicted penance. A cold shudder came over the 
 knight as he reflected what could be the foulness of the sin. 
 what the depth of the remorse, which, apparently, such 
 severe penance could neither cleanse nor assuage. He told 
 his beads devoutly, and flung himself on his rude couch, 
 after a glance at the still sleeping Moslem, and, wearied by 
 the various scenes of the day and the niglit, soon slept as 
 sound as infancy. Upon his awaking in the morning, he 
 held certain conferences with the hermit upon matters of 
 importance, and the result of their intercourse induced him 
 to remain for two days longer in the grotto. He was regular, 
 as became a pilgrim, in his devotional exercises, but was not 
 again admitted to the chapel in which he had seen such 
 wonders. 
 
 lore 
 
 but 
 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Now change the scene — and let tne trumpets sound, 
 For we must rouse the lion from his lair. 
 
 Old Play. 
 
 The scene must change, as our programme hasannounced, 
 from the mountain wilderness of Jordan to the camp of King 
 Richard of Enghind, then stationed betwixt Jean d'Acre and 
 Ascalon, and containing that army with which he of the 
 Lion Heart had promised himself a triumphant march to 
 Jerusalem, and in which he would probably have succeeded, 
 if not hindered by the jealousies of the Christian princes en- 
 gaged in the same enterprise, and the offense taken by them 
 at the uncurbed haughtiness of the English monarch, and 
 Piichard's unveiled contempt for his brother sovereigns, who, 
 his equals in rank, were yet far his inferiors in courage, 
 hardihood, and military talents. Such discords, and partic- 
 ularly those betwixt Richard and Philip of France, created 
 disputes and obstacles which impeded every active measure 
 proposed by the heroic though impetuous Richard, while 
 the ranks of the Crusaders were daily thinned not only by 
 the desertion of individuals, but of entire bands, headed by 
 their respective feudal leaders, who withdrew from a contest 
 in which they had ceased to hope for success. 
 
 The effects of the climate became, as usual, fatal to soldiers 
 from the north, and the more so, that the dissolute license 
 of the Crusaders, forming a singular contrast to the prin- 
 ciples and purpose of their taking up arms, rendered them 
 more easy victims to the insalubrious influence of burning 
 heat and chilling dews. To these discouraging causes of 
 loss was to be added the sword of the enemy. Saladin, than 
 whom no greater name is recorded in Eastern history, had 
 learnt to his fatal experience that his light-armed followers 
 were little able to meet in close encounter with the ironclad 
 Franks, and had been taught, at the same time, to apprehend 
 and dread the adventurous character of his antagonist 
 Richard. But, if his armies were more than once routed 
 with great slaughter, his numbers gave the Saracen the ad- 
 vantage in those lighter skirmishes of which many w<2re 
 inevitable. 
 
60 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 As the army of his assailants decreased, the enterprises;, 
 of the Sultan became more numerous and more bold in thij 
 species of petty warfare. The camp of the Crusaders wsuf. 
 surrounded, and almost besieged, by clouds of light cavalry.;'''; 
 resembling swarms of wasps, easily crushed when they sircf 
 once grasped, but furnished with wings to elude superioi''^' 
 strength and stings to inflict harm and mischief. There wail ^, 
 perpetual warfare of posts and foragers, in which man\f 
 valuable lives were lost, without any corresponding objec r 
 being gained ; convoys were intercepted, and communication'- " 
 
 ]:c: 
 
 sustaining life by life itself ; and water, like that of the wel^ 
 of Bethlehem, longed for by Eing David, one of its ancien! 
 monarchs, was then, as before, only obtained by the expen' 
 diture of blood. ' 
 
 These evils were, in a great measure, counterbalanced b 
 the stern resolution and restless activity of King Rich 
 who, with some of his best knights, was ever on horsebacli 
 ready to repair to any point where danger occurred, ani 
 often not only bringing unexpected succor to the Christian! 
 but discomfiting the infidels when they seemed most secuij 
 of victory. But even the iron frame of Coeur-de-Lion coul 
 not support, without injury, the alternations of the unwhol 
 some climate, joined to ceaseless exertions of body ai 
 mind. He became afflicted with one of those slow and wasi 
 ing fevers peculiar to Asia, and, in despite of his gre 
 strength, and still greater courage, grew first unfit to mou:i 
 on horseback, and then unable to attend the councils of Wi 
 which were, from time to time, held by the Crusaders, 
 was difficult to say whether this state of personal inactivij 
 was rendered more galling or more endurable to the EngU 
 monarch by the resolution of the council to engage in a tru' 
 of thirty days with the Sultan Saladin ; for, on the one ha: 
 if he was incensed at the delay which this interposed to t| 
 progress of the great enterprise, he was, on the other, sc 
 what consoled by knowing that others were not acqui: 
 laurels while he remained inactive upon a sick-bed. 
 
 That, however, which Coeur-de-Lion could least excie 
 was the general inactivity which prevailed in the camp f 
 the Crusaders so soon as his illness assumed a serious aspe ; 
 and the reports which he extracted from his unwillg 
 attendants gave him to understand that the hopes of e 
 host had abated in proportion to his illness, and that tlie i- 
 terval of truce was employed, not in recruiting tlir 
 numbers, reanimating their courage, fostering their spit 
 
THE TALISMAN 61 
 
 conquest, and preparing for a speedy and determined ad- 
 nce upon the Holy City, which was the object of tlieir 
 epedition, but in securing the camp occupied by their 
 (minished followers with trenches, palisades, and other for- 
 iications, as if preparing rather to repel an attack from a 
 ] werful enemy so soon as hostilities should recommence 
 tan to assume the proud character of conquerors and as- 
 gilants. 
 
 The English king chafed under these reports, like the 
 iiprisoned lion viewing his prey from the iron barriers of 
 [5 cage. Naturally rash and impetuous, the irritability of 
 Is temper preyed on itself. He was dreaded by his attend- 
 1 ts, and even the medical assistants feared to assume the 
 ice.ssary authority which a physician, to do justice to his 
 |tient, must needs exercise over him. One faithful baron, 
 uo, perhaps from the congenial nature of his disposition, 
 Hs devoutly attached to the King's person, dared alone to 
 mie between the dragon and his wrath, and quietly, but 
 jmlv, maintained a control Avhich no other dared assume 
 (er the dangerous invalid, and which Thomas de Multon 
 tly exercised because Le esteemed his sovereign's life and 
 Imor more than he did the degree of favor which he might 
 "56, or even the risk which he might incur, in nursmg a 
 •tient so intractable, and whose displeasure was so perilous. 
 Sir Thomas was the Lord of Gilslaud, in Cumberland, and, 
 an age when surnames and titles were not distinctly 
 tached, as now, to the individuals who bore them, he was 
 lied by the Normans the Lord de Vaux. and in English, by 
 e Saxons, who clung to their native language, and Avere 
 oud of the share of Saxon blood in th^s renowned warrior's 
 ins, he was termed Thomas, or, more familiarly, Thom, of 
 e Gills, or Narrow Valleys, from which his extensive 
 )mains derived their well-known appellation. 
 ;This chief had been exercised in almost all the wars, 
 iiether waged betwixt England and Scotland or amongst 
 18 various domestic factious which then tore the former 
 amtry asunder, and in all had been distinguished as well 
 om his military conduct as his personal prowess. He was. 
 . other respects, a rude soldier, blunt and careless in his 
 taring, and taciturn, nay, almost sullen, in his habits of 
 iciety, and seeming, at least, to disclaim all knowledge of 
 jlicy and of courtly art. There were men, however, who 
 retended to look deeply into character, who asserted that 
 le Lord de Vaux was not less shrewd and aspiring than he 
 as blunt and bold, and who thought that, while he assimi- 
 
82 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 lated himself to the King's own character of blunt hardihoodj 
 it was, iu some degree at least, with an eye to establish hia 
 favor, and to gratify his own hopes of deep-laid ambition. 
 But no one cared to thwart his schemes if such he had, by 
 rivaling him in the dangerous occupation of daily attend- 
 ance on the sick-bed of a patient whose disease was pro- 
 nounced infectious, and more especially when it was remem- 
 bered that the patient was Coeur-de-Lion, suffering under all 
 the furious impatience of a soldier withheld from battle, and 
 a sovereign sequestered from authority ; and the common 
 soldiers, at least in the English army, were generally of 
 opinion that De Vaux attended on the King like comrade 
 upon comrade, in the honest and disinterested frankness of 
 military friendship, contracted between the partakers of 
 daily dangers. 
 
 It was on the decline of a Syrian day that Eichard lay on 
 his couch of sickness, loathing it as much in mind as his 
 illness made it irksome to his body. His bright blue eye, 
 which at all times shone with uncommon keenness and 
 splendor, had its vivacity augmented by fever aiid mental 
 impatience, and glanced from among his curled and unshorn 
 locks of yellow hair as fitfully and as vividly as the last gleams 
 of the sun shoot through the clouds of an approaching thunder- 
 storm, which still, however, are gilded by its beams. His 
 manly features showed the progress of wasting illness, and 
 his beard, neglected and untrimmed, had overgrown both 
 lips and chin. Casting himself from side to side, now clutch- 
 ing towards him the coverings, v/hich at the next moment 
 he flung as impatiently from him, his tossed couch and im- 
 patient gestures showed at once the energy and the reckless 
 impatience of a disposition whose natural sphere was that of 
 the most active exertion. 
 
 Beside his couch stood Thomas de Vaux, in face attitude, 
 and manner the strongest possible contrast to the suffering 
 monarch. His statute approached the gigantic, and his hair 
 in thickness might have resembled that of Samson, though 
 only after the Israelitish champion's lock had passed under 
 the shears of the Philistines, for those of De Vaux were cut 
 short, that they might be inclosed under his helmet. The 
 light of his broad, large hazel eye resembled that of the 
 autumn morn, and it was only perturbed for a moment, 
 when, from time to time, it was attracted by Richard's velie-; 
 ment marks of agitation and restlessness. His features,! 
 though massive like his person, might have been handsome 
 before they were defaced with scars ; his upper lip, after tlie 
 
THE TALISMAN 63 
 
 fashion of the Normans, was covered with thick mustachios 
 which grew so long and hixariantly as to mingle with his 
 hair, and, like his hair, were dark brown, slightly brindled 
 with gray. His frame seemed of that kind which most 
 readily defies both toil and climate, for he was thin-flanked, 
 broad-chested, long-armed, deep-breathed, and strong- 
 limbed. He had not laid aside his bnif-coat, which displayed 
 the cross cnt on the shonlder, for more than three nights, 
 enjoying but such momentary repose as the warder of a sick 
 monarch's couch might by snatches indulge. This baron 
 rarely changed his posture, except to administer to Eichard 
 the medicine or refreshments which none of his less favored 
 attendants could persuade the impatient monarch to take ; 
 and there was something affecting in the kindly, yet awk- 
 ward, manner in which he discharged offices so strangely 
 contrasted with his blunt and soldierly habits and manners. 
 
 The pavilion in which these personages were had, as be- 
 came the time, as well as the personal character of Eichard, 
 more of a warlike than a sumptuous or royal character. 
 Weapons, offensive and defensive, several of them of strange 
 and newly-invented construction, were scattered about the 
 tented apartment, or disposed upon the pillars which sup- 
 ported it. Skins of animals slain in the chase were stretched 
 on the ground, or extended along the sides of the pavilion, 
 and, upon a heap of these silvan spoils, lay three alans, as 
 they were then called (wolf-greyhounds, that is), of the 
 largest size, and as white as snow. Their faces, marked 
 with many a scar from clutch and fang, showed their share in 
 collecting the trophies upon which they reposed, and their 
 eyes, fixed from time to time with an expressive stretch and 
 yawn upon the bed of Eichard, evinced how much they mar- 
 veled ab and regretted the unwonted inactivity which they 
 were compelled to share. These were but the accompani- 
 ments of the soldier and huntsman ; but, on a small table 
 olose by the bed, was placed a shield of wrought steel, of 
 triangular form, bearing the three lions passant, first as- 
 sumed by the chivalrous monarch, and before it the golden 
 circlet, resembling much a ducal coronet, only that it was 
 higher in front than behind, which, with the purple velvet 
 and embroidered tiara that lined it, formed then the emblem 
 of England's sovereignty. Beside it, as if prompt for de- 
 fending the regal symbol, lay a mighty curtal ax, which 
 would have wearied the arm of any other than Coeur-de- 
 Lion. 
 
 In an outer partition of the pavilion waited two or three 
 
64 WA VERLEY NO VEL 8 
 
 officers of the royal household depressed, anxious for the"; 
 master's health, aud not less so for their own safety, in cai" 
 of his decease. Their gloomy ai^prehensions spread tiien 
 selves to the warders without, who paced about in downca 
 and silent contemplation, or, resting on their halberds, sto( 
 motionless on their post, rather like armed tropliies thj,„ 
 living warriors. 
 
 " So thou hast no better news to bring me from withot 
 Sir Thomas ? " said tlie King, after a long and perturb 
 silence, spent in the feverish agitation wdiich we have e 
 deavored to describe. *' All our knights turned women 
 our ladies become devotees, and neither a spark of valor r 
 of gallantry to enlighten a camp which contains the choicf 
 of Europe's chivalry — ha ! " 
 
 " The truce, my lord," said De Vaux, with the same ] 
 tience with which lie had twenty times repeated the explai |;' 
 tion — "the truce prevents us bearing ourselves as men ' 
 action ; and, for the ladies, I am no great reveler, as is m 
 known to your Majesty, and seldom exchange steel and b 
 for velvet and gold, but thus far I know, that our choic 
 beauties are waiting upon the Queen's Majesty and the P: 
 cess to a pilgrimage to the convent of Engaddi, to ace 
 plish their vows for your Highness's deliverance from 1j 
 trouble." 
 
 " And is it thus," said Richard, with the impatienc 
 indisposition, " that royal matrons and maidens sliould 
 themselves, where the dogs wlio defile the land have as 1 
 truth to man as they have faith towards God ? " 
 
 " Nay, my lord," said De Vaux, " they have Sal 
 word for their safety." 
 
 " True — true I " replied Eichard, " and I did the hea 
 soldan injustice ; I owe him reparation for it. Would 
 I were but fit to offer it him upon my body between tl 
 hosts, Christendom and Heathenesse both looking on ! 
 
 As Eichard spoke, he thrust his right arm out of 
 naked to the shoulder, and, painfully raising himself je—^ 
 couch, shook his clenched hand, as if it grasped sworPr;'' 
 battle-ax, and was then brandished over the jeweled 
 ban of the soldan. It was not wdthout a gentle degrtSof;- 
 violence, which the King would scarce have endured Jfitt'' 
 another, that De Vaux, in his character of sick-nurse, c 
 palled his royal master to replace himself in the couch, fcd 
 covered his sinewy arm, neck, and shoulders with the a« 
 which a mother bestows upon an impatient child. 
 
 ** Thou art a rough nurse, though a willing one, De Vax 
 
THE TALISMAN 
 
 !d the King, laughing with a bitter expression, while he 
 _3mitted to the strength which he was unable to resist ; 
 <;nethiuks a coif would become thy lowering features as 
 y\\ as a child's biggin would beseem mine. We should be 
 sxibe and nurse to frighten girls with !" 
 •• We have frightened men in our time, ray liege," said 
 h \':iiix ; "'and, I trust, may live to frighten them again. 
 Mial is a fever-fit, that we should not endure it patiently, 
 order to get rid of it easily ? " 
 
 'Fever-fit!" exclaimed Richard, impetuously; "thou 
 
 lyst think, and justly, that it is a fever-fit with me ; but 
 
 lat is it with all the other Christian princes — with Philip 
 
 France, with that dull Austrian, Avith him of Montsernit, 
 
 th the Hospitallers, with the Templars — what is it with 
 
 i them ? I will tell thee : it is a cold palsy — a dead lethargy 
 
 a disease that deprives them of speech and action — a canker 
 
 at has eaten into the heart of all that is noble, andchival- 
 
 us, and virtuous among them — that has made them false 
 
 the noblest vow ever knights were sworn to — has made 
 
 em indifferent to their fame, and forgetful of their God \" 
 
 " For the love of Heaven, my liege," said De Vaux, "take 
 
 less violently ! You will be heard without doors, where 
 
 ch speeches are but too current already among the common 
 
 kliery, and engender discord and contention in the Chris- 
 
 ,in host. Bethink you that your illness mars the mainspring 
 
 !! their enterprise : a mangonel will work without screw 
 
 ';id lever better than the Christian host without King 
 
 ijichard." 
 
 " Thou flatterest me, De Vaux," said Richard ; and, not 
 
 .sensible to the power of praise, he reclined his head on the 
 
 iillow with a more deliberate attempt to repose than he had 
 
 bt exhibited. But Thomas de Vaux was no courtier : the 
 
 '|!n-ase which had offered had risen spontaneously to his lips, 
 
 'id he knew not how to pursue the pleasing theme, so as to 
 
 pothe and prolong the vein which he had excited. He was 
 
 Ijlent, therefore, until, relapsing into his moody contempla- 
 
 jons, the King demanded of him sharply, "Despardieux J 
 
 'his is smoothly said to soothe a sick man ! But does a 
 
 J '.ague of monarchs, an assemlilage of nobles, a convocation 
 
 f all the chivalry of Europe droop with the sickness of one 
 
 ^n, though he chances to be King of England ? Why 
 
 jliould Richard's illness, or Richard's death, check the march 
 
 f thirty thousand men as brave as himself ? When the 
 
 jiaster stag is struck down the lierd do not disperse upon his 
 
 "ill ; when the falcon strikes the leading crane, another takea 
 
 5 
 
66 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 the guidance of the phalanx. Why do not the powers assem- 
 ble and choose some one to whom they may entrust the 
 guidance of the host ? " 
 
 " Forsooth, and if it please your Majesty," said DeVanx, 
 " I hear consultations have been held among the royal leaders 
 for some such purpose." 
 
 " Ha !" exclaimed Richard, his jealousy awakened, giving 
 his mental irritation another direction. " Am I forgot by 
 my allies ere I have taken the last sacrament ? Do they 
 hold me dead already ? But no — no, they are right. And 
 whom do they select as leader of the Christian host ?" 
 
 " Rank and dignity," said the Vaux, " point to the King 
 of France." 
 
 '' Oh, ay," answered the English monarch, " Philip of 
 France and Navarre — Denis Mount joie — his Most Christian 
 Majesty — mouth-filling words these ! There is but one risk, 
 that he might mistake the words En arriere for F71 avant, 
 and lead us back to Paris instead of marching to Jerusalem. 
 His politic head has learned by this time that there is more 
 to be gotten by oppressing his feudatories and pillaging his 
 allies than fighting with the Turks for the Holy Sepulchre." 
 
 "They might choose the Archduke of Austria," said De 
 Vaux. 
 
 " What ! because he is big and burly like thyself. Thomas 
 — nearly as thick-headed, but without thy indifference to 
 danger and carelessness of offense ? I tell thee that Austria 
 has in all that mass of flesh no bolder animation than is 
 afforded by the peevishness of a wasp and the courage of a 
 wren. Out upon him ! he a leader of chivalry to deeds of 
 glory ! Give him a flagon of Rhenish to drink with his 
 besmirched baarenhauters and lanceknechts." 
 
 " There is the Grand Master of the Templars," continued 
 the baron, not sorry to keep his master's attention engaged 
 on other topics than his own illness, though at the expense of 
 the characters of prince and potentate — " there is the Grand 
 Master of the Templars," he continued, " undaunted, skilful, 
 brave in battle, and sage in council, having no separate 
 kingdoms of his own to divert his exertions from the re- 
 covery of the Holy Land — what thinks your Majesty of the 
 Master as a general leader of the Christian host ? " 
 
 "Ha, Beau-Seant!" answered the King. "Oh, no ex- 
 ception can be taken to Brother Giles Amaury : he under- 
 stands the ordering of a battle, and the fighting in front 
 when it begins. But, Sir Thomas, were it fair to take the 
 Holy Land from the heathen Saladiu, so full of all the vir- 
 
THE TALISMAN 67 
 
 tues which may distinguish unchristened man, and give it 
 to Giles Amaury, a worse pagan than liimself, an idolater, a 
 devil-worshiper, a necromancer, who practises crimes the 
 most dark and unnatural, in the vaults and secret places of 
 abomination and darkness ? " 
 
 " The Grand Master of the Hospitallers of St. John of 
 Jerusalem is not tainted by fame either with heresy or 
 magic,'' said Thomas de Vaux. 
 
 "• But is he not a sordid miser ?" said Richard, hastily — 
 " has he not been suspected — ay, more than suspected — of 
 selling to the infidels those advantages which they would 
 never have won by fair force ? Tush, man, better give the 
 army to be made merchandise of by Venetian skippers aud 
 Lombardy peddlers than trust it to the Grand Master of St. 
 John." 
 
 "Well, then, I will venture but another guess,'' said the 
 Baron de Vaux. " What say you to the gallant Marquis of 
 Montserrat, so wise, so elegant, such a good man-at-arras ?'"■' 
 
 " Wise ! cunning, you would say," replied Richard ; " ele- 
 gant in a lady's chamber, if you will. Oh, ay, Conrade of 
 Montserrat — who knows not the popinjay ? Politic and 
 versatile, he will change you his purposes as often as the 
 trimmings of his doublet, and you shall never be able to 
 guess the hue of his inmost vestments from tlieir outward 
 colors. A man-at-arms ! ay, a fine figure on horseback, and 
 can bear him well in the tilt-yard and at the barriers, when 
 swords are blunted at point and edge, and spears are tipped 
 with trenchers of wood instead of steel pikes. Wert thou 
 not with me when I said to that same gay marquis, " Here 
 we be, three good Christians, and on yonder plain there 
 pricks a band of some threescore Saracens, what say you to 
 charge them briskly ? There are but twenty unbelieving 
 miscreants to each true knight." 
 
 "I recollect the marquis replied," said De Vaux, ^Hhat 
 ' Ilis limbs were of flesh, not of iron, and that he would 
 rather bear the heart of a man than of a beast, though tliat 
 beast were the lion.' But I see how it is : we shall end 
 where we began, without hope of praying at the Sepulcher, 
 until Heaven shall restore King Richard to health." 
 
 At this grave remark, Richard burst out into a hearty fit 
 of laughter, the first which he had for some time indulged 
 in. "Why, what a thing is conscience," ho said, "that 
 through its means even such a thick-witted northern lord as 
 thou canst bring thy sovereign to confess his folly I It is 
 true that, did they not propose them.seWes as fit to hold p^^ 
 
68 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 leading-staff, little should I care for plucking the silken 
 trappings off the puppets thou hast shown me in succession. 
 What concerns it me what fine tinsel robes they swagger in, 
 unless when they are named as rivals in the glorious enter- 
 prise to which I have vowed myself ? Yes, De Vaux, I con- 
 fess my weakness, and the wilfulness of my ambition. The 
 Christian camp contains, doubtless, many a better knight 
 than Richard of England, and it would be wise and worthy 
 to assign to the best of them the leading of the host ; but," 
 continued the warlike monarch, raising himself in his bed, 
 and shaking the cover from his head, while iiis eyes sparkled 
 as they were wont to do on the eve of battle, " were such a 
 knight to plant the banner of the ('ross on the Temple of 
 Jerusalem, while I was unable to bear my share in the noble 
 task, he should, so soon as 1 was fit to lay lance in rest, un- 
 dergo my challenge to mortal combat, for having diminished 
 my fame, and pressed in before to the object of my enter- 
 prise. But hark, what trumpets are those at a distance ?" 
 
 "Those of King Philip, as I guess, my liege/' said the 
 stout Englishman. 
 
 " Thou art dull of ear, Thomas,'* said the King, endeavor- 
 ing to start up, "hearest thou not that clash and clang ? 
 By Heaven, the Turks are in the camp. I hear their 
 lelies." 
 
 He again endeavored to get out of bed, and De Vaux was 
 obliged to exercise his own great strength, and also to sum- 
 mon the assistance of the chamberlains from the inner tent, 
 to restrain him. 
 
 " Thou art a false traitor, De Vaux," said the incensed 
 monarch, when, breathless and exhausted with struggling, 
 he was compelled to submit to superior strength, and to re- 
 pose in quiet on his couch. "I would I were — I would I 
 were but strong enough to dash thy brains out with my 
 battle-ax !" 
 
 " I would you had the strength, my liege," said De Vaux, 11 
 *'and would even take the risk of its being so employed.' 
 The odds would be great in favor of Christendom, were: 
 Thomas Multon dead and Coeur-de-Lion himself again." | 
 
 ''Mine honest, faithful servant," said Richard, extendingi 
 his hand, which the baron reverentially saluted, '' forgive! 
 thy master's impatience of mood. It is this burning feveri 
 which chides thee, and not thy kind master, Richard ofi 
 England. But go, I prithee, and bring me word what 
 strangers are in the camp, for these sound sare not of Christen«| 
 dom." » 
 
 I 
 
THE TALISMAN 66 
 
 De Vaux left the pavilion on the errand assigned, and in 
 his absence, which he had resolved should be brief, he 
 charged the chamberlains, pages, and attendants to redouble 
 their attention on their sovereign, with threats of holding 
 them to responsibility, which rather added to than dimin- 
 ished their timid anxiety in the discharge of their duty ; for 
 next perhaps to the ire of the monarch himself, they 
 dreaded that of the stern and inexorable Lord of Gilsland.* 
 
 *dee Note 5. 
 
CHAPTER Vn 
 
 There never was a time on the march parts yet 
 
 When Scottish with Englisli met, 
 But it was marvel if the red blood ran not 
 
 As the rain does in the street. 
 
 Battle of Otterhoiim. 
 
 A CONSIDEEABLE band of Scottish warriors had joined tlie 
 Crusaders, and had naturally placed themselves under the 
 command of the English monarch, being, like his native 
 troops, most of them of Saxon and Norman descent, sjjeak- 
 ing the same languages, possessed, some of them, of English 
 as well as Scottish deuaesnes, and allied, in some cases, by 
 blood and intermarriage. The period also preceded that 
 when the grasping ambition of Edward I. gave a deadly and 
 envenomed character to the tvai's betwixt the two nations ; 
 the English fighting for the subjugation of Scotland, and the 
 Scottish, with all the stern determination and obstinacy 
 which has ever characterized their nation, for the defense of 
 their independence, by the most violent means, under the 
 most disadvantageous circumstances, and at the most ex-, 
 treme hazard. As yet, wars betwixt the two nations, though 
 fierce and frequent, had been conducted on principles of fair 
 hostility, and admitted of those softening shades by which 
 courtesy, and the respect for open and generous foemen, 
 qualify and mitigate the horrors of war. In time of peace, 
 therefore, and especially when both, as at present, were en- 
 gaged in war, waged in behalf of a common cause, and 
 rendered dear to them by their ideas of religion, the ad- 
 venturers of both countries frequently fought side by side, 
 their national emulation serving only to stimulate them to 
 excel each other in their efforts against the common enemy. 
 The frank and martial character of Richard, who made 
 no distinction betwixt his own subjects and those of William , 
 of Scotland, excepting as they bore themselves in the field i 
 of battle, tended much to conciliate the troops of both 
 nations. But upon his illness, and tlie disadvantageous cir- 1 _^ 
 cumstances in which the Crusaders were placed, the national !{|iIq{ 
 disunion between the various bands united in the Crusadf ' 
 70 
 
THE TALISMAI^ 71 
 
 began to display itself, just as old wounds break out afresh 
 in the human body when under the influence of disease or 
 debility. 
 
 The Scottish and English, equally jealous and high-spir- 
 ited, and apt to take offense — the former tiie more so, be- 
 cause the poorer and the weaker nation — began to fill up, 
 by internal dissension, the period when the truce forbade 
 them to wreak their united vengeance on the Saracens. 
 Like the contending Eonian chiefs of old, the Scottish would 
 admit no superiority, and their southern neighbors would 
 brook no equality. There were charges and recriminations, 
 and both the common soldiery and their leaders and com- 
 manders, who had been good comrades in time of victory, 
 lowered on each other in the period of adversity, as if their 
 union had not been then more essential than ever, not only 
 to the success of their common cause, but to their joint 
 safety. The same disunion had begun to show itself betwixt 
 the French and English, the Italians and the Germans, and 
 even between the Danes and Swedes ; but_ it is only that 
 which divided the two nations whom one island bred, and 
 who seemed more animated against each other for the 
 very reason, that our narrative is principally concerned 
 with. 
 
 Of all the English nobles who had followed their king to 
 Palestine, De Vaux was most prejudiced against the Scot- 
 tish ; they were his near neighbors, with whom he had been 
 engaged during his whole life in private or_ public warfare, 
 and on whom he had inflicted many calamities, while he had 
 sustained at their hands not a few. His love and devotion 
 to the King was like the vivid affection of the old English 
 mastiff to his master, leaving him churlish and inaccessible 
 to all others, even towards those to whom he was indifferent, 
 and rough and dangerous to any against whom he enter- 
 tained a prejudice. De Vaux had never observed, without 
 jealousy and displeasure, his King exhibit any mark of 
 courtesy or favor to the wicked, deceitful, and ferocious 
 race, born on the other side of a river, or an imaginary line 
 drawn through waste and wilderness, and he even doubted 
 the success of a Crusade in which they were suffered to bear 
 arms, holding them in his secret soul little better than the 
 Saracens, whom he came to combat. It may be added that, 
 as being himself a blunt and downright Englishman, unac- 
 customed to conceal the slightest movement either of love 
 or of dislike, he accounted the fair-spoken courtesy which 
 the Scots had learned, either from imitation of their frequent 
 
72 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 allies, the French, or which might have arisen from theii 
 
 own proud and restrved character, as* a false and astncioua 
 mark of the most dangerous designs against their neighbors, 
 over whom he believed, with genuine English confidence, 
 they could, by fair manhood, never obtain any advantage. 
 
 Yet, though De Vaux entertained these sentiments con- 
 cerning his northern neighbors, and extended them, with 
 little mitigation, even to such as had assumed the cross, his 
 respect for the King, and a sense of the duty imposed by his 
 vow as a Crusader, prevented him from displayiug them 
 otherwise than by regularly shnnning all intercourse with 
 his Scottish brethren-at-arms, as far as possible, by observ- 
 ing a sullen taciturnity when compelled to meet them 
 occasionally, and by looking scornfully upon them when 
 they encountered on the march and in camp. The Scottish 
 barons and knights were not men to bear his scorn unob- 
 served or unreplied to ; and it came to that pass, that he 
 was regarded as the determined and active enemy of a nation 
 whom, after all, he only disliked, and in some sort despised. 
 Nay, it was remarked by close observers that, if he had not 
 towards tliem the charity of Scripture, which suffereth long 
 and Judges kindly, he was by no means deficient in the sub- 
 ordinate and limited virtue which alleviates and relieves the 
 wants of others. The wealth of Thomas of Gilsland pro- 
 cured supplies of provisions and medicines, and some of 
 these usually flowed by secret channels into the quarters of 
 the Scottish ; his surly benevolence proceeding on the prin- 
 ciple that, next to a man's friend, his foe was of most im- 
 portance to him, passing over all the intermediate relations, 
 as too indifferent to merit even a thought. This explanation 
 is necessary, in order that the reader may fully understand 
 what we are now to detail. 
 
 Thomas de Vaux had not made many steps beyond the 
 entrance of the royal pavilion, when he was aware of what 
 the far more acute ear of tl)e English monarch, no mean 
 proficient in the art of minstrelsy, had instantly discovered, 
 that the musical strains, namely, which had reached their 
 ears, were produced by the pipes, shalms, and kettledrums 
 of the Saracens ; and at the bottom of an avenue of tents, 
 which formed a broad access to the pavilion of Eichard, he 
 could see a crowd of idle soldiers assembled around the spot 
 from which the music was heard, almost in the center of the 
 camp ; and he saw, with great surprise, mingled amid the 
 helmets of various forms worn by the Crusaders of different 
 nations, white turbans and long pikes, announcing the 
 
THE TALISMAN 73 
 
 presence of armed Saracens, and the huge deformed headr 
 of several camels or dromedaries, overlooking the multitude 
 by aid of their long, disproportioned necks. 
 
 Wondering and displeased at a sight so unexpected and 
 singular — for it was customary to leave all flags of truce and 
 other communications from the enemy at an aj^pointed place 
 without the barriers — the baron looked eagerly round for 
 some one of whom he might inquire the cause of this alarm 
 ing novelty. 
 
 The first person whom he met advancing to him, he set 
 down at once, by his grave and haughty step, as a Spaniard 
 or a Scot ; and presently after muttered to himself — ''And 
 a Scot it is — he of the Leopard. I have seen him fij^'ht in- 
 differently well, for one of his country." 
 
 Loth to ask even a passing question, he was about to pass 
 Sir Kenneth, with that sullen and lowering port which seems 
 to say, " 1 know thee, but 1 will hold no communication with 
 thee " ; but his purpose was defeated by the Northern knight, 
 who moved forward directly to him, and accosting him witli 
 formal courtesy, said, " My Lord de Vaux of Gilsland, I 
 have in charge to speak with you.'' 
 
 "Ha!'* returned the English baron, 'Mvith me? But 
 say your pleasure, so it be shortly spoken ; 1 am on the King's 
 errand." 
 
 " Mine touches King Richard yet more nearly," answered 
 Sir Kenneth ; " I bring him, I trust, health." 
 
 The Lord of Gilsland measured the Scot with incredulous 
 eyes, and replied, " Thou art no leech, I think, sir Scot ; 
 I had as soon thought of your bringing the King of Eng- 
 land wealth." 
 
 Sir Kenneth, though displeased with the manner of the 
 baron's reply, answered calmly — " Health to Richard is glory 
 and wealth to Christendom. But my time presses ; I pray 
 you, may 1 see the King ?" 
 
 " Surely not, fair sir," said the baron, " until your errand 
 be told more distinctly. The sick-chambers of princes open 
 not to all who inquire, like a Northern hostelry." 
 
 ''My lord," said Kenneth, "the cross which I wear in 
 common with yourself, and the importance of what I have 
 to tell, must, for the present, cause me to pass over a bear- 
 ing which else I were unapt to endure. In plain language, 
 then, I bring with me a Moorish physician, who undertakag 
 to work a cure on King Richard." 
 
 " A Moorish physician I" said De Vaux ; "and who wil] 
 warrant that he brings not poisons instead of remedies ? " 
 
U IV A VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 ''His own life, my lord — his head, which he offers as a 
 guarantee." 
 
 "I have known many a resolute ruffian/' said De Vaux, 
 " who valued his own life as little as it deserved, and would 
 troop to the gallows as merrily as if the hangman were his 
 partner in a dance/' 
 
 " But thus it is, my lord," replied the Scot : " Saladin, 
 to whom none will deny the credit of a generous and valiant 
 enemy, hath sent this leecli hither with an honorable retinue 
 and guard, befitting the high estimation in which El Hakim 
 is held by the Soldan, and with fruits and refreshments for 
 the King's private chamber, and such message as may pass 
 betwixt honorable enemies, praying him to be recovered of 
 his fever, that he may be the fitter to receive a visit from 
 the Soldan, with his naked scimitar in his hand, and an 
 hundred thousand cavaliers at his back. Will it please you, 
 who are of the King's secret council, to cause these camels 
 to be discharged of their burdens, and some order taken a& 
 to the reception of the learned physician ? " 
 
 ''Wonderful!" said De Vaux, as speaking to himself, 
 "And who will vouch for the honor of Saladin, in a case 
 when bad faith would rid him at once of his most powerful 
 adversary ? " 
 
 " I myself," replied Sir Kenneth, " will be his guarantee, 
 with honor, life, and fortune." 
 
 "Strange!" again ejaculated De Vaux: "the North 
 vouches for the South — the Scot for the Turk ! May I 
 crave of you, sir knight, how you became concerned in this 
 affair?" 
 
 "I have been absent on a pilgrimage, in the course of 
 which," replied Sir Kenneth, "I had a message to dis- 
 charge towards the holy hermit of Engaddi." 
 
 " May I not be entrusted with it, Sir Kenneth, and with 
 the answer of the holy man ? " 
 
 " It may not be, my lord," answered the Scot. 
 
 " I am of the secret council of England," said the Eng- 
 lishman, haughtily. 
 
 " To which land I owe no allegiance," said Kenneth. 
 " Though I have voluntarily followed in this war the per- 
 sonal fortunes of England's sovereign, I was desj^atched by the 
 general council of the kings, princes, and supreme leaders 
 of the army of the Blessed Cross, and to them only I render 
 my errand." 
 
 " Ha ! say'st thou ? " said the proud Baron de Vaux. 
 " But know, messenger of the kings and princes as thou 
 
THE TALISMAN 75 
 
 mayst be, no leech shall approach the sick-bed of Richard 
 of England without the 'consent of him of Gilsland ; and 
 they will come on evil errand who dare to intrude them- 
 selves against it.'* 
 
 He was turning loftily away, when the Scot, placing 
 himself closer, and more opposite to him, asked, in a calm 
 voice, yet not without expressing his share of j^ride, whether 
 the Lord of Gilsland esteemed him a gentleman and a good 
 knight. 
 
 " All Scots are ennobled by their birthright, '' answered 
 Thomas de Vaux, something ironically ; but, sensible of his 
 own injustice, and perceiving that Kenneth's color rose, he 
 added, "For a good knight it were sin to doubt you, ni one 
 at least who has seen you well and bravely discharge your 
 devoir." 
 
 " Well, then," said the Scottish knight, satisfied with the 
 frankness of the last admission, " and let me swear to you, 
 Thomas of Gilsland, that as I am true Scottish man, which 
 I hold a privilege equal to my ancient gentry, and as sure 
 as I am a belted knight, and come hither to acquire los and 
 fame in this mortal life, and forgiveness of my sins in that 
 which is to come, so truly, and by the blessed cross which I 
 wear, do I protest unto you, that I desire but the safety of 
 Richard Coeur-de-Jdon, in recommending the ministry of 
 this Moslem physician." 
 
 The Englishman was struck with the solemnity of the 
 obtestation, and answered with more cordiality than he had 
 yet exhibited, " Tell me. Sir Knight of the Leopard, granting 
 — which I do not doubt — that thou art thyself satisfied in 
 this matter, shall I do well, in a land where the art of 
 poisoning is as general as that of cooking, to bring this 
 unknown physician to practise with his drugs on a health 
 so valuable to Christendom ? " 
 
 '' My lord," replied the Scot, ''thus only can I reply, 
 that my squire, the only one of my retinue whom war and 
 disease had left in attendance on me, has been of late 
 suffering dangerously under this same fever, which, in valiant 
 King Richard, has disabled the principal limb of our holy 
 enterprise. This leecli, this El Hakim, hath ministered 
 remedies to him not two hours since, and already he hath 
 fallen into a refreshing sleep. That he can cure the disorder, 
 which has proved so fatal, I iiothing doubt ; that he hath 
 the purpose to do it is, I think, warranted by his mission 
 from the royal Soldan, who is true-hearted and loyal, so far 
 as a blinded infidel may be called so ; and, for his eventual 
 
76 WAVERLEY NOVELS I 
 
 success, the certainty of reward in case of succeeding, and '" 
 punishment in case of vohmtary failure, may be a sulScient 
 guarantee." 
 
 The Englishman listened with downcast looks, as one who j|!"" 
 doubted, yet was not unwilling to receive conviction. At '""1 
 length he looked up and said, " May I see your sick squire, ;' 
 fair sir?" ... ^ ^ ,,5 
 
 The Scottish knight hesitated and colored, yet answered at '"^^ 
 last, " Willingly, my Lord of Gilsland ; but you must re- 
 member, when you see my poor quarter, that the nobles and 
 knights of Scotland feed not so high, sleep not so soft, and 
 care not for the magnificence of lodgment which is proper to 
 their southern neighbor^ , I am poorly lodged, my Lord 
 of Gilsland," he added, with a haughty emphasis on the 
 word, while, with some unwillingness, he led the way to his 
 temporary place of abode. 
 
 Whatever were the prejudices of De Vaux against the 
 nation of his new acquaintance, and though we undertake 
 not to deny that some of these were excited by its proverbial 
 poverty, he had too much nobleness of disposition to enjoy 
 the mortification of a brave individual, thus compelled to 
 make known wants which his pride would gladly have con- ,. 
 cealed. 
 
 "■ Shame to the soldier of the Cross," he said, " who thinks 
 of worldly splendor, or of luxurious accommodation, when 
 pressing forward to the conquest of the Holy City. Fare as 
 hard as we may, we shall yet be better than the host of 
 martyrs and of saints, who, having trod these scenes before 
 us, now hold golden lamps and evergreen palms." 
 
 This was the most metaphorical speech which Thomas of '1™ 
 Gilsland was ever known to utter, tbe rather, perhaps (: 
 will sometimes happen), that it did not entirely express his | 
 own sentiments, being somewhat a lover of good cheer and 
 splendid accommodation. By this time they reached the 
 place of tbe camp, where the Knight of the Leopard had 
 assumed his abode. 
 
 Appearances here did indeed promise no breach of the laws 
 of mortification, to which the Crusaders, according to the 
 opinion expressed by him of Gilsland, ought to subject them- 
 selves. A space of ground, large enough to accommodate 
 perhaps thirty tents, according to the Crusaders' rules of 
 castrametation, was partly vacant, because, in ostentation,! JNf^ 
 the knight had demanded ground to the extent of his 
 original retinue, partly occupied by a few miserable huts, 
 hastily constructed of boughs and covered with, palm leaves. 
 
 iiC( 
 
 al 
 for 
 iniislj 
 bs 
 tad, 
 \h 
 Jinst 
 
 h 
 
I THE TALISMAN 77 
 
 These habitations seemed entirely deserted, and several of 
 them were ruinous. The central hut, which represented the 
 pavilion of the leader, was distinguislied by his swallow- 
 tailed pennon, placed on the point of a spear, from which its 
 long folds dropt motionless to the ground, as if sickening 
 under the scorching rays of the Asiatic sun. But no pages 
 or squires, not even a solitary warder, was placed by the 
 emblem of feudal power and knightly degrees. If its repu- 
 tation defended it not from insult, it had no other guard. 
 
 Sir Kenneth cast a melancholy look around him, but, sup- 
 pressing liis feelings, entered the hut, making a sign to the 
 Baron of Gilsland to follow. He also cast around a glance of 
 examination, which implied pity not altogether unmingled 
 with contempt, to which, perhaps, it is as nearly akin as it 
 is said to be to love. He then stooped his lofty crest, and 
 entered a lowly hut, which his bulky form seemed almost 
 entirely to fill. 
 
 The interior of the hut was chiefly occupied by two beds. 
 One was empty, but composed of collected leaves, and spread 
 with an antelope's hide. It seemed, from the articles of 
 armor laid beside it, and from a crucifix of silver, carefully 
 and reverentially disposed at the head, to be the couch of the 
 knight himself. The other contained the invalid, of whom 
 Sir "Kenneth had spoken — a strong-built and harsh-featured 
 man, past, as his looks betokened, the middle age of life. 
 His couch was trimmed more softly than his master's, audit 
 ,was plain that the more courtly garments of the latter, the 
 loose robe, in which the knights showed themselves on pa- 
 :cific occasions, and the other little spare articles of dress and 
 adornment, had been applied by Sir Kenneth to the accom- 
 modaticn of his sick domestic. In an outward part of the 
 hut, which yet was within the range of the English baron's 
 eye, a boy, rudely attired with buskins of deer's hide, a blue 
 cap or bo^nnet, and a doublet, whose original finery was much 
 tarnished, sat on his knees by a chafing-dish filled with 
 charcoal cooking, upon a plate of iron the cakes of barley- 
 bread which were then, and still are, a favorite food with 
 the Scottish people. Part of an antelope was suspended 
 against one of the main props of the hut, nor was it difficult 
 to knew how it had been procured; for a large stag grey- 
 hound, nobler in size and appearance than those even which 
 guarded King Eichard*s sick-bed, lay eying the process of 
 baking the cake. The sagacious animal, on their first en- 
 trance, uttered a stifled growl, which sounded from his deep 
 chest like distant thunder. But he saw his master, and 
 
WAVER LEY NOVELS 
 
 acknowledged liis presence by wagging bis tail and coucbing ^^^ 
 bis bead, abstaining from more tumultuous or noisy greeting, 
 as if bis noble instinct bad taugbt bim tbe propriety of 
 silence in a sick man's cbamber. 
 
 Beside tbe coucb, sat on a cusbion, also composed of skins, 
 tbe Moorish pbysician of wbom Sir Kennetb bad spoken, 
 cross-legged, after tbe Eastern fasbion. Tbe imperfect light 
 showed little of bim, save that the lower part of bis face jjft 
 was covered with a long black beard, which descended over 
 his breast ; that he wore a high tolpacli, a Tartar cap of the 
 lamb's-wool manufactured at Astraean, bearing tbe same 
 dusky color, and that bis ample caftan, or Turkish robe, 
 was also of a dark hue. Two piercing eyes, which gleamed 
 with unusual luster, were tbe only lineaments of his visage 
 that could be discerned amid the darkness in which he was 
 enveloped. Tbe English lord stood silent with a sort of 
 reverential awe ; for, notwithstanding tbe roughness of his 
 general bearing, a scene of distress and poverty, firmly en- 
 dured without complaint or murmur, would at any time have 
 claimed more reverence from Thomas de Vaux than would all 
 tbe splendid formalities of a royal presence-chamber, unless 
 that presence-chamber were King Eicbard's own. Nothing 
 was, for a time, heard but tbe heavy and regular breathings Jj^jj 
 of the invalid, who seemed in profound repose. 
 
 " He bath not slept for six nights before,^' said Sir Ken- 
 neth, "as I am assured by tbe youth, bis attendant. '^ 
 
 ''Noble Scot," said Thomas de Vaux, grasping the Scot- 
 tish knight's band, with a pressure which had more of cordi- 
 ality than be permitted his words to utter, " this gear m 
 be amended. Your esquire is but too evil fed and looked 
 to." 
 
 In the latter of part of this speech he naturally raised his 
 voice to its usual decided tone. The sick man was dis 
 turbed in bis slumbers. 
 
 " My master," he said, murmuring as in a dream — " noble 
 Sir Kenneth, taste not, to you as to me, tbe waters of the 
 Clyde cold and refreshing, after the brackish springs of 
 Palestine ? " 
 
 " He dreams of bis native land, and is happy in bis slunv 
 bers," whispered Sir Kennetb to De Vaux ; but bad scarce 
 uttered the words, when tbe pbysician, arising from the 
 place which be bad taken near the couch of tbe sick, and 
 laying tbe hand of tbe patient, whose pulse be had been care 
 fully watching, quietly upon the couch, came to the two 
 knights, and taking them each by the arm, while he inti- 
 
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 ict; 
 
 tpoi 
 
 il-ci 
 k 
 
 I 
 
' - THE TALISMAN 79 
 
 mated to them to remain silent, led them to the front of the 
 hut. 
 
 "In the name of Issa ben Mariam/' he said, "whom we 
 honor as you, though not with the same blinded superstition, 
 disturb not the effect of the blessed medicine of which he 
 hath partaken. To awaken him now is death or deprivation 
 of reason ; but return at the hour when the muezzin calls 
 from the minaret to evening prayer in the mosque, and, if 
 left undisturbed until then, I promise you, this same Frank- 
 ish soldier shall be able, without prejudice to his health,^ to 
 hold some brief converse with you, on any matters on which 
 either, and especially his master, may have to question him/' 
 
 The knights retreated before the authoritative commands 
 of the leech, who seemed fully to comprehend the impor- 
 tance of the Eastern proverb, that " the sick-chamber of the 
 patient is the kingdom of the physician/' 
 
 They paused, and remained standing together at the door 
 of the hut. Sir Kenneth with the air of one who expected 
 his visitor to say farewell, and De Vaux as if he had some- 
 thing on his mind which prevented him from doing so. The 
 hound, however, had pressed out of the tent after them, and 
 now thrust his long rough countenance into the hand of his 
 master, as if modestly soliciting some mark of his kindness. 
 ' He had no sooner received the notice which he desired, in 
 the shape of a kind word and slight caress, than, eager to 
 acknowledge his gratitude and joy for his master's return, 
 he flew off at full "speed, galloping in full career, and with 
 outstretched tail, here and there, about and around, cross- 
 ways and en along, through the decayed huts and the espla- 
 nade we have described, but never transgressing those pre- 
 cincts which his sagacity knew were protected by his master's 
 pennon. After a few gambols of this kind, the dog, coming 
 close up to his master, laid at once aside his frolicsome mood, 
 relapsed into his usual gravity and slowness of gesture and 
 deportment, and looked as if he were ashamed that anything 
 should have moved him to depart so far out of his sober 
 self-control. 
 
 Both knights looked on with pleasure ; for Sir Kenneth 
 was justly proud of his noble hound, and the northern 
 English baron was, of course, an admirer of the chase, and a 
 judge of the animal's merits. 
 
 "A right able dog," he said; "I think, fair sir. King 
 Richard hath not an alan which may match him, if he be as 
 staunch as he is swift. But let me pray you — speaking in 
 all honor and kindness — have you not heard the proclama- 
 
80 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 tion, that no one, under the rank of earl, shall keep hunting 
 dogs within King Richard's camp, without the royal license, 
 which, I think, Sir Kenneth, hath not been issued to you ? 
 I speak as Master of the Horse." 
 
 ** And I answer as a free Scottish knight," said Kenneth, 
 sternly. "For the present I follow the banner of England, 
 but I cannot remember that I have ever subjected myself to 
 the forest laws of that kingdom, nor have I such respect for 
 them as would incline me to do so. When the trumpet 
 sounds to arms, my foot is in the stirrup as soon as any ; 
 when it clangs for the charge, my lance has not yet been the 
 last laid in the rest. But for my hours of liberty or of idle- 
 ness. King Richard has no title to bar my recreation." 
 
 ''Nevertheless," said De Vaux, '"it is a folly to disobey 
 the King's ordinance ; so, with your good leave, I, as having 
 authority in that matter, will send you a protection for my 
 friend here." 
 
 " I thank you," said the Scot, coldly ; " but he knows my 
 allotted quarters, and within these I can protect him myself. 
 And yet," he said, suddenly changing his manner, " this is 
 but a cold return for a well-meant kindness. I thank you, 
 my lord, most heartily. The King's querries, or prickers, 
 might find Roswal at disadvantage, and do him some injury, 
 which I should not, perhaps, be slow in returning, and so ill 
 might come of it. You have seen so much of my housekeep- 
 ing, my lord," he added with a smile, "that I need not 
 Bhame to say that Roswal is our principal purveyor ; and 
 well I hope our Lion Richard will not be like the lion in the 
 minstrel fable, that went a-huntingand kept the whole booty 
 to himself. I cannot think lie would grudge a poor gentle- 
 man, who follows him faithfully, his hour of sport and his 
 morsel of game, more especially when other food is hard 
 enough to come by." 
 
 " By my faith, you do the King no more than justice ; 
 and yet," said the baron, ''there is something in these words, 
 * vert * and ' venison,' that turns the very brains of our 
 Norman princes." 
 
 "We have heard of late,'' said the Scot, "by minstrels 
 and pilgrims, that your outlawed yeomen have formed great 
 bands in the shires of York and Nottingham, having at their 
 head a most stout archer, called Robin Hood, with his lieu- 
 tenant. Little John. Methinks it were better that Richard 
 relaxed his forest code in England than endeavored to enforce 
 it in the Holy Land." 
 
 ** Wild work. Sir Kenneth," replied De Vaux, shrugging 
 
THE TALISMAN 81 
 
 shoukltj! d, as one who would avoid a perilous or unpleas- 
 ig topic — "a mad world, sir. I must now bid you adieu, 
 laving presently to return to the King's pavilion. At 
 respers, I will again, with your leave, visit your quarters, 
 |and speak with this same infidel physician. I would, in the 
 leantime, were it no oliehse, willingly send you what would 
 [somewhat mend your cheer." 
 
 I thank you, sir," said Kenneth, "but it needs not: 
 IRoswal hath already stocked my larder for two weeks, since 
 the sun of Palestine, if it brings diseases, serves also to dry 
 venison." 
 
 The two warriors parted much better friends than they 
 had met ; but ere they separated, Thomas de Vaux informed 
 himself at more length of the circumstances attending the 
 mission of the Eastern physician, and received from the 
 Scottish knight the credentials which he had brought to 
 King Eichard on the part of Saladin. 
 6 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A wise physician, skill'd our wounds to heal, 
 Is more than armies to the common weal. 
 
 Pope's Iliad. 
 
 " This is a strange tale. Sir Thomas," said the sick 
 monarch, when he had heard the report of the trusty Baron 
 of Gilslaud ; "art thou sure this Scottish man is a tall man 
 and true ? " 
 
 " I cannot say, my lord," replied the jealous Borderer : 
 *' I live a little too near the Scots to gather much truth 
 among them, having found them ever fair and false. But 
 this man's bearing is that of a true man, were he a devil as well 
 as a Scot ; that I must needs say for him in conscience." 
 
 " And for his carriage as a knight, how say'st thou, De 
 Vaux ? " demanded the King. 
 
 "It is your Majesty's business more than mine to note 
 men's bearings ; and I warrant you have noted the manner 
 in which this man of the Leopard hath borne himself. He 
 hath been full well spoken of." 
 
 " And jnstly, Thomas," said the King, " We have our- 
 selves witnessed him. It is indeed our purpose, in placing 
 ourselves ever in the front of battle, to see how our liegemen 
 and followers acquit themselves, and not from a desire to 
 accumulate vainglory to ourselves, as some have supposed. 
 We know the vanity of the praise of man, which is but a 
 vapor, and buckle on our armor for other purposes than to 
 win it," 
 
 De Vaux was alarmed when he heard the King make a 
 declaration so inconsistent with his nature, aiid believed at 
 first that nothing short of the approach of death could have , 
 brought him to speak in depreciating terms of military re- 
 nown, which was the very breath of his nostrils. But, rec- 
 ollecting he had met the royal confessor in the outer pa- 
 vilion, he was shrewd enough to place this temporary self- 
 abasement to the effect of the reverend man's lesson, and 
 suffered the King to proceed without reply. 
 
 "Yes," continued Richard, "I have indeed marked the 
 manner in which this knight does his devoir. My leading- 
 staff were not worth a fool's bauble, had he escaped my 
 82 
 
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 IOC 
 
THE TALISMAN 83 
 
 notice ; and he had ere now tasted of our bounty, but that 
 I have also marked his overweening and audacious pre- 
 sumption/' 
 
 " M}^ liege," said the Baron of Gilsland, observing the 
 King's countenance change, "I fear I have transgressed 
 your pleasure in lending some countenance to his trans- 
 gression." 
 
 "How, De IMulton, thou?" said the King, contracting 
 his brows and speaking in a tone of angry surprise — " thou 
 countenance his insolence ? It cannot be." 
 
 " Nay, your Majesty will pardon me to remind you that I 
 have by mine office right to grant liberty to men of gentle 
 blood to keep them a hound or two within camp, just to 
 cherish the noble art of venerie ; and besides, it were a sin 
 
 ito have maimed or harmed a thing so noble as this gentle- 
 
 I man's dog." 
 
 I '' Has he then a dog so handsome ?" said the King. 
 
 "A most perfect creature of Heaven," said the baron, who 
 was an enthusiast in field-sports, " of the noblest Northern 
 breed — deep in the chest, strong in the stern, black color, 
 and brindled on the breast and legs — not spotted with white, 
 but just shaded into gray — strength to pull down a bull, 
 swiftness to cote an antelope." 
 
 The King laughed at his enthusiasm. " "Well, then hast 
 
 igiven him leave to keep the hound, so there is an end of it. 
 Be not, however, liberal of your licenses among those knights 
 adventurers who have no prince or leader to depend upon •, 
 they are ungovernable, and leave no game in Palestine. But 
 
 ito this piece of learned heathenesse — say'st thou the Scot 
 
 I met him in the desert ? " 
 
 ** No, my liege, the Scot's tale runs thus : — He was de- 
 spatched to the old hermit of Engaddi, of whom men talk 
 
 so much " 
 
 **'Sdeath and hell!" said Eichard, starting up. "By 
 whom despatched, and for what ? Who dared send any one 
 
 'thither when our Queen was in the convent of Engaddi, 
 
 \ upon her pilgrimage for our recovery ? " 
 
 " The council of the Crusade sent him, my lord,*' answered 
 the Baron de Vaux ; " for what purpose, he declined to account 
 to me. I think it is scarce known in the camp that your 
 royal consort is on a pilgrimage, and even tbe princes may 
 not have been aware, as the Queen has been sequestered from 
 company since your love prohibited her attendance in case of 
 infection." 
 ''Well, it shall be looked into," said Eichard. ''So this 
 
84 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Scottish man, this envoy, met with a wandering physician 
 at the grotto of Engaddi — ha ?" 
 
 "Not so, my liege," replied DeVaux ; but he met, I think, 
 near that place with a Saracen emir with whom he had some 
 melee in the way of proof of valor, and finding him worthy 
 to bear brave men company, they went together, as errant 
 knights are wont, to the grotto of Engaddi." 
 
 Here De Vanx stopped, for he was not one of those who 
 can tell a long story in a sentence. 
 
 " And did they there meet the physician ?" demanded the 
 King, impatiently. 
 
 " No, my liege," replied De Vanx ; " but the Saracen, 
 learning your Majesty's grievous illness, undertook that 
 Saladin should send his own physician to you, and with many 
 assurances of his eminent skill ; and he came to the grotto 
 accordingly, after the Scottish knight had tarried a day for 
 him and more. He is attended as if he were a prince, with 
 drums and atabals, and servants on horse and foot, and brings 
 with him letters of credence from Saladin." 
 
 " Have they been examined by Giacomo Loredani ?" 
 
 '*I showed them to the interpreter ere bringing them 
 hither, and behold their contents in English." 
 
 Richard took a scroll, in which were inscribed these words : 
 " The blessing of Allah and his Prophet Mohammed — {" Out 
 upon the hound! "said Eichard, spitting in contempt, by 
 way of interjection) — Saladin, king of kings, soldan of 
 Egypt and of Syria, the light and refuge of the earth, to the 
 great Melech Ric — Richard of England — greeting. Whereas 
 Ave have been informed that the hand of sickness hath been 
 heavy upon thee, our royal brother, and that thou hast with 
 thee only such Nazarene and Jewish mediciners as work 
 without the blessing of Allah and our holy Prophet — ("Con- 
 fusion on his head ! " again muttered the English monarch) — 
 we have therefore sent to tend and wait upon thee at this 
 time the physician to our own person, Adonbec el Hakim, 
 before whose face the angel Azrael * spreads his wings and 
 departs from the sick chamber ; who knows the virtues of 
 herbs and stones, the path of the sun, moon, and stars, and 
 can save man from all that is not written on his forehead. 
 And this we do, praying you heartily to honor and make 
 use of his skill, not only that we may do service to thy worth 
 and valor, which is the glory of all the nations of Frangistan, 
 but that we may bring the controversy which is at present 
 between us to an end, either by honorable agreement or b5 
 *The Angel of Death. 
 
THE TALISMAN 8fi 
 
 open trial thereof with our weapons in a fair field ; seeing 
 that it neither becomes thy place and courage to die the 
 death of a slave who hath been overwrought by his task- 
 master, nor benefits it our fame that a brave adversary be 
 snatched from our weapon by such a disease. And, there- 
 fore, may the holy " 
 
 " Hold — hold/' said Richard, " I will have no more of his 
 dog of a Prophet ! It makes me sick to think the valiant 
 and worthy Sol Jan should believe in a dead dog. Yes, I 
 will see his physician. I will put myself into the charge of 
 this Hakim. I will repay the noble Soldan his generosity. 
 I will meet Saladin in the field, as he so worthily proposes, 
 and he shall have no cause to term Richard of England un- 
 grateful. I will strike him to the earth with my battle-ax. 
 I will convert him to Holy Church with such bloAvs as he 
 has rarely endured. He shall recant his errors before my 
 good cross-handled sword, and I will have him baptized in 
 the battle-field, from my own helmet, though the cleansing 
 waters were mixed with the blood of us both. Haste, De 
 Vaux, why dost thou delay a conclusion so pleasing ? Fetch 
 the Hakim hither.'' 
 
 " My lord," said the baron, who perhaps saw some acces- 
 sion of fever in this overfiow of confidence, " bethink you, 
 the Soldan is a pagan, and that you are his most formidable 
 enemy " 
 
 " For which reason he is the more bound to do me service 
 in this matter, lest a paltry fever end the quarrel betwixt 
 two such kings. I tell thee, he loves me as I love him — as 
 noble adversaries ever love each other ; by my honor, it were 
 sin to doubt his good faith." 
 
 " Nevertheless, my lord, it were well to wait the issue of 
 these medicines upon the Scottish squire," said the Lord of 
 Gilsland ; " my own life depends upon it, for worthy were I 
 to die like a dog, did I proceed rashly in this matter, and 
 make shipwreck of the weal of Christendom." 
 
 "I never knew thee before hesitate for fear of life," said 
 Richard, upbraidingly. 
 
 " Nor would I now, my liege," replied the stout-hearted 
 baron, " save that yours lies at pledge as well as my own." 
 
 " Well, thou suspicious mortal," answered Richard, '' be- 
 gone then, and watch the progress of this remedy. I could 
 almost wish it might either cure or kill me, for I am weary 
 of lying here like an ox dying of the murrain, when tam- 
 bours are beating, horses stamping, and trumpets sounding 
 without/^ 
 
m iVA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 The baron hastily departed^ resolved, however, to cotft. 
 municate his errand to some churchman, as he felt some^ 
 thing burdened in conscience at the idea of his master being f' 
 attended by an unbeliever, i 
 
 The Archbishop of Tyre was the first to whom he confided '!^ 
 his doubts, knowing his interest with his master, Eichard, f 
 who both loTcd and honored that sagacious pi'elate. The 
 bishop heard the doubts which De Vtiux stated with that 
 acuteness of intelligence which distinguishes the Roman 
 Catholic clergy. The religious scruples of De Vaux he 
 treated with as much lightness as propriety permitted him 
 to exhibit such a subject to a layman. 
 
 '' Mediciners," he said, 'Hike the medicines which they 
 employed, were often useful, though the one were by birth 
 or manners the vilest of humanity, as tlie others are, in 
 many cases, extracted from the basest materials. Men may 
 use the assistance of pagans and infidels,^' he continued, 
 " in their need, and there is reason to think that one cause 
 of their being permitted to remain on earth is, that they 
 might minister to the convenience of true Christians. Thus, 
 we lawfully make slaves of heathen captives. Again," prO' 
 ceeded the prelate, 'Hhere is no doubt that the primitive 
 Christians used the services of the unconverted heathen 
 thus, in the ship of Alexandria, in which the blessed Apostle 
 Paul sailed to_ Italy, the sailors were doubtless pagans, yet 
 what said the' holy saint Avhen their ministry was needful, 
 ' JVisi hi in navi manserint, vos salvi fieri 71071 potestis — 
 Unless these men abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.' 
 Again, Jews are infidels to Christianity as well as Moham- 
 medans. But tliere are few physicians in the camp except 
 ing Jews, and such are employed without scandal or scruple. 
 Therefore, Mohammedans may be used for their service in 
 that capacity, quod ei^at demmist7-andum." 
 
 This reasoning entirely removed the scruples of Thomas 
 de Vaux, who was particularly moved by the Latin quota- 
 tion, as he did not understand a word of it. 
 
 But the bishop proceeded with far less fluency when h( 
 considered the i^ossibility of the Saracen's acting with bac 
 faith ; and here he came not to a speedy decision. Thi 
 baron showed him the letters of credence. lie read and re 
 read them, and compared the original with the translation. 
 
 *' It is a dish choicely cooked," he said, '''to the palate 
 King Richard, and I cannot but have my suspicions of th 
 wily Saracen. They are curious in the art of poisons, an,, 
 can so temper them that they shall be weeks in acting upo| 
 
 Ill 
 
 n 
 
 is 
 
 Itlie 
 
 Vi 
 
 4 
 
 Itdc 
 
 iW 
 
 ?lil> 
 
I THE TALISMAN 81 
 
 ;he party, during which time the perpetrator has leisure to 
 escape. They can impregnate cloth and leather, nay, even 
 )aper and parchment, with the most subtle venom. Our 
 jady forgive me ! and wherefore, knowing this, hold I these 
 etters of credence so close so my face ? Take them, Sir 
 Thomas — take them speedily. 
 
 Here he gave them at arm's-length, and with some appcar- 
 mce of haste, to the baron. " But come, my Lord cle Vaux,'' 
 le continued, " wend we to the tent of this sick squire, 
 vhere we shall learn whether this Hakim hath really the 
 irt of curing which he professeth, ere we consider whether 
 ;here be safety in permitting him to exercise his art upon 
 King Eichard. Yet, hold ! let me first take my pounce*-- 
 Dox, for these fevers spread like an infection. I Avould 
 iidvise you to use dried rosemary steeped in vinegar, my lord. 
 {[, too, know something of the healing art." 
 ; " I thank your reverend lordship," replied Thomas of Gils- 
 iand ; ''but had I been accessible to the fever, I had caught 
 iit long since by the bed of my master." 
 
 The Bishop of Tyre blushed, for he had rather avoided 
 the presence of the sick monarch ; and he bid the baron 
 lead on. 
 
 As they paused before the wretched hut in which Kenneth 
 of the Leopard and his follower abode, the bishop said to 
 De Vaux, " Now, of a surety^, my lord, these Scottish 
 knights have worse care of their followers than we of our 
 dogs. Here is a knight, valiant they say in battle, and 
 thought fitting to be graced with charges of weight in time 
 of truce, whose esquire of the body is lodged worse than in 
 the worst dog-kennel in England. What say you of your 
 neighbors ? " 
 
 " That a master doth well enough for his servant, when 
 he lodgeth him in no worse dwelling than his own," said De 
 Vaux, and entered the hut. 
 
 The bishop followed, not without evident reli\ 3tauce ; for 
 though he lacked not courage in some respects, yet it was 
 tempered with a strong and lively regard for his own safety. 
 He recollected, however, the necessity there was for judging 
 personally of the skill of the Arabian physician, and entered 
 the hut with a stateliness of manner calculated, as he thought, 
 to impose respect on the stranger. 
 
 The prelate was, indeed, a striking and commanding 
 figure. In his youth he had been eminently handsome, and, 
 even in age, was unwilling to appear less so. His episcopal 
 dress was of the richest fashion, trimmed with costly fur, 
 
88 WA VERLEY NOVEL S 
 
 and surrounded by a cope of curious needlework. The ringa 
 on his fingers were worth a goodly barony, and the hood 
 which he wore, thjugh now unclasped and thrown back for 
 heat, had studs of pure gold to fasten it around his throat 
 and under his chin when he so inclined. His long beard, 
 now silvered with age, descended over his breast One of 
 two youthful acolytes who attended him created an artificial 
 shade, peculiar then to the East, by bearing over his head 
 an umbrella of palmetto leaves, while tlie other refreshed 
 his reverend master by agitating a fan of peacock-feathers. 
 
 When the Bishop of Tyre entered the hut of the Scottish 
 knight, the master was absent ; and the Moorish physician, 
 whom he had come to see, sat in the very posture in which 
 De Vaux had left him several hours before, cross-legged 
 upon a mat made of twisted leaves, by the side of the patient, 
 who appeared in deep slumber, and whose pulse he felt 
 from time to time. The bishop remained standing before 
 liim in silence for two or three minutes, as if expecting some 
 honorable salutation, or at least that the Saracen would 
 seem struck with the dignity of his appearance. But 
 Adonbec el Hakim took no notice of him beyond a passing 
 glance, and when the prelate at length saluted him in the 
 lingua franca current in the country, he only replied by the 
 ordinary Oriental greeting, *' Salam alicum — peace be with 
 
 " Art thou a physician, infidel ? " said the bishop, some- 
 what mortified at this cold reception. " I would s^^eak with 
 thee on that art.'* 
 
 " If thou knewest aught of medicine," answered El Hakim, 
 " thou wouldst be aware that physicians hold no counsel or 
 debate in the sick-chamber of their patient. Hear," he 
 added, as the low growling of thestaghound was heard from 
 the inner hut, " even the dog might teach thee reason, 
 ulemat. His instinct teaches him to suppress his barking 
 in the sick man's hearing. Come without the tent," said he, 
 rising and leading the way, *' if thou hast aught to say with 
 me." 
 
 Notwithstanding the plainness of the Saracen leech's dress, 
 and his inferiority of size, when contrasted with the tall 
 prelate and gigantic English baron, there was somethin;; 
 striking iii his m.anner and conntenance, which prevented 
 the Bishop of Tyre from ex])ressing strongly tlie displeasure 
 he felt at this unceremonious rebuke. When without the 
 hut, he gazed upon Adonbec in silence for several minutes 
 before he could fix on the best manner to renew the con- 
 
THE TALISMAN 89 
 
 versation. No locks were seen under the liigh bonnet of tlie 
 Arabian, which hid also part of a brow that seemed lofty 
 and expanded, smooth and free from wrinkles, as were his 
 cheeks, where they were seen under the shade of his long 
 beard. We have elsewhere noticed the piercing quality of 
 his dark eyes. 
 
 The prelate, struck with his apparent youth, at length 
 broke a pause which the other seemed in no haste to in- 
 terrupt, by demanding of the Arabian how old he was. 
 
 " The years of ordinary men," said the Saracen, " are 
 counted by their wrinkles, those of sages by their studies. 
 I dare not call myself older than an hundred revolutions of 
 the Hegira," * 
 
 The Baron of Gilsland, who took this for a literal asser- 
 tion that he was a century old, looked doubtfully upon the 
 prelate, who, though he better understood the meaning of 
 El Hakim, answered his glance by mysteriously shaking his 
 head. He resumed an air of importance, when he again 
 authoritatively demanded what evidence Adonbec could pro- 
 duce of his medical proficiency. 
 
 " Ye have the word of the mighty Saladin," said the 
 sage, touching his cap in sign of reverence, "& word which 
 was never broken towards friend or foe ; what, Nazarene, 
 wouldst thou demand more ? " 
 
 ** I would have ocular proof of thy skill," said the baron, 
 *' and without it thou approachcst not to the couch of King 
 Richard.'' 
 
 " The praise of the physician,*' said the Arabian, " is in 
 the recovery of his patient. Behold this sergeant, whose 
 blood has been dried up by the fever which has whitened 
 your camp with skeletons, and against whicii the art of your 
 Nazarone leeches hath been like a silken doublet against a 
 lance of steel. Look at his fingers and arms, wasted like the 
 claws and shanks of the crane. Death had this morning his 
 clutch on him ; but had Azrael been on one side of the 
 couch, I being on the other, his soul should not have been 
 reft from his body. Disturb me not with farther questions, 
 but await the critical minute, and behold in silent wonder 
 the marvelous event." 
 
 The physician had them recourse to his astrolabe, the 
 oracle of Eastern science, and, watching with grave pre- 
 cision until the precise time of the evening prayer had arrived, 
 he sunk on his knees, with his face turned to Mecca, and 
 
 * Meaning, that his attainments were those which might have 
 been made in a hundred years. 
 
90 WA VEELEY NOVELS 
 
 recited the petitions which close the Moslemah's day of 
 toil. 
 
 The bishop and the English baron looked on each other 
 meanwhile with symptoms of contempt and indignation, but 
 neither judged it"^fit to interrupt El Hakim in his devotions, 
 unholy as they considered them to be. 
 
 The Arab arose from the earth, on which he had pros 
 trated himself, aud, walking into the hut where the patient laj 
 extended, he drew a sponge from a small silver box, dippec 
 perhaps in some aromatic distillation ; for when he put it t( 
 the sleeper's nose, he sneezed, awoke and looked wildly 
 around. He was a ghastly spectacle, as he sat up almos 
 
 3ibleth< 
 
 naked on his couch, the bones and cartilages as visible thougl 
 the surface of his skin as if they had never been clothec 
 with flesh ; his face was long, and furrowed with wrinkles 
 but his eye, though it wandered at first, became graduall; 
 more settled. He seemed to be aware of the presence of hi" 
 dignified visitors, for he attempted feebly to pull the coveriu. 
 from his head, in token of reverence, as he inquired, in 
 subdued and submissive voice, for his master. 
 
 *' Do you know us, vassal ?" said the Lord of Gilsland. 
 
 " Not perfectly, my lord," replied the squired faintlj 
 *' My sleep has been long and full of dreams. Yet I kno^ •■ 
 that you are a great English lord, as seemeth by the re 
 cross, and this a holy prelate, whose blessing I crave on m 
 a poor sinner." 
 
 *'Thou hast it : BenedicHo Domi7ii sit vohiscum,'" said tl: 
 prelate, makiug the sign of the cross, but without approacl 
 ing nearer to the patient's bed. 
 
 "Your eyes witness," said the Arabian, "the fever hat fcte 
 been subdued : he speaks with calmness and recollectioi 
 his pulse beats composedly as yours — try its pulsatioi 
 yourself." 
 
 The prelate declined the experiment ; but Thomas 
 Gilsland, more determined on making the trial, did so, ar 
 satisfied himself that the fever was indeed gone. 
 
 " This is most wonderful," said the knight, looking 
 the bishop : '* the man is assuredly cured. I must C(mdu 
 this mediciner presently to King Richard's tent. Wh 
 thinks your reverence ? " 'i 
 
 " Stay, let me finish one cure ere I commence another* 
 said the Arab ; " I will pass with you when I have given iv 
 patient the second cup of this most holy elixir." 
 
 So saying, he pulled out a silver cup, and filling it wii 
 water from a gourd which stood by the bedside, he next dn ' ^jji 
 
 te 
 
 "1 
 
 irek; 
 
THE TALISMAN 91 
 
 forth a small silken bag made of network, twisted with silver, 
 the contents of wliich the bystanders conld not discover, and 
 immersing it in the cup, continued to watch it in silence 
 during the space five minutes. It seemed to the spectators 
 as if some effervescence took place during the operation ; 
 but if so, it instantly subsided. 
 
 " Drink," said the physician to the sick man ; " sleep, and 
 awaken free from malady." 
 
 "And with this simple-seeming draught thou will under- 
 take to cure a monarch ? " said the Bishop of Tyre. 
 
 " I have cured a beggar, as you may behold," replied the 
 sage. " Are the kings of Frangistan made of other clay than 
 the meanest of their subjects ? " 
 
 " Let us have him presently to the King," said the Baron 
 of Gilsland. " He hath sliown that he possesses the secret 
 which may restore his health. If he fails to exercise it, I 
 will put himself past the power of medicine." 
 
 As they were about to leave the hut, the sick man, raising 
 his voice as much as his weakness permitted, exclaimed, 
 *'Eeverend father, noble knight, and you, kind leech, if you 
 would have me sleep and recover, tell me in charity what is 
 become of my dear master ? " 
 
 " He is upon a distant expedition, friend," replied the prel-, 
 i\ ate — ''on an honorable embassy, which may detain him for 
 some days." 
 
 *' Nay," said the Baron of Gilsland, " why deceive the poor 
 fellow ? Friend, thy master has returned to the camp, and 
 li you will presently see him." 
 
 The invalid held up, as if in thankfulness, his wasted hands 
 to heaven, and, resisting no longer the soporiferous operation 
 of the elixir, sunk down in a gentle sleep. 
 
 " You are a better physician tlian I, Sir Thomas," said the 
 prelate : '' a soothing falsehood is fitter for a sick-room than 
 an unpleasing truth." 
 
 " How mean you, my reverend lord?" said De Vaux, 
 hastily. " Think you I would tell a falsehood to save the 
 lives of a dozen such as he ?" 
 
 " You said," replied the bishop, with manifest symptoms of 
 alarm — " you said the esquire's master was returned — he, I 
 mean, of the Conchant Leopard ?" 
 
 " And he is returned," said De Vaux. " I spoke with him 
 but a few hours since. This learned leech came in his com- 
 pany." 
 
 ''Holy Virgin ! why told you not of his return to me ?" 
 said the bishop, in evident perturbation. 
 
92 WA VERLEY NO VEL S 
 
 *' Did I not say that this same Knight of the Leopard had 
 returned in company with the physician ? I thought I had/' 
 replied De Vaux, carelessly ; " but what signified his return 
 to the skill of the physician or the cure of his Majesty ?" 
 
 " Much, Sir Thomas — it signified much," said the bishop, 
 clenching his hands, pressing his foot against the earth, and 
 giving signs of impatience, as if in an involuntary manner. 
 •' But where can he be gone now, this same knight ? God 
 be with us — here may be some fatal errors ! " 
 
 " Yonder serf in the outer space," said De Vaux, not with- 
 out wonder at the bishop's emotion, " can probably tell us 
 whither his master has gone." 
 
 The lad was summoned, and, in a language nearly incom- 
 prehensible to them, gave them at length to understand that 
 an officer had summoned his master to the royal tent, some 
 time before their arrival at that of his master. The anxiety 
 of the bishop appeared to rise to the highest, and became 
 evident to De Vaux, though neither an acute observer nor of 
 a suspicious temper. But with his anxiety seemed to increase 
 his wish to keep it subdued and unobserved. He took a 
 hasty leave of De Vaux, Avho looked after him with astonish- 
 ment ; and, after shrugging up his shoulders in silent wonder, 
 proceeded to conduct the Arabian physician to the tent oi 
 King Richard 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 This is the prince of leeches : fever, plague. 
 Cold rheum, and hot podagra, do but look on him, 
 And quit their grasp upon the tortured sinews. 
 
 Anonymous. 
 
 The Baron of Gilsland walked with slow step and an anxious 
 countenance toward the royal pavilion. He had much diffi- 
 dence of his own capacity, except in a field of battle, and, 
 conscious of no very acute intellect, was usually contented to 
 wonder at circumstances which a man of Hvelier imagination 
 would have endeavored to investigate and understand, or at 
 least would have made the subject of speculation. But it 
 seemed very extraordinary, even to him, that the attention 
 of the bishop should have been at once abstracted from all 
 reflection on the marvelous cure which they had witnessed, 
 and upon the probability it afforded of Eichard being restored 
 to health, by what seemed a very trivial piece of information, 
 announcing the motions of a beggarly Scottish knight, tlian 
 whom Thomas of Gilsland knew nothing within the circle of 
 gentle blood more unimportant or contemptible ; and, despite 
 his usual habit of passively beholding passing events, the 
 baron's spirit toiled with unwonted attempts to form conjec- 
 tures on the cause. 
 
 At length the idea occurred at once to him, that the whole 
 might be a conspiracy against King Eichard, formed within 
 the camp of the allies, and to which the bishop, who was by 
 some represented as a politic and unscrupulous person, was 
 not unlikely to have been accessary. It was true that, in his 
 own opinion, there existed no character so perfect as that of 
 his master ; for Eichard being theflower of chivalry, and the 
 chief of Christian leaders, and obeying in all points the com- 
 mands of Holy Church, De Vaux's ideas of perfection went 
 no farther. Still he knew that, however unworthily, it had 
 been always his master's fate to draw as much reproach and 
 dislike as honor and attachment from the display of his great 
 qualities ; and that in the very camp, and amongst those 
 princes bound by oath to the Crusade, were many who would 
 have sacrificed all hope of victory over the Saracens to the 
 93 
 
94 WAVER LEY NOVELS 
 
 f)leasure ol ruining, or at least of humbling, Richard of Eng- 
 and. 
 
 '* Wherefore," said the baron to himself, " it is in no sense 
 impossible that this El Hakim, with this his cure, or seeming 
 cure, wrought on the body of his Scottish squire, may mean 
 nothing but a trick, to which he of the Leopard may be 
 accessary, and wherein the Bishop of Tyre, prelate as he is, 
 may have some share." 
 
 This hypothesis, indeed, could not be so easily reconciled 
 with the alarm manifested by the bishop, on learning that, 
 contrary to his expectation, the Scottish knight had suddenly 
 returned to the Crusaders' camp. But De Vaux was in- 
 fluenced only by his general prejudices, which dictated to 
 him the assured belief that a wily Italian priest, a false 
 hearted Scot, and an infidel physician formed a set of ingre 
 dients from which all evil, and no good, was likely to be ex- 
 tracted. He resolved, however, to lay his scruples bluntly 
 before the King, of whose judgment he had nearly as high 
 an opinion as of his valor. 
 
 Meantime, events had taken place very contrary to the 
 suppositions which Thomas de Vaux had entertained. Scarce 
 had he left the royal pavilion, when, betwixt the impatience 
 of the fever and that which was natural to his disposition, 
 Richard began to murmur at his delay, and express an earn- 
 est desire for his return. He had seen enough to try to reason 
 himself out of this irritation, which greatly increased his 
 bodily malady. He wearied his attendants by demanding 
 from them amusements, and the breviary of the priest, the 
 romance of the clerk, even the harp of his favorite minstrel, 
 were had recourse to in vain. At length, some two hours 
 before sundown, and long, therefore, ere he could expect a 
 satisfactory account of the process of the cure which the ""' 
 Moor or Arabian had undertaken, he sent, as we have already 
 heard, a messenger commanding the attendance of the Knight 
 of the Leopard, determined to soothe his impatience by ob- 
 taining from Sir Kenneth a more particular account of the 
 cause of his absence from the camp, and the circumstances 
 of his meeting with this celebrated physician. 
 
 The Scottish knight, thus summoned, entered the roya" 
 presence as one who was no stranger to such scenes. He wm 
 scarcely known to the King of England, even by sight, al . 
 though, tenacious of his rank, as devout in the adoration o: » 
 the lady of his secret heart, he had never been absent on thost| i , 
 occasions when the munificence and hosjjitality of Englancj' " 
 opened the court of its monarch to all who held a certain ranJij 
 
THE TALISMAN 95 
 
 in chivalry. The King gazed fixedly on Sir Kenneth ap- 
 proaching his bedside, while the knight bent his knee for a 
 moment, then arose and stood before him, as became an officer 
 in the presence of his sovereign, in a posture of deference, 
 but not of subservience or humility. 
 
 " Thy name," said the King, " is Kenneth of the Leopard. 
 From whom hadst thou degree of knighthood ? " 
 
 " I took it from the sword of AYilliam the Lion, King of 
 Scotland," replied the Scot. 
 
 "A weapon," said the King, "well worthy to confer 
 honor, nor has it been laid on an undeserving shoulder. 
 We have seen thee bear thyself knightly and valiantly in 
 press of battle, when most need there was ; and thou hadst 
 iKit been yet to learn that thy deserts. were known to us, but 
 that thy presumption in other points has been such that tliy 
 services can challenge no better reward than that of pardon 
 for thy transgression. What sayst thon — ha ? " 
 
 Kenneth attempted to speak, but was unable to express 
 himself distinctly, the consciousness of his too ambitions love, 
 and the keen falcon glance with which Coeur-de-Lion seemed 
 to penetrate his inmost soul, combining to disconcert him. 
 
 "And yet," said the King, "although soldiers should 
 obey command, and vassals be respectful towards their supe- 
 riors, we might forgive a brave knight greater offense than 
 the keeping a simple hound, though it were contrary to our 
 express public ordinance.'" 
 
 Kichard kept his eye fixed on the Scot's face, beheld, and 
 beholding smiled inwardly at, the relief produced by the turn 
 he had given to his general accusation. 
 
 " So please you, my lord," said the Scot, "your Majesty 
 must be good to ns poor gentlemen of Scotland in this mat- 
 ter. We are far from home, scant of revenues, and cannot 
 support ourselves as your wealthy nobles, who have credit of 
 the Lombards. The Saracens shall feel our blows the harder 
 that we cat a piece of dried venison from time to time with 
 our herbs and barley-cakes.'" 
 
 "It skills not asking my leave," said Eichard, "since 
 Thomas de Vaux, who doth, like all around me, that which 
 is fittest in his own eyes, hath already given thee permission 
 for hunting and hawking." 
 
 " For hunting only, and please you," said the Scot ; " but, 
 if it please yonr Majesty to indulge me with the privilege of 
 hawking also, and yon list to trust me with a falcon on fist, 
 I trust I could supply your royal mess with some choice 
 water-fowl." 
 
96 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 yl dread me, if thou hadst but the falcon," sai:. the 
 King, "thou wouldst scarce wait for the permission, i wot. 
 well it is said abroad that we of the line of Anjou resent' 
 offense agamst our forest laws as highly as we would do 
 treason against our crown. To brave and worthy men, how- 
 ever, we could laardon either misdemeanor. But enough of' 
 this. I desire to know of you, sir knight, wherefore, and 
 by whose authority, you took this recent journey to the 
 wilderness of the Dead Sea and Engaddi ?" 
 
 *^' By order," replied the knight, *'of the council of the 
 princes of the holy Crusade." 
 
 "And how dared any one to give such an order, when I — ; 
 not the least, surely, in the league — was unacquainted with' 
 it?" 
 
 " It was not my part, please your Highness," said the Scot, ; 
 "to inquire into such particulars. lam a soldier of the: 
 Cross — serving, doubtless, for the jiresent, under your High- 1 
 ness's banner, and proud of the permission to do so; but' 
 still one who hath taken on him the holy symbol for the 
 rights of Christianity, and the recovery of the Holy Sepul-i 
 chre, and bound, therefore, to obey, without question, the' 
 orders of the princes and chiefs by whom the blessed enter-' 
 prise is directed. That indisposition should seclude, I trust 
 for but a short time, your Highness from their councils, in 
 which you had so potential a voice, I must lament with all 
 Christendom ; but, as a soldier, I must obey those on whom! 
 the lawful right of command devolves, or set but an evil' 
 example in the Christian camp." 
 
 " Thou say'st well." said KingEichard ; "and the blame; 
 rests not with thee, but with those with whom, when it shall' 
 please Heavoi to raise me from this accursed bed of pain and' 
 inactivity, I hope to reckon roundly. What was the purport 
 of thy message ?" 
 
 ** Methinks, and please your Highness," replied Sir Ken- 
 neth, " that were best asked of those who sent me, and who; 
 can render the reasons of mine errand ; whereas, I can only 
 tell its outward form and purport." 
 
 " Palter not with me, Sir Scot ; it were ill for thy safety, *^' 
 said the irritable monarch. i 
 
 " My safety, my lord," replied the knight firmly, "I cast, 
 behind me as a regardless thing when I vowed myself to this 
 enterprise, looking rather to my immortal welfare than t( 
 that which concerns my earthly body/' 
 
 " By the mass," said King Eichard, " thou art a brav( 
 fellow I Hark thee, sir knight, I love the Scottisl 
 
THE TALISMAN VJ 
 
 people : they are hardy, though dogged Jiiid stubborn, luul, 
 I think, true men in the main, though the necessity of state 
 has sometimes constrained them to be dissetnbU>rs. 1 deserve 
 some love at their hand, for I have voluntarily done wliat 
 they could not by arms have extorted from me, any more 
 than from ray predecessors : I have re-establislied the for- 
 tresses of Roxburgh and Berwick, which lay in pledge to 
 England ; I have restored your ancient boundaries ; and, 
 finallv. I have renounced a claim to homage upon the crown 
 of England, which I thouglit unjustly forced on you. 1 have 
 endeavored to make honorable and independont friends, 
 where former kings of England attempted only to compel 
 unwilling and rebellions vassals." 
 
 "All this you have done, my Lord King." said Sir Ken- 
 neth, bowing — " all this you have done, by your royal treaty 
 with our sovereign at Canterbury. Therefore have you me, 
 and many better Scottish men, making war against the in- 
 fidels, under your banners, who would else have been ravag- 
 ing your frontiers in England. If their numl)ers are now 
 few," it is because their lives have been freely waged and 
 wasted." 
 
 " I grant it true," said the King ; " and for the good offices 
 I have done your land, I require you to remember that, as a 
 principal member of the Christian league, I have a right to 
 know the negotiations of my confederates. Do me, there- 
 fore, the justice to tell me what I have a title to be ac- 
 quainted with, and which I am certain to know more truly 
 from you than from others." 
 
 "My lord," said the Scot, " thus conjured, I will speak 
 the truth ; for I well believe that your purposes towards the 
 principal object of our expedition are single-hearted and 
 honest, and it is more than I dare warrant for others of the 
 Holy League. Be pleased, therefore, to know, my charge 
 was to propose, tlirough the medium of the hermit of En- 
 gftddi, a holy man, respected and protected by Saladin liini- 
 self " 
 
 "A continuation of the truce, I doubt not," said Richard, 
 hastily interrupting him. 
 
 " No, by St. Andrew, my liege," said the Scottish knight ; 
 "but the establishment of a lasting peace, and the withdraw- 
 ing our armies from Palestine." 
 
 "St. George !" said Richard, in astonishment. " 111 as I 
 
 have justly thought of them, I could not have dreamed they 
 
 would have humbled themselves to such dishonor. Speak, 
 
 Sir Kenneth, with what will did you carry such a message ?" 
 
 7 
 
98 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 ''With right good will, my lord/' siiid Kenneth ; "be- 
 cause, when we had lost our noble leader, under whose guid-i 
 ance alone I looked for victory, I saw none who could suc- 
 ceed him likely to lead us to conquest, and I accounted il 
 well in such circumstances to avoid defeat." 
 
 " And on what conditions was this hopeful peace to be! 
 contracted ?" said King Eichard, painfully suppressing thr 
 passion with which his heart was almost bursting. 
 
 " These were not entrusted to me, my lord," answered th( 
 Knight of the Couchant Leopard. " I delivered them sealec 
 to the hermit." 
 
 " And for what hold you this reverend hermit — for fool.i 
 madman, traitor, or saint ?" said Eichard. 
 
 '' His folly, sire," replied the shrewd Scottishman, " I hole 
 to be assumed to wun favor and reverence from the Paynimi 
 rie, who regard madmen as the inspired of Heaven ; at leas ■ 
 it seemed to me as exhibited only occasionally, and not ai 
 mixing, like natural folly, with the general tenor of hii, 
 mind." 
 
 " Shrewdly replied," said the monarch, throwing himsel:; 
 back on his couch, from which he had half-raised himself; 
 "Now of his penitence ?" ' 
 
 ** His penitence," continued Kenneth, '* appears to m\ 
 sincere, and the fruits of remorse for some dreadful crime 
 for which he seems, in his own opinion, condemned torepro 
 bation." 
 
 " And for his policy ? " said King Eichard. 
 
 " Methinks, my lord," said the Scottish knight, " he de- 
 spairs of the security of Palestine, as of his own salvation, b 
 any means short of a miracle — at least, since the arm o; 
 Eichard of England hath ceased to strike for it." 
 
 ''And therefore the coward policy of this hermit is lik 
 that of these miserable princes, who, forgetful of thai 
 knighthood and their faith, are only resolved and determine 
 when the question is retreat, and, rather than go forwar^ 
 against an armed Saracen, would trample in their flight ove' 
 a dying ally." 
 
 ''Might I so far presume, my Lord King," said the Scot; 
 tish knight, "this discourse but heats your disease, th, 
 enemy from which Christendom dreads more evil than fror 
 armed hosts of infidels." 
 
 The countenance of King Eichard was, indeed, moi' 
 flushed, and his actions became more feverishly vehemen ^ 
 as, with clenched hand, expanded arm, and flashing eyes, li 
 seemed at once to suffer under bodily pain and at the san: 
 
THE TALISMAN 99 
 
 ime nuder vexation of iniiul, while his higli spirit led him 
 speak on,, as if in contempt ef both. 
 
 " You can Hatter, sir knight," he said, " but you escape 
 ue not. 1 must know more from you tlian yuu liaveyet told 
 ae. Saw you my royal consort when at Eugiiddi ?" 
 
 "To my knowledge— no, my lord," replied !Sir Kenneth, 
 nth considerable perturbation ; for he remembered the mid- 
 idght procession in the chapel of the rocks, 
 
 " I ask you," said the King, in a sterner voice, " whether 
 ou were not in the chapel of the Carmelite nuns at Engaddi, 
 nd there saw Berengaria, Queen of England, and theladies 
 f her court, who went thither on pilgrimage ?" 
 
 " My lord," said Sir Kenneth, " I will speak the truth as 
 n the confessional. In a subterranean chapel, to which the 
 Inchorite conducted me, I beheld a choir of ladies do homage 
 |o a relic of the highest sanctity ; but as I saw not their 
 aces, nor heard their voices, unless in the hymns which they 
 hanted, I cannot tell whether the Queen of England was oi 
 he bevy." 
 
 ''And was there no one of these ladies known to yon ? " 
 
 Sir Kenneth stood silent. 
 
 " I ask you," said Richard, raising himself on his elbow, 
 f as a knight and a gentleman— and I shall know^ by your 
 jnswer how you value either character — did you, or did you 
 lot, know any lady amongst that band of worshipers ? " 
 
 " My lord," said Kenneth, not without much^ hesitation, 
 'I might guess." 
 
 j *■' And I also may guess," said the King, frowning sternly ; 
 i'but it is enough. Leopard as you are, sir knight, beware 
 iempting the lion's paw. Harkye, to become enamored of 
 he moon would be but an act of folly ; but to leap from the 
 [lattlements of a lofty tower, in the wild hope of coming 
 Uthin her sphere, were self-destructive madness." 
 ! At this moment some bustling was heard in the outer 
 ipartment, and the King, hastily changing to his mere nat- 
 ural manner, said, '' Enough — begone — speed to De Vaux, 
 nd send him hither with the Arabian physician. My life 
 lor the faith of the Soldan ! Would he but abjure his false 
 !:iw, I would aid him with my sw^ord to drive this scum of 
 Prench and Austrians from his dominions, and think Pales- 
 iine as well ruled by him as when her kings were anointed by 
 !he decree of Heaven itself." 
 
 The Knight of tlie Leopard retired, and presently after- 
 ,rards the chamberlain announced a deputation from the 
 louncil, who had come to wait on the Majesty of England. 
 
100 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 *• It is well they allow that I am living yet," was hi 
 reply. " Who are the reverend ambassadors ? " 
 
 " The Grand Master of the Templars and the Marquis & 
 Montserrat." 
 
 " Our brother of France loves not sick-beds," said Rich 
 ard ; " yet had Philip been ill, I had stood by his couchlon: 
 since. Joceline, lay me the couch more fairly, it is tumble 
 like a stormy sea ; reach me yonder steel mirror ; pass 
 comb through my hair and beard — they look, indeed, liker 
 lion's mane than a Christian man's locks ; bring water/' 
 
 " My lord,' said the trembling chamberlain, " the leech( 
 say that cold water may be fatal." i 
 
 " To the foul fiend with the leeches ! " replied the monarch! 
 " if they cannot cure me, think you I will allow them to toy 
 ment me ? There, then," he said, after having made hi 
 ablutions, " admit the worshipful envoys ; they will now, i 
 think, scarcely see that disease has made Richard negligeii 
 of his person." 
 
 The celebrated Master of the Templars was a tall, thn 
 war-worn man, with a slow yet penetrating eye, and a bro j 
 on which a thousand dark intrigues had stamped a portioi 
 of their obscurity. At the head of that singular body, \> 
 whom their order was everything and their iudividuahi: 
 nothing ; seeking the advancement of its power, even at tl; 
 hazard of that very religion which the fraternity were orig.' 
 nally associated to protect ; accused of heresy and witchcraf : 
 although by their character Christian priests; suspected <■ 
 secret league with the Soldan, though by oath devoted to tb 
 protection of the Holy Temple or its recovery — the who, 
 order, and the whole personal character of its commander, (; 
 Grand Master, was a riddle, at the exposition of which mo : 
 men shuddered. The Grand Master was dressed in his whi 
 robes of solemnity, and he bare the abacus, a mystic staff ■ 
 office, the peculiar form of which has given rise to such si; 
 gular conjectures and commentaries, leading to suspioioi. 
 that this celebrated fraternity of Christian knights were er' 
 bodied under the foulest symbols of paganism. 
 
 Conrade of Montserrat had a much more pleasing exterii; 
 than the dark and mysterious priest-soldier by whom he w, 
 accompanied. He was a handsome man of middle age, 
 something past that term, bold in the field, sagacious 
 council, gay and gallant in times of festivity ; but on tl 
 other hand, he was generally accused of versatility, of a na 
 now and selfish ambition, of a desire to extend his own pri^ 
 cipality^ without regard to the weal of the Latin kingdom 
 
I TEE TALISMAN 101 
 
 ?a]estine, and of seeking his own interests by private negoti- 
 itions with Saladin, to the prejudice of the Christian 
 eaguers. 
 
 When the usual salutations had been made by these dig- 
 fiitaries, and courteously returned by King Richard, the 
 ^larquis of Monsterrat commenced an explanation of the 
 notives of their visit, sent, as he said they were, by the 
 Inxious kings and princes who composed tlie council of the 
 prusaders, "to inquire into the health of their magnani- 
 jnous ally, the A-aliant King of England.'' 
 I *•■ We know the importance in wliich the princes of the 
 jiouncil hold our health/' rejilied the English king; "and 
 ire well aware how much they must have suffered by sup- 
 bressing all curiosity concerning it for fourteen days, for 
 iear, doubtless, of aggravating our disorder, by showing 
 iheir anxiety regarding the event." 
 
 I The flow of the Marquis's eloquence being checked, and 
 :ie himself thrown into some confusion by this reply, his 
 wore austere companion took up the thread of the con\ er- 
 ation, and, Avith as much dry and brief gravity as was con- 
 istent with the presence which he addressed, informed the 
 ^ing that they came from the council, to pray, in the name 
 iif Christendom, "that he would not suffer his health to be 
 iampered with by an infidel physician, said to be despatched 
 i»y Saladin, until the council had taken measures to remove 
 fr confirm the suspicion which they at present conceived 
 ilid attach itself to the mission of such a person." 
 j " Grand Master of the Holy and Valiant Order of Knights 
 pemplars, and you. Most Noble Marquis of Montserrat," 
 'eplied Richard,"^ "if it please you to retire into the adjoining 
 lavilion, you shall presently see what account we make of 
 he tender remonstrances of our royal and princely colleagues 
 p this religious warfare." 
 
 I The Marquis and Grand Master retired accordingly ; nor 
 Ud they been many minutes in the outward pavilion when 
 ihe Eastern physician arrived, accompanied by tlie Baron of 
 rilsland and Kenneth of Scotland. The baron, however, 
 i-as a little later of entering the tent than the otlior two, stop- 
 ping, perchance, to issue some orders to the warders without. 
 i As the Arabian physician entered, he made his obeisance, 
 liter the Oriental fashion, to the jNIarquisand Grand Master, 
 I'hose dignity was apparent, both from tlieir appearance and 
 heir bearing. The Grand Master returned the salutation 
 i?ith an expression of disdainful coldness, the Marquis with 
 Ihe popular courtesy which he habitually practised to men 
 
103 WAYERLEY NOVELS 
 
 of every rank and nation. There was a pause ; for the Scot- 
 tish knight, waiting for the arrival of De Vaux, presumed 
 not, of his own authority, to enter the tent of the King of 
 Enghmd, and, during this interval, the Grand ^Master sternly 
 demanded of the Moslem, ''Iniidel, hast thou the courage 
 to practise thine art upon the person of an anointed sover- 
 eign of the Christian host ?" 
 
 '•' The sun of x\llah," answered the sage, '' shines on the , 
 Nazarene as well as on the true believer, and His servant i 
 dare make no distinction betwixt them, when called on to 
 exercise the art of healing." 
 
 " Misbelieving Hakim," said the Grand Master, " 05 
 whatsoever they call thee for an unbaptized slave of darl 
 ness, dost thou well know that thou shalt be torn asund( 
 by wild horses should King Richard die under thy charge ? 
 
 *'That were hard justice," answered the physician, "^'se 
 iug that I can but use human means, and that the issue 
 written in the book of light." 
 
 **Nay, reverend and valiant Grand Master, '* said tl 
 Marquis of Montserrat, " consider that this learned man 
 not acquainted with our Christian order, adopted in thefea 
 of God, and for the safety of His anointed. Be it known t« 
 thee, grave physician, whose skill we doubt not; that youi 
 wisest course is to repair to the presence of the illustrious 
 council of our Holy League, and there to give account anc" 
 reckoning to such wise and learned leeches as they shall nom-j 
 inate, concerning your means of process and cure of thi^ 
 illustrious patient ; so shall you escape all the dangerJ 
 which, rashly taking such a high matter upon your sole 
 answer, you may else most likely incur." 
 
 " My lords,""said El Hakim, " I understand you well 
 But knowledge hath its champions as well as your militar 
 art, nay, hath sometimes had its martyrs as well as religion.! 
 I have the command of my sovereign, the Soldan Saludin/ 
 to heal this Nazarene king, and, with the blessing of th( 
 Prophet, I will obey his commands. If I fail, ye weai 
 swords thirsting for the blood of the faithful, and 1 proifei 
 my body to j^our weapons. But I will not reason with one 
 uncircumcised upon the virtue of the medicines of which '. 
 have obtained knowledge through the grace of the Prophet 
 and I pray you interpose no delay between me and m; 
 office." 
 
 " Who talks of delay ?" said the Baron de Vaux, hastil;. 
 entering the tent ; '• we have had but too much already. 
 salute you, my Lord of Montserrat, and you, valiant Gran^' 
 
TBE TALISMAN 103 
 
 Master. But I must presently pass with this learned phy- 
 sician to the bedside of my master." 
 
 " My lord," said the Marquis, in Norman-French, or the 
 language of Oui, as it was then called, " are you well advised 
 that we came to expostulate, on the part of the council of 
 the monarchs and princes of the Crusade, against the risk 
 of permitting an infidel and Eastern physician to tamper 
 with a health so valuable as that of your master King 
 Richard ?" 
 
 " Noble Lord Marquis," replied the Englishman, bluntly, 
 " I can neither use many words nor do I delight in listening 
 to them, moreover, I am much more ready to believe what 
 my eyes have seen than what my ears have heard. I am 
 satisfied that this heathen can cure the sickness of King 
 Richard, and I believe and trust he will labor to do so. 
 Time is precious. If Mohammed— may God's curse be on 
 hiii^ ! — stood at the door of the tent, with such fair nurpose 
 as this Adonbec el Hakim entertains, I would hold it sin 
 to delay him for a minute. So, give ye gode'n, my lords." 
 
 " Nay, but," said Conrade of Montserrat, " the King him- 
 self said we should be present when this same physician dealt 
 upon him." 
 
 The baron whispered the chamberlain, probably to know 
 whether the Marquis spoke truly, and then replied, " My 
 lords, if you ""ill hold your patience, you are welcome to 
 enter with u* ; but if you interrupt, by action or threat, this 
 accomplished physician in his duty, be it known that, with- 
 out respect to your high quality, I will enforce your absence 
 from Richard's tent ; for know, I am so well satisfied of the 
 virtue of this man's medicines, that were Richard himself to 
 refuse them, by Our Lady of Lanercost, I think I could find 
 in my heart to force him to take the means of his cure 
 whether he would or no. Move onward, El Hakim." 
 
 The last word was spoken in the lingua franca, and in- 
 stantly obeyed by the physician. The Grand Master looked 
 grimly on the unceremonious old soldier, but, on exchang- 
 ing a glance with the Marquis, smoothed his frowning brow 
 as well as he could, and both followed De Vaux and the 
 Arabian into the inner tent, where Richard lay expecting 
 them with that impatience with which the sick man watches 
 the step of his physician. Sir Kenneth, whose attendance 
 seemed neither asked nor prohibited, felt himself by the 
 circumstances in which he stood, entitled to follow these 
 high dignitaries, but, conscious of his inferior power and 
 rank, remained aloof during the scene which took place. 
 
104 n^AVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Kichard, when they entered his apartment, immediately 
 exchiimed, " So ho ! a goodly fellowship come to see Richard 
 take his leap in the dark. My noble allies, I greet you as 
 the representatives of our assembled league ; Richard will 
 again be amongst you in his former fashion, or ye shall bear 
 to the gi-ave what is left of him. De Vaux, lives he or dies 
 he, thou hast the thanks of thy prince. There is yet another 
 — but this fever hath wasted my eyesight. What, the bold 
 Scot, who would climb Heaven without a ladder ? He is wel- 
 come too. Come, sir Hakim, to the work — to the work." 
 
 The physician, who had already informed himself _ of the 
 various symptoms of the King's illness, now felt his pulse 
 for a long time, and with deep attention, while all around 
 stood silent and in breathless expectation. The sage next 
 filled a cup with spring water, and dipped into it the small 
 red purse, which, as formerly, he took from his bosom. 
 When he seemed to think it sufficiently medicated, he was 
 about to ofler it to the sovereign, who prevented him, by 
 saying, " Hold an instant. Thou hast felt my pulse, let me 
 lay my finger on thine. 1 too, as becomes a good knight, 
 know something of thine art." 
 
 The Arabian yielded his hand without hesitation, and his 
 long slender dark fingers were, for an instant, inclosed, and 
 almost buried, in the large enfoldment of King Richard's 
 
 hand. , „ . , t^- 
 
 "His blood beats calm as an infants,' said the King; 
 "so throb not theirs who poison princes. De Vaux, 
 whether we live or die, dismiss this Hakim with honor and 
 safety. Commend us, friend, to the noble Saladin. Should 
 I die, it is without doubt of his faith ; should I live, it will 
 be to thank him as a warrior would desire to be thanked." 
 
 He then raised himself in bed, took the cup in his hand, 
 and, turning to the Marquis and the Grand Master — " Mark 
 what I say, and let my royal brethren pledge me in Cyprus 
 
 wine 'To the immortal honor of the first Crusader who 
 
 shall strike lance or sword on the gate of Jerusalem ; and to 
 the shame and eternal infamy of whomsoever shall turn 
 back from the plow on which he hath laid his hand !*" 
 
 He drained the cup to the bottom, resigned it to the 
 Arabian, and sunk back, as if exhausted, upon the cushions 
 which were arranged to receive him. The physician, then, 
 with silent but expressive signs, directed that all should leave 
 the tent excepting himself and De Vaux, whom no remon- 
 strance could induce to withdraw. The apartment was 
 cleared accordingly. 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 And now I will vmclasp a secret book, 
 And, to your quick-conceiving discontent, 
 I'll read you matter deep and dangerous. 
 
 Henry IV, Part I. 
 
 The Marquis of Montserrat and the Grand Master of the 
 Knights Templar stood together in the front of the royal 
 pavilion, within which this singular scene had passed, and 
 beheld a strong guard of bills and bows drawn out to form a 
 circle around it, and keep at distance all which might disturb 
 the sleeping monarch. The soldiers wore the downcast, 
 silent, and sullen looks with which they trail their arms at 
 a funeral and stepped with such caution that you could not 
 hear a buckler ring or a sword clatter, though so many men 
 in armor were moving around the tent. They lowered their 
 weapons in deep reverence as the dignitaries passed through 
 their files, but with the same profound silence. 
 
 " There is a change of cheer among these island dogs," 
 said the Grand Master to Conrade, when they had passed 
 Richard's Guards. " What hoarse tumult and revel used to 
 be before this pavilion ! naught hut pitching the bar, hurling 
 the ball, wrestling, roaring of songs, clattering of wine-pots, 
 and quaffing of flagons among tiiese burly yeomen, as if they 
 were holding some country wake, with a Maypole in the 
 midst of them instead of a royal standard." 
 
 " Mastiffs are a faithful race," said Conrade; ''and the 
 King their master has won their love by being ready to 
 wrestle, brawl, or revel amongst the foremost of them, 
 whenever the humor seized him." 
 
 ** He is totally compounded of humors," said the Grand 
 Master. " Marked you the pledge he gave us, instead of a 
 prayer, over his grace-cup yonder ? " 
 
 '' He would have felt it a grace-cup, and a well-spiced one 
 too," said the Marquis, "were Saladin like any other Turk 
 that ever wore turban or turned him to Mecca at call of the 
 muezzin. But he affects faith, and honor, and generosity, 
 as if it were for an unbaptized dog like him to practise the 
 virtuous bearing of a Christian knight. It is said he hath 
 106 
 
106 WA VER LEY NO VEL S 
 
 applied to Richard to be admitted within the pale of 
 chivalry." 
 
 "By St. Bernard!** exclaimed the Grand Master, "it 
 were time then to throw off our belts and spurs, Sir Courade, 
 deface our armorial bearings, and renounce our burgonets, 
 if the highest honor of Christianity were conferred on an 
 unchristened Turk of tenpence." 
 
 " You rate the Soldan cheap," replied the Marquis ; "yet, 
 though he be a likely man, I have seen a better heathen sold 
 for forty pence at the bagnio." 
 
 They were now near their horses, which stood at some dis- 
 tance from the royal tent, prancing among the gallant train 
 of esquires and pages by whom they were attended, when 
 Conrade, after a moment's pause, proposed that they should 
 enjoy the coolness of the evening breeze which had arisen, 
 and, dismissing their steeds and attendants, walk homewards 
 to their own quarters, through the lines of the extended 
 Christian camp. The Grand Master assented, and they 
 proceeded to walk together accordingly, avoiding, as if by 
 mutual consent, the more inhabited parts of the canvass 
 city, and tracing the broad esplanade which lay between the 
 tents and the external defenses, where they could converse 
 in private, and unmarked, save by the sentinels as they 
 passed them. 
 
 They spoke for a time upon the military points and prep- 
 arations for defense ; but this sort of discourse, in which 
 neither seemed to take interest, at length died away, and 
 there was a long pause, which terminated by the Marquis of 
 Montserrat stopping short, like a man who has formed a 
 sudden resolution, and, gazing for some moments on the 
 dark, inflexible countenance of the Grand Master, he at 
 length addressed him thus : " Might it consist with your 
 valor and sanctity, reverend Sir Giles Amaury, I would pray 
 you for once to lay aside the dark vizor which you wear and 
 to converse with a friend barefaced." 
 
 The Templar half-smiled. "There are light-colored 
 masks," he said, " as well as dark vizors, and the one con- 
 ceals the natural features as completely as the other." 
 
 " Be it so," said the Marquis, putting his hand to his chin, 
 and withdrawiug it with tlie action of one who unmasks 
 himself ; " there lies my disguise. And now, what think 
 you, as touching the interests of your own order, of the 
 prospects of this Crusade ?" 
 
 " This is tearing the veil from tni/ thoughts, rather than 
 exposing your own," said the Grand Master; "yet I wiU 
 
THE TALISMAN 107 
 
 reply with a parable told to me by a santon of the desert. 
 * A certain farmer prayed to Heaven for rain, and murmured 
 when it fell not at his need. To punish his impatience, 
 Allah,' said the santon, ' sent the Euphrates upon his farm, 
 and he was destroyed with all his possessions, even by the 
 granting of his own wishes.'" 
 
 " Most truly spoken," said the Marquis Conrade ; " would 
 that the ocean had swallowed up nineteen parts of the arma- 
 ments of these Western princes ! What remained would 
 better have served the purpose of the Christian nobles of 
 Palestine, the wretched remnant of the Latin kingdom of 
 Jerusalem. Left to ourselves, we might have bent to the 
 storm, or, moderately supported with money and troops, we 
 might have compelled Saladin to respect our valor, and grant 
 us peace and protection on easy terms. But, from the ex- 
 tremity of danger with which this powerful Crusade 
 threatens the Soldan, we cannot suppose, should it pass over, 
 that the Saracen will suffer any one of us to hold possessions 
 or principalities in Syria, far less perm.it the existence of 
 the Christian military fraternities, from whom they have 
 experienced so much mischief." 
 
 "Ay, but," said the Templar, "these adventurous 
 Crusaders may succeed, and again plant the cross on the 
 bulwarks of Zion." 
 
 "And what will that advantage either the Order of the 
 Templars or Conrade of Montserrat ?" said the Marquis. 
 
 "You it may advantage," replied the Grand Master. 
 "Conrade of Montserrat might become Conrade King of 
 Jerusalem." 
 
 "That sounds Hke something," said the Marquis, "and 
 yet it rings but hollow. Godfrey of Bouillon might well 
 choose the crown of thorns for his emblem. Grand Master, 
 I will confess to you I have caught some attachment to the 
 Eastern form of government. A pure and simple monarchy 
 should consist but of king and subjects. Such is the simple 
 and primitive structure — a shepherd and his flock. All this 
 infernal chain of feudal dependence is artificial and so- 
 phisticated, and I would rather hold the baton of my poor 
 marquisate with a firm gripe, and wield it after my pleasure, 
 than the scepter of a monarch, to be in effect restrained and 
 curbed by the will of as many proud feudal barons as hold 
 land under the Assize of Jerusalem.* A king should tread 
 freely. Grand Master, and should not be controlled by here a 
 ditch and there a fence, here a feudal privilege and there a 
 * See Assisses de Jerusalem. Note 6. 
 
103 WAVERLEY NOVELS \ 
 
 maii-clad baron with his sword in his hand to maintain itj '*'" 
 To sum the whole, I am aware that Guy de Lusiguan's claims isflc 
 to the throne would be preferred to mine, if Eichard recovers ^^^ 
 and has aught to say in the choice." m.tt 
 
 ''Enough," said the Grand Master; "thou hast indeed "^'^ 
 convinced me of thy sincerity. Others may hold the same we 
 opinions, but few, save Conrade of Montserrat, dared franklj se 
 avow that he desires not the restitution of the kingdom oi "' 
 Jerusalem, but rather prefers being master of a portion oj 
 its fragments, like the barbarous islanders, who labor nol 
 for the deliverance of a goodly vessel from the billows 
 expecting rather to enrich themselves at the expense of the "Ti 
 wreck." iji 
 
 "Thou wilt not betray my counsel ?" said Conrade, look Ktl 
 ing sharply and suspiciously. " Know, for certain, that mwfiie: 
 tongue shall never wrong my head, nor my hand forsake th"i 
 defense of either. Impeach me if thou wilt : I am prepare( 
 to defend myself in the lists against the best Templar wh( 
 ever laid lance in rest." 
 
 " Yet thou start'st somewhat suddenly for so bold j 
 steed," said the Grand Master. " However, I swear to thei 
 by the Holy Temple, which our order is sworn to defend 
 that I will keep counsel with thee as a true comrade." 
 
 "By which temple?" said the Marquis of Montserrat 
 whose love of sarcasm often outran his policy and discretion 
 "swearest thou by that on the hill of Zion, which was bull 
 by King Solomon, or by that symbolical, emblematical edi 
 fice which is said to be spoken of in the councils held in th< 
 vaults of your preceptories, as something which infers th( 
 aggrandizement of thy valiant and venerable order ?" 
 
 The Templar scowled upon him with an eye of death, bu 
 answered calmly, "By whatever temple I swear, be assured 
 Lord Marquis, my oath is sacred. I would I knew how t( 
 bind thee by one of equal obligation." 
 
 "I will swear truth to thee, "said the Marquis, laughing 
 " by the earl's coronet, which I hope to convert, ere thes* 
 wars are over, into something better. It feels cold on m^ 
 brow, that same slight coronal ; a duke's cap of maintenanc* 
 were a better protection against such a night-breeze as nov 
 blows, and a king's crown more preferable still, being line( 
 with comfortable ermine and velvet. In a word, our inter 
 ests bind us together ; for think not. Lord Grand Master 
 that, were these allied princes to regain Jerusalem, anc 
 place a king of their own choosing there, they would suffe 
 your order, any more than mj poor marquisate, to retail 
 
THE TALISMAN 109 
 
 the independence which we now hold. N"o, by Onr Lady ! 
 In such case, the proud Knights of St. John must again 
 -spread plasters and dress plague-sores in the hospitals ; and 
 you, most puissant and venerable Knights of the Temple, 
 must return to your condition of simple men-at-arms, sleep 
 three on a pallet, and mount two upon one horse, as your 
 present seal still expresses to have been your ancient most 
 simple custom." 
 
 " The rank, privileges, and opulence of our order prevent 
 so much degradation as you threaten,'' said the Templar, 
 haughtily. 
 
 " These are your bane," said Conrade of Montserrat ; 
 "and you, as well as I, reverend Grand Master, know that, 
 were the allied princes to be successful in Palestine, it would 
 be their first point of policy to abate the independence of 
 your order, which, but for the protection of our holy father 
 the Pope, and the necessity of employing your valor in the 
 conquest of Palestine, you would long since have experienced. 
 Give them complete success, and you will be flung aside, as 
 the splinters of a broken lance are tossed out of the tilt- 
 yard." 
 
 " There may be truth in what you say," said the Templar, 
 darkly smiling ; ''but what were our hopes should the allies 
 withdraw their forces, and leave Palestine in the grasp of 
 Saladin?" 
 
 '' Great and assured," replied Conrade : " the Soldan 
 would give large provinces to maintain at his behest a body 
 of well-appointed Prankish lances. In Egypt, in Persia, an 
 hundred such auxiliaries, joined to his own light cavalry, 
 would turn the battle against the most fearful odds. This 
 dependence would be but for a time, perhaps during the life 
 of this enterprising Soldan ; but in the East, empires arise 
 like mushrooms. Suppose him dead, and us strengthened 
 with a constant succession of fiery and adventurous spirits 
 from Europe, what might we not hope to achieve, uncon- 
 trolled by these monarchs, whose dignity throws us at pres- 
 ent into the shade, and, were they to remain here and suc- 
 ceed in this expedition, would willingly consign us forever 
 to degradation and dependence ?" 
 
 " You say well, my Lord Marquis," said the Grand 
 Master ; ''and your words find an echo in my bosom. Yet 
 must we be cautious : Philip of France is wise as well as 
 valiant." 
 
 " True, and will be therefore the more easily diverted from 
 an expedition to which, in a moment of enthusiasm, or urged 
 
^ 
 
 110 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 by his nobles, he rashly bound himself. He is jealous of j; 
 King Eichard, his natural enemy, and longs to return to 
 prosecute plans of ambition nearer to Paris than Palestine 
 Any fair pretense will serve him for withdrawing from a«u 
 scene in which he is aware he is wasting the force of his ^ 
 kingdom/' 
 
 " And the Duke of Austria ?" said the Templar. 
 
 "Oh, touching the Duke/' returned Conrade, "his self 
 conceit and folly lead him to the same conclusions as do 
 Philip's policy and wisdom. He conceives himself, God 
 help the while, ungratefully treated, because men's mouths, 
 even those of his own tniiinesingers, are filled with the praisei 
 of King Richard, whom he fears and hates, and in whose 
 harm he would rejoice, like those unbred dastardly curs, 
 who, if the foremost of the pack is hurt by the gripe of the 
 wolf, are much more likely to assail the sufferer from behind "" 
 than to come to his assistance. But wherefore tell I this to^^ 
 thee, save to show that I am in sincerity in desiring tha 
 this league be broken up. and the country freed of the» 
 great monarchs with their hosts ? And thou well knowestj 
 and hast thyself seen, how all the princes of influence and 
 power, one alone exce^ited, are eager to enter into treatj 
 with the Soldan." 
 
 "I acknowledge it," said the Templar : "he were blinc ^■' 
 that had not seen this in their last deliberations. But lifl 
 yet thy mask an inch higher, and tell me thy real reason foi 
 pressing upon the council that Northern Englishman, o: 
 Scot, or whatever yon call yonder Knight of the Leojaard 
 to carry their proposals for a treaty ? " 
 
 "There was a policy in it," replied the Italian: "hii 
 character of native of Britain was sufficient to meet wha 
 Saladin required, who knew him to belong to the band o: 
 Eichard, while his character of Scot, and certain other per 
 sonal grudges which I wot of, rendered it most unlikely thai 
 our envoy should, on his return, hold any communicatioij 
 with the sick-bed of Eichard, to whom his presence was evej 
 unacceptable." j 
 
 " Oh, too fine-spun policy," said the Grand Master ; " trus: 
 me, that Italian spiders' webs will never bind this unshor]! 
 Samson of the isle ; well if you can do it with new cords, anJ 
 those of the toughest. See you not that the envoy whor' 
 you have selected so carefully hath brought us, in this phys: 
 eian, the means of restoring the lion-hearted, bull-necke^ jrlltl 
 Englishman, to jirosecute liis Crusading enterprise ; anc' ffkeor 
 BO soon as he is able once more to rush on. which of th' ' 
 
 M 
 
 i 
 
THE TALISMAN 111 
 
 princes dare hold back ? They must follow him for very 
 Bhame, although they would march under the banner of 
 Satan as soon. 
 
 " Be content," said Conrade of Montserrat ; " ere this 
 physician, if he worli by anytliing short of miraculous agency, 
 can accomplish Kichard's cure, it may be j^ossible to put 
 some open rupture betwixt the Frenchman, at least the Aus- 
 trian, and his allies of England, so that the breach shall be 
 irreconcilable ; and Kichard may arise from his bed perhaps 
 to command his own native troops, but never again, by his 
 sole energy, to wield the force of the whole Crusade/^ 
 
 "Thou art a willing archer," said the Templar ; "but, 
 Conrade of Montserrat, thy bow is over-slack to carry an 
 arrow to the mark." 
 
 He then stopped short, cast a suspicious glance to see that 
 no one overheard him, and taking Conrade by the hand, 
 pressed it eagerly as he looked the Italian in the face, and 
 repeated slowly : "Richard arise from his bed, say'st thou r 
 Conrade, he must never arise !" 
 
 The Marquis of Montserrat started. " What ! spoke you 
 of Eichard of England — of Coeur-de-Lion — the champion of 
 Christendom ! " 
 
 His cheek turned pale and his knees trembled as he spoke. 
 The Templar looked at him, with his iron visage contorted 
 into a smile of contempt. 
 
 " Know'st thou what thou look'st like. Sir Conrade, at 
 this moment ? Not like the politic and valiant Marquis of 
 Montserrat — not like him who would direct the council of 
 princes and determine the fate of empires ; but like a novice 
 who, stumbling upon a conjuration in his master's book of 
 gramarye, has raised the devil when he least thought of it, 
 and now stands terrified at the spirit which appears before 
 him." 
 
 " I grant you," said Conrade, recovering himself, "that, 
 unless some other sure road could be discovered, thou hast 
 hinted at that Avhich leads most direct to our purpose. But. 
 blessed Mary ! we shall become the curse of all Europe, the 
 malediction of every one, from the Pope on his throne to 
 the very beggar at the church gate, who, ragged and leprous, 
 in the last extremity of human wretchedness, shall bless 
 himself that he is neither Giles Amaury nor Conrade of 
 Montserrat." 
 
 " If thou takest it thus," said the Grand Master, with the 
 same composure which characterized him all through this 
 femarkablo dialogue, " let us hold there has nothing passed 
 
112 WAVEBLEY NOVJiLti 
 
 between us — that we have spoken in our sleep — have awak* 
 ened, and the vision is gone." 
 
 " It never can depart," answered Conrade. 
 
 " Visions of dncal crowns and kingly diadems are, indeed, 
 somewhat tenacious of their place in the imagination," re- 
 plied the Grand Master. 
 
 " Well," answered Conrade, "let me but first try to break 
 peace between Austria and England." 
 
 They parted. Conrade remained standing still upon the 
 spot, and watching the flowing white cloak of the Templar, 
 as he stalked slowly away, and gradually disappeared amid 
 the fast-sinking darkness of the Oriental night. Proud, 
 ambitious, unscrupulous, and politic, the Marquis of Mont- 
 serrat was yet not cruel by nature. He was a voluptuary _^ 
 and an epicurean, and, like many who profess this charac- pii 
 ter, was averse, even upon selfish motives, from inflicting 
 pain, or witnessing acts of cruelty ; and he retained also a 
 general sense of respect for his own reputation, Avhich some- 
 times supplies the want of the better principle by which ^id 
 reputation is to be maintained. 
 
 " I have," he said, as his eyes still watched the point at 
 which he had seen the last slight wave of the Templar's 
 mantle — " I have, in truth, raised the devil with a venge-ttited 
 ance ! Who would have thought this stern ascetic Grand 
 Master, whose whole fortune and misfortune is merged in 
 that of his order, would be willing to do more for its ad- 
 vancement than I who labor for my own interest ? To check 
 this wild Crusade was my motive, indeed, but I durst not 
 think on the ready mode which this determined priest has ^m 
 dared to suggest ; yet it is the surest, perhaps even the 
 safest." 
 
 Such were the Marquis's meditations, when his muttered 
 soliloquy was broken by a voice from a little distance, which 
 Ijroclaimed with the emphatic tone of a herald — " Remem-j 
 ber the Holy Sepulchre ! " _ -' 
 
 The exhortation was echoed from post to post, for it wa« 
 the duty of the sentinels to raise this cry from time to time 
 upon their periodical watch, that the host of the Crusaders 
 might always have in their remembrance the purpose oJ 
 their being in arms. But though Connide was familiar with 
 the custom, and had heard the warning voice on all formei 
 occasions as a matter of habit ; yet it came at the preseni; 
 moment so strongly in contact with his own train of thought 
 that it seemed a voice from Heaven warning him against thd 
 iniquity which his heart meditated. He looked arounc 
 
 
 i 
 
 liisti 
 sidi 
 
 
THE TALISMAN 113 
 
 Anxiously, as if, like tlie patriarcli of old, though from very 
 different circunisUiuces, he was expecting some ram caught 
 in a thicket — some substitution for the sacrifice which his 
 comrade proposed to offer, not to the Supreme Being, but 
 to the Moloch of their own ambition. As he looked, the 
 broad folds of the ensign of England, heavily distending 
 itself to the failing night-breeze, caught his eye. It was 
 displayed upon an artificial mound, nearly in the midst of 
 the camp, which perhaps of old some Hebrew chief or 
 champion had chosen as a memorial of his place of rest. If 
 so, the name was now forgotten, and the Crusadei's had 
 christened it St. George's Mount, because from that com- 
 manding height the banner of England was super-eminently 
 displayed, as if an emblem of sovereignty over the many dis- 
 tinguished, noble, and even royal, ensigns which floated in 
 lower situations. 
 
 A quick intellect like that of Conrade catches ideas from 
 the glance of a moment. A single look on the standard 
 seemed to dispel the uncertainty of mind wdiich had affected 
 him. Ho walked to his pavilion with the hasty and deter- 
 mined step of one who has adopted a plan which he is re- 
 solved to achieve, dismissed the almost princely train who 
 waited to attend him, and, as he committed himself to his 
 couch, muttered his amended resolution, that the milder 
 means are to be tried before the more desperate are resorted 
 to. 
 
 " To-morrow," he said, " I sit at the board of the Arch- 
 duke of Austria ; we will see what can be done to advance 
 our purpose, before prosecuting the dark suggestions of this 
 Templar." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 One thing is certain in our Northern land, 
 Allow that birth, or valor, wealth, or wit, 
 Give each precedence to their possessor, 
 Envy, that follows on such eminence, 
 As conies the lyme-hound on the roebuck's trace, 
 Shall pull them down each one. 
 
 Sir David Lindsay. 
 
 Leopold, Grand Duke of Austria, was the first possessoi 
 of that noble country to whom the princely rank belonged. 
 He had been raised to the ducal sway in the German em- 
 pire on account of his near relationship to the Emperor, 
 Henry the Stern, and held under his government the fin- 
 est provinces which are watered by the Danube. His char- 
 acter has been stained in history on account of one ac-| 
 tion of violence and perfidy, which arose out of these very] 
 transactions in the Holy Land ; and yet the shame of hav- 
 ing made Richard a prisonej', when he returned throughj 
 his dominions, unattended and in disguise, was not onej 
 which flowed from Leopold's natural disposition. He was| 
 rather a weak and a vain than an ambitious or tyrannical 
 prince. His mental powers resembled the qualities of hisj 
 person. He was tall, strong, and handsome, with a com- 
 plexion in which red and white w'ere strongly contrasted,! 
 and had long flowing locks of fair hair. But there wasi 
 an awkwardness in his gait, which seemed as if his size! 
 was not animated by energy suflEicient to put in motion 
 such a mass ; and in the same manner, wearing the ricli- 
 est dresses, it always seemed as if they became him not. 
 As a prince, he appeared too little familiar with his own 
 dignity, and being often at a loss how to assert his author- 
 ity when the occasion demanded it, he frequently thougb.t 
 himself obliged to recover, by acts and expressions of ill- 
 timed violence, the ground which might have been easily 
 and gracefully maintained by a little more presence of mind 
 in the beginning of the controversy. 
 
 Kot only were these deficiencies visible to others, bu) 
 the Archduke himself could not but sometimes entertair 
 a painful consciousness that he was not altogether fit t( 
 U4 
 
I 
 
 THE TALISMAN 115 
 
 maintain and assert the high rank which he had acquired ; 
 and to this was joined the strong, and sometimes the just, 
 suspicion that others esteemed him lightly accordingly. 
 
 When he first joined the Crusade, with a most princely 
 attendance, Leopold had desired much to enjoy the friend- 
 ship and intimacy of Richard, and had made such advances 
 towards cultivating his regard as the King of England ought, 
 in policy, to have received and answered. But the Arch- 
 duke, though not deficient in bravery, was so infinitely in- 
 ferior to Coeur-de-Lion in that ardor of mind which wooed 
 danger as a bride, that the King very soon held him in a 
 certain degree of contempt. Eichard, also, as a Norman 
 prince, a people with whom temperance was habitual, de- 
 spised the inclination of the German for the pleasures of the 
 table, and particularly his liberal indulgence in the use of 
 wine. For these and other personal reasons the King of 
 England very soon looked upon the Austrian prince with 
 feelings of contempt, which he was at no pains to conceal 
 or modify, and which, therefore, were speedily remarked, 
 and returned with deep hatred, by the suspicious Leopold. 
 The discord between them was fanned by the secret and 
 politic arts of Philip of France, one of the most sagacious 
 monarchs of the time, who, dreading the fiery and overbear- 
 ing character of Richard, considering him as his natural 
 rival, and feeling offended, moreover, at the dictatorial 
 manner in which he, a vassal of France for his continental 
 domains, conducted himself towards his liege lord, endeav- 
 ored to strengthen his own party, and weaken that of Rich- 
 ard, by uniting the Crusading princes of inferior degree in 
 resistance to what he termed the usurping authority of the 
 King of England. Such was the state of politics and opin- 
 ions entertained by the Archduke of Austria, when Courade 
 of Montserrat resolved upon employing his jealousy of Eng- 
 land as the means of dissolving, or loosening at least, the 
 league of the Crusaders. 
 
 The time which he chose for his visit was noon, and the 
 pretense, to present the Archduke with some choice Cyprus 
 wine which had lately fallen into his hajids, and discuss its 
 comparative merits with those of Hungary and of the Rhine. 
 An intimation of his purpose was of course answered by a 
 courteous invitation to partake of the archducal meal, and 
 every effort was used to render it fitting the splendor of a 
 sovereign prince. Yet the refined taste of the Italian saw 
 more cumbrous profusion than elegance or splendor in the 
 display of provisions under which the board groaned. 
 
116 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 The Germans, thongli still possessing the martial and frank 
 character of their ancestors, who subdued the Roman empire, 
 had retained withal no slight tinge of their barbarism. The 
 practises and i^rinciples of chivalry were not carried to such 
 a nice pitch amongst them as amongst the French and En- 
 glish knights, nor were they strict observers of the prescribed 
 rules of society, which among those nations were supposed 
 to express the height of civilization. Sitting at the table of 
 the Archduke, Conrade was at once stunned and amused 
 with the clang of Teutonic sounds assaulting his ears on all 
 sides, notwithstanding the solemnity of a princely banquet. 
 Their dress seemed equally fantastic to him, many of the 
 Austrian nobles retaining their long beards, and almost all 
 of them wearing short jerkins of various colors, cut, and 
 flourished, and fringed in a manner not common in Western 
 Europe. 
 
 Numbers of dependants, old and young, attended in th( 
 pavilion, mingled at times in the conversation, received f roir 
 tho'r masters the relics of the entertainment, and devourec 
 them as they stood behind the backs of the company. Jesters 
 dwarf, and minstrels were there in unusual numbers, anc 
 more noisy and intrusive than they were permitted to be ii 
 better-regulated society. As they were allowed to share f reel^ 
 in the wine, which flowed round in large quantities, thei:-, j.,,,^ 
 licensed tumult was the more excessive. iji. 
 
 All this while, and in the midst of a clamor and confusioi 
 which would better have become a German tavern during i 
 fair than the tent of a sovereign prince, the Archduke wa 
 waited upon with a minuteness of form and observance whicl 
 showed how anxious he was to maintain rigidly the state am 
 character to which his elevation had entitled him. He waj 
 served on the knee, and only by pages of noble blood, fe^j 
 upon plate of silver, and drank his Tokay and Rhenish winej lT 
 from a cup of gold. His ducal mantle was splendidlj 
 adorned with ermine, his coronet might have equaled in valuj 
 a royal crown, and his feet, cased in velvet shoes, tlie lengtj 
 of which, peaks included, might be two feet, rested upon \ ||, 
 footstool of solid silver. But it served partly to intimate th| ^ '^^ 
 character of the man, that, although desirous to showatterj 
 tion to the Marquis of Montserrat, whom he had courteousl, 
 placed at his right hand, he gave much more of his attentioi 
 
 jlari 
 
 tlat 
 ster 
 otri 
 
 , An 
 
 salca. 
 
 : is, his man of conversation, (k , f^ 
 stood behind the Duke's riglj ^\^\ 
 
 to his spruchsprecher, that is 
 " sayer of sayings,^' who 
 shoulder. 
 
 This personage was well attired, in a cloak and doublet. .| 
 
 iim 
 
 ■ 
 
 ^'8 do; 
 
THE TALISMAN lit 
 
 3lack velvet, the last of which was decorated with various 
 lilver and gold coins, stitclied upon it, in memory of the 
 nunificent princes who had conferred them, and bearing a 
 ihort staff, to which also bunches of silver coins were 
 ittached by rings, which he jingled by way of attracting 
 ittention, when he was about to say anything which he 
 udged worthy of it. This person's capacity in the howse- 
 lold of the Archduke was somewhat betwixt that of a min- 
 ti'el and a counselor : he was by turns a flatterer, a poet, and 
 ,n orator ; and those who desired to be well with the Duke 
 [euerally studied to gain the good-will of the spruclispreclier. 
 
 Lest too mucli of this officer's wisdom should become tire- 
 ome, the Duke's other shoulder was occupied by \\\%lioffnarr , 
 r court jester, called Jonas Schwanker, who made almost 
 s much noise with his fool's cap, bells, and bauble as did 
 he orator, or man of talk, with his jingling baton. 
 
 These two personages threw out grave and comic nonsense 
 Iternately, while their master, laughing or applauding 
 hem himself, yet carefully watched the countenance of his 
 oble guest, to discern what impressions so accomplished a 
 avalier received from this display of Austrian eloquence and 
 dt. It is hard to say whether the man of wisdom or the 
 lan of folly contributed most to the amusement of the party, 
 r stood highest in the estimation of their princely master ; 
 ut the sallies of both seemed excellently well received, 
 ometimes they became rivals for the conversation, and 
 langed their flappers in emulation of each other, with a 
 lost alarming contention ; but, in general, they seemed on 
 ich good terms, and so accustomed to support each other's 
 lay, that \X\q spruclisineclier often condescended to follow up 
 le jester's witticisms with an explanation, to render them 
 lore obvious to the capacity of the audience ; so that his 
 isdom became a sort of commentary on the bufl'oon's 
 )lly. And sometimes, in requital, the lioffnarr, with a 
 ithy jest, wound up the conclusion of the orator's tedious 
 arangue. 
 
 Whatever his real sentiments might be, Conrade took 
 special care that his countenance should express nothing 
 ut satisfaction with what he heard, and smiled or applauded 
 3 zealously, to all appearance, as the Archduke himself, at 
 18 solemn folly of the spruchsiyrecher and the gibbering wit 
 i the fool. In fact, he watched carefully until the one or 
 ther should introduce some topic favorable to the purpose 
 hich was uppermost in his mind. 
 
 It was not long ere the King of England was brought on 
 
lib WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 the carpet by the jester, who had been accustomed to consider 
 Dickon of the Broom, wiiich irreverent epithet he substituted 
 for Eichard Piantagenet, as a subject of mirtli acceptable 
 and inexhaustible. The orator, indeed, was silent, and it 
 was only when applied to by Conrade that he observed, '' The 
 genista, or broom-plant, was an eni^xem of humility ; and it 
 would be well when those who wore it would remember the 
 warning.'* 
 
 The allusion to the illustrious badge of Piantagenet was 
 thus rendered sufficiently manifest, and Jonas Schwanker 
 observed that "they who humbled themselves had beeu 
 exalted with a vengeance." 
 
 "■ Honor unto whom honor is due," answered the Mar- 
 quis of Montserrat : ''we have all had some part in these 
 marches and battles, and methinks other princes might shart 
 a little in the renown which Richard of England engrosses 
 amongst minstrels and minnesingers. Has no one of tlu 
 joyeuse science here present a song in praise of the roya 
 Arcliduke of Austria, our princely entertainer ?" 
 
 Three minstrels emulously stepped forward with voice anc 
 harp. Two were silenced with difficulty by the sprucli 
 sprecher, who seemed to act as master of the revels, and w 
 hearing was at length procured for the poet preferred, wlnf 
 sung, in High German, stanzas which may be thus trau?! 
 lated : — 
 
 " What brave chief shall head the forces, ' 
 
 Where the red-cross legions gather ? 
 Best of horsemen, best of liorses. 
 Highest head and fairest feather." 
 
 Here the orator, jingling his staff, interrupted the bardi 
 intimate to the party, what they might not have inferrc 
 from the description, that their royal host was the party it 
 dicated, and a full crowned goblet went round to the accLi 
 mation — " Roch lele der Herzog Leopold!" 
 
 Another stanza followed : 
 
 " Ask not Austria why. midst princes, 
 Still her banner rises liighest ; 
 Ask as well the strong-wing'd eagle, 
 Why to Heaven he soars the nighest." 
 
 *'The eagle," said the expounder of dark sayings, "is t'l 
 cognizance of our noble lord the Archduke —of his ro}l 
 Grace, I would say — and the eagle flies tlie highest and nei 
 est to the sun of ail the feathered creation." ; 
 
 11 
 
11 
 
 J 
 
 (Eo 
 
 k 
 51 
 
 Ml 
 II 
 
 I 
 
THE TALISMAN 119 
 
 '•' The lion hath taken a spring above the eagle/' said Oon- 
 rade, carelessly. 
 
 The Archduke reddened, and fixed his eyes on the speaker, 
 while the spritchsprecher answered, after a minute's consid- 
 eration, *■' The Lord Marquis will pardon me — a lion cannot 
 fly above an eagle, because no lion hath got wings." 
 
 " Except the lion of St. Mark," responded the jester. 
 
 '' That is the Venetian's banner," said the Duke ; " but 
 assuredly that amphibious race, half nobles, half merchants, 
 will not dare to place their rank in comparison with ours ? " 
 
 " Nay, it was not of tlie Venetian lion that I spoke," said 
 the Marquis of Monserrat ; '' but of the three lions passant 
 of England ; formerly, it is said, tliey were leopards, but now 
 they are become lions at all points, and must take precedence 
 of beast, fish, or fowl, or woe wortli the gainstander." 
 
 "Mean you seriously, my lord ?" said the Austrian, now 
 considerably flushed with wine — " think yon that Eichard of 
 England asserts any pre-eminence over the free sovereigns 
 who have been his voluntary allies in this Crusade ? " 
 
 "I know not but from circumstances," answered Conrade : 
 "yonder hangs his banner alone in the midst of our camp, as 
 if he were king and generalissimo of our whole Christian 
 army." 
 
 " And do you endure this so patiently, and speak of it so 
 coldly ?" said the Archduke. 
 
 '■' Nay, my lord," answered Conrade, " it cannot concern 
 the poor Marquis of Montserrat to contend against an injury 
 patiently submitted to by such potent princes as Philip of 
 France and Leopold of Austria. What dishonor you are 
 pleased to submit to cannot be a disgrace tome." 
 
 Leopold closed his fist and struck on the table with 
 violence. 
 
 *• I have told Philip of this," he said — " I have often told 
 him that it was our duty to protect the inferior princes 
 against the usurpation of this islander ; but he answers me 
 ever with cold respect of :.heir relations together as suzerain 
 and vassal, and that it were impolitic in him to make an open 
 breach at this time and period." 
 
 "The world knows that Philip is wise," said Conrade, 
 "and will judge his submission to be policy. Yours, my 
 lord, you can yourself alone account for ; but I doubt not you 
 have deep reasons for submitting to English domination." 
 
 "/ submit !" said Leopold, indignantly — " /, the Arch- 
 duke of Austria, so important and vital a limb of the Holy 
 Roman empire — / gubrait myself to this king of half an 
 
120 WA VEBLET JV O VELS 
 
 island — this grandson of a Norman bastard ! No, hi ■! 
 
 Heaven ! The camp, and all Christendom, shall see tliat 1 ''*'" 
 
 know how to right myself, and whether I yield ground on« ^^■': 
 
 inch to the English bandog. Up, my lieges and merry mei ^y 
 
 — up and follow me ! We will — and that without losing on< f,'' 
 
 instant — place the eagle of Austria where she shall float a: '^ 
 
 high as ever floated the cognizance of king or kaiser.'' ^^ . 
 
 With that he started from his seat, and, amidst the tumult "'f 
 
 nous cheering of his guests and followers, made forthedoo: f^] 
 
 of the pavilion, and seized his own banner, which stoo( "''' 
 
 pitched before it. _ f"-' 
 
 "Nay, my lord,*' said Conrade, affecting to interfere, *'i !'"' 
 
 will blemish your wisdom to make an affray in the camp a1 ^^ 
 
 this hour, and jjerhaps it is better to submit to the usurpa ,. 
 
 tion of England a little longer than to " *'' 
 
 "'Not an hour — not a moment longer," vociferated th "^"' 
 
 Duke ; and, with the banner in his hand, and followed b; ^'^P 
 
 his shouting guests and attendants, marched hastily to th '"!'* 
 
 central mount, from which the banner of England floated '^'^' 
 
 and laid his hand on the standard-spear, as if to pluck i *''^P 
 
 from the ground. ^^^ 
 
 " My master — my dear master," said Jonas Schwankei j"?^ 
 
 throwing his arms about the Duke, " take heed — lions ha\ i"""!' 
 
 teeth " _ . . ^^"^ 
 
 " And eagles have claws," said the Duke, not relinquisl ^^f*' 
 
 ing his hold on the banner-staff, yet hesitating to pull M 
 
 from the ground. ''Itn 
 
 The speaker of sentences, notwithstanding such was li i'wi 
 
 occupation, had, nevertheless, some intervals of sound sens '^^^ 
 
 He clashed his staff loudly, and Leopold, as if by habi i^^'i 
 
 turned his head towards his man of counsel. ''Ise! 
 
 "The eagle is king among the fowls of the air," said tl h^ 
 
 spruchsprecher , " as is the lion among the beasts of the field ', gn 
 
 each has his dominion, separated as wide as England ar [fpar 
 Germany ; do thou, noble eagle, no dishonor to the prince 
 lion, but let your banners remain floating in peace side 1 
 side." 
 
 Leopold withdrew his hand from the banner-spear, ai 
 looked round for Conrade of Montserrat, but he saw hi 
 not ; for the Marquis, so soon as he saw the mischief afod^^e 
 had withdrawn himself from the crowd, taking care, in t>'!.'""h 
 first place, to express before several neutral persons his i- 
 gret that the Archduke should have chosen the hours aft' 
 dinner to avenge any wrong of which he might think heh;i 
 a right to complain. Not seeing his guest, to whom .t 
 
 lei{ 
 'le 
 Eslf. 
 
 lioi 
 
THE TALISMAN 121 
 
 jeished more particularly to have addressed liimself, the Arcn- 
 duke said aloud, that, having no wisli to breed dissension in the 
 army of tlie Cross, he did but vindicate his own privileges 
 And right to stand upon an equality with tlie King of Eng- 
 land, without desiring, as he might have done, to advance 
 his banner, which he derived from emperors, his progenitors, 
 above that of a mere descendant of the Counts of Anjou ; 
 and, in the meantime, he commanded a cask of wine to be 
 brought hither and pierced, for regaling the bystanders, who, 
 with tuck of drum and sound of music, quaffed many a 
 carouse round the Austrian standard. 
 
 This disorderly scene was not acted without a degree of 
 noise which alarmed the whole camp. 
 
 The critical hour had arrived at which the physician, 
 according to the rules of his art, had predicted that his royal 
 patient might be awakened with safety, and the sponge had 
 been applied for that purpose ; and the leech had not made 
 many observations ere he assured the Baron of Gilsland that 
 the fever had entirely left his sovereign, and that, such was 
 the happy strength of his constitution, it Avould not be even 
 necessary, as in most cases, to give a second dose of the power- 
 ful medicine. Kichard himself seemed to be of the same 
 opinion, for, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, he demanded 
 of De Vaux what present sum of money was in the royal 
 coffers. 
 
 The Baron could not exactly inform him of the amount. 
 
 *'It matters not," said Richard ; " be it greater or smaller, 
 bestow it all on this learned leech, who hath, I trust, given 
 me back again to the service of the Crusade. If it be less 
 than a thousand byzants, let him have jewels to make it up." 
 
 " I sell not the wisdom with which Allah has endowed 
 me," answered the Arabian physician ; " and be it known to 
 you, great prince, that the divine medicine of which you 
 have partaken would lose its effects in my unworthy hands, 
 did 1 exchange its virtues either for gold or diamonds." 
 
 _*'The physician refuseth a gratuity !*' said De V^aux to 
 himself. "This is more extraordinary than his being an 
 hundred years old." 
 
 " Thomas De Vaux," said Richard, " thou knowest no 
 courage but what belongs to the sword, no bounty or virtue 
 bat what are used in chivalry ; I tell thee that th'is Moor, in 
 his independence, might set an example to them who account 
 themselves the flower of knighthood," 
 
 "It is reward enough for me," said the Moor, folding his 
 arms on his bosom, and maintaining an attitude at once 
 
122 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 respectful and dignified, " that so great a king as the MekcW 
 Ric* should thus speak of his servant. But now, let mt] 
 pray you again to compose yourself on your couch ; foij 
 though I think there needs no farther repetition of thedivincj 
 draught, yet injury might ensue from any too early exertion 
 ere your strength be entirely restored." 
 
 " 1 must obey thee, Hakim," said the King ; ''yet, believe 
 me, my bosom feels so free from the wasting fire which foi 
 so many days hath scorched it that I care not how soon ] 
 expose it to a brave man's lance. But hark ! what meaci 
 these shouts and that distant music in the camp ? Go, 
 Thomas de Vaux, and make inquiry." 
 
 " It is the Archduke Leopold," said De Yaux, returning 
 after a minute's absence, "who makes with his pot-compan- 
 ions some jDrocession thronr h the camp." 
 
 " The drunken fool !" exclaimed King Richard, "can he 
 not keep his brutal inebriety within the veil of his pavilion 
 that he must needs show his shame to Christendom ? 
 What say you, sir Marquis ?" he added, addressing himself 
 to Conrade of Montserrat, who at that moment entered the 
 tent. 
 
 " Thus much, honored prince," answered tlie Marquis, 
 " that I delight to see your Majesty so well and so far re- 
 covered ; and that is a long speech for any one to make who 
 has partaken of the Duke of Austria's hospitality." 
 
 " What ! you have been dining with the Teutonic wine 
 skin," said the monarch ; "and what frolic has he found out 
 to cause all this disturbance ? Truly, Sir Conrade, I hare 
 still held you so good a reveler, that 1 wonder at your quit- 
 ting the game." 
 
 De Vaux, who had got a little behind the King, now 
 exerted himself, by look and sign, to make the Marquis 
 understand that he should say notliing to Richard of what was 
 passing without. 
 
 But Conrade understood not, or heeded not, the prohibi 
 tion. "What the Archduke does," he said, "is of little 
 consequence to any one, least of all to himself, since he; - 
 probably knows not what he is acting ; yet, to say truth, it 
 is a gambol I should not like to share in, since he is pulling 
 down the banner of England from St. George's Mount in the 
 center of the camp yonder, and displaying his own in its 
 Stead.'* 
 
 "What say'st thou?" exclaimed the King, in a tone 
 which might have waked the dead. 
 
 * Richard was thus, called by the Eastern nations. 
 
THE TALISMAN 123 
 
 " N"ay," said the Marquis, '* let it not chafe your Highness 
 that a fool should act according to his folly " 
 
 " Speak not to me," said Richard, springing from his couch, 
 and casting on his clothes with a despatch which seemed 
 marvelous — " speak not to me, Lord Marquis ! De Multon, 
 I command thee speak not a word to me : he that breathes 
 but a syllable is no friend to Richard Plantagenet. Hakim, 
 be silent, I charge thee ! '' 
 
 All this while the King was hastily clothing himself, and, 
 with the last word, snatched his sword from the pillar of 
 the tent, and without any other weapon, or calling any at- 
 tendance, he rushed out of his pavilion. Conrade, holding 
 up his hands, as if in astonishment, seemed willing to enter 
 into conversation with De Vaux, but Sir Thomas pushed 
 rudely past him, and calling to one of the royal equerries, 
 said hastily, "Fly to Lord Salisbury's quarters, and let him 
 get his men together, and follow me instantly to St. George's 
 Mount. Tell him the King's fever has left his blood and 
 settled in his brain.'* 
 
 Imperfectly heard, and still more imperfectly compre- 
 hended, by the startled attendant whom De Vaux addressed 
 thus hastily, the equerry and his fellow-servants of the royal 
 chamber rushed hastily into the tents of the neighboring 
 nobility, and quickly spread an alarm, as general as the 
 cause seemed vague, through the whole British forces. The 
 English soldiers, waked in alarm from that noonday rest 
 which the heat of the climate had taught them to enjoy as a 
 luxury, hastily asked each other the cause of the tumult, 
 and, without waiting an answer, supplied by the force of their 
 own fancy the want of information. Some said the Saracens 
 iwere in the camp, some that the King's life was attempted, 
 some that he had diedof the fever the preceding night, many 
 ithat he was assassinated by the Duke of Austria. The nobles 
 and officers, at an equal loss with the common men to ascer- 
 tain the real couse of the disorder, labored only to get their 
 followers under arms and under authority, lest their rashness 
 should occasion some great misfortune to the Crusading 
 ;irmy. The English trumpets sounded loud, shrill, and con- 
 anuously. The alarm-cry of " Bows and bills — bows and 
 Dills 1 " was heard from quarter to quarter, again and again 
 houted, and again and again answered by the presence of 
 he ready warriors, and their national invocation, " St. 
 leorge for merry England ! " 
 
 The alarm went through the nearest quarter of the camp, 
 nd men of all the various nations assembled, where, perhaps, 
 
 i 
 
124 WAVERLEV NOVELS 
 
 every people in Cliristendotn had their representatives, flew 
 to arms, and drew together under circumstances of general 
 confusion, of which they knew neither the cause nor the ob- 
 ject. It was, however, lucky, amid a scene so threatening, 
 that the Earl of Salisbury, while he hurried after De Vaux's 
 summons, with a few only of the readiest English men-at-arms, 
 directed the rest of the English host to be drawn up and 
 kept under arms, to advance to Richard's succor if necessity 
 should require it, but in fit array, and under due command, 
 and not with the tumultuary haste which their own alarm, 
 and zeal for the King's safety, might have dictated. 
 
 In the meanwhile, without regarding for one instant the 
 shouts, the cries, the tumult which began to thicken around 
 him, Richard, with his dress in the last disorder, and his 
 sheathed blade under his arm, pursued his way with the ut- 
 most speed, followed only by De Vauxand one or two house- 
 hold servants, to St. George's Mount. 
 
 He outsped even the alarm which his impetuosity only 
 had excited, and passed the quarter of his own gallant troops 
 of Normandy, Poitou, Gascony, and Anjou before the dis- 
 turbance had reached them, although tlie noise accompany- 
 ing the German revel had induced many of the soldiery to 
 get on foot to listen. The handful of Scots were also quar- 
 tered in the vicinity, nor had they been disturbed by the up- 
 roar. But the King's person and his haste were both re- 
 marked by the Knight of the Leopard, who, aware that dan- 
 ger must be afoot, and hastening to share in it, snatched his 
 shield and sword and united himself to De Vaux, who with 
 some difficulty kept pace with his impatient and fiery mas- 
 ter. De Vaux answered a look of curiosity which the 
 Scottish knight directed towards him with a shrug of his 
 broad shoulders, and they continued, side by side, to pursue 
 Richard's steps. 
 
 The King was soon at the foot of St. George's Mount, the 
 sides as well as platform of which were now surrounded and 
 crowded, partly by those belonging to the Duke of Austria's 
 retinue, who were celebrating, with shouts of jubilee, the 
 act which they considered as an assertion of national honor ; 
 partly by bystanders of different nations, wdiom dislike to the 
 English, or mere curiosity, had assembled together to witness 
 the end of these extraordinary proceedings. Through this 
 disorderly troop Richard burst his way, like a goodly ship 
 under full sail, which cleaves her forcible passage through 
 the rolling billows, and heeds not that they unite after her 
 pasgage and roar upon her stern. 
 
THE TALIS3IAN 125 
 
 The summit of the eminence was a small level space, on 
 which were pitched the rival banners, surrounded still by the 
 Archduke's friends and retinue. In the midst of the circle 
 was Leopold himself, still contemplating with self-satisfac- 
 tion the deed he had done, and still listening to the shouts 
 of applause which his partizans bestowed Avith no sparing 
 breath. "While he was in this state of self-gratulation, 
 Kichard burst into the circle, attended, indeed, only by two 
 men, but in his own headlong energies an irresistible host. 
 
 "Who has dared," he said, laying his hands upon the 
 Austrian standard, and speaking in a voice like the sound 
 which precedes an earthquake — " who has dared to place 
 this paltry rag beside the banner of England ? " 
 
 The Archduke wanted not personal courage, and it was 
 impossible he could hear this question without reply. Yet, 
 so much was he troubled and surprised by the unexpected 
 arrival of Eichard, and affected by the general awe inspired 
 by his ardent and unyielding character, that the demand 
 was twice repeated, in a tone which seemed to challenge 
 heaven and earth, ere the Archduke replied, with such firm- 
 ness as he could command, "' It was I, Leopold of Austria." 
 
 " Then shall Leopold of Austria," replied Richard, " pres- 
 ently see the rate at which his banner and his pretensions 
 are held by Richard of England." 
 
 So saying, he pulled up the standard-spear, splintered it 
 to pieces, threw the banner itself on the ground, and placed 
 his foot upon it. 
 
 " Thus," said he, "I trample on the banner of Austria ! 
 Is there a knight among your Teutonic chivalry dare im- 
 I peach my deed ? " 
 
 : There was a momentary silence ; but there are no braver 
 imen than the Germans. 
 
 "I!" and "I!" and "I!" was heard from several 
 iknights of the Duke's followers ; and he himself added his 
 voice to those which accepted the King of England's defiance. 
 
 "■ Why do we dally thus ?" said the Earl Wallenrode, a 
 gigantic warrior from the frontiers of Hungary. " Brethren 
 and noble gentlemen, this man's foot is on the honor of your 
 country. Let us rescue it from violation, and down with 
 the pride of England ! " 
 
 So saying, he drew his sword and struck at the King a 
 blow which might have proved fatal, had not the Scot in- 
 itercepted and caught it upon his shield. 
 , " I have sworn," said King Richard, and his voice was 
 leard above all the tumult, which now waxed wild and loud, 
 
126 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " never to strike one whose shoulder bears the cross ; there- 
 fore live, Wallenrode, but live to remember Richard of 
 England/' 
 
 As he spoke, he grasped the tall Hungarian round the 
 waist, and, unmatched in wrestling as in other military exer- 
 cises, hurled him backwards with sucli violence that the mass 
 flew, as if discharged from a military engine, not only throiigh 
 the ring of spectators who witnessed the extraordinary 
 scene, but over the edge of the mount itself, down the steep 
 side of which "Wallenrode rolled headlong, until, pitching 
 at length upon his shoulder, he dislocated the bone, and lay 
 like one dead. This almost supernatural display of strength 
 did not encourage either the Duke or any of his followers to 
 renew a personal contest so inauspiciously commenced. 
 Those who stood farthest back did, indeed, clash, their 
 swords and cry out, '' Cut the island mastiff to pieces ! '" 
 but those who were nearer veiled, perhaj^s, their personal 
 fears under an affected regard for order, and cried, for the 
 most part, '' Peace — peace — the peace of the Cross — the 
 peace of Holy Church and our Father the Pope I " 
 
 These various cries of the assailants, contradicting each 
 other, showed their irresolution ; while Eichard, his fool 
 still on the archducal banner, glared round him, with an 
 eye that seemed to seek an enemy, and from which the angry 
 nobles shrunk appalled, as from the threatened grasp of a 
 lion. De Vaux and the Knight of the Leopard kept theii 
 places beside him ; and though tlie swords which they held 
 were still sheathed, it was plain that they were jirompt to 
 protect Richard's person to the very last, and their size and 
 remarkable strength plainly showed the defense Avould be 
 a desperate one. 
 
 Salisbury and his attendants were also now drawing near, 
 with bills and partizans brandished, and bows already bended. 
 
 At this moment King Philip of France, attended by one 
 or two of his nobles, came on the platform to inquire the 
 cause of the disturbance, and made gestures of surprise at 
 finding the King of England raised from his sick-bed, and 
 confronting their common ally the Duke of Austria in such 
 a menacing and insulting posture. Richard hinself bhished 
 at being discovered by Philip, whose sagacity he respected 
 as much as he disliked his person, in an attitude neither . 
 becoming his character as a monarch nor as a Crusader jj»i 
 and it was observed that he withdrew his foot, as if accident- 'x- 
 ally, from tlie dishonored banner, and exchanged his look of 
 violent emotion for one of affected composure and indiffer- 
 
TBE TALISMAN 127 
 
 ence. Leopold also struggled to attain some degree of 
 calmness, mortified as lie was by having been seen by Pliilip 
 in the act of passively submitting to the insults of the fiery 
 King of England. 
 
 Possessed of many of those royal qualities for which he 
 was termed by his subjects " the august," Philip might be 
 termed the Ulysses, as Richard was indisputably the Achilles, 
 of the Crusade, The King of Prance was sagacious, wise, 
 deliberate in council, steady and calm in action, seeing 
 clearly, and steadily pursuing, the measures most for the 
 interest of his kingdom, dignified and royal in his deport- 
 ment, brave in person, but a politician rather than a warrior. 
 The Crusade would have been no choice of his own, but the 
 spirit was contagions, and the expedition was enforced upon 
 him by the church, and by the unanimous wish of his 
 nobility. In any other situation, or in a milder age, his 
 character might have stood higher than tliat of the ad- 
 venturous Coeur-de-Lion ; but in the Crusade, itself an 
 undertaking wholly irrational, sound reason was the qualit}^ 
 of all others, least estimated, and the chivalric valor wliich 
 both the age and the enterprise demanded was considered 
 as debased if mingled wath the least touch of discretion. 
 So that the merit of Philip, compared with that of his 
 haughty rival, showed like the clear but minute flame of a 
 lamp, placed near the glare of a huge blazing torch, which, 
 not possessing half the utility, makes ten times more impres- 
 sion on the eye. Philip felt his inferiority in public opinion, 
 with the pain natural to a high-spirited prince ; and it 
 cannot be wondered at if he took such opportunities as 
 offered for placing his own character in more advantageous 
 contrast with that of his rival. The jDresent seemed one of 
 those occasions in wdiich prudence and calmness might 
 reasonably expect to triumph over obstinacy and impetuous 
 violence. 
 
 " What means this unseemly broil betwixt the sworn 
 brethren of the Cross — the royal Majesty of England and 
 the princely Duke Leopold ? How is it possible that 
 those who are the chiefs and pillars of this holy expedi- 
 tion " 
 
 " K truce with thy remonstrance, France," said Eichard, 
 enraged inwardly at finding himself placed on a sort of 
 equality with Leopold, yet not knowing how to resent it, 
 " this duke, or prince, or pillar, if you will, hath been 
 insolent, and I have chastised him — that is all. Here is a 
 coil, forsooth, because of spurning a hound ! " 
 
128 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 *' Majesty of France," said the Duke, "I appeal to you 
 and every sovereign prince against the foul indignity which 
 I have sustained. This King of England hath pulled dowu 
 my banner, torn, and trampled on it." 
 
 " Because he had the audacity to plant it beside mine,"' 
 said Eichard. 
 
 " My rank as thine equal entitled me," replied the Duke 
 emboldened by the presence of Philip. 
 
 " Assert such equality for thy person," said King Rich 
 ard, *' and, by St. George, I will treat thy person as I did 
 thy broidered kerchief there, fit but for the meanest use toi 
 which kerchief may be put." 
 
 " Nay, but patience, brother of England," said Philip, 
 ''and I will presently show Austria that he is wrong in thii 
 matter. Do not think, noble Duke," he continued, ''that 
 in permitting the standard of England to occupy the highes' 
 point in our camp, we, the independent sovereigns of the 
 Crusade, acknowledge any inferiority to the royal Richard, 
 It were inconsistent to think so ; since even the oriflammi 
 itself — the great banner of France, to which the royal Rich- 
 ard himself, in respect of his French possessions, is but 
 vassal — holds for the present an inferior place to the lions oi 
 England. But as sworn brethren of the Cross, military 
 pilgrims, who, laying aside the pomp and pride of thu 
 world, are hewing with our swords the way to the Holj 
 Sepulchre, I myself, and the other princes, have renouncec 
 to King Richard, from respect to his high renown and greai 
 feats of arms, that precedence which elsewhere, and upon 
 other motives, would not have been yielded. I am satisfied 
 that, when your royal grace of Austria shall have considerec 
 this, you will express sorrow for having placed your bannei 
 on this spot, and that the royal Majesty of England wil 
 then give satisfaction for the insult he has offered." 
 
 The sjn'uchsprecher and the jester had both retired to 
 safe distance when matters seemed coming to blows, but re 
 turned when words, their own commodity, seemed agah 
 about to become the order of the day. _ ; 
 
 The man of proverbs was so delighted witli Philip's politic 
 speech, that he claslied his baton at the conclusion, by waj 
 of emphasis, and forgot the presence in which he was so fal 
 as to say aloud, that he himself had never said a wiser thin| 
 in his life. 
 
 " It may be so," whispered Jonas Schwanker, "butwt 
 shall be whipt if you speak so loud." 
 
 The Duke answered sullenly, that he would refer his 
 
THE TALISMAN 129 
 
 quarrel to the general council of tlie Crusade — a motion 
 which Philip highly applauded, as qualified to take awa}^ a 
 scandal most harmful to Christendom. 
 
 Richard, retaining the same careless attitude, listened to 
 Philip until his oratory seemed exhausted, and then said 
 aloud, '"I am drowsy, this fever hangs about me still. 
 Brother of France, thou art acquainted with my humor, and 
 that I have at all times but few words to spare ; know, there- 
 fore, at once, I will submit a matter touching the honor of 
 England neither to prince, pope, nor council. Here stands 
 my banner ; whatsoever pennon shall be reared within three 
 butts' length of it — ay, were it the oriflamme, of which you 
 were, I think, but now speaking — shall be treated as that 
 dishonored rag ; nor will I yield other satisfaction than that 
 which these poor limbs can render in the lists to any bold 
 challenge — ay, were it against five champions instead of 
 one." 
 
 " Now," said the jester, whispering his companion, " that 
 is as complete a piece of folly as if 1 myself had said it ; but 
 yet, I think, there may be in this matter a greater fool than 
 Richard yet." 
 
 "And who may that be ?" asked the man of wisdom. 
 
 " Philip," said the jester, " or our own Royal Duke, should 
 either accept the challenge. But oh, most sage sprnch- 
 sprecher, wdiat excellent kings would thou and I have made, 
 since those on whose heads these crowns have fallen can play 
 the proverb-monger and the fool as completely as our- 
 
 swered calmly to the almost injurious defiance of Richard, 
 " I came not hither to awaken fresh quarrels, contrary to 
 the oath we have sworn and the holy cause in which we have 
 engaged. I part from my brother of England as brothers 
 should part, and the only strife between the lions of Eng- 
 land and the lilies of France shall be, Avhich shall be carried 
 deepest into the ranks of the infidels." 
 
 " It is a bargain, my royal brother," said Richard, stretch- 
 ing out his hand with all the frankness which belonged to his 
 rash but generous disposition ; ''and soon may we have the 
 opportunity to try this gallant and fraternal wager." 
 
 " Let this noble Duke also partake in tlie friendship of 
 this happy moment," said Philip ; and the Duke approached, 
 half-sullenly, half-willing to enter into some accommoda- 
 tion. 
 
 " I think not of fools, nor of their folly," said Richard, 
 
 g 
 
180 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 carelessly ; and the Archduke, turning his back on him, 
 withdrew from the ground. 
 
 Richard looked after him as he retired. *' There is a sort 
 of a glow-worm courage/' he said, " that shows only by 
 night. I must not leave this banner unguarded in darkness ; 
 by daylight the look of the lions will alone defend it. Here, 
 Thomas of Gilsland, I give thee the charge of the standard — 
 watch over the honor of England." 
 
 " Her safety is yet more dear to me," said De Vaux, " and 
 the life of Eichard is the safety of England. I must have 
 your Highness back to your tent, and that without further 
 tarriance." 
 
 " Thou art a rough and peremptory nurse, De Vaux," said 
 the King, smiling ; and then added, addressing Sir Kenneth, 
 ''Valiant Scot, I owe thee a boon, and I will pay it richly. 
 There stands the banner of England ; watch it as a novice 
 does his armor on the night before he is dubbed. Stir not 
 from it tliree spears' length, and defend it with thy body 
 against injury or insult. Sound thy bugle, if thou art as- 
 sailed by more than three at once. Dost thou undertake the 
 charge ? " 
 
 " Willingly," said Kenneth ; " and will discharge it upon 
 penalty of my head. I will but arm me and return hither 
 instantly." 
 
 The Kings of France and England then took formal leave 
 of each other, hiding, under an appearance of courtesy, the 
 grounds of comjilaint which either had against the other — • 
 Richard against Philip, for what he deemed an officious in- 
 terference betwixt him and Austria, and Philip against Coer- 
 de-Lion, for the disrespectful manner in which his mediation 
 had been received. Those whom this disturbance had as- 
 sembled now drew ofE in different directions, leaving the con- 
 tested mount in the same solitude which had subsisted till 
 interrupted by the Austrian bravado. Men judged of the 
 events of the day according to their partialities ; and while 
 the English charged the Austrian with having afforded the 
 first ground of quarrel, those of other nations concurred in 
 casting the greater blame upon the insular haughtiness and 
 assuming character of Richard. 
 
 " Thou seest," said the Marquis of Montserrat to the 
 Grand Master of the Templars, ''that subtle courses are 
 more effective than violence. I have unloosed the bonds 
 which held together this bunch of scepters and lances ; thou 
 wilt see them shortly fall asunder." 
 
 **I would have called thy plan a good one,*' said the 
 
THE TALISMAN 131 
 
 Templar, "had there been but one man of courage among 
 yonder cold-blooded Austrians, to sever the bonds of which 
 you speak with his sword. A knot that is unloosed may 
 again be fastened, but not so the cord which has been cut to 
 pieces." 
 
CHAPTER Xn 
 
 Tis woman that seduces all mankind. 
 
 Gay. 
 
 In- the days of chivalry, a dangerous post, or a periloiis ad 
 venture, was a reward frequently assigned to military bravery 
 as a compensation for its former trials ; just as, in ascending 
 a precipice, the surmounting one crag only lifts the climber 
 to points yet more dangerous. 
 
 It was midnight, and the moon rose clear and high in 
 heaven, when Kenneth of Scotland stood upon his watch on 
 St. George'c Blount, beside the banner of England — a soli'tary 
 sentinel, to protect the emblem of that nation against the 
 insults which might be meditated among the thousands wliom 
 Richard s pride had made his enemies. High thoughts rolled, 
 one after another, upon the mind of the warrior. It seemed 
 to him as if he had gained some favor in the eyes of the 
 chivalrous monarch, who till now had not seemed to distin- 
 guish him among the crowds of brave men whom his renown 
 had assembled under his banner, and Sir Kenneth little 
 recked that the display of royal regard consisted in placing 
 him wpon a post so perilous. The devotion of his ambitious 
 and high-placed aiTection inflamed his military enthusiasm. 
 Hopeless as that attachment was, in almost any conceivable 
 circumstances, those which had lately occurred had, in some 
 degree, diminished the distance between Edith and himself. 
 He upon whom Richard had conferred the distinction of 
 guarding his banner was no longer an adventurer of slight i 
 note, but placed witin the regard of a princess, although he I 
 was as far as ever from her level. An unknown and obscure j 
 fate could not now be his. If he was surprised and slain on ; 
 the post Avhich had been assigned him, his death — and he | 
 resolved it should be glorious — must deserve the praises, as 
 well as call down the vengeance, of Coeur-de-Lion, and be 
 followed by the regrets, and even the tears, of the high-born 
 beauties of the English court. He had now no longer reason 
 to fear tliat he should die as a fool dieth. 
 
 Sir Kenneth had full leisure to enjoy these and similar 
 iigh-souled thoughts, fostered by that wild spirit of chivah'"' 
 132 
 
 I 
 
 Hi 
 
THE TALISMAN 133 
 
 whirn, amid its most extravagant and fantastic flights, waa 
 still pure from all selfish alloy — generous, devoted, and per- 
 haps only thus far censurable, that it proposed objects and 
 courses of action inconsistent with the frailties and imper- 
 fections of man. All nature around him slept in calm moon- 
 shine or in deep shadow. The long rows of tents and pavil- 
 ions, glimmering or darkening as they lay in the moonlight 
 or in the shade, were still and silent as the streets of a de- 
 serted city. Beside the banner-staff lay the large staghound 
 already mentioned, the sole companion of Kenneth's watch, 
 on whose vigilance he trusted for early warning of the ap- 
 proach of any hostile footstep. The noble animal seemed to 
 understand the purpose of their watch, for he looked from 
 time to time at the rich folds of the heavy pennon, and, when 
 the cry of the sentinels came from the distant lines and de- 
 fenses of the camp, he answered them with one deep ind re- 
 iterated bark, as if to affirm that he too was vigilant in his 
 duty. From time to time, also, he lowered his lofty head 
 and wagged his tail, as his master passed and repassed him 
 in the short turns he took upon his post ; or, wlien the knight 
 stood silent and abstracted, leaning on his lance, and looking 
 up towards heaven, his faithful attendant ventured some- 
 times, in the phrase of romance, " to disturb his thoughts," 
 and awaken him from his reverie, by thrusting his large rough 
 snout into the knight's gauntleted hand, to solicit a transi- 
 tory caress. 
 
 Thus passed two hours of the knight's watch without any- 
 thing remarkable occurring. At length, and upon a sudden, 
 the gallant staghound bayed furiously, and seemed about to 
 dash forward where the shadow lay the darkest, yet waited, 
 as if in the slips, till he should know the pleasure of his 
 master. 
 
 "Who goes there ?" said Sir Kenneth, aware that there 
 was something creeping forward on the shadowy side of the 
 mount. 
 
 " In the name of Merlin and Maugis," answered a hoarse, 
 disagreeable voice, " tie up your four-footed demon there, 
 or I come not at you." 
 
 " And who art thou that would approach my post ?" said 
 Sir Kenneth, bending his eyes as keenly as he could on some 
 object, which he could just observe at the bottom of the as- 
 cent, without being able to distinguish its form. "Beware 
 — I am here for death and life." 
 
 " Take up thy long-fanged Sathanas," said the voice, "or 
 I will conjure him with a, bolt from my arblast." 
 
 i 
 
134 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 At the same time was heard the sound of a spring or check, 
 as when a cross-bow is bent. 
 
 " Unbend thy arblast and come into the moonlight/' said 
 the Scot, "or, by St. Andrew, I will pin thee to the earth, 
 be what or whom thou wilt.'' 
 
 As he spoke, he poised his long lance by the middle, and, 
 fixing his eye upon the object which seemed to move, he 
 brandished the weapon, as if meditating to cast it from his 
 hand — a use of the weapon sometimes, though rarely, resorted 
 to, when a missile was necessary. But Sir Kenneth was 
 ashamed of his purpose and grounded his weapon, when there 
 stepped from the shadow into the moonlight, like an actor 
 entering upon the stage, a stunted, decrepit creature, whom, 
 by his fantastic dress and deformity, he recognized, even at 
 some distance, for the male of the two dwarfs whom he had 
 seen in the chapel at Engaddi. Recollecting, at the same 
 moment, the other, and far different, visions of that extraor- 
 dinary night, he gave his dog a signal, which he instantly 
 understood, and, returning to the standard, laid himself down 
 beside it with a stifled growl. 
 
 The little distorted miniature of humanity, assured of his 
 safety from an enemy so formidable, came panting up the 
 ascent, which the shortness of his legs rendered laborious, 
 and, when he arrived on the platform at the top, shifted to 
 his left hand the little cross-bow, which was just such a toy 
 as children at that period were permitted to shoot small birds 
 with, and, assuming an attitude of great dignity, gracefully 
 extended his right hand to Sir Kenneth, in an attitude as if 
 he expected he would salute it. But such a result not fol- 
 lowing, he demanded, in a sharp and angry tone of voice, 
 " Soldier, wherefore renderest thou not to Nectabanus the 
 homage due to his dignity ? Or, is it possible that thou 
 canst have forgotten him ?" 
 
 " Great Nectabanus," answered the knight, willing to 
 soothe the creature's humor, " that weredifficult for any one 
 who has ever looked upon thee. Pardon me, however, that, 
 being a soldier upon my post, with my lance in my hand, I 
 may not give to one of thy puissance the advantage of com- 
 ing within my guard, or of mastering my weapon. Suffice 
 it, that I reverence thy dignity, and submit myself to thee 
 as humbly as a man-at-arms in my place may." 
 
 ''It shall suffice," said Nectabanus, "so that you pres- 
 ently attend me to the presence of those who have sent ma 
 hither to summon you.^' 
 
 "Great sir," replied the knight, "neither in this can I 
 
THE TALISMAN 136 
 
 gratify thee, for my orders are to abide by this banner till 
 daybreak ; so I pray you to hold me excused in that matter 
 also.'" 
 
 So saying, he resumed his walk upon the platform ; but 
 the dwarf did not suifer him so easily to escape from his 
 importunity. 
 
 " Look you," he said, placing himself before Sir Kenneth, 
 so as to interrupt his way, " either obey me, sir knight, as in 
 duty bound, or I will lay the command upon thee, in the 
 name of one whose beauty could call down the genii from 
 their sphere, and whose grandeur could command the immor- 
 tal race when they had descended." 
 
 A wild and improbable conjecture arose in the knight's 
 mind, but he repelled it. It was impossible, he thought, 
 that the lady of his love should have sent him such a mes- 
 sage by siich a messenger ; yet his voice trembled as he said, 
 " Go to, ISTectabanus. Tell me at once, and as a true man, 
 whether this sublime lady of whom thou speakest be other 
 than the houri with whose assistance I beheld thee sweeping 
 the chapel at Engaddi ? " 
 
 " How ! presumptuous knight," replied the dwarf, 
 "think'st thou the mistress of our own royal affections, the 
 sharer of our greatness, and the partner of our comeliness, 
 would demean herself by laying charge on such a vassal as 
 thou ? No, highly as thou art honored, thou hast not yet 
 deserved the notice of Queen Guenevra, the lovely bride of 
 Arthur, from whose high seat even princes seem but pig- 
 mies. But look thou here, and as thou knowest or disown- 
 est this token, so obey or refuse her commands who hath 
 deigned to impose them on thee." 
 
 So saying, he placed in the knight's hands a ruby ring, 
 which, even in the moonlight, he had no difficulty to recog- 
 nize as that which usually graced the finger of the high-born 
 lady to whose service he had devoted himself. Could he 
 have doubted truth of the token, he would have been con- 
 vinced by the small knot of carnation-colored ribbon which 
 was fastened to the ring. This was his lady's favorite color, 
 and more than once had he himself, assuming it for tliat of 
 his own liveries, caused the carnation to triumph over all 
 other hues in the lists and in the battle. 
 
 Sir Kenneth was struck nearly mute by seeing such a token 
 in such hands. 
 
 '*' In the name of all that is sacred, from whom didst thou 
 receive this witness ? " said the knight. " Bring, if thou 
 canst, thy wavering understanding to a right settlement for 
 
136 WAVBltLET NOVELS 
 
 a minute or two, and tell me the person by whom thou art 
 sent, and the real purpose of thy message ; and take heed 
 what thou say'st, for this is no subject for buffoonery." 
 
 "Fond and foolish knight/' said the dwarf, *' wouldst 
 thou know more of this matter than that thou art honored 
 with commands from a princess, delivered to thee by a king ? 
 We list not to parley with thee farther than to command 
 thee, in the name and by the power of that ring, to follow 
 us to her who is the owner of the ring. Every minute that 
 thou tarriest is a crime against thy allegiance." 
 
 " Good Nectabanus, bethink thyself," said the knight. 
 " Can my lady know where and upon what duty I am this 
 night engaged ? Is she aware that my life — pshaw, why 
 should I speak of life ? — but that my honor depends on my 
 guarding this banner till daybreak, and can it be her wish 
 that I should leave it even to pay homage to her ? It is im- 
 possible ; the princess is pleased to be merry with her servant, 
 in sending him such a message, and I must think so the 
 rather that she hath chosen such a messenger." 
 
 " Oh, keep your belief," said Nectabanus, turning round 
 as if to leave the platform ; " it is little to me whether you 
 be traitor or true man to this royal lady ; so fare thee well.'' 
 
 " Stay — stay — I entreat you stay," said Sir Kenneth ; 
 *' answer me but one question — Is the lady who sent' thee 
 near to this place ? " 
 
 " What signifies it ?" said the dwarf. " Ought fidelity 
 to reckon furlongs, or miles, or leagues, like the poor cou- 
 rier, who is paid for his labor by the distance which he 
 traverses ? Nevertheless, thou soul of suspicion, I tell thee, 
 the fair owner of the ring, now sent to so unworthy a vassal, 
 in whom there is neither truth nor courage, is not more dis- 
 tant from this place than this arblast can send a bolt." 
 
 The knight gazed again on the ring, as if to ascertain that 
 there was no possible falsehood in the token. " Tell me," he 
 said to the dwarf, " is my presence required for any length 
 of time?" 
 
 "Time!" answered Nectabanus, in his flighty manner; 
 " what call you time ? I see it not — I feel it not ; it is but 
 a shadowy name — a succession of breathings measured forth 
 by night by the clank uf a bell, by da}' by a shadow crossing 
 along a diai-stone. Know'st thou not a true knight's time 
 should only be reckoned by the deeds that he performs in 
 behalf of God and his lady." 
 
 " The words of truth, though in the mouth of folly," said 
 the knight. " And doth my lady really summon me to some 
 
THE TALISMAN m 
 
 deed of action in her name and for her sake ? and may it not 
 be postponed for even the few hours till daybreak ? " 
 
 "She requires thy presence instantly," said the dwarf, 
 *' and without the loss of so much time as would be told by 
 ten grains of the sand-glass. Hearken, thou cold-blooded 
 and suspicious knight, these are her very words — ' Tell him 
 that the hand which dropped roses can bestow laurels.' " 
 
 This allusion to tlieir meeting in the chapel of Engaddi 
 sent a thousand recollections through Sir Kenneth's brain, 
 and convinced him that the message delivered by the dwarf 
 was genuine. The rosebuds, withered as they were, were 
 still treasured under his cuirass, and nearest to his heart. 
 He paused, and could not resolve to forego an opportunity 
 — the only one which might ever offer — to gain grace in her 
 Byes whom he had installed as sovereign of his affections. 
 The dwarf, in the meantime, augmented his confusion by 
 insisting either that he must return the ring or instantly 
 \ttend him. 
 
 " Hold — hold — yet a moment hold," said the knight, and 
 proceeded to mutter to himself — "Am I either the subject 
 or slave of King Richard, more than as a free knight sworn 
 to the service of the Crusade ? And whom have I come 
 hither to honor with lance and sword ? Our holy cause and 
 my transcendent lady ! " 
 
 " The ring — the ring ! " exclaimed the dwarf, impatiently 
 — "false and slothful knight, return the ring, which thou 
 art unworthy to touch or to look upon." 
 
 "A moment — a moment, good Nectabanus," said Sir 
 Kenneth ; " disturb not my thoughts. What if the Saracens 
 were just now to attack our lines ? Should I stay here like 
 a sworn vassal of England, watching that her king's pride 
 suffered no humiliation, or should I speed to the breach, 
 and fight for the Cross ? To the breach, assuredly ; and 
 next to the cause of God, come the commands of my liege 
 lady. And yet, Coeur-de-Lion's behest — my own promise ! 
 Nectabanus, I conjure thee once more to say, are you to 
 conduct me far from hence ? " 
 
 " But to yonder pavilion ; and, since you must needs 
 know," replied Nectabanus, " the moon is glimmering on 
 the gilded ball which crowns its roof, and which is worth a 
 king's ransom." 
 
 " I can return in an instant," said the knight, shutting 
 his eyes desperately to all farther consequences. " I can 
 he-dv from thence the bay of my dog, if any one approacheg 
 Vhe standard ; I will throw myself at my lady's feet, and 
 
138 WA VER LEY NOVEL S 
 
 pray her leave to return to conclude my watch. Here, Roswal 
 (calling his hound, and throwing down his mantle by the 
 side of the standard-spear), watch thou here, and let no one 
 approach." 
 
 The majestic dog looked in his master's face, as if to be 
 sure that he understood his charge, then sat down beside 
 the mantle, with ears erect and head raised, like a sentinel, 
 understanding perfectly the purpose for which he was sta- 
 tioned there. 
 
 " Come now, good Nectabanus," said the knight, " let us 
 hasten to obey the commands thou hast brought.'' 
 
 " Haste he that will/' said the dwarf, sullenly ; " thou 
 hast not been in haste to obey my summons, nor can I walk 
 fast enough to follow your long strides : you do not walk 
 like a man, but bound like an ostrich in the desert." 
 
 There were but two ways of conquering the obstinacy of 
 Nectabanus, who, as he spoke, diminished his walk into a 
 snail pace. For bribes Sir Kenneth had no means, for 
 soothing no time ; so in his impatience he snatched the dwarf 
 up from the ground, and bearing him along, notwithstand- 
 ing his entreaties and his fear, reached nearly to the pavilion 
 pointed out as that of the Queen. Jn approaching it, how- 
 ever, the Scot observed there was a small guard of soldiers 
 sitting on the ground, who had been concealed from him by 
 the intervening tents. Wondering that the clash of his own 
 armor had not yet attracted their attention, and supposing 
 that his motions might, on the present occasion, require to 
 be conducted with secrecy, he placed the little panting guide 
 upon the ground to recover his breath and point out what 
 was next to be done. Nectabanus was both frightened and 
 angry ; but he had felt himself as completely in the power 
 of the robust knight as an owl in the claws of an eagle, and 
 therefore cared not to provoke him to any farther display of 
 his strength. 
 
 He made no complaints, therefore, of the usage he had 
 received, but turning amongst the labyrinth of tents, he led 
 the knight in silence to the opposite side of the pavilion, 
 wliich thus screened them from the observation of the ward- 
 ers, who seemed either too negligent or too sleepy to dis- 
 charge their duty with much accuracy. Arrived there, the 
 dwarf raised the under part of the canvass from the ground, 
 and made signs to Sir Kenneth that he should introduce 
 himself to the inside of the tent, by creeping under it. The 
 knight hesitated : there seemed an indecorum in thus pri- 
 vately introducing himself into a pavilion pitched, doubt- 
 
THE TALISMAN 139 
 
 less, for the accommodation of noble ladies ; but lie recalled 
 to remembrance the assured tokens which the dwarf had 
 exhibited, and concluded that it was not for him to dispute 
 his lady's pleasure. 
 
 He stoopt accordingly, crept beneath the canvass inclosure 
 of the tent, and heard the dwarf whisper from without — 
 " Kemain there until I call thee/' 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 You talk of gaiety and innocence I 
 Tht.' moment when the fatal fruit was eaten, 
 They parted ne'er to meet again ; and malice 
 Has ever since been playmate to light gaiety, 
 From the first moment when the smiling infant 
 Destroys the flower or butterfly he toys with 
 To the last chuckle of the dying miser, 
 Who on his deathbed laughs his last to hear 
 His wealthy neighbor has become a bankrupt. 
 
 Old Play. 
 
 Sir Kenneth was left for some minutes alone and in dark- 
 ness. Here was another interruption, which must prolong 
 his absence from his post, and he began almost to repent the 
 facility with which he had been induced to quit it. But to 
 return without seeing the Lady Edith was now not to be 
 thought of. He had committed a breach of military dis- 
 cipline, and was determined at least to prove the reality of 
 the seductive expectations which had tempted him to do so 
 Meanwhile, his situation was unpleasant. There was no 
 light to show him into what sort of apartment he had been 
 led ; the Lady Edith was in immediate attendance on the 
 Queen of England, and the discovery of his having intro- 
 duced himself thus furtively into the royal pavilion might, 
 were it discovered, lead to much and dangerous suspicion. 
 While he gave way to these unpleasant reflections, and be- 
 gan almost to wish that he could achieve his retreat unob- 
 served, he heard a noise of female voices, laughing, whis- 
 pering, and speaking in an adjoining apartment, from which, 
 as the sounds gave him reason to judge, he could only be 
 separated by a canvass partition. Lamps were burning, as 
 he might perceive by the shadowy light which extended itself 
 even to his side of the veil which divided the tent, and he 
 could see shades of several figures sitting and moving in the 
 adjoining apartment. It cannot be termed discourtesy in 
 Sir Kenneth that, situated as he was, he overheard a conver- 
 sation in which he found himself deeply interested. 
 
 " Call her — call her, for Our Lady's sake," said the voice 
 of one of these laughing invisibles. '' Nectabanus, thou 
 140 
 
THE TALISMAN 141 
 
 shalt be made ambassador to Prester John's conrt^ to shov 
 them how wisely thou canst discharge thee of a mission." 
 
 The shrill tone of the dwarf was heard, yet so much sub- 
 dued, that Sir Kenneth could not understand what he said, 
 except that he spoke something of the means of merriment 
 given to the guard. 
 
 " But how shall we rid us of the spirit which Nectabanus 
 hath raised, my maidens ?" 
 
 " Hear me, royal madam/' said auothe? voice ; " if the 
 Bage and princely Nectabanus be not over-jealous of his most 
 transcendent bride and empress, let us send her to get us rid 
 of this insolent knight-errant, who can be so easily persuaded 
 that high-born dames may need the use of his insolent and 
 overweening valor." 
 
 " It were but justice, methinks," replied another, ''that 
 the Princess Guenevra should dismiss, by her courtesy, him 
 whom her husband's wisdom has been able to entice hither." 
 
 Struck to the heart with shame and resentment at what 
 he had heard. Sir Kenneth was about to attempt his escape 
 from the tent at all hazards, when what followed arrested his 
 purpose. 
 
 " Nay, truly," said the first speaker, ''our cousin Edith 
 must first learn how this vaunted, wight hath conducted him- 
 self, and we must reserve the power of giving her ocular 
 proof that he hath failed in his duty. It may be a lesson 
 will do good upon her ; for, credit me, Calista, I have some- 
 times thought she has let this Northern adventurer sit 
 nearer her heart than prudence would sanction." 
 
 One of the other voices was then heard to mutter some 
 thing of the Lady Edith's prudence and wisdom. 
 
 " Prudence, wench ! " was the reply. " It is mere pride 
 and the desire to be thought more rigid than any of us 
 Nay, I will not quit my advantage. You know well that> 
 when she has us at fault, no one 3an, in a civil way, lay your 
 error before you more precisely than can my Lady Edith. 
 But here she comes." 
 
 A figure, as if entering the apartment, cast upon the parti- 
 tion a shade, which glided along slowly until it mixed with 
 those which already clouded it. Despite of the bitter dis- 
 appointment which he had experienced, despite the insult 
 and injury with which it seemed he had been visited by the 
 malice, or, at best, by the idle humor, of Queen Berengaria 
 (for he already concluded that she who spoke loudest, and 
 in a commanding tone, was the wife of Richard), the knight 
 felt something so soothing to his feelings in learning that 
 
142 W'A VERLEY N O VEL S W 
 
 Edith had been no partner to the fraud practised on him, 
 and so interesting to his curiosity in tlie scene which waa 
 about to take place, that, instead of prosecuting his more 
 prudent purpose of an instant retreat, he looked anxiously, 
 on the contrary, for some rent or crevice by means of which 
 he might be made eye as well as ear-witness to what was to 
 go forward. 
 
 " Surely,^' said he to himself, " the Queen, who hath been 
 pleased for an idle frolic to endanger my reputation, and 
 perhaps my life, cannot complain if I avail myself of the 
 chance which fortune seems willing to afford me, to obtain 
 knowledge of her further intentions." 
 
 It seemed, in the meanwhile, as if Edith were waiting for 
 the commands of the Queen, and as if the other were reluc- 
 tant to speak, for fear of being unable to command her 
 laughter and that of her companions ; for Sir Kenneth could 
 only distinguish a sound as of suppressed tittering and mer- 
 riment. 
 
 "Your Majesty," said Edith, at last, ''seems in a merry 
 mood, though, methinks, the hour of night prompts a sleepy 
 one. I was well disposed bed ward, when I had your Majesty's 
 commands to attend you." 
 
 " I will not long delay you, cousin, from your repose," 
 said the Queen ; " though I fear you will sleep less soundly 
 when I tell you your wager is lost." 
 
 ''Nay, royal madam," said Edith, "this, surely, is dwell- 
 ing on a jest which has rather been worn out. I laid no 
 wager, however it was your Majesty's pleasure to suppose, or 
 to insist, that I did so," 
 
 " Nay, now, despite our pilgrimage, Satan is strong with 
 you, my gentle cousin, and prompts thee to leasing. Can 
 you deny that you gaged your ruby ring against my golden 
 bracelet that yonder Knight of the Libbard, or how call 
 you him, could not be seduced from his post ?" 
 
 " Your Majesty is too great for me to gainsay you," re- 
 plied Edith ; " but these ladies can, if they will, bear me 
 witness that it was your Highness who proposed such a 
 wager, and took the ring from my finger, even while I was 
 declaring that I did not think it maidenly to gage anything 
 on such a subject." 
 
 "Nay, but, my Lady Edith," said another voice, "you 
 must needs grant, under your favor, that you expressed your- 
 self very confident of the valor of that same Knight of the 
 Leopard." 
 
 "And if I did, minion," said Edith, angrily, "is that a 
 
THE TALISMAN 143 
 
 good reason why thou shouldst put in thy word to fliitter her 
 Majesty's humor ? I spoke of that knight but as all men 
 speak who have seen liim in the iield, and had no more in- 
 terest in defending than thou in detracting from him. In a 
 camp, what can women speak of save soldiers and deeds of 
 arms ? " 
 
 " The noble Lady Edith," said a third voice, " hath never 
 forgiven Calista and me, since we told your Majesty that she 
 dropped two rosebuds in the chapel." 
 
 ''If your Majesty," said Edith, in a tone which Sir Ken- 
 neth could judge to be that of respectable remonstrance, 
 *' have no other commands for me than to hear the gibes of 
 your waiting-women, I must crave your permission to with- 
 draw." 
 
 "Silence, Florise," said the Queen, "and let not our in- 
 dulgence lead you to forget the difference betwixt yourself 
 and the kinswoman of England. But you, my dear cousin," 
 she continued, resuming her tone of raillery, " how can you, 
 who are so good-natured, begrudge us poor wretches a few 
 minutes' laughing, when we have had so many days devoted 
 to weeping and gnashing of teeth ? " 
 
 "Great be your mirth, royal lady," said Edith; "yet 
 would I be content not to smile for the rest of my life rather 
 than " 
 
 She stopped, apparently out of respect ; but Sir Kenneth 
 could hear that she was in much agitation. 
 
 " Forgive me," said Berengaria, a thoughtless but good- 
 humored princess of the house of Navarre ; " but what is the 
 great offense after all ? h young knight has been wiled 
 hither ; has stolen — or has been stolen — from his post, which 
 no one will disturb in his absence, for the sake of a fair 
 lady ; for, to do your champion justice, sweet one, the wis- 
 dom of Nectabanus could conjure him hither in no name but 
 yours." 
 
 "Gracious Heaven ! your Majesty does not say so ?" said 
 Edith, in a voice of alarm quite different from the agitation 
 she had previously evinced — "you cannot say so, consist- 
 ently with respect for your own honor and for mine, your 
 husband's kinswoman ! Say you were jesting with me, my 
 royal mistress, and forgive me that I could, even for a 
 moment, think it possible you could be in earnest ! " 
 
 "The Lady Edith," said the Queen, in a displeased tone 
 of voice, " regrets the ring we have won of her. We will 
 restore the pledge to you, gentle cousin, only you must 
 not grudge us in turn a little triumph over the wisdom 
 
144 WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 wrhich has been so often spread over us, as a banner over a 
 host/' 
 
 '•'A triumph !" exclaimed Edith, indignautl}^ — '-'a triumpii 1 
 The triumph will be with the infidel, when he hears tliat 
 the Queen of England can make the reputation of her hus- 
 band's kinswoman the subject of a light frolic." 
 
 " You are angry, fair cousin, at losing your favorite ring," 
 said the Queen. "Come, since you grudge to pay your 
 wager, we will renounce our right; it was your name and 
 that pledge brought him hither, and we care not for the bait 
 after the fish is caught."' 
 
 "Madam," replied Edith, impatiently, "you know well 
 that your Grace could not wish for anything of mine but it 
 becomes instantly yours. But I would give a bushel of 
 rubies ere ring or name of mine had been used to bring a 
 brave man into a fault, and perhaps to disgrace and punish- 
 ment." 
 
 "0, it is for the safety of our true knight that we fear ? " 
 said the Queen. " You rate our power too low, fair cousin, 
 when you speak of a life being lost for a frolic of ours. 0, 
 Lady Editli, others have influence on the iron breasts of 
 warriors as well as you : the heart even of a lion is made of 
 flesh not of stone ; and, believe me, I have interest enough 
 with Richard to save this knight, in whose fate Lady Edith is 
 so deeply concerned, from the penalty of disobeying his 
 royal commands." 
 
 " For the love of the blessed cross, most royal lady," said 
 Edith — and Sir Kenneth, with feelings which it were hard 
 to miravel, heard her prostrate herself at the Queen's feet — 
 " for the love of our blessed Lady and of every holy saint in 
 the calendar, beware what you do ! You know not King 
 Kichard — yon have been but shortly wedded to him : your 
 breath might as well combat the west wind when it is wild- 
 est as your words persuade my royal kinsman to pardon a 
 military offense. Oh ! for God's sake, dismiss this gentle- 
 man, if indeed yon have lured him hither ! I could almost 
 be content to rest with the shame of having invited him, 
 did I know that he was returned again where his duty calls 
 him." 
 
 "Arise, cousin — arise," said Queen Berengaria, "and be 
 assured all will be better than you think. Rise, dear Edith ; 
 I am sorry I have played my foolery with a knight in whom 
 you take such deep interest. Nay, wring not thy hands ; I 
 will believe thou carest not for him — believe anything 
 rather than see thee look so wretchedly miserable. I tell 
 
THE TALISMAN 145 
 
 thee 1 will take the blame on myself with King Richard in 
 behalf of thy fair Northern friend — thine acquaintance. I 
 would say, since thou own'st him not as a friend. Nay, 
 look not so reproachfully. We will send Nectabanus to 
 dismiss this Knight of the Standard to his post ; and we 
 ourselves will grace him on some future day, to make 
 amends for his wild-goose chase. He is, I warrant, but lying 
 perdu in some neighboring tent.'^ 
 
 " By my crown of lilies and my scepter of a specially good 
 water-reed," said Nectabanus, " your Majesty is mistaken : 
 he is nearer at hand than yon wot — he lieth ensconced there 
 behind that canvass partition." 
 
 ''And within hearing of each word we have said!*' ex- 
 claimed the Queen, in her turn violently surjDrised and agi- 
 tated. *' Out, monster of folly and malignity ! " 
 
 As she uttered these words, Nectabanus fled from the 
 pavilion with a yell of such a nature as leaves it still doubt- 
 ful whether Berengaria had confined her rebuke to words, 
 or added some more emphatic expression of her displeasure. 
 
 "What can now be done ?" said the Queen to Edith, in a 
 whisper of undisguised uneasiness. 
 
 " That which must," said Edith, firmly. '' We must see 
 this gentleman, and place ourselves in his mercy." 
 
 So saying, she began hastily to undo a curtain whicii at 
 one place covered an entrance or communication. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, forbear ; consider," said the Queen, 
 " my apartment — our dress — the hour — my honor ! " 
 
 But ere she could detail her remonstrances, the curtain 
 : fell, and there was no division any longer betwixt the armed 
 knight and the party of ladies. The warmth of an Eastern 
 night occasioned the undress of Queen Berengaria and her 
 household to be rather more simple and unstudied than their 
 station, and the presence of a male spectator of rank, re- 
 quired. This the Queen remembered, and with a loud 
 shriek fled from the apartment where Sir Kenneth was dis- 
 j closed to view in a compartment of the ample pavilion, now 
 ! no longer separated from that in which they stood. The 
 grief and agitation of the Lady Edith, as well as the deep 
 interest she felt in a hasty explanation with the Scottish 
 knight, perhaps occasioned her forgetting that her locks 
 were more disheveled, and her person less heedfully cov- 
 ered, than was the wont of high-born damsels, in an age 
 which was not, after all, the most prudish or scrupulous 
 - period of the ancient time. A thin loose garment of pink- 
 colored silk made the principal part of her vestments, witb 
 ic 
 
146 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 Oriental slippers, into which she had hastily thrust her bare 
 feet, and a scarf hurriedly and loosely thrown about her 
 shoulders. Her head had no other covering than the veil 
 of rich and disheveled locks falling round it on every side, 
 that half hid a countenance which a mingled sense of mod- 
 esty, and of resentment, and other deep and agitating feel- 
 ings, had covered with crimson. . ||_ 
 
 But although Edith felt her situation with all that deli- 
 cacy which is her sex's greatest charm, it did not seem that 
 for a moment she placed her own bashfulness in comparison 
 with the duty which, as she thought, she owed to him who 
 had been led into error and danger on her account. She 
 drew, indeed, her scarf more closely over her neck and 
 bosom, and she hastily laid from her hand a lamp, Avhich 
 shed too much luster over her figure ; but, while Sir Ken- 
 neth stood motionless on the same spot in which he was first 
 discovered, she rather stepped towards than retired from 
 him, as she exclaimed, " Hasten to your post, valiant 
 knight ; you are deceived in being trained hither. Ask no 
 questions/* 
 
 '' I need ask none,'* said the knight, sinking upon one 
 knee, witii the reverential devotion of a saint at the altar, 
 and bending his eyes on the ground, lest his looks should 
 increase the lady's embarrassment. 
 
 ^ *' Have you heard all ?" said Edith, impatiently. " Gra- 
 cious saints ! then wherefore wait you here, when each 
 minute that passes is loaded with dishonor ?" 
 
 " I have heard that I am dishonored, lady, and I have 
 heard it from you," answered Kenneth. " What reck I how 
 soon punishment follows ? I have but one petition to you, 
 and then I seek, among the sabers of tlie infidels, whether ; 
 dishonor may not be washed out with blood." 
 
 " Do not so, neither," said the lady. " Be wise : dally 
 not here — all may yet be well, if you will but use despatch." 
 
 " I_ wait but for your forgiveness," said the knight, still 
 kneeling, " for my presumption in believing that my poor 
 services could have been required or valued by you." 
 
 '' I do forgive you. 0, I have nothing to forgive ! I 
 have been the means of injuring you. But 0, begone ! I 
 will forgive — I will value you — that is, as I value every 
 brave Crusader — if you will but begone ! " 
 
 " Receive, first, this precious yet fatal pledge," said the 
 knight, tendering the ring to Edith, who now showed ges- 
 tures of impatience. 
 
 ** Oh no — no," she said, declining to receive it. '' Keep 
 
THE TALISMAN 147 
 
 it— Veep it as a mark of my regard — my regret, I would say. 
 begone, if not for your own sake, for mine ! " 
 
 Almost recompensed for the loss even of lionor, which her 
 voice had denounced to him, by the interest which she 
 seemed to testify in his safety. Sir Kenneth rose from his 
 knee, and, casting a momentary glance on Edith, bowed low 
 and seemed about to withdraw. At the same instant, that 
 maidenly bashfulness, which the energy of Edith's feelings 
 had till then triumphed over, became conqueror in its turn, 
 and she hastened from the apartment, extinguishing her 
 lamp as she went, and leaving, in Sir Kenneth's thoughts, 
 both mental and natural gloom behind her. 
 
 She must be obeyed was tlie first distinct idea which waked 
 him from his reverie, and he hastened to the place by which 
 he had entered the pavilion. To pass under the canvass in 
 the manner he had entered required time and attention, and 
 he made a readier aperture by slitting the canvass wall with 
 his poniard. When in the free air, he felt rather stupified 
 and overpowered by a conflict of sensations than able to as- 
 certain what was the real import of the whole. He was 
 obliged to spur himself to action, by recollecting that the 
 commands of the Lady Edith had required haste. Even 
 then, engaged as he was amongst tent-ropes and tents, he 
 was compelled to move with caution until he should regain 
 the path or avenue aside from which the dwarf had led him, 
 in order to escape the observation of the guards before the 
 Queen's pavilion ; and he was obliged also to move slowly, 
 and with precaution, to avoid giving an alarm, either by 
 falling or by the clashing of his armor. A thin cloud had 
 obscured the moon, too, at the very instant of his leaving 
 the tent, and Sir Kenneth had to struggle with this incon- 
 venience at a moment when the dizziness of his head and 
 the fulness of his heart scarce left him powers of intelligence 
 suflficient to direct his motions. 
 
 But at once sounds came upon his ear which instantly 
 recalled him to the full energy of his faculti s. These pro- 
 ceeded from the Mount of St. George. He heard first a 
 single fierce, angry, and savage bark, which was immediately 
 followed by a yell of agony. No deer ever bounded with a 
 wilder start at'^ the voice of Roswal than did Sir Kenneth at 
 what he feared was the death-cry of that noble hound, from 
 whom no ordinary injury could have extracted even the 
 slightest acknowledgment of pain. He surmounted the space 
 which divided him from the avenue, and, having attained it, 
 began to run towards the mount, although loaded with his 
 
]48 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 mail, faster than most men could have accompanied him 
 even if unarmed, relaxed not his pace for the steep sides of 
 the artificial mound, and in a few minutes stood on the plat- 
 form upon its summit. 
 
 The moon broke forth at this moment, and showed him 
 that the standard of England was vanished, that the spear 
 on which it had floated lay broken on the ground, and be- 
 side it was his faithful hound, apparently in the agonies of 
 death. 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 All my long arrear of honor lost, 
 I'd up in youth, and hoarded up for age ! 
 Hath honor's fountain then suck'd up tlie stream? 
 He hath ; and hooting boys may barefoot pass, 
 And gather pebbles from tlie naked ford, 
 
 Don Sebastian. 
 
 After a torrent of afflicting sensations, by which he was 
 at first almost stunned and confounded, Sir Kenneth's first 
 thought was to look for the authors of this violation of the 
 English banner ; but in no direction could he see traces of 
 them. His next, which to some persons, but scarce to any 
 who have made intimate acquaintances among the canine 
 race, may appear strange, was to examine the condition of 
 his faithful Roswal, mortally wounded, as it seemed, in dis- 
 charging the duty which his master had been seduced to 
 abandon. He caressed the dying animal, who, faithful to 
 the last, seemed to forget his own pain in the satisfaction he 
 received from his master's presence, and continued wagging 
 his tail and licking his hand, even while by low moaningshe 
 expressed that his agony was increased by the attempts 
 which Sir Kenneth made to withdraw from the wound the 
 fragment of the lance, or javelin, with which it had been 
 inflicted ; then redoubled his feeble endearments, as if fear- 
 ing he had offended his master by showing a sense of the pain 
 to which his interference had subjected him. There was 
 something in the display of the dying creature's attachment 
 which mixed as a bitter ingredient with the sense of dis- 
 grace and desolation by which Sir Kenneth was oppressed. 
 His only friend seemed removed from him, just when he had 
 incurred the contempt and hatred of all besides. The 
 knight's strength of mind gave way to a burst of agonized 
 distress, and he groaned and wept aloud. 
 
 While he thus indulged his grief, a clear and solemn voice, 
 close beside him, pronounced these words in the sonorous 
 tone of the readers of the mosque, and in the Ungua franca 
 mutually understood by Christians and Saracens : 
 
 " Adversity is like the period of the former and of the lat- 
 ter rain — cold,comfortless unfriendly to man and to animal j 
 U9 
 
150 WAVERLEV NOVELS 
 
 yet from that season have their birth the flower and the 
 fruit — the date, the rose, ai^l the pomegranate." 
 
 Sir Kenneth of the Leop:!r 1 turned towards the speaker, 
 and beheld the Arabian physician, who, approaching un- 
 heard, had seated himself a little behind him cross-legged, 
 and uttered with gravity, yet not without a tone of sympathy, 
 the moral sentences of consolation with which the Koran and 
 its commentators supplied him ; for, in the East, wisdom is 
 held to consist less in a display of the sage's own inventive 
 talents than in his ready memory, and happy application of, 
 and reference to, " that which is written. 
 
 Ashamed at being surprised in a womanlike expression of 
 sorrow. Sir Kenneth dashed his tears indignantly aside, and 
 again busied himself with his dying favorite. 
 
 " The poet hath s:-id/' continued the Arab, without no- 
 ticing the knight's averted looks and sullen deportment, 
 " the ox for the field and the camel from the desert. Were 
 not the hand of the leech fitter than that of the soldier to 
 cure wounds, though less able to inflict them ? " 
 
 " This patient. Hakim, is beyond thy help, " said Sir 
 Kenneth; ''and, besides, he is, by thy law, an unclean 
 animal." 
 
 "Where Allah hath deigned to bestow life, and a sense of 
 pain and pleasure," said the physician, "it were sinful 
 pride should the sage, whom He has enlightened, refuse to 
 prolong existence or assuage agony. To the sage, the cure 
 of a miserable groom, of a poor dog, and of a conquering 
 monarch are events of little distinction. Let me examine 
 this wounded animal." 
 
 Sir Kenneth acceded in silence, and the physician in- 
 spected and handled Roswal's wound with as much care and 
 attention as if he had been a human being. He then took 
 forth a case of instruments, and, by the judicious and skilful 
 application of pincers, withdrew^ from the wounded shoulder 
 the fragment of the w^eapon, and stopped with styptics and 
 bandages the effusion of blood which followed ; the creature 
 all the w^hile suffering him patiently to perform these kind 
 offices, as if he had been aware of his kind intentions. 
 
 "The animal may be cured," said El Hakim, addressing 
 himself to Sir Kenneth, " if you will permit me to carry him 
 to my tent, and treat him wdth the care wdiich the nobleness 
 of his nature deserves. For know, that thy servant Adonbeo 
 is no less skilful in the race, and pedigree, and distinctions 
 of good dogs and of noble steeds than in the diseases which 
 affect the human race." 
 
TEE TALISMAN 151 
 
 *' Take him with you/' said the knight. ''I bestow him 
 on you freely if he recovers. I owe thee a reward for attend- 
 ance on my squire, and have nothing else to pay it with. 
 For myself, I will never again wind bugle or halloo to 
 hound." 
 
 The Arabian made no reply, but gave a signal with a 
 clapping of his hands, which was instantly answered by the 
 appearance of two black slaves. He gave them his orders 
 in Arabic, received the answer, that " to hear was to obey," 
 when, taking the animal in their arms, they removed him 
 without much resistance on his part ; for, though his eyes 
 turned to his master, he was too weak to struggle. 
 
 " Fare thee well, Roswal, then," said Sir Kenneth — ''fare 
 thee well, my last and only friend ; thou art too noble a 
 possession to be retained by one such as I must in future call 
 myself. I would," he said, as the slaves retired, '• that, 
 dying as he is, I could exchange conditions with that noble 
 animal I " 
 
 " It is written," answered the Arabian, although the 
 exclamation had not been addressed to him, " that all 
 creatures are fashioned for the service of man ; and the 
 master of the earth speaketh folly when he would exchange, 
 in his impatience, his hopes here and to come for the servile 
 condition of an inferior being." 
 
 " A dog who dies in discharging his duty," said the 
 knight, sternly, " is better than a man who survives the 
 desertion of it. Leave me. Hakim ; thou hast, on this side 
 of miracle, the most wonderful science which man ever 
 possessed, but the wounds of the spirit are beyond thy 
 power." 
 
 " Not if the patient will explain his calamity, and be 
 guided by the physician," said Adonbec el Hakim. 
 
 " Know, then," said Sir Kenneth, " since thou art so 
 importunate, that last night the banner of England was 
 displayed from this mound — I was its appointed guardian ; 
 morning is now breaking — there lies the broken banner- 
 spear, the standard itself is lost, and here sit I a living 
 man!" ^ .... 
 
 *'How!" said El Hakim, examining him; *'thy armor 
 is whole, there is no blood on thy weapons, and report speaks 
 thee one unlikely to return thus "from fight. Thou hast been 
 trained from thy post — ay, trained by the rosy cheek and 
 black eye of one of those houris to whom you Nazarenes vow 
 rather such service as is due to Allah than such love as may 
 lawfully be rendered to forms of clay like our own. It has 
 
152 WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 been thus assuredly ; for so hath man ever falren, even since 
 the days of Sultan Adam.*' 
 
 " And if it were so, physician/' said Sir Kenneth, sullenly, 
 ** what remedy ? '* 
 
 " Knowledge is the parent of power," said El Hakim, "as 
 valor supplies strength. Listen to me. Man is not as a 
 tree, bound to one spot of earth ; nor is he framed to cling 
 to one bare rock, like the scarce animated shell-fish. Thine 
 own Christian writings command thee, when persecuted in 
 one city, to flee to another ; and we Moslem also know that 
 Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, driven forth from the 
 holy city of Mecca, found his refuge and his helpmates at 
 Medina." 
 
 '^ And what dees this concern me ?" said the Scot. 
 
 " Much," answered the physician. " Even the sage flies 
 the tempest which he cannot control. Use thy speed, there- 
 fore, and fly from the vengeance of Richard to the shadow 
 of Saladin's victorious banner." 
 
 " I might indeed hide my dishonor," said Sir Kenneth, 
 ironically, " in a camp of infidel heathens where the very 
 phrase is unknown. But had I not better partake more 
 fully in their reproach ? Does not thy advice stretch so far 
 as to recommend me to take the turban ? Methinks 1 want 
 but apostasy to consummate my infamy." 
 
 " Blaspheme not, Nazarene," said the physician, sternly, 
 ** Saladin makes no converts to the law of the Prophet, 
 save those on whom its precepts shall work conviction. 
 Open thine eyes to the light, and the great Soldan, whose 
 liberality is as boundless as his power, may bestow on thee a 
 kingdom ; remain blinded if thou wilt, and, being one 
 whose second life is doomed to misery, Saladin will yet, for 
 this span of present time, make thee rich and happy. But 
 fear not that thy brows shall be bound with the turban, save 
 at thine own free choice." 
 
 '' My choice were rather," said the knight, ''that my 
 writhen features should blacken, as they are like to do, in 
 this evening's setting sun." 
 
 " Yet thou art not wise, Nazarene," said El Hakim, *' td 
 reject this fair offer ; for I have power with Saladin, and 
 can raise thee high in his grace. Look you, my son ; this 
 Crusade, as you call your wild enterprise, is like a large 
 dromond parting asunder in the waves. Thou thyself hast 
 borne terms of truce from the kings and princes whose force 
 is here assembled to the mighty Soldan, and knew'st not, 
 perchance, the full tenor of thine own errand." 
 
 % 
 
THE TALISMAN Ib'd 
 
 **1 knew not, and I care not," said the knight, im- 
 patiently ; '' what avails it to me that I have been of lute 
 the envoy of princes, when, ere night, I shall be a gibbeted 
 and dishonored corse ? " 
 
 "Nay, I speak that it may not be so with thee," said the 
 physician. ''Saladin is courted on all sides : the combined 
 princes of this league formed against him have made such 
 proposals of composition and peace as, in other circumstances, 
 it might have become his honor to have granted to them. 
 Others have made private offers, on their own separate ac- 
 30unt, to disjoin their forces from the camp of the kings of 
 Frangistan, and even to lend their arms to the defense of 
 the standard of the Prophet. But Saladin will not be served 
 by such treacherous and interested defection. The King of 
 Kings will treat only with the Lion King : Saladin will hold 
 treaty with none but the Melech Ric, and with him he will 
 treat like a prince, or fight like a champion. To Eichard 
 he will yield such conditions of his free liberality as the 
 swords of all Europe could never compel from him by force 
 or terror. He will permit a free pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 
 and all the places where the Nazarenes list to worship ; nay, 
 he will so far share even his empire with his brother Richard, 
 that he will allow Chistian garrisons in the six strongest 
 cities of Palestine, and one in Jerusalem itself, and suffer 
 them to be under the immediate command of the officers of 
 Richard, who, he consentSj shall bear the name of King 
 Guardian of Jerusalem. Yet farther, strange and incredible 
 as you may think it, know, sir knight — for to your honor I 
 can commit even that almost incredible secret — know that 
 Saladin will put a sacred seal on this happy union betwixt 
 the bravest and noblest of Frangistan and Asia, by raising to 
 the rank of his royal spouse a Christian damsel, allied in 
 blood to King Richard, and known by the name of the Lady 
 Edith of Plantagenet."* 
 
 "Ha ! say'st thou ?" exclaimed Sir Kenneth, who listen- 
 ing with indifference and apathy to the preceding part of El 
 Hakim's speech, was touched by this last communication, as 
 the thrill of a nerve, unexpectedly jarred, will awaken the 
 sensation of agony, even in the torpor of palsy. Then, mod- 
 erating his tone, by dint of much effort, he restrained his 
 indignation, and, veiling it under the appearance of con- 
 temptuous doubt, he prosecuted the conversation, in order 
 to get as much knowledge as possible of the plot, as he 
 deemed it, against the honor and happiness of her whom he 
 * See Proposal of Marriage. Note 7. 
 
154 WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 loved not the less that his passion had ruined, apparently, 
 his fortunes, at once, and his honor. "And what Christian,'' 
 he said, with tolerable calmness, " would sanction a union 
 so unnatural as that of a Christian maiden with an unbeliev- 
 ing Saracen ? " 
 
 "Thou art but an ignorant, bigoted Nazarene," said the 
 Hakim. '' Seest thou not how the Mohammedan princes 
 daily intermarry with the noble Nazarene maidens in Spain, 
 without scandal either to Moor or Christian ? And the 
 noble Soldan will, in his full confidence in the blood of 
 Eichard, permit the English maid the freedom which your 
 Frankish manners have assigned to women. He will allow 
 her the free exercise of her religion — seeing that, in very 
 truth, it signifies but little to which faith females are ad- 
 dicted — and he will assign her such place and rank over all 
 the women of his zenana, that she shall be in every respect 
 his sole and absolute queen.'* 
 
 *MVhat!" said Sir Kenneth, " darest thou think, Moslem, 
 that Richard would give his kinswoman — a high-born and 
 virtuous princess — to be at best, the foremost concubine in 
 the haram of a misbeliever ? Know. Hakim, the meanest free 
 Christian noble would scorn, on his child's behalf, such 
 splendid ignominy." 
 
 " Thou errest," said the Hakim : " Philip of France, and 
 Henry of Champagne, and others of Richard's principal 
 allies, have heard the proposal without starting, and have 
 promised, as far as they may, to forward an alliance that 
 may end these wasteful wars ; and the wise arch-priest of 
 Tyre hath undertaken to break the proposal to Richard, not 
 doubting that he shall he able to bring the plan to good issue. 
 The Soldan's wisdom hath as yet kept his proposition secret 
 from others, such as he of Montserrat and the Master of the 
 Templars, because he knows they seek to thrive by Richard's 
 death or disgrace, not by his life or honor. Up, therefore, 
 sir knight, and to horse. I will give thee a scroll which 
 shall advance thee highly with the Soldan ; and deem not 
 that you are leaving your country, or her cause, or her 
 religion, since the interest of the two nionarchs will speedily 
 be the same. To Saladin thy counsel will be most acceptable, 
 since thou canst make him aware of much concerning the 
 marriages of the Christians, the treatment of their wives, 
 and other points of their laws and usages, which, in the 
 course of such treaty, it much concerns him that he should 
 know. The right hand of the Soldan grasps the treasures 
 of the East, and it is the fountain of generosity. Or, if 
 
THE TALISMAN 155 
 
 thou desirest it, Saladin, when allied with England, can 
 have but little difficulty to obtain from Richard not only 
 thy pardon and restoration to favor, but an honorable com- 
 mand in the troops which may be left of tlie King of 
 England's host to maintain their joint government in Pal- 
 estine, Up, then, and mount ; there lies a plain path 
 before thee.'* 
 
 "Hakim," said the Scottish knight, "thou art a man of 
 peace ; also, thou hast saved the life of Richard of England, 
 and, moreover, of my own poor esquire, Strauchan. I have, 
 therefore, heard to an end a matter which, being propounded 
 by another Moslem than myself, I would have cut short with 
 a blow of my dagger. Hakim, in return for thy kindness, I 
 advise thee to see that the Saracen who shall propose to 
 Richard a union betwixt the blood of Plantagenet and that 
 of his accursed race do put on a helmet which is capable to 
 endure such a blow of a battle-ax as that which struck down 
 the gate of Acre. Certes, he will be otherwise placed beyond 
 the reach even of thy skill." 
 
 " Thou art, then, wilfully determined not to fly to the 
 Saracen host ? " said the physician. " Yet, remember, thou 
 stayest to certain destruction ; and the writings of thy law, 
 as well as ours, prohibit man from breaking into the taber- 
 nacle of his own life." 
 
 "God forbid !" replied the Scot, crossing himself ; "but 
 we are also forbidden to avoid the punishment which oui 
 crimes have deserved. And, since so poor are thy thoughts 
 of fidelity. Hakim, it grudges me that I have bestowed my 
 good hound on thee, for, should he live, he will have a master 
 ignorant of his value." 
 
 " A gift that is begrudged is already recalled," said El 
 Hakim, " only we physicians are sworn not to send away a 
 patient uncured. If the dog recover, he is once more 
 yours." 
 
 "Go to. Hakim," answered Sir Kenneth; "men speak 
 not of hawk and hound, when there is but an hour of day- 
 jreaking betwixt them and death. Leave me to recollect 
 aiy sins and reconcile myself to Heaven." 
 : "1 leave thee in thine obstinacy," said the physician: 
 ' ' the mist hides the precipice from those who are doomed to 
 'all over it." 
 
 He withdrew slowly, turning from time to time his head, 
 IS if to observe whether the devoted knight might not recall 
 lim either by word or signal. At last his turbaned figure 
 vas lost among the labyrinth of tents which lay extended 
 
 i 
 
156 WA VERLE T NO VEL8 
 
 beneath, whitening in the pale light of the dawning, before 
 which the moonbeam had now faded away. 
 
 But although the physician Adonbec's words had not made: 
 that impression upon Kenneth wliich the sage desired, they 
 had inspired the Scot with a motive for desiring life, which, 
 dishonored as he conceived himself to be, he was before will- . 
 ing to part from as from a sullied vestment no longer be-' 
 coming his wear. Much that had passed betwixt himself and 
 the hermit, besides what he had observed between the an- 
 chorite and Skeerkohf (or Ilderim), he now recalled to recol- 
 lection, and [all] tended to confirm what the Hakim had 
 told him of the secret article of the treaty. 
 
 •* The reverend impostor ! " he exclaimed to himself — " the 
 hoary hypocrite ! He spoke of the unbelieving husband con- 
 verted by the believing wife ; and what do I know but 
 that the traitor exhibited to the Saracen, accursed of God, 
 the beauties of Edith Plantagenet, that the hound might 
 judge if the princely Christian lady were fit to be admitted 
 into the haram of a misbeliever ? If I had yonder infidel 
 Ilderim, or whatsoever he is called, again in the gripe with 
 which I once held him fast as ever hound held hare, never 
 again should 7ie at least come on errand disgraceful to the 
 honor of Christian king or noble and virtuous maiden. But 
 I — my hours are fast dwindling into minutes ; yet, while I 
 have life and breath, something must be done, and speedily." 
 
 He paused for a few minutes, threw from him his helmet, 
 then strode down the hill, and took the road to King Eich- 
 ftrd's pavilion. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The feather'd songster, chanticleer, 
 
 Had wound his bugle-horn, 
 And told the early villager 
 
 The coming of the morn. 
 King Edward saw the ruddy streaks 
 
 Of light eclipse the gray. 
 And heard the raven's croaking throat 
 
 Proclaim the fated day. 
 " Thou'rt riglit," he said, " for, by the God 
 
 That sits enthroned on high, 
 Charles Bawdwin, and his fellows twain, 
 
 This day shall surely die. " 
 
 Chatterton. 
 
 On the evening on which Sir Kenneth assumed his post, 
 Eichard, after the stormy event which disturbed its tran- 
 quillity, had retired to rest in the plenitude of confidence 
 inspired by his unbounded courage, and the superiority 
 which he had displayed in carrying the point he aimed at in 
 presence of the whole Christian host and its leaders, many 
 of whom, he was aware, regarded in their secret souls the 
 
 I disgrace of the Austrian Duke as a triumph over themselves ; 
 
 ' so that his pride felt gratified that, in prostrating one enemy, 
 
 I he had mortified a hundred. 
 
 Another monarch would have doubled his guards on the 
 
 i evening after such a scene, and kept at least a part of his 
 
 I troops under arms. But Coeur-de-Lion dismissed, upon the 
 occasion, even his ordinary watch, and assigned to his sol- 
 diers a donative of wine to celebrate his recovery, and to 
 drink to the banner of St, George ; and his quarter of the 
 camp would have assumed a character totally devoid of 
 vigilance and military preparation, but that Sir Thomas de 
 Vaux, the Earl of Salisbury, and other nobles, took precau- 
 tions to preserve order and discipline among the revelers. 
 
 The physician attended the King from his retiring to bed 
 till midnight was past, and twice administered medicine to 
 Ihim during that period, always previously observing the 
 quarter of heaven occupied by the full moon, whose influ- 
 ences he declared to be most sovereign, or most baleful, to 
 157 
 
158 WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 the effect of his drugs. It was three hours after midnight 
 ere El Hakim withdrew from the royal tent, to one which 
 had been pitched for himself and his retinue. In his way 
 thither he visited the tent of Sir Kenneth of the Leopard, 
 in order to see the condition of his first patient in the Chris- 
 tian camp, old Strauchan, as the knight's esqiiire was 
 named. Inquiring there for Sir Kenneth himself. El Hakim 
 learned on what duty he was employed, and probably this in- 
 formation led him to St. George's Mount, where he found 
 him whom he sought in the disastrous circumstances alluded 
 to in the last chapter. 
 
 It was about the hour of sunrise, when a slow, armed 
 tread was heard approaching the King's pavilion ; and ere 
 De Vaux, who slumbered beside his master's bed as lightly 
 as ever sleep sat upon the eyes of a watch-dog, had time to 
 do more than arise and say, " Who comes ?" the Knight of 
 the Leopard entered the tent, with a deep and devoted 
 gloom seated upon his manly features. 
 
 " Whence this bold intrusion, sir knight ?" said De Vaux, 
 sternly, yet in a tone which respected his master's slumbers. 
 
 " Hold ! De Vaux," said Richard, awaking on the instant ; 
 " Sir Kenneth cometh like a good soldier to render an ac- 
 count of his guard ; to such the general's tent is ever accessi- 
 ble.'^ Then rising from his slumbering posture, and leaning 
 on his elbow, he fixed his large bright eye upon the warrior. 
 " Speak, sir Scot ; thou comest to tell me of a vigilant, safe, 
 and honorable watch, dost thou not ? The rustling of the 
 folds of the banner of England were enough to guard it, 
 even without the body of such a knight as men hold thee."' 
 
 " As men will hold me no more,'" said Sir Kenneth. " My 
 watch hath neither been vigilant, safe, nor honorable. The 
 banner of England has been carried off." 
 
 ''And thou alive to tell it ?" said Richard, in a tone of 
 derisive incredulity. ''Away, it cannot be. There is not 
 even a scratch on thy face. Why dost thou stand thus 
 mute ? Speak the truth ; it is ill jesting with a king, yet I 
 will forgive thee if thou hast lied." 
 
 " Lied, Sir King ! " returned the unfortunate knight, with 
 fierce emphasis, and one glance of fire from his eye, bright 
 and transient as the flash from the cold and stony flint. , 
 "But this also must be endured. I have spoken the 
 truth." 
 
 " By God and by St. George ! " said the King, bursting 
 into fury, which, however, he instantly checked. "■ De Vaux, 
 go view the spot. This fever has disturbed his brain. This 
 
THE TALISMAN 159 
 
 cannot be. The man's courage is proof. It cannot be ! 
 Go speedily ; or send, if thou wilt not go." 
 
 The King was interrupted by Sir Henry Neville, who 
 came, breathless, to say that the banner was gone, and the 
 knight who guarded it overpowered, and most probably 
 murdered, as there w^as a pool of blood where the banner- 
 spear lay shivered. 
 
 "But whom do I see here ?" said Neville, his eyes sud- 
 denly resting upon Sir Kenneth. 
 
 " A traitor," said the King, starting to his feet, and seiz- 
 ing the curtal ax, which was ever near his bed — "a traitor, 
 whom thou shalt see die a traitor's death." And he drew 
 back the weapon as in act to strike. 
 
 Colorless, but firm as a marble statue, the Scot stood be- 
 fore him, with his bare head uncovered by any protection, 
 his eyes cast down to the eartli, his lips scarcely moving, yet 
 muttering probably in prayer. Opposite to him, and within 
 the due reach for a blow, stood King Eichard, his large per- 
 son wrapt in the folds of his camiscia, or ample gown of 
 linen, except where the violence of his action had flung the 
 covering from his right arm, shoulder, and a part of his 
 breast, leaving to view a specimen of a frame which might 
 have merited his Saxon predecessor's epithet of Ironside. 
 He stood for an instant, prompt to strike ; then sinking the 
 head of the weapon towards the ground, he exclaimed, " But 
 there was blood, Neville — there was blood upon the place. 
 Hark thee, -sir Scot, brave thou wert once, for I have seen 
 thee fight. Say thou hast slain two of the thieves in de- 
 fense of the standard — say but one — say thou hast struck 
 but a good blow in our behalf, and get thee out of the camp 
 with thy life and thy infamy ! " 
 
 " You have called me liar, my Lord King," replied Ken- 
 neth, firmly; "and tlierein, at least, you have done me 
 wrong. Know, that there was no blood shed in defense of 
 the standard save that of a poor hound, which, more faith- 
 ful than his master, defended the charge which he deserted." 
 
 "Now, by St. George !" said Eichard, again heaving up 
 his arm. But De Vaux threw himself between the King and 
 the object of his vengeance, and spoke with the blunt truth 
 of his character — " My liege, this must not be — here — nor 
 by your own hand. It is enough of folly for one night and 
 day to have entrusted your banner to a Scot ; said I not they 
 were eve** fair and false ?"* 
 
 "Thor didst, De Vaux ; thou wast right, and I confess 
 
 * See -Scots, Fair and False. Note 8. 
 
160 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 it," said Richard. "1 should have known him better— 1 
 should have remembered how the fox William deceived me 
 touching this Crusade." 
 
 " My lord," said Sir Kenneth, " William of Scotland never 
 deceived; but circumstances prevented his bringing his 
 forc6S 
 
 " Peace, shameless ! " said the King ; ''thou sulliest the 
 name of a prince, even by speaking it. And yet, De Vaux, 
 it is strange," he added, " to see the bearing of the man. 
 Coward or traitor he must be, yet he abode the blow of 
 Richard Plantagenet, as our arm had been raised to lay 
 knighthood on his shoulder. Had he shown the slightest 
 sign of fear— had but a Joint trembled, or an eyelid quivered 
 — I had shattered his head like a crystal goblet. But I can- 
 not strike where there is neither fear nor resistance." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " My lord " said Kenneth. 
 
 '' Ha ! " replied Richard, interrupting him, " hast thou 
 found thy speech ? Ask grace from Heaven, but none from 
 me, for England is dishonored through thy fault ; and wert 
 thou mine own and only brother, there is no pardon for thy 
 fault." ^, .^ ^ 
 
 " I speak not to demand grace of mortal man, said the 
 Scot ; '' it is in your Grace's pleasure to give or refuse me 
 time for Christian shrift ; if man denies it, may God grant 
 me the absolution which I would otherwise ask of His church ! 
 But whether I die on the instant or half an hour hence, I 
 equally beseech your Grace for one moment's opportunity to 
 speak that to your royal person which highly concerns your, 
 fame as a Christian king." 
 
 " Say on," said the King, making no doubt that he was 
 about to hear some confession concerning the loss of the 
 banner. 
 
 " What I have to speak," said Sir Kenneth, '' touches the 
 royalty of England, and must be said to no ears but thine 
 
 ''Begone with yourselves, sirs," said the King to Neville 
 and De Vaux. 
 
 The first obeyed, but the latter would not stir from the 
 King's presence. 
 
 " If yon said I was in the right," replied De Vaux to his 
 sovereign, " I will be treated as one should be who hath been 
 found to be right— that is, I will have my own will. I leave 
 you not with this false Scot." 
 
 " How ! De Vaux," said Richard, angrily, and stamping 
 
THE TALISMAN 161 
 
 Blightl}^ '' darest thou not venture our person with one 
 traitor ? " 
 
 "It is in vain you frown and stamp, my lord/^ said De 
 Vaux ; " I venture not a sick man with a sound one, a naJied 
 man with one armed in proof." 
 
 " It matters not," said the Scottish knight ; "I seek no 
 excuse to put off time, I will speak in presence of the Lord 
 of Gilsland. He is good lord and true." 
 
 " But half an hour since," said De Vaux, with a groan, 
 implying a mixture of sorrow and vexation, "and I had said 
 as much for thee." 
 
 " There is treason around you. King of England," con- 
 tinued Sir Kenneth. 
 
 " It may well be as thou say'st," replied Richard, " I have 
 a pregnant example." 
 
 "Treason that will injure thee more deeply than the loss 
 of an hundred banners in a pitched field. The — the " — Sir 
 Kenneth hesitated, and at length continued, in a lower tone — 
 " the Lady Edith " 
 
 " Ha ! " said the King, drawing himself suddenly into a 
 ■ state of haughty attention, and fixing his eye firmly on the 
 supposed criminal. " What of her ? — what of her ? — what 
 has she to do with this matter ? " 
 
 " My lord," said the Scot, " there is a scheme on foot to 
 disgrace your royal lineage, by bestowing the hand of the 
 Lady Edith on the Saracen Soldan, and thereby to purchase 
 a peace most ■ dishonorable to Christendom, by an alliance 
 most shameful to England." 
 
 This communication had precisely the contrary effect from 
 , that which Sir Kenneth expected. Eichard Plautagenet 
 j was one of those who, in lago's words, would not serve God 
 '■ because it was the devil who bade him : advice or informa- 
 tion often affected him less according to its real import than 
 through the tinge which it took from the supposed character 
 and views of those by whom it was communicated. Unfortu- 
 nately, the mention of his relative's name renewed his recol- 
 I lection of what he had considered as extreme pi'esumption 
 i in the Knight of the Leopard, even when he stood high in 
 the rolls of chivalry, but which, in his present condition, 
 appeared an insult sufficient to drive the fiery monarch into 
 a frenzy of passion. 
 
 "Silence," he said, *' infamous and audacious! By 
 
 i Heaven, I will have thy tongue torn out with hot pincers, 
 
 : for mentioning the very name of a noble Christian damsel. 
 
 Know, degenerate traitor, that I was already aware to what 
 
 II 
 
162 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 height thou hadst dared to raise thine eyes, and endured it, 
 though it were insolence, even when thou liadst cheated ns— 
 for thou art all a deceit — into holding thee as of some name 
 and fame. But now, with Yips blistered with the confession 
 of thine own dishonor — that thou shouldst now dare to name 
 our noble kinswoman as one in whose fate thou hast part or 
 interest ! AVhat is it to thee if she marry Saracen or Christian ? 
 What is it to thee if, in a camp where princes turn cowards 
 by day and robbers by night — where brave knights turn to 
 paltry deserters and traitors — what is it, I say ; to thee or any 
 one, if I should please to ally myself to truth and to valor in 
 the person of Saladin ? " 
 
 " Little to me, indeed, to whom all the world will soon be 
 as nothing," answered Sir Kenneth, boldly ; " but were I 
 now stretched on the rack, I would tell thee, that what I have 
 said is much to thine own conscience and thine own fame. I 
 tell thee, sir king, that if thou dost but in thought entertain 
 the purpose of wedding thy kinswoman, the Lady Edith " 
 
 " Name her not — and for an instant think not of her/' 
 said the King, again straining the curtal ax in his gripe, 
 until the muscles started above his brawny arm, like cordage 
 formed by the ivy around the limb of an oak. 
 
 "Not name — not tbink of her !" answered Sir Kenneth, 
 his spirits, stunned as they were by self-depression, beginning 
 to recover their elasticity from this species of controversy. 
 "Now, by the Cross, on which I place my hope, her name 
 shall be the last word in my mouth, her image the last 
 thought in my mind. Try thy boasted strength on this hare 
 brow, and see if thou canst prevent my purpose." 
 
 "He will drive me mad \" said Eichard, who, in his de- 
 spite, was once more staggered in his purpose by the daunt- 
 less determination of the criminal. 
 
 Ere Thomas of Gilsland could reply, some bustle was heard 
 without, and the arrival of the Queen was announced frsm 
 the outer part of the pavilion. 
 
 " Detain her — detain her, Neville," cried the King ; " this 
 is no sight for women. Fie, that I have sulfered such a jftiti 
 paltry traitor to chafe me thus ! Away with h,im, De Vans " 
 he whispered, " through the back entrance oi' our tent ; coop l|||, 
 him up close, and answer for his safe custody with your life. | idj, 
 And harkye, he is presently to die ; let him have a ghostly i ijij 
 father — we would not kill soul and body. And stay, hark I L,], 
 thee, we will not have him dishonored : he .shall die knight- j ^( 
 like, in his belt and spurs ; for if his treachery be as black as I uj 
 hell, his boldness may match that of the devil himself." |^ 
 
THE TALISMAN 163 
 
 De Vaux, right glad, if the truth may be guessed, that the 
 scene ended without Richard's descending to the unkingly 
 act of himself slaying an unresisting prisoner, made haste to 
 remove Sir Kenneth by a private issue to a separate tent, 
 where he was disarmed and put in fetters for security. De 
 Vaux looked on with a steady and melancholy attention, while 
 the provost's officers, to whom Sir Kenneth was now com- 
 mitted, took these severe precautions. 
 
 When they were ended, he said solemnly to the unhappy 
 criminal, *'It is King Richard's pleasure that you die unde- 
 graded, without mutilation of your body or shame to your 
 arms, and that your head be severed from the trunk by the 
 sword of the executioner." 
 
 I "It is kind," said the knight, in a low and rather submis- 
 |sive tone of voice, as one who received an unexpected favor ; 
 '*'my family will not then hear the worst of the tale. Oh, 
 my father — my father !" 
 
 This muttered invocation did hot escape the blunt but 
 kiudly-natured Englishman, and he brushed the back of his 
 large hand over his rough features, ere he could proceed. 
 ! " It is Richard of England's farther pleasure," he said, at 
 llength, " that you have speech with a holy man, and I have 
 met on the passage hither with a Carmelite friar, who may 
 fit you for your passage. He waits without, until you are in 
 % frame of mind to receive him." 
 
 "Let it be instantly," said the knight. "In this also 
 Richard is kind. I cannot be more fit to see the good father 
 lit any time than now ; for life and I have taken farewell, as 
 :wo travelers who have arrived at the crossway, where their 
 •oads separate." 
 
 1 "It is well," said De Vaux, slowly and solemnly ; ''for it 
 ;rks me somewhat to say that which sums my message. It 
 s King Richard's pleasure that you prepare for instant 
 leath." 
 
 " God's pleasure and the King's be done," replied the 
 :night, patiently. " I neither contest the justice of the 
 ,entence nor desire delay of the execution." 
 i De Vaux began to leave the tent, but very slowly ; paused 
 t the door, and looked back at the Scot, from whose aspect 
 houghts of the world seemed banished, as if he was compos- 
 ng himself into deep devotion. The feelings of the stout 
 ;!lnglish baron were in general none of the most acute, and 
 iet, on the present occasion, his sympathy overpowered him 
 a an unusual manner. He came hastily back to the bundle 
 t reeds on which the captive lay, took one of his fettered 
 
164 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 hands, and said, with as much softness as his rough voice was 
 capable of expressing, " Sir Kenneth, thou art yet young — 
 thou liast a father. My Ralph, whom I left training his little 
 Galloway nag on the banks of the Irthing, may one day 
 attain thy years ; and, but for last night, would to God 1 
 saw his youth bear such promise as thine ! Can nothing be 
 said or done in thy behalf ? " 
 
 " Nothing," was the melancholy answer. " I have deserted 
 my charge — the banner entrusted to me is lost. When the 
 headsman and block are prepared, the head and trunk are 
 ready to part company.*' 
 
 "Nay, then, God have mercy!" said De Vaux ; "yet 
 would I rather than my best horse I had taken that watch 
 myself. There is mystery in it, young man, as a plain man 
 may descry, though he cannot see through it. Cowardice ? 
 pshaw ! No coward ever fought as I have seen thee do. 
 Treachery ? I cannot think traitors die in their treason so 
 calmly. "Thou hast been trained from thy post by some deep 
 guile — some well-devised stratagem : the cry of some dis- 
 tressed maiden has caught thine ear, or the laughful look of 
 some merry one has taken thine eye. Never blush for it, we 
 have all been led aside by such gear. Come, I pray thee, 
 make a clean conscience of it to me, instead of the priest. 
 Richard is merciful when his mood is abated. Hast thou 
 nothing to entrust to me ?" 
 
 The unfortunate knight turned his face from the kind 
 warrior, and answered, "Nothing." 
 
 And De Vaux, who had exhausted his topics of persuasion, 
 arose and left the tfnt, with folded arms, and in melancholy 
 deeper than he tliought the occasion merited, even angry 
 with himself to find that so simple a matter as the death of j ie 
 a Scottishman could affect him so nearly. 
 
 " Yet," as he said to himself, "though the rough-footed 
 knaves be our enemies in Cumberland, in Palestine one al- 
 most considers them as brethren." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ** Tis not her sense — for sure, in that 
 
 There's notliing more than common ; 
 And all her wit is only chat, 
 Like any other woman. 
 
 Song. 
 
 The high-born Berengaria, daughter of Sanchez, King of 
 Navarre, and the Queen-Consort of the heroic Richard, was 
 accounted one of the most beautiful women of the period. 
 Her form was slight, though exquisitely molded. She was 
 I graced with a complexion not common in her country, a 
 j profusion of fair hair, and features so extremely juvenile as 
 I to make her look several years younger than she really was, 
 i though in reality she was not above one-and-twenty. Perhaps 
 j it was under the consciousness of this extremely juvenile ap- 
 j pearance that she affected, or at least practised, a little 
 childish petulance and wilfulness of manner, not unbefitting, 
 she might suppose, a youthful bride, whose rank and age 
 gave her a right to have her fantasies indulged and attended 
 to. She was by nature perfectly good-humored, and if her 
 due share of admiration and homage (in her opinion a very 
 large one) was duly resigned to her, no one could possess 
 better temper or a more friendly disposition ; but then, like 
 i all despots, the more power that was voluntarily yielded to 
 ! her, the more she desired to extend her sway. Sometimes, 
 ' even when all her ambition was gratified, she chose to be a 
 little out of health and a little out of spirits ; and physicians 
 had to toil their wits to invent names for imaginary maladies, 
 j while her ladies racked their imagination for new games, 
 I new headgear, and new court-scandal, to pass away those 
 unpleasant hours, during which their own situation was 
 scarce to be greatly envied. Their most frequent resource 
 for diverting this malady was some trick, or piece of mis- 
 chief, practised upon each other ; and the good queen, in 
 'the buoyancy of her reviving spirits, was, to speak truth, 
 Tather too indifferent whether the frolics thus practised were 
 entirely befitting her own dignity, or whether the pain which 
 those suffered upon whom they were inflicted was not beyond 
 the proportion of pleasure which she herself derived from 
 ' " ' 165 
 
166 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 them. She was confident in her husband's favor, in her high 
 rank, and in her supposed power to make good whatever 
 such pranks might cost others. In a word, she gamboled 
 with the freedom of a young lioness, who is unconscious of 
 the weight of her own paws when laid on those whom she 
 sports with. 
 
 The Queen Berengaria loved her husband passionately, 
 but she feared the loftiness and roughness of his character. 
 and as she felt herself not to be his match in intellect, was 
 not much i:)leased to see that he would often talk with Edith 
 Piantagenet in preference to herself, simply because he found 
 more amusement in her conversation, a more comprehensive 
 understanding, and a more noble cast of thoughts and senti- 
 ments, than his beautiful consort exhibited. Berengaria 
 did not hate Edith on this accouut, far less meditate her 
 any harm ; for, allowing for some selfishness, her characti'r 
 was, on the whole, innocent and generous. But the ladies 
 of her train, sharp-sighted in such matters, had for some 
 time discovered that a poignant jest at the expense of the 
 Lady Edith was a specific for relieving her Grace of Eng- 
 land's low spirits, and the discovery saved their imagination 
 much toil. 
 
 There was something ungenerous in this, because the Lady 
 Edith was understood to be an orphan ; and though she was 
 called Piantagenet, and the Fair Maid of Anjou, and admit- 
 ted by Eichard to certain privileges only granted to the royal 
 family, and held her place in the circle accordingly, yet few ■ 
 knew, and none acquainted with the court of' England j; 
 ventured to ask, in what exact degree of relationship she > 
 stood to Coeur-de-Lion. She had come with Eleanor, the 
 celebrated Queen-Mother of England, and joined Eichard at 
 Messina, as one of the ladies destined to attend on Baren- 
 garia, whose nuptials then approached. Eichard treated his 
 kinswoman with much respectful observance, and the Queen 
 made her her most constant attendant, and, even in despite 
 of the petty jealousy which we have observed, treated her, 
 generally, with suitable respect. 
 
 The ladies of the household had, for a long time, no 
 further advantage over Edith than might be afforded by an 
 opportunity of censuring a less artfully-disposed head-attire 
 or an unbecoming robe ; for the lady was judged to be inferior 
 in these mysteries. The silent devotion of the Scottish 
 knight did not, indeed, pass unnoticed : his liveries, his 
 cognizances, his feats of arms, his mottoes and devices, were 
 merely watched, and occasionally made the subject of a pass- 
 
THE TALISMAN 167 
 
 ing jest. But then came the pilgrimage of the Queen and 
 her ladies to Engaddi — a journey which the Queen had un- 
 dertaken under a vow for the recovery of her husband's 
 health, and which she had been encouraged to carry into 
 effect by the Archbishop of Tyre for a political purpose. It 
 was then, and in the chapel at that holy place, connected 
 from above with a Carmelite nunnery, from beneath with 
 the cell of the anchorite, that one of the Queen's attendants 
 remarked that secret sign of intelligence which Edith had 
 made to her lover, and failed not instantly to communicate 
 it to her Majesty. The Queen returned from her pilgrimage 
 enriched with this admirable recipe against dulness or ennui, 
 and her train was at the same time augmented by a present 
 of two wretched dwarfs from the dethroned Queen of Jeru- 
 salem, as deformed and as crazy (the excellence of that un- 
 happy species) as any queen could have desired. One of 
 Berengaria's idle amusements had been to try the effect of 
 the sudden appearance of such ghastly and fantastic forms 
 on the nerves of the knight when left alone in the chapel ; 
 but the jest had been lost by the composure of the Scot 
 and the interference of the anchorite. She had now tried 
 another, of which the consequences promised to be more 
 serious. 
 
 The ladies again met after Sir Kenneth had retired from 
 the tent ; and the Queen, at first little moved by Edith's 
 angry expostulations, only replied to her by upbraiding her 
 prudery, and by indulging her wit at the expense of the garb, 
 nation, and, above all, the poverty, of the Knight of the 
 Leopard, in which she displayed a good deal of playful malice, 
 mingled with some humor, until Edith was compelled to carry 
 her anxiety to her separate apartment. But when, in the 
 morning, a female, whom Edith had entrusted to make in- 
 quiry, brought word that the standard was missing, and its 
 champion vanished, she burst into the Queen's apartment, 
 and implored her to rise and proceed to the King's tent 
 without delay, and use her powerful mediation to prevent 
 the evil consequences of her jest. 
 
 The Queen, frightened in her turn, cast, as is usual, the 
 blame of her own folly on those around her, and endeavored 
 to comfort Edith's grief, and appease her displeasure, by a 
 thousand inconsistent arguments. She was sure no harm 
 had chanced : the knight was sleeping, she fancied, after his 
 night-watch. What though, for fear of the King's displeas- 
 ure, he had deserted with the standard — it was but a piece of 
 silk, and he but a needy adventurer ; or, if he was put under 
 
168 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 warding for a time, she would soon get the King to pardon 
 him — it was but waiting to let Richard's mood pass away. 
 
 Thus she continued tcilking thick and fast, and heaping 
 together all sorts of inconsistencies, with the vain expecta- 
 tion of persuading both Edith and herself that no harm could 
 come of a frolic which in her heart she now bitterly repented. 
 But while Edith in vain strove to intercept this torrent of 
 idle talk, she caught the eye of one of the ladies who entered 
 the Queen's apartment. There was death in her look of 
 affright and horror, and Edith, at the first glance of her 
 countenance, had sunk at once on the earth, had not strong 
 necessity, and her own elevation of character, enabled her to 
 maintain at least external composure. 
 
 " Madam,*' she said to the Queen, "lose not another word 
 in speaking, but save life ; if, indeed," she added, her voice 
 choking as she said it, " life may yet be saved." 
 
 " It may be — it may," answered the Lady Calista. " I have 
 just heard that he has been brought before the King ; it is 
 not yet over, but," she added, bursting into a vehement flood 
 of weeping, in which personal apprehensions had some share, 
 *' it will soon, unless some course be taken." 
 
 " I will vow a golden candlestick to the Holy Sepulchre — 
 a shrine of silver to our Lady of Engaddi— a pall, worth one 
 hundred bezants, to St. Thomas of Orthez," said the Queen, 
 in extremity. 
 
 *' Up — up, madam !" said Edith ; ''call on the saints if 
 you list, but be your own best saint." 
 
 " Indeed, madam," said the terrified attendant, " the Lady 
 Edith speaks truth. Up, madam, and let us to King Richard's 
 tent, and beg the poor gentleman's life." 
 
 " I will go— I will go instantly," said the Queen, rising 
 and trembling excessively ; while her women, in as great con- 
 fusion as herself, were unable to render her those duties which 
 were indispensable to her levee. Calm, composed, only pale 
 as death, Edith ministered to the Queen with her own hand, 
 and alone supplied the deficiencies of her numerous attend- 
 ants. 
 
 " How you wait, wenches ! " said the Queen, not able even 
 then to forget frivolous distinctions. " Suffer ye the Lady 
 Edith to do the duties of your attendance ? Seest thou, 
 Edith, they can do nothing : I shall never be attired in time. 
 We will send for the Archbishop of Tyre, and employ him as 
 a mediator." 
 
 (' no — no ! " exclaimed Edith. *' Go yourself, madam ; 
 you have done the evil, do you confer the remedy." 
 
THE TALISMAN 169 
 
 *'\ will go — I will go," said the Qneen ; ''but if Richard 
 be in his mood, I dare not speak to him ; he will kill me \'* 
 
 " Yet go, gracious madam," said the Lady Calista, who 
 best knew her mistress's temper ; "not a lion, in his fury, 
 could look upon such a face and form, and retain so much 
 as an angry thought, far less a love-true knight like the 
 royal Richard, to whom your slightest word would be a 
 command." 
 
 " Dost thou think so, Calista ? " said the Queen. " Ah, 
 thou little knowest — yet I will go. But see you here — what 
 means this ? You have bedizened me in green, a color he 
 detests. Lo you ! let me have a blue robe, and — search for 
 the ruby carcanet, which was part of the King of Cyprus's 
 ransom ; it is either in the steel-casket or somewhere else." 
 
 " This, and a man's life at stake ! " said Edith, indig- 
 nantly ; "it passes human patience. Remain at yonr ease, 
 madam ; I will go to King Richard. I am a party inter- 
 ested ; I will know if the honor of a poor maiden of his 
 blood is to be so far tampered with, that her name shall be 
 abused to train a brave gentleman from his duty, bring him 
 within the compass of death and infamy, and make, at the 
 same time, the glory of England a laughing-stock to the 
 whole Christian army." 
 
 At this unexpected burst of passion, Berengaria listened 
 with an almost stupified look of fear and wonder. But as 
 Edith was about to leave the tent, she exclaimed, though 
 faintly, " Stop her — stop her ! " 
 
 "You must indeed stop, noble Lady Edith," said Calista, 
 taking her arm gently ; " and you, royal madam, I am sure, 
 will go, and without farther dallying. If the Lady Edith 
 goes alone to the King, he will be dreadfully incensed, nor 
 Avill it be one life that will stay his fury." 
 
 " I will go — I will go," said the Queen, yielding to neces- 
 sity ; and Edith reluctantly halted to wait her movements. 
 
 They were now as speedy as she could have desired. The 
 Queen hastily wrapped herself in a large loose mantle, which 
 covered all inaccuracies of the toilet. Li this guise, at- 
 tended by Edith and her women, and preceded and followed 
 by a few officers and men-at-arms, she hastened to the tent 
 of her lion-like husband. 
 
CHAPTER XVn 
 
 Were every hair upon his liead a life. 
 
 And every life were to be supplicated 
 
 By numbers equal to those hairs quadrupled, 
 
 Life after life should out like waning stars 
 
 Before the daybreak ; or as festive lamps, 
 
 Which have lent luster to the midnight revel, 
 
 Each after each are quench'd when guests depart ' 
 
 Old May. 
 
 The entrance of Queen Bereugaria into the interior of Rich- 
 ard's pavilion was withstood, in the most respectful and 
 reverential manner indeed, but still withstood, by the cham- 
 berlains who watched in the outer tent. She could hear the 
 stern command of the King from within, prohibiting their 
 entrance. 
 
 " You see," said the Queen, appealing to Edith, as if she 
 had exhausted all means of intercession in her power — " I 
 knew it ; the King will not receive us." 
 
 At the same time, they heard Richard speak to some one 
 within — " Go, speed thine oflfice quickly, sirrah, for in that 
 consists thy mercy ; ten byzants if thou deaFst on him at one 
 blow. And, hark thee, villain, observe if his cheek loses 
 color or his eye falters ; mark me the smallest twitch of the 
 features or wink of the eyelid ; I love to know how brave 
 souls meet death." 
 
 " If he sees my blade waved aloft without shrinking, he is 
 the first ever did so," answered a harsh, deep voice, which a 
 sense of unusual awe had softened into a sound much lower 
 than its usual coarse tones. 
 
 Edith could remain silent no longer. " If your Grace," 
 she said to the Queen, " make not your own way, I make it 
 for you ; or if not for your Majesty, for myself, at least. 
 Chamberlains, the Quoen demands to see King Richard — 
 the wife to speak with her husband." 
 
 " Xoble lady," said the officer, lowering his wand of office, 
 *'it grieves me to gainsay you ; but his Majesty is busied on 
 matters of life and death." 
 
 "And we seek also to speak with him on matters of life 
 and death,*' said Edith. " I will make entrance for your 
 17P 
 
THE TALISMAN 171 
 
 Grace," and putting aside the chamberlain with one hand, 
 Bhe laid hold on the curtain with the otlier. 
 
 " I dare not gainsay her Majesty's pleasure," said the 
 chamberlain, yielding to the vehemence of the fair petitioner ; 
 and, as he gave way, the Queen found herself obliged to enter 
 the apartment of Richard. 
 
 The monarch was lying on his couch, and at some distance, 
 as awaiting his farther commands, stood a man whose pro- 
 fession it was not difficult to conjecture. He was clothed in a 
 jerkin of red cloth, which reached scantly below the shoul- 
 ders, leaving the arms bare from about half-way above the 
 elbow, and, as an upper garment, he wore, when about as 
 at present to betake himself to his dreadful office, a coat or 
 tabard without sleeves, something like that of a herald, made of 
 dressed bull's hide, and stained in the front with many a broad 
 i spot and speckle of dull crimson. The jerkin, and the tab- 
 i ard over it, reached the knee, and the nether stocks, or cov- 
 i ering of the legs, were of the same leather which composed 
 I the tabard. A cap of rough shag served to hide the upper 
 j part of a visage which, like that of a screech-owl, seemed 
 I desirous to conceal itself from light ; the lower part of the 
 1 face being obscured by a huge red beard, mingling with 
 j shaggy locks of the same color. What features were seen 
 j were stern and misanthropical. The man's figure was short, 
 i strongly made, with a neck like a bull, very broad shoulders, 
 i arms of great and disproi:)ortioned length, a huge square 
 I trunk, and thick bandy legs. This truculent official leant 
 j on a sword the blade of which was nearly four feet and a half 
 I in length, while the handle of twenty inches, surrounded by 
 j a ring of lead plummets to counterpoise the weight of such 
 j a blade, rose considerably above the man's head, as he rested 
 i his arm upon its hilt, waiting for King Richard's farther 
 i directions. 
 
 I On the sudden entrance of the ladies, Richard, who was 
 j then lying on his couch, with his face towards the entrance, 
 j and resting on his elbow as he spoke to his grisly attendant, 
 ' flung himself hastily, as if displeased and surprised, to the 
 other side, turning his back to the Queen and the females of 
 : her train, and drawing around him the covering of his coucli, 
 i which, by his own choice, or more probably tl)e flattering 
 i selection of his chamberlains, consisted of two large lioii's 
 skins, dressed in Venice with such admirable skill that they 
 i seemed softer than the hide of the deer. 
 
 I Berengaria, sucii as we have described her, knew well — 
 i what woman knows not ? — her own road to victory. After a 
 
172 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 hurried glance of uudis^uised and unaffected terror at the! 
 ghastly companion of her husband's secret counsels, she! 
 rushed at once to tlie side of Eichard's couch, dropped on 
 her knees, flung her mantle from her shoulder, showing, as 
 they hung down at their full length, her beautiful golden 
 tresses, and while her countenance seemed like the sun 
 bursting tlirough a cloud, yet bearing on its pallid front' 
 traces that its splendors have been obscured, she seized upon 
 the right hand of the King, which, as he assumed his wonted 
 posture, had been employed in dragging the covering of 
 his couch, and gradually pulling it to her with a force which 
 was resisted, though but faintly, she possessed herself of that 
 arm, the prop of Christendom and the dread of Heathenesse, 
 and, imprisoning its strength in both her little fairy hands, 
 she bent upon it her brow, and united to it her lips. 
 
 '* What needs this, Berengaria ?" said Eichard, his head' 
 still averted, but his hand remaining under her control. 
 
 " Send away that man — his look kills me ! " muttered 
 Berengaria. 
 
 '* Begone, sirrah,^' said Eichard, still without looking 
 round, " what wait'st thou for ? art thou fit to look on these 
 ladies ?*' 
 
 " Your Highness's pleasure touching the head," said the 
 man. 
 
 " Out with thee, dog ! " answered Eichard — " a Christian 
 burial/' 
 
 The man disappeared, after casting a look upon the beau- 
 tiful Queen, in her deranged dress and natural loveliness, with 
 a smile of admiration more hideous in its expression than 
 even his usual scowl of cynical hatred against humanity. ' ''■' 
 
 "And now, foolish wench, what wishest thou?" said 
 Eichard, turning slowly and half reluctantly round to his '?' 
 royal suppliant. *' 
 
 But it was not in nature for any one, far less an admirer i.^' 
 of beauty like Eichard, to whom it stood only in the second H 
 rank to glory, to look without emotion on the countenance and ' " 
 the tremor of a creature so beautiful as Berengaria, or to feel, i '''*' 
 without sympathy, that her lips, her brow, were on his hand, ■ '^ 
 and that it was wetted by her tears. By degrees, he turned ■ 
 on her his manly countenance, with the softest expression of 
 which his large blue eye, which so often gleamed witli 
 insufferable light, was capable. Caressing her fair head, and 
 mingling his large fingers in her beautiful and disheveled ■ 
 locks, he raised and tenderly kissed the cherub countenance 
 which seemed desirous to hide itself in his hand. The robust " 
 
THE TALISMAN 173 
 
 form, tlie broad, noble brow, and majestic looks, the naked 
 arm and shoulder, the lion's skins among which he lay, and 
 the fair fragile feminine creature that kneeled by his side, 
 might have served for a model of Hercules reconciling him- 
 jself, after a quarrel, to his wife Dejanira. 
 I '_• And, once more, what seeks the lady of my heart in her 
 knight's pavilion, at this early and unwonted hour ? " 
 
 "Pardon, my most gracious liege — pardon!" said the 
 Queen, whose fears began again to unfit her for the duty of 
 intercessor. 
 
 " Pardon ! for what ?" asked the King. 
 ! "First, for entering your royal presence too boldly and 
 janadvisedly " She stopped. 
 
 " Thou too boldly ! the sun might as well ask pardon 
 because his rays entered the windows of some wretch's 
 'lungeon. But I was busied with work unfit for thee to 
 witness, my gentle one, and I was unwilling, besides, that 
 thou shouldst risk thy precious health where sickness has been 
 30 lately rife." 
 
 " But thou art now well ?" said the Queen, still delaying 
 the communication which she feared to make. 
 
 *' AVell enough to break a lance on the bold crest of that 
 champion wlio shall refuse to acknowledge thee the fairest 
 lame in Christendom." 
 
 " Thou wilt not then refuse me one boon — only one — only 
 I poor life ? " 
 
 '' Ha ! proceed," said King Richard, bending his brows. 
 
 ''This unhappy Scottish knight," murmured the Queen. 
 
 '•' Speak not of him, madam," exclaimed Eichard, sternly ; 
 'he dies — his doom is fixed." 
 
 " Nay, my royal liege and love, 'tis but a silken banner 
 leglected ; Berengaria will give thee another broidered with 
 ler own hand, and rich as ever dallied with the wind. Every 
 )earl I have shall go to bedeck it, and with every pearl I 
 yill drop a tear of thankfulness to my generous knight." 
 
 " Thou know'st not what thou say'st," said the King, 
 nterrupting her in anger. " Pearls ! can all the pearls of 
 he East atone for a speck upon England's honor — all the 
 ears that ever woman's eye wept wash away a stain on 
 Richard's fame ? Go to, madam, know your place, and 
 our time, and your sphere. At present we have duties in 
 i^hich you cannot be our partner." 
 
 '•' Thou hear'st, Edith," whispered the Qneen, '' we shall 
 ut incense him.*' 
 
 ** Be it so," said Edith, stepping forward. ' My lord — I, 
 
174 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 your poor kinswoman, crave you for justice rather than 
 mercy and to the cry of justice the ears of a monarch should 
 be open at every time, place, and circumstance/' 
 
 " Ha ! our cousin Edith ! " said Richard, rising and sitting 
 upright on the side of his couch, covered with his long 
 camiscia. " She speaks ever kinglike, and kinglike will I 
 answer her, so she bring no request unworthy herself or 
 me. " 
 
 The beauty of Edith was of a more intellectual and less 
 voluptuous cast than that of the Queen ; but impatience and 
 anxiety had given her countenance a glow which it some- 
 times wanted, and her mien had a character of energetic 
 dignity that imposed silence for a moment even on Eichard 
 himself, who, to judge by his looks, would willingly have 
 interrupted her. 
 
 " My lord," she said, " this good knight, whose blood you 
 are about to spill, hath done, in his time, service to Chris- 
 tendom. He hatii fallen from his duty through a snare set 
 for him in mere folly and idleness of spirit. A message sent 
 to him in the name of one who — why should I not speaK 
 it ? — it was in my own — induced him for an instant to leave 
 his post. And what knight in the Christian camp might 
 not have thus far transgressed at command of a maiden who, 
 poor howsoever in other qualities, hath yet the blood of 
 Plantagenet in her veins ? " 
 
 ''And you saw him, then, cousin?" replied the King, 
 biting his lips to keep down his passion. 
 
 " I did, my liege," said Edith. " It is no time to explain 
 wherefore : 1 am here neither to exculpate myself nor to 
 blame others." 
 
 " And where did you do him such a grace ?" 
 
 "In the tent of her Majesty the Queen." 
 
 " Of onr royal consort ! " said Richard. " Now by Heaven, 
 by St. George of England, and every other saint that treads 
 its crystal floor, this is too audacious ! I have noticed and 
 overlooked this warrior's insolent admiration of one so far 
 above him, and I grudged him not that one of my blood 
 should shed from her high-born sphere such influence as 
 the sun bestows on the world beneath. But, heaven and 
 earth ! that you should have admitted him to an audience 
 by night, in the very tent of our royal consort, and dare to 
 offer this as an excuse for his disobedience and desertion 1 
 By my father's soul, Edith, thou shalt rue this thy life long 
 in a monastery ! " 
 
 ** My liege," said Edith, " your greatness licenses tyranny. 
 
THE TALISMAN 175 
 
 My honor. Lord King, is as little touched as yours, and my 
 Lady the Queen can prove it if she think fit. But I have 
 already said, I am not here to excuse myself or inculpate 
 others. I ask you but to extend to one whose fault was com- 
 mitted under strong temptation that mercy which even you 
 yourself, Lord King, must one day supplicate at a higher 
 tribunal, and for faults, perhaps, less venial.^' 
 
 "Can this be Edith Plantagenet ?"said the King, bitterly 
 — " Edith Plantagenet, the wise and the noble ? Or is it 
 some lovesick woman, who cares not for her own fame in 
 comparison of the life of her paramour ? Now, by King 
 Henry's soul ! little hinders but I order thy minion's skull 
 to be brought from the gibbet, and fixed as a perpetual orna- 
 ment by the crucifix in thy cell." 
 
 " And if thou dost send it from the gibbet to be placed 
 forever in my sight," said Edith, " I will say it is a ^elic of 
 a good knight, cruelly and unworthily done to death by — 
 (she checked herself) — by one of whom I shall only say, he 
 should have known better how to reward chivalry. Minion 
 call'st thou him ? " she continued, with increasing vehemence. 
 " He was indeed my lover, and a most true one ; but never 
 sought he grace from me by look or word, contented with 
 such humble observance as men pay to the saints. And the 
 good — the valiant — the faithful must die for this ! " 
 
 " 0, peace — peace, for pity's sake," whispered the Queen, 
 *'you do but offend him more ! " 
 
 " I care not," said Edith : "the spotless virgin fears not 
 the raging lion. Let him work his will on this worthy 
 knight. Edith, for whom he dies, will know how to weep 
 his memory : to me no one shall speak more of politic al- 
 liances, to be sanctioned with this poor hand. I could not 
 — I would not — have been his bride living — our degrees were 
 too distant. But death unites the high and the low : I am 
 henceforward the spouse of the grave." 
 
 The King was about to answer with much anger, when a 
 Carmelite monk entered the apartment hastily, his head and 
 person muffled in the long mantle and hook of striped cloth 
 of the coarsest texture which distinguished his order, and, 
 flinging himself on his knees before the King, conjured him, 
 by every holy word and sign, to stop the execution. 
 
 " JSTow, by both sword and scepter," said Eichard, "the 
 world are leagued to drive me mad ! Fools, women, and 
 monks cross me at everry step. How comes he to live 
 still?" 
 
 " Mj gracious liege/' gjiid the monk. " I entreated of the 
 
176 WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 Lord of Gilsland to stay the execution uutil I had throwr 
 myself at your royal " 
 
 ''And he was wilful enough to grant thy request ?" said 
 the King ; " but it is of a piece with his wonte'd obstinacy 
 And what is it thou hast to say ? Speak, in the fiend's 
 name ! '* i 
 
 " My loro,, there is a weighty secret — but it rests under 
 the seal of confession — I dare not tell or even whisper it ; 
 but I swear to thee by my holy order, by the habit which I 
 wear, by the blessed Elias, our founder, even him who was! 
 translated without sulfering the ordinary pangs of mortality, 
 that this youth hath divulged to me a secret which, if 1 
 might confide it to thee, would utterly turn thee from thy 
 bloody purpose in regard to him/' 
 
 " Good father," said Eichard, " that I reverence the 
 church, let the arms which I now wear for her sake bear wit- 
 ness. Give me to know this secret, and I will do what shall . 
 seem fitting in the matter. But I am no blind Bayard, to 
 take a leap in the dark under the stroke of a pair of priestly 1 
 spurs." 
 
 " My lord," said the holy man, throwing back his cowl i)^ 
 and upper vesture, and discovering under the latter a gar- 
 ment of goat-skin and from beneath the former a visage so 
 wildly wasted by climate, fast, and penance as to resemble 
 rather the apparition of an animated skeleton than a human 
 face, "for twenty years have I macerated this miserable 
 body in the caverns of Engaddi, doing penance for a great 
 crime. Think you I, who am dead to the world, would con- 
 trive a falsehood to endanger my own soul, or that one 
 bound by the most sacred oaths to the contrary — one such 
 as I, who have but one longing wish connected with earth, 
 to wit, the rebuilding of our Christian Zion — would betray 
 the secrets of the confessional ? Both are alike abhorrent 
 to my very soul." 
 
 " So," answered the King, " thou art that hermit of whom 
 men speak so much ? Thou art, I confess, like enough to 
 those spirits which walk in dry places, but Richard fears no 
 hobgoblins ; and thou art he, too, as I bethink me, to whom 
 the Christian princes sent this very criminal to open a com- 
 munication with the Soldan. even while I, who ought to 
 have been first consulted, lay on my sici<:-bed ? Thou and 
 they may content themselves, I willnot put my neck into 
 the loop of a Carmelite's girdle. And, for your envoy, he 
 shall die, the rather and the sooner that thou dost entreat 
 for him." 
 
THE TALISMAN 177 
 
 *' Mow God be gracious to thee. Lord King ! " said the 
 hermit, with much emotion; ''thou art setting that mis- 
 chief on foot which thou wilt hereafter wish thou hadst 
 stopt, though it had cost thee a limb. Rash, blinded man, 
 yet forbear \" 
 
 "Away — away,'^ cried the King, stampi-ri"- ; "the sun 
 has risen on the dishonor of England, and i is not yet 
 avenged. Ladies and priest, withdraw, if ye wo aid not hear 
 orders which would displease you ; for, by St. George, I 
 swear " 
 
 " Swear not ! " said the voice of one who had just then 
 entered the pavilion. 
 
 " Ha ! my learned Hakim," said the King ; " come, I 
 hope, to tax our generosity." 
 
 " I come to request instant speech with you — instant — and 
 touching matters of deep interest." 
 
 " First look on my wife. Hakim, and let her know in you 
 the preserver of her husband." 
 
 " It is not for me," said the physician, folding his arms 
 with an air of Oriental modesty and reverence, and bending 
 his eyes on the ground — " It is not for me to look upon 
 beauty unveiled, and armed in its splendors." 
 
 'Retire, then, Berengaria," said the monarch; "and, 
 Edith, do you retire also. Nay, renew not your importuni- 
 ties ! This I give to them, that the execution shall not be 
 till high noon. Go and be pacified. Dearest Berengaria, be- 
 gone. Edith," he added, with a glance which struck terror 
 even into the courageous soul of his kinswoman, " go, if you 
 are wise." 
 
 The females withdrew, or rather hurried from the tent, 
 rank and ceremony forgotten, much like a flock of wild-fowl 
 huddled togethei, against whom the falcon has made a 
 recent stoop. 
 
 They returned from thence to the Queen's pavilion, to 
 indulge in regrets, and recriminations, equally unavailing. 
 Edith was the only one who seemed to disdain these ordinary 
 channels of sorrow. Without a sigh, without a tear, with- 
 out a word of upbraiding, she attended upon the Queen, 
 whose weak temperament showed her sorrow in violent 
 hysterical ecstasies, and passionate hypochondriacal effusions, 
 in the course of which Edith sedulously, and even affection- 
 ately, attended her. 
 
 "It is impossible she can have loved this knight," said 
 Plorise to Calista, her senior in attendance upon the Queen's 
 person. " We have been mistaken ; she is but sorry for his 
 12 
 
178 WA VEELEY NO VEL S 
 
 fate, as for a stranger who lias come to trouble on her 
 account." 
 
 *' Hush — hush/' answered her more experienced and more 
 observant comrade; "she is of that proud house of Plan- 
 tagenet, who never own that a hurt grieves them. While 
 they have themselves been bleeding to death under a mortal 
 wound, they have been known to bind up tlie scratches sus- 
 tained by their more faint-hearted comrades. Florise, we 
 have done frightfully wrong ; and, for my own part, I would 
 buy with every jewel I have, that our fatal jest had remained 
 unacted." 
 
CHAPTEE XVIII 
 
 This work desires a planetary intelligence 
 Of Jupiter and Sol ; and those great spirits 
 Are proud, fantastical. It asks great charges 
 To entice them from the guiding of their spheres. 
 To wait on mortals. 
 
 Albumazar. 
 
 ' The hermit followed the ladies from the pavilion of Richard, 
 :i as shadow follows a beam of sunshine when the clouds s^re 
 driving over the face of the sun. But he turned on the 
 threshold, and held up his hand towards the King in a warn- 
 ing, or almost a menacing posture, as he said — " Woe to 
 him who rejects the counsel of the church, and betaketh 
 himself to the foul divan of the infidel ! King Eichard, I 
 do not yet shake the dust from my feet and depart from thy 
 encampment : the sword falls not, but it hangs but by a 
 hair. Haughty monarch, we shall meet again." 
 
 ''Be it so, haughty priest," returned Richard — "prouder 
 in thy goat-skins than princes in purple and fine linen." 
 
 The hermit vanished from the tent, and the King con- 
 tinued, addressing the Arabian, ''Do the dervises of the 
 East, wise Hakim, use such familiarity with their princes ?" 
 
 "The dervise," replied Adonbee, "should be either a 
 sage or a madman : there is no middle course for him who 
 wears the MirMah* who watches by night and fasts by 
 day. Hence hath he either wisdom enough to bear himself 
 discreetly in the presence of princes, or else, having no rea- 
 son bestowed on him, he is not responsible for his own 
 actions," 
 
 " Methinks our monks have adopted chiefly the latter 
 character," said Richard. " But to the matter. In what 
 can I pleasure you, my learned physician ?" 
 
 " Great King," said El Hakim, making his profound 
 Oriental obeisance, " let thy servant speak one word, and 
 yet live. I would remind thee that thou owest — not to me, 
 their humble instrument — but to the Intelligences, whose 
 benefits I dispense to mortals, a life " 
 
 • Literally, the torn robe. The habit of the dervises is so called. 
 179 
 
180 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ''And I warrant me thou wouldst have another in re- 
 quital, ha ? " interrupted the King. 
 
 " Such is my humble prayer," said the Hakim, " to the 
 great Melech Rio, even the life of this good knight, who is 
 doomed to die, and but for such fault as was committed bv 
 the Sultan Adam, surnamed Aboulbeschar, or the father ol 
 all men." 
 
 '' And thy wisdom might remind thee. Hakim, that Adan 
 died for it," said the King, somewhat sternly, and thci; 
 began to pace the narrow space of his tent, vrith some emo- 
 tion, and to talk to himself. " Why, God-a-mercy, I knew 
 what he desired as soon as ever he entered the pavilion I 
 Here is one poor life justly condemned to extinction, and I, 
 a king and a soldier, who have slain thousands by my com- 
 mand, and scores with my own hand, am to have no power 
 over it, although the honor of my arms, of my house, of my 
 very Queen, hath been attainted by the culprit. By St. 
 George, it makes me laugh ! By St. Louis, it reminds me 
 of Blondel's tale of an enchanted castle, where the destined 
 knight was withstood successively in his purpose of enti'ance 
 by forms and figures the most dissimilar, but all hostile to 
 his undertaking. No sooner one sunk than another ap- 
 peared. Wife — kinswoman — hermit — Hakim — each appears 
 in the lists as soon as the other is defeated. Why, this is a 
 single knight fighting against the whole melee of the tourna^ 
 ment— ha ! ha ! ha ! " And Eichard laughed aloud ; for 
 hehad, in fact, begun to change his mood, his resentment 
 being usually too violent to be of long endurance. 
 
 The physician meanwhile looked on him with a coun- 
 tenance of surprise, not unmingled with contempt ; for the 
 Eastern peoi^le make no allowance for those mercurial 
 changes in the temper, and consider open laughter, upon 
 almost any account, as derogatory to the dignity of man, 
 and becoming only to women and children. At length, the 
 sage addressed the King, when he saw him more composed. 
 
 "A doom of death should not iscue from laughing lips. 
 Let thy servant hope that thou hast granted him this man's 
 life." 
 
 ''Take the freedom of a thousand captives instead," said 
 Richard : ''restore so many of thy countrymen to their tents 
 and families, and I will give the warrant instantly. This 
 man's life can avail thee nothing, and it is forfeited." 
 
 "All our lives are forfeited," said the Hakim, putting 
 hi-s hand to his cajj. "]3ut the great Creditor is merciful, 
 and exacts not the pledge rigorously nor untimely/' 
 
THE TAL ISMAIL 181 
 
 " Thou canst show me," said Richard, " no special interest 
 thou hast to hecomei7itercessor betwixt me and the execution 
 of justice, to which I am sworn as a crowned king." 
 
 " Thou art sworn to the dealing forth mercy as well as 
 justice/' said El Hakim ; " but what thou seekest, great 
 King, is the execution of thine own will. And, for the con- 
 cern I have in this request, know that many a man's life 
 depends upon thy granting this boon." 
 
 " Explain thy words," said Richard ; " but think not to 
 impose upon me by false pretexts.'" 
 
 " Be it far from thy servant !" said Adonbec, " Know, 
 then, that the medicine to which thou, sir king, and many 
 one beside owe their recovery is a talisman, composed under 
 certain aspects of the heavens, when the Divine Intelligences 
 are most propitious. I am but the poor administrator of its 
 virtues. I dip it in a cup of water, observe the fitting hour 
 to administer it to the patient, and the potency of the draught 
 works the cure." 
 
 "A most rare medicine," said the King, *'and a commo- 
 'dious ! and, as it may be carried in the leech's purse, would 
 isave the whole caravan of camels which they require to convey 
 [drugs and physic-stuff. I marvel there is any other in use." 
 , '' It is written," answered the Hakim, with imperturbable 
 'gravity, " 'Abuse not the steed which hath borne thee from 
 ithe battle.' Know, that such talismans might indeed be 
 framed, but rare has been the number of adepts who have 
 dared to undertake the application of their virtue. Severe 
 restrictions, painful observances, fasts, and penance are 
 necessary on the part of the sage who uses this mode of cure : 
 land if, through neglect of these preparations, by his love of 
 ease, or his indulgence of sensual appetite, he omits to cure 
 at least twelve persons within the course of each moon, the 
 virtue of the divine gift departs from the amulet, and both 
 the last patient and the physician will be exposed to speedy 
 misfortune, neither will they survive the year. I require 
 yet one life to make up the appointed number." 
 I " Go out into the camp, good tiakim, where thou wilt find 
 ii many," said the King, "and do not seek to rob my heads- 
 man of Ms patients ; it is unbecoming a mediciner of thine 
 3minence to interfere with the practise of another. Besides, 
 [ cannot see how delivering a criminal from the death he de- 
 lei'ves should go to make up thy tale of miraculous cures." 
 , " When thou canst show why a draught of cold water 
 ihould have cured thee, when the most precious drugs failed,'' 
 ■aid the Hakim, " thou mayst reason on the other mysteries 
 
182 WA VEBLEY NO VELS 
 
 attendant on this matter. For myself, I am inefficient to 
 the great work, having this morning touched an unclean 
 animal. Ask, therefore, no farther questions ; it is enough 
 that, by sparing this man's life at my request, you will de- 
 liver yourself, great King, and thy servant from a great 
 danger." 
 
 " Hark thee, Adonbec," replied the King, " I have no ob- 
 jection that leeches should wrap their words in mist, and pre- 
 tend to derive knowledge from the stars ; but when you bid 
 Eichard Plantagenet fear that a danger will fall upon him 
 from some idle omen or omitted ceremonial, you speak to no 
 ignorant Saxon, or doting old woman, who foregoes her pur- 
 pose because a hare crosses her path, a raven croaks, or a cat 
 sneezes." 
 
 " I cannot hinder your doubt of my words," said Adonbec ; 
 "but yet, let my Lord the King grant that truth is on the 
 tongue of his servant, will he think it just to deprive the 
 world, and every wretch who may suffer by the pains which 
 so lately reduced him to that couch, of the benefit of this 
 most virtuous talisman, rather than extend his forgiveness 
 to one poor criminal ? Bethink you, Lord King, that, though 
 thou canst slay thousands, thou canst not restore one man to 
 health. Kings have the power of Satan to torment, sages 
 that of Allah to heal ; beware how thou hinderest the good 
 to humanity which thou canst not thyself render. Thou 
 canst cut off the head, but not cure the aching tooth." 
 
 " This is over-insolent," said the King, hardening himself, 
 as the Hakim assumed a more lofty, and almost a command- 
 ing tone. " We took thee for our leech, not for our coun- 
 selor or conscience-keeper." 
 
 "And is it thus the most renowned prince of Frangistan 
 repays benefit done to his royal person ? " said El Hakim, 
 exchanging the humble and stooping posture in which he 
 had hitherto solicited the King for an attitude lofty and 
 commanding. " Know, then," he said, " that through every 
 court of Europe and Asia — to Moslem and Nazarene — to 
 knight and lady — wherever harp is heard and sword worn— 
 wherever honor is loved and infamy detested — to every quar- 
 ter of the world will I denounce thee, Melech Ric, as thank- 
 less and ungenerous ; and even the lands — if there be any I 
 such — that never heard of thy renown shall yet be acquainted 
 with thy shame ! " 
 
 " Are these terms to me, vile infidel ? " said Richard, 
 striding up to him in fury. " Art weary of thy life ? " 
 
 "Strike V said El Hakim ; " thine own deed shall then 
 
THE TALISMAN 183 
 
 paint thee more worthless than could my words, though each 
 had an hornet's sting/' 
 
 Richard turned fiercely from him, folded. his arms, trav- 
 ersed the tent as before, and then exclaimed, " Thankless 
 and ungenerous ! as well be termed coward and infidel. 
 Hakim, thou hast chosen thy boon ; and though I had rather 
 thou hadst asked my crown-jewels, yet I may not, kinglike, 
 rffuse thee. Take this Scot, therefore, to thy keeping ; the 
 pi'ovost will deliver him to thee on this warrant." 
 
 He hastily traced one or two lines, and gave them to the 
 physician. " Use him as thy bond-slave, to be disposed of 
 as thou wilt ; only let him beware how he comes before tlie 
 eves of Richard. Hark thee — thou art wise — he hath been 
 overbold among those in whose fair looks and weak judg- 
 ments we trust our honor, as you of the East lodge your 
 treasures in caskets of silver wire, as fine and as frail as the 
 web of a gossamer." 
 
 "Thy servant understands the words of the King," said 
 tlie sage, at once resuming the reverent style of address in 
 wliich he had commenced. " When the rich carpet is soiled, 
 the fool pointeth to the stain, the wise man covers it with 
 liis mantle. I have heard my lord's pleasure, and to hear is 
 to obey." 
 
 " It is well," said the King ; "let him consult his own 
 safety, and never appear in my presence more. Is there 
 aught else in which I may do thee pleasure ?" 
 
 *• The bounty of the King hath filled my cup to the brim," 
 said the sage ; "yea, it hath been abundant as the fountain 
 \\liich sprung up amid the camp of the descendants of 
 Israel, when the rock was stricken by the rod of Moussa ben 
 Ainran." 
 
 " Ay, but," said the King, smiling, " it required, as in the 
 desert, a hard blow on the rock, ere it yielded its treasures. 
 I would that I knew something to pleasure thee, which I 
 might yield as freely as the natural fountain sends forth its 
 waters." 
 
 "• Let me touch that victorious hand," said the sage, " in 
 token that, if Adonbec el Hakim should hereafter demand a 
 boon of Richard of England, he may do so, yet plead his 
 command." 
 
 " Thou hast hand and glove upon it, man." replied 
 Richard ; " only, if thou couldst consistently make up thy 
 tale of patients without craving me to deliver from punish- 
 ment those who have deserved it, I would more willingly 
 discharge my debt in some other form." 
 
'^' 
 
 184 WA VERLEY N O VEL S 
 
 " May thy days be multiplied ! " answered the Hakim, and 
 withdrew from the apartment after the usual deep obeisance. 
 
 King Eichard gazed after him as he departed, like one but; 
 half-satisfied with what had passed. 
 
 " Strange pertinacity," he said, " in this Hakim, and a 
 wonderful chance to interfere between that audacious Scot 
 and the chastisement he has merited so richly. Yet, let 
 him live ! there is one brave man the more in the world. 
 And now for the Austrian. Ho, is the Baron of Gilsland 
 there without?'* 
 
 Sir Thomas de Vaux thue summoned, his bulky form 
 speedily darkened the opening of the pavilion, while behind 
 him glided as a specter, unannounced yet unopposed, the 
 savage form of the hermit of Engaddi, wrapped in his goat- 
 skin mantle. 
 
 Richard, without noticing his presence, called in a loud 
 tone to the baron, " Sir Thomas de Vaux of Lanercost and 
 Gilsland, take trumpet and herald, and go instantly to the 
 tent of him whom they call Archduke of Austria, and see 
 that it be when the press of his knights and vassals is greatest 
 around him, as is likely at this hour, for the German boar 
 breakfasts ere he hears mass ; enter his presence with as little 
 reverence as thou mayst, and impeach him, on the part of 
 Eichard of England, that he hath this night, by his own 
 hand or that of others, stolen from its staff the banner of 
 England. Wherefore, say to him our pleasure that, within an 
 hour from the time of my speaking, he restore the said ban- 
 ner with all reverence, he himself and his principal barons 
 waiting the whilst with heads uncovered, and without their 
 robes of honor. And that, moreover, he pitch beside it, on 
 the one hand, his own banner of Austria reversed, as that 
 which hath been dishonored by theft and felony ; and on the jf*^ 
 other a lance, bearing the bloody head of him who was his '-.'■ 
 nearest counselor or assistant in this base injury. And say, ;i; 
 that such our behests being punctually discharged, we will, ; ;{ 
 for the sake of onr vow and the weal of the Holy Land, for- ' ' 
 give his other forfeits. '* 
 
 "And how if the Duke of Austria deny all accession to 
 this act of wrong and of felony ?" said Thomas de Vaux. 
 
 "Tell him," replied the King, "we will prove it upon 
 his body — ay, were he backed with his two bravest cham- 
 pions. Knight-like will we prove it, on foot or on horse, in V* 
 the desert or in the field — time, place, and arms all at his own , 
 choice." 
 
 ** Bethink you of the peace of God and the church, m^ 
 
THE TALISMAN 185 
 
 tiege lord/' said the Baron of Gilslaiid, *■■ among those princes 
 engaged in this holy Crusade." 
 
 " Bethink you how to execute my commands, my liege 
 vassal," answered Eichard, impatiently. " Methinks men 
 expect to turn our purpose by their breath, as boys blow 
 feathers to and fro. Peace to the church ! who, I prithee, 
 minds it ? The peace of the church, among Crusaders, im- 
 plies, war with the Saracens with whom the princes have 
 made truce, and the one ends with the other. And, besides, 
 see you not how every prince of them is seeking his own 
 several ends ? I will seek mine also, and that is honor, 
 .For honor I came hither, and if I may not win it upon the 
 Saracens, at least I will not lose a jot from any respect to 
 this paltry duke, though he were bulwarked and buttressed 
 by every prince in the Crusade." 
 
 De Vaux turned to obey the King's mandate, shrugging 
 his shoulders at the same time, the bluntness of his nature 
 being unable to conceal that its tenor went against his judg- 
 ment. But the hermit of Engaddi stepped forward, and 
 assumed the air of one charged with higher commands than 
 those of a mere earthly potentate. Indeed, his dress of 
 shaggy skins, his uncombed and untrimmed hair and beard, 
 his lean, wild, and contorted features, and the almost insane 
 fire which gleamed from under his bushy eyebrows, made 
 him approach nearly to our idea of some seer of Scripture, 
 who, charged with high mission to the sinful kings of Judali 
 or Israel, descended from the rocks and caverns in which he 
 ! dwelt in abstracted solitude, to abash earthly tyrants in the 
 midst of their pride, by discliarging on them the blighting 
 denunciations of Divine Majesty, even as the cloud dis- 
 , charges the lightnings with which it is fraught on the 
 ; pinnacles and towers of castles and palaces. 
 I In the midst of his most wayward mood, Eichard respected 
 I the church and its ministers, and though offended at the 
 intrusion of the hermit into his tent, he greeted him 
 with respect ; at the same time, however, making a sign to 
 Sir Thomas de Vaux to hasten on his message. 
 
 But the hermit prohibited the baron, by gesture, look, and 
 word, to stir a yard on such an errand ; and, holding up his 
 bare arm, from which the goat-skin mantle fell back in the 
 violence of his action, he waved it aloft, meager with famine, 
 and wealed with the blows of the discipline. 
 
 "In the name of God, and of the most holy Father, the vice- 
 gerent of the Christian Church upon earth, I prohibit thig 
 most profane, bloodthirsty, and brutal defiance betwixt two 
 
186 WAV ERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Christiau princes, vvliose shoulders are signed with the 
 blessed mark under which they swore brotherhood. Woe to 
 him by whom it is broken ! Richard of England, recall tlve 
 most unhallowed message thou hast given to that baron. 
 Danger and death are nigh thee — the dagger is glancing at 
 tliy very throat ! " 
 
 " Danger and death are playmates to Richard," answered 
 the monarch, proudly ; " and he hath braved too many swords 
 to fear a dagger." 
 
 " Danger and death are near/" replied the seer : and, 
 sinking his voice to a hollow, unearthly tone, he added, 
 " And after death the judgment ! " 
 
 *' Good and holy father," said Richard, " I reverence thy 
 person and thy sanctity " 
 
 " Reverence not me," interrupted the hermit ; " reverence 
 sooner the vilest insect that crawls by the shores of the Dead 
 Sea, and feeds upon its accursed slime. But reverence Him 
 wdiose commands I speak. Reverence Him whose sepulchre 
 you have vowed to rescue. Revere the oath of concord 
 wdiicli you have sworn, and break not the silver cord of 
 union and fidelity with wdiich you have bound yourself to 
 your princely confederates." 
 
 ''Good father," said the King, "'you of the church seem 
 to me to presume somewhat, if a layman may say so much, 
 upon the dignity of your holy character. Without challeng- 
 ing your right to take charge of our conscience, methinks 
 you might leave us the charge of our own honor." 
 
 ''Presume !" repeated the hermit; " is it for me to pre- 
 sume, royal Richard, who am but the bell obeying the hand 
 of the sexton — but the senseless and worthless trumpet, 
 carrying the command of him who sounds it ? See, on my 
 knees I throw myself before thee, imploring thee to have 
 mercy on Christendom, on England, and en thyself !" 
 
 " Rise — rise," said Richard, compelling him to stand up : 
 " it beseems not that knees which are so frequently bended 
 to the Deity should press the ground in honor of man. 
 What dauge'r awaits us, reverend father ? and when stood the 
 power of England so low, that the noisy bluster of this new- 
 made duke's displeasure should alarm her or her monarch ?" 
 
 " I have looked forth from my mountain turret upon the 
 starry host of heaven, as each in his midnight circuit uttered 
 wisdom to another, and knowledge to the few who can un- 
 derstand their voice. There sits an enemy in thy house of 
 life. Lord King, malign at once to thy fame and thy pros- 
 perity — an emanation of Saturn, menacing thee with instant 
 
THE TALISMAN 187 
 
 id bloody peril, and which, but thou yield thy proud will 
 ) the rule of tliy duty, will presently crush thee, even in 
 ly pride.'' 
 
 " Away — away, this is heathen science," said the King. 
 
 Christians practise it not ; wise men believe it not. Old 
 lan, thou dotest." 
 
 " I dote not, Richard,'' answered the hermit ; " I am not 
 ) happy. I know my condition, and that some portion of 
 iason is yet permitted me, not for my own use, but that of 
 le church and the advancement of the Cross. I am the 
 [ind man who holds a torcli to others, though it yields no 
 ^ht to himself. Ask me touching what concerns the weal 
 ' Christendom and of this Crusade, and 1 will speak with 
 lee as the wisest counselor on whose tongue persuasion 
 ^er sat. Speak to me of my own wretched being, and my 
 brds shall be those of the maniac outcast which I am." 
 
 " 1 would not break the bands of unity asunder among 
 le princes of the Crusade," said Richard, witli a mitigated 
 lue and manner ; " but what atonement can they render 
 le for the injustice and insult which I have sustained ?" 
 I "Even of that I am prepared and commissioned to speak 
 
 I- the council, which, meeting hastily at the summons of 
 lilip of France, have taken measures for that effect." 
 /'Strange," replied Richard, ''that others should treat 
 t what is due to the wounded Majesty of England ! " 
 
 " They are willing to anticipate your demands, if it be 
 jssiljle," answered the hermit. "In a body, they consent 
 tat the banner of England be replaced on St. George's 
 bunt, and they lay under ban and condemnation the aada- 
 ous criminal, or criminals, by whom it was outraged, and 
 vU announce a princely reward to any who shall denounce 
 t3 delinquent's guilt, and give his flesh to the wolves and 
 r^ens." 
 
 " And Anstria," said Richard, " upon whom rest such 
 Siong presumptions that he was the author of the deed ?" 
 
 ■■'To prevent discord in the host," replied the hermit, 
 'Austria will clear himself of the suspicion, by submitting 
 tiwhatsoever ordeal the Patriarch of Jerusalem shall im- 
 p,ie." 
 
 ' Will he clear himself by the trial by combat ? " said 
 Bag Richard. 
 
 'His oath prohibits it," said the hermit; "and, more- 
 !r, the council of the princes " 
 
 ' Will neither authorize battle against the Saracens," in- 
 tfrupted Richard, " nor against any one else. But it is 
 
188 WAVERLEY NOVELS i 
 
 enough, father; thou hast shown me the folly of proceed] tfl 
 ing as I designed in this matter. You shall sooner lighi 
 your torch in a puddle of rain than bring a spark out of 
 cold-blooded coward. There is no honor to be gained o 
 Austria, and so let him pass. I will have him perjure himi 
 self, however : I will insist on tlie ordeal. How I sha'i 
 laugh to hear his clumsy fingers hiss, as he grasps tlie red! 
 hot globe of iron ! Ay, or his huge mouth riven, and hii 
 gullet swelling to suffocation, as he endeavors to swallow th 
 consecrated bread ! " 
 
 " Peace, Eichard," said the hermit — " oh, peace, fo 
 shame if not for charity ! Who sliall praise or hone 
 princes who insult and calumniate each other ? Alas ! tha 
 a creature so noble as thou art, so accomplished in prince! 
 thoughts and princely daring, so fitted to honor Christen 
 dom by thy actions, and, in thy calmer mood, to rule her bi 
 thy wisdom, should yet have the brute and wild fury of thj 
 lion mingled with the dignity and courage of that king oi 
 the forest \" _ ! 
 
 He remained an instant musing with his eyes fixed on th 
 ground, and then proceeded — " But Heaven, that know 
 our imperfect nature, accepts of our imperfect obedience 
 and hath delayed, though not averted, the bloody end of thj 
 daring life. The destroying angel hath stood still, as of ol( 
 by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, and th 
 blade is drawn in his hand, by which, at no distant datej 
 Richard the lion-hearted shall be as low as the meanesi 
 peasant. "" 
 
 "Must it then be so soon ?" said Richard. " Yet, evel 
 so be it. May my course be bright, if it be but brief ! " 
 
 " Alas ! noble King," said the solitary, and it_ seemed aijlli 
 if a tear (unwonted guest) were gathering in his dry antti 
 glazened eye, "short and melancholy, marked with mortij;!iii 
 fication, and calamity, and captivity, is the span that dividei| i 
 thee from the grave which yawns for thee — a grave in whicHi" 
 thou shalt be laid without lineage to succeed thee, withoujit 
 the tears of a people, exhausted by thy ceaseless wars, t() ;ta 
 lament thee, without having extended the knowledge of thj i 
 subjects, without having done aught to enlarge their happi- il 
 ness." i ill 
 
 " But not without renown, monk — not without the tearhj 
 of the lady of my love. These consolations, which thoij'jl 
 canst neither know nor estimate, await upon Richard to hi;j !ti 
 grave." . \i 
 
 ** Do I not know — can I not estimate, the value of min|i{ 
 
THE TALISMAN 189 
 
 itrel's praise and of lady's love ? " retorted the hermit, in a 
 ;one which for a moment seemed to emulate the enthusiasm 
 )f Richard himself. " King of England," he continued, 
 sxtending his emaciated arm, " the blood which boils in thy 
 )lue veins is not more noble than that which stagnates in 
 nine. Few and cold as the drops are, they still are of the 
 )lood of the royal Lusignan — of the horoic and sainted God- 
 rey. I am — that is, I was when in the world — Alberick 
 
 ilortemar " 
 
 " Whose deeds," said Richard, " have so often filled Fame's 
 rumpet ! Is it so — can it be so ? Could such a light as 
 hine fall from the horizon of chivalry, and yet men be un- 
 ertain where its embers had alighted ? " 
 I '' Seek a fallen star," said the hermit, " and thou shalt 
 inly light on some foul jelly, which, in shooting through 
 he horizon, has assumed for a moment an appearance of 
 plendor. Richard, if I thought that rending the bloody 
 eil from my horrible fate could make thy proud heart stoop 
 the discipline of the church, I could find in my heart to 
 isll thee a tale which I have hitherto kept gnawing at my 
 itals in concealment, like the self-devoted youth of Hea- 
 lienesse. Listen, then, Richard, and may the grief and de- 
 oair which cannot avail this wretched remnant of what was 
 Qce a man be powerful as an example to so noble, yet so 
 ild, a beiug as thou art ! Yes, I will — I will tear open the 
 mg-hidden wounds, although in thy very presence they 
 lould bleed to death !" 
 King Richard, upon whom the history of Alberick of Mor- 
 imar had made a deep impression in his early years, when 
 linstrels were regaling his father's halls with legends of the 
 [oly Land, listened with respect to the outlines of a tale 
 hich, darkly and imperfectly sketched, indicated suffi- 
 ently the cause of the partial insanity of this singular and 
 lost unhappy being. 
 
 i " I need not," he said, '' tell thee that I was noble in birth, 
 jigh in fortune, strong in arms, wise in counsel. All these 
 was ; but while the noblest ladies in Palestine strove which 
 lould wind garlands for my helmet, my love was fixed — 
 nalterably and devotedly fixed — on a maiden of low degree, 
 '.er father, an ancient soldier of the Cross, saw our passion, 
 id knowing the difference betwixt us, saw no other refuge 
 ir his daughter's honor than to place her within the shadow 
 : the cloister. I returned from a distant expedition, loaded 
 ith spoils and honor, to find my happiness was destroyed 
 •rever. I, too, sought the cloister, and Satan, who had 
 
190 WA VER LEY NOVELS 
 
 marked me for his own, breathed into my heart a vapor | ipi 
 spiritual pride, which could only have had its source in lij 
 own infernal regions. I had risen as high in the church 
 before in the state : I was, forsooth, the wise, the self-suf 
 cient, the impeccable ! I was the counselor of councils 
 was the director of prelates — how should I stumble — whei^ 
 fore should I fear temptation ? Alas ! I became confess' 
 to a sisterhood, and amongst that sisterhood I found tl| 
 long-loved — the long-lost. Spare me farther confession ! 
 fallen nun, whose guilt was avenged by self-murder, sleei 
 soundly in the vaults of Engaddi, while, above her ve; kp 
 grave, gibbers, moans, and roars a creature to whom but 
 much reason is left as may suffice to render him complete: 
 sensible to his fate ! " 
 
 " Unhappy man ! " said Eichard, " I wonder no longer i 
 thy misery. How didst thou escape the doom which tl 
 canons denounce against thy ofleuse ? " 
 
 " Ask one who is yet in the gall of worldly bitterness," 
 the hermit, " and he v/ill speak of a life spared for person 
 respects, and from consideration to high birth. But, Richar 
 /tell thee that Providence hath preserved me, to lift me c 
 high as a light and beacon, whose ashes, when this earth 
 fuel is burnt out, must yet be flung into Tophet. Wjthere 
 and shrunk as this poor form is, it is yet animated with fcw 
 spirits — one active, shrewd and piercing, to advocate tl 
 cause of the Church of Jerusalem ; one mean, abject, an 
 despairing, fluctuating between madness and misery, J 
 mourn over my own wretchedness, and to guard holy relic 
 on which it would be most sinful for me even to cast .no 
 eye. Pity me not ! it is but sin to pity the loss of such a 
 abject — pity me not, but profit by my example. Thou stant 
 est on the highest, and, therefore, on the most dangerouj',,: 
 pinnacle occupied by any Christian prince. Thou art prouj j| 
 of heart, loose of life, bloody of hand. Put from thee th i 
 sins which are to thee as daughters : though they be dear t 
 the sinful Adam, expel these adopted furies from thy brea 
 —thy pride, thy luxury, thy blood-thirstiness \" 
 
 ''He raves," said Richard, turning from the solitary t 
 De Vaux, as one who felt some pain from a sarcasm whic v 
 yet he could not resent ; then turned him calmly, and som»^ ., 
 what scornfully, to the anchorite, as he replied — "Thoi^,, 
 hast found a fair bevy of daughters, reverend father, to 0C| >, 
 who hath been but few months married ; but since I mii!|^i 
 put them from my roof, it were but like a father to provifj.' 
 them with suitable matches. Wherefore I will part witj ,j 
 
THE TALISMAN 19l 
 
 y pride to the iioble canons of the church, my luxury, as 
 lou call'st it, to the monks of the rule, and my blood-thirst- 
 ess to the Knights of the Temple. '" 
 
 " 0, heart of steel and hand of iron/' said the rmchorite. 
 upon whom example, as well as advice, is alike thrown 
 ray I Yet shalt thou be spared for a season, in case it so 
 ! thou shouldst turn and do that which is acceptable in 
 e sight of Heaven. For me, I must return to my place. 
 yrie eleison ! I am he through whom the rays of Heavenly 
 ace dart like those of the sun through a burning glass, 
 ncentrating them on other objects until they kindle and 
 aze, while the glass itself remains cold and uninfluenced. 
 yrie eleison! The poor must be called, for the rich have 
 fused the banquet. Kyrie eleison! " So saying, he burst 
 )m the tent, uttering loud cries. 
 
 "A mad priest l^' said Richard, from whose mind the 
 intic exclamations of the hermit had partly obliterated the 
 pression produced by the detail of his personal history and 
 sfortunes. "After him, De Yaux, and see he comes to 
 harm : for. Crusaders as Ave are, a juggler hath more 
 '■erence amongst our varlets than a priest or a saint, and 
 3y may, perchance, put some scorn upon him." 
 The knight obeyed, and Eichard presently gave way to the 
 ;)ughts which the wild prophecy of the monk had inspired. 
 To die early — without lineage — without lamentation! a 
 nvy sentence, and well that it is not passed by a more 
 nipetent judge. Yet the Saracens, who are accomplished 
 nnystical knowledge, will often maintain that He in whose 
 i!S the wisdom of the sage is but as folly inspires wisdom 
 li prophecy into the seeming folly of the madman. Yon- 
 Ir hermit is said to read the stars too, an art generally 
 DiCtised in these lands, where the heavenly host was of yore 
 ;!■ object of idolatry. I would I had asked him touching 
 ;li loss of my banner ; for not the blessed Tishbite, the 
 'cnder of his order, could seem more wnldly rapt out of 
 iiself, or epeak with a tongue more resembling that of a 
 3'phet, How now, De Vaux, what news of the mad 
 
 TSSt?" 
 
 'Mad priest, call you him, my lord?" answered De 
 Vux. " Methinks he resembles more the blessed Baptist 
 tiiself, just issued from the wilderness. He has placed 
 ti iself on one of the military engines, and from thence he 
 [):aches to the soldiers, as never man preached since the 
 tie of Peter the Hermit. The camp, alarmed by his cries, 
 3iwd around him in thousands ; and breaking off every now 
 
192 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 and then from the main thread of his discourse, he address 
 the several nations, each in their own language, and press 
 upon each the arguments best qualified to urge them to pe 
 severance in the delivery of Palestine." 
 
 *'By this light, a noble hermit!" said King Eichar. 
 " But what else could come from the blood of Godfrey 
 He despair of safetv, because he hath in former days livt 
 par amours ? I will have the Pope send him an ample r 
 mission, and I would not less willingly be intercessor hi 
 his helle amie been an abbess." 
 
 As he spoke, the Arclibishop of Tyre craved audience, f< 
 the purpose of requesting Richard's"^ attendance, should h, 
 health permit, on a secret conclave of the chiefs of the Cri 
 sade, and to explain to him the military and political ii 
 cidents which had occurred during his illness. 
 
 ga 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Mxist we then sheathe our still victorious sword. 
 Turn back our forward step, which ever trode 
 O'er foemen's necks the onward path of glory, 
 Unclasp the mail, which with a solemn vow, 
 In God's own house, we hung upon our shoulders — 
 That vow, as unaccomplish'd as the promise 
 Which village nurses make to still their children. 
 And after think no more of ? 
 \ The Crusade, a Tragedy. 
 
 !he Archbishop of Tyre was au emissary well choseu to 
 (immunicate to Eichard tidings which from another voice 
 le lion-hearted king would not have brooked to hear, with- 
 at the most unbounded explosions of resentment. Even 
 •.is sagacious and reverend prelate found difficulty in in- 
 iicing him to listen to news which destroyed all his hopes 
 ( gaining back the Holy Sepulcher by force of arms, and 
 squiring the renown which the universal all-hail of Ghris- 
 Inilom was ready to confer upon him, as the Champion of 
 le Cross. 
 
 But, by the archbishop's report, it appeared that Saladin 
 ns assembling all the force of his hundred tribes, and that 
 te monarchs of Europe, already disgusted from various 
 lotives with the expedition, which had proved so hazard- 
 ( s, and was daily growing more so, had resolved to aban- 
 (n their purpose. In this they were countenanced by the 
 eample of Philip of France, who, with many protestations 
 c regard, and assurances that he would first see his brothei 
 c England in safety, declared his intention to return tc 
 hrope. His great vassal, the Earl of Champagne, had 
 aopted the same resolution ; and it could not excite sur- 
 pse that Leopold of Austria, affronted as he had been by 
 Ichard, was glad to embrace an opportunity of deserting a 
 cise in which his haughty opponent was to be considered 
 achief. Others announced the same purpose; so that it 
 fls plain that the King of England was to be left, if lie 
 C3se to remain, supported only by sucli volunteers as miglit. 
 Oder such depressing circumstances, join themselves to the 
 Iglish army, and by the doubtful aid of Conrade of Mont- 
 is 188 
 
194 WA VERLEY NO VEL8 
 
 Berrat, and the military orders of the Temple and of S 
 John, who, though they were sworn to wage liattle again 
 the Saracens, were at least equally jealous of any Europe;) 
 monarch achieving the conquest of Palestine, where, wit 
 short-sighted and selfish policy, they proposed to establit 
 independent dominions of their own. 
 
 It needed not many arguments to show Richard the trut 
 of his situation ; and, indeed, after his first burst of passioi 
 he sat him calmly down, and, with gloomy looks, head d 
 pressed, and arms folded on his bosom, listened to the arc! 
 .bishop's reasoning on the impossibility of his carrying c 
 the Crusade when deserted by his companions. Nay, 1 
 forbore interruption, even when the prelate ventured, i 
 measured term.s, to hint that Richard's own impetuosity he 
 been one main cause of disgusting the prince with the e: 
 pedition. 
 
 " Confiteor," answered Richard, with a dejected look, ap 
 something of a melancholy smile; "I confess, revereii 
 father, that I ought on some accounts to sing culpa tnei 
 But is it not hard that my frailties of temper should be visiti 
 with such a penance — that, for a burst or two of natur, 
 passion, I should be doomed to see fade before me ungatl , 
 ered such a rich harvest of glory to God and honor to chi- 
 airy ? But it shall not fade. By the soul of the Conquero ' 
 I will plant the cross on the towers of Jerusalem, or it sha 
 be planted over Richard's grave !" 
 
 "Thou mayst doit," said the prelate, '^yet not anotht 
 drop of Christian blood be shed in the quarrel." 
 
 " Ah, you speak of compromise. Lord Prelate ; but tl: , 
 blood of the infidel hounds must also cease to flow," sai 
 Richard. _ : 
 
 "There will be glory enough," rejolied the archbishojj- 
 " in having extorted from Saladin, by force of arms, and L|, 
 the respect inspired by your fame, such conditions as at onCj [, 
 restore the Holy Sepulcher, open the Holy Land to pi, '.^ 
 grims, secure their safety by strong fortresses, and, strong( "1 
 than all, assure the safety of the Holy City, by conferrinj ^.' 
 on Richard the title of King Guardian of Jerusalem." ' 
 
 "How !" said Richard, his eyes sparkling with unusu; 
 light, "I — I — I the King Guardian of tlae Holy Cit} 
 Victory itself, but that it is victory, could not gain mon , 
 scarce so much, when won with unwilling and disunittj;^ 
 forces. But Saladin still proposes to retain his interest i: '" 
 the Holy Land?" 
 
 **As a joint sovereign, the sworn ally," replied the pre 
 
THE TALISMAN 195 
 
 e, '' of the miglity Richard — his relative, if it may be per- 
 itted, by marriage." 
 
 *'By marriage ! " said Eichard, surprised, yet less so than 
 ,e prelate had expected. " Ha ! Ay — Edith Plantagenet ! 
 id I dream this or did some one tell me ? My head is still 
 3ak from this fever, and has been agitated. Was it the 
 :ot, or the Hakim, or yonder holy hermit that hinted such 
 kvild bargain ?" 
 
 '* The hermit of Engaddi, most likely," said the arch- 
 ishop, " for he hath toiled much in this matter ; and since 
 ;e discontent of the princes has become apparent, and a 
 ;3aration of their forces unavoidable, he hath had many 
 ;nsultations, both with Christian and Pagan, for arranging 
 !ch a pacification as may give to Christendom, at least in 
 :rt, the objects of this holy warfare." 
 " My kinswoman to an infidel — ha ! " exclaimed Richard, 
 ijhis eyes began to sparkle. 
 
 irhe prelate hastened to avert his wrath. " The Pope's 
 jiisent must doubtless be first attained, and the holy her- 
 ijt, who is well known at Rome, will treat with the holy 
 Either." 
 
 i' How ! without our consent first given ? " said the King. 
 "'' Surely no," said the bishop, in a quieting and insinu- 
 iiig tone of voice ; " only with and under your especial 
 isction." 
 
 J* My sanction to marry my kinswoman to an infidel ! " 
 lal Richard ; yet he spoke rather in a tone of doubt than as 
 liinctiy reprobating the measure proposed. " Could I 
 i;e dreamed of such a composition when I leaped upon 
 1 Syrian shore from the prow of my galley, even as a lion 
 
 iji'ngs on his prey ; and now ? But proceed, I will 
 
 itr with patience." 
 
 Iqually delighted and surprised to find his task so much 
 ;aer than he had apprehended, the archbishop hastened to 
 XT forth before Richard the instances of such alliances in 
 ^|in, not without countenance from the Holy See, the in- 
 ia'ulable advantages which all Christendom would derive 
 '.Vid the union of Richard and Saladin by a bond so sacred ; 
 in, above all, he spoke with great vehemence and unction 
 )i]the probability that Saladin would, in case of the pro- 
 )o;d alliance, exchange his false faith for the true one. 
 
 Hath the Soldan shown any disposition to become 
 GHstian?" said Richard; "if so, the king lives not on 
 3ah to whom I would grant the hand of a kinswoman — ay, 
 orlster — sooner than to my noble Saladin — ay, though the 
 
196 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 one came to lay crown and scepter at her feet, and the othe 
 had nothing to offer but his good sword and better heart." 
 
 " Saladin hath heard our Christian teachers," said th 
 bishop, somewhat evasively — " my unworthy self, and others 
 and as he listens with patience, and replies with calmness, i 
 can hardly be but that he be snatched as a brand from th 
 burning. Magna est Veritas, et prevalebit. Moreover, th 
 hermit of Engaddi, few of whose words have fallen fruitles 
 to the ground, is possessed fully with the belief that there i 
 a calling of the Saracens and the other heathen approachius 
 to whicli this marriage shall be matter of induction. H 
 readeth the course of the stars ; and dwelling, with macerf ■' 
 tion of the flesh, in those divine places which the saint ; 
 have trodden of old, the spirit of Elijah the Tishbite, th : 
 founder of his blessed order, hath been with him as it w£ 
 with the prophet Elisha, the son of Shaphat, when he sprea 
 his mantle over him." 
 
 King Richard listened to the prelate's reasoning with 
 downcast brow and a troubled look. 
 
 *' I cannot tell," he said, '' how it is with me ; but m(| 
 thinks these cold counsels of the princes of Christendoi 
 have infected me too with a lethargy of spirit. The tim 
 hath been that, had a layman proposed such alliance to me 
 I had struck him to earth ; if a churchman, I had spit i 
 him as a renegade and priest of Baal ; yet now tliis couns( 
 sounds not so strange in mine ear. For why should I nc 
 seek for brotherhood and alliance with a Saracen, bravd 
 just, generous, who loves and honors a worthy foe as if hi 
 were a friend ; whilst the princes of Christendom shrim 
 from the side of their allies, and fO/rsake the cause of Heavej 
 and good knighthood ? Bat I will possess my patience, am 
 will not think of them. Only one attempt will 1 make t 
 keep this gallant brotherhood together, if it be possible ; an iii; 
 if 1 fail. Lord Archbishop, we will speak togetlier of thi ;; 
 counsel, which, as now, I neither accept nor altogethi 
 reject. Wend we to the council, my lord — the hour cal 
 us. Thou say'st Richard is hasty and proud ; thou shalt st 
 him humble himself like the lowly broom-plant from whic 
 he derives his surname." 
 
 With the assistance of those of his privy-chamber, tl 
 King then hastily robed himself in a doublet and mantle ( 
 a dark and uniform color ; and without any mark of regfjsi 
 dignity, exce[)ting a ring of gold upon his head, he hastenej t 
 with the Archbishop of Tyre to attend the council, whic 
 waited but his presence to commence its sitting. 
 
THE TALISMAN 197 
 
 The pavilion of the council was an ample tent, having be- 
 fore it the large banner of the cross displayed, and another, 
 m which was portrayed a female kneeling, with disheveled 
 lair and disordered dress, meant to represent the desolate 
 md distressed Church of Jerusalem, and bearing the motto, 
 Afflictce sponstB ne oUiviscaris. Warders, carefully selected, 
 cept every one at a distance from the neighborhood of this 
 ;ent, lest the debates, which were sometimes of a loud and 
 stormy character, should reach other ears than those they 
 ivere designed for. 
 
 Here, therefore, the princes of the Crusade were asseni- 
 jled, awaiting Ricliard's arrival ; and even the brief delay 
 vhich was thus interposed was turned to his disadvantage 
 )y his enemies ; various instances being circulated of his 
 wide and undue assumption of superiority, of which even 
 he necessity of the present short pause was quoted as a-.i in- 
 tanco. Men strove to fortify each other in their evil 
 Kpinion of the King of England, and vindicated the offense 
 fhich each had taken, by putting the most severe construc- 
 iion upon circumstances tlie most trifling ; and all this, per- 
 i-taps, because they were conscious of an instinctive reverence 
 or tlie heroic monarch, which it would require more than 
 rdinary efforts to overcome. 
 
 ; They had settled accordingly, that they should receive 
 im on his entrance with slight notice, and no more respect 
 lan was exactly necessary to keep within the bounds 
 f cold ceremonial. But when they beheld that noble form, 
 lat princely countenance, somewhat pale from his late ill- 
 ess, the eye which had been called by ministrels the bright 
 ■ar of battle and victory — when his feats, almost surpassing 
 uman strength and valor rushed on their recollection, the 
 )uncil of princes simultaneously arose — even the jealous 
 i.ing of France, and the sullen and offended Duke of Austria, 
 '•ose with one consent, and the assembled princes burst forth 
 itli one voice in the acclamation, " God save King Eichard 
 ■' England ! Long life to the valiant Lion's-Leart ! " 
 SWith a countenance frank and open as the summer sun 
 "hen it rises, Richard distributed his thanks around, and 
 "■ngratulated himself on being once more among his royal 
 1 ethren of the Crusades. 
 
 "Some brief words he desired to say," such was his ad- 
 less to the assembly, " though on a subject so unworthy as 
 hnself, even at the risk of delaying for a few minutes their 
 .tnsultations for the weal of Christendom and the advance- 
 I3iit of their holy enterprise." 
 
198 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 The assembled princes resumed their seats, and there w£ 
 a profound silence. 
 
 "This day," continued the King of England, "is a hig 
 festival of the church ; and well becomes it Christian mer 
 at such a tide, to reconcile themselves with their brethrer 
 and confess their faults to each other. Xoble princes, an 
 fathers of this holy expedition, Richard is a soldier : h; 
 hand is ever readier than his tongue, and his tongue is br 
 too much used to the rough language of his trade. But d 
 not, for Plantagenet's hasty speeches and ill-considere 
 actions, forsake the noble cause of the redemption of Palestine 
 do not throw away earthly renown and eternal salvation, t 
 be won here if ever they can be won by man, because the a( 
 of a soldier may have been hasty, and his speech as hard i 
 the iron which"^he has worn from childhood. Is Pilchard i, 
 default to any of you, Richard will make compensation hot 
 by word and action. Noble brother of France, have 1 bee 
 so unlucky as to offend you ? " 
 
 " The Majesty of France has no atonement to seek froi ^ 
 that of England," answered Philip, with kingly dignity, a( g, 
 cepting, at the same time, the offered hand of Richard I 
 "and whatever opinion I may adopt concerning the pros("7; 
 cution of this enterprise will depend on reasons arising oi . 
 of the state of my own kingdom, certainly on no jealousy c 
 disgust at mv royal and most valorous brother." 
 
 "Austria," said Richard, walking up to the Archduke wit 
 a mixture of frankness and dignity, while Leopold aro^ 
 from his seat, as if involuntarily, and with the action of a 
 automaton, whose motions depended upon some external in 
 pulse_"Austria thinks he hath reason to be offended wit: .,; 
 England ; England, that he hath cause to complam cj^,. 
 Austria. Let them exchange forgiveness, that the peace d,. 
 Europe, and the concord of this host, may remain unbrokerj^ 
 We are now joint-supporters of a more glorious banner tha-jji, 
 ever blazed before an eartlily prince, even the Banner cjj. 
 Salvation ; let not, therefore, strife be betwixt us for thj^, 
 Bvmbol of our more worldlv dignities; but let Leopold n,,. 
 store the pennon of England, if he has it in his power, an,, 
 Richard will say, though from no motive save his love fcj., 
 Holy Church, that he repents him of the^ hasty mood i^J 
 which he did insult the standard of Austria." _ y. 
 
 The Archduke stood still, sullen and discontented, with hij 
 eves fixed on the floor, and his countenance lowering wit^. 
 smothered displeasure, which awe, mingled with awkwarOpj. 
 ness, prevented his giving vent to in words. j ^j; 
 
THE TALISMAN 199 
 
 The Patriarch of Jerusalem hastened to break the em- 
 arrassing silence, and to bear witness for the Archduice of 
 ustria, tliat he had exculpated himself, by a solemn oath, 
 •cm all knowledge, director indirect, of the aggression done 
 ) the banner of England. 
 
 " Then we have done the noble Archduke the greater 
 rong," said Richard ; " and craving his pardon for imputing 
 > him an outrage so cowardly, we extend our hand to him 
 
 token of renewed peace and amity. But how is this ? 
 ustria refuses our uncovered hand, as he formerly refused 
 ir mailed glove ? What ! are we neither to be his mate in 
 ace nor his antagonist in war ? Well, let it be so. We 
 ill take the slight esteem in which he holds us as a penance 
 r aught which we may have done against him in heat of 
 ood, and will therefore hold the account between us 
 eared." 
 So saying, he turned from the Archduke with an air rather 
 
 diirnity than scorn, leaving the Austrian apparently as 
 uch relieved by the removal of his eye as is a sullen and 
 nant schoolboy when the glance of his severe pedagogue is 
 withdrawn. 
 
 "Noble Earl of Champagne — princely Marquis of Mont- 
 irrat — valiant Grand Master of the Templars, 1 am here a 
 j'.nitent in the confessional. Do any of you bring a charge, 
 I, claim amends from me ?" 
 
 "I know not on what we could ground any," said the 
 ijiooth-tongued Conrade, " unless it were that the King of 
 Jigland carries off from his poor brothers of the war all the 
 Ime which they might have hoped to gain in the expedition." 
 " ]\[y charge, if I am called on to make one," said the 
 laster of the Templars, " is graver and deeper than that of 
 (e Marquis of Montserrat. It may be thought ill to beseem 
 military monk such as I to raise his voice where so many 
 tble princes remain silent ; but it concerns our whole host, 
 sd not least this noble King of England, that he should 
 tar from some one to his face those charges which there 
 33 enow to bring against him in his absence. We laud and 
 tnor the courage and high achievements of the King of 
 hgland, but we feel aggrieved that he should, on all 
 :3asions. seize and maintain a precedence and superiority 
 :3r us which it becomes not independent princes to submit 
 '' Much we might yield of our free will to his bravery, his 
 ul, liis wealth, and "his power ; but he who snatches all, as 
 citter of right, and leaves nothing to grant out of courtesy 
 id favor, degrades us from allies into retainers and vassals. 
 
200 WA VERLET N VEL8 
 
 and sullies, in the eyes of our soldiers and subjects, the luste_,„ 
 of our authority, which is no longer independently exercised il 
 Since the Royal Richard has asked the truth from us, h(i uii 
 must neither be surprised nor angry when he hears one t( m 
 whom worldly pomp is prohibited, and secular authority ^i 
 is nothing, saving so far as it advances the prosperity o i 
 God's temple, and the prostration of the lion which goetlj jt 
 about seeking whom he may devour — when he hears, 1 say § 
 such a one as I tell him the truth in reply to his question i 
 which truth, even while I speak it, is, I know, confirmed by thi jtl 
 heart of every one who hears me, however respect may stifli In 
 their voices." i 
 
 Richard colored very highly while the Grand Master was ijl 
 making this direct and unvarnished attack upon his conduct i 
 and the murmur of assent which followed it showed plainly i 
 that almost all who were present acquiesced in the justice ol tit 
 the accusation. Incensed, and at the same time mortified.! jm 
 he yet foresaw that to give way to his headlong resentmenij w 
 would be to give the cold and wary accuser the advantag(| i^ 
 over him which it was the Templar's principal object to ob- '; 
 tain. He, therefore, with a strong effort, remained silenl . 
 till he had repeated a paternoster, being the course whicl, ■ 
 his confessor had enjoined him to pursue, when anger wa^j if 
 likely to obtain dominion over him. The King then spoke) j 
 with composure, though not without an embittered tone, 
 especially at the outset. 
 
 "And is it even so? And are our brethren at such,. 
 pains to note the infirmities of our natural temper, and thej j, 
 rough precipitance of our zeal, which may sometimes' havej,, 
 urged us to issue commands when there was little time to] j, 
 hold counsel ? I could not have thought that offences casualj ^ 
 and unpremeditated like mine could find such deep root in; ]\ 
 the hearts of my allies in this most holy cause, that for myj} 
 sake they should withdraw their hand from the plow whenj j; 
 the furrow was near the end, for my sake turn aside from thej ,j 
 direct path to Jerusalem which their swords have opened. Ij j 
 vainly thought that my small services might have outweighedj ^, 
 my rash errors ; that, if it were remembered that I pressed] :.j 
 to the van in an assault, it would not be forgotten that I wasj .^ 
 ever the last in the retreat; that, if I elevated my bannerj.jj 
 apon conquered fields of battle, it was all the advantage th:it| ,j 
 1 sought, while others were dividing the spoil. I may havcj^ 
 called the conquered city by my name, but it was to othersj j 
 that I yielded the dominion. If I have been headstrong ir.|;g 
 urging bold counsels, 1 have not, methinks, spared my ow» j 
 
THE TALISMAN 201 
 
 lood or my people's in carrying them into as bold execution ; 
 • if I have, in the h'lrry of march or battlC; assumed a com- 
 and over the soldiers of others, such have been ever treated 
 1 my own, when my wealth purchased the provisions and 
 edicines Aviiich their own povereigns could not procure. But 
 shames me to remind you of what all but myself seem to 
 ive forgotten. Let us rather look forward to our future 
 easures ; and believe me, brethren,'' he continued, his face 
 iidled with eagerness, '* you shall not find the pride, or the 
 rath, or the ambition of Richard a stumbling-block of 
 fence in the path to which religion and glory summon you, 
 ; with the trumpet of an archangel. Oh no — no ! never 
 ould I survive the thought that my frailties and infirmities 
 id been the means to sever this goodly fellowship of as- 
 mbled princes. I would cut off my left hand with my 
 ght could my doing so attest my sincerity. I will yield up 
 )luntarily, all right to command in the host, even mine own 
 3ge subjects. They shall be led by such sovereigns as you 
 ay nominate, and their king, ever but too apt to exchange 
 e leader's baton for the adventurer's lance, will serve under 
 lie banner of Beau-Seant among the Templars — ay, or under 
 iat of Austria, if Austria will name a brave man to lead 
 ■s forces. Or, if ye are yourselves a-weary of this war, and 
 :el your armor chafe your tender bodies, leave but with 
 Jichard some ten or fifteen thousand of your soldiers to work 
 (it the accomplishment of your vow ; and when Zion is won," 
 ',) exclaimed, waving his hand aloft, as if displaying the 
 liandard of the Cross over Jerusalem — " when Zion is won, 
 •3 will write upon her gates, not the name of Eichard 
 lantagenet, but of those generous princes who entrusted 
 ;m with the means of conquest." 
 
 The rough eloquence and determined expression of the 
 ■.ilitary monarch at once roused the drooping spirits of the 
 (usaders, reanimated their devotion, and, fixing their atten- 
 :)n on the principal object of the expedition, made most of 
 ;em who were present blush for having been moTed by such 
 itty subjects of complaint as had before engrossed them. 
 ;ye caught fire from eye, voice lent courage to voice. They 
 :sumed, as with one accord, the war-cry with which the 
 irmon of Peter the Hermit was echoed back, and shouted 
 ;oud, " Lead us on, gallant Lion's-heart, none so worthy to 
 ad where brave men follow. Lead us on — to Jerusalem — 
 ' Jerusalem ! It is the will of God — it is the will of God ! 
 lessed is he who shall lend an arm to its fulfilment ! " 
 The shout, so sudden and generally raised, was heard be- 
 
202 H'AVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 yond the ring of sentinels who guarded the pavilion of cou; 
 oil, and spread among the soldiers of the host, who, inacti' 
 and dispirited by disease and climate, had begun, like the 
 leaders, to drop in resolution ; but the reappearance > 
 Richard in renewed vigor, and the well-known shout whi( 
 echoed from the assembly of the princes, at once rekindh 
 their enthusiasm, and thousands and tens of thousands an 
 wered with the same shout of " Zion — Zion ! War — war !- 
 instant battle with the infidels ! It is the will of God — it 
 the will of God ! " 
 
 The acclamations from without increased in their tni 
 the enthusiasm which prevailed within the pavilion. Thoi 
 who did not actually catch the flame were afraid, at least t 
 the time, to seem colder than others. There was no moi 
 speech except of a proud advance toward Jerusalem upc 
 the expiry of the truce, and the measures to be taken in til 
 mean time for supplying and recruiting the army. Tl 
 council broke up, all apparently filled with the same enthuJ 
 iastic purpose, which, however, soon faded in the bosom (I 
 most, and never had an existence in that of others. 
 
 Of the latter class were the Marquis Conrade and tl 
 Grand Master of the Templars, who retired together to thfti 
 quarters ill at ease, and malcontent with the events of thj 
 day. _ _ t 
 
 "I ever told it to thee," said the latter, with the colcj 
 sardonic expression peculiar to him, " that Richard wouli 
 burst through the flimsy wiles you spread for him, as woul 
 a lion through a spider's web. Thou seest he has but t 
 speak, and his breath agitates these fickle fools as easily a 
 the whirlwind catcheth scattered straws and sweeps them tc 
 gether or disperses them at its pleasure." 
 
 " When the blast has passed away," said Conrade, " thl 
 straws, which it made dance to its pipe, will settle to eart'.' 
 again." 
 
 " But know'st thou not besides," said the Templar, "tha 
 it seems, if this new purpose of conquest shall be abandonei 
 and pass away, and each mighty prince shall again be left t| 
 such guidance as his own scanty brain can supply, Richani 
 may yet probably become King of Jerusalem by compact! 
 and establish those terms of treaty with the Soldan whicl! 
 thou thyself thought'st him so likely to spurn at ?" 
 
 " Now, by Mahound and Termagaunt, for Christian oath 
 are out of fashion," said Conrade, "say'st thou the proiK^ 
 King of England would unite his blood with a heather 
 Soldan ? My policy threw in that ingredient to make tb 
 
THE TALISMAN 203 
 
 whole treaty an abomination to him. As bad for us that he 
 become our master by an agreement as by victory." 
 
 " Thy pohcy hath ill calculated Kichard's digestion," an- 
 swered the Templar ; " I know his mind by a whisper from 
 the arcb bishop. And then thy master-stroke respecting 
 yonder banner — it has passed off with no more respect than 
 two cubits of embroidered silk merited. Marquis Conrade, 
 thy wit begins to halt ; I will trust thy fine-spun measures 
 no longer, but will try my own. Know'st thou not the people 
 whom the Saracens call "Charegites ? " 
 
 ''Surely," answered the Marquis; "they are desperate 
 and besotted enthusiasts, who devote their lives to the ad- 
 vancement of religion ; somewhat like Temjjlars, only they 
 are never known to pause in the race of their calling." 
 
 "Jest not," answered the scowling monk ; "know, that 
 one of these men has set down in his bloody vow the name 
 of the island emperor yonder, to be hewn down as the chief 
 enemy of the Moslem faith." 
 
 " A most judicious paynim," said Conrade. " May Maho- 
 met send him his paradise for a reward ! " 
 
 " He was taken in the camp by one of our squires, and, 
 in private examination, frankly avowed his fixed and deter- 
 mined purpose to me," said the Grand Master. 
 
 " Now the Heavens pardon them who prevented the pur- 
 pose of this most judicious Charegite ! " answered Conrade. 
 
 "He is my prisoner," added the Templar, "and secluded 
 from speech with others, as thou mayst suppose ; but prisons 
 have been broken " 
 
 " Chains left unlocked, and captives have escaped," an- 
 swered the Marquis. "It is an ancient saying, 'No sure 
 dungeon but the grave.'" 
 
 " When loose he resumes his quest," continued the mili- 
 tary priest, " for it is the nature of this sort of bloodhound 
 never to quit the slot of the prey he has once scented." 
 
 " Say no more of it," said the Marquis ; "I see thy policy 
 — it is dreadful, but the emergency is imminent." 
 
 " I only told thee of it," said the Templar, " that thou 
 mayst keep thyself on thy guard, for the uproar will be 
 dreadful, and there is no knowing on whom the English may 
 vent their rage. Ay, there is another risk : my page knows 
 the counsels of this Charegite," he continued ; "and, more- 
 over, he is a peevish, self-willed fool, whom I would I were 
 rid of, as he thwarts me by presuming to see with his own 
 eyes, not mine. But our holy Order gives me power to put 
 a remedy to such inconvenience. Or stay — the Saracen may 
 
204 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 find a good dagger in his cell, and I warrant yon he uses it 
 as he breaks forth, which will be of a surety as soon as the 
 page enters with his food. 
 
 "It will give the affair a color," said Conrade ; "and 
 yet " 
 
 "* Yet' and ' but,'" said the Templar, " are words for 
 fools : wise men neither hesitate nor retract : they resolve 
 and they execute." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 When beauty leads the lion in her toils, 
 
 Such are her charms, he dare not raise his man*, 
 
 Far less expand the terror of his fangs. 
 
 So great Alcides made his club a distaff, 
 
 And spun to please fair Omphale. 
 
 Anonyvfums. 
 
 Richard, the unsuspicious object of the dark treachery de- 
 tailed in the closing part of the last chapter, having eifected 
 for the present at least, the triniphant union of the Crusad- 
 ing princes in a resolution to prosecute the war with vigor, 
 had it next at heart to establish tranquillity in his own 
 family ; and, now that he could judge more temperately, to 
 inquire distinctly into the circumstances leading to the loss 
 of his banner, and tlie nature and the extent of the connec- 
 tion betwixt bis kinswoman Edith and the banished adven- 
 turer from Scotland. 
 
 Accordingly, the Queen and her household were startled 
 with a visit from Sir Thomas de Vaiix, requesting the present 
 attendance of the Lady Calista of Montfau9on, the Queen^s 
 principal bower-woman, upon King Richard. 
 
 " What am I to say, madam ? " said the trembling atten- 
 dant to the Queen. " He will slay us all." 
 
 " Nay, fear not, madam," said De Yaux. " His Majesty 
 hath spared the life of the Scottish knight, who was the, 
 chief offender, and bestowed him upon the Moorish physi- 
 cian : he will not be severe upon a lady, though faulty." 
 
 " Devise some cunning tale, wench," said Berengaria. 
 " My husband hath too little time to make inquiry into the 
 truth." 
 
 *' Tell the tale as it really happened," said Edith, ** lest 
 I tell it for thee." 
 
 " With humble permission of her Majesty," said De Vaux, 
 ** I would say Lady Edith adviseth well ; for although King 
 Richard is pleased to believe what it pleases your Grace to 
 tell him, yet I doubt his having the same deference for the 
 Lady Calista, and in this especial matter." 
 
 " The Lord of Gisland is right," said the Lady Calista, 
 much agitated at the thoughts of the investigation whicij 
 206 
 
206 wavi:rley novels 
 
 ■was to take place ; " and, besides, if I had presence of mind 
 enough to forge a plausible story, beshrew me if I think I 
 should have the courage to tell it.'' 
 
 In this candid humor, the Lady Calista was conducted by 
 De Vaux to the King, and made, as she had proposed, a full 
 confession of the decoy by which the unfortunate Knight of 
 the Leopard had been induced to desert his post ; exculpat- 
 ing the Lady Edith, who, she was aware, would not fail to 
 exculpate herself, and laying the full burden on the Queen, 
 her mistress, whose share of the frolic, she well knew, would 
 appear the most venial in the eyes of Cceur-de-Lion. In 
 truth, Richard was a fond, almost an uxorious, husband. 
 The first burst of his wratli had long since passed away, and 
 he was not disposed severely to censure what could not now 
 be amended. The wily Lady Calista, accustomed from her 
 earliest childhood to fathom the intrigues of a court and 
 watch the indications of a sovereign's will, hastened back to 
 the Queen with the speed of a lapwing, charge-I with the 
 King's commands that she should expect a speedy visit from 
 him ; to which the bower-lady added a commentary founded 
 on her own observation, tending to show that Richard meant 
 just to preserve so much severity as might bring his royal 
 consort to repent of her frolic, and then to extend to her and 
 all concerned his gracious pardon. 
 
 " Sits the wind in that corner, wench ?" said the Queen, 
 mnch relieved by this intelligence. " Believe nie that, great 
 commander as he is, Richard will find it hard to circumvent 
 us in this matter ; and that, as the Pyrenean shepherds are 
 wont to say in my native Navarre, many a one comes for wool 
 and goes back shorn." 
 
 Having posessed herself of all the information wliich Calista 
 could communicate, the royal Berengaria arrayed herself in 
 her most becoming dress, and awaited with confidence the 
 arrival of the heroic Richard. 
 
 He arrived, and found himself in the situation of a prince 
 entering an offending province in the confidence that his 
 business will only be to inflict rebuke and receive submission, 
 when he unexpectedly finds it in a state of complete defiance 
 and insurrection. Berengaria well knew the power of her 
 charms and the extent of Richard's affection, and felt assured 
 that she could make her own terms good, now that the first 
 tremendous explosion of his anger had expended itself with- 
 out mischief. Far from listening to the King's intended re- 
 buke, as what the levity of her conduct had justly deserved. 
 she extenuated, nay defended, as a harmless frolic, that which 
 
TEE TALISMAN 207 
 
 she was accused of. She denied, indeed, with many a 
 pretty form of negation, that she had directed Nectabanus 
 absohitely to entice the knight farther than the brink of the 
 monnt on which he kept watch — and indeed this was so far 
 true, that she had not designed Sir Kenneth to be intro- 
 duced into her tent ; and then, eloquent in urging her own 
 defence, the Queen was far more so in pressing upon 
 Eichard the charge of unkindness, in refusing her so poor a 
 boon as the life of an unfortunate knight, who, by her 
 thoughtless prank, had been brought within the danger of 
 martial law. She wept and sobbed while she enlarged on 
 her husband's obduracy on this score, as a rigor which had 
 threatened to make her unhappy for life, whenever she 
 should reflect that she had given, unthinkingly, the remote 
 cause for such a tragedy. The vision of the slaughtered 
 victim would have haunted her dreams — nay, for aught she 
 knew, since such things often happened, his actual specter 
 might have stood by her waking couch. To all this 
 misery of the mind was she exposed by the severity of one 
 who, while he pretended to dote upon her slightest glance, 
 would not forego one act of poor revenge, though the issue 
 was to render her miserable. 
 
 All this flow of female eloquence was accompanied with 
 the usual arguments of tears and sighs, and uttered with such 
 tone and action as seemed to show that the Queen's resent- 
 ment arose neither from pride nor sullenness, but from 
 feelings hurt at finding her consequence with her husband 
 less than she had expected to possess. 
 
 The good King Richard was considerably embarrassed. 
 He tried in vain to reason with one whose very jealousy of 
 his affection rendered her incapable of listening to argu- 
 ment, nor could he bring himself to use the restraint of law- 
 ful authority to a creature so beautiful in the midst of her 
 unreasonable displeasure. He was, therefore, reduced to the 
 defensive, endeavored gently to chide her suspicions and 
 soothe her displeasure, and recalled to her mind that she 
 need not look back upon the past with recollections either 
 of remorse or supernatural fear, since Sir Kenneth was alive 
 and well, and had been bestowed by him upon the great 
 Arabian physician, who, doubtless, of all men, knew best 
 how to keep him living. But this seemed the unkindest cut 
 of all, and the Queen's sorrow was renewed at the idea of a 
 Saracen — a mediciner — obtaining a boon for which, with 
 bare head and on bended knee, she had petitioned her hus- 
 band in vain. At this new charge, Eichard's patience be- 
 
208 WA VERLEY NO VEL S 
 
 gan rather to give way, and lie said, in a serious tone of 
 voice, " Berengaria, the physician saved my life. If it is of 
 value in your eyes, you will not grudge him a higher recom- 
 pense than the only one 1 could prevail on him to accept."' 
 
 The Queen was satisfied she had urged her coquettish 
 displeasure to the verge of safety. 
 
 " My Richard," she said, '' why brought you not that sage 
 to me, that England's Queen might show how she esteemed 
 him who could save from extinction the lamp of chivalry., 
 the glory of England, and the light of poor Berengaria's life 
 and hope ? " 
 
 In a word, the matrimonial dispute was ended ; but, that 
 some penalty might be paid to justice, both King and Queen 
 accorded in laying the whole blame on the agent Necta- 
 banus, who (the Queen being by this time well weary of the 
 poor dwai'f s humor) was, with his royal consort Guenevra, 
 sentenced to be banished from the court ; and the unlucky 
 dwarf only escaped a supplementary whi^^ping, from the 
 Queen's assurances that he had already sustained personal 
 chastisement. It was decreed farther that, as an envoy was 
 shortly to be despatched to Saladin, acquainting him with 
 the resolution of the council to resume hostilities so soon as 
 the truce was ended, and as Richard proposed to send a 
 valuable present to the Soldan, in acknowledgment of the 
 high benefit he had derived from the services of El Hakim, 
 the two unhappy creatures should be added to it as curi- 
 osities, which, from their extremely grotesque appearance, 
 and the shattered state of their intellect, were gifts that 
 might well pass between sovereign and sovereign. 
 
 Richard had that day yet another female encounter to 
 sustain ; but he advanced to it with comparative indifPer- 
 ence, for Edith, though beautiful, and highly esteemed by 
 her royal relative — nay, although she had from his unjus't 
 suspicions actually sustained the injury of which Berengaria 
 only affected to complain — still was neither Richard's wife 
 nor mistress, and he feared her reproaches less, although 
 founded in reason, than those of the Queen, though unjust 
 and fantastical. Having requested to speak with her apart, 
 he was ushered into her apartment, adjoining that of the 
 Queen, whose two female Coptish slaves remained on their 
 knees in the most remote corner during the interview. A 
 thin black veil extended its ample folds over the tall and 
 graceful form of the high-born maiden, and she Avore not 
 upon her person any female ornament of what kind soever. 
 She arose and made a low reverence when Richard entered. 
 
THE TALISMAN 209 
 
 resumed her seat at his command, and, when he sat down 
 beside her, waited, without" uttering a syllable, until he 
 should communicate his pleasure. 
 
 Richard, whose custom, it was to be familiar with Edith, 
 as their relationship authorized, felt this reception chilling, 
 and opened the conversation with some embarrassment. 
 
 " Our fair cousin," he at length said, " is angry with us ; 
 and we own that strong circumstances have induced us, 
 without cause, to suspect her of conduct alien to what we 
 have ever known in her course of life. But while we walk 
 in this misty valley of humanity, men will mistake shadows 
 for substances. Can my fair cousin not forgive her som'e- 
 what vehement kinsman, Richard ? " 
 
 " Who can refuse forgiveness to Richard," answered Edith, 
 ** provided Richard can obtain pardon of the king f " 
 
 "■ Come, my kinswoman," replied Coeur-de-Lion, ''this is 
 all too solemn. By Our Lady, such a melancholy counte- 
 nance, and this ample sable veil, might make men think 
 thou wert a new-made widow, or had lost a betrothed lover, 
 at least. Cheer up ; thou hast heard, doubtless, that there 
 is no real cause for woe, why then keep up the form of 
 mourning ? " 
 
 " For the departed honor ot Plantagenet — for the glory 
 which hath left my father's house." 
 
 Richard frowned. *' Departed honor ! glory which hath 
 left our house ! " he repeated, angrily ; " but my cousin Edith 
 is privileged. I have judged her too hastily, shehasthere- 
 a right to deem of me too harshly. But tell me at least in 
 what I have faulted." 
 
 '* Plantagenet " said Edith, " should have either pardoned 
 an offense or punished it. It misbecomes him to assign free 
 men. Christians, and brave knights to the fetters of the in- 
 fidels. It becomes him not to compromise and barter, or to 
 grant life under the forfeiture of liberty. To have doomed 
 the unfortunate to death might have been severity, but had 
 a show of justice ; to condemn him to slavery and exile was 
 barefaced tyranny." 
 
 " I see, my fair cousin," said Richard, " you are of those 
 pretty ones who think an absent lover as bad as none, or as a 
 dead one. Be patient ; half a score of light horsemen may 
 yet follow and redeem the error, if thy gallant have in keeping 
 any secret which might render his death more convenient 
 than his banishment." 
 
 " Peace with thy scurrile jests," answered Edith, coloring 
 deeply. " Think rather that, for the indulgence of thy 
 14 
 
210 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 mood, thou hast lopped from tliis great enterprise one good, 
 ly limb, deprived the Cross of one of its most brave support- 
 ers, and placed a servant of the true God in the hands of the 
 heathen ; hast given, too, to minds as suspicious as thou 
 hast shown thine own in this matter, some right to say that 
 Eichard Coeur-de-Lion banished the bravest soldier in his 
 camp, lest his name in battle might match his own.'' 
 
 " I — I ! " exclaimed Richard, now indeed greatly moved — 
 *'aml one to be jealous of renown ? I would he were here 
 to profess such an equality ! I would waive my rank and my 
 crown, and meet him, manlike, in the lists, that it might 
 appear whether Eichard Plantagenet had room to fear or to 
 envy the prowess of mortal man. Come, Edith, thou think'st 
 not as thou say'st. Let not anger or grief for the absence 
 of thy lover make thee unjust to thy kinsman who, notwith- 
 standing all thy tetchiness, values thy good report as high as 
 that of anyone living." 
 
 " The absence of my lover ! '" said the Lady Edith. " But 
 yes, he may be well termed my lover who hath paid so dear 
 for the title. Unworthy as I might be of such homage, I 
 was to hira like a light, leading him forward in the noble 
 path of chivalry ; but that 1 forgot my rank, or that he pre- 
 sumed beyond his, is false, were a king to speak it." 
 
 " My fair cousin," said Eichard, " do not put words in my 
 mouth which I have not spoken. I said not you have graced 
 this man beyond the favor which a good knight may earn, 
 even from a princess, whatever be his native condition. But, 
 by Our Lady, I know something of this love-gear : it begins 
 with mute respect and distant reverence, but when oppor- 
 tunities occur, familiarity increases, and so — But it skills not 
 talking with one who thinks herself wiser than all the world." 
 
 " My kinsman's counsels I willingly listen to when they 
 are such," said Edith, "as convey no insult to my rank and 
 character." 
 
 " Kings, my fair cousin, do not counsel, but rather com- 
 mand," said Eichard. 
 
 "Soldans do indeed command," said Edith, " but it is 
 because they have slaves to govern." 
 
 " Come, you might learn to lay aside this scorn of soldan- 
 rie, when you hold so high of a Scot," said the King. " I 
 hold Saladin to be truer to his word than this William of 
 Scotland, who must needs be called a Lion forsooth he hath 
 foully faulted, towards me, in failing to send the auxiliar}' 
 aid he promised. Let me tell thee, Edith, thou mayst live 
 to prefer a true Turk to a false Scot." 
 
THE TALISMAN 211 
 
 <i j^o — never ! " answered Edith, " not slioiild Richard 
 himself embrace the false religion, which he crossed the seas 
 to expel from Palestine." 
 
 " Thou wilt have the last word/' said Richard, " and thou 
 shalt have it. Even think of me what thou wilt, pretty 
 Edith. I shall not forget that we are near and dear 
 cousins." 
 
 So saying, he took his leave in fair fashion, but very little 
 satisfied with the result of his visit. 
 
 It was the fourth day after Sir Kenneth had been dis- 
 missed from the camp ; and King Richard sat in his jiavi- 
 lion, enjoying an evening breeze from the west, which, with 
 unusual coolness on her wings, seemed breathed from Merry 
 England for the refreshment of her adventurous monarch, 
 as he was gradually recovering the full strength which was 
 necessary to carry on his gigantic projects. There was no 
 one with him, De Vaux having been sent to Ascalon to bring 
 up reinforcements and supplies of military munition, and 
 most of his other attendants being occupied in different de- 
 partments, all preparing for the re-opening of hostilities, and 
 for a grand preparatory review of the army of the Crusaders, 
 which was to take place the next day. The King sat listen- 
 ing to the busy hum among the soldiery, the clatter from 
 the forges, where horseshoes were preparing, and from the 
 tents of the armorers, who were repairing harness ; the voice 
 of the soldiers, too, as they passed and repassed, was loud and 
 cheerful, carrying with its very tone an assurance of high 
 and excited courage, and an omen of approaching victory. 
 While Richard's ear drank in these sounds with delight, and 
 while he yielded himself to the visions of conquest and of 
 glory which they suggested, an equerry told him that a 
 messenger from Saladin waited without. 
 
 " Admit him instantly," said the King, " and with due 
 honor, Josceline."^ 
 
 The English knight accordingly introduced a person, ap- 
 parently of no higher rank than a Nubian slave, whose ap- 
 pearance was nevertheless highly interesting. He was of 
 superb stature and nobly formed, and his commanding fea- 
 tures, although almost jet-black, showed nothing of negro 
 descent. He wore over his coal-black locks a milk-white 
 turban, and over his shoulders a short mantle of the same 
 color, open in front and at the sleeves, under which appeared 
 a doublet of dressed leopard's skin reaching within a hand- 
 breadth of the knee. The rest of his muscular limbs, both 
 
212 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 legs and arms, were bare, excepting tliat he had sandals on 
 his feet, and wore a collar and bracelets of silver. A straight 
 broadsword, with a handle of boxwood, and a sheath covered 
 with snake-skin, was suspended from his waist. h\ his right 
 hand he held a short javelin, witli a broad, bright, steel 
 head, of a span in length, and in his left he led, by a leash 
 of twisted silk and gold, a large and noble staghound. 
 
 The messenger prostrated himself, at the same time par- 
 tially uncovering his shoulders, in sign of humiliation, and 
 having touched the earth with his forehead, arose so far as 
 to rest on one knee, while he delivered to the King a silken 
 napkin, inclosing another of cloth of gold, within which was 
 a letter from Saladin in the original Arabic, with a transla- 
 tion into Norman-English, which may be modernized thus : 
 
 " Saladin, King of Kings, to Melech-Eic, the Lion of 
 England. Whereas, we are informed by thy last message 
 that thou hast chosen war rather than peace, and our enmity 
 rather than our friendship, we account thee as one blinded 
 in this matter, and trust shortly to convince thee of thine 
 error, by the help of our invincible forces of the thousand 
 tribes, when Mohammed, the Prophet of God, and Allah, 
 the God of the Prophet, shall judge the controversy betwixt 
 us. In what remains, we make noble account of thee, and 
 of the gifts which thou hast sent us, and of the two dwarfs, 
 singular in their deformity as Ysop, and mirthful as the lute 
 of Isaack. And in requital of these tokens from the treas- 
 ure-house of thy bounty, behold we have sent thee a Nubian 
 slave, named Zohauk, of whom judge not by his complexion, 
 according to the foolish ones of the earth, in respect the 
 dark-rinded fruit hath the most exquisite flavor. Know 
 that he is strong to execute the will of his master, as Rustan 
 of Zablestan ; also he is wise to give counsel when thou shalt 
 learn to hold communication with him, for the lord of speech 
 hath been stricken with silence betwixt the ivory walls of his 
 palace. We commend him to thy care, hoping the hour 
 may not be distant when he may render thee good service. 
 And herewith we bid thee farewell ; trusting that our most 
 holy Prophet may yet call thee to a sight of the truth, fail- 
 ing which illumination, our desire is, for the speedy restora- 
 tion of thy royal health, that Allah may judge between thee 
 and us in a plain field of battle." 
 
 And the missive was sanctioned by the signature and seal 
 of the Sold an. 
 
 Richard surveyed the Nubian in silence as he stood before 
 
THE TALISMAN 818 
 
 him, his looks bent upon tlie ground, his arms folded on his 
 bosom, with tlie appearance of a black marble statue of the 
 most exquisite workmanship, waiting life from the touch of 
 a Prometheus. The King of England, who, as it was em- 
 phatically said of his successor Henry the Eighth, loved to 
 look upon A MAN", was well pleased with the thewes, sinews, 
 and symmetry, of him whom he now surveyed, and questioned 
 him in the lingua franca, " Art thou a pagan t" 
 
 The slave sliook his head, and raising his linger to his brow, 
 crossed himself in token of his Christianity, then resumed 
 his posture of motionless humility. 
 
 " A Nubian Christian doubtless," said Richard, and muti- 
 lated of the organ of speech by those heathen dogs ? " 
 
 The mute again slowly shook his head, in token of negative, 
 pointed with his forefinger to Heaven, and then laid it upon 
 his own lips. 
 
 *'I understand thee,*' said Eichard ; "thou dost suffer 
 under the infliction of God, not by the cruelty of man. 
 Canst thou clean an armor and belt, and buckle it in time of 
 need ? " 
 
 The mute nodded, and stepping towards the coat of mail, 
 which hung, with the shield and helmet of the chivalrous 
 monarch, upon the pillar of the tent, he handled it with such 
 nicety of address as sufficiently to show that he fully under- 
 stood the business of the armor-bearer. 
 
 " Thou art an apt, and will doubtless be a useful knave ; 
 thou shalt wait in my chamber, and on my person," said the 
 King, " to show how much I value the gift of the royal Sol- 
 dan. H thou hast no tongue, it follows thou canst carry 
 no tales, neither provoke me to be sudden by any unfit 
 reply." 
 
 The Nubian again prostrated himself until his brow 
 touched the earth, then stood erect, at some paces distant, 
 as waiting for his new master's commands. 
 
 "Nay, thou shalt commence thy office presently," said 
 Richard, " for I see a speck of rust darkening on that shield ; 
 and when I shake it in the face of Saladin, it should be bright 
 and unsullied as theSoldan's honor and mine own." 
 
 A horn was winded without,and presently Sir Henry Neville 
 entered with a packet of despatches. " From England, my 
 lord," he said, as he delivered them. 
 
 "From England — our own England !" repeated Eichard, 
 in a tone of melancholy enthusiasm. " Alas ! they little 
 think how hard their sovereign has been beset by sickness 
 and sorrow, faint friends and forward enemies." Then 
 
214 WAVERLEF N0VI:LS 
 
 opening the despatches, he said hastily, " Ha ! this comes 
 from no peaceful land : they too have their feuds. Neville, 
 begone ; I must peruse these tidings alone and at lei- 
 sure." 
 
 Neville withdrew accordingly, and Richard was soon ab- 
 sorbed in the melancholy details which had been conveyed 
 to him from England, concerning the factions that were tear- 
 ing to pieces his native dominions : the disunion of his 
 brothers, John and Geoffrey, and the quarrels of both with 
 the High Judiciary Longchamp, Bishop of Ely ; the oppres- 
 sions practised by the nobles upon the peasantry, and rebellion 
 of the latter against their masters, which had produced 
 everywhere scenes of discord, and in some instances the effu- 
 sion of blood. Details of incidents mortifying to his pride, 
 and derogatory from his authority, were intermingled with 
 the earnest advice of his wisest and most attached counselors, 
 that he should presently return to England, as his presence 
 offered the only hope of saving the kingdom from all the hor- 
 rors of civil discord, of which France and Scotland were likely 
 to avail themselves. Filled with the most painful anxiety, 
 Richard read, and again read, the ill-omened letters, com- 
 pared the intelligence which some of them contained with 
 the same facts as differently stated in others, and soon be- 
 came totally insensible to whatever was passing around him, 
 although seated, for the sake of coolness, close to the en- 
 trance of his tent, and having the curtains withdrawn, so 
 that he could see and be seen by the guards and others 
 who were stationed without. 
 
 Deeper in the shadow of the pavilion, and busied with the 
 task his new master had imposed, sat the Nubian slave with 
 his back rather turned towards the King. He had finished 
 adjusting and cleaning the hauberk and brigandine, and was 
 now busily employed on a broad pavesse, or buckler, of un- 
 usual size, and covered with steel-plating, which Richard 
 often used in reconnoitering, or actually storming fortified 
 places, as a more effectual protection against missile weapons 
 than the narrow triangular shield used on horseback. This 
 pavesse bore neither the royal lions of England nor any other 
 device, to attract the observation of the defenders of the 
 walls against which it was advanced ; the care, therefore, of 
 the armorer was addressed to causing its surface to_ shine as 
 bright as crystal, in which he seemed to be peculiarly suc- 
 cessful. Beyond the Nubian, and scarce visible from with- 
 out, lay the large dog, which might be termed his brother 
 slave, and which, as if he felt awed by being transferred to a 
 
THE TALISMAN 216 
 
 royal owner, was couched close to the side of the mute^ with 
 head and ears on the ground, and his limbs and tail drawn 
 close around and under him. 
 
 While the monarch and his new attendant were thus oc- 
 cupied, another actor crept upon the scene, and mingled 
 among the group of English yeomen, about a score of whom, 
 respecting the unusually pensive posture and close occupa- 
 tion of their sovereign, were, contrary to their wont, keep- 
 ing a silent guard in front of his tent. It was not, however, 
 more vigilant than usual. Some were playing at games of 
 hazard with a small pebbles, others spoke together in 
 whispers of the approaching day of battle, and several lay 
 asleep, their bulky limbs folded in their green mantles. 
 
 Amid these careless warders glided the puny form of a little 
 old Turk, poorly dressed like a marabout or santon of the 
 desert — a sort of enthusiasts, who sometimes ventured into 
 the camp of the Crusaders, though treated always with con- 
 tumely, and often with violence. Indeed, the luxury and 
 profligate indulgence of the Christian leaders had occasioned 
 a motley concourse in their tents of musicians, courtezans, 
 Jewish merchants, Copts, Turks, and all the varied refuse of 
 the Eastern nations ; so that the caftan and turban, though 
 to drive both from the Holy Land was the professed object of 
 the expedition, were nevertheless neither an uncommon nor 
 an alarming sight in the camp of the Crusaders. When, 
 however, the little insignificant figure we have described ap- 
 proached so nigh as to receive some interruption from the 
 warders, he dashed his dusky green turban from his head^ 
 showed that his beard, and eyebrows were shaved like those 
 of a jn'ofessed buffoon, and that the expression of his fantas- 
 tic and writhen features, as well as of his little black eyes, 
 which glittered like jet, was that of a crazed imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 " Dance, marabout," cried the soldiers, acquainted with 
 the manners of these wandering enthusiasts — "'dance, or we 
 will scourge thee with our bow-strings, till thou spin as never 
 top did under schoolboy's lash." Thus shouted the reckless 
 warders, as much delighted at having a subject to tease as a 
 child when he catches a butterfly, or a schoolboy upon dis- 
 covering a bird's nest. 
 
 The marabout, as if happy to do their behests, bounded 
 from the earth and spun his giddy round before them with 
 singular agility, which, when contrasted with his slight and 
 wasted figure, and diminutive appearance, made him re- 
 semble a withered leaf twirled round and round at the pleas- 
 
216 WA VERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 ure of the winter's breeze. His single lock of hair streamed 
 upwards from his bald and shaven head, as if some genie 
 upheld him by it ; and indeed it seemed as if supernatural 
 art were necessary to the execution of the wild whirling 
 dance, in which scarce the tiptoe of the performer was seen 
 to touch the ground. Amid the vagaries of his performance, 
 he flew here and there, from one spot to another, still ap- 
 proaching, however, though almost imperceptibly, to the 
 entrance of tlie royal tent ; so that, when at length he sunk 
 exhausted on the earth, after two or three bounds still higher 
 than those which he had yet executed, he was not above 
 thirty yards from the King's person. 
 
 '' Give him water," said one yeoman : "^ they always crave a 
 drink after their merry-go-round." 
 
 "^ Aha, water say'st thou, Long Allen?" exclaimed an- 
 other archer, with a most scornful emphasis on the despised 
 element; ''how wouldst like such beverage thyself, after 
 such a morrice-dancing ?" 
 
 " The devil a water-di'op he gets here," said a third. " We 
 will teach the light-footed old infidel to be a good Christian, 
 and drink wine of Cyprus." 
 
 "Ay — ay," said a fourth; ''and in case he be restive, 
 fetch thou Dick Hunter's horn, that he drenches his mare 
 withal." 
 
 A circle was instantly formed around the prostrate and 
 exhausted dervise, and while one tall yeoman raised his feeble 
 form from the ground, another presented to him a huge flagon 
 of wine. Incapable of speech, the old man shook his head 
 and waved away from him with his hand the liquor forbid- 
 den by the Prophet ; but his tormentors were not, thus to be 
 appeased. 
 
 " The horn — the horn ! " exclaimed one. " Little differ- 
 ence between a Turk and a Turkish horse, and we will use 
 him conforming." 
 
 " By St. George, you will choke him ! " said Long Allen ; 
 " and, besides, it is a sin to throw away upon a heathen dog 
 as much wine as would serve a good Christian for a treble 
 night-cap." 
 
 " Thou knows't not the nature of these Turks and pagans, 
 Long Allen," replied Henry Woodstall ; " I tell thee, man, 
 that this flagon of Cyprus will set his brains a-spinning, just 
 in the opposite direction that they went whirling in the danc- 
 ing, and so bring him, as it were, to himself again. Choke ! 
 he will no more choke on it than Ben's black bitch on the 
 pound of butter." 
 
THE TALISMAN 217 
 
 " And for grudging it/' said Tomalin Blacklees, "why 
 ihould'st thou grudge the poor payniiu devil a drop of drink 
 oil earth, since thou know'st he is not to have a drop to cool 
 the tip of his tongue through a long eternity ? " 
 
 "That were hard laws, look ye,'' said Long Allen, " only 
 for being a Turk, as his father was before him. Had he 
 been Christian turned heathen, I grant you the hottest corner 
 had been good winter quarters for him." 
 
 " Hold thy peace. Long Allen," said Henry Woodstall ; 
 " I tell thee that ongue of thine is not the shortest limb 
 about thee, and 1 prophesy that it will bring thee into dis- 
 grace with Father Francis, as once about the black-eyed 
 Syrian wench. But here comes the horn. Be active a bit, 
 man, wilt thou, and just force open his teeth with the haft 
 of thy dungeon-dagger ?" 
 
 "Hold — hold, he is comfortable," said Tomalin; "see — 
 see, he signs for the goblet ; give him room, boys. Oop sey 
 es, quoth the Dutchman : down it goes like lamb's-wool ! 
 Nay, they are true topers when once they begin ; your Turk 
 never coughs in his cup, or stints in his liquoring." 
 
 In f?ct, the dervise, or whatever he was, drank, or at least 
 seemed to drink, the large flagon to the very bottom at a 
 single pull ; and when lie took it from his lips, after the 
 whole contents were exhausted, only uttered, with a deep 
 sigh, the words "Allah kerim," or God is merciful. There 
 was a laugh among the yeomen who witnessed this pottle- 
 deep potation, so obstreperous as to arouse and disturb the 
 King, who, raising his finger, said, angrily, "How, knaves, 
 no respect, no observance ? " 
 
 All were at once hushed into silence, well acquainted with 
 the temper of Richard, which at some times admitted of 
 much military familiarity, and at others exacted the most 
 precise respect, although the latter humor was of much more 
 rare occurrence. Hastening to a more reverent distance from 
 the royal person, they attempted to drag along with them 
 the marabout, who, exhausted apparently by previous fatigue, 
 or overpowered by the potent draught he had just swalloAved, 
 resisted being moved from the spot, both with struggles and 
 groans. 
 
 " Leave him still, ye fools," whispered Long Allen to his 
 mates ; " by St. Christopher, you will make our Dickon go 
 beside himself, and we shall have his dagger presently fly at 
 our costards. Leave him alone, in less than a minute he 
 will sleep like a dormouse." 
 
 At the same moment, the monarch darted another impa- 
 
218 WA VEELEY NOVELS 
 
 tient glance to the spot, and all retreated in haste, leaving 
 the dervise on the ground, unable as it seemed, to stir a 
 single limb or joint of his body. In a moment afterward, 
 all was as still and quiet as it had been before the intrusion. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 And wither'd murder, 
 Alarum'd by his sentinel, tiie wolf, 
 Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. 
 With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design 
 Moves like a ghost. 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 'oil the space of a quarter of an hour, or longer, after the 
 icident related, all remained perfectly quiet in the front of 
 le royal habitation. The King read, and nmsed in the 
 atrance of his pavilion ; behind, and with his back turned 
 ) the same entrance, the Nubian slave still burnished the 
 mple pavesse ; in front of all, at an hundred paces distant, 
 le yeomen of the guard stood, sat, or lay extended on the 
 rass, attentive to their own sports, but pursuing them in 
 lence, while on the esplanade betwixt them and the front 
 : the tent lay, scarcely to be distinguished from a bundle 
 ' rags, tlie senseless form of the marabout. 
 
 But the Nubian had the advantage of a mirror, from the 
 'illiant reflection which the surface of the highly-polished 
 i.ield now afforded, by means of which he beheld, to his 
 larm and surprise, that the marabout raised his head gently 
 :om the ground, so as to survey all around him, moving 
 nth a well-adjusted precaution, which seemed entirely in- 
 (-nsistent with a state of ebriety. He couched his head 
 istantly, as if satisfied he was unobserved, and began, with 
 le slightest possible appearance of voluntary effort, to drag 
 Imself, as if by chance, ever nearer and nearer to the King, 
 It stopping, and remaining fixed at intervals, like the spider, 
 \iich, moving towards her object, collapses into apparent life- 
 Lsness when she thinks she is the subject of observation, 
 ''-lis species of movement appeared suspicious to the Ethio- 
 {in, who, on his part, prepared himself, as quietly as possible, 
 t interfere, the instant that interference should seem to be 
 rcessary. 
 
 The marabout meanwhile glided on gradually and imper- 
 
 cotibly, serpent-like, or rather snail-like, till he was about 
 
 ti yards' distance from Richard's person, when, starting on 
 
 bi feet, he sprung forward with the bound of a tiger, stood 
 
 219 
 
220 WAVERLEY NOVELS J 
 
 at the King's back in less than an instant, and brandished ■ 
 aloft the cangiar, or poniard, which he had hidden in his 
 sleeve. Not the presence of his whole army could have i 
 saved their heroic monarch ; but the motions of the Nubian |l 
 had been as well calculated as those of the enthusiast, and | 
 ere the latter could strike, the former caught his uplifted 
 arm. Turning his fanatical wrath upon what thus unex- 
 pectedly interposed betwixt him and his object, the Charegite, 
 for such w^as the seeming marabout, dealt the Nubian a blow 
 with the dagger, which, however, only grazed his arm, while 
 the far superior strength of the Ethiopian easily dashed him 
 to the ground. Aware of what had passed, Richard had 
 now arisen, and, with little more of surprise, anger, or 
 interest of any kind in his countenance than an ordinary 
 man would show in brushing off and crushing an intrusive 
 wasp, caught up the stool on which he had been sitting, and 
 exclaiming only, ' Ha, dog ! ' dashed almost to pieces the 
 skull of the assassin, who uttered twice, once in a loud and 
 once in a broken tone, the words 'Allah acMar' {God is 
 victorious) and expired at the King's feet. 
 
 " Ye are careful warders," said Richard to his archers, in f, 
 a tone of scornful reproach, as, aroused by the bustle of 
 what had passed, in terror and tumult they now rushed 't 
 into his tent — " watchful sentinels ye are, to leave me to do ' 
 such hangman's work with my own hand. Be silent all of 
 you, and cease your senseless clamor ; saw ye never a dead 
 Turk before ? Here — cast that carrion out of the camp, 
 strike the head from the trunk, and stick it on a lance, 
 taking care to turn the face to Mecca, that he may the easier 
 tell the foul impostor, on whose inspiration he came hither, 
 how he has sped on his errand. For thee, my swart and 
 
 silent friend " he added, turning to the Ethiopian. 
 
 " But how's this ? thou art wounded ; and with a poisoned 
 weapon, I warrant me, for by force of stab so weak an animal 
 as that could scarce hope to do more than raze the lion's 
 hide. Suck the poison from his wound one of you : the 
 venom is harmless on the lips, though fatal when it mingles 
 with the blood." 
 
 The yeomen looked on each other confusedly and with 
 hesitation, the apprehension of so strange a danger prevailing 
 with those who feared no other. j. , 
 
 " How now, sirrahs," continued the King, '' are yott J. 
 dainty-lipped, or do you fear death, that you dally thus ?" '"' 
 
 " Not the death of a man," said Long Allen, to whom the J*; 
 King looked as he spoke ; ' ' but methinks I would not di* 
 
THE TALISMAN 221 
 
 like a poisoned rat for the sake of a black chattel there, that 
 is bought and sold in a market like a Martlemas ox." 
 
 " His Grace speaks to men of sucking poison," muttered 
 another yeoman, "as if he said, 'Go to, swallow a goose- 
 berry M" 
 
 " Nay," said Eichard, " I never bade man do that which 
 [ would not do myself." 
 
 And, without farther ceremony, and in spite of the general 
 expostulations of those around, and tiie respectful opposition 
 Df the Nubian himself, the King of England applied his lips 
 :o the wound of the black slave, treating with ridicule all 
 -emonstrances and overpowering all resistance. He had no 
 !ooner intermitted his singular occupation than the Nubian 
 ;tarted from him, and, casting a scarl over his arm, intimated 
 )y gestures, as firm in purpose as^ they were respectful in 
 nanner, his determination not to 'permit the monarch to 
 enew so degrading an employment. 
 
 Long Allen also interposed, saying, that " If itwereneces- 
 ary to prevent the King engaging again in a treatment of 
 his kind, his own lips, tongue, and teeth wereat the service 
 f the negro (as he called the Ethiopian), and that he would 
 at him up bodily, rather than King Richard's mouth should 
 gain approach him." 
 
 ' Neville, who entered with other officers, added his remon- 
 Tances. 
 
 " Nay — nay, make not a needless halloo about a hart that 
 le hounds have lost, or a danger when it is over," said the 
 
 ing ; " the wound will be a trifle, for the blood is scarce 
 -awn — an angry cat had dealt a deeper scratch ; and for me, 
 have but to take a drachm of orvietan by way of precau- 
 ion, though it is needless." 
 
 Thus spoke Richard, a little ashamed, perhaps, of his own 
 ondescension, though sanctioned both by humanity and 
 jatitude. But when Neville continued to make r'emon- 
 frances on the peril to his royal person, the King imposed 
 tience on him. 
 
 '" Peace, I prithee, make no more of it ; I did it but to 
 &:ow these ignorant prejudiced knaves how they might help 
 eoh other when these cowardly caitiffs come against us with 
 srbacanes and poisoned shafts. But," he added, " take thee 
 tis Nubian to thy quarters, Neville, I have changed my 
 rnd touching him ; let him be well cared for. But, hark 
 i! thine ear — see that he escapes thee not ; there is more in 
 til than seems. Let him have all liberty, so that he leave 
 nt the camp. And you. ye beef-devouring, wine-swilling 
 
222 ^AVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 English mastiffs, get ye to your guard again, and be snre yoti 
 keep it more warily. Think not you are now in your own 
 land of fair play, where men speak before they strike, and 
 shake hands ere they cut throats. Danger in our land walks 
 openly, and with his blade drawn, and defies the foe whom 
 he means to assault ; but here, he challenges you with a silL- 
 glove instead of a steel gauntlet, cuts your throat with th( 
 feather of a turtle-dove, stabs you with the tongue of i 
 priest's brooch, or throttles you with the lace of my lady'i 
 boddice. Go to, keep your eyes open and your months shut 
 dri. k less and look sharper about you ; or I will place youi 
 huge stomachs on such short allowance as would pinch tlu 
 stomach of a patient Scottish man. 
 
 The yeomen, abashed and mortified, withdrew to thei] 
 post, and Neville was beginniiig to remonstrate with hif 
 master upon the risk of passing over thus slightly thei 
 negligence upon their duty, and the propriety of an exami^l 
 in a case so peculiarly aggravated as the permitting one S( 
 suspicious as the marabout to approach within dagger's lengtl 
 of his person, when Richard interrupted him with, " 8peal 
 not of it, Neville ; wouldst thou have me avenge a petty risi 
 to myself more severely than the loss of England's banner 
 It has been stolen — stolen by a thief, or delivered up by i 
 traitor, and no blood has been shed for it. My sable friend 
 thou art an expounder of mysteries, saith the illustriou! 
 Soldan ; now would I give thee thine own weight in gold, if 
 by raising one still blacker than thyself, or by what othei 
 means thou wilt, thou couldst show me the thief who die 
 mine honor that wrong. What say'st thou — ha ! " 
 
 The mute seemed desirous to sj^eak, but uttered only thai 
 imperfect sound proper to his melancholy condition, thei 
 folded his arms, looked on the King with an eye of intelli- 
 gence, and nodded in answer to his question. 
 
 "How! "said Eichard, with joyful impatience. "Will 
 thou undertake to make discovery in this matter ?" 
 
 The Nubian slave repeated the same motion. 
 
 "But how shall we understand each other? "said fch( 
 King. " Canst thou write, good fellow ? " 
 
 The slave again nodded in assent. 
 
 " Give him writing-tools," said the King. " They wen 
 readier in my father's tent than mine, butthey besomewher( 
 about if this scorching climate have not dried up the ink 
 Why, this fellow is a jewel — a black diamond, Neville 
 
 " So please you, my liege," said Neville, " if I miglit speaJ 
 my poor mind, it were ill dealing in this ware. This mw 
 
 ieelar 
 
THE TALISMAN 223 
 
 mu :t be a wizard, and wizards deal with the Enemy, who 
 hat^^most interest to sow tares among the wheat, and bring 
 dis-ension into our councils, and " 
 
 " Peace. Neville," said Richard. " Halloo toj'our North- 
 ern hound when he is close on the haunch of the deer, and 
 hcpe to recall him, but seek not to stop Plantagenet when 
 he hath hope to retrieve his honor. "' 
 
 The slave, who during this discussion had been writing, in 
 whicli art he seemed skilful, now arose, and pressing what 
 he had written to his brow, prostrated himself as usual, ere 
 he delivered it into the King's hands. The scroll was in 
 French, although their intercourse had hitherto been con- 
 ducted by Richard in the lingua franca. 
 
 " To Richard, the conquering and invincible King of Eng- 
 land, this from the humblest of his slaves. Mysteries are tlie 
 \ealed caskets of Heaven, but wisdom may devise means to 
 )pen the lock. AVere your slave stationed where the leaders 
 )f the Christian host were made to pass before him in order, 
 ioubt nothing that, if he who did the injury whereof my 
 King complains shall be among the number, he may be made 
 manifest in his iniquity, though it be hidden under seven 
 peils." 
 
 'Now, by St. George !" said King Richard, -'thou hast 
 spoken most opportunely. Neville, thou know'stthat, when 
 we muster our troops to-morrow, the princes have agreed tliat, 
 to expiate the affront offered to England in tlie theft of her 
 ijuuner, the leaders should pass our new standard as it floats 
 ju St. George's Mount, and salute it with formal regard. 
 Bi'lieve me, the secret traitor will not dare to absent himself 
 'roni an expurgation so solemn, lest his very absence should 
 oe nuitter of suspicion. There will we place our sable man 
 Df counsel, and, if his art can detect the villain, leave me fco 
 deal with him." 
 
 " My liege," said Neville, with the frankness of an English 
 Daron, "■ beware what work you begin. Here is the concord 
 )f our holy league unexpectedly renewed ; will you, upon 
 uich suspicion as a negro slave can instil, tear open wounds 
 ,;o lately closed, or will you use the solemn procession, adopted 
 "or the reparation of your honor, and establishment of unan- 
 niity amongst the discording princes, as the means of again 
 indingout new cause of offence, or reviving ancient quarrels ? 
 [t were scarce too strong to say, this were a breach of the 
 leelaration your Grace made to the assembled council of the 
 Drusade." 
 
224 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ''Neville," said the King, sternly interrupting him, " thy 
 zeal makes thee presninptuons and unmannerly. Never did 
 I promise to abstain from taking whatever means were most 
 promisiiig to discover the infamous author of the attack on 
 my honor. Ere I had done so, I would have renounced my 
 kingdom — my life. All my declarations were under this 
 necessary and absolute qualification ; only, if Austria had 
 stepped forth and owned the injury like a man, I proffered, 
 for the sake of Christendom, to have forgiven him." 
 
 " But," continued the baron, anxiously, " what hope that 
 this juggling slave of Saladin will not palter with your 
 Grace?" 
 
 " Peace, Neville," said the King ; " thou think'st thyself 
 mighty wise and art but a fool. Mind thou my charge touch- 
 ing this fellow ; there is more in him tlian thy Westmore- 
 land wit can fathom. And thou, swart and silent, prepare 
 to perform the feat thou hast promised, and, by the word of 
 a king, thou shalt choose thine own recompense. Lo, he 
 writes again." 
 
 The mute accordingly wrote and delivered to the King, 
 with the same form as before another slip of paper, contain- 
 ing these words : " The will of the King is the law to his 
 slave ; nor doth it become him to ask guerdon for discharge 
 of his devoir." 
 
 "Ouerdon and devoir !" said the King, interrupting him- 
 self as he read, and speaking to Neville in the English tongue, 
 with some emphasis on the words. " These Eastern people 
 will profit by the Crusaders : they are acquiring the language 
 of chivalry. And see, Neville, how discomposed that fellow 
 looks ; were it not for his color he would blush. I should 
 not think it strange if he understood what I say : they are 
 perilous linguists." 
 
 " The poor slave cannot endure your Grace's eye," said 
 Neville ; " it is nothing more." 
 
 "Well, but," continued the King, striking the paper with 
 his finger, as he proceeded, " this bold scroll proceeds to say, 
 that our trusty mute is charged with a message from Saladin 
 to the Lady Edith Plantagenet,and craves means and oppor- 
 tunity to deliver it. What think'st thou of a request so 
 modest — ha, Neville ? " 
 
 " I cannot say," said Neville, ''how such freedom may 
 relish with your Grace ; but the lease of the messenger's neck 
 would be a short one, who should carry such a request to the 
 Soldan on the part of your Majesty." 
 
 ** Nay, I thank Heaven that I covet none of his sunburnt 
 
THE TALISMAN 225 
 
 beauties/' said Richard ; " and for punishing this fellow for 
 discharging his master's errand, and that when he has just 
 saved my life, methinks it were something too summary. 
 I'll tell thee, Neville, a secret — for, although our sable and 
 mute minister be present, he cannot, thou know'st, tell it over 
 again, even if he should chance to understand us — I tell 
 thee, that for this fortnight past I have been under a strange 
 spell, and I would I were disenchanted. There has no sooner 
 any one done me good service, but lo you, he cancels his in- 
 terest in me by some deep injury ; and, on the other hand, he 
 who hath deserved death at my hands for some treachery or 
 some insult is sure to be the very person, of all others, who con- 
 fers upon me some obligation that overbalances his demerits, 
 and renders respite of his sentence a debt due from my 
 honor. Thus, thou seest, I am deprived of the best part of 
 my royal function, since I can neither punish men nor 
 reward them. Until the influence of this disqualifying 
 planet be passed away, I will say nothing concerning the 
 request of this our sable attendant, save that it is an un- 
 asually bold one, and that his best chance of finding grace 
 n our eyes will be, to endeavor to make the discovery which 
 le proposes to achieve in our behalf. Meanwhile, Neville, 
 io thou look well to him, and let him be honorably cared 
 'or. And hark thee once more," he said in a low whisjjer, 
 ' seek out yonder hermit of Engaddi, and bring him to me 
 orthwith, be he saint or savage, madman or sane. Let me 
 ee him privately.'" 
 Neville retired from the royal tent, signing to the Nubian 
 
 follow him, and much surprised at what he had seen and 
 leard, and especially at the unusual demeanor of the King, 
 n general, no task was so easy as to discover Eichard's 
 mmediate courseof sentiment and feeling, though it might, 
 Q some cases, be difficult to calculate its duration ; for no 
 weathercock obeyed the changing wind more readily than 
 he King his gusts of passion. But, on the present occasion, 
 is manner seemed unusually constrained and mysterious, 
 or was it easy to guess whether displeasure or kindness 
 redominated in his conduct towards his new dependant, 
 r in the looks with which, from time to time, he regarded 
 im. The ready service which the King had rendered to 
 Dunteract the bad effects of the Nubian's wound might 
 iem to balance the obligation conferred on him by the 
 ave, when he intercepted the blow of the assassin ; but it 
 ;emed, as a much longer account remained to be arranged 
 3tween them, that the monarch was doubtful whether the 
 
 1 '5 
 
226 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 settlement might leave him, upou the whole, debtor or 
 creditor, and that, therefore, he assumed, in the meantime, 
 a neutral demeanor, which might suit with either character. 
 As for the Nubian, by whatever means he had acquired the 
 art of writing the European languages, the King remained 
 convinced that the English tongue at least was unknown to 
 him, since, having watched him closely during the last part 
 of the interview, he conceived it impossible for any one un- 
 derstanding a conversation, of which he was liimself the sub- 
 ject, to have so completely avoided the appearance of taking 
 an interest in it. 
 
CHAPTEE XXII 
 
 Who's there ? Approach — 'tis kindly done — 
 My learned physician and a friend. 
 
 Sir Eustace Grey. 
 
 Due narrative retrogrades to a period shortly previous to the 
 ncidents last mentioned, when, as the reader must remem 
 3er, the unfortunate Knight of the Leopard, bestowed upon 
 :he Arabian physician by King Eichard, rather as a slave 
 :han in any other capacity, was exiled from the camp of the 
 Jrusaders, in whose ranks he had so often and so brilliantly 
 iistinguished himself. He followed his new master, for so 
 ve must now term the Hakim, to the Moorish tents which 
 iontained his retinue and his property, with the stupified 
 'eelings of one who, fallen from the summit of a precipice, 
 ind escaping unexpectedly with life, is just able to drag 
 limself from the fatal spot, but without the power of es- 
 imating the extent of the damage which he has sustained. 
 Arrived at the tent, he threw himself, without speech of any 
 cind, upon a couch of dressed buffalo's hide, which was 
 )ointed out to him by his conductor, and, hiding his face 
 )etwixt his hands, groaned heavily, as if his heart were on 
 he point of bursting. The physician heard him, as he 
 ras giving orders to his numerous domestics to prepare for 
 heir departure the next morning before daybreak, and, 
 noved with compassion, interrupted his occupation to sit 
 lown, cross-legged, by the side of his couch, and administer 
 omfort according to the Oriental manner. 
 
 " My friend, ""he said, " be of good comfort ; for what 
 ayeth the poet — ' It is better that a man should be the ser- 
 ant of a kind master than the slave of his own wild pas- 
 ions.' Again, be of good courage ; because, whereas Ysouf 
 en Yagoube was sold to a king by his brethren, even to 
 *haraoh king of Egypt, thy king hath, on the other hand, 
 estowed thee on one who will be to thee as a brother.'" 
 
 Sir Kenneth made an effort to thank the Hakim ; but his 
 
 eart was too full, and the indistinct sounds which accom- 
 
 anied his abortive attempts to reply induced the kind phy- 
 
 ician to desist from his premature endeavors at consolation, 
 
 227 
 
228 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 He left his new domestic, or guest, in quiet, to indulge hii 
 sorrows, and having commanded all the necessary prepara 
 tions for their departure on the morning, sat down upon the 
 carpet of the tent and indulged himself in a moderate re 
 past. After he had thus refreshed himself, similar viand; 
 were offered to the Scottish knight ; but though the slave; 
 let him understand that the next day would be far advances 
 ere they would halt for the purpose of refreshment,, Sii 
 Kenneth could not overcome the disgust which he fel 
 against swallowing any nourishment, and could be prevailei 
 upon to taste nothing, saving a draught of cold water. 
 
 He was awake, long after his Arab host had performec 
 his usual devotions and betaken himself to his repose, no: 
 had sleep visited him at the hour of midnight, when a move 
 ment took place among the domestics, which, though at 
 tended with no speech, and very little noise, made him awan 
 they were loading the camels and preparing for departure 
 In the course of these preparations, the last person who wa, 
 disturbed, excepting the physician himself, was the Knigli 
 of Scotland, whom, about three in the morning, a sort o 
 major-domo, or master of the household, acquainted tha 
 he must arise. He did so, without farther answer, and fol 
 lowed him into the moonlight, where stood the camels, mos 
 of which were already loaded, and one only remained kneel 
 ing until its burden should be completed. 
 
 A little apart from the camels stood a number of horse 
 ready bridled and saddled, and the Hakim himself, comiii; 
 forth, mounted on one of them with as much agility as tin 
 grave decorum of his character permitted, and directed an 
 other, which he pointed out, to be led towards Sir Kenneth 
 An English officer was in attendance to escort_ them througl 
 the camp of the Crusaders, and to ensure their leaving it ii 
 safety, and all was ready for their departure. The pavilioi 
 which they had left was, in the meanwhile, struck witl 
 singular despatch, and the tent-poles and coverings com 
 posed the burden of the last camel ; when the physiciai 
 pronouncing solemnly the verse of the Koran, " God be on 
 guide, and Mohammed our protector, in the desert as in_tli< 
 watered field," the whole cavalcade was instantly in motion 
 
 In traversing the camp, they were challenged by the va 
 rious sentinels who maintained guard there, and suffered t' 
 proceed in silence, or with a muttered curse upon the; 
 prophet, as they passed the post of some more zealous Cm 
 sader. At length, the las* barriers were left behind them 
 and the party formed th' ^selves for the march with mih 
 
THE TALISMAN 229 
 
 6ary precaution. Two or three horsemen advanced in front 
 as a vanguard ; one or two remained a bow-shot in the rear ; 
 and, wherever the ground admitted, others were detached 
 to keep an outlook on the flanks. In this manner they pro- 
 ceeded onward, while Sir Kenneth, looking back on the 
 moonlight camp, might now indeed seem banished, deprived 
 at once of honor and of liberty, from the glimmering ban- 
 ners under which he had hoped to gain additional renown, 
 and the tended dwellings of chivalry, of Christianity, and — 
 of Edith Plantagenet. 
 
 The Hakim, who rode by his side, observed, in his usual 
 tone of sententious consolation — " It is unwise to look back 
 when the journey lieth forward " ; and as he spoke, the horse 
 3f the knight made such a perilous stumble as threatened to 
 add a practical moral to the tale. 
 
 _ The knight was compelled by this hint to give more atten- 
 tion to the management of his steed, which more than once 
 required the assistance and support of the check-bridle al- 
 ::hough, in other respects, nothing could be more easy at once 
 md active than the ambling pace at which the animal, which 
 ivas a mare, proceeded. 
 
 " The conditions of that horse," observed the sententious 
 physician, *• are like those of human fortune ; seeing that 
 imidst his most swift and easy pace the rider must guard 
 limself against a fall, and that it is when prosperity is at the 
 lighest that our prudence should be awake and vigilant, to 
 orevent misfortune." 
 
 The overloaded appetite loathes even the honeycomb, and 
 itis scarce a wonder that the knight, mortified and harassed 
 ,vith misfortunes and abasement, became something impatient 
 pf hearing his misery made, at every turn, the ground of 
 broverbs and apothegms, however just and apposite. 
 \ _ " Methinks," he said, rather peevishly, " I wanted no ad- 
 litional illustration of the instability of fortune ; though I 
 should thank thee, sir Hakim, for thy choice of a steed for 
 ne, would the jade but stumble so effectually as at once to 
 )reak my neck and her own." 
 
 " My brother," answered the Arab sage, with imperturb- 
 .ble gravity, " thou speakest as one of the foolish. Thou 
 ay'st in thy heart, that the sage should have given thee 
 s his guest the younger and better horse, and reserved the 
 Id one for himself ; but know, that the defects of the older 
 teed may be compensated by the energies of the young rider, 
 whereas the violence of the young horse requires to be mod- 
 rated by the cold temper of the older." 
 
230 WAVERLEV j\OVELS 
 
 So spoke the sage ; but neither to this observation did Sir 
 Kenneth return any answer which could lead to a continuance 
 of their conversation, and the physician, wearied, periiaps. 
 of administering comfort to one who would not be comforted, 
 signed to one of his retinue. 
 
 "Hassan," he said, "hast thou nothing wherewith to be- 
 guile the way ?" 
 
 Hassan, story-teller and poet by profession, spurred, up, 
 upon this summons, to exercise his calling. "Lord of the 
 palace of life," he said, addressing the ph3^sician, " thou, 
 before whom the angel Azrael spreadeth his wings for flight 
 
 thou, wiser than Solimaun ben Daoud, upon whose signet 
 
 was inscribed the real name which controls the spirits 
 of the elements — forbid it. Heaven, that, while thou travellest 
 upon the track of benevolence, bearing healing and hope wher- 
 ever thou comest, thine own course should be saddened for t!it 
 lack of the tale and of the song. Behold, while thy servant} g!i 
 is at thy side, he will pour forth the treasures of his memory,- - 
 as the fountain sendeth her stream beside the pathway, for 
 the refreshment of him that walketh thereon." 
 
 After this exordium, Hassan uplifted his voice, and began; ini 
 a tale of love and magic, intermixed with feats of warlike; e: 
 achievement, and ornamented with abundant quotations from 
 xhe Persian poets, with whose compositions the orator seemed _ 
 familiar. The retinue of the physician, such excepted as _ 
 were necessarily detained in attendance on the camels, jpr; 
 thronged up to the narrator, and pressed as close as deferencel ; 
 for their master permitted, to enjoy the delight which the j jr,. 
 inhabitants of the East have ever derived from this species tin 
 of exhibition. i !(- 
 
 At another time, notwithstanding his imperfect knowledge! if, 
 of the language. Sir Kenneth might have been interested m\\. 
 the recitation, which, though dictated by a more extravagant! 
 imagination, and expressed in more inflated and metaphorical' ,, 
 language, bore yet a strong resemblance to the romances of it(; 
 chivalrv, then so fashionable in Europe. But as matters it, 
 stood with him, he was scarcely even sensible that a man in, i^ 
 the centre of the cavalcade recited and sung, in a low tone, j|;,, 
 for nearly two hours, modulating his voice to the various ji^. 
 moods of passion introduced into the tale, and receiving, in' • 
 return, noAV low murmurs of applause, now muttered ex- 
 pressions of wonder, now sighs and tears, and sometimes, 
 what it was far more difficult to extract from such an audi- 
 ence, a tribute of smiles, and even laughter. 
 
 During the recitation, the attention of the exile, however 
 
THE TALISMAN 281 " 
 
 abstracted by his own deep sorrow, was occasionally awakened 
 by the low wail of a dog, secured in a wicker inclosure sus- 
 pended on one of the camels, which, as an experienced 
 woodsman, he had no hesitation in recognizing to be that of 
 his own faithful hound ; and from the plaintive tone of the 
 animal, he hud no doubt that he was sensible of his master's 
 vicinity, and, in his way, invoking his assistance for liberty 
 and rescue. 
 
 " Alas ! poor Eoswal,*' he said, " thou callest for aid and 
 sympathy upon one in stricter bondage than thou thyself art. 
 I will not seem to heed thee, or return thy affection, since it 
 would serve but to load our parting with yet more bitterness." 
 
 Thus passed the hours of night, and the space of dim hazy 
 dawn which forms the twilight of a Syrian morning. But 
 when the very first line of the sun's disk began to rise above 
 the level horizon, and when the very first level ray shot 
 glimmering in dew along the surface of the desert, which the 
 travelers had now attained, the sonorous voice of El Hakim 
 himself overpowered and cut short the narrative of the tale- 
 teller, while he caused to resound along the sands the solemn 
 summons which the muezzins thunder at morning from the 
 niinuret of every mosque. 
 
 " To prayer — to prayer ! God is the one God. To prayer 
 — to prayer ! Mohammed is the prophet of God. To prayer 
 • — to prayer ! Time is flying from you. To prayer — to 
 prayer ! Judgment is drawing nigh to you." 
 
 In an instant each Moslem cast himself from his horse, 
 turned his face towards Mecca, and performed with sand an 
 imitation of those ablutions which were elsewhere required 
 to be made with water, while each individual, in brief but 
 fervent ejaculations, recommended himself to the care, and 
 his sins to the forgiveness, of God and the Prophet. 
 
 Even Sir Kenneth, whose reason at once and prejudices 
 were offended by seeing his companions in that which he 
 considered as an act of idolatry, could not help respecting 
 the sincerity of their misguided zeal, and being stimulated 
 by their fervor to apply supi^lications to Heaven in a purer 
 form, wondering, meanwhile, what new-born feelings could 
 teach him to accompany in prayer, though with varied in- 
 vocations, those very Saracens, whose heathenish worship he 
 had conceived a crime dishonorable to the land in which 
 high miracles had been wrought, and where the day-star of 
 redemption had ainsen. 
 
 The act of devotion, however, though rendered in such 
 Btrange society, burst purely from his natural feelings of 
 
232 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 religious duty, and had its usual effect in composing the 
 spirits, which had been long harassed by so rapid a succes- 
 sion of calamities. The sincere and earnest approach of the 
 Christian to the throne of the Almiglity teaches the best les- 
 son of patience under affliction ; since wherefore should we 
 mock the Deity with supplications, Avhen we insult Him by 
 murmuring under His decrees ? or how, while our prayers 
 have in every word admitted the vanity and nothingness of 
 the things of time in comparison to those of eternity, should 
 we hope to deceive the Searcher of Hearts, by permitting the 
 world and worldly passions to reassume the reins even im- 
 mediately after a solemn address to Heaven ? But Sir Ken- 
 neth was not of these. He felt himself comforted and 
 strengthened, and better prepared to execute or submit to 
 whatever his destiny might call upon him to do or to suffer. 
 
 Meanwhile, the par^y of Saracens regained their saddles 
 and continued their route, and the tale-teller, Hassan, 
 resumed the thread of his narrative ; but it was no longer to 
 the same attentive audience. A horseman, who had ascended 
 some high ground on the right hand of the little column, 
 ''lad returned on a speedy gallop to El Hakim, and commu- 
 licated with him. Four or five more cavaliers had then 
 oeen despatched, and the little band, which might consist 
 of about twenty or thirty persons, began to follow them 
 with their eyes, as men from whose gestures, and advance 
 or retreat, they were to augur good or evil. Hassan, finding 
 his audience inattentive, or being himself attracted by the 
 dubious appearances on the flank, stinted in his song ; and 
 the march became silent, save when a camel-driver called 
 out to his patient charge, or some anxious follower of the 
 Hakim communicated with his next neighbor in a hurried 
 and low whisper. 
 
 This suspense continued until they had rounded a ridge, 
 composed of hillocks of sand, which concealed from their 
 main body the object that had created this alarm among 
 their scouts. Sir Kenneth could now see, at the distance 
 of a mile or more, a dark object moving rapidly on the 
 bosom of the desert, which his experienced eye recognized 
 for a party of cavalry, much superior to their own in num- 
 bers, and,"^from the thick and frequent flashes which flung 
 back the level beams of the rising sum, it was plain that 
 these were Europeans in their complete panoply. 
 
 The anxious looks which the horsemen of El Hakim now 
 cast upon their leader seemed to indicate deep apprehension; 
 while he, with gravity as undisturbed as when he called his 
 
I THE TALISMAN 233 
 
 followers to prayer, detached two of his best-mounted ca- 
 valiers, with instructions to approach as closely as prudence 
 permitted to these travelers of the desert, and observe more 
 minutely their numbers, their character, and, if possible, 
 their purpose. The approach of danger, or what was feared 
 as such, was like a stimulating draught to one in apathy, 
 and recalled Sir Kenneth to himself and his situation. 
 
 " What fear you from these Christian horsemen, for such 
 they seem ? " he said to the Hakim, 
 
 '' Fear ! " said El Hakim, repeating the word disdainfully. 
 " The sage fears nothing but Heaven, but ever expects from 
 wicked men the worst which they can do," 
 
 " They are Christians," said Sir Kenneth, ''and it is the 
 time of truce ; why should you fear a breach of faith ?" 
 
 "They are the priestly soldiers of the Temple," answered 
 El Hakim, " whose vow limits them to know neither truth 
 Qor faith with the worshipers of Islam, May the Prophet 
 blight them, both root, branch, and twig ! Their peace is 
 war, and their faith is falsehood. Other invaders of Pal- 
 estine have their times and moods of courtesy. The lion 
 Richard will spare when he has conquered ; the eagle Philip 
 will close his wing when he has stricken a prey ; even the 
 A-ustrian bear will sleej) when he is gorged ; but this horde 
 3f ever-hungry wolves know neither pause nor satiety in 
 their rapine, Seest thou not that they are detaching a 
 party from their main body, and that they take an eastern 
 lirection ? Yon are their pages and squires, whom they 
 :rain up in their accursed mysteries, and whom, as lighter 
 iiounted, they send to cut us off from our watering-place. 
 But they will be disappointed : / know the war of the desert 
 7et better than they." 
 
 He spoke a few words to his principal officer, and his 
 whole demeanor and countenance was at once changed from 
 ;he solemn repose of an Eastern sage, accustomed more to 
 contemplation than to action, into the prompt and proud 
 expression of a gallant soldier, whose enei-gies are roused bj 
 :;he near approach of a danger which he at once foresee! 
 md despises. 
 
 To Sir Kenneth's eyes the approaching crisis had a differen , 
 ispect, and when Adonbec said to him, "Thou must tany 
 ;lose by my side," he answered solemnly in the negative, 
 
 •' Yonder," he said, "are my comrades in arms — the rr.en 
 n whose society I have vowed to fight or fall. On t'leir 
 oanner gleams the sign of our most blessed redemption ; I 
 januot fly from the Cross in company with the Crescer t." 
 
234 WA VEELEY NO VELS 
 
 "Fool!" said the Hakim; "their first action would he 
 to do thee to death, were it only to conceal their breach of , 
 the truce." : | 
 
 " Of that I must take my chance," replied Sir Kenneth ; r 
 " but I wear not the bonds of the infidels an instant longer 
 than I can cast them from me." 
 
 " Then will I compel thee to follow me," said El Hakim. 
 
 "Compel!" answered Sir Kenneth, angrily. "Wert 
 thou not my benefactor, or one who has showed Avill to be 
 such, and were it not that it is to thy confidence I owe the 
 freedom of these hands, which thou mightst have loaded 
 with fetters, I would show thee that, unarmed as I am, com- 
 pulsion would be no easy task." 
 
 "Enough — enough," replied the Arabian physician, *' we 
 lose time even when it is becoming precious." 
 
 So saying, he threw his arm aloft, and uttered a loud and 
 shrill cry, as a signal to those of his retinue, who instantly 
 dispersed themselves on the face of the desert, in as many 
 different directions as a chaplet of beads when the string is 
 broken. Sir Kenneth had no time to note what ensued ; 
 for, at the same instant, the Hakim seized the rein of his 
 steed, and putting his own to its metal, both sprung forth 
 at once with the suddenness of light, and at a pitch of velo- 
 city which almost deprived the Scottish knight of the power 
 of respiration, and left him absolutely incapable, had he 
 been desirous, to have checked the career of his guide. 
 Practised as Sir Kenneth was in horsemanship from his 
 earliest youth, the speediest horse he had ever mounted was 
 a tortoise in comparison to those of the Arabian sage. They 
 spurned the sand from behind them — they seemed to devour 
 the desert before them — miles flew away with minutes, and 
 yet their strength seemed unabated, and their respiration as 
 free as when they first started upon the wonderful race. 
 The motion, too, as easy as it was swift, seemed more like 
 flying through the air than riding on the earth, and was at- 
 tended with no unpleasant sensation, save the awe naturally 
 felt by one who is moving at such astonishing speed, and 
 the difficulty of breathing occasioned by their passing through 
 the air so rapidly. 
 
 It was not until after an hour of this portentous motion, 
 and when all human pursuit was far, far behind, that the 
 Hakim at length relaxed his speed, and, slackening the pace 
 of the horses into a hand-gallop, began, in a voice as com- 
 posed and even as if lie had been walking for the last hour, 
 a descant upon the excellence of his coursers to the Scot, 
 
THE TALISMAN 235 
 
 who, breathless, half blind, half dead, and altogether giddy, 
 from the rapidity of this singular ride, hardly comprehended 
 the words which flowed so freely from his companion. 
 
 " Those horses,'* he said, "are of the breed called the 
 Winged, equal in speed to aught excepting the Borak of the 
 Prophet. They are fed on the golden barley of Yemen, 
 mixed with spices, and with a small portion of dried sheep's 
 flesh. Kings have given provinces to possess them, and 
 their age is active as their youth. Thou, Nazarene, art the 
 first, save a true believer, that ever had beneath his loins 
 one of this noble race, a gift of the Prophet himself to the 
 blessed Ali, his kinsman and lieutenant, well called the Lion 
 of God. Time lays his touch so lightly on these generous 
 steeds, that the mare on which thou nowsittest has seen five 
 times five years pass over her, yet retains her pristine speed 
 and vigor, only that in the career the support of a bridle, 
 managed by a hand more experienced than thine, hath 
 now become necessary. May the Prophet be blessed, who 
 hath bestowed on the true believers the means of advance 
 and retreat, which causeth their iron-clothed enemies to be 
 worn out with their own ponderous weight ! How the horses 
 of yonder dog Templars must have snorted and blown, when 
 they had toiled fetlock-deep in the desert for one-twentieth 
 part of the space which these brave steeds have left behind 
 them, without one thick pant, or a drop of moisture upon 
 their sleek and velvet coats ! " 
 
 The Scottish knight, who had now begun to recover his 
 breath and powers of attention, could not help acknowledg- 
 ing in his heart the advantage possessed by these Eastern 
 warriors in a race of animals alike proper for advance or re- 
 treat, and so admirably adapted to the level and sandy des- 
 erts of Arabia and Syria. But he did not choose to augment 
 the pride of the Moslem by acquiescing in his proud claim 
 of superiority, and therefore suffered the conversation to 
 drop, and, looking around him, could now, at the more 
 moderate pace at which they moved, distinguish that he 
 was in a country not unknown to him. 
 
 The blighted borders and sullen waters of the Dead Sea, 
 t.ie ragged and precipitous chain of mountains arising on 
 the left, the two or three palms clustered together, forming 
 the single green speck on the bosom of the waste wilderness 
 — objects which, once seen, were scarcely to be forgotten — • 
 showed to Sir Kenneth that they were approaching the foun- 
 tain called the Diamond of the Desert, which had been the 
 scene of his interview on a former occasion with the Saracen 
 
236 WA V-ERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 Emir Slieerkolif, or Ilderim. In a few minutes they checked 
 their horses beside the spring, and the Hakim invited 8ir 
 Kennetli to descend from horseback, and repose himself as 
 in a place of safety. They unbridled their steeds, El Hakim 
 observing that farther care of them was unnecessary, since 
 they would be speedily Joined by some of the best-mounted 
 among his slaves, who would do what farther was needful. 
 
 ''Meantime," he said, spreading some food on the grass, 
 '' eat and drink, and be not discouraged. Fortune may raise 
 up or abase the ordinary mortal, but the sage and the soldier 
 should have minds beyond her control."' 
 
 The Scottish knight endeavored to testify his thanks by 
 showing himself docile ; but though he strove to eat out of 
 complaisance, the singular contrast between his present 
 situation and that which he had occupied on the same spot, 
 when the envoy of princes and the victor in combat, came 
 like a cloud over his mind, and fasting, lassitude, and fatigue 
 oppressed his bodily powers. El Hakim examined his 
 hurried pulse, his red and inflamed eye, his heated hand, 
 and his shortened respiration. 
 
 " The mind," he said, "grows wise by watching, but her 
 sister the body, of coarser materials, needs the support of 
 repose. Thou must sleep ; and that thou mayst do so to re- 
 freshment, thou must take a draught mingled with this 
 elixir." 
 
 He drew from his bosom a small crystal vial, cased in silver 
 filigree-work, and dropped into a little golden drinkiug-cup 
 a small portion of a dark-colored fluid. 
 
 "This," he said, "is one of those productions which 
 Allah hath sent on earth for a blessing, though man's weak- 
 ness and wickedness have sometimes converted it into a 
 curse. It is powerful as the wine-cup of the Nazarene to 
 drop the curtain on the sleepless eye, and to relieve the 
 burden of the overloaded bosom ; but when applied to the 
 purposes of indulgence and debauchery, it rends the nerves, 
 destroys the strength, weakens the intellect, and undermines 
 life. But fear not thou to use its virtues in the time of 
 need, for the wise man warms him by the same fire-brand 
 with which the madman burnetii the tent."* 
 
 "I have seen too much of tliy skill, sage Hakim," said Sir 
 Kenneth," to debate thine host" ; and swallowed the narcotic, 
 mingled as it was with some water from the spring, then 
 wrapped him in the haik, or Arab cloak, which had been fast- 
 ened to his saddle-pommel, and, according to the directions of 
 * Some preparation of opium seems to be intimated. 
 
THE TALISMAN 237 
 
 the physician, stretched himself at ease in the shade to await the 
 promised repose. Sleep came not at first, but in her stead a 
 train of pleasing, yet not rousing or awakening, sensations. 
 A state ensued in which, still conscious of his own iden- 
 tity and his own condition, the knight felt enabled to con- 
 sider them not only without alarm and sorrow, but as com- 
 posedly as he might have viewed the story of his misfortunes 
 acted upon a stage, or rather as a disembodied spirit might 
 regard the transactions of its past existence. From this 
 state of repose, amounting almost to apathy respecting the 
 past, his thouglits were carried forward to the future, which 
 in spite of all that existed to overcloud the prospect, glit- 
 tered with such hues as, under much happier auspices, his 
 unstimulated imagination had not been able to produce, 
 even in its most exalted state. Liberty, fame, successful 
 love, appeared to be the certain, and not very distant, pros- 
 pect of the enslaved exile, the dishonored knight, even of 
 tlie despairing lover, who had placed his hopes of happiness 
 so far beyond the prospect of chance, in her wildest possi- 
 bilities, serving to countenance his wishes. Gradually, as 
 tlie intellectual sight became overclouded, these gay visions 
 became obscure, like the dying hues of sunset, until they 
 were at last lost in total oblivion ; and Sir Kenneth lay ex- 
 tended at the feet of El Hakim, to all appearance, but for 
 his deep respiration, as inanimate a corpse as if life had 
 actually departed. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Mid these wild scenes encliantment waves her hand. 
 To change tlie face of the mysterious land ; 
 Till the bewildering scenes around us seem 
 The vain productions of a feverish dream. 
 
 Astolpho, a Romance. 
 
 When" the Knight of the Leopard awoke from his long and 
 profound repose, he found himself in circumstances so dif- 
 ferent from those in which he had lain down to sleep, that 
 he doubted whether he was not still dreaming, or whether 
 the scene had not been changed by magic. Instead of the 
 damp grass, he lay on a couch of more than Oriental luxury, 
 and some kind hands had, during his repose, stripped him 
 of the cassock of chamois which he wore under his armor, 
 and substituted a night-dress of the finest linen, and a loose 
 gown of silk. He had been canopied only by the palm-trees 
 of the desert, bat now he lay beneath a silken pavilion, 
 which blazed with the richest colors of the Chinese loom, 
 while a slight curtain of gauze, displayed around his couch, 
 was calculated to protect his repose from tlie insects, to 
 which he had, ever since his arrival in these climates, been 
 a constant and passive prey. He looked around, as if to 
 convince himself that he was actually awake, and all that 
 fell beneath his eye partook of the splendor of his dormi- 
 tory. A portable bath of cedar, lined with silver, was ready 
 for use, and steamed with the odors which had been used in 
 preparing it. On a small stand of ebony beside the couch 
 stood a silver vase, containing sherbet of the most exquisite 
 quality, cold as snow, and which tlie thirst that followed 
 the use of the strong narcotic rendered peculiarly delicious. 
 Still farther to dispel the dregs of intoxication which it had 
 left behind, the knight resolved to use the bath, and experi- 
 enced in doing so a delightful refreshment. Having dried 
 himself with napkins of the Indian wool, he would willingly 
 have resumed his own coarse garments, that he might go 
 forth to see whether the world was as much changed with- 
 out as within the place of his repose. These, however, were 
 ttowhere to be seen, but in their place he found a Saraceu 
 
THE TALISMAN 239 
 
 dress of rich materials, with saber and poniard, and all be- 
 fitting an emir of distinction. He was able to suggest no 
 motive to himself for this exuberance of care, excepting a 
 suspicion that these attentions were intended to shake him 
 in his religious jjrofession ; as indeed it was well kno\/n that 
 the high esteem of the European knowledge and courage 
 made the Soldan unbounded in his gifts to those who, having 
 become his prisoners, had been induced to take the turban. 
 Sir Kenneth, therefore, crossing himself devoutly, resolved 
 to set all such snares at defiance ; and that he might do so 
 the more firmly, conscientiously determined to avail himself 
 as moderately as possible of the attentions and luxuries thus 
 liberally heaped upon him. Still, however, he felt his liead 
 oppressed and sleepy, and aware, too, that his undress was 
 not fit for appearing abroad, he reclined upon the couch, 
 and was again locked in the arms of slumber. 
 
 But this time his rest was not nnbroken, for he was 
 awakened by the voice of the physician at the door of the 
 tent, inquiring after his health, and whether he had rested 
 sufficiently, •' May I enter your tent ? " he concluded, " for 
 the curtain is drawn before the entrance.''' 
 
 " The master,'' replied Sir Kenneth, determined to show 
 that he was not surprised into forgetfulness of his own con- 
 dition, " need demand no permission to enter the tent of 
 the slave." 
 
 " But if I come not as a master ? " said El Hakim, still 
 without entering. 
 
 " The physician," answered the knight, " hath free access 
 to the bedside of his patient." 
 
 " Neither come I now as a physician," replied El Hakim ; 
 " and therefore I still request permission ere I come under 
 the covering of thy tent." 
 
 " Whoever comes as a friend," said Sir Kenneth, " and 
 such thou hast hitherto shown thyself to me, the habitation 
 of the friend is ever open to him." 
 
 " Yet once again," said the Eastern sage, after the peri- 
 phrastical manner of his countrymen, ''supposing that I 
 come not as a friend ? " 
 
 '' Come as thou wilt," said the Scottish knight, somewhat 
 impatient of this circumlocution — " be what thou wilt, thou 
 knowest well it is neither in my power nor my inclination to 
 refuse thee entrance." 
 
 "I come, then," said El Hakim, ''as your ancient foe ; 
 but a fair and a generous one." 
 He entered as he gpok§ ; and when he stood before the 
 
240 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 bedside of Sir Kenneth, the voice continued to be tliat ol 
 Adonbec, the Arabian physician, but tlie form, di-ei^s, and 
 features were those of Jlderiui of Kurdistan, called Sheer- 
 kohf. Sir Kenneth gazed upon him, as if he expected the 
 vision to depart, like something created by his imagination. 
 
 " Doth it so surprise thee,^' said Ilderim, " and thou an 
 approved warrior, to see that a soldier knows somewhat of 
 the art of healing ? I say to thee, Nazarene, that an accom- 
 plished cavalier should know how to dress his steed as well 
 as how to ride him ; how to forge his sword upon the stithy, 
 as well as how to use it in battle ; how to burnish his arms^ 
 as well as how to wear them ; and, above all, how to cure 
 wounds as well as how to inflict them." 
 
 As he spoke, the Christian knight repeatedly shut his eyes, 
 and while they remained closed, the idea of the Hakim, with 
 his long, flowing, dark robes, high Tartar cap, and grave 
 gestures, was present to his imagination ; but so soon as he 
 opened them, the graceful and richly-genmied turban, the 
 light hauberk of steel rings entwisted with silver, which 
 glanced brilliantly as it obeyed every inflection of the body, 
 the features freed from their formal expression, less swarthy 
 and no longer shadowed by the mass of hair (now limited 
 to a well-trimmed beard), announced the soldier and not the 
 sage. 
 
 " Art thou still so much surprised," said the Emir, " and 
 hast thou walked in the work! with such little observance, 
 as to wonder that men are not always what they seem ? 
 Thou thyself — art thou what thou seemest ? " 
 
 " No, by St. Andrew ! " exclaimed the knight ; " for, to 
 the whole "Christian camp I seem a traitor, and I know my- 
 self to be a true, though an erring, man." 
 
 " Even so I judged thee," said Ilderim, " and as we had 
 eaten salt together, I deemed myself bound to rescue thee 
 from death and contumely. But wherefore lie you still on 
 your couch, since the sun is high in the heavens ? or are 
 the vestments which my sumpter-camels, have afforded un- 
 worthy of your wearing ? " 
 
 " Not unworthy, surely, but unfitting for it," replied the 
 Scot ; '' give me the dress of a slave, noble Ilderim, and I 
 will don it with pleasure ; but I cannot brook to wear the 
 habit of the free Eastern warrior, with the turban of the 
 Molsem." 
 
 " ISTazaiene," answered the Emir, "'thy nation so easily 
 entertain susiDicion, that it may well render themselves sus- 
 pected. Have I not told thee that Saludin desires no co^- 
 
THE TALISMAN 241 
 
 irerts saving those wliom tlie holy Prophet shall dispose to 
 submit themselves to his law ? Violence and bribery are 
 alike alien to his plan for extending the true faith. Hearken 
 to me, my brother. When the blind man was miraculously 
 restored to sight, the scales dropped from his eyes at the 
 Divine pleasure ; think'st thou that any earthly leech could 
 have removed them ? No. Such mediciner might have 
 tormented the patient with his instruments, or perhaps 
 soothed him with his balsams and cordials, but dark as he 
 was must the darkened man have remained ; and it is even 
 so with the blindness of the understanding. If there be 
 those among the Franks who, for the sake of wordly lucre, 
 have assumed the turban of the Prophet, and followed the 
 laws of Islam, with their own consciences be the blame. 
 Themselves sought out the bait ; it was not flung to them 
 by the Soldan. And when they shall hereafter be sentenced, 
 as hypocrites, to the lowest gulf of Hell, below Christian 
 and Jew, magician and idolater, and condemned to eat the 
 fruit of the tree Yacoun, which is the heads of demons, to 
 themselves, not to the Soldan, shall their guilt and their 
 punishment be attributed. Wherefore wear, without doubt 
 or scruple, the vesture prepared for you, since, if you pro- 
 ceed to the camp of Saladin, your own native dress will 
 expose you to troublesome observation, and perhaps to in- 
 sult." 
 
 " If I go to the camp of Saladin ?" said Sir Kenneth, re- 
 peating the words of the Emir. " Alas ! am I a free agent, 
 and rather must I not go wherever your pleasure carries 
 me ?" 
 
 " Thine own will may guide thine own motions," said the 
 Emir, ''as freely as the wind which moveth the dust of the 
 desert in what direction it chooseth. The noble enemy who 
 met, and well-nigh mastered, my sword cannot become my 
 slave like him who has crouched beneath it. If wealth and 
 power would tempt thee to join our people, I could ensure 
 thy possessing them ; but the man who refused the favors of 
 the Soldan when the axe was at his head will not, I fear, 
 now accept them, when I tell him he has his free choice." 
 
 " Complete your generosity, noble Emir," said Sir Ken- 
 neth, " by forbearing to show nie a mode of requital which 
 conscience forbids me to comply with. Permit me rather to 
 express, as bound in courtesy, my gratitude for this most 
 chivalrous bounty, this undeserved generosity." 
 
 " Say not undeserved," replied the Emir Ilderim ; " was 
 it not through thy conversation, and thy account of the 
 i6 
 
242 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 beauties which grace tlie court of the Melech Ric^ that I 
 ventured me thither in disguise, and thereby procured a 
 sight the most blessed that I have ever enjoyed — that I ever 
 shall enjoy, until the glories of Paradise beam on my eyes ? '' 
 
 " I understand you not/' said Sir Kenneth, coloring al- 
 ternately and turning pale, as one who felt that the conver- 
 sation was taking a tone of the most painful delicacy. 
 
 "Not understand me!" exclaimed the Emir. "If tlie 
 sight I saw in the tent of King Richard escaped thine obser- 
 vation, I will account it duller than the edge of a buftoon's 
 wooden falchion. True, thou wert under sentence of death 
 at the time ; but, in my case, had my head been dropping 
 from the trunk, the last strained glances of my eyeballs had 
 distinguished with delight such a vision of loveliness, and 
 the head would have rolled itself towards the incomparable 
 houris, to kiss with its quivering lij^s the hem of their vest- 
 ments. Yonder royalty of England, who for her superior 
 loveliness deserves "to be queen of the universe, what ten- 
 derness in her blue eye, what luster in her tresses of dishev- 
 eled gold ! By the tomb of the Prophet, I scarce think 
 that the houri who shall present to me the diamond cup of 
 immortality will deserve so warm a caress \" 
 
 " Saracen," said Sir Kenneth, sternly, "thou speakest of 
 the wife of Richard of England, of whom men think not 
 and speak not as a woman to be won, but as a queen to be 
 revered/' 
 
 " I cry you mercy " said the Saracen. " I had forgotten 
 your superstitious veneration for the sex, which you con- 
 sider rather fit to be wondered at and worshiped than wooed 
 and possessed. I warrant, since thou exactest such profound 
 respect to yonder tender piece of frailty, whose every motion, 
 step, and look bespeaks her very woman, less than absolute 
 adoration must not be yielded to her of the dark tresses and 
 nobly-speaking eye. She, indeed, I will allow, hath in her 
 noble port and majestic mien something at once pure and 
 firm ; yet even she, when pressed by opportunity and a for- 
 ward lover, would, I warrant thee, thank him in her heart 
 rather for treating her as a mortal than as a goddess." 
 
 " Respect the kinswoman of Cceur-de-Lion ! " said Ken- 
 neth, in a tone of unreprcssed anger. 
 
 "Respect her !" answered the Emir, in scorn; "by the 
 Caaba, and if I do, it shall be rather as the bride of Saladin." 
 
 " The infidel Soldan is unworthy to salute even a spot 
 that has been ]iressed by the foot of Edith Plantagenet,'' 
 exclaimed the Christian, springing from his couch. 
 
THE TALISMAN 243 
 
 "Ha! what said the Giaour?" exclaimed the Emir, lay- 
 ing his hand on his poniard hilt, while his forehead glowed 
 like ghmcing copper, and the muscles of his lips and clieeks 
 wrought till each curl of his beard seemed to twist and screw 
 itself, as if alive with instinctive wrath. But the Scottish 
 knight, who had stood the lion-anger of Richard, was nn- 
 appalled at the tiger-like mood of the chafed Saracen. 
 
 " What I have said/' continued Sir Kenneth, with folded 
 arms and dauntless look, " I would, were my hands loose, 
 maintain on foot or horseback against all mortals ; and would 
 hold it not the most memorable deed of my life to support 
 it with my good broadsword against a score of these sickles 
 and bodkins," pointing at the curved saber and small poniard 
 of the Emir. 
 
 The Saracen recovered his composure as the Christian 
 spoke, as far as to withdraw his hand from his weapon, as if 
 the motion had been without meaning ; but still continued 
 in deep ire. 
 
 " By the sword of the Prophet," he said, '' which is the 
 key both of Heaven and Hell, he little values his own life, 
 brother, who uses the language thou dost. Believe me, that 
 were thine hands loose, as thou term'st it, one single true 
 believer would find them so much to do, that thou wouldst 
 soon wish them fettered again in manacles of iron." 
 
 " Sooner would I wish them hewn off by the shoulder- 
 blades," replied Sir Kenneth. 
 
 "Well. Thy hands are bound at present," said the 
 Saracen, in a more amicable tone — "bound by thine own 
 gentle sense of courtesy, nor have I any present j^urpose of 
 setting them at liberty. We have proved each other's 
 strength and courage ere now, and we may again meet in a 
 fair field ; and shame befall him who shall be the first to 
 part from his foeman ! But now we are friends, and I look 
 for aid from thee, rather than hard terms or defiances." 
 
 "We are friends." repeated the knight ; and there was a 
 pause, during which the fiery Saracen paced the tent, like 
 the lion, Avho, after violent irritation, is said to take that 
 method of cooling the distemperature of his blood, ere he 
 stretches himself to repose in his den. The colder European 
 remained unaltered in posture and aspect ; yet he, doubt- 
 less, was also engaged in subduing the angry feelings which 
 had been so unexpectedly awakened. 
 
 " Let us reason of this calmly," said the Saracen ; " I am 
 a physician, as thou know'st, and it is written, that he who 
 would have his wound cured must not shrink when the 
 
244 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 leech probes and tents it. Seest thou, I am about to lay my 
 finger on the sore. Thou lovest this kinswoman of the 
 Melech ■Kic. Unfold the veil that shrouds thy thoughts — 
 or unfold it not if thou wilt, for mine eyes see through its 
 coverings." 
 
 " I loved her," answered Sir Kenneth, after a pause, "as 
 a man loves Heaven's grace, and sued for her favor like a 
 sinner for Heaven's pardon." 
 
 "And you love her no longer ?" said the Saracen. 
 
 "Alas," answered Sir Kenneth, " I am no longer worthy 
 to love her. I pray thee cease this discourse : thy words are 
 poniards to me." 
 
 " Pardon me but a moment," continued Ilderim. " When 
 thou, a, poor and obscure soldier, didst so boldly and so 
 highly fix thine affection, tell me, hadst thou good hope of 
 its issue ?" 
 
 " Love exists not without hope," replied the knight ; 
 " but mine was as nearly allied to despair as that of the 
 sailor swimming for his life, who, as he surmounts billow 
 after billow, catches by intervals some gleam of the distant 
 beacon, which shows him there is land in sight, though his 
 sinking heart and wearied limbs assure him that he will never 
 reach it." 
 
 "And now," said Ilderim, " these hopes are sunk — that 
 solitary light is quenched forever ?" 
 
 "Forever," answered Sir Kenneth, in the tone of an echo 
 from the bosom of a ruined sepulchre. 
 
 " Methinks," said the Saracen, " if all thou lackest were 
 some such distant meteoric glimpse of happiness as thou 
 hadst formerly, thy beacon-light might be rekindled, thy 
 hope fished up from the ocean in which it was sunk, and 
 thou thyself, good knight, restored to the exercise and 
 amusement of nourishing thy fantastic passion upon a 
 diet as unsubstantial as moonlight ; for, if thou stood'st to- 
 morrow fair in reputation as ever theu wert, she whom thou 
 lovest will not be less the daughter of princes and the elected 
 bride of Saladin." 
 
 "I would it so stood," said the Scot, "and if I did not 
 
 He stopped short, like a man who is afraid of boasting, under 
 circumstances which did not permit his being put to the 
 test. The Saracen smiled as he concluded the sentence. 
 
 "Thou wouldst challenge the Soldan to single combat ?" 
 said he. 
 
 "And if I did," said Sir Kenneth, haughtily, " Saladin's 
 
THE TALISMAN 245 
 
 »\rould neither be the first nor the best turban that I have 
 couched hxnce at." 
 
 •'Ay, but methinks the Soldan might regard it as too un- 
 equal a mode of perilling the chance of a royal bride, and 
 the event of a great war/' said the Emir, 
 
 " He may be met with in the front of battle/' said the 
 knight, his eyes gleaming with the ideas which such a thought 
 inspired. 
 
 " He has been ever found there/' said Ilderim ; ''nor is 
 it his wont to turn his horse's head from any brave en- 
 counter. But it was not of the Soldan that I meant to 
 speak. In a word, if it will content thee to be placed in 
 such reputation as may be attained by detection of the thief 
 who stole the banner of England, I can put thee in a fair 
 way of achieving this task. That is, if thou wilt be gov- 
 erned ; for what says Lokman, 'If the child would walk, 
 the nurse must lead him ; if the ignorant would understand, 
 the wise must instruct.'" 
 
 "And thou art wise, Ilderim," said the Scot — "wise 
 though a Saracen, and generous though an infidel. I have 
 witnessed that thou art both. Take, then, the guidance of 
 this matter ; and so thou ask nothing of me contrary to my 
 lovalty and my Christian faith, I will obey thee punctually. 
 Do what thou hast said, and take my life when it is ac- 
 complished." 
 
 "Listen thou to me then," said the Saracen. "Thy 
 noble hound is now recovered, by the blessing of that divine 
 medicine which healeth man and beast, and by his sagacity 
 shall those who assailed him be discovered." 
 
 " Ha ! " said the knight, " methinks I comprehend thee ; 
 I was dull not to think of this ! " 
 
 "But tell me," added the Emir, "hast thou any follow- 
 ers or retainers in the camp by whom the animal may be 
 known ? " 
 
 " I dismissed," said Sir Kenneth, " my old attendant, thy 
 patient, with a varlet that waited on him, at the time when 
 I expected to suffer death, giving him letters for my friends 
 in Scotland ; there are none other to whom the dog is 
 familiar. But then my own person is well known — my very 
 speech will betray me, in a camp where I have played no 
 mean part for many months." 
 
 " Both he and thou shall be disguised, so as to escape 
 even close examination. I tell thee," said the Saracen, 
 " that not thy brother in arms, not thy brother in blood, 
 shall discover thee, if thou be guided by my counsels. Thou 
 
246 WA VERLET NO VELS 
 
 hast seen me do matters more difficult : he that can call the 
 dying from the darkness of the shadow of death can easily 
 cast a mist before the eyes of the living. But mark me — 
 there is still the condition annexed to this service, that thou 
 deliver a letter of Saladin to the niece of the Melech Kic, 
 whose name is as difficult to our Eastern tongue and lips as 
 her beauty is delightful to our eyes." 
 
 Sir Kenneth paused before he answered, and the Saracen 
 observing his hesitation, demanded of him, **If he feared to 
 undertake this message ?" 
 
 " Not if there were death in the execution," said Sir 
 Kenneth : *'I do but pause to consider whether it consists 
 with my honor to bear the letter of the Soldan, or with that 
 of the Lady Edith to receive it from a heathen prince." 
 
 "By the head of Mohammed and by the honor of a sol- 
 dier, by the tomb at Mecca and by the soul of my father," 
 said the Emir, '' I swear to thee that the letter is written in 
 all honor and respect. The song of the nightingale will 
 sooner blight the rose-bower she loves than will the words 
 of the Soldan offend the ears of the lovely kinswoman of 
 England." 
 
 " Then," said the knight, " I will bear the Soldan's letter 
 faithfully, as if I were his born vassal ; understanding, that 
 beyond this simple act of service, which I will render with 
 fidelity, from me of all men he can least exjDCct mediation 
 or advice in this his strange love-suit." 
 
 "Saladin is noble," answered the Emir, "and will not 
 spur a generous horse to a leap which he cannot achieve. 
 Come with me to my tent," he added, " and thou shalt be 
 presently equipped with a disguise as unsearchable as mid- 
 night ; so thou may'st walk the camp of the Nazarenes as 
 if thou hadst on thy finger the signet of Giaougi."* 
 
 •Perhaps the same with Gyges. 
 
CHAPTEK XXIV 
 
 A grain of dust, 
 Soiling our cup, will make our sense reject 
 fastidiously the draught which we did thirst for ; 
 A rusted nail, placed near the faithful compass, 
 Will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy. 
 Even this small cause of anger and disgust 
 Will break the bonds of amity 'mongst princes, 
 And wreck their noblest purposes. 
 
 Tlie Crusade. 
 
 The reader can now have little donbt who the Ethiopian 
 slave really was, with what purpose he had sought Eichard's 
 camp, and wherefore aud with what hope he now stood close 
 to the per,5on of that monarch, as, surrounded by his valiant 
 peers of E igland and Normandy, Coeur-de-Lion stood on the 
 summit of St. George's Mount, witli the banner of England 
 by his side, borne by the most goodly person in the army, 
 being his own natural brother, William with the Long Sword, 
 Earl of Salisbury, the offspring of Henry the Second's amour 
 with the celebrated Eosamond of Woodstock. 
 
 From several expressions in tlie King's conversation with 
 Neville on the preceding day, the Nubian was left in anxious 
 doubt whether his disguise had not been penetrated, espe- 
 cially as that the King seemed to be aware in what manner 
 the agency of the dog was expected to discover the thief 
 who stole the banner, although the circumstance of such an 
 animal's having been wounded on the occasion had been 
 scarce mentioned in Eichard's presence. Nevertheless, as 
 'he King continued to treat him in no other manner than 
 ais exterior required, the Nubian remained uncertain whether 
 he was or was not discovered, and determined not to throw 
 his disguise aside voluntarily. 
 
 Meanwhile, the powers of the various Crusading princes, 
 arrayed under their royal and princely leaders, swept in long 
 order around the base of the little mound ; and as those of 
 each different country passed by, their commanders advanced 
 a step or two up the hill, and made a signal of courtesy to 
 Eichard and to the standard of England, " in sign of regard 
 aud amity/' as the protocol of the ceremony heedfully ex 
 
248 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 pressed it, " not of subjection or vassalage." The spiritual 
 dignitaries, who in those days veiled not their bonnets to 
 created being, bestowed on the King and his symbol of com- 
 mand their blessing instead of rendering obeisance. 
 
 Thus the long files marched on, and, diminished as they 
 were by so many causes, appeared still an iron host, to whom 
 the conquest of Palestine might seem an easy task. The 
 soldiers, inspired by the consciousness of united strength, 
 sate erect in their steel saddles, while it seemed that the 
 trumpets sounded more cheerfully shrill, and the steeds, re- 
 freshed by rest and provender, chafed on the bit, and trode 
 the ground more proudly. On they passed, troop after 
 troop, banners waving, spears glancing, plumes dancing, in 
 long perspective — ahost composed of different nations, com- 
 plexions, languages, arms, and appearances, but all fired, for 
 the time, with the holy yet romantic purpose of rescuing the 
 distressed daughter of Zion from her thraldom, and redeem- 
 ing the sacred earth, which more than mortal had trodden, 
 from the yoke of the unbelieving pagan. And it must be 
 owned, that if, in other circumstances, the species of courtesy 
 rendered to the King of England by so many warriors from 
 whom he claimed no natural allegiance had in it something 
 that might have been thought humiliating, yet the nature 
 and cause of the war were so fitted to his pre-eminently 
 chivalrous character and renowned feats in arms, that claims 
 which might elsewhere have been urged were there forgot- 
 ten, and the brave did willing homage to the bravest, in an 
 expedition where the most undaunted and energetic courage 
 was necessary to success. 
 
 The good King was seated on horseback about half-way up 
 the mount, a morion on his head, surmounted by a crovvn, 
 which left his manly features exposed to public view, as with 
 Pool and considerate eye he perused each rank as it ])assed 
 ^lim, and returned the salutation of the leaders. His tunic 
 was of sky-colored velvet, covered with plates of silver, and 
 his hose of crimson silk, slashed with cloth of gold. By 
 his side stood the seeming Ethiopian slave, holding the noble 
 dog in a leash, such as was used in woodcraft. It was a cir- 
 cumstance which attracted no notice, for many of the princes 
 of the Crusade had introduced black slaves into their house- 
 hold, in imitation of the barbarous splendor of the Saracens. 
 Over the King's head streamed the large folds of the banner, 
 and, as he looked to it from time to time, he seemed to re- 
 gard a ceremony, indifferent to himself personally, as impor- 
 tant, when considered as atoning an indignity offered to the 
 
THE TALISMAN 249 
 
 kingdom which he ruled. In the background, and on tiie 
 very summit of the mount, a wooden turret, erected for the 
 occasion, held the Queen Berengaria and the principal ladies 
 of the court. To this the King looked from time to time, 
 and then ever and anon his eyes were turned on the Nubian 
 and the dog, but only when such leaders approached as, 
 from circumstances of previous ill-will, he suspected of being 
 accessary to the theft of the standard, or whom he judged 
 capable of a crime so mean. 
 
 Thus, he did not look in that direction when Philip Augus- 
 tus of France approached at the head of his splendid troops 
 of Gallic chivalry ; nay, he anticipated the motions of the 
 French king, by descending the mount as the latter came 
 up the ascent, so that they met in the middle space, and 
 blended their greetings so gracefully that it appeared they 
 met in fraternal equality. The sight of the two greatest 
 (jrinces of Europe, in rank at once and power, thus publicly 
 avowing their concord, called forth bursts of thundering ac- 
 claim from the Crusading host of many miles' distance, and 
 made the roving Arab scouts of the desert alarm the camp of 
 Saladin with intelligence that the army of the Christians was 
 m motion. Yet who but the King of kings can read the 
 hearts of monarchs ? Under this smooth show of courtesy, 
 Kichard nourished displeasure and suspicion against Philip, 
 and Philip meditated withdrawing himself and his host from 
 the army of the Cross, and leaving Richard to accomplish or 
 fail in the enterprise with his own unassisted forces. 
 
 Richard's demeanor Avas different when the dark-armed 
 knights and squires of the Temple chivalry approached — 
 men with countenances bronzed to Asiatic blackness by the 
 suns of Palestine, and the admirable state of whose horses 
 and appointments far surpassed even that of the choicest 
 troops of France and England. The King cast a hasty 
 glance aside, but the Nubian stood quiet, and his trusty dog 
 sat at his feet, watching, with a sagacious yet pleased look, 
 the ranks which now passed before them. The King's look 
 turned again on the chivalrous Templars, as the Grand 
 Master, availing himself of his mingled character, bestowed 
 his benediction on Richard as a priest, instead of doing his 
 reverence as a military leader. 
 
 " The misproud and amphibious caitiff puts the monk 
 upon me," said Richard to the Earl of Salisbury. "But, 
 Longsword, we will let it pass. A punctilio must not lose 
 Christendom the services of these experienced lances, because 
 their victories have rendered_ them overweening. Lo you. 
 
250 \VA VERLEY NO VEL 8 
 
 here comes our valiant adversary, the Duke of Austria ; mark 
 his manner and bearing, Longsword ; and thou, Nubian let 
 the hound have full view of him. By Heaven, he brings his 
 buifoons along with him ! " 
 
 In fact, whether from habit, or, which is more likely, to 
 intimate contempt of the ceremonial he was about to comply 
 with, Leopold was attended by his spruchsprecher and his 
 jester, and, as he advanced towards Richard, he wdiistled in 
 what he wished to be considered as an indifferent manner, 
 though his heavy features evinced the sullenness, mixed with 
 fear, with which a truant schoolboy may be seen to approach 
 his master. As the reluctant dignitary made, with discomposed 
 and sulky look, the obeisance required, the spruchsprecher 
 shook his baton, and proclaimed, like a herald, that, in 
 what he was now doing, the Archduke of Austria was not 
 to be held derogating from the rank and privileges of a 
 sovereign prince, to which the jester answered with a sonor- 
 ous " amen," which provoked much laughter among the 
 bystanders. 
 
 King Richard looked more than once at the Nubian and 
 his dog ; but the former moved not, nor did the latter strain 
 at the leash, so that Richard said to the slave with some 
 scorn, " Thy success in this enterprise, my sable friend, even 
 though thou hast brought thy hound's sagacity to back thine 
 own, will not, I fear, place thee high in the rank of wizards, 
 or much augment thy merits towards our person." 
 
 The Nubian answered, as usual, only by a lowly obeisance. 
 
 Meantime the troops of the ]\Iarquis of Montserrat next 
 passed in order before the King of England. That powerful 
 and wily baron, to make the greater display of his foi-ces, 
 had divided them into two bodies. At the head of the first, 
 consisting of his vassals and followers, and levied from his 
 Syrian possessions, came his brother Enguerrand, and he 
 himself followed, leading on a gallant band of twelve hundred 
 Stradiots, a kind of light cavalry raised by the Venetians in 
 their Dalmatian joossessions, and of which they had entrusted 
 the command to the Marquis, with whom the republic had 
 many bonds of connection. These Stradiots were clothed in 
 a fashion partly European, but partaking chiefly of the East- 
 ern fashion. They wore, indeed, short hauberks, but had 
 over them parti-colored tunics of rich stuffs, with large wide 
 pantaloons and half-boots. On their heads were straight up- 
 right caps, similar to those of the Greeks, and they carried 
 small round targets, bows and arrows, scimitars, and poniards. 
 They were mounted on horses, carefully selected, and well- 
 
THE TALISMAN 251 
 
 maintained at the expense of the state of Venice ; their 
 saddles and appointments resembled those of the Turks, and 
 they rode in the same manner, with sliort stirrups and upon 
 a high seat. These troops were of great use in skirmishing 
 with the Arabs, though unable to engage in close combat, 
 like the iron-sheathed men-at-arms of Western and Northern 
 Europe. 
 
 Before this goodly band came Conrade, in the same garb 
 with the Stradiots, but of such rich stuff that he seemed to 
 blaze with gold and silver, and the milk-white plume fastened 
 in his cap by a clasp of diamonds seemed tall enough to sweep 
 the clouds. The noble steed which he reined bounded and 
 caracoled, and displayed his spirit and agility in a manner 
 which might have troubled a less admirable horseman than 
 the Marquis, who gracefully ruled him with the one hand, 
 while the other displayed the baton, whose predominancy 
 over the ranks which he led seemed equally absolute. Yet 
 his authority over the Stradiots was more in show than in 
 i substance ; for there paced beside him, on an ambling palfrey 
 I of soberest mood, a little old man, dressed entirely in black, 
 without beard or mustachios, and having an appearance 
 ' altogether mean and insignificant, when compared with the 
 blaze of splendor around him. But this mean-looking old 
 man was one of those deputies whom the Venetian govern- 
 ment sent into camps to overlook the conduct of the generals 
 to whom the leading was consigned, and to maintain thar; 
 jealous system of espial and control which had long distin- 
 guished the policy of the republic. 
 
 Conrade, who, by cultivating Richard's humor, had at- 
 tained a certain degree of favor with him, no sooner was 
 , come within his ken than the King of England descended 
 a step or two to meet him, exclaiming, at the same time, 
 " Ha, Lord Marquis, thou at the head of the fleet Stradiots, 
 and thy black shadow attending thee as usual, whether the 
 , sun shines or not ! May not one ask thee whether the rule 
 j of the troops remains with the shadow or the substance ?" 
 
 Conrade was commencing his reply with a smile, when 
 Roswal, the noble hound, uttering a furious and savage yell, 
 sprung forward. The Nubian, at the same time, slipped 
 the leash, and the hound, rushing on, leaped upon Conrade's 
 noble charger, and seizing the Marquis by the throat, pulled 
 him down from the saddle. The plumed rider lay rolling 
 on the sand, and the frightened horse fled in wild career 
 through the camp. 
 
 " Thy hound hath pulled down the right quarry, I war- 
 
252 . WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 rant him," said the King to the lS"ubiaii, " and I vow to St. 
 George he is a stag of ten tynes. Pluck the dog oif, lest he 
 throttle him/' 
 
 The Ethiopian accordingly, though not without difficulty, 
 disengaged the dog from Conrade, and fastened him up, still 
 highly excited and struggling in the leash. Meanwhile, 
 many crowded to the spot, especially followers of Conrade 
 and oflficers of the Stradiots, who, as they saw their leader 
 lie gazing wildly on the sky, raised him up amid a tumul- 
 tuary cry of " Cut the slave and his hound to pieces !" 
 
 But the voice of Richard, lond and sonorous, was heard 
 clear above all other exclamations. "He dies the death 
 who injures the hound. He hath but done his duty, after 
 the sagacity with which God and nature have endowed the 
 brave animal. Stand forward for a false traitor, thou, 
 Conrade Marquis of Montserrat. I impeach thee of treason." 
 
 Several of the Syrian leaders had now come up, and Con- 
 rade, vexation, and shame, and confusion struggling with 
 passion in his manner and voice, exclaimed, " What means 
 this ? With what am I charged ? Why this base usage 
 and these reproachful terms ? Is this the league of concord 
 which England renewed but so lately ? " 
 
 " Are the princes of the Crusade turned hares or deers 
 in the eyes of King Richard, that he should slip hounds on 
 them ?" said the sepulchral voice of the Grand Master of 
 the Templars. 
 
 " It must be some singular accident — some fatal mistake," 
 said Philip of France, who rode up at the same moment. 
 
 " Some deceit of the Enemv," said the Archbishop of 
 Tyre. 
 
 " A stratagem of the Saracens," cried Henry of Cham- 
 pagne. *' It were well to hang up the dog, and put the slave 
 to the torture." 
 
 ''Let no man lay hand upon them," said Richard, ''as 
 he loves his own life. Conrade, stand forth, if thou darest, 
 and deny the accusation which this mnte animal hath in 
 his noble instinct brought against thee, of injury done to 
 him and foul scorn to England ?" 
 
 " I never touched the banner," said Conrade liastily. 
 
 " Thy words betray thee, Conrade !" said Richard ; " for 
 how didst thou know, save from conscious guilt, that the 
 question is concerning the banner ?" 
 
 " Hast thou then not kept the camp in turmoil on that 
 and no other score ?" answered Conrade ; "and dost thou 
 impute to a prince and an ally a crime which, after all, was 
 
THE TALISMAN 253 
 
 probably committed by some paltry felon for the sake of the 
 gold thread ? Or wouldst thou not impeach a confederate 
 on the credit of a dog ?" 
 
 By this time the alarm was becoming general, so that 
 Philip of France interposed. 
 
 '* Princes and nobles/' he said, ''you speak in presence 
 of those whose swords will soon be at the throats of each 
 other, if they hear their leaders at such terms together. 
 In the name of Heaven, let us draw off, each his own troops, 
 into their separate quarters, and ourselves meet an hour 
 hence in the pavilion of council, to take some order in this 
 new state of confusion.*' 
 
 "Content," said King Eichard, "though I should have 
 liked to have interrogated that caitiff while his gay doublet 
 was yet bemirched with sand. But the pleasure of France 
 shall be ours in this matter." 
 
 The leaders separated as was proposed, each prince plac- 
 ing himself at the head of his own forces ; and then was 
 heard on all sides the crying of war-cries, and the sounding 
 of gathering notes upon bugles and trumpets, by which the 
 different stragglers were summoned to their prince's banner ; 
 and the troops were shortly seen in motion, each taking 
 different routes through the camp to their own quarters. 
 But although any immediate act of violence was thus pre- 
 vented, yet the accident which had taken place dwelt on 
 every mind ; and those foreigners, who had that morning 
 hailed Richard as the worthiest to lead their army, now re- 
 sumed their nrejudices against his pride and intolerance, 
 while the English, conceiving the honor of their country 
 connected with the quarrel, of which various reports had 
 ' gone about, considered the natives of other countries jealous 
 of the fame of England and her king, and disposed to under- 
 mine it by the meanest arts of intrigue. Many and various 
 were the rumors spread upon the occasion, and there was one 
 which averred that the Queen and her ladies had been much 
 alarmed by the tumult, and that one of them had swooned. 
 
 The council assembled at the appointed hour. Conrade 
 had in the meanwhile laid aside his dishonored dress, and 
 with it the shame and confusion which, in spite of his talents 
 and promptitude, had at first overwhelmed him, owing to 
 the strangeness of the accident and suddenness of the accu- 
 sation. He was now robed like a prince, and entered the 
 council-chamber attended by the Archduke of Austria, the 
 Grand Masters both of the Temple and of the Order of St. 
 John, and several other potentates, who made a show of 
 
254 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 supporting him and defending his cause, chiefly perhaps 
 from political motives, or because they themselves nourished 
 a personal enmity against Eichard. 
 
 This appearance of union in favor of Conrade was far from 
 influencing the King of England. He entered the council 
 with his usual indifference of manner, and in the same dresa 
 in which he had just alighted from horseback. He cast a 
 careless and somewhat scornful glance on the leaders, who 
 had with studied affectation arranged themselves around 
 Conrade, as if owning his cause, and in the most direct terms 
 charged Conrade of Montserrat with having stolen the 
 banner of England, and wounded the faithful animal who 
 stood in its defense. 
 
 Conrade arose boldly to answer, and in despite, as he ex- 
 pressed himself, of man and brute, king or dog, avouched 
 his innocence of the crime charged. 
 
 "■ Brother of England,'^ saicl Philip, who willingly as- 
 sumed the character of moderator of the assembly, "this is 
 an unusual impeachment. We do not hear you avouch your 
 own knowledge of this matter, farther than your belief rest- 
 ing upon the demeanor of this hound towards the Marquis 
 of Montserrat. Surely the word of a knight and a prince 
 should bear him out against the barking of a cur ?" 
 
 " Royal brother, '' returned Richard, ''recollect that the 
 Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our 
 pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature 
 noble and incapable of deceit. He forgets neither friend 
 nor foe, remembers, and with accuracy, both beneflt and 
 injury. He hath a share of man's intelligence, but no share 
 of man's falsehood. You may bribe a soldier to slay a man 
 with his sword, or a witness to take life by false accusation ; 
 but you cannot make a hound tear his benefactor : he is the 
 friend of man, save when man justly incurs his enmity. 
 Dress yonder Marquis in what peacock-robes you will, dis- 
 guise his appearance, alter his complexion with drugs and 
 washes, hide him amidst an hundred men ; I will yet pawn 
 my scepter that the hound detects him, and expresses his 
 resentment, as you have this day beheld. This is no new 
 incident, although a strange one. Murderers and robbers 
 have been, ere now, convicted, and suffered death under 
 such evidence, and men have said that the finger of God was 
 in it. In thine own land, royal brother, and upon such an 
 occasion, the matter was tried by a solemn duel betwixt the 
 man and the dog, as appellant and defendant in a challenge 
 of murder. The dog was victorious ; the man was pun- 
 
THE TALISMAN 255 
 
 ished, and the crime was confessed. Credit me, royal 
 brother, that hidden crimes have of ten been brought to light 
 by the testimony even of inanimate substances, not to men- 
 tion animals far inferior in instinctive sagacity to the dog, 
 who is the friend and companion of our race." 
 
 " Such a duel there hath indeed been, royal brother," an- 
 swered Philip, " and that in the reign of one of our prede- 
 cessors, to whom God be gracious. But it was in the olden 
 time, nor can we hold it a precedent fitting for this occasion. 
 The defendant in that case was a private gentleman, of small 
 rank or respect ; his offensive weapons were only a club, his 
 defensive a leathern jerkin. But we cannot degrade a prince 
 to the disgrace of using such rude arms, or to the ignominy 
 of such a combat." 
 
 " I never meant that you should," said King Eichaid : 
 '' it were foul play to hazard the good hound's life against 
 that of such a double-faced traitor as this Conrade hath 
 proved himself. But there lies our own glove ; we appeal 
 him to the combat in respect of the evidence we brought 
 forth against him. A king, at least, is more than the mate 
 of a marquis." 
 
 Conrade made no hasty effort to seize on the pledge which 
 Richard cast into the middle of the assembly, and King 
 Philip had time to reply, ere the Marquis made a motion to 
 lift the glove. 
 
 " A king," said he of France, *Ms as much' more than a 
 match for the Marquis Conrade as a dog would be less. 
 Royal Richard, this cannot be permitted. You are the 
 leader of our expedition — the sword and buckler of Chris- 
 tendom." 
 
 ''I protest against such a combat," said the Venetian /?rof- 
 editore. "until the King of England shall have repaid the 
 fifty thousand bezants which he is indebted to the republic. 
 It is enough to be threatened with loss of our debt, should 
 our debtor fall by the hands of the pagans, without the addi- 
 tional risk of his being slain in brawls amongst Christians 
 concerning dogs and banners." 
 
 " And I," said William with the Long Sword, Earl of 
 Salisbury, ''protest in my turn against my royal brother 
 periling his life, which is the property of the people of Eng- 
 land, in such a cause. Here, noble brother, receive back 
 your glove, and think only as if the wind had blown it from 
 your hand. Mine shall lie in its stead. A king's son, 
 though with the bar sinister on his shield, is at least a match 
 lor this marmoset of a marquis." 
 
256 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " Princes and nobles," said Conrade, " I will not accept 
 King Richard's defiance. He hath been chosen our leader 
 against the Saracens, and if his conscience can answer the 
 accusation of provoking an ally to the field on a quarrel so 
 frivolous, mine, at least, cannot endure the reproach of ac- 
 cepting it. But touching his bastard brother, William of 
 Woodstock, or against any other who shall adopt, or shall 
 dare to stand godfather to, this most false charge, I will 
 defy my honor in the lists, and prove whosoever impeaches 
 it a false liar." 
 
 " The Marquis of Monsterrat," said the Archbishop of 
 Tyre, '"' hath spoken like a wise and moderate gentleman ; 
 and methinks this controversy might, without dishonor to 
 any party end at t'lis point." 
 
 " Methinks it might so terminate," said the King of France, 
 " provided King Kichard will recall his accusation, as made 
 upon over-slight grounds." 
 
 " Philip of France," answered Coeur-de-Lion, "my words 
 shall never do my thoughts so much injury. I have charged 
 yonder Conrade as a thief, who, under cloud of night, 
 stole from its place the emblem of England's dignity. I still 
 believe and charge him to be such ; and when a day is ap- 
 pointed for the combat, doubt not that, since Conrade de- 
 clines to meet us in person, I will find a champion to appear 
 in support of my challenge ; for thou, William, must not 
 thrust thy long sword into this quarrel without our special 
 license." 
 
 " Since my rank makes me arbiter in this most unhappy 
 matter," said Philip of France, " I appoint the fifth day. 
 from hence for the decision thereof, by way of combat, ac- 
 cording to knightly usage — Richard King of England to 
 appear by his cliampion as appellant, and Conrade Marquis 
 of Montserrat in his own person as defendant. Yet I own, 
 I know not where to find neutral ground where such a quarrel 
 may be fought out ; for it must not be in the neighborhood 
 of this camp, where the soldiers would make faction on the 
 difi'erent sides." 
 
 " It were well," said Richard, ''to apply to the generosity 
 of the royal Saladin, since, heathen as he is, I have never 
 known knight more fulfilled of nobleness, or to whose good 
 faith we may so peremptorily entrust ourselves. I speak thus 
 for those who may be doubtful of mishap ; for myself, 
 wherever I see my foe, I make that spot my battle- 
 ground. *' 
 
 " Be it so," said Philijr " '' we will make this matter known 
 
THE TALISMAN 257 
 
 to Saladin, although it be showing to an enemy the unhappy 
 spirit of discord which we would willingly hide from even 
 ourselves, were it possible. Meanwhile, I dismiss this as- 
 sembly, and charge you all, as Christian men and noble 
 knights, that ye let this unhappy feud breed no farther 
 brawling in the camp, but regard it as a thing solemnly re- 
 ferred to the judgment of God, to whom each of you should 
 pray that He will dispose of victory in the combat according 
 to the truth of the quarrel ; and therewith may His will be 
 done ! " 
 
 *' Amen — amen !" was answered on all sides; while the 
 Templar whispered the Marquis, " Conrade, wilt thou not 
 add a petition to be delivered from the power of the dog, as 
 the Psalmist hath it ? " 
 
 '' Peace, thou I" replied the Marquis; ''there is a 
 
 revealing demon abroad, which may report, amongst other 
 tidings, how far thou dost carry the motto of thy order — 
 Feriatur leo." 
 
 "Thou wilt stand the brunt of challenge?" said the 
 Templar. 
 
 " Doubt me not," said Conrade. " I will not, indeed, have 
 willingly met the iron arm of Eichard himself, and I shame 
 not to confess that I rejoice to be free of his encounter. But, 
 from his bastard brother downward, the man breathes not in 
 his ranks whom I fear to meet." 
 
 " It is well you are so confident," continued the Templar; 
 "and in that case the fangs of yonder hound have done more 
 to dissolve this league of princes than either thy devices or 
 the dagger of the Charegite. Seest thou liow, under a brow 
 studiously overclouded, Philip cannot conceal the satisfac- 
 tion which he feels at the prospect of release from the alliance 
 which sat so heavy on him ? Mark how Henry of Champagne 
 smiles to himself, like a sparkling goblet of his own wine ; 
 and see the chuckling delight of Austria, who thinks his 
 quarrel is about to be avenged, without risk or trouble of his 
 own. Hush, he approaches. A most grievous chance, most 
 royal Austria, that these breaches in the walls of our 
 Zion " 
 
 " If thou meanest this Crusade," -replied the Duke, "\ 
 would it were crumbled to pieces, and each were safe at home I 
 I speak this in confidence, ' 
 
 " But," said the Marquis of Montserrat, " to think this 
 
 disunion should be made by the hands of King Richard, for 
 
 whose pleasure we have been contented to endure so much, 
 
 and to whom we have been as submissive as slaves to a master, 
 
 17 
 
258 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 in hopes that he would use his valor against our enemies, 
 instead of exercising it upon our friends ! " 
 
 " I see not that he is so much more valorous than others," 
 said the Archdui^e. " I believe, had the noble Marquis met 
 him in the lists, he would have had the better ; for, though 
 the islander deals heavy blows with the pole-ax, he is not so 
 very dexterous with the lance. I should have cared little to 
 have met him myself on our old quarrel, had the weal of 
 Christendom permitted to sovereign princes to breathe them- 
 selves in the lists. And if thou desirest it, noble Marquis, I 
 will myself be your godfather in this combat." 
 
 " And I also," said the Grand Master. 
 
 " Come, then, and take your nooning in our tent, noble 
 sirs," said the Duke, ''and we'll speak of this business over 
 K)me right Nierenstein." 
 
 They entered together accordingly. 
 
 " What said our patron and these great folks together ?" 
 said Jonas Schwanker to his companion, the spruchsprecher, 
 who had used the freedom to press nigh to his master when 
 the council was dismissed, while the jester waited at a more 
 respectful distance. 
 
 " Servant of folly," said the spruchsprecher, " moderate 
 thy curiosity ; it beseems not that I should tell to thee the 
 counsels of our master." 
 
 " Man of wisdom, you mistake," answered Jonas : " we 
 are both the constant attendants on our patron, and it con- 
 cerns us alike to know whether thou or I — wisdom or folly- 
 have the deeper interest in him." 
 
 '' He told to the Marquis," answered the spruchsprecher, 
 "and to the Grand Master, that he was aweary of these wars, 
 and would be glad he was safe at home." 
 
 " That is a drawn cast, and counts for nothing in the 
 game," said the jester ; *'it was most wise to think thus, but 
 great folly to tell it to others. Proceed." 
 
 "Ha, hem !" said the spruchsprecher ; "he next said to 
 them, that Eichard was not more valorous than others, or 
 over-dexterous in the tilt-yard." 
 
 " Woodcock of my side," said Schwanker ; " this was egre- 
 gious folly. What next?" 
 
 "Nay, I am something oblivious," replied the man of wis- 
 dom ; " he invited them to a goblet of Nierenstein." 
 
 " That hath a show of wisdom in it," said Jonas, "thou 
 may'st mark it to thy credit in the meantime ; but an he 
 drink too much, as is most likely, I will have it pass to mine. 
 Anything more?" 
 
THE TALISMAN 259 
 
 "N'othing worth memory," answered the orator, "only he 
 wished he had taken the occasion to meet Kichard in the 
 lists." 
 
 " Out upon it — out upon it ! " said Jonas ; " this is such 
 dotage of folly, that I am wellnigh ashamed of winning the 
 game by it. Ne'ertheless, fool as he is, we will follow him, 
 most sage spruchsprecher, and have our share of the wine of 
 Nierenstein." 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Yet this inconstancy is such 
 
 As thou, too, shalt adore ; 
 I could not love thee, love, so much, 
 , Loved I not honor Tnore. 
 
 Montrose's Lines.* 
 
 When King Richard returned to his tent, he commanded 
 the Nubian to be brought before him. He entered with his 
 usual ceremonial reverence, and, having prostrated himself, 
 remained standing before tlieKing, in the attitude of a slave 
 awaiting the orders of his master. It was perhaps well for 
 him that the preservation of his character required his eyes 
 to be fixed on the ground, since the keen glance with which 
 Richard for some time surveyed him in silence would, if 
 fully encountered, have been difficult to sustain. 
 
 ""^Thou canst well of woodcraft,^' said the King, after a 
 pause, "and hast started thy game and brought him to bay 
 as ably as if Tristrem f himself had taught tliee. But this is 
 not all : he must be brought down at force. I myself would 
 have liked to have leveled my hunting spear at him. There 
 are, it seems, respects which prevent this. Thou art about 
 to return to the camp of Soldan, bearing a letter, requiring 
 of his courtesy to appoint neutral ground for the deed of 
 chivalry, and, should it consist with his pleasure, to concur 
 with us in witnessing it. Now, speak conjecturally, we 
 think thou might'st find in that camp some cavalier who, 
 for the love of truth and his own augmentation of honor, 
 will do battle with this same traitor of Monserrat ? " 
 
 The Nubian raised his eyes and fixed them on the King 
 with a look of eager ardor ; then raised them to Heaven with 
 such solemn gratitude, that the water soon glistened in them ; 
 then bent his head, as affirming what Richard desired, and 
 resumed his usual posture of submissive attention. 
 
 "It is well," said the King; "and I see thy desire to 
 oblige me in this matter. And herein, I must needs say, 
 lies the excellence of such a servant as thou, who hast not 
 speech either to debate our purpose or to require explanation 
 of what we have determined. An English serving-man in 
 
 * See Note 9. f See Sir Tristrem. Note 10. 
 
 260 
 
THE TALISMAN 261 
 
 thy place, had given me his dogged advice to trust the com- 
 bat with some good lance of my household, who, from my 
 brother Longsword downwards, are all on fire to do battle in 
 my cause ; and a chattering Frenchman had made a thou- 
 sand attempts to discover wherefore I look for a champion 
 from the camp of the infidels. But thou, my silent agent, 
 canst do my errand without questioning or comprehending 
 't : with thee to hear is to obey." 
 
 A bend of the body, and a genuflection, were the appro 
 priate answer of the Ethiopian to these observations. 
 
 ''And now to another point," said the King, and speaking 
 suddenly and rapidly. "Have you yet seen Edith Planta- 
 genet ? " 
 
 The mute looked up as in the act of being about to 
 speak — nay, his lips had begun to utter a distinct negative — 
 when the abortive attempt died away in the imperfect mur- 
 murs of the dumb. 
 
 •' Why, lo you there !" said the King. *' The very sound 
 of the name of a royal maiden, of beauty so surpassing as 
 that of our lovely cousin, seems to have power enough well- 
 nigli to make the dumb speak ! What miracles then might 
 her eye work upon such a subject ! I will make the experi- 
 ment, friend slave. Thou shalt see this choice beauty of our 
 court, and do the errand of the princely Soldan." 
 
 Again a ,]0}'ful glance, again a genuflection ; but, as he 
 arose, the King laid his hand heavily on his shoulder, and 
 proceeded with stern gravity thus : " Let me in one thing 
 Avarn yon, my sable envoy. Even if thou shouldst feel that 
 the kindly influence of her whom thou art soon to behold 
 should loosen the bonds of thy tongue, presently imprisoned, 
 as the good Soldan expresses it, within the ivory walls of its 
 castle, beware how thou changest thy taciturn character, or 
 speakesta word in her presence, even if thy powers of utter- 
 ance were to be miraculously restored. Believe me, that I 
 should have thy tongue extracted by the roots, and its ivory 
 palace, that is, I presume, its range of teeth drawn out one 
 by one. Wherefore, be wise and silent stiii." 
 
 " The Nubian, so soon as the King had removed his heavy 
 grasp from his shoulder, bent his liead, and laid his hand on 
 his lips, in token of silent obedience. 
 
 But Richard again laid his hand on him more gently, and 
 added, " This behest we lay 021 thee as on a slave. Wert 
 thou knight and gentleman, Ave would require thine honor 
 '.u pledge of thy silence, which is one especial condition of 
 vir present trust.*' 
 
262 WA VEBLE Y iV VEL S 
 
 The Ethiopian raised his body proudly, looked full at the 
 King, and laid his right hand on his heart. 
 
 Eichard then summoned his chamberlain. 
 
 "Go, Xeville," he said, "with this slave, to the tent of 
 our royal consort, and say it is our pleasure that he have 
 an audience — a private audience — of our cousin Edith. 
 He is charged with a commission to her. Thou canst show 
 him the way also, in case he requires thy guidance, though 
 thou may'st have observed it is wonderful how familiar he 
 already seems to be with the purlieus of our camp. And 
 thou, loo, friend Ethiop," the King continued, "what thou 
 dost, do quickly, and return hither within the half-hour." 
 
 " I stand discovered," thought the seeming Nubian, as, 
 with downcast looks and folded arms, he followed the hasty 
 stride of Neville towards the tent of Queen Berengaria — " I 
 stand undoubtedly discovered and unfolded to King Richard ; 
 yet I cannot perceive that his resentment is hot against me. 
 If I understand his words, and surely it is impossible to mis- 
 interpret them, he gives me a noble chance of redeeming my 
 honor upon the crest of this false marquis, whose guilt 1 
 read in his craven eye and quivering lip, when the charge was 
 made against him. Roswal, faithfully hast thou served thy 
 master, and most dearly shall thy wrong be avenged ! But 
 what is the meaning of my present permission to look upon 
 her whom I had despaired ever to see again ? And why or 
 how can the royal Plantagenet consent that I should see his di- 
 vine kinswoman, either as the messenger of the heathen 
 Saladin or as the guilty exile whom he so lately expelled 
 from his camp, his audacious avowal of the affection which 
 is his pride being the greatest enhancement of his guilt ? 
 That Richard should consent to her receiving a letter from 
 an infidel lover, [andj by the hands of one of such dispro- 
 portioned rank, are either of them circumstances equally in- 
 credible, and, at the same time, inconsistent with each other. 
 But Richard, when unmoved by his heady passions, is liberal, 
 generous, and truly noble, and as such I will deal with him, 
 and act according to his instructions, direct or implied, 
 seeking to know no more than may gradually unfold itself 
 without my officious inquiry. To him who has given me so 
 brave an opportunity to vindicate my tarnished honor I owe 
 acquiescence and obedience, and, painful as it may be, the 
 debt shall be paid. And yet " — thus the proud swelling of 
 his heart farther suggested — " Coeur-de-Lion, as he is called, 
 might have measured the feelings of others by his own. I 
 urge an address to his kinswoman ! /, who never spoke word 
 
THE TALISMAN 283 
 
 to her when I took a royal prize from her hand, when I was 
 accounted not tlie lowest in feats of chivalry among the 
 defenders of the Cross ! /approach her when in a base dis- 
 guise, and in a servile habit, and, alas I when my actual 
 condition is that of a slave, with a spot of dishonor on that 
 which was once my shield ! /do this! He little knows me. 
 Yet I thank him for the opportunity which may make us afll 
 better acquainted with eacli other." 
 
 As he arrived at this conclusion, they paused before the 
 entrance of the Queen's pavilion. 
 
 They were of course admitted by the guards, and Neville, 
 leaving the Nubian in a small apartment or ante-chamber, 
 which was but too well remembered by him, passed into that 
 which was used as the Queen's presence-chamber. He com- 
 municated his royal master's pleasure in a low and respectful 
 tone of voice, very different from the bluntness of Thomas 
 de Vaux, to whom Richard was everything, and rest of the 
 court, including Berengaria herself, was notliing. A burst 
 of laughter followed the communication of his errand. 
 
 ''And what like is the Nubian slave, who comes ambassa- 
 dor on such an errand from the Soldan — a negro, De Neville, 
 is he not ? " said a female voice, easily recognized for that 
 of Berengaria. " A negro, is he not, De Neville, with black 
 skin, a head curled like a ram's, a flat nose, and blubber lips 
 —ha, worthy Sir Henry ?" 
 
 " Let not your Grace forget the shin-bones," said another 
 voice, " bent outwards like the edge of a Saracen scimitar." 
 
 " Rather like the bow of a Cupid, since he comes upon a 
 lover's errand," said the Queen. " Gentle Neville, thou art 
 ever prompt to pleasure us poor women, who have so little 
 to pass away our idle moments. We must see this messenger 
 of love. Turks and Moors have I seen many, but negro 
 never." 
 
 ' ' I am created to obey your Grace's commands, so you will 
 bear me out with my sovereign for doing so," answered the 
 debonair knight. " Yet, let me assure your Grace, you will 
 see somewhat different from what you expect." 
 
 " So much the better ; uglier yet than our imaginations 
 can fancy, yet the chosen love-messenger of this gallant 
 Soldan ! '_' 
 
 " Gracious madam,'* said the Lady Calista, "may I im- 
 plore you would permit the good knight to carry this mes- 
 senger straight to the Lady Edith, to whom his credentials 
 are addressed ? We have already escaped hardly for such a 
 frolic." 
 
264 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " Escaped ! " repeated the Queen, scornfully. " Yetthon 
 maA'St be riglit, Calista, in thy caution ; let this Nubian, as 
 thou callest him, first do his errand to our cousin. Besides, 
 he is mute too, is lie not ?" 
 
 " He is, gracious madam," answered the knight. 
 
 " Royal sport have these Eastern ladies," said Berengaria, 
 "attended by those before whom they may say anything, yet 
 who can report nothing ; whereas in our camp, as the prelate 
 of St. Jude's is won't to say, a bird of the air will carry the 
 matter." 
 
 " Because," said De Neville, "your Grace forgets that you 
 speak within canvass walls." 
 
 The voices sunk on this observation, and, after a little 
 vv^hispering, the English knight again returned to the Ethio- 
 pian, and made him a sign to follow. He did so, and Neville 
 conducted him to a pavilion, pitched somewhat apart from 
 that of the Queen, for the accommodation, it seemed, of tlie 
 Lady Edith and her attendants. One of her Coptic maidens 
 received the message communicated by Sir Henry Neville, 
 and, in the space of a very few minutes, the Nubian was 
 ushered into Edith's presence, while Neville was left on the 
 outside of the tent. The slave who introduced him with- 
 drew on a signal from her mistress, and it was with humilia- 
 tion, not of the posture only but of the very inmost soul, that 
 the unfortunate knight, tlius strangely disguised, threw him- 
 self on one knee, with looks bent on the ground, and arms 
 folded on his bosom, like a criminal who expects his doom. 
 Edith M'as clad in the same manner as when she received 
 King Eicliard, her long transparent dark veil hanging around 
 her like the shade of a summer night on a beautiful land- 
 scape, disguising and rendering obscure the beauties which 
 it could not hide. She held in her hand a silver lamp, fed 
 with some aromatic spirit, which burned with unusual bright- 
 ness. 
 
 Wiien Edith came within a step of the kneeling and mo- 
 tionless slave, she held the light towards his face, as if to 
 peruse his features more attentively, then turned from him, 
 and placed her lamp so as to throw the shadow of his face in 
 profile upon the curtain which hung beside. She at length 
 spoke in a voice composed, yet deeply sorrowful. 
 
 "Is it you? Is it indeed you, brave Knight of the 
 Leopard — gallant Sir Kenneth of Scotland — is it indeed 
 you — thus servilely disguised — thus surrounded by an 
 hundred dangers ? " 
 
 At hearing the tones of his lady's voice thus unexpectedly 
 
THE TALISMAN 263 
 
 addressed to him, and in a tone of compassion approaching 
 to tenderness, a corresponding reply rushed to tlie knight's 
 lips, and scarce could Richard's commands, and his own 
 promised silence, prevent his answering, that the sight he 
 saw, the sounds he just heard, were suflticient to recompense 
 the slavery of a life, and dangers which threatened that life 
 every hour. He did recollect himself, however, and a deep 
 and impassioned sigh was his only reply to" the high-born 
 Edith's question. 
 
 " I see — I know I have guessed right," continued Edith. 
 " I marked you from your first appearance near the plat- 
 form on which I stood with the Queen. I knew, too, your 
 valiant hound. She is no true lady, and is unworthy of the 
 service of such a knight as thou art, from whom disguises 
 of dress or hue could conceal a faithful servant. Speak, 
 then, without fear, to Edith Plantagenet. She knows how 
 to grace in adv-fersity the good knight who served, honored, 
 and did deeds of arms in her name when fortune befriended 
 him. Still silent ! Is it fear or shame that keeps thee so ? 
 Fear should be unknown to thee ; and for shame, let it re- 
 main with those who have wronged thee." 
 
 The knight, in despair at being obliged to play the mute 
 in an interview so interesting, could only express his morti- 
 fication by sighing deeply, and laying his finger upon his lips. 
 Edith stepped back as if somewhat displeased. 
 
 •" Wiiat !" she said, "the Asiatic mute in very deed, as 
 well as in attire ? This I looked not for. Or thou may'st 
 scorn me, perhaps, for thus boldly acknowledging that I 
 have heedfully observed the homage thou hast paid me ? 
 Hold no unworthy thoughts of Edith on that account. 
 She knows well the bounds which reserve and modesty pre- 
 scribe to high-born maidens, and she knows when and how 
 far they should give place to gratitude — to a sincere desire 
 tliat it were in her power to repay services and repair injuries 
 arising from the devotion which a good knight bore towards 
 her. Wliy fold thy hands together, and wring them with 
 so much passion ? Can it be," she added, shrinking back 
 at the idea, '' that their cruelty has actually deprived thee 
 of speech ? Thou shakest thy head. Be it a spell, be it 
 obstinacy, I question thee no farther, but leave thee to do 
 thine errand after thine own fashion. I also can be mute." 
 
 The disguised knight made an action as if at once lament- 
 ing his own condition and deprecating her displeasure, while 
 at the same time he presented to her, wrapped, as usual, in 
 fine silk and cloth of gold, the letter of the Soldan. She 
 
266 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 took it, surveyed it carelessly, then laid it aside, and bend- 
 ing her eyes once more on the knight, she said in a low tone, 
 " Not even a word to do thine errand to me ? " 
 
 He pressed both his hands to his brow, as if to intimate 
 the pain which he felt at being unable to obey her ; but she 
 turned from him in anger. 
 
 ''Begone!" she said. "I have spoken enough— too 
 much — to one who will not waste on me a word in reply. 
 Begone ! and say, if I have wronged thee, I have done pen- 
 ance ; for if I have been the unhappy means of dragging 
 thee down from a station of honor, I have, in this interview, 
 forgotten my own worth and lowered myself in thy eyes and 
 in my own." 
 
 She covered her eyes with her hand, and seemed deeply 
 agitated. Sir Kenneth would have approached, but she 
 waved him back. 
 
 " Stand off I thou whose soul Heaven hath suited to its 
 new station ? Aught less dull and fearful than a slavish 
 mute had spoken a word of gratitude, were it but to recon- 
 cile me to my own degradation. Why pause you ? Begone ! " 
 
 The disguised kniglit almost involuntarily looked towards 
 the letter as an apology for protracting his stay. She 
 snatched it up, saying, in a tone of irony and contempt, *' I 
 had forgotten — the dutiful slave waits an answer to his mes- 
 sage. How's this — from the Soldan ! " 
 
 She hastily ran over the contents, which were expressed 
 both in Arabic and French, and when she had done, she 
 laughed in bitter anger. 
 
 ''Now this passes imagination," she said : "no jongleur 
 can show so deft a transmutation. His legerdemain can 
 transform zechins and bezants into doits and maravedies ; 
 but can his art convert a Christian knight, ever esteemed 
 among the bravest of the Holy Crusade, into the dust-kissing 
 slave of a heathen Soldan — the bearer of a paynim's insolent 
 proposals to a Christian maiden — nay, forgetting the laws of 
 honorable chivalry, as well as of religion ? But it avails not 
 talking to the willing slave of a heathen hound. Tell your 
 master, when his scourge shall have found thee a tongue, 
 that which thou hast seen me do." So saying, she threw 
 the Soldan's letter on the ground, and placed her foot upon 
 it. "And say to him, that Edith Plantagenet scorns the 
 homage of an unchristened pagan." 
 
 With these words she was about to shoot from the knight, 
 when, kneeling at her feet in bitter agony, he ventured to 
 lay his hand upon her robe and oppose her departure. 
 
THE TALISMAN 267 
 
 "Heardst thou not what I said, dull slave ?"she said, 
 turning short round on him, and speaking with emphasis : 
 " tell the heathen Soldan, thy master, that I scorn his snit 
 as much as I despise the prostration of a worthless renegade 
 to religion and chivalry — to God and to his lady \" 
 
 So saying, she burst from him, tore her garment from his 
 grasp, and left the tent. 
 
 The voice of Neville, at the same time, summoned him 
 from without. Exhausted and stupefied by the distress he 
 had undergone during this interview, from which he could 
 only have extricated himself by breach of the engagement 
 which he had formed with King Richard, the unfortunate 
 knight staggered rather than walked after the English baron, 
 till they reached the royal pavilion, before which a party of 
 horsemen had just dismounted. There was light and motion 
 within the tent, and when Neville entered with his disguised 
 attendant, they found the King, with several of his nobility, 
 engaged in welcoming those who were newly arrived. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 The tears I shed must ever fall I 
 I weep not for an absent swain ; 
 For time may happier hours recall, 
 And parted lovers meet again. 
 
 I weep not for the silent dead ; 
 Their pains are past, their sorrows o'er, 
 And those that loved their steps must tread, 
 When death shall join to part no more. 
 
 But worse than absence, worse than death, 
 She wept her lover's sullied fame. 
 And, fired with all the pride of birth, 
 She wept a soldier's injured name."* 
 
 Ballad. 
 
 The frank and bold voice of Richard was heard in joyous 
 gratulation. 
 
 " Thomas de Vaux ! — stout Tom of the Gills ! by the head 
 of King Henry, thou art welcome to me as ever was flask of 
 wine to a jolly toper ! I should scarce have known how to 
 order my battle array, unless I had thy bulky form in mine 
 eye as a landmark to form my ranks upon. We shall have 
 blows anon, Thomas, if the saints be gracious to us ; and had 
 we fought in thine absence, I would have looked to hear of 
 thy being found hanging upon an elder-tree." 
 
 " I should have borne my disappointment with more 
 Christian patience, I trust," said Thomas de Vaux, " than 
 to have died the death of an apostate. But I thank your 
 Grace for my welcome, which is more generous, as it respects 
 a banquet of blows, of which saving your pleasure, you are 
 ever too apt to engross the larger share ; but here have I 
 brought one to whom your Grace will, I know, give a yet 
 warmer welcome." 
 
 The person who now stepped forward to make obeisance 
 to Richard was a young man of low stature and slight form. 
 His dress was as modest as his figure was unimpressive ; but 
 
 * The last four lines of this Ballad are by the Author himself, and 
 the previous lines from " The Song of Genius," by Helen D'Arcy 
 Crajiatoun, afterwards Mrs. Dugald Stewart (Laing). 
 
 s 
 
THE TALISMAN 260 
 
 he bore on his bonnet a gold bnckle. with a gem the luster 
 
 ' of which could only be rivalled by the brilliancy of the eye 
 
 which the bonnet shaded. It was the only striking feature 
 
 in his countenance ; but when once noticed, it ever made 
 
 J a strong impression on the spectator. About his neck there 
 
 I' hung in a scarf of skyblue silk a '' wrest/' as it is called — 
 
 that is, the key with which a harp is tuned, and which was 
 
 of solid gold." 
 
 This personage would have kneeled reverently to Richard, 
 
 . but the monarch raised him in joyful haste, pressed him to 
 
 , his bosom warmly, and kissed hini on either side of the face. 
 
 " Blondel de Nesle ! " he exclaimed joyfully; "welcome 
 
 ' from Cyprus, my king of minstrels ! — welcome to the King 
 
 of England, who rates not his own dignity more highly than 
 
 he does thine. I have been sick, man, and, by my soul. I 
 
 believe it was for lack of thee; for, were I half-way to the 
 
 gate of Heaven, methinks thy strains could call me back. 
 
 And what news, my gentle master, from the land of the lyre ? 
 
 Anything fresh from the trouveurs of Provence — anything 
 
 from the minstrels of merry Normandy — above all hast thou 
 
 thyself been busy ? But I need not ask thee — thou canst 
 
 not be idle, if thou wouldst : thy noble qualities are like a 
 
 fire burning within, and compel thee to pour thyself out in 
 
 music and song." 
 
 " Soniething I have learned, and something I have done, 
 noble king," answered the celebrated Blondel, with a retir- 
 ing modesty which all Richard's enthusiastic admiration of 
 his skill had been unable to banish. 
 
 " We will hear thee, man — we will hear thee instantly," 
 said the King ; then touching Blondel's shoulder kindly, he 
 added, "That is, if thou art not fatigued witli thy journey ; 
 for I would sooner ride my best horse to death than injure a 
 note of thy voice." 
 
 " My voice is, as ever, at the service of my roval patron," 
 said Blondel; "but your Majesty." he added/ looking at 
 some papers on the table, " seems more importantly engaged, 
 and the hour waxes late." 
 
 " Not a whit, man — not a whit, my dearest Blondel. I 
 did but sketch an array of battle against the Saracens — a 
 thing of a moment, almost as soon done as the routing of 
 them." 
 
 "Methinks, however," said Thomas de Vaux, "it were 
 not unfit to inquire what soldiers your Grace hath to array. 
 .1 bring reports on that subject from Ascalon." 
 I *'Thou art a mule, Thomas/' said the King — "a very 
 
270 WA VER LEY NO VEL S 
 
 mule for dulness and obstinacy. Come, nobles — a hall — a 
 hall ! — range ye around him. Give Blondel the tabouret. 
 Where is his harp-bearer ? or, soft — lend him my harp, his 
 own may be damaged by the journey." 
 
 " I would your Grace would take my report," said Thomas 
 de Vaux, " I have ridden far, and have more list to my bed 
 than to have my ears tickled." 
 
 " Thy ears tickled ! " said the King ; " that must be with 
 a woodcock's feather, and not with sweet sounds. Hark 
 thee, Thomas, do thine ears know the singing of Blondel 
 from the braying of an ass ? " 
 
 " In faith, my liege," replied Thomas, " I cannot well say ; 
 but, setting Blondel out of the question, who is a born gen- 
 tleman, and doubtless of high acquirements, I shall never, 
 for the sake of your Grace's question, look on a minstrel but 
 I shall think upon an ass." 
 
 " And might not your manners," said Kichard, " have ex- 
 cepted me, who am a gentleman born as well as Blondel, and, 
 like him, a guild-brother of the joi/cuse science?" 
 
 "Your Grace should remember," said De Vaux, smiling, 
 " that 'tis useless asking for manners from a mule." 
 
 " Most truly spoken," said the King ; '' and an ill-condi- 
 tioned animal thou art. But come hither, master mule, and 
 be unloaded, that thou mayest get thee to thy litter, without 
 any music being wasted on thee. Meantime, do thou, good 
 brother of Salisbury, go to our consort's tent, and tell her 
 that Blondel has arrived, with his budget fraught with the 
 newest minstrelsy. Bid her come hither instantly, and do 
 thou escort her, and see that our cousin, Edith Plantagenet, 
 remain not behind." 
 
 His eye then rested for a moment on the Nubian, with that 
 expression of doubtful meaning which his countenance usually 
 displayed when he looked at him. 
 
 " Ha, our silent and secret messenger returned? Stand 
 up, slave, behind the back of De Neville, and thou shalt hear 
 presently sounds which will make thee bless God that He 
 afflicted thee rather with dumbness- than deafness." 
 
 So saying, he turned from the rest of the company towards 
 De Vaux, and plunged instantly into the military details 
 which that baron laid before him. 
 
 About the time that the Lord of Gilsland had finished his 
 audience, a messenger announced that the Queen and her 
 attendants were approaching the royal tent. " A flask of 
 wine, ho ! " said the King— " of old King Isaac's long-saved 
 Cyprus, which we won when we stormed Famagosta ; fill to 
 
TEE TALISMAN 271 
 
 the stout Lord of Gilslancl, gentles — a moreca'^eful and faith- 
 ful servant never had any prince." 
 
 " I am glad," said Thomas de Vanx, •* that your Grace 
 finds the mule a useful slave, though his voice be less musical 
 than horse-hair or wire." 
 
 " What, thou canst not yet digest that quip of the mule ? " 
 said Richard. " Wash it down with a brimming flagon, 
 man, or thou wilt choke upon it. Wliy, so — well pulled ! 
 And now I will tell thee, thou art a soldier as well as I, and 
 we must brook each other's jests in the hall, as each other's 
 blows in the tourney, and love each other the harder we hit. 
 By my faith, if thou didst not hit me as hard as I did thee 
 in our late encounter, thou gavest all thy wit to the thrust. 
 But here lies the difference betwixt thee and Blondel. Thou 
 art but my comrade — I might say my pupil — in the art of 
 war ; Blondel is my master in the science of mins+relsy 
 and music. To thee I permit the freedom of intimacy ; to 
 him I must do reverence, as to my superior in his art. 
 Come, man, be not peevish, but remain and hear our glee." 
 
 " To see your Majesty in such cheerful mood," said the 
 Lord of Gilsland, ''by my faith, I could remain till Blondel 
 had achieved the great romance of King Arthur, which lasts 
 for three days." 
 
 " We will not tax your patience so deeply/' said the King. 
 "But see, yonder glare of torches without shows that our 
 consort approaches. Away to receive her, man, and win 
 thyself grace in the brightest eyes of Christendom. Nay, 
 never stop to adjust thy cloak. See, thou hast let Neville 
 come between the wind and the sails of thy galley I " 
 
 " He was never before me in the field of battle," said De 
 Vaux, not greatly pleased to see himself anticipated by the 
 more active service of the chamberlain. 
 
 "No, neither he nor any one went before thee there, my 
 good Tom of the Gills," said the King, " unless it was our- 
 self, now and then." 
 
 " Ay, my liege," said De Vaux, "and let us do justice to 
 the unfortunate : the unhappy Knight of the Leopard hath 
 been before me, too, at a season ; for, look you, he weighs 
 less on horseback, and so " 
 
 " Hush ! " said the King, interrupting him in a peremp- 
 tory tone, " not a word of him ! " and instantly stepped 
 forward to greet his royal consort ; and when he had done 
 30, he presented to her Blondel, as king of minstrelsy, and 
 his master in the gay science. Berengaria, who well knew 
 that her royal husband's passion for poetry and music almost 
 
272 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 equalled his appetite for warlike fame, and that Blonde! was 
 his especial favorite, took anxious care to receive him with 
 all the flattering distinctions due to one whom the king de- 
 lighted to honor. Yet it was evident that, though Blondel 
 made suitable returns to the compliments showered on him 
 something too abundantly by the royal beauty, he owned 
 with deeper reverence and more humble gratitude the simple 
 and graceful welcome of Edith, whose kindly greeting ap- 
 peared to him, perhaps, sincere in proportion to its brevity 
 and simplicity. 
 
 Both the Queen and her royal husband were aware of this 
 distinction, and Richard, seeing his consort somewhat 
 piqued at the preference assigned to his cousin, by which 
 perhaps he himself did not feel much gratified, said in the 
 hearing of both, '' We minstrels, Bercngaria, as thou mayst 
 see by the bearing of our master Blondel, pay more reverence 
 to a severe judge like our kinswoman than to a kindly, 
 partial friend like thyself, who is willing to take our worth 
 upon trust." 
 
 Edith was moved by this sarcasm of her royal kinsman, 
 and hesitated not to reply, that, "To be a harsh and severe 
 judge was not an attribute proper to her alone of all the 
 Plantagenets." 
 
 She had perhaps said more, having some touch of the 
 temper of that house, which, deriving their name and cogni- 
 zance from the lowly broom [Planta Genista), assumed as an 
 emblem of humility, were perhaps one of the proudest 
 families that ever ruled in England ; but her eye, when 
 kindling in her reply, suddenly caught those of the Nubian, 
 although he endeavored to concealhimself behind the nobles 
 who were present, and she sunk upon a seat, turning so 
 pale that the Queen Berengaria deemed herself obliged to 
 call for water and essences, and to go through the other 
 ceremonies appropriate to a lady's swoon. Richard, who 
 better estimated Edith's strength of mind, called to Blondel 
 to assume his seat and commence his lay, declaring that 
 minstrelsy was worth every other recipe to recall a Plan- 
 tagenet to life. " Sing us," he said, " that song of the 
 Bloody Vest, of which thou didst formerly give me the argu- 
 ment, ere Ileft Cyprus; thou must be perfect in it by this 
 time, or, as our yeomen say, thy bow is broken." 
 
 The anxious eye of the minstrel, however, dwelt on Edith, 
 and it was not till he observed her returning color that he 
 obeyed the repeated commands of the King. Then, ac- 
 companying his voice with the harp, so as to grace, but yet 
 
! THE TALISMAN 273 
 
 not drown, the sense of what he snng, he chanted m a sort 
 of recitative one of those ancient adventures of love and 
 knighthood which were wont of yore to win the public atten- 
 tion. So soon as he began to j^relnde, the insignificance of 
 his personal appearance seemed to disappear, and his coun- 
 tenance glowed with energy and inspiration. His full, 
 manly, mellow voice, so absolutely under command of the 
 purest taste, thrilled on every ear and to every heart. 
 Richard, rejoiced as after victory, called out the appropriate 
 summons for silence, 
 
 " Listen, lords, in bower and hall ; " 
 
 while, with the zeal of a patron at once and a pupil, he ar- 
 ranged the circle around, and hushed them into silence, and 
 he himself sat down with an air of expectation and interest, 
 not altogether unmixed with the gravity of the professed 
 critic. The courtiers turned tlieir eyes on the King, that 
 they miglit be ready to trace and imitate the emotions his 
 features should express, and Thomas de Vanx yawned tre- 
 mendously, as one who submitted unwillingly to a weari- 
 some penance. The song of Blondel was of course in the 
 J^orman language ; but the verses which follow express its 
 meaning and its manner. 
 
 ^be :©IooDb Dest 
 
 'Twas near the fair city of Benevent, 
 When the sun was setting on bough and bent, 
 And knights were preparing in bower and tent, 
 On the eve of the Baptist's tournament ; 
 When in Lincoln green a stripling gent, 
 Well seeming a page by a princess sent, 
 Wander'd the camp, and, still as he went. 
 Enquired for the Englishman, Thomas a Kent. 
 
 Far hath he fared, and farther must fare. 
 Till he finds his pavilion nor stately nor rare — 
 Little save iron and steel was there ; 
 And, as lacking the coin to pay armorer's care, 
 With his sinewy arms to the shoulders bare. 
 The good knight with hammer and file did repair 
 The mail that to-morrow must see him wear, 
 For the honor of St. John and his lady fair. 
 
 " Thus speaks my lady," the page said he, 
 A-nd the knight bent lowly both head and knee^ 
 '' She is Benevent's princess so high in degree. 
 ly.-'- And thou art as lowly as knight may well be ; 
 
 i8 
 
274 WA VERLEY N O VEL S 
 
 He that would climb so lofty a tree, 
 
 Or spring such a gulf as divides lier from thee, 
 
 Must dare some high deed, by which all men may see 
 
 His ambition is back'd by his high chivalrie. 
 
 "Therefore thus speaks my lady," the fair pa^e he said, 
 And the knight lowly louted with hand and with head, 
 " Fling aside the good armor in which thou art clad, 
 And don thou tliis weed of her night-gear instead, 
 For a hauberk of steel, a kirtle of thread ; 
 And charge, thus attired, in the tournament dread, 
 And fight as thy wont is where most blood is shed, 
 And bring honor away, or remain with the dead." 
 
 Untrovibled in his look and untroubled in his breast. 
 The kniglit tlie weed hath taken and reverently hath kissed— 
 " Now blessed be the moment, the messenger be blest ! 
 Much honored do I hold me in my lady's high behest! 
 And say unto my lady, in this dear night-weed dress'd, 
 To the best-armed champion I will not veil my crest. 
 But if I live and bear me well 'tis her turn to take the test." 
 Here, gentles, ends the foremost fytte of the Lay of the Bloodj 
 Vest. 
 
 "Thou hast changed the measure upon us unawares in 
 that last couplet, my Blondel ? " said the King. 
 
 "Most true, my lord/' said Blondel. "I rendered the 
 verses from the Italian of an old harper whom I met in 
 Cyprus, and not having having had time either to translate 
 it accurately or commit it to memory, I am fain to supply 
 gaps in the music and the verse as I can upon the spur of 
 the moment, as you see boors mend a quickset fence with a 
 
 " Nay, on my faith," said the King, " I like these rattling 
 rolling Alexandrines : methinks they come more twangingly 
 off to the music than that briefer measure." 
 
 " Both are licensed, as is well known to your Grace," an- 
 swered Blondel. 
 
 "They are so, Blondel," said Richard; "yet methinks 
 the scene, where there is like to be fighting, will go best on 
 in these same thundering Alexandrines, which sound like 
 the charge of cavalry ; while the other measure is but like 
 the side-long amble of a lady's palfrey." 
 
 " It shall be as your Grace pleases," replied Blondel, and 
 began again to prelude. 
 
 " Nay, first cherish thy fancy with a cup of fiery Chios 
 wine," said the King ; " and hark thee, I would have thee 
 fling away that newfangled restriction of thine, of terminat- 
 ing in accurate and similar rhymes. They are a constraint 
 
THE TALISMAN 276 
 
 on thy flow of fancy, and make thee resemble a man dancing 
 in fetters." 
 
 "The fetters are easily flung off, at least," said Blondel, 
 again sweejoing his fingers over the strings, as one who 
 would rather have played than listened to criticism. 
 
 " But why put them on, man ?" continued the King. 
 " Wherefore thrust thy genius into iron bracelets ? I 
 marvel how you got forward at all : I am sure I should 
 not have been able to compose a stanza in yonder ham- 
 pered measure." 
 
 Blondel looked down and busied himself with the strings 
 of his harp, to hide an involuntary smile which crept over 
 his features ; but it escaped not Kichard's observation. 
 
 ** By my faith, thou laugh'st at me, Blondi'l," he said ; 
 "and, in good truth, every man deserves it who presumes 
 to play the master when he should be the pupil ; but we 
 kings get bad habits of self-opinion. Come, on with thy 
 lay, dearest Blondel — on after thine own fashion, better 
 than aught that we can suggest, though we must needs be 
 talking." 
 
 Blondel resumed the lay ; but, as extemporaneous com- 
 position was familiar to him, he failed not to comply with 
 the King's hints, and was perhaps not displeased to show 
 with how much ease he could new-model a poem even 
 while in the act of recitation. 
 
 ZMC JBlooJ)l2 lDC6t 
 
 Fytte Second 
 
 The Baptist's fair morrow beheld gallant feats : 
 
 There was winning of honor and losing of seats, 
 
 There was hewing with falchions and splintering of staves ; 
 
 The victors won glory, the vanquished won graves. 
 
 O, many a knight there fought bravely and well. 
 
 Yet one was accounted his peers to excel, 
 
 And 'twas he whose sole armor on body and breast 
 
 Seem'd the weed of a damsel when bound for her rest. 
 
 There were some dealt him wounds that were bloody and sore, 
 
 But others respected his plight, and forbore. 
 
 " It is some oath of honor." they said, " and I trow, 
 
 Twere unknightly to slay him achieving his vow." 
 
 Then the prince, for his sake, bade the toui'nament cease : 
 
 He flung down his warder, the trumpets sung peace ; 
 
 And the judges declare, and competitors yield, 
 
 That the Knight of the Night-gear was first in the field. 
 
-76 WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 The feast it was nigh, and the mass it was nigher, 
 
 When before the fair princess low louted a squire, 
 
 And delivered a garment unseemly to view. 
 
 With sword-cut and spear-thrust all hack'd and pierced throvigb. 
 
 All rent and all tatter'd, all clotted with blood. 
 
 With foam of tlie horses, with dust, and with mud. 
 
 Not the point of that lady's small finger, I ween, 
 
 Could have rested on spot was unsullied and clean. 
 
 " This token my master, Sir Thomas a Kent, 
 Restores to the princess of fair Benevent. 
 He that climbs the tall tree has won riglit to tlie fruit, 
 He that leaps tlie wide gulf should prevail in his suit: 
 Through life's utmost peril tlie prize I have won. 
 And now must the faith of my mistress be shown ; 
 For she who prompts knights on such danger to run 
 Must avouch his true service in front of the sun. 
 
 " ' I restore,' says my master, ' the garment I've worn, 
 
 And I claim of tlie princess to don it in turn ; 
 
 For its stains and its rents she should prize it the more. 
 
 Since by shame 'tis unsullied, though crimson'd with gore.' '• 
 
 Then deep blvish'd the princess ; yet kiss'd she and press'd 
 
 The Ijlood-spotted robes to her lips and her breast. 
 
 "Go tell my true knight, church and chamber shall show, 
 
 If I value the blood on this garment or no." 
 
 And when it was time for the nobles to pass, 
 
 In solemn procession to minster and mass. 
 
 The first walk'd the princess in purple and pall. 
 
 But the blood-besmear'd night-robe she wore over all; 
 
 And eke, in the hall, where they all sat at dine. 
 
 Wlien she knelt to her father and proffered the wine, 
 
 Over all her rich robes and state jewels she wore 
 
 That wimple unseemly, bedabbled with gore. 
 
 Then lords whisper'd ladies, as well you may think, 
 And ladies replied, with nod, titter, and wink ; 
 And the prince, who in anger and shame had look'd down, 
 Turn'd at length to his daughter, and spoke with a frown : 
 " Now since thou hast publish'd thy folly and guilt. 
 E'en atone with thy hand for the blood thou hast spilt ; 
 Yet sore for your boldness you both will repent. 
 When you wander as exiles from fair Benevent." 
 
 Then out spoke stout Thomas, in hall where he stood, 
 Exhausted and feeble, but dauntless of mood. 
 " The blood that I lost for this daughter of tliine, 
 I pour'd forth as freely as flask gives its wine ; 
 And if for my sake she brooks penance and blame, 
 Do not doubt I will save her from suffering and shame; 
 And light will she reck of thy princedom and rent, 
 When I hail her, in England, the Countess of Kent ! " 
 
 A murmtir of applause ran through the assembly, foL 
 lowing the example of Eichard himself, who loaded with 
 
THE TALISMAN 277 
 
 praises his favorite minstrel, and ended by presenting him 
 \/ith a ring of considerable value. The Queen hastened 
 to distinguish the favorite by a rich bracelet, and many of 
 the nobles who were present followed the royal example. 
 
 '"Is our cousin Edith," said the King, "become insen- 
 sible to the sound of the harp she once loved ?" 
 
 "She thanks Blondel for his lay," replied Edith, "but 
 doubly the kindness of the kinsman who suggested it." 
 
 " Thou art angry, cousin," said the King — " angry be- 
 cause thou hast heard of a woman more wayward than thy= 
 self. But you escape me not : I will walk a space home- 
 ward with you towards the Queen's pavilion ; we must have 
 conference together ere the night has waned into morning." 
 
 The Queen and her attendants were now on foot, and the 
 other guests withdrew from the royal tent. A train with 
 blazing torches, and an escort of archers, awaited Berengaria 
 without the pavilion, and she was soon on her way home- 
 ward. Richard, as he had proposed, walked beside his kins- 
 woman, and compelled her to accept of his arm as her sup- 
 port, so that they could speak to each other without being 
 overheard. 
 
 " What answer, then, am I to return to the noble Soldan ?" 
 said Richard. " The kings and princes are falling from me, 
 Edith : this new quarrel hath alienated them once m.ore. I 
 would do something for the Holy Sepulchre by composition, 
 if not by victory ; and the chance of my doing this depends, 
 alas ! on the caprice of a woman. I would lay my single 
 spear in the rest against ten of the best lances in Christen- 
 dom, rather than argue with a wilful wench, who knows not 
 what is for her own good. What answer, coz, am I to return 
 to the Soldan ? It must be decisive." 
 
 " Tell him," said Edith, " that the poorest of the Planta- 
 genets will rather wed with misery than with misbelief." 
 
 " Shall I say with slavery, Edith ?"said the King. " Me- 
 thinks that is nearer thy thoughts." 
 
 " There is no room." said Edith, "for the suspicion you 
 so grossly insinuate. Slavery of the body might have been 
 pitied, but that of the soul is only to be despised. Shame 
 to thee, king of Merry England ! Tliou hast enthralled both 
 the limbs and the spirit of a knight once scarce less famed 
 than thyself." 
 
 "Should I not prevent my kinswoman from drinking 
 poison, by sullying the vessel which contained it, if I saw no 
 other means of disgusting her with the fatal liquor ? " replied 
 the King. 
 
278 WAVER LEY^ NOVELS 
 
 "It is thyself," answered Edith, " that would press me to 
 drink poison, because it is proffered in a golden chalice." 
 
 ** Edith/' said Richard, " I cannot force thy resolution ; 
 but beware you shut not the door which Heaven opens. 
 The hermit of Eugaddi, he whom Popes and councils have 
 regarded as a prophet, hath read in the stars that thy mar- 
 riage shall reconcile me with a powerful enemy, and that thy 
 husband shall be Christian, leaving thus the fairest ground 
 to hope that the conversion of the Soldan, and the bringing 
 in of the sons of Ishmael to the pale of the church, will be 
 the consequence of thy wedding with Saladin. Come, thou 
 must make some sacrifice rather than mar such happy pros- 
 pects." 
 
 ''Men may sacrifice rams and goats," said Edith, ''but 
 not honor and conscience. I have heard that it was the 
 dishonor of a Christian maiden which brought the Saracen 
 into Spain ; the shame of another is no likely mode of ex- 
 pelling them from Palestine." 
 
 "Dost thou call it shame to become an empress ?" said 
 the King. 
 
 " I call it shame and dishonor to profane a Christian sacra- 
 ment by entering into it with an infidel whom it cannot 
 bind ; and I call it foul dishonor that I, the descendant of a 
 Christian princess, should become of free-will the head of a 
 haram of heathen concubines." 
 
 " Well, kinswoman," said the King, after a pause, " I 
 must not quarrel with thee, though I think thy dependent 
 condition might have dictated more compliance." 
 
 "My liege," replied Edith, "your Grace hath worthily 
 succeeded to all the wealth, dignity, and dominion of the 
 house of Plantagenet ; do not, therefore, begrudge your poor 
 kinswoman some small share of their pride." 
 
 " By my faith, wench," said the king, " thou hast un- 
 horsed me with that very word ; so we will kiss and be friends. 
 I will presently despatch thy answer to Saladin. But, after 
 all, coz, were it not better to suspend your answer till you 
 have seen him ? Men say he is pre-eminently handsome." 
 
 "There is no chance of our meeting, my lord," said Edith. 
 
 " By St. George, but there is next to a certainty of it," 
 said the King ; "for Saladin will doubtless afford us a free 
 field for the doing of this new 'battle of the standard,' and 
 will witness it himself. Berengaria is wild to behold it also, 
 and I dare be sworn not a feather of you, her companions 
 and attendants, will remain behind — least of all thou thy- 
 self, fair coz. But come, we have reached the pavilion, and 
 
THE TALISMAN 2'79 
 
 mnst part, not in unkindness though — nay, thou must seal 
 it with thy lip as well as thy hand, sweet Edith ; it is my 
 right as a sovereign to kiss my pretty vassals." 
 
 He embraced her respectfully and affectionately, and re- 
 turned through the moonlight camp, humming to himself 
 such snatches of Blondel's lay as he could recollect. 
 
 On his arrival, he lost no time in making up his despatches 
 for Saladin, and delivered them to the Nubian, with a charge 
 to set out by peep of day on his return to the Soldan. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 "We heard the tecbir, — so these Arabs call 
 Their shout of onset, when, with loud acclaim, 
 They challenge Heaven to give them victory. 
 
 Siege of Damascus. 
 
 On the subsequent morning, Richard was invited to_ a 
 conference by Philip of France, in which the hitter, with 
 mauy expressions of his high esteem for his brother of Eng- 
 land, communicated to him, in terms extreniely courteous, 
 but too explicit to be misunderstood his positive intention 
 to return to Europe, and to the cares of his kingdom, as en- 
 tirely despairing of future success in their undertaking, with 
 their diminished forces and civil discords. Richard remon- 
 strated, but in vain ; and when the conference ended, he re- 
 ceived without surprise a manifesto from the Duke of Aus- 
 tria and several other princes, announcing a resolution similar 
 to that of Philip, and in no modified terms assigning for 
 their defection from the cause of the Cross the inordinate 
 ambition and arbitrary domination of Richard of England. 
 All hopes of continuing the war with any prospect of ulti- 
 mate success were now abandoned, and Richard, while he 
 shed bitter tears over his disappointed hopes of glory, was 
 little consoled by the recollection that the failure was in 
 some degree to be imputed to the advantages which he had 
 given his enemies by his own hasty and imprudent temper. 
 
 *' They had not dared to have deserted my father thus," 
 he said to De Vaux, in the bitterness of his resentment. 
 " Xo slanders they could have uttered against so wise a king 
 would have been believed in Christendom ; whereas — fool 
 that I am !— I have not only afforded them a pretext for de- 
 serting me, but even a color for casting all the blame of the 
 rupture upon my unhappy foibles.'^ 
 
 These thoughts were so deeply galling to the King, that 
 De Vaux was rejoiced when the arrival of an ambassador 
 from Saladin turned his reflections into a different channel. 
 
 This new envoy was an emir much resi)ected by the Sol- 
 dan, whose name was Abdallah el Hadgi. He derived his 
 descent from the family of the Prophet, and the race or tribe 
 of Hashem, in witness of which genealogy he wore a green 
 
THE TALISMAN 281 
 
 turban of large dimensions. He had also three times per- 
 formed the journey to Mecca, from which he derived his 
 epithet of El Hadgi, or the Pilgrim. Notwithstanding these 
 various pretentsions to sanctity, Abdallah was, for an Arab, 
 a boon companion, who enjoyed a merry tale, and laid aside 
 his gravity so far as to quafE a blythe flagon, when secrecy 
 ensured him against scandal. He was likewise a statesman, 
 whose abilities had been used by Saladiu in various negotia- 
 tionswith the Christian princes,andparticularlywith Richard, 
 to whom El Hadgi was personally known and acceptable. 
 Animated by the "cheerful acquiescence with which the envoy 
 of Saladin afforded a fair field for the combat, a safe-conduct 
 for all who might choose to witness it, and offered his own 
 person as a guarantee of his fidelity, Richard soon forgot his 
 disappointed hopes, and the approaching dissolution of the 
 Christian league, in the interesting discussions preceding a 
 combat in the lists. 
 
 The station called the Diamond of the Desert was assigned 
 for the place of conflict, as being nearly at an equal distance 
 betwixt the Christian and Saracen camps. It was agreed 
 that Conrade of Montserrat, the defendant, with his god- 
 fathers, the Archduke of Austria and the Grand Masters of 
 the Templars, should appear there on the day fixed for the 
 combat, with an hundred armed followers, and no more ; 
 that Richard of England and his brother Salisbury, who sup- 
 ported the accusation, should attend with the same number, 
 to protect his champion ; and that the Soldan should bring 
 with him a guard of five hundred chosen followers, a band 
 considered as not more than equal to the two hundred Chris- 
 tian lances. Such persons of consideration as either party 
 chose to invite to witness the contest were to wear no other 
 weapons than their swords, and to come without defensive 
 armor. The Soldan undertook the preparation of the lists, 
 and to provide accommodations and refreshments of every 
 kind for all who were to assist at the solemnity ; and his let- 
 ters expressed, with much courtesy, the pleasure which he 
 anticipated in the prospect of a personal and peaceful meet- 
 ing with the Melech Ric, and his anxious desire to render his 
 reception as agreeable as possible. 
 
 All preliminaries being arranged, and communicated to 
 the defendant and his godfathers, Abdallah the Hadgi was 
 admitted to a more private interview, where he heard with 
 delight the strains of Blondel. Having first carefully put 
 his green turban out of sight, and assumed a Greek cap in 
 its stead, he requited the Norman minstrel's music with a 
 
282 WA VERLEY NO VEL8 
 
 drinking-song from the Persian, and quaffed a hearty flagon 
 of Cyprus wine, to show that his practise matched his prin- 
 ciples. On the next day, grave and sober as the water- 
 drinker Mirglip, he bent lais brow to the ground before Sala- 
 din's footstool, and rendered to the Soldan an account of his 
 embassy. 
 
 On the day before that appointed for the combat, Conrade 
 and his friends set off by daybreak to repair to the place as- 
 signed, and Richard left the camp at the same hour, and for 
 the same purpose ; but, as had been agreed upon, he took 
 his journey by a different route — a precaution which had 
 been judged necessary, to prevent the possibility of a quarrel 
 betwixt their armed attendants. 
 
 The good King himself was in no humor for quarreling 
 with any one. Nothing could have added to his pleasurable 
 anticipations of a desperate and bloody combat in the lists, 
 except his being in his own royal person one of the combat- 
 ants ; and he was half in charity again even with Conrade 
 of Montserrat. Lightly armed, richly dressed, and gay as a 1 
 bridegroom on the eve of his nuptials, Richard caracoled i 
 along by the side of Queen Berengaria's litter, pointing out i; 
 to her the various scenes through which they passed, and 
 cheering with tale and song the bosom of the inhospitable 
 wilderness. The former route of the Queen's pilgrimage to I 
 Engaddi had been on the other side of the chain of moun- « 
 tains, so that the ladies were strangers to the scenery of the | 
 desert ; and though Berengaria knew her husband's disposi 
 tion too well not to endeavor to seem interested in what he i 
 was pleased either to say or to sing, she could not help in- \. 
 dulging some female fears when she found herself in the howl- 
 ing wilderness with so small an escort, which seemed almost 
 like a moving speck on the bosom of the plain, and knew, at 
 the same time, they were not so distant from the camp of j 
 Saladin but what they might be in a moment surprised and ! 
 swept off by an overpowering host of his fiery-footed cavalry, ;■ 
 should the pagan be faithless enough to embrace an oppor- ;■ 
 tunity thus tempting. But when she hinted these suspicions ^, 
 to Richard, he repelled them with displeasure and disdain. \ 
 "It were worse than ingratitude," he said, "to doubt the ■ 
 good faith of the generous Soldan." 
 
 Yet the same doubts and fears recurred more than once, | 
 not to the timid mind of the Queen alone, but to the firmer i 
 and more candid soul of Edith Plantagenet, who had no such I 
 confidence in the faith of the Molsem as to render her per- • 
 fectly at ease when so mucli in their power ; and her «ur- 
 
THE TALISMAN 283 
 
 prise had been far less than her terror if the desert around 
 had suddenly resounded with the shout of '•' AUa hu \" and 
 a band of Arab cavah-y had pounced on them like vultures 
 on their prey. Nor were these suspicions lessened when, as 
 evening approached, they were aware of a single Arab horse- 
 man, distinguished by his turban and long lance, hovering 
 on the edge of a small eminence like a hawk poised in the air, 
 and who instantly, on the appearance of the royal retinue, 
 darted off with the speed of the same bird when it shoots 
 down the wind and disappears from the horizon. 
 
 " We must be near the station," said King Eichard ; " and 
 yonder cavalier is one of Saladin's outposts ; methinkslhear 
 the noise of the Moorish horns and cymbals. Get you into 
 order, my hearts, and form yourselves around the ladies 
 soldier-like and firmly." 
 
 As he spoke, each knight, squire, and archer hastily closed 
 in upon his appointed ground, and they proceeded in the 
 most compact order, which made their numbers appear still 
 smaller ; and, to say the truth, though there might be no 
 fear, there was anxiety as well as curiosity, in the attention 
 with which they listened to the wild bursts of Moorish music, 
 which came ever and anon more distinctly from the quarter 
 in which the Arab horseman had been seen to disappear. 
 
 De Vaux spoke in a whisper to the King — "Were it not 
 well, my liege, to send a page to the top of that sandbank ? 
 Or would it stand with your pleasure that I prick forward ? 
 Methinks, by all yonder clash and clang, if there be no more 
 than five hundred men beyond the sand-hills, half of the 
 Soldan's retinue must be drummers and cymbal-tossers. 
 Shall I spur on ? " 
 
 The baron had checked his horse with the bit, and was 
 just about to strike him with the spurs, when the King 
 exclaimed — " Not for the world. Such a caution would 
 express suspicion, and could do little to prevent surprise, 
 which, however, 1 apprehend not." 
 
 They advanced accordingly in close and firm order till 
 they surmounted the line of low sand-hills, and came in 
 sight of the appointed station, when a splendid, but at the 
 same time a startling, spectacle awaited them. 
 
 The Diamond of the Desert, so lately a solitary fountain, 
 distinguished only amid the waste by solitary groups of 
 palm-trees, was now the center of an encampment, the 
 embroidered flags and gilded ornaments of which glittered 
 far and wide, and reflected a thousand rich tints against 
 the setting sun. The coverings of the large pavilons were 
 
284 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 of lAe gayest colors — scarlet, briglit yellow, pale blue, and 
 other gaudy and gleaming hues — and the tops of their pillars, 
 or tent-poles, were decorated with golden pomegranates and 
 small silken flags. But, besides these distinguished pavil- 
 ions, there were what Thomas de Vaux considered as a 
 portentous number of the ordinary black tents of the Arabs, 
 being sufficient, as he conceived, to accommodate, according 
 to the Eastern fashion, a host of five thousand men. A 
 number of Arabs and Kurds, fully corresponding to the 
 extent of the encampment, were hastily assembling, each 
 leading his horse in his hand, and their muster was accom- 
 panied by an astonishing clamor of their noisy instruments 
 of martial music, by which, in all ages, the warfare of the 
 Arabs has been animated. 
 
 They soon formed a deep and confused mass of dismounted 
 cavalry in front of their encampment, when, at the signal 
 of a shrill cry, which arose high over the clangor of the 
 music, each cavalier sprung to his saddle. A cloud of dust, 
 arising at the moment of this maneuver, hid from Eichard 
 and his attendants the camp, the palm-trees, and the 
 distant ridge of mountains, as well as the troops Avhose 
 sudden movement had raised the cloud, and, ascending high 
 over their heads, formed itself into the fantastic forms of 
 wreathed pillars, domes, and minarets. Another shrill yell 
 was heard from the bosom of this cloudy tabernacle. It 
 was the signal for the cavalry to advance, which they did at 
 full gallop, disposing themselves as they came forward, so 
 as to come in at once on the front, flanks, and rear of 
 Richard's little body-guard, who were thus surrounded, and 
 almost choked, by the dense clouds of dust enveloping them 
 on each side, through which were seen alternately, and lost, 
 the grim forms and wild faces of the Saracens, brandishing 
 and tossing their lances in every possible direction, with the 
 wildest cries and halloos, and frequently only reining up 
 their horses when within a spear's length of the Christians, 
 while those in the rear discharged over the heads of both 
 parties thick volleys of arrows. One of these struck the 
 litter in wliich the Queen was seated, who loudly screamed, 
 and the red spot was on Eichard's brow in an instant. 
 
 "^ Ha ! St. George," he exclaimed, *'we must take some 
 order with this infidel scum ! " 
 
 But Edith, whose litter was near, thrust her head out, 
 and with her hand holding one of the shafts, exclaimed, 
 " Eoyal Eichard, beware what you do : see, these arrows are 
 
THE TALISMAN 285 
 
 "Koble, sensible wench!*' exclaimed Eichard ; "by 
 Heaven, thou shamest us all by thy readiness of thought 
 and eye. Be not moved, my English hearts," he exclaimed 
 to his followers : " their arrows have no heads, and their 
 spears, too, lack the steel points. It is but a wild welcome, 
 after their savage fashion, though doubtless they would re- 
 joice to see us daunted or disturbed. Move onward, slow 
 and steady." 
 
 The little phalanx moved forward accordingly, accom- 
 panied on all sides by the Arabs, with the shrille'st and most 
 piercing cries, the bowmen, meanwhile, displaying their 
 agility by shooting as near the crests of the Christians as 
 was possible, without actually hitting them, while the 
 lancers charged each other with such rude blows of their 
 blunt w^eapons, that more than one of them lost his saddle, 
 and well-nigh his life, in this rough sport. All this, though 
 designed to express welcome, had rather a doubtful appear- 
 ance in the eyes of the Europeans. 
 
 As they had advanced nearly half-way toward the camp. 
 King Richard and his suite forming, as it were, the nucleus 
 round which this tumultuary body of horsemen howled, 
 whooped, skirmished, and galloped, creating a scene of in- 
 describable confusion, another shrill cry was heard, on wdiich 
 all these irregulars, who were on the front and upon the 
 flanks of the little body of Europeans, wheeled off, and 
 forming themselves into a long and deep column, followed 
 with comparative order and silence in the rear of Richard's 
 troop. The dust began now to dissipate in tlieir front, wdien 
 there advanced to meet them, through that cloudy veil, a body 
 of cavalry of a different and more regular description, com- 
 pletely armed with offensive and defensive weapons, and who 
 might well have served as a body-guard to the proudest of 
 Eastern monarchs. This splendid troop consisted of five 
 hundred men, and each horse which it contained was worth 
 an earl's ransom. The riders were Georgian and Circassian 
 slaves in the very prime of life ; their helmets and hauberks 
 were formed of steel rings, so bright that they shone like 
 silver ; their vestures were of the gayest colors, and some of 
 cloth of gold or silver ; the sashes were twisted with silk 
 and gold, their rich turbans were plumed and jeweled, and 
 their sabers and poniards, of Damascene steel, were adorned 
 with gold and gems on hilt and scabbard. 
 
 This splendid array advanced to the sound of military 
 music, and when they met the Christian body, they opened 
 their files to the right and left, and let them enter' between 
 
286 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 their ranks. Richard now assumed the foremost place in 
 his troop, aware that Saladin himself was approaching. 
 Nor was it long when, in the center of his bodyguard, sur- 
 rounded by his domestic officers, and those hideous negroes 
 who guard the Eastern harem, and whose misshapen forms 
 were rendered yet more frightful by the richness of their 
 attire, came the Soldan, with the look and manners of one 
 on whose brow Nature had written, This is a King ! In his 
 snow-white turban, vest, and wide Eastern trousers, wearing 
 a sash of scarlet silk, without any other ornament, Saladin 
 might have seemed the plainest dressed man in his own 
 guard. But closer inspection discerned in his turban that 
 inestimable gem, which was called by the poets the Sea of 
 Light ; the diamond on which his signet was engraved, and 
 which he wore in a ring, was probably worth all the jewels 
 of the English crown, and a sapphire, which terminated the 
 hilt of his canjiar, was of not much inferior value. It should 
 be added that to protect him from the dust, which, in the 
 vicinity of the Dead Sea, resembles the finest ashes, or, per- 
 haps, out of Oriental pride, the Soldan wore a sort of veil 
 attached to his turban, which partly obscured the view of 
 his noble features. He rode a milk-white Arabian, which 
 bore him as if conscious and proud of his noble burden. 
 
 There was no need of further introduction. The two 
 heroic monarchs, for such they both were, threw themselves 
 at once from horseback, and the troops halting and the music 
 suddenly ceasing, they advanced to meet each other in pro- 
 found silence, and, after a courteous inclination on eitiier 
 side, they embraced as brethren and equals. The pomp and 
 display upon both sides attracted no further notice — no one 
 saw aught save Richard and Saladin, and they too beheld 
 nothing but each other. The looks with which Richard 
 surveyed Saladin, were, however, more intently curious than 
 those which the Soldan fixed upon him ; and the Soldan 
 also was the first to break silence. 
 
 '* The Melech Ric is welcome to Saladin as water to this 
 desert. I trust he hath no distrust of this numerous array. 
 Excepting the armed slaves of my household, those who sur- 
 round you with eyes of wonder and of welcome, are, even 
 the humblest of them, the privileged nobles of my thousand 
 tribes ; for who that could claim a title to be present, would 
 remain at home when such a Prince was to be seen as Rich- 
 ard, with the terrors of whose name, even on the saiuls of 
 Yemen, the nurse stills her child, and the free Arab sub- 
 dues his restive steed I " 
 
THE TALISMAN 287 
 
 " And these are all nobles of Araby ? " said Eichardj look- 
 ing around on wild forms with their persons covered with 
 haiks, their countenance swart with the sunbeams, their 
 teeth as white as ivory, their black eyes glancing with 
 fierce and preternatural luster from under the shade of 
 their turbans, and their dress being in general simple, even 
 to meanness. 
 
 "They claim such rank," said Saladin ; "but, though 
 numerous, they are within the conditions of the treaty, and 
 bear no arms but the saber ; even the iron of their lances is 
 left behind." 
 
 "I fear," muttered De Vaux in English, " they have left 
 them where they can be soon found. A most flourishing 
 House of Peers, I confess, and would find Westminster Hall 
 something too narrow for them." 
 
 "Hush, De Vaux." said Eichard, "I command thee. 
 Noble Saladin," he said, " suspicion and thou cannot, exist on 
 the same ground. Seest thou," pointing to the litters — "I 
 too have brought some champions with me, though armed, 
 perhaps, in breach of agreement, for bright eyes and fair 
 features are weapons which cannot be left behind." 
 
 The Soldan, turning to the litters, made an obeisance as 
 lowly as if looking towards Mecca, and kissed the sand in 
 token of respect. 
 
 "Nay," said Eichard, "they will not fear a closer en- 
 counter, brother ; wilt thou not ride towards their litters, 
 and the curtains will be presently withdrawn." 
 
 "That may Allah prohibit !" said Saladin, "since not an 
 Arab looks on who would not think it shame to the noble 
 ladies to be seen with their faces uncovered.'^ 
 
 ' ' Thou shalt see them, then, in private, my royal brother/' 
 answered Eichard. 
 
 "To what purpose?" answered Saladin, mournfully. 
 "Thy last letter was, to the hopes which I had entertained, 
 like water to fire ; and wherefore should I again light a 
 fiame which may indeed consume, but cannot cheer, me ? 
 But will not my brother pass to the tent which his servant 
 hath prepared for him ? My principal black slave hath taken 
 order for the reception of the princesses ; the officers of my 
 household will attend your followers ; and ourselves will be 
 the chambei'lain of the royal Eichard." 
 
 He led the way accordingly to a splendid pavilion, where 
 was everything that royal luxury could devise. De Vaux, 
 who was in attendance, then removed the chappe [capa) or 
 long riding-cloak which Eichard wore, and he stood before 
 
288 WAVERLEY J^OVELS 
 
 Saladin in the close dress which showed to advantage the 
 strength and symmetry of his person, while it bore a strong 
 contrast to the flowing robes which disguised the thin frame 
 of the Eastern monarcli. It was Eichard's two-handed sword 
 that chiefly attracted the attention of the Saracen — a broad 
 straight blade, the seemingly unwieldy length of which ex- 
 tended well-nigh from the shoulder to the heel of the wearer. 
 
 " Had I not," said Saladin, " seen this brand flaming in 
 the front of battle, like that of Azrael, I had scarce believed 
 that human arm could wield it. Might I request to see the 
 Melech Ric strike one blow with it in peace, and in pure 
 trial of strength ? " 
 
 " Willingly, noble Saladin,** answered Eichard ; and look- 
 ing around for something whereon to exercise his strength, 
 he saw a steel mace, held by one of the attendants, the 
 handle being of the same metal, and about an inch and a 
 half in diameter. This he placed on a block of wood. 
 
 The anxiety of De Vaux for his master's honor led him to 
 whisper in English, " For the blessed Virgin's sake, beware 
 what you attempt, my liege ! Your full strength is not as 
 yet returned ; give no triumjah to the infidel." 
 
 *' Peace, fool ! ** said Eichard, standing firm on his ground, 
 and casting a fierce glance around ; " thinkest thou that I 
 can fail in Jiis presence ? " 
 
 The glittering broadsword, wielded by both his hands, rose 
 aloft to the King's left shoulder, circled round his head, 
 descended with the sway of some terrific engine, and the bar 
 of iron rolled on the ground in two pieces, as a woodsman 
 would sever a sapling with a hedging-bill. 
 
 ''By the head of the Prophet, a most wonderful blow I" 
 said the Soldan, critically and accurately examining the iron 
 bar which had been cut asunder ; and the blade of the sword 
 was so well tempered as to exhibit not the least token of 
 having suffered by the feat it had performed. He then took 
 the King's hand, and looking on the size and muscular 
 strength which it exhibited, laughed as he placed it beside 
 his own, so lank and thin, so inferior in brawn and sinew. 
 
 *' Ay, look well," said De Vaux, in English, " it will be 
 long ere your long jackanape's fingers do such a feat with 
 your fine gilded reaping-hook there." 
 
 "Silence, De Vaux," said Eichard; "by Our Ladj,he 
 understands or guesses thy meaning — be not so broad, I 
 pray thee." 
 
 The Soldan, indeed, presently said — " Something I would 
 fain attempt, though wherefore should the weak show theii 
 
THE TALISMAN 289 
 
 inferiority in presence of tlie strong ? Yet, each land hath 
 its own exercises, and this may be new to the Melech Eic." 
 So saying, he took from the floor a cushion of silk and down, 
 and placed it upright on one end. " Can thy weapon, my 
 brother, sever that cushion ? " he said to King Eichard. 
 
 "No, surely,^' rej^lied the King; "no sword on earth, 
 were it the Excalibar of King Arthur, can cut that which 
 opposes no steady resistance to the blow." 
 
 '• Mark, then," said Saladin ; and, tucking up the sleeve 
 of his gown, showed his arm, thin indeed and spare, but 
 which constant exercise had hardened into a mass consisting 
 of nought but bone, brawn, and sinew. He unsheatlied his 
 scimitar, a curved and narrow blade, which glittered not like 
 the swords of the Franks, but was, on the contrary, of a dull 
 blue color, marked with ten millions of meandering lines, 
 which showed how anxiously the metal had been welded by 
 the armorer. Wielding this weapon, apparently su ineffi- 
 cient when compared to that of Eichard, the Soldan stood 
 resting his weight upon his left foot, which was slightly ad- 
 vanced ; he balanced himself a little as if to steady his aim, 
 then stepping at once forward, drew the scimitar across 
 the cushion, applying the edge so dexterously, and with so 
 little apparent effort, that the cushion seemed rather to fall 
 asunder than to be divided by violence. 
 
 " It is a juggler's trick," said De Vaux, darting forward 
 and snatching up the portion of the cushion which had been 
 cut off, as if to assure himself of the reality of the feat ; " there 
 is gramarye in this." 
 
 The Soldan seemed to comprehend him, for he undid the 
 sort of veil which he had hitherto worn, laid it double along 
 the edge of his saber, extended the weapon edgeways in the 
 air, and di-awing it suddenly through the veil, although it 
 hung on the blade entirely loose, severed that also into two 
 parts, which floated to different sides of the tent, equally 
 displaying the extreme temper and sharpness of the weapon 
 and the exquisite dexterity of him who used it. 
 
 "Now, ill good faith, my brother," said Eichard, "thou 
 art even matcliless at the trick of the sword, and right peril- 
 ous were it to meet thee. Still, however, I put some faith 
 in a downright English blow, and what we cannot do by 
 sleight we eke out by strength. Nevertheless, in truth thou 
 art as expert in inflicting wounds as my sage Hakim in cur- 
 ing them. 1 trust I shall see the learned leech ; I have 
 much to thank him for, and had brought some small pres- 
 ent." 
 19 
 
290 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 As he spoke, Saladin exchanged his turban for a Tartar 
 cap. He had no sooner done so, than De Yaux opened at 
 once his extended mouth and his large round eyes, and 
 Richard gazed with scarce less astonishment, while the 
 Soldan spoke in a grave and altered voice : " The sick man, 
 sayeth the poet, while he is yet infirm, knoweth the physi- 
 cian by his step ; but when he is recovered, he knoweth not 
 even his face when he looks upon him." 
 
 "A miracle ! — a miracle ! " exclaimed Kichard. 
 
 " Of Mahound's working, doubtless," said Thomas de 
 Vanx. 
 
 "That I should lose my learned Hakim," said Richard, 
 " merely by absence of his cap and robe, and that I should 
 find him again in my royal brother Saladin ! " 
 
 •' Such is oft the fashion of the world," answered the 
 Soldan : "the tattered robe makes not always the dervise." 
 
 "And it Avas through thy intercession," said Richard, 
 " that yonder Knight of the Leopard was saved from death ; 
 and by thy artifice that he revisited my camp in disguise ?" 
 
 "Even so," replied Saladin; "I was physician enough 
 to know that, unless the wounds of his bleeding honor were 
 stanched, the days of his life must be few. His disguise 
 was more easily penetrated than I had expected from the 
 success of mv own." 
 
 " An accident," said King Richard (probably alluding to 
 the circumstance of his applying his lips to the wound of the 
 supposed Xubian), "let me first know that his skin w\as ar- 
 tificially discolored ; and that hint once taken, detection be- 
 came easy, for his form and person are not to be forgotten. 
 I confidently expect that he will do battle on the morrow." 
 
 " He is full in preparation and high in hope," said the 
 Soldan. " I have furnished him with weapons and horse, 
 thinking nobly of him from what I have seen under various 
 disguises." 
 
 " Knows he now," said Richard, " to whom he lies under 
 obligation ? " 
 
 ""He doth," replied the Saracen ; "I w^as obliged to con- 
 fess my person when I unfolded my purpose." 
 
 "And confessed he aught to you?" said the King of 
 England. 
 
 " Nothing explicit," replied the Soldan ; " but from much 
 that passed between us, I conceive his love is too highly 
 placed to be happy in its issue." 
 
 "And thou knowest that his daring and insolent passion 
 crossed thine own wishes ? " said Richard. 
 
THE TA uISMAN 291 
 
 " I might guess so much/' said Saladin ; " but his passion 
 had existed ere my wishes had been formed, and, I must now 
 add, is likely to survive them, I cannot, in honor, revenge 
 me for my disappointment on him who had no hand in it. 
 Or, if this high-born dame loved him better than myself, 
 who can say that she did not justice to a knight, of her own 
 religion, who is full of nobleness ? " 
 
 " Yet of too mean lineage to mix with the blood of Plan- 
 tagenet," said Richard, haughtily. 
 
 " Such may be your maxims in Frangistan," replied the 
 Soldan. *' Our poets of the Eastern countries say, that a 
 valiant camel-driver is worthy to kiss the lip of a fair queen, 
 when a cowardly prince is not worthy to salute the hem of 
 her garment. But with your permission, noble brother, I 
 must take leave of thee for the present, to receive the Duke 
 of Austria and yonder Nazarene knight, much less worthy 
 of hospitality, but who must yet be suitably entreated, not 
 for their sakes, but for mine own honor, for what saith the 
 sage Lokman — ' Say not that the food is lost unto thee which 
 is given to the stranger ; for if his body be strengthened and 
 fattened therewithal, not less is thine own worship and good 
 name cherished and augmented ? ' " 
 
 The Saracen monarch departed from King Richard's tent, 
 and having indicated to him, rather with signs than with 
 speech, where the pavilion of the Queen and her attendants 
 was pitched, he went to receive the Marquis of Montserrat 
 and his attendants, for whom, with less good-will, but with 
 equal splendor, the magnificent Soldan had provided accom- 
 modations. The most ample refreshments, both in the 
 i Oriental and after the European fashion, were spi-ead before 
 i the royal and princely guests of Saladin, each in their own 
 i separate pavilion ; and so attentive was the Soldan to the 
 i habits and taste of his visitors, that Grecian slaves were 
 i stationed to present them with the goblet, which is the 
 I abomination of the sect of Mohammed. Ere Richard had 
 I finished his meal, the ancient ofnrahj who had brought the 
 ! Soldan's letter to the Christian camp, entered with a plan of 
 ; the ceremonial to be observed on the succeeding day of com- 
 bat. Richard, who knew the taste of his old acquaintance, 
 invited him to pledge him in a flagon of wine of Schiraz ; 
 but Abdallah gave him to understand, with a rueful aspect, 
 that self-denial, in the present circumstances, was a matter 
 in which his life was concerned ; for that Saladin, tolerant in 
 , many respects, both observed and enforced by high penalties 
 the laws of the prophet. 
 
292 WAVERLBY NOVELS 
 
 '' Nciy, then," said Eichard, " if he loves not wine, that 
 lightener of the human heart, his conversation is not to be 
 hoped for, and the prediction of the mad priest of Engaddi 
 goes like chaff down the wind." 
 
 The King then addressed himself to settle the articles of 
 combat, which cost a considerable time, as it was necessary 
 on some points to consult with the opposite parties, as well 
 as with the Soldan. 
 
 They were at length finally agreed upon, and adjusted by 
 a protocol in French and in Arabian, which was subscribed 
 by Saladin as umpire of the field, and by Richard and Leopold 
 as guarantees for the two combatants. As the omrah took 
 his final leave of King Richard for the evening, De Vaux 
 entered. 
 
 " The good knight," he said, "who is to do battle to- 
 morrow requests to know whether he may not to-night pay 
 duty to his royal godfather ?" 
 
 " Hast thou seen him, De Vaux ?" said the King, smil- 
 ing ; " and didst thou know an ancient acquaintance ? " 
 
 " By our Lady of Lanercost," answered De Vaux, "there 
 are so many surprises and changes in this land, that my poor 
 brain turns. I scarce knew Sir Kenneth of Scotland ti)l his 
 good hound, that had been for a short while under my care, 
 came and fawned on me ; and even then I only knew the tyke 
 by the depth of his chest, the roundness of his foot, and 
 his manner of baying ; for the poor gaze-hound was painted 
 like any Venetian courtezan." 
 
 " Thou art better skilled in brutes than men, De Vaux," 
 said the King. 
 
 " I will not deny," said De Vaux, " I have found them 
 ofttimes the honester animals. Also, your Grace is pleased 
 to term me sometimes a brute myself ; besides that I serve 
 the Lion, whom all men acknowledge the king of brutes." 
 
 " By St. George, there thou brokest thy lance fairly on 
 my brow," said the King. "I have ever said thou hast a 
 sort of wit, De Vaux — marry, one must strike tliee with a 
 sledge-hammer ere it can be made to sparkle. But to the 
 present gear ; is the good knight well armed and equipped ?* 
 
 " Fully, my liege, and nobly," answered De Vaux ; " I 
 know the armor well : it is that which the Venetian com- 
 missary offered your Highness, just ere you became ill, for 
 five hundred bezants." 
 
 "And he hath sold it to the infidel Soldan, I warrant me, 
 for a few ducats more, and present payment. These Vene- 
 tians would sell the Sepulcher itself I'* 
 
THE TALISMAN 2&S 
 
 ** The armor will never be borne in a nobler cause," said 
 De Vaux. 
 
 ''Thanks to the nobleness of the Saracen," said the King, 
 ''not to the avarice of the Venetians." 
 
 "I would to God your Grace would be more cautious," 
 Baid the anxious De Vaux. " Here are we deserted by all 
 our allies, for points of offense given to one or another ; we 
 cannot hope to prosper upon the land, and we have only to 
 quarrel with the amphibious republic to lose the means of 
 retreat by sea ! " 
 
 " I will take care," said Eichard, impatiently ; " but school 
 me no more. Tell me rather, for it is of interest, hath the 
 knight a confessor ?" 
 
 "He hath," answered De Vaux; "the hermit of En- 
 gaddi, who erst did him that office when preparing for death, 
 attends him on the present occasion, the fame of the duel 
 having brought him hither." 
 
 " 'Tis well," said Eichard ; " and now for the knight's re- 
 quest. Say to him, Eichard will receive him when the dis- 
 charge of his devoir beside the Diamond of the Desert shall 
 have atoned for his fault beside the Mount of St. George ; 
 and as thou passest through the camp, let the Queen know 
 I will visit her pavilion ; and tell Blondel to meet me 
 there." 
 
 De Vaux departed, and in about an hour afterwards, 
 Eichard, wrapping his mantle around him, and taking his 
 ghittern in his hand, walked in the direction of the Queen's 
 pavilion. Several Arabs passed him, but always with averted 
 heads and looks fixed upon the earth, though he could ob- 
 serve that all gazed earnestly after him when he was past. 
 This led him justly to conjecture that his person was known 
 to them, but that either the Soldan's commands or their own 
 Oriental politeness forbade them to seem to notice a sovereign 
 who desired to remain incognito. 
 
 Wlien the King reached the pavilion of his Queen, he 
 found it guarded by those unhappy officials whom Eastern 
 jealousy places around the zenana. Blondel was walking 
 before the door, and touched his rote from time to time in 
 a manner which made the Africans show their ivory teeth, 
 and bear burden with their strange gestures and shrill un- 
 natural voices. 
 
 " What art thou after with this herd of black cattle, 
 Blondel ?" said the King. " Wherefore goest thou not into 
 the tent'?" 
 
 " Because my trade can neither spar© the head nor the 
 
294 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 fingers," said Blond el ; "and these honest blackamco'S 
 threatened to cut me joint from joint if I jDressed forwaia/' 
 Well, enter with me," said the King, " and 1 will be thy 
 juard." 
 
 The blacks accordingly lowered pikes and swords to King* . 
 Eichard, and bent their eyes on the ground, as if unworthy 
 to look upon him. In the interior of the pavilion, they 
 found Thomas de Vaux in attendance on the Queen. "While 
 Berengaria welcomed Blondel, King Eicha.-d fspoke for some 
 time secretly and apart with his fair kinswoman. 
 
 At length, " Are we still foes, my fair Edith ?'' he said, 
 in a whisper. 
 
 "No, my liege," said Edith, in a voice just so low as not 
 to interrupt the music ; " none can bear enmity against 
 King Richard, when he deigns to show himself as he really 
 is, generous and noble, as well as valiant and honorable.'' 
 So saying, she extended her hand to him. 
 
 The King kissed it in token of reconciliation, and then 
 proceeded, "You think, my sweet cousin, that my anger 
 in this matter was feigned ; but you are deceived. The 
 punishment I inflicted upon this knight was just ; for he 
 had betrayed — no matter for how^ tempting a bribe, fair 
 cousin — the trust committed to him. But I rejoice, per- 
 chance as much as you, that to-morrow gives him a chance 
 to win the field, and throw back the stain which for a time 
 clung to him upon the actual thief and traitor. Xo ! future 
 times may blame Eichard for impetuous folly ; but they 
 shall say that, in rendering judgment, he was just when he 
 should, and merciful when he could." 
 
 "Laud not thyself, cousin King," said Edith. "They 
 may call thy justice cruelty, thy mercy capi'ice." 
 
 "And do not thou jiride thyself," said the King, "as if 
 thy knight, who hath not yet buckled on his armor, were 
 unbelting it in triumph. Conrade of Montserrat is held a 
 good lance. What if the Scot should lose the day ?" 
 
 " It is impossible ! " said Edith, firmly. "My own eyes 
 saw yonder Conrade tremble and change color, like a base 
 thief. He is guilty, and the trial by combat is an appeal to 
 the justice of God. I myself, in such a cause, would en- 
 counter him without fear." 
 
 " By the mass, I think thou wouldst, wench," said the 
 King, " and beat him to boot ; for there never breathed a 
 truer Plantagenet than thou." 
 
 He paused, and added in a very serious tone, " See that * 
 thou continue to remember what is due to thy birth." 
 
THE TALISMAN 295 
 
 " What means that advice, so seriously given at this 
 moment ? " said Edith. " Am I of such light nature as to 
 forget my name — my condition ? " 
 
 " I will speak plainly, Edith," answered the King, "and 
 as to a friend : What will this knight be to you, should he 
 come off victor from yonder lists ? " 
 
 "To me?" said Edith, blushing deep with shame and dis- 
 pleasure. "What can he be to me more than an honored 
 knight, worthy of such grace as Queen Berengaria might 
 confer on him, had he selected her for his lady, instead of a 
 more unworthy choice ? The meanest knight may devote 
 himself to the service of an empress, but the glory of his 
 choice," she said proudly, "must be his reward." 
 
 " Yet he hath served and suffered much for you," said th 
 King. 
 
 "I have paid his services with honor and applause, an 
 his sufferings Avith tears," answered Edith. " Had he dt 
 sired other reward, he would have done wisely to hav» 
 bestowed his affections within his own degree." 
 
 " You would not then wear the bloody night-gear for hi • 
 sake ? " said King Richard. 
 
 _ " No more," answered Edith, " than I would have require© 
 him to expose his life by an action in which there was more 
 madness than honor." 
 
 " Maidens talk ever thus," said the King ; " but when the 
 favored lover presses his suit, she says, with a sigh, her stars 
 had decreed otherwise." 
 
 "Your Grace has now, for the second time, threatened 
 me with the influence of my horoscope," Edith replied, with 
 dignity. "Trust me, my liege, whatever be the power of 
 the stars, your poor kinswoman will never wed either infidel 
 or obscure adventurer. Permit me, that I listen to the 
 music of Blondel, for the tone of your royal admonitions is 
 scarce so grateful to the ear." 
 
 The conclusion of the evening offered nothing worthy of 
 aotice. 
 
CHAPTER XXVin 
 
 Heard ye the din of battle bray, 
 Lance to lance, and horse to horse ? 
 Gray. 
 
 It had been agreed, on account of the heat of the climate^ 
 that the judicial combat, which was the cause of the presenl 
 assemblage of various nations at the Diamond of the Desert, 
 should take place at one hour after sunrise. The wide lists, 
 which had been constructed under the inspection of the 
 Knight of the Leopard, inclosed a space of hard sand, 
 which was one hundred and twenty yards long by forty in 
 width. They extended in length from north to south, so 
 as to give both parties the equal advantage of the rising sun. 
 Saladin's royal seat was erected on the western side of the 
 inclosure, just in the center, where the combatants were 
 expected to meet in mid encounter. Opposed to this was 
 a gallery with closed casements, so contrived that the 
 ladies, for whose accommodation it was erected, might 
 see the fight without being themselves exposed to view. 
 At either extremity of the lists was a barrier, which could 
 be opened or shut at pleasure. Thrones had been also 
 erected, but the Archduke, perceiving that his was lower 
 than King Richard's, refused to occupy it ; and Coeur-de- 
 Lion, who would have submitted to much ere any formality 
 should have interfered with the combat, readily agreed that 
 the sponsors, as they were called, should remain on horse- 
 back during the fight. At one extremity of the lists were 
 placed the followers of Richard, and opposed to them were 
 those who accompanied the defender, Conrad e. Around 
 the throne destined for the Soldan were ranged his splended 
 Georgian Guards, and the rest of the inclosure was occupied 
 by (Ihristian and Mohammedan spectators. 
 
 L(mg before daybreak, the lists were surrounded by even 
 a larger number of Saracens than Richard had seen on the 
 preceding evening. When the first ray of the sun's glorious 
 orb arose above the desert, the sonorous call, " To prayer — 
 to prayer ! " was poured forth by the Soldan himself, and 
 answered by others, whose rank and zeal entitled them tc 
 
THE TALISMAN 297 
 
 act as muezzins. It was a striking spectacle to see them all 
 sink to earth, for the purpose of repeating their devotions, 
 with their faces turned to Mecca. But when they arose from 
 tlie ground, the sun's rays, now strengtliening fast, seemed 
 to confirm the Lord of Gilsland's conjecture of the night 
 before. They were flashed back from many a spear-head, 
 for the pointless lances of the preceding day were certainl}^ 
 no longer such. De Vaux pointed it out to his master, who 
 answered with impatience, that he had perfect confidence 
 in the good faith of the Soldan ; but if De Vaux was afraid 
 of his bulky body, he might retire. 
 
 Soon after this the noise of timbrels was heard, at the 
 sound of which the whole Saracen cavaliers threw them- 
 selves from their horses, and prostrated themselves, as if for 
 a second morning prayer. This was to give an opportunity 
 to the Queen, with Edith and her attendants, to pass from 
 the pavilion to the gallery intended for them. Fifty guards 
 of Saladin's seraglio escorted them, with naked sabers, 
 whose orders were, to cut to pieces whomsoever, were he 
 prince or peasant, should venture to gaze on the ladies as 
 they passed, or even presume to raise his head until the 
 cessation of the music should make all men aware that they 
 were lodged in their gallery, not to be gazed on by the 
 curious eye. 
 
 This superstitious observance of Oriental reverence to the 
 fair sex called forth from Queen Berengaria some criticisms 
 very unfavorable to Saladin and his country. But their 
 den, as the royal fair called it, being securely closed and 
 guarded by their sable attendants, she was under the neces- 
 sity of contenting herself with seeing, and laying aside for 
 the present the still more exquisite pleasure of being seen. 
 
 Meantime the sponsors of both champions went, as was 
 their duty, to see that they were duly armed, and prepared 
 for combat. The Archduke of Austria was in no hurry to 
 perform this part of the ceremony, having had rather an 
 unusually severe debauch upon wine of Schiraz tlie preced- 
 ing evening. But the Grand Master of the Temple, more 
 deeply concerned in the event of the combat, was early 
 before the tent of Conrade of Montserrat. To his great 
 surprise, the attendants refused him admittance. 
 
 " Do you not know me, ye knaves?'' said the Grand 
 Master, in great anger. 
 
 •' We do, most valiant and reverend," answered Conrade's 
 squire ; " but even you may not at present enter : the Mar- 
 quis is about to confess himself." 
 
298 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 '' Confess himself !" exclaimed the Templar, in a tone 
 where alarm mingled with surprise and scorn ; " and to 
 whom, I pray thee ?" 
 
 " My master bid me be secret," said the squire ; on which 
 the Grand Master pushed past him, and entered the tent 
 almost by force. 
 
 The Marquis of Montserrat was kneeling at the feet of the 
 hermit of Engaddi, and in the act of beginning his con- 
 fession. 
 
 " What means this, Marquis ?" said the Grand Master; 
 '' up, for shame — or, if you must needs confess, am not 
 I here?" 
 
 " I have confessed to you too often already," replied 
 Conrade, with a pale cheek and a faltering voice. " For 
 God's sake, Grand Master, begone, and let me unfold my 
 conscience to this holy man." 
 
 ''In what is he holier than I am?" said the Grand 
 Master. " Hermit— prophet — madman, say, if thou darest, 
 in what thou excellest me ? " 
 
 " Bold and bad man," replied the hermit, " know that I 
 am like the latticed window, and the divine light passes 
 through to avail others, though, alas ! it helpeth not me. 
 Thou art like the iron stanchions, which neither receive 
 light themselves nor communicate it to any one." 
 
 " Prate not to me, but depart from this tent," said the 
 Grand Master ; " the Marquis shall not confess this morning, 
 unless it be to me, for I part not from his side." 
 
 " Is this your pleasure?" said the hermit to Conrade; 
 " for think not I will obey that proud man, if you continue 
 to desire my assistance." 
 
 '' Alas," said Conrade, irresolutely, "what would you 
 have me say ? Farewell for a while ;" we will speak anon." 
 
 " Oh, procrastination," exclaimed the hermit, '• thou art 
 a soul- murderer ! Unhappy man, farewell, not for a while, 
 but until we shall both meet — no matter where. And for 
 thee," he added, turning to the Grand Master, " Tremble ! " 
 
 " Tremble ! " replied the Templar, contemptuously, " I 
 cannot if I would." 
 
 The hermit heard not his answer, having left the tent. 
 
 " Come, to this gear hastily," said the Grand Master, 
 " since thou wilt needs go through the foolery. Hark thee, 
 I think I know most of thy frailties by heart, so we may 
 omit the detail, which may be somewhat a long one, and 
 begin with the absolution. What signifies counting the spots 
 of dirt that we are about to wash from our hands ? " 
 
THE TALISMAN 299 
 
 ** Knowing what thou art th^'self," said Conrade, " it is 
 blasphemous to speak of pardoning anotlier." 
 
 " That is not according to the canon. Lord Marquis," said 
 the Templar : " thou art more scrupulous than orthodox. 
 The absolution of the wicked priest is as effectual as if he 
 were himself a saint ; otherwise, God help the poor penitent ! 
 What wounded man inquires whether the surgeon that tents 
 his gashes have clean hands or no ? Come, shall we to this 
 toy?" 
 
 " No," said Conrade, " I will rather die unconfessed than 
 mock the sacrament.** 
 
 " Come, noble Marquis/' said the Templar, '' rouse up 
 your courage, and speak not thus. In an hoar's time thou 
 shalt stand victorious in the lists, or confess thee in thy 
 helmet like a valiant knight." 
 
 *' Alas, Grand Master," answered Conrade, "all augurs ill 
 for this aifair. The strange discovery by the instinct of a 
 dog, the revival of this Scottish knight, who comes into the 
 lists like a specter — all betokens evil." 
 
 "Pshaw," said the Templar, " I have seen thee bend thy 
 lance boldly against him in sport, and with equal chance of 
 success ; think thou art hut in a tournament, and who 
 bears him better in the tilt-yard than thou ? Come, squires 
 and armorers, your master must be accoutered for tlie 
 field." 
 
 The attendants entered accordingly, and began to arm the 
 Marquis. 
 
 " What morning is without ?" said Conrade. 
 
 "The sun rises dimly," answered a squire. 
 
 " Thou seest, Grand Master," said Conrade, " naught 
 smiles on us." 
 
 " Thou wilt fight the more coolly, my son," answered the 
 Templar ; " thank Heaven, that hath tempered the sun of 
 Palestine to suit thine occasion." 
 
 Thus jested the Grand Master ; but his jests had lost their 
 influence on the harassed mind of the Marquis, and, not- 
 withstanding his attempts to seem gay, his gloom communi- 
 cated itself to the Templar. 
 
 " This craven," he thought, " will lose the day in pure 
 faintness and cowardice of heart, wliich he calls tender con- 
 science. I, whom visions and auguries shake not — who am 
 firm in my purpose as the living rock — I should have fought 
 the combat myself. Would to^God the Scot may strike him 
 dead on the spot ; it were next best to his winning the vic- 
 tory. But come what will, he must have no other confessor 
 
300 fVAVEULEY NOVELS 
 
 than myself ; our sins are too mucli in common, and he might 
 confess my share with his own." 
 
 While these thoughts passed through his mind, he 
 continued to assist the Marquis in arming, but it was in 
 silence. 
 
 The hour at length arrived, the trumpets sounded, the 
 knights rode into the lists armed at all points, and mounted 
 like men who were to do battle for a kingdom's honor. 
 They wore their vizors up, and riding around the lists three 
 times, showed themselves to the spectators. Both were 
 goodly persons, and both had noble countenances. But 
 there was an air of manly confidence on the brow of the Scot 
 — a radiancy of hope, which amounted even to cheerfulness, 
 while, although pride and effort had recalled much of Con- 
 rade's natural courage, there lowered still on his brow a cloud 
 of ominous despondence. Even his steed seemed to tread 
 less liglitly and blithely to the trumpet-sound than the noble 
 Arab which was bestrode by Sir Kenneth ; and the spruch- 
 sprecher shook his head while he observed that, while the 
 challenger rode around the lists in the course of the sun, 
 that is, from right to left, the defender made the same cir- 
 cuit ividdersins, that is, from left to right, which is in 
 most countries held ominous. 
 
 A temporary altar was erected just beneath the gallery oc- 
 cupied by the Queen, and beside it stood the hermit in the 
 dress of his order as a Carmelite friar. Other churchmen 
 were also present. To this altar the challenger and de- 
 fender were successively brought forward, conducted by their 
 respective sponsors. Dismounting before it, each knight 
 avouched the justice of his cause by a solemn oath on the 
 Evangelists, and prayed that his success might be according 
 to the truth or falsehood of what he then swore. They also 
 made oath that they came to do battle in knightly guise, 
 and with the usual weapons, disclaiming the use of_ spells, 
 charms, or magical devices, to incline victory to their side. 
 The challenger pronounced his vow with a firm and manly 
 voice, and a bold and cheerful countenance. When the 
 ceremony was finished, the Scottish knight looked at the 
 gallery, and bent his head to the earth, as if in honor of 
 those invisible beauties which were inclosed within ; then, 
 loaded with armor as he was, sprung to the saddle without 
 the use of the stirrup, and made his courser carry him in a 
 succession of caracoles to his station at the eastern extremity 
 of the lists. Conrade also presented himself before the altar 
 with boldness enough ; but his voice, as he took the oath. 
 
TEE TALISMAN SOI 
 
 sounded hollow, as if drowned in his helmet. The lips with 
 which he appealed to Heaven to adjudge victory to the just 
 quarrel grew white as they uttered the impious mockery. 
 As he turned to remount his horse, the Grand Master ap- 
 proached him closer, as if to rectify something about the 
 sitting of his gorget, and whispered — " Coward and fool ! 
 recall thy senses, and do me this battle bravely, else, by 
 Heaven, shouldst thou escape him, thou escapest not we/" 
 
 The savage tone in which this was whispered perhaps com- 
 pleted the confusion of the Marquis's nerves, for he stumbled 
 as he made to horse ; and though he recovered his feet, 
 sprung to the saddle with his usual agility, and displayed his 
 address in horsemanship as he assumed his position opposite 
 CO the challenger's, yet the accident did not escape those 
 who were on the watch for omens, which might predict the 
 fate of the day. 
 
 The priests", after a solemn prayer that God would show 
 the rightful quarrel, departed from the lists. The trum- 
 pets of^'the challenger then rung a flourish, anda herald-at- 
 arms proclaimed at the eastern end of the lists — "Here 
 stands a good knight, Sir Kenneth of Scotland, champion 
 for the royal King Richard of England, who accuseth Con- 
 rade Marquis of Montserrat of foul treason and dishonor 
 dune to the said king." 
 
 When the words Kenneth of Scotland announced the 
 name and character of the champion, hitherto scarce gener- 
 ally known, a loud and cheerful acclaim burst from the 
 followers of King Richard, and hardly, notwithstanding 
 repeated commands of silence, suffered the reply of the de- 
 fendant to be heard. He, of course, avouched his innocence, 
 and offered his body for battle. The esquires of the com- 
 batants now approached, and delivered to each his shield and 
 lance, assisting to hang the former around his neck, that his 
 two hands might remain free, one for the management of 
 the bridle, the other to direct the lance. 
 
 The shield of the Scot displayed his old bearing, the leo- 
 p;ird, but with the addition of a collar and broken chain, in 
 allusion to his late captivity. The shield of the Marquis 
 bore, in reference to his title, a serrated and rocky mountain. 
 Each shook his lance aloft, as if to ascertain the weight and 
 toughness of the unwieldy weapon, and then laid it in the 
 rest" The sponsors, heralds, and squires now retired to the 
 barriers, and the combatants sat opposite to each other, face 
 to face, with couched lance and closed vizor, the human 
 form so completely enclosed that they looked more like 
 
302 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 statues of molten iron than beings of flesh and blood. The 
 silence of suspense was now general : men breathed thicker, 
 and their very souls seemed seated in their eyes, while not a 
 sound was to be heard save the snorting and pawing of the 
 good steeds, who, sensible of what was about to haj)pen, 
 were impatient to dash into career. They stood thus for 
 perhaps three minutes, when, at a signal given by the Soldan, 
 an hundred instruments rent the air with their brazen 
 clamors, and each champion striking his horse with the 
 spurs and slacking the rein, the horses started into full 
 gallop, and the knights met in mid space with a shock like 
 a thunderbolt. The victory was not in doubt — no, not one 
 moment. Conrade, indeed, showed himself a practised war- 
 rior ; for he struck his antagonist knightly in the midst of 
 his shield, bearing his lance so straight and true that it 
 shivered into splinters from the steel spear-head up the very 
 gauntlet. The horse of Sir Kenneth recoiled two or three 
 yards and fell on his haunches, but the rider easily raised 
 him with his hand and rein. But for Conrade there was no 
 recovery. Sir Kenneth's lance had pierced through the 
 shield, through, a plated corslet of Milan steel, through a 
 " secret," or coat of linked mail, worn beneath the corslet, 
 Had wounded him deep in the bosom, and borne him from 
 his saddle, leaving the truncheon of the lance flxed in his 
 wound. The sponsors, heralds, and Saladin himself, de- 
 scending from his throne, crowded around the wounded 
 man ; while Sir Kenneth, who had drawn his sword ere yet 
 he discovered his antagonist was totally helpless, now com- 
 manded him to avow his guilt. The helmet was hastily un- 
 closed, and the wounded man, gazing wildly on the skies, 
 replied — " What would you more ? God hath decided 
 Justly : I am guilty ; but there are worse traitors in the 
 camp than I. In pity to my soul, let me have a confessor ! " 
 
 He revived as he uttered these words. 
 
 " The talisman — the powerful remedy, royal brother I " 
 said King Richard to Saladin. 
 
 ''The traitor," answered the Soldan, "is more fit to be 
 dragged from the lists to the gallows by the heels than to 
 profit by its virtues ; and some such fate is in his look," he 
 added, after gazing fixedly upon the wounded man; "for, 
 though his wound may be cured, yet AzraeFs seal is on the 
 wretch's brow." 
 
 " Nevertheless," said Richard, " I pray you do for him 
 what you may, that he may at least have time for confession. 
 Slay not soul and body. To him one half-hour of time may 
 
THE TALISMAN SOS 
 
 be worth more, by ten thousandfold, than the life of the 
 oldest patriarch." 
 
 " My royal brother's v/ish shall be obeyed," said Saladin. 
 "Slaves, bear this wounded man to our tent." 
 
 " Do not so," said the Templar, who had hitherto stood 
 gloomily looking on in silence. " The royal Duke of Austria 
 and myself will not j)ermit this unhappy Christian j^rince to 
 be delivered over to the Saracens, that they may try their 
 spells upon him. We are his sponsors, and demand that he 
 be assigned to our care." 
 
 " That is, you refuse the certain means offered to recover 
 him ?" said Richard. 
 
 " Not so," said the Grand Master, recollecting himself. 
 ** If the Soldau useth lawful medicines, he may attend the 
 patient in my tent." 
 
 *' Do so, I pray thee, good brother," said Eichard to Saladin, 
 *' though the permission be ungraciously yielded. But now 
 to a more glorious work. Sound, trumpets — shout, England 
 — in honor of England's champion ! " 
 
 Drum, clarion, trumpet, and cymbal rung forth at once, 
 and the deep and regular shout which for ages has been the 
 English acclamation sounded amidst the shrill and irregular 
 yells of the Arabs, like the diapason of the organ amid the 
 howling of a storm. There was silence at length. 
 
 " Brave Knight of the Leopard," resumed Coeur-de-Lion, 
 ** thou hast shown that the Ethiopian may change his skin, 
 and the leopard his spots, though clerks quote Scripture for 
 the impossibility. Yet I have more to say to you when I 
 have conducted you to the presence of the ladies, the best 
 judges and best rewarders of deeds of chivalry." 
 
 The Knight of the Leopard bowed assent. 
 
 *'And thou, princely Saladin, wilt also attend them. I 
 promise thee our Queen will not think herself welcome, if 
 she lacks the opportunity to thank her royal host for her 
 most princely reception." 
 
 Saladin bent his head gracefully, but declined the invita- 
 tion. 
 
 " 1 must attended the wounded man," he said. " The 
 leech leaves not his patient more than the champion the lists, 
 even if he be summoned to a bower like those of Paradise. 
 And farther, royal Richard, know that the blood of the East 
 flows not so temperately in the presence of beauty as that of 
 your land. What saith the Book itself — ' Her eye is as the 
 edge of the sword of the Prophet, who shall look upon it ?' 
 He that would not bes burnt avoideth to tread on hot embers j 
 
304 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 wise men spread not the flax before a bickering torch. 
 ' He/ siiith the sage, ' who hath forfeited a treasure, doth 
 not wisely to turn back his head to gaze at it.' 
 
 Kichard, it may be believed, respected the motives of 
 delicacy which fiowed from manners so different from his own, 
 and urged his request no farther. 
 
 " At noon," said the Soldan, as he departed, " I trust ye 
 will all accept a collation under the black camel-skin tent of 
 a chief of Kurdistan." 
 
 The same invitation was circulated among the Christians, 
 comprehending all those of sufficient importance to be ad- 
 mitted to sit at a feast made for princes. 
 
 " Hark ! " said Richard, " the timbrels announce that our 
 Queen and her attendants are leaving their gallery ; and see, 
 the turbans sink on the ground, as if struck down by a de- 
 stroying angel. All lie prostrate, as if the glance of an 
 Arab's eye could sully the luster of a lady's cheek ! Come, 
 we will to the pavilion, and lead our conqueror thither in 
 triumph. How I pity that noble Soldan, who knows but of 
 love as it is known to those of inferior nature !" 
 
 Bloudel tuned his harp to its boldest measure, to welcome 
 the introduction of the victor into the pavilion of Queen 
 Berengaria. He entered, s>.pported on either side by his 
 sponsors, Richard and Thomas [William] Longsword, and 
 knelt gracefully down before the Queen, thougii more than 
 half the homage was silently rendered to Edith, who sat on 
 her right hand. 
 
 " Unarm him, my mistresses," said the King, whose de- 
 light was in the execution of such chivalrous usages. "^Let 
 beauty honor chivalry ! Undo his spurs, Berengaria ; Queen 
 though thou be thou owest him what marks of favor thou 
 canst give. Unlace his helmet, Edith — by this hand thou 
 shalt, wert thou the j^roudest Plantagenet of the line, and 
 he the poorest knight on earth ! " 
 
 Both ladies obeyed the royal commands — Berengaria with 
 bustling assiduity, as anxious to gratify her husband's 
 humor, and Edith blushing and growing pale alternately, as 
 slowly and awkwardly she undid, with Longsword's assist- 
 ance, the fastenings which secured the helmet to the gorget. 
 
 *'And what expect yon from beneath this iron shell?" 
 said Richard, as the removal of the casque gave to view the 
 noble countenance of Sir Kenneth, his face glowing with 
 recent exertion, and not less so with present emotion. 
 " What think ye of him, gallants and beauties ? " said 
 Hichard. *' Doth he resemble an Ethiopian slave, or doth 
 
THE TALISMAN 305 
 
 he present the face of an obscure and nameless adventurer ? 
 No, by my good sword ! Here terminate his various dis- 
 guises. He hatli knelt down before you unknown save by his 
 worth ; he arises equally distinguished by birth and by for- 
 tune. The adventurous knight, Kenneth, arises David Earl 
 of Huntingdon, Prince Eoyal of Scotland !" 
 
 There was a general exclamation of surjn-ise, and Edith 
 dropped from her hand the helmet which she had just 
 received. 
 
 " Yes, my masters," said the King, " it is even so. Ye 
 know how Scotland deceived us when she proposed to send 
 this valiant earl, with a bold company of her best and noblest, 
 to aid our arms in this conquest of Palestine, but failed to 
 comply with her engagements. This noble youth, under 
 whom the Scottish Crusaders were to have been arrayed, 
 thought foul scorn that his arm should be withheld from the 
 holy warfare, and joined us at Sicily with a small train of 
 devoted and faithful attendants, which was augmented by 
 many of his countrymen to whom the rank of their leader 
 was unknown. Tlie confidants of the royal prince had all, 
 save one old follower, fallen by death, when his secret, but 
 too well kept, had nearly occasioned my cutting ofp, in a 
 Scottish adventurer, one of the noblest hopes of Europe. 
 Why did you not mention your rank, noble Huntingdon, 
 when endangered by my hasty and passionate sentence? 
 Was it that you thought Eichard capable of abusing the 
 advantage I possessed over the heir of a king whom I have 
 so often found hostile ?" 
 
 " I did you not that injustice, royal Richard,'' answered 
 the Earl of Huntingdon ; "but my pride brooked not that 
 I should avow myself Prince of Scotland in order to save my 
 life, endangered for default of loyalty. And, moreover, I 
 had made my vow to preserve my rank unknown till the 
 Crusade should be accomplished ; nor did I mention it save in 
 articulo mortis, and under the seal of confession, to yonder 
 reverend hermit." 
 
 " It was the knowledge of that secret, then, which made 
 the good man so urgent with me to recall my severe sen- 
 tence ? " said Richard. " Well did he say that, had this good 
 knight fallen by my mandate, I should have wished the deed 
 undone though it had cost me a limb. A limb ! I should 
 have wished it undone had it cost me my life, since the world 
 would have said that Richard had abused the condition in 
 which the heir of Scotland had placed himself, by his con- 
 fidence in his generosity." 
 20 
 
306 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 " Yet, may we know of your Grace by what strange and 
 happy chance this riddle was at length read?" said the 
 Queen Berengaria. 
 
 " Letters were brought to ns from England," said the King 
 "in which we learnt, among other unpleasant news, that the 
 King of Scotland had seized upon three of our nobles, when on 
 a pilgrimage to St. Ninian, and alleged as a cause that his heir, 
 being supposed to be fighting in the ranks of the Teutonic 
 Knights against the heathen of Borussia, was, in fact, in our 
 camp and m our power ; and, therefore, William proposed to 
 hold these nobles as hostages for his safety. This gave me 
 the first light on the real rank of the Knight of the Leopard, 
 and my suspicions were confirmed by De Vaux, who, on his 
 return from Asca^on, brought back with him the Earl of 
 Huntingdon's sole attendant, a thick-skulled slave, who had 
 gone thirty miles to unfold to De Vaux a secret he should 
 have told to me." 
 
 " Old Strauchan must be excused," said the Lord of Gils- 
 land. " He knew from experience that my heart is some- 
 what softer than if I wrote myself Plantagenet." 
 
 '' Thy heart soft, thou commodity of old iron and Cumber- 
 land flint that thou art !" exclaimed the King. " It is we 
 Plantagenets who boast soft and feeling hearts, Edith," turn- 
 ing to his cousin, with an expression which called the blood 
 into her cheek. " Give me thy hand, my fair cousin, and, 
 Prince of Scotland, thine." 
 
 "Forbear, my lord," said Edith, hanging back, and en- 
 deavoring to hide her confusion under an attempt to rally 
 her royal kinsman's credulity. " Eemember you not that my 
 hand was to be the signal of converting to the Christian faith 
 the Saracen and Arab, Saladin and all his turbaned host ? " 
 
 " Ay, but the wind of prophecy hath chopped about, and 
 sits now in another corner," replied Richard. 
 
 " Mock not, lest your bonds be made strong," said the 
 hermit, stepping forward. " The heavenly host write 
 nothing but truth in their brilliant records : it is man's eyes 
 which are too weak to read their characters aright. Know that, 
 when Saladin and Kenneth of Scotland slept in my grotto, 1 
 read in the stars that there rested under my roof a prince, 
 the natural foe of Eiehard, with whom the fate of Edith 
 Plantagenet was to be united. Could I doubtthat this must 
 be the Soldan, whose rank was well known to me, as he oftet; 
 visited my cell to converse on the revolutions of the heavenly 
 bodies ? Again, the lights of the firmament proclaimed that 
 this prince, the husband of Edith Plantagenet, should be a 
 
THE TALISMAN 301 
 
 Christian ; and I — weak and wild interpreter ! — argued thence 
 the conversion of the noble Saladin, whose good qualities 
 seemed often to incline him towards the better faith. The 
 sense of my weakness hath humbled me to the dust, but in 
 the dust, I have found comfort. I have not read aright the 
 e of others ; who can assure me but that I may have mis- 
 calculated mine own ? God will not have us break into His 
 council-house or spy out His hidden mysteries. We must 
 wait His time with watching and prayer, with fear and with 
 hope. I came hither the stern seer — the proud prophet — 
 skilled, as I thought, to instruct princes, and gifted even with 
 supernatural powers, but burdened with a weight which I 
 /leemed no shoulders but mine could have borne. But my 
 hands have been broken : I go hence humble in my ignorance, 
 penitent, and not hopeless." 
 
 With these words he withdrew from the assembly ; and it 
 is recorded that, from that period, his frenzy fits seldom 
 occurred, and his penances were of a milder character, and 
 accompanied with better hopes of the future. So much is 
 there of self-opinion, even in insanity, that the conviction of 
 his having entertained and expressed an unfounded predic- 
 tion with so much vehemence seemed to operate, like loss of 
 blood on the human frame, to modify and lower the fever of 
 the brain. 
 
 It is needless to follow into farther particulars the confer- 
 ences at the royal tent, or to inquire whether David Earl of 
 xiuntingdon was as mute in the presence of Edith Plantageuet 
 as when he was bound to act under the character of an 
 obscure and nameless adventurer. It may be well believed 
 that he there expressed, with suitable earnestness, the pas- 
 sion to which he had so often before found it difficult to give 
 words. 
 
 The hour of noon now approached, and Saladin waited to 
 receive the princes of Christendom in a tent which, but for 
 its large size, differed little from that of the ordinary shelter 
 3f the common Kurdman, or Arab ; yet beneath its ample 
 ind sable covering was prepared a banquet after the most 
 gorgeous fashion of the East, extended upon carpets of the 
 richest stuffs, with cushions laid for the guests. But we 
 3annot stop to describe the cloth of gold and silver, the 
 uipcrb embroidery in arabesque, the shawls of Cashmere, 
 md the muslins of India, which were here unfolded in all 
 :heir splendor : far less to tell the different sweetmeats, 
 'agouts edged with rice colored in various manners, with all 
 ihe other niceties of Eastern cookery. Lambs roasted 
 
308 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 whole, and game and poultry dressed in pilaus, were piled in 
 vessels of gold, and silver, and porcelain, and intermixed 
 with large mazers of sherbet, cooled in snow and ice from the 
 caverns of Mount Lebanon. A magnificent pile of cushions 
 at the head of the banquet seemed prepared for the master 
 of the feast and such dignitaries as he might call to share 
 that place of distinction, while, from the roof of the tent in 
 all quarters, but over this seat of eminence in particular, 
 waved many a banner and pennon, the trophies of battles 
 won and kingdoms overthrown. But amongst and above 
 them all, a long lance displayed a shroud, the banner of 
 Death, with this impressive inscription — "Saladin", Kixg 
 OF Kings — Saladin, Victor of Victor? — Saladix must 
 DIE." Amid these preparations, the slaves who had ar- 
 ranged the refreshments stood with drooped heads and folded 
 arms, mute and motionless as monumental statuary, or as 
 automata, which waited the touch of the artist to put them 
 in motion. 
 
 Expecting the approach of his princely guests, the Soldan, 
 imbued, as most were, with the superstitioiis of his time, 
 paused over a horoscope and corresponding scroll, which had 
 been sent to him by the hermit of Engaddi when he departed 
 from the camp. 
 
 " Strange and mysterious science," he muttered to him- 
 self, " which, pretending to draw the curtain of futurity, 
 misleads those whom it seems to guide, and darkens the scene 
 which it pretends to ilhiminate ! Who would not liave said 
 that I was that enemy most dangerous to Richard, whose 
 enmity was to be ended by marriage with his kinswoman ? 
 Yet it now appears that a union betwixt this gallant earl and 
 the lady will bring about friendshi^a betwixt Richard and 
 Scotland, an enemy more dangerous than I, as a wildcat in 
 a chamber is more to be dreaded than a lion in a distant I 
 desert. But then," he continued to mutter to himself, '* the 
 combination intimates that this husband was to be Christian. 
 Christian I " he repeated, after a pause. '*That gave the h\ 
 insane, fanatic star-gazer hopes that I might renounce my le 
 faith ! but me, the faithful follower of our Prophet — me it 
 should have undeceived. Lie there, mysterious scroll," he 
 added, thrusting it under the pile of cushions ; " strangeare 
 thy bodements and fatal, since, even when true in themselves, 
 they work upon those who attempt to decipher their meaning 
 all the effects of falsehood. How now ! what means this 
 intrusion ?" 
 
 He spoke to the dwarf Xectabanus, who rushed into the 
 
THE TALISMAN 809 
 
 tent fearfully agitated, with each strange and dispropor- 
 tioned feature wrenched by horror into still more extrava- 
 gant ugliness — his mouth open, his eyes staring, his hands, 
 with their shriveled and deformed fingers, wildly expanded. 
 
 " What now ? " said the Soldan, sternly. 
 
 *' Accipe hoc ! " groaned out the dwarf. - 
 
 ** Ha ! sayst thou ?" answered Saladin. 
 
 "Accipe Aoc /" replied the panic-struck creature, un- 
 conscious, perhaps, that he repeated the same words as be- 
 fore. 
 
 " Hence, I am in no vein for foolery," said the Emperor. 
 
 *' Nor am I further fool," said the dwarf, " than to make 
 my folly help out my wits to earn my bread, poor helpless 
 wretch ! Hear — hear me, great Soldan." 
 
 " -Nay, if thou hast actual wrong to complain of," said 
 Saladin, "fool or wise, thou art entitled to the ear of a 
 king. Retire hither with me;" and he led him into the 
 inner tent. 
 
 Whatever their conference related to, it was soon broken 
 off by the fanfare of the trumpets, announcing the arrival 
 lof the various Christian princes, whom Saladin welcomed to 
 his tent with a royal courtesy well becoming their rank and 
 his own, but chiefly he saluted the young Earl of Hunting- 
 don, and generously congratulated him upon prospects 
 which seemed to have interfered with and overclouded those 
 which he had himself entertained. 
 
 '* But think not," said the Soldan, "thou nobl e youth, 
 that the Prince of Scotland is more welcome to Saladiu than 
 was Kenneth to the solitary Ilderim when they met in the 
 desert, or the distressed Ethiop to the Hakim Adonbec. A 
 ibrave and generous disposition like thine hath a value in- 
 jdependent of condition and birth, as the cool draught which 
 I here proffer thee is as delicious from an earthen vessel as 
 from a goblet of gold." 
 
 The Earl of Huntingdon made a suitable reply, gratefully 
 iacknowledging the various important services he had re- 
 ceived from the generous Soldan ; but when he had pledged 
 Saladin in the bowl of sherbet which the Soldan had prof- 
 fered to him, he could not help remarking with a smile. 
 ;"The brave cavalier, Ilderim, knew not of the formation of 
 lice, but the munificent Soldan cools his sherbet with snow." 
 
 " Wouldst thou have an Arab or a Kurdman as wise as a 
 Hakim ?" said the Soldan. "He who does on a disguise 
 must make the sentiments of his heart and the learning of 
 his head accord with the dress which he assumes. I desired 
 
310 IV A VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 to see how a brave and single-hearted cavalier of Frangistan 
 would conduct himself in debate with such a chief as I then 
 seemed ; and I questioned the truth of a well-known fact, 
 to know by what arguments thou wouldst support thj 
 assertion/' 
 
 While they were speaking, the Archduke of Austria, who 
 stood a little apart, was struck with the mention of iced 
 sherbet, and took with pleasure and some bluntnessthe deep 
 goblet, as the Earl of Huntington was about to replace it. 
 
 " Most delicious ! " he exclaimed, after a deep draught, 
 which the heat of the weather, and the feverishness follow- 
 ing the debauch of the preceding day, had rendered doubly 
 acceptable. He sighed as he handed the cup to the Grand 
 Master of the Templars. Saladin made a sign to the dwarf, 
 who advanced and pronounced, with a harsh voice, the 
 words, " Accipe Jwc ! " The Templar started, like a steed 
 who sees a lion under a bush beside the pathway ; yet in- 
 stantly recovered, and to hide, perliaps, his confusion, raised 
 the goblet to his lips ; but those lips never touched that 
 goblet's rim. The saber of Saladin left its sheath as light- 
 ning leaves the cloud. It was waved in the air, and the head 
 of the Grand Master rolled to the extremity of the tent, 
 while the trunk remained for a second standing, with the 
 goblet still clenched in its grasp, then fell, the liquor min- 
 gling with the blood that spurted from the veins.* 
 
 There was a general exclamation of " Treason," and 
 Austria, nearest to whom Saladin stood with the bloody 
 saber in his hand, started back as if apprehensive that his 
 turn was to come next. Eichard and others laid hand on 
 their swords. 
 
 '' Fear nothing, noble Austria," said Saladin, as compos- 
 edly as if nothing had happened, " nor you, royal England, 
 be wroth at what you have seen. Not for his manifold 
 treasons ; not for the attempt which, as may be vouched by 
 his own squire, he instigated against King Eichard's life; 
 not that he pursued the Prince of Scotland and myself in 
 the desert, reducing us to save our lives by the speed of our 
 horses ; not that he had stirred up the Maronites to attack 
 us upon this very occasion, had I not brought up unexpect- 
 edly so many Arabs as rendered the scheme abortive — not 
 for any or all of these crimes does he now lie there, although 
 each were deserving such a doom ; but because, scarce half 
 an hour ere he polluted our presence, as the simoom em- 
 poisons the atmosphere, he poniarded his comrade and ac-i (lei 
 g See Death of Grand Master. Note 11. 
 
THE TALISMAJSr 311 
 
 complice, Conrade of Montserrat, lest lie should confess the 
 hifamous plots in which they had both been engaged." 
 
 '* How ! Conrade murdered ! And by the Grand Mnster, 
 his sponsor and most intimate friend ! " exclaimed Eichard. 
 " Noble Soldan, I would not doubt thee ; yet this must be 
 proved, otherwise " 
 
 " There stands the evidence/* said Saladin, pointing to 
 the terrified dwarf. "Allah, who sends tlie firefly to illumi- 
 nate the night-season, can discover secret crimes by the most 
 contemptible means." 
 
 The Soldan proceeded to tell the dwarf's story, which 
 amounted to this : — In his foolish curiosity, or, as he partly 
 confessed, with some thoughts of pilfering, Nectabanus had 
 strayed into the tent of Conrade, which had been deserted 
 by his attendants, some of whom had left the encampment 
 to carry the news of his defeat to his brother, and others 
 were availing themselves of the means which Saladin had 
 supplied for reveling. The wounded man slept under the 
 influence of Saladin's wonderful talisman, so that the dwarf 
 had opportunity to pry about at pleasure, until he was 
 frightened into concealment by the sound of a heavy step. 
 He skulked behind a curtain, yet could see the motions, and 
 hear the words, of the Grand Master, who entered, and 
 carefully secured the covering of the pavilion behind him. 
 His victim started from sleep, and it would appear that he 
 instantly suspected the purpose of his old associate, for it 
 was in a tone of alarm that he demanded wherefore he dis- 
 turbed him. 
 
 " I come to confess and to absolve thee," answered the 
 Grand Master. 
 
 Of their further speech the terrified dwarf remembered 
 little, save that Conrade implored the Grand Master not to 
 break a wounded reed, and that the Templar struck him to 
 the heart with a Turkish dagger, with the words " Accipe 
 lioc" — words which long afterwards haunted the terrified 
 imagination of the concealed witness. 
 
 " 1 verified the tale," said Saladin, "by causing the body 
 to be examined ; and I made this unhappy being, whom 
 Allah hath made the discoverer of the crime, repeat in your 
 own presence the words which the murderer spoke ; and you 
 yourselves saw the effect which they produced upon his 
 conscience." 
 
 The Soldan paused ; and the King of England broke 
 Bilence : 
 
 " If this be true, as I doubt not, we have witnessed a great 
 
312 iVA VERLEY N VEL S 
 
 act of justice, tliough it bore a different aspect. But where- 
 fore in this presence ? wherefore with thine own hand ?" 
 
 "I' had designed otherwise," said Saladin ; " but, had I 
 not hastened his doom, it had been altogether averted, 
 since, if I had permitted him to taste of my cup, as he was 
 about to do, how could I, without incurring the brand of in- 
 hospitality, have done him to death as he deserved ? Had 
 he murdered my father, and afterwards partaken of my food 
 and my bowl, not a hair of his head could have been injured 
 by me. But enough of him — let his carcass and his memory 
 be removed from amongst us.'^ 
 
 The body was carried away, and the marks of the slaughter 
 obliterated or concealed with such ready dexterity as showed 
 that the case was not altogether so uncommon as to paralyze 
 the assistants and officers of Saladin's household. 
 
 But the Christian princes felt that the scene which they 
 had beheld weighed heavily on their spirits, and although, 
 at the courteous invitation of the Soldan, they assumed 
 their seats at the banquet, yet it was with the silence of 
 doubt and amazement. The spirits of Richard alone sur- 
 mounted all cause for suspicion or embarrassment. Yet he, 
 too, seemed to ruminate on some proposition, as if he were 
 desirous of making it in the most insinuating and accept- 
 able manner which was possible. At length he drank oif a 
 large bowl of wine, and, addressing the Soldan, desired to 
 know whether it was not true that he had honored the Earl s' 
 of Pluntingdon with a personal encounter. 
 
 Saladin answered with a smile, that he had proved his fi' 
 horse and his weapons with the heir of Scotland, as cavaliers "i 
 are wont to do with each other when they meet in the desert ; ' 
 and modestly added that, though the combat was not en- 
 tirely decisive, he had not, on his part, much reason to 
 pride himself on the event. The Scot, on the other hand, 
 disclaimed the attributed superiority, and wished to assign 
 it to the Soldan. jie' 
 
 " Enough of honor thou hast had in the encounter,^' said ""i 
 Richard, "and I envy thee more for that than for the smiles 
 of Edith Plantagenet, though one of them might reward a ' 
 bloody day's work. But what say you, noble princes ; is it 
 fitting that such a royal ring of chivalry should break up 
 without something being done for future times to speak of ? 
 What is the overthrow and death of a traitor to such a fair 
 garland of honor as. is here assembled, and which ouglit not. 
 to part without witnessing something more worthy of their 
 regard h How say you, princely Soldan ? What if we two 
 
THE TALISMAN 313 
 
 ehonld now, and before this fair company, decide the long- 
 contended question for this land of Palestine, and end at 
 once these tedious wars ? Yonder are the lists ready, nor 
 can Paynimrie ever hope a better champion than thou, I, 
 unless worthier offers, will lay down my gauntlet in behalf 
 of Christendom, and, in all love and honor, we will do 
 mortal battle for the possession of Jerusalem." 
 
 There was a deep pause for the Soldan's answer. His 
 cheek and brow colored highly, and it was the opinion of 
 many present that he hesitated whether he should accept 
 the challenge. At length he said, " Fighting for the Holy 
 City against those whom we regard as idolaters, and wor- 
 shipers of stocks and stones and graven images, I might con- 
 fide that Allah would strengthen my arm ; or if I fell be- 
 neath the sword of the Melech Ric, I could not pass to Par- 
 adise by a more glorious death. But Allah has already gi^ en 
 Jerusalem to the true believers, and it were a tempting the 
 God of the Prophet to peril, upon my own personal strength 
 and skill, that which I hold securely by the superiority of 
 my forces." 
 
 *' If not for Jerusalem, then," said Richard, in the tone 
 of one who would entreat a favor of an intimate friend, 
 *'_yet for the love of honor, let us run at least three courses 
 witli grinded lances ? " 
 
 " Even this," said Saladin, half-smiling at Cceur-de-Lion's 
 affectionate earnestness for the combat — "even this I may 
 not lawfully do. The master places the shepherd over the 
 flock, not for the shepherd's' own sake, but for the sake of 
 the sheep. Had I a son to hold the scepter when I fell, I 
 might have had the liberty, as I have the will, to brave this 
 bold encounter ; but your own Scripture sayeth, that when 
 the herdsman is smitten, the sheep are scattered." 
 
 " Thou hast had all the fortune," said Richard, turning 
 to the Earl of Huntingdon, with a sigh. " I would have 
 given the best year in my life for that one half-hour beside 
 the Diamond of the Desert ! " 
 
 The chivalrous extravagance of Richard awakened the 
 spirits of the assembly, and when at length they arose to 
 depart, Saladin advanced and took Coeur-de-Lion by the 
 hand. 
 
 " Noble King of England," he said, "we now part, never 
 to meet again. That your league is dissolved, no more to 
 be reunited, and that your native forces are far too few to 
 enable you to prosecute your enterprise, is as well known to 
 me as to yourself. I may not yield you up that Jerusalem 
 
314 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 which you so much desire to hold. It is to us, as to you, a 
 Holy City. But whatever other terms Eichard demands of 
 Saladin shall be as willingly yielded as yonder fountain 
 yields its waters. Ay, and the same should be as frankly 
 afforded by Saladin if Richard stood in the desert with but 
 two archers in his train." 
 
 The next day saw Richard's return to his own camp, and 
 in a short space afterwards the young Earl of Huntingdon 
 was espoused by Edith Plantagenet. The Soldan sent, as a 
 nuptial present on this occasion, the celebrated Talisman" : 
 but though many cures were wrought by means of it in 
 Europe, none equaled in success and celebrity those which 
 the Soldan achieved. It is still in existence, having been 
 bequeathed by the Earl of Huntingdon to a brave knight of 
 Scotland, Sir Simon of the Lee, in whose ancient and highly- 
 honored family it is still preserved ; and although charmed 
 stones have been dismissed from the modern pharmacopeia, 
 its virtues are still applied to for stopping blood and in cases 
 of canine madness. 
 
 Our story closes here, as the terms on which Richard re- 
 linquished his conquests are to be found in every history of 
 the period. 
 
 BND OF THE'TALISMAS 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 
 
 As I stood by yon roofless tower 
 
 Where the wa'ttower scents the dewy air, 
 Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower, 
 
 And tells the midnight moon her care ; 
 The winds were laid, the air was still, 
 
 The stars they sliot along the sky, 
 The fox was howling on the hill, 
 
 And the distant echoing glens reply. 
 
 Robert Bukns. 
 
ALES OF MY LANDLORD 
 
 jfourtb anO Xast Series 
 
 COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM 
 
 8CHOOLMASTEB AND PARISH-CLERK OF GANDEBCLECOH 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO CASTLE DANGEROUS 
 
 The following introduction to Castle Dangerous was forwarded 
 by Sir Walter Scott from Naples in February, 1833, together with 
 some corrections of the text, and notes on localities mentioned in 
 the Novel. 
 
 The materials for the Introduction must have been collected be- 
 fore he left Scotland, in September, 1831 ; but in the hurry of pre- 
 paring for his voyage lie had not been able to arrange them so as to 
 accompany the first edition of this Romance. 
 
 A few notes, supplied by the [original] Editor [J. G. Lockhart] , 
 are followed by his name in brackets. 
 
 The incidents on which the ensuing Novel maiiily turns are 
 derived from the ancient metrical clironicle of TJie Bruce by- 
 Archdeacon Barbour, and from Tlie HiMory of the Houses of 
 Douglas and Angus, by David Hume of Godscroft ; and are 
 sustained by the immemorial tradition of the western parts 
 of Scotland. They are so much in consonance with the spirit 
 and manners of the troubled age to which they are referred, 
 that I can see no reason for doubting their being founded in 
 fact : the names, indeed, of numberless localities in the vicin- 
 ity of Douglas Castle appear to attest, beyond suspicion, 
 many even of the smallest circumstances embraced in the 
 story of Godscroft. 
 
 Among all the associates of Robert the Bruce, in his great 
 enterprise of rescuing Scotland from the power of Edward, 
 the first place is universally conceded to James, the eighth 
 817 
 
818 WA VERLET N VEL S 
 
 Lord Douglas, to this day venerated by his countrymen as 
 ** the Good Sir James '* : 
 
 And Gud Schyr James off Douglas, 
 
 Tliat in his time sa worthy was. 
 
 That off his price and his bounte, 
 
 In fer landis renownyt wes he.— Barbour [bk. i.]. 
 
 The Good Sir James, the dreadful blacke Douglas, 
 
 That in his dayes so wise and worthie was, 
 
 Wha here, and on the infidels of Spain, 
 
 Such honor, praise, and triumphs did obtain. — Gordon.* 
 
 From the time when the King of England refused to rein- 
 state him, on his return from France, where he had received 
 the education of chivalry, in the extensive possessions of his 
 family, which had been held forfeited by the exertions of liia 
 father, William the Hardy, the young knight of Douglas 
 appears to have embraced the cause of Bruce with enthusi- 
 astic ardor, and to have adhered to the fortunes of his sov- 
 ereign with unwearied fidelity and devotion. " The Doug- 
 lasse," says Hollinshed [Hisiorie of Scotland, p. 215, ed. 
 1585], "was joyfully received of King Robert, in whose ser- 
 vice he faithfully continued, both in peace and war, to his 
 life's end. Though the surname and familie of the Doug- 
 lasses was in some estimation of nobilitie before those dales, 
 yet the rising thereof to honour chanced through this James 
 Douglasse ; for, by meanes of his advancement, others of that 
 lineage took occasion, by their singular manhood and noble 
 prowess, shewed at sundrie times in defence of the realme, 
 to grow to such height in authoritie and estimation, that 
 their mightie puissance in mainrent, lands, and great pos- 
 sessions at length was, through suspicion conceived by the 
 kings that succeeded, the cause in part of their ruinous 
 decay.*' 
 
 In every narrative of the Scottish war of independence, a 
 considerable space is devoted to those years of perilous adven- 
 ture and suffering which were spent by the illustrious friend 
 of Bruce in harassing the English detachments successively 
 occupying his paternal territory, and in repeated and success- 
 ful attempts to wrest the formidable fortress of Douglas 
 Castle itself from their possession. In the English as well 
 as Scotch Chronicles, and in Rymer's Fcedera, occur frequent 
 notices of the different officers entrusted by Edward with the 
 keeping of this renowned stronghold ; especially Sir Robert 
 de Clifford, ancestor of the heroic race of the Cliffords, Earls 
 
 * Patrick Gordon, who published in 1615, in heroic verse, the first 
 book of The History of Pi'ince Robert, surnamed the Bruce {Laing). 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CASTLE DANGEROUS 319 
 
 of Cumberland ; his lieutenants. Sir Richard dc Thiirlewalle 
 (written sometimes Thruswall), of Tiiirlwall Castle, on the 
 Tipalt in Northumberland ; and Sir John de Walton, the 
 romantic story of whose love-pledge, to hold the Castle of 
 Douglas for a year and a day, or surrender all hope of obtain- 
 ing his mistress's favor, with the tragic consequences softened 
 in the Novel, is given at length in Godscroft, and has often 
 been pointed out as one of the affecting passages in the 
 chronicles of chivalry.* 
 
 The Author, before he had made much progress in this, 
 probably the last of his Novels, undertook a journey to 
 Douglas Dale, for the purpose of examining the remains of 
 the famous castle, the kirk of St. Bride of Douglas, the patron 
 saint of that great family, and the various localities alluded 
 to by Godscroft in his account of the early adventures of 
 Good Sir James : but though he was fortunate enough to 
 find a zealous and well-informed cicerone in Mr. Thomas 
 Haddow, and had every assistance from the kindness of Mr. 
 Alexander Fiulay, the resident chamberlain of his friend, Lord 
 Douglas, the state of his health at the time was so feeble, that 
 he found himself incapable of pursuing his researches, as in 
 better days he would have delighted to do, and was ob- 
 liged to be contented with such a cursory view of scenes, in 
 themselves most interesting, as could be snatched in a single 
 morning, when any bodily exertion was painful. Mr. Had- 
 dow was attentive enough to forward subsequently some notes 
 on the points which the Author had seemed desirous of 
 investigating ; but these did not reach him until, being 
 obliged to prepare matters for a foreign excursion in quest 
 of health and strength, he had been compelled to bring his 
 work, such as it is, to a conclusion. 
 
 The remains of the old Castle of Douglas f are inconsider- 
 able. They consist indeed of but one ruined tower, standing 
 at a short distance from the modern mansion, which itself is 
 only a fragment of the design on which the Duke of Douglas 
 meant to reconstruct the edifice, after its last accidental de- 
 struction by fire. His Grace had kept in view the ancient 
 prophecy that, as often as Douglas Castle might be destroyed, 
 it should rise again in enlarged dimensions and improved 
 splendor, and projected a pile of building which, if it had 
 been completed, would have much exceeded any nobleman's 
 
 * The reader will find both this story and that of Count Robert of 
 Paris in Sir W. Scott's essay on " Chivalry," published in 1818, in 
 the Supplement to the Encyclopcedia Britannica (Lockhart). 
 tSee Note 1. 
 
320 WA VERLET NO VELS 
 
 residence then existing in Scotland, as indeed what had been 
 finished, amounting to about one-eighth part of the plan, is 
 sufficiently extensive for the accommodation of a large estab- 
 lishment, and contains some apartments the dimensions of 
 which are magnificent. The situation is commanding ; and 
 though the Duke's successors have allowed the mansion to 
 continue as he left it, great expense has been lavished on the 
 environs, which now present a vast sweep of richly undulated 
 woodland, stretching to the border of the Oairntable moun- 
 tains, repeatedly mentioned as the favorite retreat of the 
 great ancestor of the family in the days of his hardship and 
 persecution. There remains at the head of the adjoining 
 bourg the choir of the ancient cliurch of St. Bride, having 
 beneath it the vauH which was used till lately as the burial- 
 place of this princely race, and only abandoned when their 
 stone and leaden coffins had accumulated, in the course of 
 five or six hundred years, in such a way that it could accom- 
 modate no more. Here a silver case, containing the dust of 
 what was once the brave heart of Good Sir James, is still 
 pointed out ; and in the dilapidated choir above appears, 
 thougli in a sorely ruinous state, the once magnificent tomb 
 of the warrior himself. After detailing the well-known cir- 
 cumstances of Sir James's death in Spain, 20[25]th August, 
 1330, where he fell, assisting the King of Arragon in an expe- 
 dition against the Moors, when on his way back to Scotland 
 from Jerusalem, to which he had conveyed the heart of 
 Bruce, the old poet Barbour tells us [bk.xiv.] that — 
 
 Quhen his men lang mad murnyn, 
 Tliai debowalyt him, and syne 
 Gert scher him swa. that mycht be tane 
 The flesch all haly fra the bane. 
 And the cariouue thai- in haly place 
 Erdyt, with rycht gret worschip, was. 
 
 The banys haue thai with thaim tane ; 
 And syne ar to their schippis gane ; 
 
 Syne towart Scotland held thair way, 
 And thar ar cum my n in full gret hy. 
 And the banys'honorabilly 
 In till the kyrk off Douglas war 
 Erdyt, with" the dule and mekill car 
 Schyr Archebald his sonp gert syu 
 Off alabastre. bath fair and fyne, 
 Ordane a tumbe sa riciily 
 As it behowyt to swa worthy. 
 
 The monument is supposed to have been wantoniy mutilated 
 
INTRODUCTION TO CASTLE DANGEROUS 321 
 
 and defaced by a detachment of Cromwell's troops, who, as 
 was their custom, converted the kirK of St. Bride of Douglas 
 into a stable for their horses. Enougli, however, remains to 
 identify the resting-place of the Great Sir James. The effigy, 
 of dark stone, is cross-legged, marking his character as one 
 who had died after performing the pilgrimage to the Holy 
 Sepulchre, and in actual conflict with the infidels of Spain ; 
 and the introduction of the heart, adopted as an addition to 
 the old arms of Douglas, in consequence of the knight's fulfil- 
 ment of Bruce's dying injunction, appears, when taken in 
 connection with the posture of the figure, to set the question 
 at rest. The monument in its original state, must have been 
 not inferior m any respect to the best of the same period in 
 Westminster Abbey ; and the curious reader is referred for 
 farther particulars of it to Tlie Sepulchral Antiquities of 
 Great Britai?i, by Edward Blore, F.S.A. (London, 1826), 
 where may also be found interesting details of some of the 
 other tombs and effigies in the cemetery of the first house of 
 Douglas. 
 
 As considerable liberties have been taken with the his- 
 torical incidents on which this novel is founded, it is due to 
 tlie reader to place before him such extracts from Godscroft 
 and Barbour as may enable him to correct any mis-impres- 
 sion. The passages introduced in the Appendix, from the 
 ancient poem of TJie Bruce, will moreover gratify those who 
 have not in their possession a copy of the text of Barbour, 
 as given in the valuable quarto edition of my learned friend 
 Dr. Jamieson, as furnishing on the whole a favorable speci- 
 men of the style and manner of a venerable classic who 
 wrote when Scotland was still full of the fame and glory of 
 her liberators from the yoke of Plantagenet, and especially 
 of Sir James Douglas, " of whom," says Godscroft [p. 52, 
 ed. 1644], " we will not omit here (to shut up all) the judg- 
 ment of those times concerning him, in a rude verse indeed, 
 yet such as beareth witness of his true magnanimity and in- 
 vincible mind in either fortune, good or bad : — 
 
 Good Sir James Douglas, who wise, and wight, and worthy was, 
 Was never overgladin no winning, nor yet oversad for no tineing: 
 Good fortune and evil chance he weighed both in one balance. 
 
 W. S. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Hosts have been known at that dread sound to yield, 
 And, Douglas dead, his name hath won the field. 
 
 John Home. 
 
 It was at the close of an early spring day, when nature, in a 
 cold province of Scotland, was reviving from her winter's 
 sleep, and the air at least, though not the vegetation, gave 
 promise of an abatement of the rigor of the season, that 
 two travelers, whose appearance at that early period suffi- 
 ciently announced their wandering character, which, in 
 general, secured a free passage even through a dangerous 
 country, were seen coming from the southwestward, within 
 a few miles of the Castle of Douglas, and seemed to behold- 
 ing their course in the direction of the river of that name, 
 whose dale afforded a species of approach to that memo- 
 rable feudal fortress. The stream, small in comparsion to 
 the extent of its fame, served as a kind of drain to the 
 country in its neighborhood, and at the same time afforded 
 the means of a rough road to the castle and village. The 
 high lords to whom the castle had for ages belonged might, 
 had they chosen, have made this access a great deal smoother 
 and more convenient ; but there had been as yet little or no 
 exercise for those geniuses who have taught all the world 
 that it is better to take the more circuitous road round the 
 base of a hill than the direct course of ascending it on the 
 one side and descending it directly on the other, without 
 yielding a single step to render the passage more easy to the 
 traveler ; still less were those mysteries dreamed of which 
 MacAdam* has of late days expounded. But, indeed, to 
 what purpose should the ancient Douglasses have employed 
 his principles, even if they had known them in ever so much 
 perfection ? Wheel-carriages, except of the most clumsy 
 description, and for the most simple operations of agriculture, 
 were totally unknown. Even the most delicate female had 
 • See Note 2. 
 
tM WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 110 resource save a horse, or, in case of sore infirmity, a lit- 
 ter. The men use their own sturdy limbs, or hardy horses, 
 to transport themselves from place to place ; and travelers, 
 females in particular, experienced no small inconvenience 
 from the rugged nature of the country. A swollen torrent 
 sometimes crossed their path, and comj)elled them to wait 
 until the waters had abated their frenzy. The bank of a 
 small river was occasionally torn away by the eifects of a 
 thunderstorm, a recent inundation, or the like convulsions 
 of nature ; and the wayfarer relied upon his knowledge of 
 the district, or obtained the best local information in his 
 power, how to direct his path so as to surmount such un- 
 toward obstacles. 
 
 The Douglas issues from an amphitheatre of mountains 
 which bounds the valley to the southwest, from whose con- 
 tributions, and the aid of sudden storms, it receives its 
 scanty supplies. The general aspect of the countiy is that 
 of the pastoral hills of the south of Scotland, forming, as is 
 usual, bleak and wild farms, many of which had, at no great 
 iength of time from the date of the story, been covered with 
 trees, as some of them still attest by bearing the name of 
 *' shaw," that is, wild natural wood. The neighborhood of 
 the Douglas water itself was flat land, capable of bearing 
 strong crops of oats and rye, supplying the inhabitants with 
 what they required of these productions. At no great dis- 
 tance from the edge of the river, a few special spots excepted, 
 the soil capable of agriculture was more and more mixed 
 with the pastoral and woodland country, till both terminated 
 in desolate and partly inaccessible moorlands. 
 
 Above all, it was war-time, and of necessity all circum- 
 stances of mere convenience were obliged to give way to a 
 paramount sense of danger ; the inhabitants, therefore, in- 
 stead of trying to amend the paths which connected them 
 with other districts, were thankful that the natural difficul- 
 ties which surrounded them rendered itunnecessary to break 
 up or to fortify the access from more open countries. Their 
 wants, with a very few exceptions, were completely supplied, 
 as we have already said, by the rude and scanty produce of 
 their own mountains and " holms," the last of which served 
 for the exercise of their limited agriculture, while the better 
 part of the mountains and forest glens produced pasture for 
 their herds and flocks. The recesses of the unexplored 
 depths of these silvan retreats being seldom disturbed, es- 
 pecially since the lords of the district had laid aside, during 
 this time of strife, their constant occupation of hunting, the 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 825 
 
 various kinds of game had increased of late very considerably ; 
 so that not only in crossing the rougher parts of the hilly 
 and desolate country we are describing different varieties of 
 deer were occasionally seen, but even the wild cattle peculiar 
 to Scotland sometimes showed themselves, and other 
 animals, which indicated the irregular and disordered state 
 of the period. The wildcat was frequently surprised in the 
 dark ravines or the swampy thickets ; and. the wolf, already 
 a stranger to the more populous districts of the Lothians, 
 here maintained his ground against the encroachments of 
 man, and was still himself a terror to those by whom he was 
 finally to be extirpated. In winter especially — and winter 
 was hardly yet past — these savage animals were wont to be 
 driven to extremity for lack of food, and used to frequent, in 
 dangerous numbers, the battlefield, the deserted churchyard 
 — nay, sometimes the abodes of living men, there to watch 
 for children, their defenseless prey, with as much familiarity 
 as the fox nowadays will venture to prowl near the mistress's * 
 poultry-yard. 
 
 From what we have said, our readers, if they have made 
 — as who in these days has not ? — the Scottish tour, will be 
 able to form a tolerably just idea of the wilder and upper 
 part of Douglas Dale, during the earlier period of the 14th 
 century. The setting sun cast his gleams along a moorland 
 country, which to the westward broke into larger swells, ter- 
 minating in the mountains called the Larger and Lesser 
 Cairntable. The first of these is, as it were, the father of 
 the hills in the neighborhood, the source of an hundred 
 streams, and by far the largest of the ridge, still hokling in 
 his dark bosom, and in the ravines with which his sides 
 are plowed, considerable remnants of those ancient forests 
 with which all the high grounds of that quarter were once 
 covered, and particularly'the hills, in which the rivers — both 
 those which run to the east and those which seek the west 
 to discharge themselves into the Solway — hide, like so many 
 hermits, their original and scanty sources. 
 
 The landscape was still illuminated by the reflection of 
 the evening sun, sometimes thrown back from pool or stream ; 
 sometimes resting on gray rocks, huge cumberers of the soil, 
 which labor and agriculture have since removed ; and some- 
 times contenting itself with gilding the banks of the stream, 
 tinged alternately gray, green, or ruddy, as the ground it- 
 self consisted of rock, or grassy turf, or bare earthen mound, 
 
 * The good dame or -^vife of a respectable farmer is almost uni« 
 versally thus designat^td in Scotland. 
 
826 WA VERLEY NO VEL8 
 
 or looked at a distance like a rampart of dark red porphyry. 
 Occasionally, too, the eye rested on the steep brown extent 
 of moorland, as the sunbeam glanced back from the little 
 tarn or mountain pool, whose luster, like that of the eye ia 
 the human countenance, gives a life and vivacity to every 
 feature around. 
 
 The elder and stouter of the two travelers whom we have 
 mentioned was a person well, and even showily, dressed, ac- 
 cording to the finery of the times, and bore at his back, as 
 wandering minstrels were wont, a case, containing a small 
 harp, rote, or viol, or some such species of musical instru- 
 ment for accompanying the voice. The leathern case an- 
 nounced so much, although it proclaimed not the exact 
 nature of the instrument. The color of the traveler's 
 doublet was blue, and that of his hose violet, with slashes 
 which showed a lining of the same color witli the Jerkin. A 
 mantle ought, according to ordinary custom, to have covered 
 this dress ; but the heat of the sun, though the season was 
 so early, had induced the wearer to fold up his cloak in 
 small compass, and form it into a bundle, attached to the 
 shoulders like the military great-coat of the infantry soldiei 
 of the present day. The neatness with which it was made 
 up argued tne precision of a practised traveler, who had 
 been long accustomed to every resource which change of 
 weather required. A great profusion of narrow ribbons or 
 points, constituting the loops with which our ancestors con- 
 nected their doublet and hose, formed a kind of cordon, 
 composed of knots of blue or violet, which surrounded the 
 traveler's jjerson, and thus assimilated in color with the two 
 garments which it was tlie office of these strings to combine. 
 The bonnet us^ually worn witli this showy dress was of that 
 kind with which Henry the Eighth and his son, Edward the 
 Sixth, are usually represented. It was more fitted, from 
 the gay stuff of which it was composed, to appear in a public 
 place than to encounter a storm of rain. It was party- 
 colored, being made of different stripes of blue and violet ; 
 and the wearer arrogated a certain degree of gentility to 
 himself, by wearing a plume of considerable dimensions of 
 the same favorite colors. The features over which this 
 feather drooped were in no degree remarkable for peculiarity 
 of expression. Yet in so desolate a country as the west of 
 Scotland it would not have been easy to pass the man with- 
 out more minute attention than he would have met with 
 where there was more in the character of the scenery to 
 arrest the gaze of the passengers. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS B2!i 
 
 A quick eye, a sociable look, seeming to say, " Ay, look at 
 me, 1 am a man worth noticing, and not unworthy your at- 
 tention," carried with it, nevertheless, an interpretation 
 which might be thought favorable or otherwise, according to 
 the character of the person whom the traveler met. A knight 
 or soldier would merely have thought that he had met a merry 
 fellow, who could sing a wild song, or tell a wild tale, and 
 help to empty a flagon, with all the accomplishments neces- 
 sary for a boon companion at an hostelry, except perhaps an 
 alacrity at defraying his share of the reckoning. A church- 
 man, on the other hand, might have thought he of the blue 
 and violet was of too loose habits, and accustomed too little to 
 limit himself within the boundaries of beseeming mirth, to 
 be fit society for one of his sacred calling. Yet the man of 
 song had a certain steadiness of countenance, which seemed 
 fitted to hold place in scenes of serious business as well as of 
 gaiety. A wayfaring passenger of wealth, not at that time 
 a numerous class, might have feared in him a professional 
 robber, or one whom opportunity was very likely to convert 
 into such ; a female might have been apprehensive of uncivil 
 treatment ; and a youth, or timid person, might have thought 
 of murder or such direful doings. Unless privately armed, 
 however, the minstrel was ill-accoutered for any dangeroua 
 occupation. His only visible weapon was a small crooked 
 sword, like what we now call a hanger ; and the state of the 
 times would have justified any man, however peaceful hia 
 intentions, in being so far armed against the perils of the 
 road. 
 
 If a glance at this man had in any respect prejudiced him 
 in the opinion of those whom he met on his journey, a look 
 at his companion would, so far as his character could be 
 guessed at — for he was closely muffled up — have passed for 
 an apology and warrant for his associate. The younger 
 traveler was apparently in early youth, a soft and gentle boy, 
 whose Sclavonic gown, the appropriate dress of the pilgrim, 
 he wore more closely drawn about him than the coldness of 
 the weather seemed to authorize or recommend. His fea- 
 tures, imperfectly seen under the hood of his pilgrim's dress, 
 were prepossessing in a high degree ; and though he wore a 
 walking-sword, it seemed rather to be in compliance with 
 general fashion than from any violent purpose he did so. 
 There were traces of sadness upon his brow, and of teais 
 upon his cheeks ; and his weariness was such as even his 
 rougher companion seemed to sympathize with, while he 
 privately participated also in the sorrow which left its marks 
 
328 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 upon a countenance so lovely. They spoke together, and the 
 elder of the two, while he assumed the deferential air proper 
 to a man of inferior rank addressing a superior, showed, in 
 tone and gesture, something that amounted to interest and 
 affection. 
 
 "Bertram, my friend,*' said the younger of the two, ''how 
 far are w^e still from Douglas Castle ? We have already come 
 farther than the twenty miles which thou didst say was the 
 distance from Commock — or how didst thou call the last 
 hostelry which we left by daybreak ?" 
 
 "Cumnock, my dearest lady — I beg ten thousand excuses 
 — my gracious young lord/' 
 
 " Call me Augustine," replied his comrade, *' if you mean 
 to speak as is fiftest for the time." 
 
 " Nay, as for that," said Bertram, " if your ladyship can 
 condescend to lay aside your quality, my own good-breeding 
 is not so firmly sewed to me but that I can doff it and re- 
 sume it again without its losing a stitch ; and since your lady 
 ship, to whom I am sworn in obedience, is pleased to com- 
 mand that I should treat you as my own son, shame it were 
 to me if I were not to show you the affection of a father, 
 more especially as I may well swear my great oath that I owe 
 you the duty of such, though well I wot it has, in our case., 
 been the lot of the parent to be maintained by tlie kindness 
 and liberalitv of the child ; for when was it that I hungered 
 or thirsted, and the black stock * of Berkely did not relieve 
 my wants ? " 
 
 ••' I would have it so," answered the young pilgrim — " I 
 would have it so. What use of the mountains of beef and 
 the oceans of beer which they say our domains produce, if 
 there is a hungry heart among our vassalage, or especially if 
 thou, Bertram, who hast served as the minstrel of our house 
 for more than twenty years, shouldst experience such a feel- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Certes, lady," answered Bertram, " it would be like the 
 catastrophe which is told of the baron of Fastenough, when 
 his last mouse was starved to death in the very pantry ; anr" 
 if I escape this journey without such a calamity, I shall think 
 myself out of reach of thirst or famine for the whole of my 
 life." 
 
 *'Thou hast suffered already once or twice by these at- 
 tacks, my poor friend," said the lady. 
 
 ''It is little," answered Bertram," " anything that I have 
 
 * The table dormant, which stood in a baron's hall, was of tea so 
 designated. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 329 
 
 Buffered ; and I were ungrateful to give the inconvenience 
 of missing a breakfast, or making an untimely dinner, so 
 serious a name. But then I hardly see how your ladyship 
 can endure this gear much longer. You must yourself feel 
 that the plodding along these highlands, of which the Scots 
 give us such good measure in their miles, is no jesting mat- 
 ter ; and as for Douglas Castle, why, it is still three good 
 miles off."' 
 
 " The question then is," quoth the lady, heaving a sigh, 
 " what we are to do when we have so far to travel, and 
 when the castle gates must be locked long before we arrive 
 there?'' 
 
 " For that I will pledge my word," answered Bertram. 
 " The gates of Douglas, under the keeping of Sir John de 
 Walton, do not open so easily as those of the buttery hatch 
 at our own castle when it is well oiled ; and if your ladyship 
 take my advice, you will turn southward ho, and in two days 
 at farthest we shall be in a land where men's wants are pro- 
 vided for, as the inns proclaim it, with the least possible 
 delay, and the secret of this little journey shall never be 
 known to living mortal but ourselves, as sure as I am sworn 
 minstrel and man of faith." 
 
 "J thank thee for thy advice, mine honest Bertram," said 
 the lady, " but I cannot profit by it. Should thy knowledge 
 of these parts possess thee with an acquaintance with any 
 decent house, whether it belong to rich or poor, I would 
 willingly take quarters there, if I could obtain them from 
 this tune until to-morrow morning. The gates of Douglas 
 Castle will then be open to guests of so peaceful an appear- 
 ance as we carry with us, and — and — it will out — we might 
 have time to make such applications to our toilet as might 
 insure us a good reception, by drawing a comb througji our 
 locks, or such-like foppery." 
 
 "Ah, madam! "said Bertram, *' were not Sir John de 
 Walton in question, methinks I should venture to reply, that 
 an unwashed brow, an unkempt head of hair, and a look far 
 more saucy than your ladyship ever wears, or can wear, were 
 tl)e proper disguise to trick out that minstrel's boy whom 
 you wish to represent in the present pageant." 
 
 '' Do you suffer your youthful pupils to be indeed so 
 slovenly and so saucy, Bertram ?" answered the lady. " 1 
 for one will not imitate them in that particular ; and whether 
 Sir John be now in the Castle of Douglas or not, I will treat 
 the soldiers who hold so honorable a charge with a washed 
 brow and a head of hair somewhat ordered. As for going 
 
330 IVAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 back without seeing a castle whicli has mingled even with 
 my very dreams — at a word, Bertram, thou mayst go that 
 way, but I will not." 
 
 " And if I part with your ladyship on such terms," re- 
 sponded the minstrel, "now your frolic is so nearly accom- 
 plished, it shall be the foul fiend himself, and nothing more 
 comely or less dangerous, that shall tear me from your side ; 
 and for lodging, there is not fai from hence the house of one 
 Tom Dickson of Hazelside, one of the most honest fellows of 
 ■;he dale, and who, although a laboring man, ranked as high 
 as a warrior, wlien I was in this country, as any noble gentLe- 
 man that rode in the band of the Douglas." 
 
 " He is, then, a soldier ? " said the lady. 
 
 " When his country or his lord need liis sword," replied 
 Bertram, ''and, to say the truth, they are seldom at peace ; 
 but otherwise, he is no enemy, save to the wolf which plun- 
 ders his herds." 
 
 " But forget not, my trusty guide," replied the lady, 
 *' that the blood in our veins is English, and, consequently, 
 that we are in danger from all who call themselves foes to 
 the ruddy cross." 
 
 " Do not fear this man's faith," answered Bertram. " You 
 may trust to him as to the best knight or gentleman of the 
 land. We may make good our lodging by a tune or a song ; 
 and it may remember you that I undertook, provided it 
 pleased your ladyship, to temporize a little with the Scots, 
 who, poor souls, love minstrelsy, and when they have but a 
 silver penny will willingly bestow it to encourage the gay 
 science — I promised you, I say, that we should be as welcome 
 to them as if we had been born amidst their own wild hills ; 
 and for the best that such a house as Dickson's affords, the 
 gleeman's son, fair lady, shall not breathe a wish in vain. 
 And liow, will you speak your mind to your devoted friend 
 and adopted father, or rather your sworn servant and guide, 
 Bertram the Minstrel, what it is your pleasure to do in this 
 matter ? " 
 
 ''0, we will certainly accept of the Scot's hospitality," 
 said the lady, "your minstrel word being plighted that he 
 is a true man. Tom Dickson, call you him ? " 
 
 "Yes," replied Bertram, "such is his name; and by 
 looking on these sheep, I am assured that we are now upon 
 his land." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the lady, with some surprise ; " and how 
 is your wisdom aware of that ? " 
 
 ** I see the firstletter of his name marked upon this flock." 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 331 
 
 answered the guide. " Ah, learning is what carries a man 
 through the world, as well as if he had tlie ring by virtue of 
 which old minstrels tell that Adam understood the language 
 of the beasts in Paradise. Ah, madam ! there is more wit 
 taught in the shepherd's shieling than thelady thinks of who 
 sews her painted seam in her summer bower.'' 
 
 " Be it so, good Bertram. And altliough not so deeply 
 skilled in the knowledge of written language as you are, it 
 is impossible for me to esteem its value more than I actually 
 do ; so hold we on the nearest road to this Tom Dickson's, 
 whose very sheep tell of his whereabout. I trust we have 
 not very far to go, although the knowledge that our journev 
 is shortened by a few miles has so much recovered my fatigua 
 that methinks I could dance all the rest of the way." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Rosalind. Well, this is the Forest of Arden. 
 
 Touchstone. Aye, now am I in Arden ; the more fool I. When I 
 was at home I was in a better place ; but travelers must be content, 
 
 Bos. Aye, be so, good Touclistone. Look you, who comes here ; 
 a young man and an old, in solemn talk. 
 
 As You Like It, Act II. Scene IV. 
 
 As the travelers spoke together, they reached a turn of the 
 path which presented a more extensive prospect than the 
 broken face of the country had yet shown them. A valley, 
 through which flowed a small tributary stream, exhibited 
 the wild, but not unpleasant, features of " a long vale of 
 green bracken," here and there besprinkled with groups of 
 alder-trees, of hazels, and of copse oak-wood, which had 
 maintained their stations in the recesses of the valley, 
 although they had vanished from the loftier and more ex- 
 posed sides of the hills. The farm-house, or mansion-house, 
 for, from its size and appearance, it might iiave been the one 
 or the other, was a large but low building, and the walls of 
 the outhouses were sufficiently strong to resist any band of 
 casual depredators. There was nothing, however, which 
 could withstand a more powerful force ; for, in a country laid 
 waste by war, the farmer was then, as now, obliged to take 
 his chance of the great evils attendant upon that state of 
 things ; and his condition, never a very eligible one, was 
 rendered considerably, worse by the insecurity attending it. 
 About half a mile farther was seen a Gothic building of very 
 small extent, having a half-dismantled chapel, which the 
 minstrel pronounced to be tlie abbey of St. Bride. "The 
 place,'" he said, " I understand, is allowed to subsist, as two 
 or three old monks and as many nuns, wliom it contains, 
 are permitted by the English to serve God there, and some- 
 times to give relief to Scottish travelers ; and who have ac- 
 cordingly taken assurance with Sir John de Walton, and 
 accepted as their superior a churchman on whom he thinks 
 he can depend. But if these guests happen to reveal any 
 secrets, they are, by some means or other, believed to fly 
 towards the English governor ; and therefore, unless your 
 ladyship's commands be positive, I think we had best not 
 trust ourselves to their hospitality.'* 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 338 
 
 **0f a surety, no," said the lady, "if thon canst provide 
 me with lodgings wliere we shall have more prudent hosts." 
 
 At this moment, two human forms were seen to approach 
 the farm-house in a different direction from the travelers 
 and speaking so high, in a tone apparently of dispute, that 
 the minstrel and his companion could distinguish their 
 voices though the distance was considerable. Having 
 screened his eyes with his hand for some minutes, Bertram 
 at length exclaimed, " By Our Lady, it is my old friend, 
 Tom Dickson, sure enough ! What can make him in such 
 bad humor with the lad, who, I think, may be the little wild 
 boy, his son Charles, who used to run about and plait rushes 
 some twenty years ago ? It is lucky, however, we have 
 found our friends astir; for, I warrant, Tom hath a hearty 
 piece of beef in the pot ere he goes to bed, and he must have 
 changed his wont if an old friend hath not his share ; and 
 who knows, had we come later, at what hour they may now 
 find it convenient to drop latch and draw bolt so near a 
 hostile garrison ; for, if we call things by their right names, 
 such is the proper term for an English garrison in the castle 
 of a Scottish nobleman." 
 
 " Foolish man," answered the lady, " thou judgest of Sir 
 John de Walton as thou wouldst of some rude boor, to whom 
 the opportunity of doing what he wills is a temptation and 
 license to exercise cruelty and oppression. Now, I could 
 plight you my word that, setting apart the quarrel of the 
 kingdoms, which, of course, will be fought out in fair battle 
 on both sides, you will find that English and Scottish, within 
 this domain, and within the reach of Sir John de Walton's 
 infiuence, live together as that same fiock of sheep and goats 
 do with the shepherd's dog — a foe from whom they fly upon 
 certain occasions, but around whom they nevertheless eagerly 
 gather for protection should a wolf happen to show himself." 
 
 "^ It is not to your ladyship," answered Bertram, " that I 
 should venture to state my opinion of such matters ; but the 
 young knight, when he is sheathed in armor, is a different 
 being from him who feasts in halls among press of ladies ; 
 and he that feasts by another man's fireside, and when his 
 landlord, of all men in the world, chances to be the Black 
 Douglas, has reason to keep his eyes about him as he makes 
 his meal. But it were better I looked after our own evening 
 refreshment than that I stood here gaping and talking about 
 other folks' matters." So saying, he called out in a thun- 
 dering tone of voice, '' Dickson ! — what ho, Thomas Dick- 
 eon I will you not acknowledge an old friend, who is much 
 
334 WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 disposed to trust his supper and night's lodging to your 
 hospitality ? " 
 
 The Scotchman, attracted by the call, looked first along 
 the banks of the river, then upwards to the bare side of the 
 hill, and at length cast his eyes upon the two figures who 
 were descending from it. 
 
 As if he felt the night colder while he advanced from the 
 more sheltered part of the valley to meet them, the Douglas 
 Dale farmer wrapped closer around him the gray plaid which, 
 from an early period, has been used by the shepherds of the 
 south of Scotland, and the appearance of which gives a 
 romantic air to the peasantry and middle classes ; and which, 
 although less brilliant and gaudy in its colors, is as pictur- 
 esque in its arrangement as the more military tartan mantle 
 of the Highlands. When they approached near to each 
 other, the lady might observe that this friend of her guide 
 was a stout athletic man, somewhat past the middle of life, 
 and already showing marks of the approach, but none of the 
 infirmities, of age, uj)on a countenance which had been ex- 
 posed to many a storm. Sharp eyes, too, and a quick obser- 
 vation, exhibited signs of vigilance, acquired by one who had 
 lived long in a country where he had constant occasion for 
 looking around him with caution. His features were still 
 swollen with displeasure ; and the handsome young man who 
 attended him seemed to be discontented, like one who had 
 undergone no gentle marks of his father's indignation, and 
 who, from the sullen expression which mingled with an ap- 
 pearance of shame on his countenance, seemed at once affected 
 by anger and remorse. 
 
 " Do you not remember me, old friend ? " said Bertram, 
 as they approached within a distance for communing ; "or 
 have the twenty years which have marched over us since we 
 met carried along with them all remembrance of Bertram, 
 the English minstrel ? " 
 
 "In troth," answered the Scot, "it is not for want of 
 plenty of your countrymen to keep you in my remembrance, 
 and I have hardly heard one of them so much as whistle 
 Hey, now the day dawns, 
 
 but it has recalled some note of your blithe rebeck ; and yet 
 such animals are we, that I had forgot the mien of my old 
 friend, and scarcely knew him at a distance. But we have 
 had trouble lately : there are a thousand of your countrymen 
 that keep garrison in the Perilous Castle of Douglas yonder, 
 as well as in other places througli the vale, and that is but a 
 woful sight for a true Scotchman ; even my own poor house 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 335 
 
 has not escaped the dignity of a garrison of a man-at-arms, 
 besides two or three archer knaves, and one or two slips of 
 mischievous boys called pages, and so forth, who will not let 
 a man say, ' this is my own/ by his own fireside. Do not, 
 therefore, think hardly of me, old comrade, if I show you a 
 welcome something colder than you might expect from a 
 friend of other days ; for, by St. Bride of Douglas, I have 
 scarcely anything left to which I can say welcome." 
 
 " Small welcome will serve," said Bertram. " My son, 
 make thy reverence to thy father's old friend. Augustine 
 is learning my joyous trade, but he will need some practise 
 ere he can endure its fatigues. If you could give him some 
 little matter of food, and a quiet bed for the night, there's no 
 fear but that we shall both do well enough ; for I daresay when 
 you travel with my friend Charles there — if that tall youth 
 chance to be my old acquaintance Charles — you will find your- 
 self accommodated when his wants are once well provided for." 
 
 " Nay, the foul fiend take me if I do," answered the Scot- 
 tish husbandman. " I know not what the lads of this day 
 are made of — not of the same clay as their fathers to be sure 
 — not sprung from the heather, which fears neither wind nor 
 rain, but from some delicate plant of a foreign country, which 
 will not thrive unless it be nourished under glass, with a 
 murrain to it I The good Lord of Douglas — I have been his 
 henchman, and can vouch for it — did not in his pagehood 
 desire such food and lodging as, in the present day, will 
 hardly satisfy such a lad as your friend Charles." 
 
 " Nay," said Bertram, " it is not that my Augustine is 
 over nice ; but, for other reasons, I must request of you a 
 bed to himself : he hath of late been unwell." 
 
 "Ay, I understand," said Dickson, ''your son hath had a 
 touch of that illness which terminates so frequently in the 
 black death you English folk die of ? ^e hear much of the 
 havoc it has made to the southward. Comes it hitherward ? " 
 
 Bertram nodded. 
 
 " Well, my father's house," continued the farmer, " hath 
 more rooms than one, and your son shall have one well aired 
 and comfortable ; and for supper, ye shall have a part of 
 what is prepared for your countrymen, though I would rather 
 have their room than their company. Since I am bound to 
 feed a score of them, they will not dispute the claim of such 
 a skilful minstrel as thou art to a night's hospitality, I am 
 ashamed to say that I must do their bidding even in my own 
 house. Well-a-day, if my good lord were in possession of 
 his own, I have heart and hand enough to turn the whole of 
 them out of my house, like — like " 
 
836 WAVERLEY NOVELS. 
 
 "To speak plainly," said Bertram, 'Mike a Southron 
 strolling gang from Redesdale, whom I have seen voii fling 
 out of your house like a litter of blind puppies when not one 
 of them looked behind to see who had done him the courtesy 
 until he was half-way to Cairntable." 
 
 _ "Ay," answered the Scotchman, drawing himself up at least 
 six inches taller than before ; " then I had a house of my own, 
 and a cause and an arm to keep it. Now I am — what signifies 
 it what I am ?— the noblest lord in Scotland is little better.' 
 
 " Truly, friend," said Bertram, " now you view this mat- 
 ter in a rational light. I do not say that the wisest, the 
 richest, or the strongest man in this world has any right to 
 tyrannize over his neighbor, because he is the more weak, 
 ignorant, and the poorer ; but, yet, if he does enter into such 
 a controversy, he must submit to the course of nature, and 
 that will always give the advantage in the tide of battle to 
 wealth, strength, and health." 
 
 "'With permission, however," answered Dickson, "the 
 weaker party, if he uses his faculties to the utmost, may, in 
 the long-run, obtain revenge upon the author of his suffer- 
 ings, which would be at least compensation for his temporary 
 submission ; and he acts simply as a man, and most foolishly 
 as a Scotchman, whether he sustains these wrongs M'ith the 
 insensibility of an idiot or whether he endeavor to revenge 
 them before Heaven's appointed time has arrived. But if 1 
 talk thus I shall scare you, as I have scared some of your 
 countrymen, from accepting a meal of meat and a night's 
 lodging in a house where you might be called with the morn- 
 ing to a bloody settlement of a national quarrel." 
 
 " ISTever mind," said Bertram, " we have been known to 
 each other of old ; and I am no more afraid of meeting un- 
 kindness in your house than you expect me to come here for 
 the purpose of addii^g to the injuries of which you com- 
 plain. " 
 
 " So be it," said Dickson ; " and you, my old friend, are as 
 welcome to my abode as when it never held any guest save of 
 my own inviting. And you, my young friend, Master Augus- 
 tine, shall be looked after as we'll as if you came with a gay 
 brow and alight cheek, such as best becomes the gay science." 
 
 " But wherefore, may I ask," said Bertram, " so much 
 displeased but now at my young friend Charles ? " 
 
 The youth answered before his father had time to speak. 
 " My father, good sir, may put what show upon it he will, 
 but shrewd and wise men wax weak in the brain in these 
 troubloas times. He saw two or three wolves seize upon 
 
VASTLE DANGEROUS 337 
 
 three of our choicest wethers ; and beeiiuse I shouted to give 
 the ahirm to the English garrison, he was angry as if he 
 could have murdered me — just for saving the sheep from the 
 jaws that would have devoured them/' 
 
 " This is a strange account of thee, old friend," said Ber- 
 tram. " Dost thou connive with the wolves in robbing thine 
 own fold?" 
 
 " Why, let it pass if thou lovest me," answered the coun- 
 tryman: "Charles could tell thee something nearer the 
 truth if he had a mind ; but for the present let it pass." 
 
 The minstrel, perceiving that the Scotchman was fretted 
 and embarrassed with the subject, pressed it no farther. 
 
 At this moment, in crossing the threshold of Thomas 
 Dickson's house, they were greeted with sounds from two 
 English soldiers within. " Quiet, Anthony," said one voice 
 — " quiet, man ! for the sake of common sense, if not com- 
 mon manners ; Robin Hood himself never sat down to his 
 board ere the roast was ready." 
 
 " Ready !" quoth another rough voice ; "it is roasting to 
 rags, and small had been the knave Dickson's share, even of 
 these rags, had it not been the express orders of the worship- 
 ful Sir John de Walton that the soldiers who lie at outposts 
 should afford to the inmates such provisions as are not nec- 
 essary for their own subsistence." 
 
 " Hush, Anthony — hush, for shame !" replied his fellow- 
 soldier, *' if ever I heard our host's step, I heard it this in- 
 stant ; so give over thy grumbling, since our captain, as we 
 all know, hath prohibited, under strict penalties, all quar- 
 rels between his followers and the people of the country." 
 
 "I am sure," replied Anthony, " that I have ministered 
 occasion to none ; but I would I were equally certain of the 
 L^ood meaning of this sullen-browed Thomas Dickson to- 
 wards the English soldiers, for I seldom go to bed in this 
 dungeon of a house but I expect my throat will gape as 
 wide as a thirsty oyster before I awaken. Here he comes, 
 however," added Anthony, sinking his sharp tones as he 
 spoke ; '•' and I hope to be excommunicated if he has not 
 brought with him that mad animal, his son Charles, and 
 two other strangers, hungry enough, I'll be sworn, to eat 
 up the whole supper, if they do us no other injury." 
 
 " Shame of thyself, Anthony," repeated his comrade ; "a 
 good archer thou as ever wore Kendal green, and yet affect 
 to be frightened for two tired travelers, and alarmed for the 
 inroad their hunger may make on the night's meal. There 
 are four or five of us here ; we have our bows and our bills 
 38 
 
338 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 within reach, and scorn to be chased from our supper, or 
 cheated out of our share of it, by a dozen Scotchmen, 
 whether stationary or strollers. How say'st thou ? " he 
 added, turning to Dickson — " how say ye, quartermaster ? it 
 is no secret that, by the directions given to our post, we 
 must inquire into the occupations of such guests as you may 
 receive besides ourselves, your unwilling inmates ; you are 
 as ready for supper, I warrant, as supper is for you, and I 
 will only delay you and my friend Anthony, who becomes 
 dreadfully impatient, until you answer two or three ques- 
 tions which you wot of." 
 
 " Bend-the-Bow," answered Dickson, *' thou art a civil 
 fellow ; and although it is something hard to be constrained 
 to give an account of one's friends, because they chance. to 
 quarter in one's own house for a night or two, yet I must 
 submit to the times, and make no vain opposition. You 
 may mark down in your breviary there that, upon the four- 
 teenth day before Palm Sunday, Thomas Dickson brought 
 to his house of Hazelside, in which you hold garrison, by 
 orders from the English governor. Sir John de Walton, two 
 strangers, to whom the said Thomas Dickson had promised 
 refreshment and a bed for the evening, if it be lawful at this 
 time and place." 
 
 " But what are they— these strangers ? " said Anthony, 
 Bomewhat sharply. 
 
 " A fine world the while," murmured Thomas Dickson, 
 ** that an honest man should be forced to answer the ques- 
 tions of every paltry companion ! " But he mitigated his 
 voice and proceeded — " The eldest of my guests is Bertram, 
 an ancient English ministrel, who is bound on his own er- 
 rand to the Castle of Douglas, and will communicate what 
 he has to say of news to Sir John de Walton himself. _ I 
 have known him for twenty years, and never heard anything 
 of him save that he was good man and trne. The younger 
 stranger is his son, a lad recovering from the English disor- 
 der, which has been raging far and wide in Westmoreland 
 and Cumberland.-' 
 
 " Tell me," said Bend-the-Bow, *' this same Bertram, was 
 he not about a year since in the service of some noble lady 
 in our own country ?" 
 
 " I have heard so," answered Dickson. 
 
 " We shall, in that case, I think, incur little danger," 
 replied Bend-the-Bow, ''by allowing this old man and hia 
 son to proceed on their journey to the castle." 
 
 ** You are my elder and my better," answered Anthony ; 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 339 
 
 " but I may remind you that it is not so clearly our duty to 
 give free passage into a garrison of a thousand men of all 
 ranks to a youth who has been so lately attacked by a con- 
 tagious disorder ; and I question if our commander would 
 not rather hear that the Black Douglas, with a hundred devils 
 as black as himself, since such is his color, had taken pos- 
 session of the outpost of Hazelside with sword and battle- 
 ax than that one person suffering under this fell sickness 
 had entered peaceably, and by the opened wicket of the 
 castle." 
 
 " There is something in what thou sayest, Anthony," re- 
 plied his comrade; "and considering that our governor, 
 since he has undertaken the troublesome job of keeping a 
 castle which is esteemed so much more dangerous than any 
 other within Scotland, has become one of the most cautious 
 and jealous men in the world, we had better, I think, inform 
 him of the circumstance, and take his commands how the 
 stripling is to be dealt with." 
 
 " Content am I," said the archer ; " and first, methinks, 
 I would just, in order to show that we know what belongs to 
 such a case, ask the stripling a few questions, as how long 
 he has been ill, by what physicians he has been attended, 
 when he was cured, and how his cure is certified, etc." 
 
 " True, brother," said Bend-the-Bow. '' Thou hearest, 
 minstrel, we would ask thy son some questions. What has 
 become of him ? He was in this apartment but now." 
 
 "So please you," answered Bertram, "he did but pass 
 through the apartment. Mr. Thomas Dickson, at my en- 
 treaty, as well as in respectful reverence to your honor's 
 health, carried him through the* room without tarriance, 
 judging his own bed-chamber the fittest place for a young 
 man recovering from a severe illness, and after a day of no 
 small fatigue." 
 
 "Well," answered the elder archer, "though it is un- 
 common for men who, like us, live by bow-string and quiver, 
 to meddle with interrogations and examinations ; yet, as the 
 case stands, we must make some inquiries of your son ere 
 we permit him to set forth to the Castle of Douglas, where 
 you say his errand leads him." 
 
 •' Rather my errand, noble sir," said the minstrel, "than 
 that of the young man himself." 
 
 " If such be the case," answered Bend-the-Bow, " we may 
 sufficiently do our duty by sending yourself, with the first 
 gray light' of dawn, to the castle, and letting your son remain 
 in bed, which I warrant is the fittest place for him, until we 
 
340 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 shall receive Sir John de Walton's commands whether he is 
 to be brought onAvard or not." 
 
 " And we may as well," said Anthony, "since we are to 
 have this man's company at supper, make him acquainted 
 with the rules of the out garrison stationed here for the 
 time," So saying, he pulled a scroll from his leathern pouch, 
 and said, '' Minstrel, canst thou read ? " 
 
 "It becomes my calling," said the minstrel. 
 
 " It has nothing to do with mine, though," answered the 
 archer, " and therefore do thou read these regulations aloud ,• 
 for, since I do not comprehend these characters by sight, I 
 lose no chance of having them read over to me as often as I 
 can, that I may fix their sense in my memory. So beware 
 that thou readest the words letter for letter as they are set 
 down ; for thou dost so at thy peril, sir minstrel, if thou 
 readest not like a true man." 
 
 " On my minstrel word," said Bertram, and began to read 
 excessively slow, for he wished to gaiii a little time for 
 consideration, which he foresaw would be necessary to pre- 
 vent his being separated from his mistress, which was likely 
 to occasion her mucli anxiety and distress. He therefore 
 began thus : "-'Outpost at Hazelside,* the steading of 
 Goodman Thomas Dickson.' Ay, Thomas, and is thy 
 house so called ? " 
 
 " It is the ancient name of the steading," said the Scot, 
 "being surrounded by a hazel-shaw, or thicket." 
 
 " Hold your chattering tongue, minstrel," said Anthony, 
 " and proceed, as you value that or your ears, which you 
 seem disposed to make less use of." 
 
 " ' His garrison,' " proceeded the minstrel, reading, 
 "'consists of a lance with its furniture.' "What, then, a 
 lance, in other words, a belted knight, commands this 
 party ? " 
 
 " 'Tis no concern of thine," said the archer. 
 
 " But it is," answered the minstrel : " we have a right to 
 be examined by the highest person in presence." 
 
 " I will show thee, thou rascal," said the archer, starting 
 up, " that 1 am lance enough for thee to reply to, and I will 
 break thy head if thou say'st a word more." 
 
 " Take care, brother Anthony," said his comrade, " we 
 are to use travelers courteously — and, with your leave, those 
 travelers best who come from our native l"nd." 
 
 " It is even so stated here," said the minstrel, and he pro- 
 ceeded to read — " ' The watch at this outpost of Hazelside 
 *See Notes. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 341 
 
 fihall stop and examine all travelers passing by the said 
 station, suffering such to pass onwards to the town of Doug- 
 las, or to Douglas Castle, always interrogating them with 
 civility, and detaining and turning them back if there arise 
 matter of suspicion ; but conductiiig themselves in all mat- 
 ters civilly and courteously to the people of tlie country, and 
 to those who travel in it." You see, most excellent and 
 valiant archer," added the commentator Bertram, " that 
 courtesy and civility are, above all, recommended to your 
 worship in your conduct towards the inhabitants, and those 
 passengers who, like us, may chance to fall under your rules 
 in such matters/^ 
 
 " I am not to be told at this time of day," said the archer, 
 " how to conduct myself in the discharge of my duties. Let 
 me advise you, sir minstrel, to be frank and open in your 
 answers to our inquiries, and you shall have no reason to 
 complain.'" 
 
 " I hope, at all events," said the minstrel, " to have your 
 favor for my son, who is a delicate stripling, and not accus- 
 tomed to play his part among the crew which inhabit this 
 wild world." 
 
 " Well," continued the elder and more civil of the two 
 archers, " if thy son be a novice in this terrestrial naviga- 
 tion, I warrant that thou, my friend, from thy look and 
 manner of speech, hast enough of skill to use thy compass. 
 To comfort thee, although thou must thyself answer the 
 questions of our governor or deputy-governor, in order that 
 he may see there is no offense in thee, I think there may be 
 permission granted for thy son's residing here in the con- 
 vent hard b}' — where the nuns, by the way, are as old as the 
 monks, and have nearly as long beards, so thou mayst be 
 easv about thy son's morals — until thou hast done thy 
 business at Douglas Castle, and art ready to resume thy 
 journey." 
 
 " If such permission," said the minstrel, " can be obtained, 
 I should be better pleased to leave him at the abbey, and go 
 myself, in the first place, to take the directions of your com- 
 manding-officer." 
 
 " Certainly," answered the archer, " that will be the 
 safest and best way ; and with a piece or two of money thou 
 mayst secure the protection of the abbot." 
 
 '"' Thou say'st well," answered the minstrel ; '' I have 
 known life, I hive known every stile, gap, pathway, and 
 pass of this wilderness of ours for some thirty years ; and he 
 that cannot steer his course fairly through it like au able 
 
342 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 seaman, after having served such an apprenticeship can trar; 
 hardly ever be taught, were a century to be given him toilioi 
 learn it in." 
 
 *' Since thou art so expert a mariner/' answered the archer 'is 
 Anthony, " thou hast, I warrant me, met in thy wanderings 
 a potation called a morning's draught, which they who are 
 conducted by others where they themselves lack experience 
 are used to bestow upon those who undertake the task of 
 guide upon such an occasion ? " 
 
 " I understand you, sir," quoth the minstrel ; " and al- 
 though money, or 'drink-geld,' as the Fleming calls it, is|o 
 rather a scarce commodity in the purse of one of my calling, 
 yet, according to my feeble ability, thou shalt have no cause 
 to complain that thine eyes or those of thy comrades have 
 been damaged by a Scottish mist while we can find an 
 English coin to pay for the good liquor which should wash 
 them clear." 
 
 " Content," said the archer ; '' we now understand eaci 
 other, and if difficulties arise on the road, thou shalt not 
 want the countenance of Anthony to sail triumphantly 
 through them. But thou hadst better let thy son know 
 soon of the early visit to the abbot to-morrow, for thou 
 mayst guess that we cannot and dare not delay our depart- 
 ure for the convent a minute after the eastern sky is ruddy ; 
 and, with other infirmities, young men often are prone to 
 laziness and a love of ease." 
 
 " Thou shalt have no reason to think so," answered the 
 minstrel : " not the lark himself, when waked by the first 
 ray peeping over the black cloud, springs more lightly to 
 the sky than will my Augustine answer the same brilliant 
 summons. And now we understand each other, I would 
 only further pray you to forbear light talk while my son is 
 in your company, — a boy of innocent life, and timid in con- 
 versation." 
 
 " Nay, jolly minstrel," said the elder archer, " thou givest 
 us here too gross an example of Satan reproving sin. If 
 thou hast followed thy craft for twenty years, as thou pre- 
 tendest, thy son, having kept thee company since child^ 
 hood, must by this time be fit to open a school to teacli 
 even devils the practise of the seven deadly sins, of which 
 none know the theory if those of the gay science are lacking." 
 
 " Truly, comrade, thou speakest well," answered Bertram, 
 " and I acknowledge that we minstrels are too much to blame 
 in this matter. Nevertheless, in good sooth, the fault is not 
 one of which I myself am particularly guilty ; on the con- 
 
 p\ 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 343 
 
 rar}^, I think that he who would wish to have his own hair 
 lonored when time lias strewed it with silver should so rein 
 lis mirth when in the presence of the young as may show in 
 *fhat respect he holds innocence. I will, therefore, with 
 /our permission, speak a word to Augustine, that to-morrow 
 NQ must be on foot early." 
 
 " Do so, my friend," said the English soldier; ''and do 
 he same the more speedily that our poor supper is still 
 iwaiting until thou art ready to partake of it." 
 
 ** To which, I promise thee," said Bertram, " I am disposed 
 o entertain no delay." 
 
 ''Follow me, then," said Dickson, "and I will show thee 
 vhere this young bird of thine has his nest." 
 
 Their host accordingly tripped up the wooden stair, and 
 apped at a door, which he thus indicated was that of his 
 '■ounger guest. 
 
 " Your father," continued he, as the door opened, " would 
 peak with you. Master Augustine." 
 
 "Excuse me, my host," answered Augustine ; "the truth 
 s that this room being directly above your eating-chamber, 
 .nd the flooring not in the best possible repair, I have been 
 ompelled to the unhandsome practise of eavesdropping, 
 ^nd not a word has escaped me that passed concerning my 
 )ropo3ed residence at the abbey, our journey to-morrow, 
 ,nd the somewhat early hour at which I must shake o3 
 loth, and, according to thy expression, fly down from the 
 oost." 
 
 " And how dost thou relish," said Dickson, " being left 
 nth the abbot of St. Bride's little flock here ?" 
 
 ' Why, well," said the youth, "if the abbot is a man of 
 espectability becoming his vocation, and not one of those 
 waggering churchmen who stretch out the sword, and bear 
 hemselves like rank soldiers in these troublous times." 
 
 "For that, young master," said Dickson, "if you let him 
 »ut his hand deep enough into your purse, he will hardly 
 uarrel with anything." 
 
 " Then I will leave him to my father," replied Augustine, 
 ' who will not grudge him anything he asks in reason." 
 
 "■ In that case," replied the Scotchman, "you may trust 
 o our abbot for good accommodation ; and so both sides are 
 .leased." 
 
 " It is well, my son," said Bertram, who now joined in the 
 onversation ; "and that thou mayst be ready for thy early 
 raveling, I shall presently get our host to send thee some 
 ood, after partaking of which thou shouldst go to bed and 
 
344 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Bleep off the fatigue of to-day, since to-morrow will bring 
 work for itself." 
 
 '* And as for thy engagement to these honest archer 
 answered Augustine, " I hope you will be able to do what 
 will give pleasure to our guides, if they are disposed to be 
 civil and true men." 
 
 " God bless thee, my child ! " answered Bertram : " thou 
 knowest already what would drag after thy beck all the Eng 
 lish archers that were ever on this side of the Solway. There 
 is no fear of r gray-goose shaft, if you sing a reveiUez like to 
 that whicli chimed even now from that silken nest of dainty 
 young goldfinches." 
 
 ''Hold me as in readiness, then," said the seeming youth, 
 " when you depart to-morrow morning. I am within hear 
 ing, I suppose, of the bells of St. Bride's chapel, and have 
 no fear, through my sloth, of keeping you or your company 
 waiting." 
 
 "Good night, and God bless thee, my child !" again said 
 the minstrel; "remember that your father sleeps not far 
 distant, and on the slightest alarm will not fail to be with 
 you. I need scarce bid thee recommend thyself, meantime, 
 to the great Being who is the friend and father of us all." 
 
 The pilgrim thanked his supposed father for his evening 
 blessing, and the visitors withdrew without farther speech at 
 the time, leaving the young lady to those engrossing fears 
 which, the novelty of her situation and the native delicacy 
 of her sex being considered, naturally thronged upon her, 
 
 The tramp of a horse's foot was not long after heard at the 
 house of Hazelside, and the rider was welcomed by its garrison 
 with marks of respect. Bertram understood so much as to 
 discover from the conversation of the warders that this late 
 arrival was Aymer de Valence, the knight who commanded 
 the little party, and to the furniture of whose lance, as it 
 was technically called, belonged the archers with whom we 
 have already been acquainted, a man-at-arms or two, a certain 
 proportion of pages or grooms, and, in short, the command 
 and guidance of the garrison at Thomas Dickson's, while in 
 rank he was deputy-governor of Douglas Castle. 
 
 To prevent all susi^icion repecting himself and his com-'*'" 
 panion, as well as the risk of the latter being disturbed, the 
 minstrel thought it proper to present himself to the inspec- ■ 
 tion of this knight, the great authority of the little place.Faji 
 He found him, with as little scruple as the archers hereto-"''^- 
 fore, making a suj)per off the relics of the roast-beef, ' 
 
 Before this young knight Bertram underwent an examina- • 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 345 
 
 tion, while an old soldier took down in writing such items of 
 information as the examinate thought proper to express in 
 liis replies, both with regard to the minutia? of his present 
 journey, his business at Castle Douglas, and his route when 
 that business should be accomplished — a much more minute 
 examination, in a word, than he had hitherto undergone by 
 the archers, or perhaps than was quite agreeable to him, be- 
 ing encumbered with at least the knowledge of one secret, 
 whatever more. Not that this new examinator had anything 
 stern or severe in his looks or his questions. As to the first, 
 he was mild, gentle, and ''meek as a maid,^' and possessed 
 
 xactly of the courteous manners ascribed by our father 
 Chaucer to the pattern of chivalry whom he describes upon 
 his pilgrimage to Canterbury. But, with all his gentleness, 
 De Valence showed a great degree of acuteuess and accuracy 
 in his queries ; and well pleased was Bertram that the young 
 knight did not insist upon seeing his supposed son, although 
 9ven in that case his ready wit had resolved, like a seaman 
 
 n a tempest, to sacrifice one part to preserve the rest. He 
 was not, however, driven to this extremity, being treated by 
 Sir Aymer with that degree of courtesy which in that age 
 men of song were in general thought entitled to. The knight 
 kindly and liberally consented to the lad's remaining in the 
 
 onvent, as a fit and quiet residence for a stripling and an 
 invalid, until Sir John de Walton should express his pleasure 
 3n the subject ; and Sir Aymer consented to this arrange- 
 ment the more willingly, as it averted all possible danger of 
 bringing disease into the English garrison. 
 
 By the young knight's order, all in Dickson's house were 
 iespatclied earlier to rest than usual ; the matin bell of the 
 neighboring chapel being the signal for their assembly by 
 iaybreak. They rendezvoused accordingly, and proceeded 
 50 St. Bride's, where they heard mass, after which an inter- 
 view took place between the abbot Jerome and the minstrel, 
 
 n which the former undertook, with the permission of De 
 Valence, to receive Augustine into his abbey as a guest for 
 few days, less or more, and for which Bertram promised 
 m acknowledgment in name of alms, which was amply satis- 
 factory. 
 
 ' So be it," said Bertram, taking leave of his supposed 
 son ; "rely on it I will not tarry a day longer at Douglas 
 Castle than shall suffice for transacting my business there, 
 which is to look after the old books you wot of, and I will 
 speedily return for thee to the abbey of St. Bride, to resume 
 in company our journey homeward.'^ 
 
846 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " 0, father," replied the youth, with a smile, " I fear, ii 
 you get among romances and chronicles, you will be so 
 earnest in your researches that you will forget poor Angus 
 tine and his concerns." 
 
 " Never fear me, Augustine," said the old man, making 
 the motion of throwing a kiss towards the boy ; " thou art 
 good and virtuous, and Heaven will not neglect thee were 
 thy father unnatural enough to do so. Believe me, all the 
 old songs since Merlin's day shall not make me forget thee.'' 
 
 Thus they separated, the minstrel, with the English 
 knight and his retinue, to move towards the castle, and the 
 youth in dutiful attendance on the venerable abbot, who waf 
 delighted to find that his guest's thoughts turned rathei 
 upon spiritual things than on the morning repast, of the 
 approach of which he could not help being himself sensible 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The night, methinks, is but the daylight sick, 
 
 It looks a little paler ; 'tis a day 
 
 Such as the day is when the sun is hid. 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 To facilitate the progress of the party on its way to Douglas 
 Castle, the knight of Valence offered the minstrel the con- 
 venience of a horse, which the fatigues of yesterday made 
 him gladly accept. Any one acquainted with equestrian ex- 
 ercise is aware tliat no means of refreshment carries away 
 the sense of fatigue from over-walking so easily as the ex- 
 change to riding, which calls into play another set of muscles, 
 and leaves those which have been over-exerted an opportu- 
 nity of resting through change of motion more completely 
 than they could in absolute repose. Sir Aymer de Valence 
 was sheathed in armor, and mounted on his charger ; two of 
 the ai'chers. a groom of mean rank, and a squire, who looked 
 in his day for the honor of knighthood, completed the de- 
 tachment, which seemed so disposed as to secure the min- 
 strel from escape and to protect him against violence. 
 " Not," said the young knight, addressing himself to Ber- 
 tram, " that there is usually danger in traveling in this 
 country, any more than in the most quiet districts of Eng- 
 land ; but some disturbances, as you may have learned, have 
 broken out here within this last year, and have caused the 
 garrison of Castle Douglas to maintain a stricter watch. 
 But let us move on, for the complexion of the day is con- 
 genial with the original derivation of the name of the coun- 
 try, and the description of the chiefs to whom it belonged — 
 Siiolto Dim Glass (see yon dark gray man), and dark gray 
 will our route prove this morning, though by good luck it is 
 not long." 
 
 The mojning was indeed what the original Gaelic words 
 implied, a drizzly, dark, moist day ; the mist had settled 
 upon the hills, and unrolled itself upon brook, glade, and 
 tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to 
 raise the veil, though, from the wild sounds which were 
 heard occasionally on the ridges, and through the glens, it 
 might be supposed to wail at a sense of its own inability. 
 347 
 
348 WA VERLEY NO VEL S 
 
 The route of the travelers was directed by the course which 
 the river had plowed for itself down the valley, the banks of 
 which bore in general that dark gray livery which Sir 
 Aymer de Valence had intimated to be the prevalent tint of 
 the country. Some ineffectual struggles of the sun shot a 
 ray here and there to salute the peaks of the hills ; yet these 
 were unable to surmount the dulness of a March morning, 
 and, at so early an hour, produced a variety of shades, rather 
 than a gleam of brightness, upon the eastern horizon. The 
 view was monotonous and depressing, and apparently the 
 good knight Aymer sought some amusement in occasional 
 talk with Bertram, who, as was usual with his craft, pos- 
 sessed a fund of knowledge and a power of conversation well 
 suited to pass away a dull morning. The minstrel, well 
 pleased to j^ick up such information as he might be able 
 concerning the present state of the country, embraced every 
 opportunity of sustaining the dialogue. 
 
 " I would speak with you, sir minstrel," said the young 
 knight. " If thou dost not find the air of this morning too 
 harsh for thine organs, heartily do I wish thou wouldst 
 fairly tell me what can have induced thee, being, as thou 
 seemest, a man of sense, to thrust thyself into a wild coun- 
 try like this, at such a time. And you, my masters," ad- 
 dressing the archers and the rest of the party, '' methinks 
 it would be as fitting and seeming if you reined back your 
 steeds for a horse's length or so, since I apprehend you 
 can travel on your way without the pastime of minstrelsy." 
 The bowmen took the hint, and fell back, but, as was ex- 
 pressed by their grumbling observations, by no means pleased 
 that there seemed little chance of their overhearing what 
 conversation should pass between the young knight and the 
 minstrel, which proceeded as follows : — 
 
 " I am, then, to understand, good minstrel," said the 
 knight, 'Hhat you, who have in your time borne arms, and 
 even followed St. George's red-cross banner to the Holy Sep- 
 ulchre, are so little tired of the danger attending our pro- 
 fession, that you feel yourself attracted unnecessarily to re- 
 gions where the sword, forever loose in its scabbard, is ready 
 to start on the slightest provocation ?" 
 
 "It would be hard," replied the minstrel,^bluntly, *' to 
 answer such a question in the affirmative ; and yet, when 
 you consider how nearly allied is his profession who cele- 
 brates deeds of arms with that of the knight who performs 
 them, your honor, I think, will hold it advisable that a 
 minstrel desirous of doing his devoir should, like a young 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 349 
 
 knight, seek the truth of adventures where it is to be found, 
 and rather visit countries where the knowledge is preserved 
 of high and noble deeds than those lazy and quiet realms in 
 which men live indolently, and die ignobly in peace, or by 
 sentence of law. You yourself, sir, and those like you, who 
 hold life cheap in respect of glory, guide your course through 
 this world on the very same principle which brings your 
 poor rhyming servant Bertram from a far province of Merry 
 England to this dark country of rugged Scotland called 
 Douglas Dale. You long to see adventures worthy of notice, 
 and I — under favor for naming us two in the same breath^ 
 seek a scanty and precarious, but not a dishonorable, living 
 by preparing for immortality, as well as I can, the particulars 
 of such exploits, especially the names of those who were the 
 heroes of these actions. Each, therefore, labors in his voca- 
 tion ; nor can the one be justly wondered at more than the 
 other, seeing that, if there be any difference in the degrees 
 of danger to which both the hero and the poet are exposed, 
 the courage, strength, arms, and address of the valiant 
 knight render it safer for him to venture into scenes of peril 
 than for the poor man of rhyme." 
 
 " You say well," answered the warrior ; " and although 
 it is something of novelty to me to hear your craft represented 
 as upon a level with my own mode of life, yet shame were it 
 to say that the minstrel who toils so much to keep in memory 
 the feats of gallant knights should not himself prefer fame 
 to existence, and a single achievement of valor to a whole 
 age without a name, or to affirm that he follows a mean and 
 unworthy profession." 
 
 " Your worship will then acknowledge," said the minstrel, 
 " that it is a legitimate object in such as myself, who, sim- 
 ple as I am, have taken my regular degrees among the pro- 
 fessors of the gay science at the capital town of Aigues- 
 Mortes, to struggle forward into this Northern district, where 
 I am well assured many things have happened which have 
 been adopted to the harp by minstrels of great fame in an- 
 cient days, and have become the subject of lays which lie 
 deposited in the library of Castle Douglas, where, unless 
 copied over by some one who understands the old British 
 characters and language, they must, with whatever they may 
 contain, whether of entertainment or edification, be speedily 
 lost to posterity. If these hidden treasures were preserved 
 and recorded by the minstrel art of my poor self and others, 
 it might be held well to compensate for the risk of a chance 
 blow of a broadsword, or the sweep of a brown-bill, received 
 
850 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 while I am engaged in collecting them ; and I were unworthy 
 of the name of a man, much more of an inventor or finder,* 
 should I weigh the loss of life, a commodity always so un- 
 certain, against the chance of that immortality which will 
 survive in my lay after my broken voice and shivered harp 
 shall no longer be able either to express tune or accompany 
 tale." 
 
 " Certainly," said Sir Aymer, '' having a heart to feel such 
 a motive, you have an undoubted right to express it ; nor 
 should I have been in any degree disposed to question it had 
 I found many minstrels j)repared, like yourself, to prefer 
 renown even to life itself, which most men think of greatly 
 more consequence.'" 
 
 "There are, indeed, noble sir," replied Bertram, "min- 
 strels, and, with your reverence, even belted knights them- 
 selves, who do not sufficiently value that renown which is 
 acquired at the risk of life. To such ignoble men we must 
 leave their own reward : let us abandon to them earth, and 
 the things of earth, since they cannot aspire to that glory 
 which is the best reward of others." 
 
 The minstrel uttered these last words with such enthusi- 
 asm that the knight drew his bridle and stood fronting Ber- 
 tram, with his countenance kindling at the same theme, on 
 which, after a short silence, he expressed himself with a like 
 vivacity. 
 
 " Well fare thy heart, gay companion ! I am happy to see 
 there is still so much enthusiam surviving in the world. 
 Thou hast fairly won the minstrel groat ; and if I do not 
 pay it in conformity to my sense of thy merit, it shall be the 
 fault of dame Fortune, who has graced my labors in these 
 Scottish wars with the niggard pay of Scottish money. A 
 gold piece or two there must be remaining of the ransom 
 of one French knight whom chance threw into my hands, 
 and that, my friend, shall surely be thine own ; and hark 
 thee, I, Aymer de Valence, who now speak to thee, am born 
 of the noble house of Pembroke ; and though now landless, 
 shall, by the grace of Our Lady, have in time a fitting 
 establishment, wherein 1 will find room for a minstrel like 
 thee, if thy talents have not by that time found thee a better 
 patron." 
 
 "Thank thee, noble knight," said the ministrel, "as 
 well for thy present intentions as I hope I shall for thy future 
 performance ; but I may say with truth that I have not the 
 gordid inclination of many of my brethren." 
 • See Maker or Trouveur. Note 4. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 351 
 
 *'He who partakes the true thirst of noble fame," said 
 the young knight, " can have little room in his heart for the 
 love of gold. But thou hast not yet told me, friend minstrel, 
 what are the motives, in particular, which have attracted thy 
 wandering steps to this wild country ?" 
 
 " Were I to do so," replied Bertram, rather desirous to 
 avoid the question as in some respects too nearly bordering 
 on the secret purpose of his journey, "it might sound like 
 a studied panegyric on thine own bold deeds, sir knight, and 
 those of your companion-in-arms ; and such adulation, min- 
 strel as I am, I hate like an emj^ty cup at a companion's lips. 
 But let me say in few words, that Douglas Castle, and the 
 deeds of valor which it has witnessed, have sounded wide 
 through England ; nor is there a gallant knight or trusty 
 minstrel whose heart does not throb at the name of the strong- 
 hold, which in former days the foot of an Englishman never 
 entered, except in hospitality. There is a magic in the very 
 names of Sir John de Walton and Sir Aymer de Valence, the 
 gallant defenders of a place so often won back by its ancient 
 lords, and with such circumstances of valor and cruelty that 
 it bears in England the name of the Dangerous Castle." 
 
 " Yet I would fain hear," answered the knight, "your 
 own minstrel account of those legends which have induced 
 you, for the amusement of future times, to visit a country 
 which, at this period, is so distracted and perilous." 
 
 " If you can endure the length of a minstrel tale," said 
 Bertram, " I for one am always amused by the exercise of 
 my vocation, and have no objection to tell my story, provided 
 you do not prove an impatient listener." 
 
 "Nay, for that matter," said the young knight, " a fail 
 listener thou shalt have of me ; and if my reward be not 
 great, my attention at least shall be remarkable." 
 
 "And he," said the minstrel, "must be a poor gleeman 
 who does not hold himself better paid with that than with 
 gold or silver, were the pieces English rose-nobles. On this 
 condition, then, I begin a long story, which may, in one or 
 other of its details, find subject for better minstrels than my- 
 self, and be listened to by such warriors as you hundreds of 
 years hence." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 While many a merry lay and many a song 
 
 Cheer'd the rough road, we wished the rough road long ; 
 
 The rougli road, then returning in a round, 
 
 Mark'd their impatient steps, for all was fairy ground. 
 
 Dr. Johnson. 
 
 " It was about the year of redemption one thousand two 
 hundred and eighty-five [1283] years," began the minstrel, 
 " when King Alexander the Third of Scotland lost his daugh- 
 ter Margaret, whose only child, of the same name, called 
 the Maiden of Norway, as her father was king of that country, 
 became the heiress of this kingdom of Scotland, as well as 
 of her father's crown. An unhappy death was this for Alex- 
 ander, who had no nearer heirs left of his own body than 
 this grandchild. She indeed might claim his kingdom by 
 birthright, but the difficulty of establishing such a claim of 
 inheritance must have been anticipated by all who bestowed 
 a thought upon the subject. The Scottish king, therefore, 
 endeavored to make up for his loss by replacing his late 
 queen, who was an English princess, sister of our Edward 
 the First, with Juletia, daughter of the Count de Dreux. 
 The solemnities at the nuptial ceremony, which took place 
 in the town of Jedburgh, were very great and remarkable, 
 and particularly when, amidst the display of a pageant which 
 was exhibited on the occasion, a ghastly specter made its ap- 
 pearance in the form of a skeleton, as the King of Terrors 
 is said to be represented. Your worship is free to laugh at 
 this, if you think it a proper subject for mirth ; but men are 
 alive who viewed it with their own eyes, and tlie event showed 
 too well of what misfortunes this apparition was the singular 
 prognostication." 
 
 " I have heard the story, '^ said the knight ; " but the 
 monk who told it me suggested that the figure, though un- 
 happily chosen, was perhaps purposely introduced as a part 
 of the pageant.'" 
 
 " I know not that/^ said the minstrel, drily ; " but there 
 is no doubt that shortly after this apparition King Alexander 
 died, to the great sorrow of his people. The Maid of Nor- 
 352 
 
 1 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 358 
 
 way, his heiress, speedily followed her grandfather to the 
 grave, and our English king, sir knight, raked up a claim 
 of dependency and homage duq, he said, by Scotland, which 
 neither the lawyers, nobles, priests, nor the very minstrels 
 of Scotland had ever before heard of." 
 
 "Now, beshrew me/' interrupted Sir Aymer de Valence, 
 '' this is beyond bargain. I agreed to hear your tale with 
 patience, but I did not pledge myself that it should contain 
 matter to the reproach of Edward the First, of blessed 
 memory j nor will I permit his name to be mentioned in my 
 hearing without the respect due to his high rank and noble 
 qualities. 
 
 " Nay," said the minstrel, " I am no Highland bagpiper 
 or genealogist, to carry respect for my art so far as to quar- 
 relwith a man of worship who stops me at the beginning of 
 a pibroch. I am an Englishman, and wish dearly well lo my 
 country ; and, above all, I must speak the truth. But I 
 will avoid disputable topics. Your age, sir, though none of 
 the ripest, authorizes me to suppose you may have seen the 
 battle of Falkirk, and other onslaughts in which the compe- 
 tition of Bruce and Baliol has been fiercely agitated, and you 
 will permit me to say that, if the Scottish have not had the 
 right upon their side, they have at least defended the wrong 
 with the efforts of brave men and true." 
 
 " Of brave men, I grant you," said the knight, " for I 
 have seen no cowards amongst them ; but as for truth, they 
 can best judge of it who know how often they have sworn 
 faith to England, and how repeatedly they have broken their 
 vow." 
 
 ''I shall not stir the question," said the minstrel, ''leav- 
 ing it to your worship to determine which has most false- 
 hood, he who compels a weaker person to take an unjust 
 oath, or he who, compelled by necessity, takes the imposed 
 oath without the intention of keeping his word." 
 
 " Nay — nay," said De Valence, " let us keeji our opinions, 
 for we are not likely to force each other from the faith we 
 have adopted on this subject. But take my advice, and, 
 whilst thou travelest under an English joennon, take heed 
 that thou keepest off this conversation in the hall and 
 kitchen, where perhaps the soldier may be less tolerant than 
 the officer. And now, in a word, what is thy legend of this 
 Dangerous Castle ? " 
 
 "For that," replied Bertram, "methinks your worship is 
 most likely to have a better edition than I, who have not 
 been in this country for many years ; but it is not for me to 
 23 
 
354 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 bandy opinions with your knightsliip. I will even proceed 
 with the tale as I have heard it. I need not, I presume, in- 
 form your worship that the Lords of Douglas, who founded 
 this castle, are second to no lineage in Scotland in the anti- 
 quity of their descent. Nay, they have themselves boasted 
 that their family is not to be seen or distinguished, likeotner 
 great houses, until it is found at once in a certain degree of 
 eminence. " You may see us in the tree," they say, "you 
 cannot discover us in the twig ; you may see us in the stream, 
 you cannot trace us to the fountain."" In a word, they deny 
 that historians or genealogists can point out the first mean 
 man named Douglas who originally elevated the family ; and 
 true it is that, so far back as we have knowai thisrace, they 
 have always been renowned for valor and enterprise, acf^om- 
 panied with the power which made that enterprise effectual.'' 
 " Enough," said the knight, "I have heard of the pride 
 and power of that great family, nor does it interest me in 
 the least to deny or detract from their bold claims to con- 
 sideration in this respect." 
 
 "Without doubt you must also have heard, noble sir," 
 replied the minstrel, "many things of James, the present 
 heir of the house of Douglas ? " 
 
 " More than enough," answered the English knight ; " he 
 is known to have been a stout supporter of that outlawed 
 traitor, William Wallace ; and again, upon the first raising 
 of the banner by this Eobert Bruce, who pretends to be King 
 of Scotland, this young springald, James Douglas, must 
 needs start into rebellion anew. He plunders his uncle, the 
 Archbishop of St. Andrews, of a considerable sum of uioney 
 to fill the Scottish usurper's not over-burdened treasury, de- 
 bauches the servants of his relation, takes arms, and, though 
 repeatedly chastised in the field, still keeps his vaunt, and 
 threatens mischief to those who, in the name of his rightful 
 sovereign, defend the Castle of Douglas Dale." 
 
 -' It is your pleasure to say so, sir knight," replied Ber- 
 tram ; "yet I am sure, were you a Scot, you would with 
 patience hear me tell over what has been said of this young 
 man by those who have known him, and whose account of 
 his adventures shows how differently the same tale may be 
 told. These men talk of the present heir of this ancient 
 family as fully adequate to maintain and augment its reputa- 
 tion ; ready, iudeed, to undergo every peril in the cause of 
 Eobert the Bruce, because the Bruce is esteemed by him his 
 lawful king ; and sworn and devoted, with such small strength 
 as he can muster, to revenge himself on those Southrons who 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 355 
 
 have, for several years, as lie thiuks, unjustly possessed them- 
 selves of their father's abode." 
 
 " 0," replied Sir Aymer de Valence, " we have heard much 
 of his achievements in this respect, and of his threats against 
 our governor and ourselves ; yet we think it scarce likely that 
 Sir John de Walton will move from Douglas Dale without 
 the King's order, although this James Douglas, a mere 
 chicken, take upon himself to crack his voice by crowing 
 like a cock of the game." 
 
 " Sir.," answered Bertram, " our acquaintance is but brief, 
 and yet I feel it has been so beneficial to me, that I trust 
 there is no harm in hoping that James Douglas and you may 
 never meet in bodily presence till the state of the two coun- 
 tries shall admit of peace being between you." 
 
 *' Thou art obliging, friend," answered Sir Aymer, "and, 
 I doubt not, sincere ; and truly thou seemest to have a 
 wholesome sense of the respect due to this young knight when 
 men talk of him in his native valley of Douglas. For me, I 
 am only poor Aymer of Valence, without an acre of land, or 
 much hope of acquiring any, unless I cut something huge 
 with my broadsword out of the middle of these hills. Only 
 this, good raiustrei, if thou livest to tell my story, may I pray 
 thee to use thy scrupulous custom of searching out the verity, 
 and whether I live or die thou shalt not, I think, discover 
 that thy late acquaintance of a spring morning hath added 
 more to- the laurels of James of Douglas than any man's death 
 must give to him by whose stronger arm, cr more lucky 
 chance, it is his lot to fall." 
 
 " I nothing fear you, sir knight," said the minstrel, " for 
 yours is that happy brain which, bold in youth as beseems a 
 young knightj is in more advanced life the happy source of 
 prudent counsel, of which I would not, by an early death, 
 wish thy country to be deprived." 
 
 " Thou art so candid, then, as to wish Old England the 
 benefit of good advice," said Sir Aymer, "though thou 
 leanest to the side of Scotland in the controversy ? " 
 
 "Assuredly, sir knight," said the minstrel, "since, in 
 wishing that Scotland and England each knew their own 
 true interest, I am bound to wish them both alike well ; and 
 they should, I think, desire to live in friendship together. 
 Occupying each their own portion of the same island, and 
 living under the same laws, and being at peace with each 
 other, they might, without fear, face the enmity of the 
 whole world.' 
 
 " If thy faith be so liberal," answered the knight, " as be- 
 
356 WA VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 comes a good miin, thou must certainly pray, sir minstrel, 
 for the success of England in the war, by which alone these 
 murderous hostilities of the Northern nation can end in a 
 solid peace. The rebellions of this obstinate country are but 
 the struggles of the stag when he is mortally wounded : the 
 animal grows weaker and weaker with every struggle, till his 
 resistance is effectually tamed by the hand of death." 
 
 "Not so, sir knight," said the minstrel ; ''if my creed is 
 well taught me, we ought not so to pray. We may, without 
 offense, intimate in our prayers the end we wish to obtain ; 
 but it is not for us poor mortals to point out to an all-seeing 
 Providence the precise manner in which our petitions are to 
 be accomplished, or to wish the downfall of a country to end 
 its commotions, as the death-stab terminates the agonies of 
 the wounded stag. AVhether I appeal to my heart or to my 
 understanding, the dictate would be to petition Heaven for 
 what is just and equal in the case ; and if I should fear for 
 thee, sir knight, in an encounter with James of Douglas, it 
 is only because he upholds, as I conceive, the better side of 
 the debate, and powers more than earthly have presaged to 
 him success." 
 
 " Do you tell me so, sir minstrel," said De Valence in a 
 threatening tone, "knowing me and my office ?" 
 
 "Your personal dignity and authority," said Bertram, 
 " cannot change the right into wrong, or avert what Provi- 
 dence has decreed to take place. You know, I must presume, 
 that the Douglas hath, by various devices, already contrived 
 to make himself master of this Castle of Douglas three 
 several times, and that Sir John De Walton, the present 
 governor, holds it with a garrison trebled in force, and under 
 the assurance that if, without surprise, he should keep it 
 from the Scottish power for a year and a day, he shall obtain 
 the barony of Douglas, with its extensive appendages, in free 
 property for his reward ; while, on the other hand, if he shall 
 suffer the fortress during this space to be taken, either by 
 guile or by open force, as has happened successively to the 
 holders of the Dangerous Castle, he will become liable to dis- 
 honor as a knight and to attainder as a subject ; and th.; 
 chiefs who take share with him and serve under him will 
 participate also in his guilt and his punishment." 
 
 " All this I know well," said Sir Aymer ; " and I only 
 wonder that, having become public, the conditions have, 
 nevertheless, been told with so much accuracy ; but what 
 has this to do with the issue of the combat, if the Douglas 
 and I should chance to meet ? I will not surely be disposed 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 357 
 
 to fight with less animation because I wear my fortune upon 
 my sword, or become coward because I fight for a portion of 
 the Douglas's estate, as well as for fame and for fatherland ? 
 And after all " 
 
 " Hear me," said the minstrel ; " an ancient gleeman has 
 said that in a false quarrel there is no true valor, and the 
 los or praise won therein is, when balanced against honest 
 fame, as valueless as a wreath formed out of copper com- 
 pared to a chaplet of pure gold ; but I bid you not take me 
 for thy warrant in this important question. Thou well 
 knowest how James of Thirlwall, the last English com- 
 mander before Sir John de Walton, was surprised, and the 
 castle sacked with circumstances of great inhumanity." 
 
 **' Truly," said Sir Aymer, "I think that Scotland and 
 England both have heard of that onslaught, and of the dis- 
 gusting proceedings of the Scottish chieftain, when he 
 caused transport into the wild forest gold, silver, ammuni- 
 tion, and armor, and all things that could be easily removed, 
 and destroyed a large quantity of provisions, in a manner 
 equally savage and nnheard of." 
 
 " Perhaps, sir knight," said Bertram, '' you were yourself 
 an eyewitness of that transaction, which has been spoken of 
 far and wide, and is called the Douglas Larder ?" 
 
 "1 saw not the actual accomplishment of the deed," said 
 De Valence — " that is, I witnessed it not a-doing — but I 
 beheld enough of the sad relics to make the Douglas Larder 
 never by me to be forgotten as a record of horror and abomi- 
 nation. I would speak it truly, by the hand of my father 
 and by my honor as a knight ! and I will leave it to thee to 
 judge wliether it was a deed calculated to secure the smiles 
 of Heaven in favor of the actors. This is my edition of the 
 etory : — 
 
 " A large quantity of provisions had during two years or 
 thereabouts been collected from different points, and the 
 castle of Douglas, newly repaired, and, as was thought, care- 
 fully guarded, was appointed as the place where the said 
 provisions were to be put in store for the service of the King 
 of England, or of the Lord Clifford, whichever should first 
 enter the western marches with an English army, and stand 
 in need of such a supply. This army was also to relieve our 
 wants — I mean those of my uncle the Earl of Pembroke, 
 who for some time before had lain with a considerable force 
 in the town called Ayr, near tlie old Caledonian Poorest, and 
 where we had hot wars with the insurgent Scots. Well, sir, 
 it happened, as in similar cases, that Thirlwall, though a 
 
358 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 bold and active soldier, was surprised in the Castle of Doug- 
 las, about Hallowmass, by this same worthy, young James 
 Douglas. In no very good humor was he, as you may sup- 
 pose ; for his father, called William the Hardy, or William 
 Long-legs, having refused, on any terms, to become Angli- 
 cized, was made a lawful prisoner, and died as such, closely 
 confined in Berwick, or, as some say, in Newcastle. The 
 news of his father's death had put young Douglas into no 
 small rage, and tended, I think, to suggest what he did in 
 his resentment. Embarrassed by the quantity of provisions 
 which he found in the castle, which, the English being su- 
 perior in the country, he had neither the means to remove 
 nor the leisure to stay and consume, the fiend, as I think, 
 inspired him with a contrivance to render them unfit for 
 human use. You shall Judge yourself whether it was likely 
 to be suggested by a good or an evil spirit. 
 
 ''According to this device, the gold, silver, and other 
 transportable commodities being carried to secret places of 
 safety, Douglas caused the meat, the malt, and other corn 
 or grain, to be brought down into the castle cellar, where he 
 emptied the contents of the sacks into one loathsome heap, 
 striking out the heads of the barrels and puncheons, so as 
 to let the mingled drink run through the heap of meal, 
 grain, and so forth. The bullocks provided for slaughter 
 were in like manner knocked on the head, and their blood 
 suffered to drain into the mass of edible substances ; and 
 lastly, the flesh of these oxen was buried in the same mass, 
 in which were also included the dead bodies of those in the 
 castle, who, receiving no quarter from the Douglas, paid 
 dear enough for having kept no better watch. This base 
 and unworthy abuse of provisions intended for the use of 
 man, together with throwing into the well of the castle car- 
 casses of men and horses, and other filth for polluting the 
 same, has since that time been called the Douglas Lardek." 
 
 ''I pretend not, good Sir Aymer," said the minstrel, ''to 
 vindicate what you justly reprove, nor can I conceive any 
 mode of rendering provisions arranged after the form of the 
 Douglas Larder proper for the use of any Christian ; yet 
 this young gentleman might perhaps act under the sting of 
 natural resentment, rendering his singular exploit more ex- 
 cusable than it may seem at first. Think, if your own noble 
 father had just died in a lingering captivity, his inheritance 
 seized upon, and occupied as a garrison by a foreign enemy, 
 would not these things stir you to a mode of resentment 
 which, in cold blood, and judging of it as the action of an 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 359 
 
 enemy, your honor might hold in natural and laudable ab- 
 horrence ? Would you pay respect to dead and senseless 
 objects, which no one could blame your appropriating to 
 your own use, or even scruple tlie refusal of quarter to pris- 
 oners, which is so often practised even in wars which are 
 otherwise termed fair and humane ?" 
 
 " You press me close, minstrel," said Aymer de Valence. 
 " I at least have no great interest to excuse the Douglas in 
 this matter, since its consequences were, that I myself, and 
 the rest of my uncle's host, labored with Clifford and his 
 army to rebuild this same Dangerous Castle ; and feeling no 
 stomach for the cheer that the Douglass had left us we 
 suffered hard commons, though I acknowledge we did not 
 hesitate to adopt for our own use such sheep and oxen as the 
 miserable Scots had still left around their farmhouses ; and 
 I jest not, sir ministrel, when I acknowledge in sad earnest 
 that we martial men ought to make our petitions with 
 peculiar penitence to Heaven for mercy, when we reflect on 
 .the various miseries which the nature of our profession 
 compels us to inflict upon each other." 
 
 " It seems to me," answered the minstrel, " that those 
 who feel the stings of their own conscience should be more 
 lenient when they speak of the offenses of others ; nor do I 
 greatly rely on a sort of prophecy which was delivered, as 
 the men of this hill district say, to the young Douglas, by a 
 man who in the course of nature should have been long since 
 dead, promising him a course of success against the English 
 for having sacrificed his own castle to prevent their making 
 it a garrison." 
 
 " We have time enough for the story," said Sir Aymer, 
 ** and methinks it would suit a knight and a minstrel better 
 than the grave converse we have hitherto held, which would 
 have beseemed — so God save me ! — the mouths of two 
 traveling friars." 
 
 " So be it," said the minstrel : " tlie rote or the viol 
 easily changes its time and varies its note." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 A tale of sorrow, for your eyes may weep ; 
 A tale of horror, for your flesh may tingle ; 
 A tale of wonder, for the eyebrows arch, 
 And the flesh curdles, if you read it rightly. 
 
 Old Play. 
 
 *' Your honor must be informed, gentle Sir Aymer de 
 Valence, that I have heard this story told at a great distance 
 from the land in which it happened, by a sworn minstrel, 
 the ancient friend and servant of the house of Douglas, one 
 of the best, it is said, who ever belonged to that noble 
 family. This minstrel, Hugo Hugonet by name attended 
 his young master when on this fierce exploit, as was his 
 wont. 
 
 " The castle was in total tumult ; in one corner the war- 
 men were busy breaking up and destroying provisions ; in 
 another, they were slaying men, horses, and cattle, and 
 these actions were accompanied with appropriate sounds. 
 The cattle, particularly, had become sensible of their im- 
 pending fate, and with awkward resistance and piteous cries 
 testified that reluctance with which these poor creatures look 
 instinctively on the shambles. The groans and screams of 
 men undergoing, or about to undergo, the stroke of death, 
 and the screeches of the poor horses which were in mortal 
 agony, formed a fearful chorus, Hugonet was desirous to 
 remove himself from such unpleasant sights and sounds ; 
 but his master, the Douglas, had been a man of some reading, 
 and his old servant was anxious to secure a book of poetry, 
 to which he had been attached of old. This contained the 
 lays of an ancient Scottish bard, who, if an ordinary human 
 creature while he was" in this life cannot now perhaps be 
 exactly termed such. 
 
 " He was, in short, that Thomas, distinguished by the 
 name of the Ehymer, and whose intimacy, it is said, became 
 60 great with the gifted people called the faery folk that he 
 corSd, like them, foretell the future deed before it came to 
 pass, and united in his own person the quality of bard and of 
 soothsayer. But of late years he had vanished almost entirely 
 from this mortal scene ; and although the time and manner 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 361 
 
 of his death were never publicly known, yet the general 
 belief was, that he was not severed from the land of the 
 living, but removed to the land of faery, from whence he 
 sometimes made excursions, and concerned himself only 
 about matters which were to corae hereafter. Hugonet was 
 the more earnest to prevent the loss of the works of this 
 ancient bard, as many of his poems and predictions were 
 said to be preserved in the castle, and were supposed to 
 contain much especially connected with the old house of 
 Douglas, as well as other families of ancient descent, who had 
 been subjects of this old man's prophecy ; and accordingly 
 he determined to save this volume from destruction in the 
 general conflagration to which the building was about to be 
 consigned by the heir of its ancient ijroprietors. With this 
 view he hurried up into the little old vaulted room called 
 " the Douglas's study," in which there might be some dozen 
 old books written by the ancient chaplains, in what the 
 minstrels call the letter black. He immediately discovered 
 the celebrated lay, called Sir Tristreni,* which has been so 
 often altered and abridged as to bear little resemblance to 
 the original. Hugonet, who well knew the value in which 
 this poem was held by the ancient lords of the castle, took 
 the parchment volume from the shelves of the library, and 
 laid it upon a small desk adjacent to the baron's chair. 
 Having made such preparation for putting it in safety, he 
 fell into a brief reverie, in which the decay of light, and the 
 preparations for the Douglas Larder, but especially the last 
 sight of objects which had been familiar to his eyes, now on 
 the eve of destruction, engaged him at that moment. 
 
 " The bard, therefore, was thinking within himself upon 
 the uncommon mixture of the mystical scholar and warrior 
 in his old master, when, as he bent his eyes upon the book 
 of the ancient Rhymer, he was astonished to observe it slowly 
 removed from the desk on which it lay by an invisible hand. 
 The old man looked with horror at the spontaneous motion 
 of the book for the safety of which he was interested, and 
 had the courage to approach a little nearer the table, in 
 order to discover by what means it had been withdrawn. 
 
 '' I have said the room was already becoming dark, so as 
 to render it difficult to distinguish any person in the chair, 
 though it now appeared, on closer examination, that a kind 
 of shadowy outline of a human form was seated in it, but 
 neither precise enough to convey its exact figure to the mind 
 nor so detailed as to intimate distinctly its mode of action. 
 * See Note 5. 
 
362 WA VEBLEY JS'OVELS 
 
 The bard of Douglas, therefore, gazed upon the object of his 
 fear, as if he had looked upon something uot mortal ; never- 
 theless, as he gazed more intently, he became more capable 
 of discovering the object which offered itself to his eyes, and 
 they grew by degrees more keen to penetrate what they wit- 
 nessed. A tall thin form, attired in, or rather shaded with, a 
 long flowing dusky robe, having a face and physiognomy so 
 wild and overgrown with hair as to be hardly human, were 
 the only marked outlines of the phantom ; and, looking more 
 attentively, Hugonet was still sensible of two other forms, 
 the outlines, it seemed, of a hart and a hind, which appeared 
 half to shelter themselves behind the person and under the 
 robe of this supernatural figure." 
 
 " A probable tale," said the knight, " for you, sir minstrel, 
 a man of sense as you seem to be, to recite so gravely ! From 
 what wise authority have you had this tale, which, though it 
 might pass well enough amid clanging beakers, must be held 
 quite apocryjjhal in the sober hours of the morning ? " 
 
 " By my minstrel word, sir knight," answered Bertram, 
 *' I am no propagator of the fable, if it be one ; Hugonet, 
 the violer, when he had retired into a cloister near the Lake 
 of Pembelmere in Wales, communicated the story to me as 1 
 now tell it. Therefore, as it was upon the authority of an 
 eyewitness, I apologize not for relating it to you, since I could 
 hardly discover a more direct source of knowledge." 
 
 " Be it so, sir minstrel," said the knight; "tell on thy 
 tale, and may thy legend escape criticism from others as well 
 as from me."' 
 
 " Hugonet, sir knight," answered Bertram, ''was a holy 
 man, and maintained a fair character during his whole life, 
 notwithstanding his trade may be esteemed a light one. The 
 vision spoke to him in an antique language, like that for- 
 merly used in the kingdom of Strathclyde, being a species of 
 Scots or Gaelic, which few would have comprehended. 
 
 " ' You are a learned man," said the apparition, 'and not 
 unacquainted with the dialects used in your country formerly, 
 although they are now out of date, and you are obliged to 
 translate them into the vulgar Saxon of Deira or Northum- 
 berland ; but highly must an ancient British bard jirize one 
 in this ' remote term of time" who sets upon the poetry of 
 his native country a value which invites him to think of its 
 preservation at a moment of such terror as influences the 
 present evening." 
 
 "'It is, indeed," said Hugonet, 'a night of terror, that 
 calls even the dead from the grave, and makes them the 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 363 
 
 ghastly and fearful companions of the living. Who or what 
 art thou, in God's name, who breakest the bounds which 
 divide them, and revisitest thus strangely the state thou hast 
 so long bid adieu to ?" 
 
 " ' I am,' replied the vision, ' that celebrated Thomas 
 the Ehymer, by some called Thomas of Ercildoun, or 
 Thomas the True Speaker. Like other sages, I am permitted 
 at times to revisit the scenes of my former life, nor am I in- 
 capable of removing the shadowy clouds and darkness which 
 overhang futurity ; and know, thou afflicted man, that 
 what thou now se.est in this woeful country is not a general 
 emblem of what shall therein befall hereafter ; but in pro- 
 portion as the Douglasses are now suffering the loss and de- 
 struction of their home for their loyalty to the rightful heir 
 of the Scottish Kingdom, so hath Heaven appointed for them 
 a just reward ; and as they have not spared to burn and de- 
 stroy their own house and that of their fathers in the Bruce's 
 cause, so is it the doom of Heaven that, as often as the walls 
 of Douglas Castle shall be burned to the ground, they shall 
 be again rebuilt still more safely and more magnificent than 
 before." 
 
 "A cry was now heard like that of a multitude in the 
 courtyard, joining in a fierce shout of exultation ; at the 
 same time a broad and ruddy glow seemed to burst from the 
 beams and rafters, and sparks flew from them as from the 
 smith's stithy, while the element caught to its fuel, and the 
 conflagration broke its way through every aperture. 
 
 "'See ye that ?' said the vision, casting his eye towards 
 the windows, and disappearing. ' Begone ! The fated hour 
 of removing this book is not yet come, 7ior art thine the 
 destined hands. But it will be safe wliere I have placed it, 
 and the time of its removal shall come.' The voice was heard 
 after the form had vanished, and the brain of Hugonet 
 almost turned round at the wild scene which he beheld ; 
 his utmost exertion was scarely sufficient to wathdraw^ him 
 from the terrible spot ; and Douglas Castle that night sunk 
 into ashes and smoke, to arise, in no great length of time, 
 in a form stronger than ever." The minstrel stopped, and his 
 hearer, the English knight, remained silent for some minutes 
 ere at length he replied, 
 
 *' It is true, minstrel, '" answered Sir Aymer, "that your 
 tale is so far undeniable, that this castle, three times burned 
 down by the heirs of the house and of the barony, has hither- 
 to been as often reared again by Henry Lord Clifford and 
 other generals of the English, who endeavored on every oc- 
 
3f)4 IVAVEBLEY NOVJSLS 
 
 casiou to build it up more artificially and more strongly than 
 it had formerly existed, since it occupies a position too im- 
 portant to the safety of our Scottish border to permit our 
 yielding it up. This I myself have partly witnessed. But 
 I cannot think that, because the castle has been so destroyed, 
 it is therefore decreed so to be repaired in future, consider- 
 ing that such cruelties as surely cannot meet the approbation 
 of Heaven have attended the feasts of the Douglasses. But 
 I see thou art determined to keep thine own faith, nor can I 
 blame thee, since the wonderful turns of faith which have 
 attended this fortress are sufficient to wjirrant any one to 
 watch for what seem the peculiar indications of the will of 
 Heaven ; but thou mayst believe, good minstrel, that the 
 fault shall not be mine if the young Douglas shall have op- 
 portunity to exercise his cookery upon a second edition of 
 his family larder, or to profit by the predictions of Thomas 
 the Rhymer." 
 
 " I do not doubt due circumspection upon your own part 
 and Sir John de Walton's," said Bertram ; " but there is no 
 crime in my saying that Heaven can accomplish its own pur- 
 poses. I look upon Douglas Castle as in some degree a fated 
 place, and I long to see what changes time may have made 
 in it during the currency of twenty years. Above all, I 
 desire to secure, if possible, the volume of this Thomas of 
 Erchildoun, having in it such a fund of forgotten minstrelsy, 
 and of prophecies respecting the future fates of the British 
 kingdom, both northern and southern." 
 
 The knight made no answer, but rode a little space forward, 
 keeping the upper part of the ridge of the water, by which 
 the road down the vale seemed to be rather sharply con- 
 ducted. It at length attained the summit of an acclivity of 
 considerable length. From this point, and behind a con- 
 spicuous rock, which appeared to have been pushed aside, as it 
 were, like the scene of a theater, to admit a view of the 
 under part of tlie valley, the travelers beheld the extensive 
 vale, parts of which have been already shown in detail, but 
 which, as the river became narrower, was now entirely laid 
 bare m its height and depth as far as it extended, and dis- 
 played in its precincts, at a little distance from the course of 
 the stream, the towering and lordly castle to which it gave 
 the name. The mist, which continued to encumber the 
 valley with its fleecy cloud, showed imperfectly the rude 
 fortifications which served to defend the small town of 
 Douglas, which was strong enough to repel a desultory 
 attack, but not to withstand what was called in those days 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 365 
 
 a formal siege. The most striking feature was its church, 
 an ancient Gothic pile raised on an eminence in the center 
 of the town, and even then extremely ruinous. To tlie left, 
 and lying in the distance, might be seen other towers and 
 battlements ; and, divided from the town by a piece of 
 artificial water, which extended almost around it, arose the 
 Dangerous Castle of Douglas, 
 
 Sternly was it fortified, after the fashion of the middle 
 ageSjWith donjon and battlements ; displaying, above others, 
 the tall tower, which bore the name of Lord Henry's or the 
 Clifford's Tower. 
 
 " Yonder is the castle," said Aymer de Valence, extending 
 his arm, with a smile of triumph upon his brow; "thou 
 mayst judge thyself whether the defenses added to it under 
 the Clifford are likely to render its next capture a more easy 
 deed than the last." 
 
 The minstrel barely shook his head, and quoted from the 
 Psalmist — " Msi Dominus custodiet." Nor did he prose- 
 cute the discourse, though De Valence answered eagerly, 
 " My own edition of the text is not very different from thine ; 
 but, methinks, thou art more spiritually-minded than can 
 always be predicated of a wandering minstrel." 
 
 "God knows," said Bertram, "that if I, or such as I, are 
 forgetful of the finger of Providence in accomplishing its 
 purposes in this lower world, we have heavier blame than 
 that of other people, since we are perpetually called upon, 
 in the exercise of our fanciful profession, to admire the turns 
 of fate which bring good out of evil, and which render those 
 who think only of" their own passions and purposes the 
 executors of the will of Heaven." 
 
 " I do submit to what you say, sir minstrel," answered the 
 knight, " and it would be unlawful to express any doubt of 
 the truths which you speak so solemnly, any more than of 
 your own belief in them. Let me add, sir, that I think I 
 have power enough in this garrison to bid you welcome, and 
 Sir John de Walton, I hope, will not refuse access to hall, 
 castle, or knight's bower to a person of your profession, and 
 by whose conversation we shall perhaps profit somewhat, i 
 cannot, however, lead you to expect such indulgence for your 
 son, considering the present state of his health ; but if I pro- 
 cure him the privilege to remain at the convent of St. Bride, 
 he will be there unmolested and in safety, until you have re- 
 newed your acquaintance with Douglas Dale and its history, 
 and are disposed to set forward on your journey." 
 . *'l embrace your honor's proposal the more willingly,*' 
 
366 WA VERLE Y N O VEL S 
 
 said the minstrel, "that I can recompense the father 
 abbot." 
 
 ''A main point with holy men or wome:.," replied De Val- 
 ence, " who, in time of warfare, subsist by affording the visit- 
 ors of their shrine the means of maintenance in their clois- 
 ters for a passing season." 
 
 The party now approached the sentinels on guard at the 
 castle, who were closely and thickly stationed, and who re- 
 spectfully admitted Sir Aymer de Valance, as next in com- 
 mand under Sir John de Walton. Fabian— for so was the 
 young squire named who attended on De Valence — mentioned 
 it as his master's pleasure that the minstrel should also be 
 admitted. 
 
 An old archer, however, looked hard at the minstrel as he 
 followed Sir Aymer. " It is not for us," said he, "or any 
 of our degree, to oppose the pleasure of Sir Aymer de Valence, 
 nephew to the Earl of Pembroke, in such a"' matter ; and for 
 us, Master Fabian, welcome are you to make the gleeman 
 your companion both at bed and board, as well as your visit- 
 ant, a week or two at the Castle of Douglas ; but your wor- 
 ship is well aw^are of the strict order of watch laid upon 
 us, and if Solomon king of Israel were to come here as a 
 traveling minstrel, by my faith I durst not give him en- 
 trance, unless I had positive authority from Sir John de 
 Walton." 
 
 " Do you doubt, sirrah," said Sir Aymer de Valence, who 
 returned on hearing an altercation betwixt Fabian and the 
 archer — "do you doubt that I have good authority to enter- 
 tain a guest, or do you presume to contest it ?" 
 
 " Heaven forbid !" said the old man, "that I should pre- 
 sume to place my own desire in opposition to your worship, 
 who has so lately and so honorably acquired your spurs ; but 
 in this matter I must think what will be theVish of Sir John 
 de Walton, who is your governor, sir knight, as well as mine : 
 and so far I hold it worth while to detain your guest until 
 Sir John return from a ride to the outposts of the castle ; 
 and this, I conceive, being my duty, will be no matter '^f 
 offense to your worship." 
 
 " Methinks," said the knight, "it is saucy in thee to sup- 
 pose that my commands can have anything in them improper, 
 or contradictory to those of Sir John de Walton ; thou mayst 
 trust to me at least that thou shall come to no harm. Keep this 
 man in the guard-room ; let him not want good cheer, and 
 when Sir John de Walton returns, report him as a person ad- 
 mitted by my invitation, and if anything more be wanted to 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 367 
 
 make out yonr excuse, I shall not be reluctant in stating it 
 to the governor." 
 
 The archer made a signal of obedience with the joike which 
 he held in his hand, and resumed the grave and solemn 
 manner of a sentinel upon his post. He first, however, ush- 
 ered in the minstrel, and furnished him with food and 
 liquor, speaking at the same time to Fabian, who remained 
 behind. The smart young stripling had become very proud 
 of late, in consequence of obtaining the nameof Sir Aymer's 
 squire, and advancing a step in chivalry, as Sir Aymer him- 
 self had, somewhat earlier than the usual period, been 
 advanced from squire to knight. 
 
 " I tell thee, Fabian," said the old archer, whose gravity, 
 sagacity, and skill in his vocation, while they gained him the 
 confidence of all in the castle, subjected him, as he himself 
 said, occasionally to the ridicule of the young coxcombs, and 
 at the same time, we may- add, rendered him somewhat prag- 
 matic and punctilious towards those who stood higher than 
 himself in birth and rank — "I tell thee, Fabian, thou wilt 
 do thy master. Sir Aymer, good service if thou wilt give 
 him a hint to suffer an old archer, man-at-arms, or such-like, 
 to give him a fair and civil answer respecting that which he 
 commands ; for undoubtedly it is not in the first score of a 
 man's years that he learns the various proper forms of military 
 service ; and Sir John de Walton, a most excellent com- 
 mander no doubt, is one earnestly bent on prrsuing the strict 
 line of his duty, and will be rigorously severe, as well, be- 
 lieve me, with thy master as with a lesser person. Nay, he 
 also possesses that zeal for his duty which induces him to 
 throw blame, if there be the slightest ground for it, upon 
 Aymer de Valence himself, although his uncle, the Earl of 
 Pembroke, was Sir John de Walton's steady patron, and laid 
 the beginning of his good fortune ; for all which, by train- 
 ing up his nephew in the true discipline of the French wars. 
 Sir John has taken the best way of showing himself grateful 
 to the old earl." 
 
 *' Be it as you will, old Gilbert Greenleaf," answered Fabian, 
 "thou knowest I never quarrel with thy sermonizing, and 
 therefore give me credit for submitting to many a lecture 
 from Sir John de Walton and thyself ; but thou drivest this 
 a little too far, if thou canst not let a day pass without giving 
 me a flogging. Credit me. Sir John de Walton will not 
 thank thee if thou term him one too old to remember that 
 he himself had once some green sap in his veins. Ay, thus 
 it is, the old man will not forget that he has once been 
 
368 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 young, nor the young that he must some day be old ; and so 
 the one changes his nianners into tlie lingering formality of 
 advanced age, and the other remain like a midsummer tor- 
 rent swollen with rain, every drop of water in it noise, froth, 
 and overflow. There is a maxim for thee, Gilbert ! Heardest 
 thou ever better ? Hang it up amidst thy axioms of wisdom, 
 and see if it will not pass among them like fifteen to the 
 dozen. It will serve to bring thee off, man, when the wine- 
 pot — thine only fanlt, good Gilbert — hath brought thee on 
 occasion into something of a scrape.'' 
 
 " Best keep it for thyself, good sir squire," said the old 
 man ; " methinks it is more like to stand thyself one day in 
 good stead. Who ever heard of a knight or of the wood of 
 which a knight is made, and that is a squire, being punished 
 corporally like a poor old archer or horseboy ? Your worst 
 fault will be mended by some of these witty sayings, and 
 your best service will scarce be rcAvarded more thankfully 
 than by giving thee the name of Fabian the Fabler, or 
 some such witty title." 
 
 Having unloosed his repartee to this extent, old Greenleaf 
 resumed a certain acidity of countenance, which may be said 
 to characterize those whose preferment hath become frozen 
 under the influence of the slowness of its progress, and who 
 display a general spleen against such as have obtained the 
 advancement for which all are struggling earlier, and, as 
 they suppose, with less merit than their own. From time to 
 time the eye of tlie old sentinel stole from the top of his pike, 
 and with an air of triumph rested upon the young man Fabian, 
 as if to see how deeply the wound had galled him, while at 
 the same time he held himself on the alert to perform what- 
 ever mechanical duty his post might require. Botli Fabian 
 and his master were at the hapjoy period of life when such 
 discontent as that of the grave archer affected them lightly, 
 and, at the very worst, was considered as the jest of an old 
 man and a good soldier ; the moreespecially as he was always 
 willing to do the duty of his companions, and was much 
 trusted by Sir John de Walton, who, though very much 
 younger, had been bred up like Greenleaf in the wars of 
 Edward the First, and was tenacious in upholding strict dis- 
 cipline, which, since the death of that great monarch, had 
 been considerably neglected by the young and warm-blooded 
 valor of England. 
 
 Meantime it occurred to Sir Aymer de Valence that, 
 though, in displaying the usual degree of hospitality shown 
 to such a man as Bertram, he had merely done what was 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 369 
 
 becoming his own rank, as one possessed of the highest 
 honors of chivalry, the self-styled minstrel might not in 
 reality be a man of that worth which he assumed. There 
 was certainly something in his conversation, at least more 
 grave, if not more austere, than was common to those of his 
 calling ; and when he recollected many points of Sir John 
 de Walton's minuteness, a doubt arose in his mind that the 
 governor might not approve of his having introduced into 
 the castle a person of Bertram's character, who was capable 
 of making observations from which the garrison might after- 
 wards feel much danger and inconvenience. Secretly, there- 
 fore, he regretted that he had not fairly intimated to the 
 wandering minstrel that his reception, or that of any stran- 
 ger, within the Dangerous Castle was not at present per- 
 mitted by the circumstances of the times. In this case, the 
 express line of his duty would have been his vindication, and 
 instead, perhaps, of discountenance and blame, he would 
 have had praise and honor from his superior. 
 
 With these thoughts 23assing through his mind, some tacit 
 apprehension arose of a rebuke on the part of his command- 
 ing-officer, for this officer, notwithstanding his strictness. 
 Sir Aymer loved as well as feared. He went, therefore, 
 towards the guard-room of the castle, under the pretense of 
 seeing that the rites of hospitality had been duly observed 
 towards his late traveling companion. The minstrel arose 
 respectfully, and from the manner in which he paid his com- 
 pliments seemed, if he had not expected this call of inquiry, 
 at least to be in no degree surprised at it. Sir Aymer, on 
 the other hand, assumed an air something more distant than 
 he had yet used towards Bertram, and in reverting to his 
 former invitation, he now so far qualified it as to say, that 
 the minstrel knew that he was only second in command, and 
 that effectual permission to enter the castle ought to be sanc- 
 tioned by Sir John de Walton. 
 
 There is a civil way of seeming to believe any apology 
 which people are disposed to receive in payment, without 
 alleging suspicion of its currency. The minstrel, therefore, 
 tendered his thanks for the civility which had so far been 
 shown to him. "It was a mere wish of passing curiosity," 
 he said, "which, if not granted, could be attended with no 
 consequences either inconvenient or disagreeable to him. 
 Thomas of Ercildoun was, according to the Welsh triads, 
 one of the three bards of Britain who never stained a spear 
 with blood, or was guilty either of taking or retaking castles 
 and fortresses, and thus far not a person likely, after death, 
 24 
 
370 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 to be suspected of such warlike feats. But I can easil}'' con- 
 ceive why Sir John de Walton should have allowed the 
 usual rites of hospitality to fall into disuse, and why a man 
 of public character like myself ought not to desire food or 
 lodging where it is accounted so dangerous ; and it can sur- 
 prise no one why the governor did not even invest his worthy 
 young lieutenant with the power of dispensing with so strict 
 and unusual a rule/' 
 
 These words, very coolly spoken, had something of the 
 effect of affronting the young knight, as insinuating that he 
 was not held sufficiently trustworthy by Sir John de Walton, 
 with whom he had lived on terms of affection and familiar- 
 ity, though the governor had attained his thirtieth year and 
 upwards, and his lieutenant did not yet write himself one- 
 and-twenty, the lull age of chivalry having been in his case 
 particularly dispensed with, owing to a feat of early man- 
 hood. Ere he had fully composed the angry thoughts which 
 were chafing in his mind, the sound of a hunting-bugle was 
 heard at the gate, and from the sort of general stir which it 
 spread through the garrison, it was plain that the governor 
 had returned from his ride. Every sentinel, seemingly ani- 
 mated by his presence, shouldered his pike more uprightly, 
 gave the word of the post more sharply, and seemed more 
 fully awake and conscious of his duty. Sir John de Walton, 
 having alighted from his horse, asked Greenleaf what had 
 passed during his absence ; the old archer " thought it his 
 duty to say that a minstrel, who seemed like a Scotchman, 
 or wandering Borderer, had been admitted into the castle, 
 while his son, a lad sick of the pestilence so much talked of, 
 had been left for a time at the abbey of St. Bride." This 
 he said on Fabian's information. The archer added, that 
 " the father was a man of tale and song, who could keep the 
 whole garrison amused, without giving them leave to attend 
 to their own business." 
 
 " We want no such devices to pass the time," answered 
 the governor ; '- and we would have been better satisfied if 
 our lieutenant had been pleased to find us other guests, and 
 fitter for a direct and frank communication, than one who, 
 by his profession, is a detractor of God and a deceiver of 
 man." 
 
 " Yet," said the old soldier, who could hardly listen even 
 to his commander without indulging the humor of contra- 
 diction, "I have heard your honor intimate that the trade 
 of a minstrel, when it is justly acted up to, is as worthy as 
 even the degree of knighthood itself." 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 371 
 
 '* Such it may have been in former days answered the 
 knight; ''but in modern minstrelsy the duty of rendering 
 the art an incentive to virtue is forgotten, and it is well if 
 the poetry which fired our fathers to noble deeds does not 
 now push on their children to such as are base and unworthy. 
 But I will speak upon this to my friend Aymer, than whom 
 I do not know a more excellent or a more high-spirited 
 young man." 
 
 "While discoursing with the archer in this manner. Sir 
 John de Walton, of a tall and handsome figure, advanced 
 and stood within the ample arch of the guard-room chimney, 
 and was listened to in reverential silence by trusty Gilbert, 
 who filled up with nods and signs, as an attentive auditor, 
 the pauses in the conversation. 
 
 The conduct of another hearer of what passed was not 
 equally respectful, but, from his position, he escaped ob- 
 servation. This third person was no other than the squire 
 Fabian, who was concealed from observation by his position 
 behind the hob, or projecting portion of the old-fashioned 
 fireplace, and hid himself yet more carefully when he heard 
 the conversation between the governor and the archer turn 
 to the prejudice, as he thought, of his master. The squire's 
 employment at this time was the servile task of cleaning Sir 
 Aymer's arms, which was conveniently performed by heating, 
 upon the projection already specified, the pieces of steel 
 armor for the usual thin coating of varnish. He could not, 
 therefore, if he should be discovered, be considered as guilty 
 of anything insolent or disrespectful. He was better screened 
 from view, as a thick smoke arose from a quantity of oak 
 panelling, carved in many cases with the crest and achieve- 
 ments of the Douglas family, which, being the fuel nearest 
 at hand, lay smoldering in the chimney, and gathering to 
 a blaze. 
 
 The governor, unconscious of this addition to his audience, 
 pursued his conversation with Gilbert Greenleaf. "I need 
 not tell you," he said, "that I am interested in the speedy 
 termination of this siege or blockade with which Douglas 
 continues to threaten us ; my own honor and affections are 
 engaged in keeping this Dangerous Castle safe in England's 
 behalf, but I am troubled at the admission of this stranger ; 
 and young De Valence would have acted more strictly in the 
 line of his duty if he had refused to this Avanderer any com- 
 munication with this garrison without any permission." 
 
 "Pity it is," replied old Greenleaf, shaking his head, 
 " that this good-natured and gallant young knight is some- 
 
872 WA VERLE Y NO VELS 
 
 what drawn aside by the rash advices of his squire, the boj 
 Fabian, who has bravery, but as little steadiness in him as a 
 bottle of fermented small beer." 
 
 " Now hang thee," thought Fabian to himself, "for an 
 old relic of the wars, stulfed full of conceit and warlike 
 terms, like the soldier who, to keep himself from the cold, 
 has lapped himself so close in a tattered ensign for a shelter, 
 that his very outside may show nothing but rags and 
 blazonry." 
 
 " I would not think twice of the matter, were the party 
 less dear to me," said Sir John de Walton. " But I would 
 fain be of use to this young man, even although I should 
 purchase his improvement in military knowledge at the ex- 
 pense of giving him a little pain. Experience should, as it 
 v/ere, be burnt in upon the mind of a young man, and not 
 merely impressed by marking the lines of his chart out for 
 him with chalk ; I will remember the hint yon, Greenleaf, 
 have given, and take an opportunity of severing these two 
 young men ; and though I most dearly love the one, and am 
 far from wishing ill to the other, yet at present, as you well 
 hint, the blind is leading the blind, and the young knight 
 has for his assistant and counselor too young a squire, and 
 that must be amended," 
 
 " Marry, out upon thee, old palmer-worm !" said the page 
 within himself; 'Miave I found thee' in the very fact of 
 maligning myself and my master, as it is thy nature to do 
 towards all the hopeful young buds of chivalry ? If it were 
 not to dirty the arms of an Sieve of chivalry, by measuring 
 them with one of thy rank, I might honor thee with a 
 knightly invitation to the field, Avhilethe scandal which thou 
 hast spoken is still foul upon thy tongue ; as it is, thou shalt 
 not carry one kind of language publicly in the castle, and 
 another before the governor, upon the footing of having 
 served with him under the banner of Long-shanks. I will 
 carry to my master tliis tale of thine evil intentions ; and 
 when we have concerted together, it shall appear whether the 
 youthful spirits of the garrison or the gray beards are most 
 likely to be the hope and protection of this same Castle of 
 Douglas." 
 
 It is enough to say that Fabian pursued his purpose, in 
 carrying to his master, and in no very good humor, there- 
 port of what had passed between Sir John de Walton and the 
 old soldier. He succeeded in representing the whole as a 
 formal offense intended to Sir Aymer de Valence ; while all 
 that the governor did to remove the suspicions entertained 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 373 
 
 by the young kniglit could not in any respect bring him to 
 take a kindly view of the feelings of his commander towards 
 him. He retained the impression which he had formed from 
 Fabian's recital of what he had heard, and did not think he 
 was doing Sir John de Walton any injustice in supposing 
 him desirous to engross the greatest share of the fame ac- 
 quired in the defense of the castle, and thrusting back his 
 companions, who might reasonably pretend to a fair portion 
 of it. 
 
 The mother of mischief, says a Scottish proverb, is no 
 bigger than a midge's wing.* In this matter of quarrel 
 neither the young man nor the old knight had afforded each 
 other any Just cause of offense. De Walton was a strict 
 observer of military discipline, in which he had been educated 
 from his extreme youth, and by which he was almost as com- 
 pletely ruled as by his natural disposition ; and his present 
 situation added force to his original education. 
 
 Common report had even exaggerated the military skill, 
 the love of adventure, and the great variety of enterprise as- 
 cribed to James, the young Lord of Douglas. He had, in the 
 eyes of this Southern garrison, the faculties of a fiend, rather 
 than those of a mere mortal ; for if the English soldiers 
 cursed the tedium of the perpetual watch and ward upon 
 the Dangerous Castle, which admitted of no relaxation from 
 the severity of extreme duty, they agreed that a tall form 
 was sure to appear to them with a battle-ax in his hand, and, 
 entering into conversation in the most insinuating manner, 
 never failed, with an ingenuity and eloquence equal to that 
 of a fallen spirit, to recommend to the discontented sentinel 
 some mode in which, by giving his assistance to betray the 
 English, he might set himself at liberty. The variety of 
 tliese devices, and the frequency of their recurrence, kept 
 Sir John de Walton's anxiety so perpetually upon the stretch, 
 that he at no time thought himself exactly out of the Black 
 Douglas's reach any more than the good Christian sujDposes 
 himself out of the reach of the wiles of the Devil ; while 
 every new temptation, instead of confirming his hope, seems 
 to announce that the immediate retreat of the Evil One will 
 be followed by some new attack yet more cunningly devised. 
 Under this general state of anxiety and apprehension, the 
 temper of the governor changed somewhat for the worse, 
 and they who loved him best regretted most that he became 
 addicted to complain of the want of diligence on the part o^ 
 those who, neither invested with responsibility like lais nor 
 * i. e. Gnat's wing. 
 
374 WA VERL EY NO VEL& 
 
 animated by the hope of such splendid rewards, did not en- 
 tertain the same degree of watcliful and incessant suspicion 
 as himself. The soldiers muttered that the vigilance of their 
 governor was marked with severity ; the officers and men of 
 rank, of whom there were several, as the castle was a renowned 
 school of arms, and there was a certain merit attained even 
 by serving within its walls, complained, at the same time, 
 that Sir John de Walton no longer made parties for hunting, 
 for hawking, or for any purpose which might soften the 
 rigors of warfare, and suffered nothing to go forward but the 
 precise discipline of the castle. On the other hand, it may 
 be usually granted that the castle is well kept where the 
 governor is a disciplinarian ; and where feuds and personal 
 quarrels are found in the garrison, the young men are usually 
 more at fault than those whose greater experience has con- 
 vinced them of the necessity of using the strictest precau- 
 tions. 
 
 A generous mind — and such was Sir John de Walton's — 
 is often in this way changed and corrupted by the habit of 
 over-vigilance, and pushed beyond its natural limits of candor. 
 Neither was Sir Aymer de Valence free from a similar 
 change : suspicion, though from a different cause, seemed 
 also to threaten to bias his open and noble disposition, in 
 those qualities which had hitherto been proper to him. It 
 was in vain that Sir John de Walton studiously sought op- 
 portunities to give his younger friend indulgences which at 
 times were as far extended as the duty of tlie garrison per- 
 mitted. The blow was struck : the alarm had been given to 
 a proud and fiery temper on both sides ; and while De Valence 
 entertained an opinion that he was unjustly suspected by a 
 friend who was in several respects bound to him, De Walton, 
 on the other hand, was led to conceive that a young man of 
 whom he took a charge as affectionate as if he had been a 
 son of his own, and who owed to his lessons what he knew of 
 warfare, and what success he had obtained in life, had taken 
 offense at trifles, and considered himself ill-treated on very 
 inadequate grounds. The seeds of disagreement thus sown 
 between them failed not, like the tares sown by the Enemy 
 among tlie wheat, to pass from one class of the garrison to 
 another ; the soldiers, though without any better reason than 
 merely to pass the time, took different sides between their 
 governor and his young lieutenant ; and so the ball of con- 
 tention, being once thrown up between them, never lacked 
 some arm or other to keep it in motion. 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 Alas ! they had been friends in youth ; 
 But whispering tongues can poison truth • 
 And constancy lives in realms above, 
 
 And life is thorny, and j^outh is vain, 
 And to be wroth with one we love, 
 
 Doth work like madness in the brain. 
 
 Each spoke words of high disdain. 
 And insvilt to his heart's dear brother, 
 But never either found another 
 To free the hollow heart from paining ; 
 They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
 
 Like cliffs which had been rent asunder. 
 A dreary sea now flows between. 
 
 But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder. 
 Shall wlioUy do away, I ween. 
 The marks of that which once hath been. 
 
 Coleridge, Christabel. 
 
 In prosecution of the intention which, when his blood was 
 cool, seemed to him wisest, Sir John de Walton resolved that 
 he would go to the verge of indulgence with his lieutenant 
 and his young officers, furnish them with every species of 
 amusement which the place rendered possible, and make 
 them ashamed of their discontent by overloading them with 
 courtesy. The first time, therefore, that he saw Aymer de 
 Valence after his return to the castle, he addressed him in 
 high spirits, whether real or assumed, 
 
 ^" What thinkest thou, my young friend," said de Walton, 
 '' if we try some of the woodland sjjorts proper, they say, to 
 tliis country ? There are still in our neighborhood some 
 herds of the Caledonian breed of wild cattle,* which are no- 
 where to be found except among the moorlands, the black 
 and rugged frontier of what was anciently called the king- 
 dom of Strathclyde. There are some hunters, too, who have 
 been accustomed to the sport, and who vouch that these 
 animals are by far the most bold and fierce subjects of chase 
 i'l the island of Britain." 
 
 ** You will do as you please," replied Sir Aymer, coldly ; 
 ** but it is not I, Sir John, who would recommend, for th'' 
 
 * See Note 6. 
 «2^ 
 
376 H'^ VERLET NOVELS 
 
 Bake of a hunting-match, that you should involve the whole 
 garrison in danger : you know best the responsibilities in- 
 curred by your office here, and no doubt must have heedfully 
 attended to them before making a proposal of such a nature/' 
 
 " I do indeed know my own duty," replied De Walton, 
 offended in turn, ''and might be allowed to think of yours 
 also, without assuming more than my own share of respon- 
 sibility ; but it seems to me as if the commander of this 
 Dangerous Castle, among other inabilities, were, as old 
 people in this country say, subjected to a spell, and one 
 which renders it impossible for him to guide his conduct so 
 as to afford pleasure to those whom he is most desirous to 
 oblige. Not a great many weeks since, whose eyes would 
 have sparkled like those of Sir Aymer de Valence at the pro- 
 posal of a general hunting-match after a new object of 
 game ; and now what is his bearing when such sport is pro- 
 posed — merely, I think, to disappoint my purpose of obliging 
 him ? A cold acquiescence drops half-frozen from his lips, 
 and he proposes to go to rouse the wild cattle with an air of 
 gravity, as if he were undertaking a pilgrimage to the tomb 
 of a martyr." 
 
 "Not so. Sir John," answered the young knight. ''In 
 our present situation we stand conjoined in more charges 
 than one, and although the greater and controlling trust is 
 no doubt laid upon you as the elder and abler knight, yet 
 still 1 feel that I myself have my own share of a serious re- 
 sponsibility. I trust, therefore, you will indulgently hear my 
 opinion, and bear with it, even though it should appear to 
 have relation to that part of our common charge which is 
 more especially entrusted to your keeping. The dignity of 
 knighthood which I have the honor to share with you, the 
 accolade laid on my shoulder by the royal Plantagent, en- 
 titles me, methinks, to so much grace." 
 
 " I cry you mercy," said the elder cavalier ; " I forgot how 
 important a person I had before me, dubbed by King Ed- 
 ward himself, who was moved no doubt by sj^ecial reasons to 
 confer such an early honor ; and I certainly feel that I over- 
 step my duty when I propose anything that savors like idle 
 sport to a person of such grave pretensions." 
 
 "Sir John de Walton," retorted De Valence, "we have 
 had something too much of this — let it stop here. All that 
 I mean to say is that, in this wardship of Douglas Castle, it 
 will not be by my consent if any amusement which distinctly 
 infers a relaxation of discipline be unnecessarily engaged in, 
 and especially such as compels us to summon to our assistance 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 377 
 
 a number of the Scots, whose evil disposition towards us we 
 well know ; nor will I, though my years have rendered me 
 liable to such suspicion, suffer anything of this kind to be 
 imputed to me ; and if unfortunately — though I am sure I 
 know not why — we are in future to lay aside those bonds of 
 familiar friendship which formerly linked us to each other, 
 yet I see no reason why we should not bear ourselves in our 
 necessary communications like knights and gentlemen, and 
 put the best construction on each other's motives, since there 
 can be no reason for imputing the worst to anything that 
 comes from either of us." 
 
 '* You may be right. Sir Aymer de Valence," said the 
 governor, bending stiffly ; ' ' and since we say we are no longer 
 bound to each other as friends, you may be certain, never- 
 theless, that I will never permit a hostile feeling of which 
 you are the object to occupy my bosom. You have been long, 
 and I hope not uselessly, my pupil in the duties of chivalry. 
 You are the near relation of the Earls of Pembroke, my kind 
 and constant patron, and if these circumstances are well 
 weighed, they form a connection which it would be difficult, 
 at least for me, to break through. If you feel yourself, as 
 you seem to intimate, less strictly tied by former obligations, 
 you must take your own choice in fixing our relations towards 
 each other." 
 
 " I can only say," replied De Valence, " that my conduct 
 will naturally be regulated by your own ; and you. Sir John, 
 cannot hope more devoutly than I do that our military duties 
 may be fairly discharged without interfering with our friendly 
 intercourse. "" 
 
 The knights here parted, after a conference which once or 
 twice had very nearly terminated in a full and cordial expla- 
 nation ; but still there was wanting one kind heartfelt word 
 from either to break, as it were, the ice which was fast 
 freezing upon their intercourse, and neither chose to be the 
 first in making the necessary advances with sufficient cordi- 
 ality, though each would have gladly done so had the other 
 appeared desirous of meeting it with the same ardor ; but 
 their pride was too high, and prevented either from saying 
 what might at once have put them upon an open and manly 
 footing. They parted, therefore, without again returning 
 to the subject of the proposed diversion ; until it was after- 
 wards resumed in a formal note, praying Sir Aymer de Va- 
 lence to accompany the commandant of Douglas Castle upon 
 a solem hunting-match, which had for its object the wild 
 cattle of the neighboring dale. 
 
378 WAVERLEY N0VEL8 
 
 The time of meeting was appointed at six in the morning, 
 beyond the gate of the outer barricade ; and the chase was 
 declared to be ended in the afternoon, when the recheat 
 should be blown beneath the great oak, known by the name 
 of Sholto's Club, which stood, a remarkable object, where 
 Douglas Dale was bounded by several scattered trees, the 
 outskirts of the forest and hill country. The usual warning 
 was sent out to the common people, or vassals of the district, 
 which they, notwithstanding their feeling of antipathy, re- 
 ceived in general with delight, upon the great epicurean 
 principle of carpe diem — that is to say, in whatever circum- 
 stances it happens to present itself, be sure you lose no 
 recreation which life affords. A hunting-match has still its 
 attractions, even though an English knight take his pleasure 
 in the woods of the Douglas. 
 
 It was no doubt afflicting to these faithful vassals to ac- 
 knowledge another lord, than the redoubted Douglas, and to 
 wait by wood and river at the command of English officers, 
 and in the company of their archers, whom they accounted 
 their natural enemies. Still it Avas the only species of amuse- 
 ment which had been permitted them for a long time, and 
 they were not disposed to omit the rare opportunity of join- 
 ing in it. The chase of the wolf, the wild boar, or even the 
 timid stag, required sylvan arms ; the wild cattle still more 
 demanded this equipment of war-bows and shafts, boar-spears 
 and sharp swords, and other tools of the chase, similar to 
 those used in actual war. Considering this the Scottish in- 
 habitants were seldom allowed to join in the chase, except 
 under regulations as to number and arms, and especially in 
 preserving a balance of force on the side of tlie English sol- 
 diers, which was very offensive to them. The greater part 
 of the garrison was upon such occasions kept on foot, and 
 several detachments, formed according to the governor's 
 direction, were stationed in different positions, in case any 
 quarrel should suddenly break out. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The drivers through the wood went, 
 
 For to raise the deer ; 
 Bowmen bickered upon the bent, 
 
 With their broad arrows clear. 
 
 The wylde through the woods went. 
 
 On every side sliear ; 
 Grehounds through the groves glent, 
 
 For to kill thir deer. 
 
 Ballad of Clievij Chase, Old Edit, 
 
 The appointed morning came in cold and raw, after the 
 manner of the Scottish March weather. Dogs yelled, yawned, 
 and shivered, and the huntsmen, though hardy and cheerful 
 in expectation of the day's sport, twitched tiieir mauds, or 
 Lowland plaids, close to their throats, and looked with some 
 dismay at the mists which floated about the horizon, now 
 threatening to sink down on the peaks and ridges of promi- 
 nent mountains, and now to shift their position under the 
 influence of some of the uncertain gales which rose and fell 
 alternately as they swept along the valley. 
 
 Nevertheless, the appearance of the whole formed, as is 
 usual in almost all departments of the chase, a gay and jovial 
 spectacle. A brief truce seemed to have taken place between 
 the nations, and the Scottish people appeared for the time 
 rather as exhibiting the sports of their mountains in a friendly 
 manner to the accomplished knights and bonny archers of Old 
 England than as performing a feudal service, neither easy 
 nor dignified in itself, at the instigation of usurping neigh- 
 bors. The figures of the cavaliers, now half seen, new ex- 
 hibited fully, and at the height of stenuous exertion, accord- 
 ing to the character of the dangerous and broken ground, 
 particularly attracted the attention of the pedestrians, who, 
 leading the dogs or beating the thickets, dislodged such 
 objects of chase as they found in the dingles, and kept their 
 eyes fixed upon their companions, rendered more remarkable 
 from being mounted, and the speed at which they urged 
 their horses ; the disregard of all accidents being as perfect 
 as Melton Mowbray itself, or any other noted field of hunters 
 of the present day, can exhibit. 
 
880 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 The principles on whicli modern and ancient hunting were 
 conducted are, however, as different as possible, A fox, or 
 even a hare, is in our own day considered as a sufficient 
 apology for a day's exercise to forty or fifty dogs, and nearly 
 as many men and horses ; but the ancient chase, even though 
 not terminating, as it often did, in battle, carried with it 
 objects more important, and an interest immeasurably more 
 stirring. If, indeed, one species of exercise can be pointed 
 out as more universally exhilarating and engrossing than 
 others, it is certainly that of the chase. The poor over- 
 labored drudge, who has served out his day of life, and 
 wearied all his energies, in the service of his fellow-mortals, 
 he who has been for many years the slave of agriculture, or, 
 still worse, of manufactures, engaged in raising a single 
 peck of corn from year to year, or in the monotonous labors 
 of the desk, can hardly remain dead to the general happi- 
 ness when the chase sweeps past him Avith hound and horn, 
 and for a moment feels all the exultation of the proudest 
 cavalier who partakes the amusement. Let any one who 
 has witnessed the sight recall to his imagination the vigor 
 and lively interest which he has seen inspired into a village, 
 including the oldest and feeblest of its inhabitants. In the 
 words of Wordsworth, it is, on such occasions — 
 
 Up Timothy, up with your staff and away, 
 Not a soul will remain in the village to-day ; 
 The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds, 
 And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds. 
 
 But compare these inspiring sounds to the burst of a whole 
 feudal population enjoying the sport, whose lives, instead of 
 being spent in tlie monotonous toil of modern avocations, 
 have been agitated by the hazards of war and of the chase, 
 its near resemblance, and you must necessarily suppose that 
 the excitation is extended like a fire which catches to dry 
 heath. To use the common expression, borrowed from an- 
 other amusement, all is fish that comes in the net on such 
 occasions. An ancient hunting-match, the nature of the 
 carnage excepted, was almost equal to a modern battle, when 
 the strife took place on the surface of a varied and unequal 
 country. A whole district poured forth its inhabitants, who 
 formed a ring of great extent, called technically a tinchel. 
 and, advancing and narrowing their circle by degrees, drove 
 before them the alarmed animals of every kind, all and each 
 of which, as they burst from the thicket or the moorland, 
 were objects of the bow, the javelin, or whatever missilo 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 381 
 
 weapons the hunters jjossessed ; while others were run down 
 and worried by large greyhounds, or more frequently brought 
 to bay, when the more important persons present claimed 
 for themselves the pleasure of putting them to death with 
 their chivalrous hands, incurring individually such danger 
 as is inferred from a mortal contest even with the timid buck, 
 when he is brought to the death-struggle, and has no choice 
 but yielding his life or putting himself upon the defensive, 
 by the aid of his splendid antlers, and with all the courage 
 of despair. 
 
 The quantity of game found in Douglas Dale on this oc- 
 casion was very considerable, for, as already noticed, it was 
 a long time since a hunting upon a great scale had been at- 
 tempted under the Douglasses themselves, whose misfor- 
 tunes had commenced, several years before, with those of 
 their country. The English garrison, too, had not sooner 
 judged themselves strong or numerous enough to exercise 
 these valued feudal privileges. In the meantime the game 
 increased considerably. The deer, the wild cattle, and the 
 wild boars lay near the foot of the mountains, and made 
 frequent irruptions into the lower part of the valley, which 
 in Douglas Dale bears no small resemblance to an oasis, sur- 
 rounded by tangled woods and broken moors, occasionally 
 rocky, and showing large tracts of that bleak dominion to 
 which wild creatures gladly escape when pressed by the 
 neighborhood of man. 
 
 As the hunters traversed the spots which separated the 
 field from the wood, there was always a stimulating uncer- 
 tainty what sort of game was to be fouiid, and the marks- 
 man, with his bow ready bent, or his javelin poised, and his 
 good and well-bitted horse thrown upon its haunches, ready 
 for a sudden start, observed watchfully what should rush 
 from the covert, so that, were it deer, boar, wolf, wild cattle, 
 or any other species of game, he might be in readiness. 
 
 The wolf, which, on account of its ravages, was the most 
 obnoxious of the beasts of prey, did not, however, supply the 
 degree of diversion which his name promised : he usually 
 fled far — in some instances many miles — before he took 
 courage to turn to bay, and though formidable at such mo- 
 ments, destroying both dogs and men by his terrible bite, 
 yet at other times was rather despised for his cowardice. 
 The boar, on the other hand, was a much more irascible and 
 courageous animal. 
 
 The wild cattle, the most formidable of all the tenants of 
 the ancient Caledonian forest, were, however, to the English 
 
882 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 cavaliers by far the most interesting objects of pursuit. 
 Altogether, the ringing of bnglrs, the clattering of horses' 
 hoofs, the lowing and bellowing of the enraged mountain 
 cattle, the sobs of deer mangled by throttling dogs, the wild 
 shouts of exultation of the men, made a chorus which ex- 
 tended far through the scene in which it arose, and seemed 
 to threaten the inhabitants of the valley even in its inmost 
 recesses. 
 
 During the course of the hunting, when a stag or a boar 
 was expected, one of the wild cattle often came rushing for- 
 ward, bearing down the young trees, crashing the branches 
 in its progress, and in general dispersing whatever opposition 
 was presented to it by the hunters. Sir John de Walton was 
 the only one of the chivalry of the party who individually 
 succeeded in mastering one of these powerful animals. Like 
 a Spanish tauridor, he bore down and killed with his lance 
 a ferocious bull ; two well-grown calves and three kine were 
 also slain, being unable to carry off the quantity of arrows. 
 Javelins, and other missiles directed against them by the 
 archers and drivers ; but many others, in spite of every en- 
 deavor to intercept them, escaped to their gloomy haunts in 
 the remote skirts of the mountain called Cairntable, with their 
 hides well-feathered with those marks of human enmity. 
 
 A large portion of the morning was spent in this way, 
 until a particular blast from the master of the hunt an- 
 nounced that he had not forgot the discreet custom of the 
 repast, which, on such occasions, was provided for upon a 
 scale proportioned to the multitude who had been convened 
 to attend the sport. 
 
 The blast peculiar to the time assembled the whole party 
 in an open space in a wood, where their numbers had room 
 and accommodation to sit down upon the green turf, the 
 slain game affording a plentiful supply for roasting or broil- 
 ing, an employment in which the lower class were all ini- 
 mediately engaged ; while puncheons and pipes, placed _ in 
 readiness, and scientifically opened, supplied Gascoigne wine 
 and mighty ale at the pleasure of those who chose to appeal 
 
 to them. • « . 
 
 The knights, whose rank did not admit of interference, 
 were seated by themselves, and ministered to by their squires 
 and pages, to whom such menial services were not accounted 
 disgraceful, but, on the contrary, a proper step of their 
 education. The number of those distinguished persons seated 
 upon the present occasion at the table of dais, as it was 
 called, in virtue of a canopy of green boughs with which it was 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS S83 
 
 overshadowed, comprehended Sir John de Walton, Sir Aymer 
 de Valence, and some reverend brethren dedicated to the 
 service of St. Bride, who, though Scottish ecclesiastics, were 
 treated with becoming respect by the English soldiers. One 
 or two Scottish retainers or vavasours, maintaining, perhaps 
 in prudence, a suitable deference to the English knight, 
 sat at the bottom of the table, and as many English archers, 
 peculiarly respected by their suj^eriors, were invited, accord- 
 ing to the modern phrase, to the honors of the sitting. 
 
 Sir John de Walton sat at the head of the table ; his eye, 
 though it seemed to have no certain object, yet never for a 
 moment remained stationary, but glanced from one counte- 
 nance to another of the ring formed by his guests, for such 
 they all were, no doubt, though he himself could hardly 
 have told upon what principle he had issued the invitations ; 
 and even apparently was at a loss to think what, in one or 
 two cases, had procured him the honor of their presence. 
 
 One person in particular caught De Walton's eye, as having 
 the air of a redoubted man-at-arms, although it seemed as if 
 fortune had not of late smiled upon his enterprises. He 
 was a tall raw-boned man, of an extremely rugged coun- 
 tenance, and his skin, which showed itself through many a 
 loophole in his dress, exhibited a comjilexion which must 
 have endured all the varieties of an outlawed life ; and akin 
 to one who had, according to the customary phrase, ''ta'en 
 the bent with Robin Bruce ' — in other words, occupied the 
 moors with him as an insurgent. Some such idea certainly 
 crossed De Walton's mind. Yet the apparent coolness and 
 absence of alarm with which the stranger sat at the board 
 of an English officer, at the same time being wholly in his 
 power, had much in it which was irreconcilable with any 
 such suggestion. De Walton, and several of those about 
 him, had in the course of the day observed that this tattered 
 cavalier, the most remarkable parts of whose garb and equip- 
 ments consisted of an old coat-of-mail and a rusted yet 
 massive partizan about eight feet long, was possessed of 
 superior skill in the art of hunting to any individual of their 
 numerous party. The governor having looked at this sus- 
 picious figure until he had rendered the stranger aware of 
 the special interest which he attracted, at length filled a 
 goblet of choice wine, and requested him, as one of the best 
 pupils of Sir Tristrem who had attended upon the day's 
 chase, to pledge fiim in a vintage superior to that supplied 
 to the general company. 
 
 "I suppose, however, sir," said De Walton, ''you will 
 
mi WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 have no objections to put off my challenge of a brimmer until 
 you can answer my pledge in Gascoigne Avine, which grew 
 in the King's own demesne, was pressed for his own lip, and 
 is therefore fittest to be emptied to his Majesty's health and 
 prosperity." 
 
 " One half of the island of Britain," said the woodsman, 
 with great composure, "will be of your honor's opinion; 
 but, as I belong to the other half, even the choicest liquor 
 in Gascony cannot render that health acceptable to me." 
 
 A murmur of disapprobation ran through the warriors 
 present ; the priests hung their heads, looked deadly grave, 
 and muttered their paternosters. 
 
 "You see, stranger," said De Walton, sternly, "that 
 your speech discomposes the company." 
 
 " It may be so,'' replied the man, in the same blunt tone ; 
 " and it may happen that there is no harm in the speech 
 notwithstanding." 
 
 "Do you consider that it is made in my presence ?" an- 
 swered De Walton. 
 
 *' Yes, sir governor." 
 
 " And have you thought what must be the necessary in- 
 ference ?" continued De Walton. 
 
 " I may form a round guess," answered the stranger, 
 "what I might have to fear, if your safe-conduct and word 
 of honor, when inviting me to this hunting, were less trust- 
 worthy than I know full well it really is. But I am your 
 guest ; your meat is even now passing my throat ; your cup, 
 filled with right good wine, I have just now quaffed off ; and 
 I would not fear the rankest paynim infidel, if we stood in 
 such relation together, much less an English knight. I tell 
 you besides, sir knight, you undervalue the wine we have 
 quaffed. The high "flavor and contents of your cup, grow 
 where it will, give me spirit to tell you one ortwo circum- 
 stances, which cold cautious sobriety would, in a moment 
 like this, have left unsaid. You wish, I doubt not, to know 
 who I am ? My Christian name is Michael ; my surname is 
 that of Turnbull — a redoubted clan, to whose honors, even 
 in the field of hunting or of battle, 1 have added something. 
 My abode is beneath 'the mountain of Euberslaw, by the fair 
 streams of Teviot. You are surprised that I know how to 
 hunt the wild cattle— I, who have made tliem my sport from 
 infancy in the lonely forests of Jed and Southdean, and have 
 killed more of them than you or any Englishman in your 
 host ever saw, even if you include the doughty deeds of this 
 day/' 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 385 
 
 The bold Borderer made this declaration with the same 
 provoking degree of coolness which predominated in his 
 whole demeanor, and was indeed his principal attribute. 
 His effrontery did not fail to produce its effect upon Sir 
 John de Walton, who instantly called out — " To arms ! — 
 to arms ! Secure the spy and traitor. Ho ! pages and yeo- 
 men — William, Anthony, Bend-the-Bow, and Greenleaf — 
 seize the traitor, and bind him with your bowstrings and dog- 
 leashes — bind him, I say, until the blood stars from beneath 
 his nails." 
 
 " Here is a goodly summons ! " said Turnbull, with a sort 
 of horse-laugh. "^ Were I as sure of being answered by twenty 
 men I could name, there would be small doubt of the upshot 
 of this day." 
 
 The archers thickened around the hunter, yet laid no 
 hold on him, none of them being willing to be the first who 
 broke the peace proper to the occasion. 
 
 " Tell me," said De Walton, " thou traitor, for what 
 waitest thou here ?" _ 
 
 " Simply and solely," said the Jed forester, " that I may 
 deliver up to the Douglas the castle of his ancestors, and 
 that I may ensure thee, sir Englishman, the payment of thy 
 deserts, by cutting that very throat which thou makest such 
 a bawling use of." 
 
 At the same time, perceiving that the yeomen were crowd- 
 ing behind him to carry their lord's commands into execu- 
 tion so soon as they should be reiterated, the huntsman 
 turned himself short round upon those who appeared about 
 to surprise him, and having, by the suddenness of the action 
 induced them to step back a pace, he proceeded — " Yes, 
 John de Walton, my purpose was ere now to have put thee 
 to death, as one whom I find in possession of that castle and 
 territory which belong to my master, a knight much more 
 worthy than thyself ; but I know not why I have paused — 
 thou hast given me food when I have hungered for twenty- 
 four hours, I have not therefore had the heart to pay thee at 
 advantage as thou hast deserved. Begone from this place 
 and country, and take the fair warning of a foe ; thou hast 
 constituted thyself the mortal enemy of this people, and 
 there are those among them who have seldom been injured 
 or defied with impunity. Take no care in searching after 
 nie — it will be in vain — until I meet thee at a time which 
 will come at my pleasure, not thine. Push not your inqui- 
 sition into cruelty, to discover by what means I have deceived 
 you, for it is impossible for you to learn : and with this 
 25 
 
386 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 friendly advice, look at me and take your leave, for, although 
 we shall one day meet, it may be long ere I see you again." 
 
 De Walton remained silent, hoping that his prisoner (for 
 he saw no chance of his escaping) might, in his communicative 
 humor, drop some more information, and was not desirous 
 to precipitate a fray with which the scene was likely to con- 
 clude, unconscious at the same time of the advantage which 
 he thereby gave the daring hunter. 
 
 As Turnbull concluded his sentence, he made a sudden 
 spring backwards, which carried him out of the circle formed 
 around him, and, before they were aware of his intentions, 
 at once disappeared among the underwood. 
 
 "Seize him — seize him!" repeated De Walton; 'Met us 
 have him at least at our discretion, unless the earth has 
 actually swallowed him." 
 
 This indeed appeared not unlikely, for near the place 
 where Turnbull had made the spring there yawned a steep 
 ravine, into which he plunged, and descended by the assist- 
 ance of branches, bushes, and copsewood until he reached 
 the bottom, where he found some road to the outskirts of 
 the forest, through which he made his escape, leaving the 
 most expert woodsmen among the pursuers totally at fault, 
 and unable to trace his footsteps. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 This interlude carried some confusion into the proceedings 
 of the hunt, thus suddenly surprised by the apparition of 
 Michael Turnbull, an armed and avowed follower of the 
 house of Douglas, a sight so little to be expected in the ter- 
 ritory where his master was held a rebel and a bandit, and 
 where he himself must have been well known to most of the 
 peasantry present. The circumstance made an obvious im- 
 pression on the English chivalry. Sir John de Walton looked 
 grave and thoughtful, ordered the hunters to be assembled 
 on the spot, and directed his soldiers to commence a strict 
 search among the persons who had attended the chase, so as 
 to discover whether Turnbull had any companions among 
 them ; but it was too late to make that inquiry in the strict 
 fashion which De Walton directed. 
 
 The Scottish attendants on the chase, when they beheld 
 that the hunting under pretense of which they were called 
 together, was interrupted for the purpose of laying hands 
 upon their persons, and subjecting them to examination, 
 took care to suit their answers to the questions put to them 
 — in a word, they kept their own secret, if they had any. 
 Many of them, conscious of being the weaker party, became 
 afraid of foul play, slipt away from the places to which they 
 had been appointed and left the hunting-match like men 
 who conceived they had been invited with no friendly intent. 
 Sir John de Walton became aware of the decreasing numbers 
 of the Scottish, their gradual disappearance awakening in 
 the English knight that degree of suspicion which had of 
 late become his peculiar characteristic. 
 
 " Take, I pray thee," said he to Sir Aymer de Valence, 
 ''as many men-at-arms as thou canst get together in five 
 minutes' space, and at least a hundred of the mounted 
 archers, and ride as fast as thou canst, without permitting 
 them to straggle from thy standard, to reinforce the garrison 
 of Douglas ; for I have my own thoughts what may have been 
 attempted on the castle, when we observe with our own eyes 
 such a nest of traitors here assembled." 
 
 " With reverence. Sir John," replied Aymer, '-'you shoot 
 in this matter rather beyond the mark. That the"^ Scottish 
 387 
 
888 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 peasants have bad thouglits against ns, I will be the last to 
 deny ; but, long debarred from any silvan sport, you cannot 
 wonder at their crowding to any diversion by wood or river, 
 and still less at their being easily alarmed as to the certainty 
 of the safe footing on which they stand with us. The least 
 rough usage is likely to strike them with fear and with the 
 desire of escape, and so " 
 
 " And so," said Sir John de Walton, who had listened 
 with a degree of impatience scarce consistent with the grave 
 and formal politeness which one knight was accustomed to 
 bestow upon another — " and so I would rather see Sir Aymer 
 de Valence busy his horse's heels to execute my orders than 
 give his tongue the trouble of impugning them." 
 
 At this sharp reprimand, all present looked at each other 
 with indications of marked displeasure. Sir Aymer was 
 highly offended, but saw it was no time to indulge in repri- 
 sal. He bowed until the feather which was in his barret-cap 
 mingled with his horse's mane, and without reply — for he did 
 not even choose to trust his voice in reply at the moment — 
 headed a considerable body of cavalry by the straightest road 
 back to the Castle of Douglas. 
 
 When he came to one of those eminences from which he 
 could observe the massive and complicated towers and walls 
 of the old fortress, with the glitter of the broad lake which 
 surrounded it on three sides, he felt much pleasure at the 
 sight of the great banner of England, which streamed from 
 the highest part of the building. " I knew it," he internally 
 said — " I was certain that Sir John de Walton had become a 
 very woman in the indulgence of his fears and suspicions. 
 Alas ! that a situation of responsibility should so much have 
 altered a disposition which I have known so noble and so 
 knightly ! By this good day, I scarce know in what manner 
 I should demean me when thus publicly rebuked before the 
 garrison. Certainly he deserves that I should, at some time 
 or other, let him understand that, however he may triumph 
 in the exercise of his short-lived command, yet, when man 
 is to meet with mau, it will puzzle Sir John de Walton to 
 show himself the superior of Aymer de Valence, or perhaps 
 to establish himself as his equal. But if, on the contrary, 
 his fears, however fantastic, are sincere at the moment he 
 expresses them, it becomes me to obey punctually commands 
 which, however absurd, are imposed in consequence of the 
 governor's belief that they are rendered necessary by the 
 times, and not inventions designed to vex and domineer over 
 his officers in the indulgence of his official powers. I would 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 389 
 
 1 knew which is the true statement of the case, and whether 
 the once famed De Walton is become afraid of his enemies 
 more than fits a knight, or makes imaginary doubts the pre- 
 text of tyrannizing over his friend. I cannot say it would 
 make much difference to me, but I would rather have it 
 that the man I once loved had turned a petty tyrant than a 
 Aveak-spirited coward ; and I would be content that he should 
 study to vex me, rather than be afraid of his own shadow." 
 
 With these ideas passing in his mind, the young knight 
 crossed the causeway which traversed the piece of water that 
 fed the moat, and, passing under the strongly fortified gate- 
 way, gave strict orders for letting down the portcullis and 
 elevating the drawbridge, even at the appearance of De 
 Walton's own standard before it. 
 
 A slow and guarded movement from the hunting-ground 
 to the Castle of Douglas gave the governor ample time to 
 recover his temper, and to forget that his young friend had 
 shown less alacrity than usual in obeying his commands. He 
 was even disposed to treat as a jest the length of time and 
 extreme degree of ceremony with which every point of mar- 
 tial discipline was observed on his own re-admission to the 
 castle, though the raw air of a wet spring evening whistled 
 around his own unsheltered person and those of his follow- 
 ers, as they waited before the castle gate for the exchange ot 
 passwords, the delivery of keys, and all the slow minutiae 
 attendant upon the movements of a garrison in a well- 
 guarded fortress. 
 
 " Come," said he, to an old knight, who was peevishly 
 blaming the lieutenant-governor, ''it was my own fault : I 
 spoke but now to Aymer de Valence Avith more authoritative 
 emphasis than his newly-dubbed dignity was pleased with, 
 and this precise style of obedience is apiece of not unnatural 
 and very pardonable revenge. Well, we will owe him a 
 return. Sir Philip — shall we not ? This is not a night to 
 keep a man at the gate." 
 
 This dialogue, overheard by some of the squires and pages, 
 was bai died about from one to another, until it entirely lost 
 the tone of good-humor in which it Avas spoken, and the 
 offense for which Sir John de Walton and old Sir Philip 
 were to meditate revenge, and Avas said to have been repre- 
 sented by the governor as a piece of mortal and intentional 
 offense on the part of his subordinate officer. 
 
 Thus an increasing feud went on from day to day between 
 two warriors who, with no just cause of quarrel, had at heart 
 every reason to esteem an d^ love each other. It became 
 
890 n^A VEELET NOVELS 
 
 visible in the fortress even to those of the lower rank, who 
 hoped to gain some consequence by intermingling in the 
 species of emulation produced by the jealousy of the com- 
 manding-officers — an emulation which may take place, in- 
 deed, in the present day. but can hardly have the same sense 
 of wounded pride and jealous dignity attached to it which 
 existed in times when the personal honor of knighthood 
 rendered those who possessed it jealous of every punctilio. 
 
 So many little debates took place between the two knights, 
 that Sir Aymer de Valence thought himself under the neces- 
 eity of writing to his uncle and namesake, the Earl of Pem- 
 broke, stating that his officer, Sir John de Walton, had un- 
 fortunately of late taken some degree of prejudice against 
 him, and that, after having borne with many provoking in- 
 stances of his displeasure, he was now compelled to request 
 that his place of service should be changed from the Castle 
 of Douglas to wherever honor could be acquired, and time 
 might be given to put an end to his present cause of com- 
 plaint against his commanding-officer. Through the whole 
 letter young Sir Aymer was particularly cautious how he 
 expressed his sense of Sir John de Walton's jealousy or 
 severe usage ; but such sentiments are not easily concealed, 
 and in spite of him an air of displeasure glanced out from 
 several passages, and indicated his discontent with his uncle's 
 old friend and companion-in-arms, and with the sphere of 
 military duty which his uncle had himself assigned him. 
 
 An accidental movement among the English troops 
 brought Sir Aymer an answer to his letter sooner than he 
 could have hoped for at that time of day, in the ordinary 
 course of correspondence, which was then extremely slow 
 and interrupted. 
 
 Pembroke, a rigid old warrior, entertained the most partial 
 opinion of Sir John de Walton, who was a work as it were 
 of his own hands, and was indignant to find that his nephew, 
 whom he considered as a mere boy, elated by having had the 
 dignity of knighthood conferred upon him at an age un- 
 usually early, did not absolutely coincide with him in this 
 opinion. He replied to him, accordingly, in a tone of high 
 displeasure, and expressed himself as a person of rank would 
 write to a young and dependent kinsman upon the duties of 
 his profession ; and, as he gathered his nephew's cause of 
 complaint from his own letter, he conceived that he did him 
 no injustice in making it slighter than it really was. _ He 
 reminded the young man that the study of chivalry consisted 
 in the faithful and patient discharge of military service 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 391 
 
 (jphether of high or low degree, according to the circumstances 
 in wliich war placed the champion. That, above all, the 
 post of danger, which Douglas Castle had been termed by 
 common consent, was also the post of lionor ; and that a 
 young man should be cautious how he incurred the supposi- 
 tion of being desirous of quitting his present honorable com- 
 mand, because he was tired of the discipline of a military 
 director so renowned as Sir John de Walton. Much also 
 there was, as was natural in a letter of that time, concern- 
 ing the duty of young men, whether in council or in arms, 
 to be guided implicitly by their elders ; and it was observed, 
 with justice, that the commanding-officer, who had put him- 
 self into the situation of being responsible with his honor, 
 if not his life, for the event of the siege or blockade, might 
 justly, and in a degree more than common, claim the implicit 
 direction of the whole defense. Lastly, Pembroke reminded 
 his nephew that he was, in a great measure, dependent upon 
 the report of Sir John de Walton for the character which 
 he was to sustain in after life ; and reminded him that a 
 few actions of headlong and inconsiderate valor would not 
 so firmly found his military reputation as months and years 
 spent in regular, humble, and steady obedience to the com- 
 mands which the governor of Douglas Castle might think 
 necessary in so dangerous a conjuncture. 
 
 This missive arrived within so short a time after the 
 despatch of the letter to which it was a reply, that Sir Aymer 
 was almost tempted to suppose that his uncle had some mode 
 of corresponding with De Walton unknown to the young 
 knight himself and to the rest of the garrison. And as the 
 earl alluded to some particular displeasure which had been 
 exhibited by De Valence on a late trivial occasion, his uncle's 
 knowledge of this and other minutige seemed to confirm his 
 idea that his own conduct was watched in a manner which 
 he did not feel honorable to himself or dignified on the part 
 of his relative ; in a word, he conceived himself exposed to 
 that sort of surveillance of which, in all ages, the young 
 have accused the old. It hardly needs to say that the ad- 
 monition of the Earl of Pembroke greatly chafed the fiery 
 spirit of his nephew, insomuch that, if the earl had wished 
 to write a letter purposely to increase the prejudices which 
 he desired to put an end to, he could not have made use of 
 terms better calculated for that elTect. 
 
 The truth was, that the old archer, Gilbert Greenleaf, had, 
 without the knowledge of the young knight, gone to Pem- 
 broke's camp, in Ayrshire, and was recommended by Sir 
 
892 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 John de Walton to the earl as a person who could give such 
 minute information respecting A3-mer de Valence as he might 
 desire to receive. The old archer was, as we have seen, a 
 formalist, and when pressed on some points of Sir Aymer de 
 Valence's discipline, he did not hesitate to throw out hints 
 which, connected with those in the knight's letter to his 
 uncle, made the severe old earl adopt too implicitly the idea 
 that his nephew was indulging a spirit of insubordination, 
 and a sense of impatience under authority, most dangerous 
 to the character of a young soldier. A little explanation 
 might have produced a complete agreement in the sentiment? 
 of both ; but for this fate allowed neither time nor oppor- 
 tunity ; and the old earl was unfortunately induced to be- 
 come a party, instead of a negotiator, in the quarrel. 
 
 And by decision, more embroil'd the fray. 
 
 Sir John de "Walton soon perceived that the receipt of 
 Pembroke's letter did not in any respect alter the cold, cere- 
 monious conduct of his lieutenant towards him, which 
 limited their intercourse to what their situation rendered in- 
 dispensable, and exhibited no advances to any more frank or 
 intimate connection. Thus, as may sometimes be the case 
 between officers in their relative situations even in the present 
 day, they remained in that cold, stiff degree of official com- 
 munication in which their intercourse was limited to as few 
 expressions as the respective duties of their situation abso- 
 lutely demanded. Such a state of misunderstanding is, in 
 fact,"^ worse than a downright quarrel : the latter may be ex- 
 plained or apologized for, or become the subject of medita- 
 tion, but in such a case as the former an eclaircissement is as 
 unlikely to take place as a general engagement between two 
 armies which have taken up strong defensive position? on both 
 sides. Duty, however, obliged the two principal persons in 
 the garrison of Douglas Castle to be often togetlier, when 
 they were so far from seeking an opportunity of making up 
 matters, that they usually revived ancient subjects of debate. 
 
 It was upon such an occasion that De Walton, in a very 
 formal manner, asked De Valence in what capacity, and for 
 how long time, it was his pleasure that the minstrel called 
 Bertram should remain at the castle. 
 
 "A week,'' said the. governor, "is certainly long enough, 
 in this time and place, to express the hospitality due to a 
 minstrel." 
 
 " Certainly,*' replied the young man ; " I have not interest 
 enough in the subject to form a single wish upon it." 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 393 
 
 ** In that case," resumed De Walton, " I shall request of 
 this person to cut short his visit at the Castle of Douglas." 
 
 " I know no particular interest," replied Aymer de Valence, 
 " which I can possibly have in this man's motions. He is 
 here under pretense of making some researches after the 
 writings of Thomas of Ercildoun, called the Ehymer, which 
 he says are infinitely curious, and of which there is a volume 
 in the old baron's study, saved somehow from the flames at 
 the last conflagration. This told, you know as much of his 
 errand as I do ; and if you hold the presence of a wandering 
 old man and the neighborhood of a boy dangerous to the 
 castle under your charge, you will no doubt do well to dis- 
 miss them — it will cost but a word of your mouth." 
 
 "Pardon me," said De Walton ; " the minstrel came here 
 as one of your retinue, and I could not, in fitting courtesy, 
 send him away without your leave." 
 
 "lam sorry, then," answered Sir Aymer, " in my turn, 
 that you did not mention your purpose sooner. I never en- 
 tertained a dependent vassal or servant whose residence in 
 the castle I would wish to have prolonged a moment beyond 
 your honorable pleasure." 
 
 '' I am sorry," said Sir John de Walton, " that we two 
 have of late grown so extremely courteous that it is difficult 
 for us to understand each other. This minstrel and his son 
 come from we know not where, and are bound we know not 
 whither. There is a report among some of your escort that 
 this fellow Bertram upon the way had the audacity to im- 
 pugn, even to your face, the King of England's right to the 
 crown of Scotland, and that he debated the point with you, 
 while your other attendants were desired by you to keep 
 behind and out of hearing." 
 
 " Hah ! " said Sir Aymer, " do you mean to found on that 
 circumstance any charge against my loyalty ? I pray you to 
 observe that such an averment would touch mine honor, 
 which I am ready and willing to defend to the last gasp." 
 
 "No doubt of it, sir knight," answered the governor; 
 '' but it is the strolling minstrel, and not the high-born Eng- 
 lish knight, against whom the charge is brought. Well, the 
 minstrel come's to this castle, and he intimates a wish that his 
 son should be allowed to take up his quarters at the little old 
 convent of St. Bride, where two or three Scottish nuns and 
 friars are still permitted to reside, most of them rather out 
 of respect to their order than for any good-will which they 
 are supposed to bear the English or their sovereign. It may 
 also be noticed that this leave was purchased by a larger sum 
 
394 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 of money, if my information be correct, than is usually to 
 be found in the purses of traveling minstrels, a class of wan- 
 derers alike remarkable for their poverty and for their genius. 
 What do you think of all this ?" 
 
 "I ! " rej^lied De Valence. " I am happy that my situation, 
 as a soldier under command, altogether dispenses with my 
 thinking of it at all. My post, as lieutenant of your castle, 
 is such that, if I can manage matters so as to call my honor 
 and my soul my own, I must think that quite enough of free- 
 will is left at my command ; and I promise you shall not have 
 again to reprove, or send a bad report of me to my uncle, on 
 that account." 
 
 " This is beyond suffrance ! " said Sir John de Walton, 
 half aside, and then proceeded aloud — " Do not, for Heaven's 
 sake, do yourself and me the injustice of supposing that I 
 am endeavoring to gain an advantage over you by these ques- 
 tions. Eecollect, young knight, that, when you evade giving 
 your commanding-officer your advice when required, you fail 
 as much in point of duty as if you declined affording him the 
 assistance of your sword and lance." 
 
 ''Such being the case," answered De Valence, ''let me 
 know plainly on what matter it is that you require my opinion. 
 I will deliver it plainly, and stand by the result, even if I 
 should have the misfortune — a crime unpardonable in so 
 young man and so inferior an officer — to differ from that of 
 Sir John de Walton." 
 
 " I would ask you, then, sir knight of Valence," answered 
 the governor, " what is your opinion with respect to this 
 minstrel Bertram, and whether the susj^icions respecting him 
 and his son are not such as to call upon me, in performance 
 of my duty, to put them to a close examination, with the 
 question ordinary and extraordinary, as is usual in such cases, 
 and to expel them not only from the castle, but from the 
 whole territory of Douglas Dale, under pain of scourging, if 
 they be again found wandering in these parts ? " 
 
 " You ask me my opinion," said De Valence, "and you 
 shall have it, sir knight of Walton, as freely and fairly as if 
 matters stood betwixt us on a footing as friendly as they ever 
 did. I agree with you that most of those who in these days 
 profess the science of minstrelsy are altogether unqualified 
 to support the higher pretensions of that noble order. Min- 
 strels by right are men who have dedicated themselves to the 
 noble occupation of celebrating knightly deeds and generous 
 principles : it is in their verse that the valiant knight is 
 nanded down to fame, and the poet has a right, nay, is bound, 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 395 
 
 to emulate the virtues which he praises. The looseness of 
 the times has diminished the consequence and impaired the 
 morality of this class of wanderers : their satire and their 
 praise are now too often distributed on no other principle 
 than love of gain ; -yet let us hope that there are still among 
 them some who know, and also willingly perform, their duty. 
 My own opinion is, that this Bertram liolds himself as one 
 who has not shared in the degradation of his brethren, nor 
 bent the knee to the mammon of the times ; it must remain 
 with you, sir, to judge whether such a person, honorably and 
 morally disposed, can cause any danger to the Castle of 
 Douglas. But believing, from the sentiments he has mani- 
 fested to me, that he is incapable of playing the part of a 
 traitor, I must strongly remonstrate against his being pun- 
 ished as one, or subjected to the torture within the wnlls of 
 an English garrison. I should blush for my country if it re- 
 quired of us to inflict such wanton misery upon wanderers 
 whose sole fault is poverty ; and your own knightly senti- 
 ments will suggest more than would become me to state to 
 Sir John de Walton, unless in so far as is necessary to apolo- 
 gize for retaining my own opinion." 
 
 Sir John de Walton's dark brow was stricken with red when 
 he heard an opinion delivered, in opposition to his own, which 
 plainly went to stigmatize his advice as ungenerous, unfeel- 
 ing, and unknightly. He made an effort to preserve his 
 temper, while he thus replied with a degree of calmness — 
 •'You have given your opinion. Sir Aymer de Valence ; and 
 that you have given it openly and boldly, without regard to 
 my own, I thank you. It is not quite so clear that I am 
 obliged to defer my own sentiments to yours, in case the rules 
 on which I hold my office, the commands of the King, and 
 the observations which I may personally have made, shall rec- 
 ommend to me a different line of conduct from that which 
 you think it right to suggest," 
 
 De Walton bowed, ia conclusion, with great gravity ; and 
 the young kniglit, returning the reverence with exactly the 
 same degree of stiff formality, asked whether there were 
 any particular orders respecting his duty in the castle ; 
 and having received an answer in the negative, took his 
 departure. 
 
 Sir John de Walton, after an expression of impatience, as 
 if disappointed at finding that the advance which he had 
 made towards an explanation with his young friend had 
 proved unexpectedly abortive, composed his brow as if to 
 deep thought, and walked several times to and fro in the 
 
396 TV A VERLEY NOVELS 
 
 apartment, considering what course he was to take in these 
 circumstances. " It is hard to censure him severely," he 
 said, " when I recollect that, on first entering ui^on life, my 
 own thoughts and feelings would have been the same with 
 those of this giddy and hot-headed, but. generous, boy. Now 
 prudence teaches me to suspect mankind in a thousand in- 
 stances where perhaps there is not sufficient ground. If I 
 am disposed to venture my own honor and fortune, rather 
 than an idle traveling minstrel should suffer a little pain, 
 which at all events I might make up to him by money, still, 
 have I a right to run the risk of a conspiracy against the 
 King, and thus advance the treasonable surrender of the 
 Castle of Douglas, for which I know so many schemes are 
 formed ; for which, too, none can be imagined so desperate 
 but agents will be found bold enough to undertake the exe- 
 cution ?_ A man who holds my situation, although the slave 
 of conscience, ought to learn to set aside those false scruples 
 which assume the appearance of flowing from our own morai 
 feeling, whereas they are in fact instilled by the suggestior 
 of affected delicacy. I will not, I swear by Heaven, be in- 
 fected by the follies of a boy such as Aymer ; I will not, 
 that I may defer to his caprices, lose all that love, honor, 
 and ambition can propose for the reward of twelve months' 
 service, of a nature the most watchful and unpleasant. I 
 will go straight to my point, and use the ordinary precau- 
 tions in Scotland which I should employ in Normandy oi 
 Gascoigne. What ho ! page, who waits there ?" 
 
 One of his attendants replied to his summons. " Seel 
 me out Gilbert Greenleaf the archer, and tell him I would 
 speak with him touching the two bows and the sheaf of 
 arrows concerning which I gave him a commission to Ayr." 
 
 A few minutes intervened after tlie order was given, when 
 the archer entered, holding in his hand two bow-staves, not 
 yet fashioned, and a number of arrows secured together with 
 a thong. He bore the mysterious looks of one whose ap- 
 parent business is not of very great consequence, but k 
 meant as a passport for other affairs which are in themselves 
 of a secret nature. Accordingly, as the knight was silent^ 
 and afforded no other opening for Greenleaf, that judicious- 
 negotiator proceeded to enter \\])o\\ such as was open to hiuL 
 
 " Here are the bow-staves, noble sir, which you desireoi 
 me to obtain while I was at Ayr with the Earl of Pembroke** 
 army. They are not so good as I could have wished, yei' 
 are perhaps of better quality than could have been procures^ 
 by any other than a fair judge of the weapon. The iiaii Q:^ 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 39T 
 
 Pembroke's whole camp are frantic mad in order to procure 
 real Spanish staves from the Groyne and other ports in 
 Spain ; but though two vessels laden with such came into 
 the port of Ayr, said to be for the King's army, yet I believe 
 never one-half of them have come into English hands. 
 These two grew in Sherwood, which [and], having been 
 seasoned since the time of Robin Hood, are not likely to 
 fail either in strength or in aim, in so strong a hand, and 
 with so just an eye, as those of the men who wait on your 
 worship." 
 
 " And who has got the rest, since two ships' cargoes of 
 new bow-staves are arrived at Ayr, and thou with difficulty 
 hast only procured me two old ones ? " said the governor. 
 
 " Faith, I pretend not skill euougli to know," answered 
 Greenleaf, shrugging his shoulder. " Talk there is of plots 
 in that country as well as here. It is said that their Bruce 
 and the rest of his kinsmen intend a new May-game, and 
 that the outlawed king proposes to land near to Turnberry 
 early in summer, with a number of stout kernes from Ire- 
 land ; and no doubt the men of his mock earldom of Carrick 
 are getting them ready with bow and spear for so hopeful 
 an undertaking. I reckon that it Avill not cost us the ex- 
 pense of more than a few score of sheaves of arrows to put 
 all that matter to rights." 
 
 ' ' Do you talk then of conspiracies in this part of the 
 country, Greenleaf ? " said De Walton. " I know you are a 
 sagacious fellow, well bred for many a day to the use of the 
 bent stick and string, and will not allow such a practise to 
 go on under thy nose without taking notice of it." 
 
 '*I am old enough, Heaven knows," said Greenleaf, '^and 
 have had good experience of these Scottish wars, and know 
 well whether these native Scots are a people to be trusted to 
 by knight or yeoman. Say they are a false generation, and 
 say a good archer told you so, who with a fair aim, seldom 
 missed a hand's-breadth of the white. Ah, sir, your honor 
 knows how to deal with them : ride them strongly and rein 
 them hard ; you are not like those simple novices who im- 
 agine that all is to be done by gentleness, and wish to parade 
 themselves as courteous and generous to those faithless moun- 
 taineers, who never, in the course of their lives, knew any 
 tincture either of courteousness or generosity." 
 
 '•Thou alludest to some one," said the governor, **and 1 
 charge thee, Gilbert, to be plain and sincere with me. Thou 
 knowest, methinks, that in trusting me thou wilt come to 
 no harm ? ** 
 
398 WAVER LEY NOVELS 
 
 "It is true — it is true, sir," said the old remnant of th( 
 wars, carrying his hand to his brow ; " but it were imnrudent 
 to communicate all the remarks which float through an old 
 man's brain in the idle moments of such a garrison as this. 
 One stumbles unawares on fantasies as well as realities, and 
 thus one gets, not altogether undeservedly, the character of 
 a talebearer and mischief-maker among his comrades, and 
 methinks I would not willingly fall under that accusation." 
 
 " Speak frankly to me," answered De Walton, "and have 
 no fear of being misconstrued, whosoever the conversation 
 may concern." 
 
 *' Nay in plain truth," answered Gilbert, " I fear not the 
 greatness of this young knight, heing, as I am, the oldest 
 soldier in the garrison, and having drawn a bowstring long 
 and many a day ere he was weaned from his nurse's breast." 
 
 "It is then," said De Walton, "my lieutenant and friend, 
 Aymer de Valence, at whom your suspicions point ? " 
 
 " At nothing," replied the archer, " touching the honor of 
 the young knight himself, who is as brave as the sword he 
 wears, and, his youth considered, stands high in the roll of 
 English chivalry ; but he is young, as your worship knows, 
 and I own that in the choice of his company he disturbs and 
 alarms me." 
 
 "Why, you know, Greenleaf," answered the governor, 
 *' that in the leisure of a garrison a knight cannot always con- 
 fine his sports and pleasures among those of his own rank, 
 who are not numerous, and may not be so gamesome or fond 
 of frolic as he would desire them to be," 
 
 "I know that well," answered the archer, "nor would I 
 say a word concerning your honor's lieutenant for joining 
 any honest fellows, however inferior their rank, in the wrest- 
 ling-ring or at a bout of quarter staff. But if Sir Aymer de 
 Valence has a fondness for martial tales of former days, me- 
 thinks he had better learn them from the ancient soldiers 
 who have followed Edward the First — whom God assoilzie ' 
 — and who have known before his time the barons' wars and 
 other onslaughts, in which the knights and archers of Merry 
 England transmitted so many gallant actions to be recorded 
 by fame ; this truly, I say, were more beseeming the Earl of 
 Pembroke's nephew than to see him closet himself day after 
 day with a strolling minstrel, who gains his livelihood by 
 reciting nonsense and lies to such young men as are fond 
 enough to believe him, of whom hardly any one knows 
 whether he be English or Scottish in his opinions, and still 
 less can any one pretend to say whether he is of English or 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 899 
 
 Jcnttish birth, or with what purpose he lies lounging about 
 this castle, and is left free to communicate everything which 
 passes within it to those old mutterers of matins at St. Bride's, 
 wlio say with their tongues 'God save King Edward,' but 
 pray in their hearts ' (Jod save King Robert the Bruce.' 
 Such a communication he can easily carry on by means of his 
 son, who lies at St. Bride's cell, as your M'orship knows, under 
 pretense of illness." 
 
 "How do you say?" exclaimed the governor — ''under 
 pretense ? Is he not then really indisposed ? " 
 
 " Nay, he may be sick to the death for aught I know," 
 said the archer ; " but if so, were it not then more natural 
 that the father should attend his son's sick-bed than that he 
 should be ranging about this castle, where one eternally meets 
 him in the old baron's study, or in some corner, where you 
 least expect to find him ? " 
 
 " If he has no lawful object," replied the knight, " it might 
 be as you say ; but he is said to be in quest of ancient poems 
 or prophecies of Merlin, of the Rhymer, or some other old 
 bard ; and in truth it is natural for him to wish to enlarge 
 his stock of knowledge and power of giving amusement, and 
 where should he find the means save in a study filled with 
 ancient books ?" 
 
 " No doubt," replied the archer, with a sort of dry, civil 
 sneer of incredulity ; " I have seldom known an insurrection 
 in Scotland but that it was prophesied by some old forgotten 
 rhyme, conjured out of dust and cobwebs, for the sake of 
 giving courage to those North Country rebels who durst not 
 otherwise have abiden the whistling of the gray-goose shaft; 
 but curled heads are hasty, and, with license, even your own 
 train, sir knight, retains too much of the fire of youth for 
 such uncertain times as the present." 
 
 "Thou hast convinced me, Gilbert Greenleaf, and I will 
 look into this man's business and occupation more closely 
 than hitherto. This is no time to peril the safety of a royal 
 castle for the sake of affecting generosity towards a man of 
 whom we know so little, and to whom, till we receive a very 
 full explanation, we may, without doing him injustice, attach 
 grave suspicious. Is he now in the apartment called the 
 baron's study ?" 
 
 " Your worship will be certain to find him there," replied 
 Greenleaf. 
 
 " Then follow me, with two or three of thy comrades, and 
 keep out of sight, but within hearing : it may be necessary 
 to arrest this man." 
 
400 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 '' My assistance," said the old archer, "shall be at hand 
 when you call, but " 
 
 '' But what ?" said the knight ; " I hope I am not to find 
 doubts and disobedience on all hands ? " 
 
 " Certainly not on mine," repliod Greenleaf ; " I would 
 only remind your worshij) that what I have said was a sincere 
 opinion expressed in answer to your worship's question, and 
 that, as Sir Aymcr de Valence has avowed himself the patron 
 of this man, I would not willingly be left to the hazard of 
 his revenge." 
 
 " Pshaw ! " answered De Walton, " is Aymer de Valence 
 governor of this castle or am I ? or to whom do yon imagine 
 you are responsible for answering such questions as I may 
 put to you ? " 
 
 " Nay," replied the archer, secretly not "".ispleased at seeing 
 De Walton show some little jealousy of his own authority, 
 " believe me, sir knight, that I know my own station and 
 your worship's, and that I am not now to be told to whom I 
 owe obedience." 
 
 " To the study then, and let us find the man,'' said the 
 governor. 
 
 " A fine matter indeed," subjoined Greenleaf, following 
 him, '•' that your worship should have to go in person to look 
 after the arrest of so mean an individual. But your honor 
 is right : these minstrels are often jugglers, and possess the 
 power of making their escape by means which borrel folk 
 like myself are disposed to attribute to necromancy." 
 
 Without attending to these last words. Sir John de Walton 
 set forth towards the study, walking at a quick pace, as if 
 this conversation had augmented his desire to find himself 
 in possession of the person of the suspected minstrel. 
 
 Traversing the ancient passages of the castle, the governor 
 had no difficulty in reaching the study, which was strongly 
 vaulted with stone, and furnished with a sort of iron cabinet, 
 intended for the preservation of articles and papers of value, 
 in case of fire. Here he found the minstrel seated at a small 
 table, sustaining before him a manuscript, apparently of 
 great antiquity, from which he seemed engaged in making 
 extracts. The windows of the room Avere very small, and 
 still showed some traces that tliey had originally been 
 glazed with a painted history of St. IBride— another mark of 
 the devotion of the great family of Douglas to their tutelar 
 saint. 
 
 The minstrel, who had seemed deeply wrapped in the con- 
 templation of his task, on being disturbed by the uulooked< 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 401 
 
 for entrance of Sir John de Walton, rose with every mark 
 of respect and humility, and, remaining standing in the 
 governor's presence, appeared to wait for his interrogations, 
 as if he had anticipated that the visit concerned himself 
 particularly. 
 
 " I am to suppose, sir minstrel," said Sir John de "Walton, 
 " that you have been successful in your search, and have 
 found the roll of poetry or prophecies that you proposed to 
 seek after amongst these broken shelves and tattered 
 volumes ? " 
 
 "More successful than I could have expected,'' replied the 
 minstrel, " considering the effects of the conflagration. 
 This, sir knight, is apparently the fatal volume for which I 
 sought, and strange it is, considering the heavy chance of 
 other books contained in this library, that I have been able 
 to find a few, though imperfect, fragments of it.*' 
 
 " Since, therefore, you have been permitted_ to indulge 
 your curiosity,"' said the governor, ''I trust, minstrel, you 
 will have no objection to satisfy mine ?" 
 
 The minstrel replied with the same humility, "_that,_ if 
 there was anything within the poor compass of his skill which 
 could gratify Sir John de Walton in any degree, he would 
 but reach his lute and presently obey his commands/' 
 
 "You mistake, sir," said Sir John, somewhat harshly. 
 " I am none of those Avho have hours to spend in listening 
 to tales or music of former'days: my life has hardly given 
 me time enough for learning the duties of my profession, 
 far less has it allowed me leisure for such twangling follies. 
 I care not who knows it, but my ear is so incapable of judg- 
 ing of your art, which you doubtless think a noble one, 
 that I can scarcely tell the modulation of one tune from 
 another." 
 
 "In that case," replied the minstrel, composedly, "I 
 can hardly promise myself the pleasure of affording your 
 worship the amusement which I might otherwise have done." 
 
 " JSTor do I look for any at your hand," said the governor, 
 advancing a step nearer to him, and speaking in a sterner 
 tone. " I want information, sir, which I am assured you 
 can give me, if you incline ; and it is my duty to tell you 
 that, if you show unwillingness to speak the truth, I know 
 means by which it will become my painful duty to extort 
 it in a more disagreeable manner than I would wish/' 
 
 " If your questions, sir knight/' answered Bertram, "be 
 such as I can or ought to answer, tliere shall be no occasion 
 to put them more than once. If they are such as I cannot 
 26 
 
402 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 or ought not to reply to, believe me that no threats of vio- 
 lence will extort an answer from me." 
 
 "You speak boldly/' said Sir John de Walton; "but 
 take my word for it, that your courage will be put to the 
 test. I am as little fond of proceeding to such extremities 
 as you can be of undergoing them, but such will be the 
 natural consequence of your own obstinacy. I therefore ask 
 you, whether Bertram be your real name ; whether you 
 have any other profession than that of a traveling min- 
 strel and, hastily, whether you have any acquaintance or 
 connection with any Englishman or Scottishman beyond 
 the walls of this Castle of Douglas ? " 
 
 " To these questions," replied the minstrel, " I have al- 
 ready answered the worshipful knight. Sir Aymerde Valence, 
 and, having fully satisfied him, it is not, I conceive, nec- 
 cessary that I should undergo a second examination ; nor is 
 it consistent either with your worship's honor or that of the 
 lieutenant-governor that such a re-examination should take 
 place." 
 
 " You are very considerate," replied the governor, " of 
 my honor and of that of Sir Aymer de Valence. Take my 
 word for it, they are both in perfect safety in our own keep- 
 ing, and may dispense with your attention, I ask you, will 
 you answer the inquiries which it is my duty to make, or am 
 I to enforce obedience by putting you under the penalties 
 of the question ? I have already, it is my duty to say, seen 
 the answers you have returned to my lieutenant, and they 
 do not satisfy me." 
 
 He at the same time clapped his hands, and two or three 
 archers showed themselves, stripped of their tunics, and only 
 attired in their shirts and hose. 
 
 "I understand," said the minstrel, "that you intend to 
 inflict upon me a punishment which is foreign to the genius 
 of the English laws, in that no proof is adduced of my 
 guilt, I have already told that I am by birth an English- 
 man, by profession a minstrel, and that I am totally uncon- 
 nected with any person likely to nourish any design against 
 this Castle of Douglas, Sir John de Walton, or his gar- 
 rison. What answers you may extort from me by bodily 
 agony, I cannot, to speak as a plain-dealing Christian, hold 
 myself responsible for. I think that I can endure as much 
 pain as any one ; I am sure that I never yet felt a degree of 
 agony that I would not willingly prefer to breaking my 
 plighted word, or becoming a false informer against inno- 
 cent persons ; but I own I do not know the extent to which 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 403 
 
 the art of torture may be carried ; and though I do not 
 fear you. Sir John de Walton, yet I must acknowledge that 
 I fear myself, since I know not to what extremity your 
 cruelty may be capable of subjecting me, or how far I may 
 be enabled to bear it. I, therefore, in the first place, pro- 
 test that I shall in no manner be liable for any words which 
 I may utter in the course of any examination enforced from 
 me by torture ; and you must therefore under such circum- 
 stances, proceed to the execution of an office which, permit 
 me to say. is hardly that which I expected to have found 
 thus administered by an accomplished knight like yourself." 
 
 " Hark you, sir," replied the governor, "' you and I are 
 at issue, and in doing my duty I ought instantly to proceed 
 to the extremities 1 have threatened ; but perhaps you your- 
 self feel less reluctance to undergo the examination as pro- 
 posed than I shall do in commanding it : I will therefore 
 consign you for the present to a place of confinement suit- 
 able to one who is suspected of being a spy upon this for- 
 tress. Until you are pleased to remove such suspicions, 
 your lodgings and nourishment are those of a prisoner. In 
 the meantime, before subjecting you to the question, take 
 notice, I will myself ride to the abbey of St. Bride, and 
 satisfy myself whether the young person whom you would 
 pass as your son is possessed, of the same determination as 
 that which you yourself seem to assert. It may so happen 
 that his examination and yours may throw such light upon 
 each other as will decidedly prove either your guilt or inno- 
 cence, without its being confirmed by the use of the extraor- 
 dinary question. If it be otherwise, tremble for your 
 son's sake, if not for your own. Have I shaken you, sir ; 
 or do you fear for your boy's young sinews and joints the 
 engines which, in your own case, you seem willing to defy ? " 
 
 "Sir," answered the minstrel, recovering from the 
 momentary emotion he had shown, "I leave it to yourself, 
 as a man of honor and candor, whether you ought, in com- 
 mon fairness, to form a worse opinion of any man because 
 he is not unwilling to incur in liis own person severities 
 which he would not desire to be inflicted upon his child, a 
 sickly youth, just recovering from a dangerous disease." 
 
 " it is my duty," answered De Walton, after a short 
 pause, " to leave no stone unturned by which this business 
 may be traced to the source ; and if thou desirest mercy for 
 thy son, thou wilt thyself most easily attain it by setting 
 him the example of honesty and plain- dealing." 
 
 The minstrel threw himself back on the seat, as if fully 
 
i04 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 resolved to bear every extremity that could be inflictedj 
 rather than make any farther answer than lie had already 
 offered. Sir John de Walton himself seemed in some degree 
 uncertain what might now be his best course. He felt an 
 invincible repugnance to proceed, without due considera- 
 tion, in what most people would have deemed the direct 
 line of his duty, by inflicting the torture both upon father 
 and son ; but deep as was his sense of devotion towards the 
 King, and numerous as were the hopes and expectations he 
 had formed upon the strict discharge of his present high 
 trust, he could not resolve upon having recourse at once to 
 this cruel method of cutting the knot. Bertram's appear- 
 ance was venerable, and his power of words not unworthy 
 of his aspect and bearing. The governor remembered that 
 Aymer de Valence, whose judgment in general it was im- 
 possible to deny, had described him as one of those rare in- 
 dividuals who vindicated the honor of a corrupted profession 
 by their personal good behavior ; and he acknowledged to 
 himself that there was gross cruelty and injustice in refusing 
 to admit the prisoner to the credit of being a true and honest 
 man until, by way of proving his rectitude, he had strained 
 every sinew and crushed every joint in his body, as well as 
 those of his son. "1 have no touchstone," he said in- 
 ternally, " which can distinguish truth from falsehood. The 
 Bruce and his followers are on the alert : he has certainly 
 equipped the galleys which lay at Rachrin during winter. 
 This story, too, of Greenleaf, about arms being procured for 
 a new insurrection, tallies strangely with the appearance of 
 that savage-looking forester at the hunt ; and all tends to 
 show that something is upon the anvil which it is my duty 
 to provide against. I will, therefore, pass over no circum- 
 stance by which I can affect the mind through hope or fear ; 
 but, please God to give me light from any other source, I 
 will not think it lawful to torment these unfortunate, and, 
 it may yet be, honest, men." He accordingly took his de- 
 parture from the library, whispering a word to Greenleaf 
 respecting the prisoner. 
 
 He had reached the outward door of the study, and his 
 satellites had already taken the minstrel into their grasp, 
 when the voice of the old man was heard calling upon De 
 Walton to return for a single moment. 
 
 " What hast thou to say, sir ?" said the governor. " Be 
 speedy, for I have already lost more time in listening to thee 
 than I am answerable for, and so I advise thee for thine own 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 405 
 
 "I advise thee," said the minstrel, "for thine own sake. 
 Sir John de Walton, to beware how tliou dost insist on tliy 
 
 f (resent purpose, by which thou thyself alone, of ail men 
 iving, will most severely suffer. If thou harmest a hair of 
 that young man's head — nay, if thou permittest him to 
 undergo any privation which it is in thy power to prevent — 
 thou wilt, in doing so, prepare for thine own suffering a de- 
 gree of agony more acute than anything else in this mortal 
 world could cause thee. I swear by the most blessed objects 
 of our holy religion, I call to witness that holy sepulcher, 
 of which I have been an unworthy visitor, that I speak 
 nothing but the truth, and that thou wilt one day testify 
 thy gratitude for the part I am now acting. It is my in- 
 terest, as well as yours, to secure you in the safe possession 
 of this castle, although assuredly I know some things re- 
 specting it, and respecting your worship, Avhich I nni not at 
 liberty to tell without the consent of that youth. Bring me 
 but a'^ note under his hand, consenting to my taking you 
 into our mystery, and believe me, you will soon see those 
 clouds charmed away ; since there was never a doleful uncer- 
 tainty which more speedily changed to joy, or a thunder- 
 cloud of adversity which more instantly gave way to sun- 
 shine, than would then the suspicions which appear now so 
 formidable." 
 
 He spoke with so much earnestness as to make some im- 
 pression upon Sir John de Walton, who was once more 
 wholly at a loss to know what line his duty called upon him 
 to pursue. 
 
 "I would most gladly," said the governor, "follow out 
 my purpose by the gentlest means in my power, and I shall 
 bring no further distress upon this poor lad than thine own 
 obstinacy and his shall appear to deserve. In the meantime, 
 think, sir minstrel, that my duty has limits, and if I slack 
 it for a day, it will become thee to exert every effort in thy 
 power to meet my condescension. [ will give thee leave to 
 address thy son by a line under thy hand, and I will await 
 his answer before I proceed farther in this matter, which 
 seems to be very mysterious. Meantime, if thou hast a soul 
 to be saved, I conjure thee to speak the truth, and tell me 
 whether the secrets of which thou seemest to be a too 
 faithful treasurer have regard to the practises of Douglas, 
 of Bruce, or of any in their names, against this Castle of 
 Douglas ?" 
 
 The prisoner thought a moment, and then replied — " lam 
 aware, sir knight, of the severe charge under which this 
 
406 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 command is entrusted to your hands, and were it in my 
 power to assist you, as a faithful minstrel and loyal subject, 
 either with hand or tongue, I should feel myself called upon 
 so to do ; but so far am I from being the character your suspi- 
 cious have apprehended, that I should have held it for certain 
 that the Bruce and Douglas had assembled their followers, 
 for the purpose of renouncing their rebellious attempts, and 
 taking their departure for the Holy Land, but for the appari- 
 tion of the forester who, I hear, bearded you at the hunting, 
 which impressed upon me the belief that, when so resolute 
 a follower and henchman of the Douglas was sitting fearless 
 among you, his master and comrades could be at no great 
 distance. How far his intentions could be friendly to you, 
 I must leave it to yourself to judge ; only believe me thus 
 far, that the rack, pulley, or pincers would not have com- 
 pelled me to act the informer, or adviser, in a quarrel wherein 
 I have little or no share, if I had not been desirous of fixing 
 the belief upon you that you are dealing with a true man, 
 and one who has your welfare at heart. Meanwhile, permit 
 me to have writing-materials, or let my own be restored, for 
 I possess, in some degree, the higher arts of my calling ; nor 
 do I fear but that I can procure for you an explanation of 
 these marvels, without much more loss of time." 
 
 "^ God grant it prove so," said the governor; "though I 
 see not well how I can hope for so favorable a termination, 
 and I may sustain great harm by trusting too much on the 
 present occasion. My duty, however, requires that, in the 
 meantime, you be removed into strict confinement." 
 
 He handed to the prisoner as he spoke the writing- 
 materials, which had been seized upon by the archers on their 
 first entrance, and then commanded these satellites to un- 
 liand the minstrel. 
 
 "I must, then," said Bertram, ''remain subjected to all 
 the severities of a strict captivity ? But I deprecate no hard- 
 ship whatever in my own person, so I may secure you from 
 acting with a degree of rashness of which you will all your 
 life repent, without the means of atoning." 
 
 " No more words, minstrel," said the governor ; " but 
 since I have made my choice, perhaps a very dangerous one 
 for myself, let us carry this spell into execution, which thou 
 sayest is to serve me, as mariners say that oil spread upon 
 the raging billows will assuage their fury." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Beware ! beware ! of the Black Friar. 
 
 He still retains his sway, 
 For lie is yet the church's heir by right, 
 
 Whoever may be the lay. 
 Amundeville is lord by day, 
 
 But the monk is lord by night, 
 Nor wine nor wassal could raise a vassal 
 
 To question that friar's right. 
 
 Don Juan, Canto xvii. 
 
 The minstrel made no vain boast of the skill which he pos- 
 sessed in the use of pen and ink. In fact, no priest of the 
 time could have produced his little scroll more speedily, 
 more neatly composed, or more fairly written, than were the 
 lines addressed " To the youth called Augustine, son of 
 Bertram the Minstrel." 
 
 "I have not folded this letter," said he, ''nor tied it 
 with silk, for it is not expressed so as to explain the mystery 
 to you ; nor, to speak frankly, do I think that it can convey 
 to you any intelligence ; but it may be satisfactory to show 
 you what the letter does not contain, and that it is written 
 from and to a person who both mean kindly towards you 
 and your garrison." 
 
 " That," said the governor, " is a deception which is 
 easily practised ; it tends, however, to show, though not 
 with certainty, that you are disposed to act upon good faith ; 
 and until the' contrary appear, I shall consider it a point of 
 duty to treat you with as much gentleness as the matter 
 admits of. Meantime, I will myself ride to the abbey of St. 
 Bride, and in person examine the young prisoner ; and as 
 you say he has the power so I pray to Heaven he may have 
 the will, to read his riddle, which seems to throw us all into 
 confusion." So saying, he ordered his horse, and while it 
 was getting ready, he perused with great composure the 
 minstrel's letter. Its contents ran thus : — 
 
 "Deae Augustine — 
 
 '* Sir John de Walton, the governor of this castle, 
 has conceived those suspicions which I have pointed out ais 
 407 
 
408 WA VERLET NOVELS 
 
 likely to be the consequence of our coming to this country 
 without an avowed errand. I at least am seized, and threat- 
 ened with examination under torture, to force me to tell the 
 purpose of our Journey ; but they shall tear my flesh from 
 my bones ere they force me to break the oath which I have 
 taken. And the purport of this letter is to apprise you of 
 the danger in which you stand of being placed in similiar 
 3ircumstances, unless you are disposed to authorize me to 
 make the discovery to this knight ; but on this subject 
 you have only to express your own wishes, being assured 
 they shall be in every respect attended to by your devoted 
 
 '' Bertram." 
 
 This letter did not throw the smallest light upon the 
 mystery of the writer. The governor read it more than once, 
 and turned it repeatedly in his hand, as if he had hoped by 
 that mechanical process to draw something from the missive 
 which at a first view the words did not express ; but as no 
 result of this sort appeared, De Walton retired tv> the hall, 
 where he informed Sir Aymer de Valence that he ivas going 
 abroad as far as the abbey of St. Bride, and that he would 
 be obliged by his taking upon hiia the duties ol governor 
 during his absence. Sir Aymer, of course, intimated his 
 acquiescence in the charge ; and the state of disunion in 
 which they stood to each other permitted no further expla- 
 nation. 
 
 Upon the arrival of Sir John de Walton at the dilapidated 
 shrine, the abbot, witli trembling haste, made it his business 
 immediately to attend the commander of the English gar- 
 rison, upon whom, for the present, their house depended for 
 every indulgence they experienced, as well as for the 
 subsistence and protection necessary to them in so perilous 
 a period. Having interrogated this old man respecting the 
 youth residing in the abbey, De Wilton was informed that 
 he had been indisposed since left there by his father, Ber- 
 tram, a minstrel. It appeared to the abbot that his indis- 
 position might be of that contagious kind which, at that 
 period ravaged the English Borders, and made some in- 
 cursions into Scotland, where it afterwards worked a fearful 
 progress. After some farther conversation, Sir John de 
 Walton put into the abbot's hand the letter to the young 
 person under the roof ; on delivering which to Augustiue, 
 the reverend father was charged with a message to the 
 English governor so bold that he was afraid to be the bearer 
 of it. It signified that the youth could not, and would not, 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 4% 
 
 at that moment receive the English knight ; but that, if 
 he came back on the morrow after mass, it was probable he 
 might learn something of what was requested. 
 
 " This is not an answer/' said Sir John de Walton, " to be 
 sent by a boy like this to a person in my charge ; and me- 
 thinks, father abbot, you consult your own safety but 
 slenderly in delivering such an insolent message." 
 
 The abbot trembled under the folds of his large coarse 
 habit ; and De Walton, imagining that his discomposure was 
 the consequence of guilty fear, called upon him to remember 
 the duties which he owed to England, the benefits which he 
 had received from himself, and the probable consequence of 
 taking part in a pert boy's insolent defiance of the power of 
 the governor of the province. 
 
 The abbot vindicated himself from these charges with the 
 utmost anxiety. He pledged his sacred word that the incon- 
 siderate character of the boy's message was owing to the 
 waywardness arising from indisposition. He reminded the 
 governor that, as a Christian and an Englishman, he had 
 duties to observe towards the community of St. Bride, which 
 had never given the English government the least subject of 
 complaint. As he spoke, the churchnuin seemed to gather 
 courage from the immunities of his order. He said he could 
 not permit a sick boy, who had taken refuge within the 
 sanctuary of the church, to be seized or subjected to any 
 species of force, unless he was accused of a specific crime, 
 capable of being immediately proved. The Douglasses, a 
 headstrong race, had, in former days, uniformly resj^ected 
 the sanctuary of St. Bride, and it was not to be supposed 
 that the King of England, the dutiful and obedient child of 
 the Church of Rome, would act with less veneration for her 
 rights than the followers of a usurper, homicide, and excom- 
 municated person like Robert Bruce. 
 
 Walton was considerably shaken with this remonstrance. 
 He knew that, in the circumstances of the times, the Pope 
 had great power in every controversy in which it was his 
 pleasure to interfere. He knew that, even in the dispute 
 respecting tbe supremacy of Scotland, his Holiness had set 
 up a claim to the kingdom which, in the temper of the times, 
 might perhaps have been deemed superior both to that of 
 Robert Bruce and that of Edward of England, and he con- 
 ceived his monarch would give liim little thanks for any fresh 
 embroilment which might take place with the church. 
 Moreover, it was easy to place a watch, so as to prevent 
 Augustine from escaping during the night ; and on the fol- 
 
410 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 lowing morning he would be still as effectually in the power 
 of the English governor as if he were seized on by open force 
 at the present moment. Sir John de Walton, however, so 
 far exerted his authority over the abbot, that he engaged, in 
 consideration of the sanctuary being respected for this space 
 of time, that, when it expired, he would be aiding and assist- 
 ing with his spiritual authority to surrender the youth, should 
 he not allege a sufficient reason to the contrary. This ar- 
 rangement, which appeared still to flatter the governor with 
 the prospect of an easy termination of this troublesome dis- 
 pute, induced him to grant the delay which Augustine 
 rather demanded than petitioned for. 
 
 ''At your request, father abbot, whom I have hitherto 
 found a true man, I will indulge this youth with the grace 
 he asks before taking him into custody, understanding that 
 he shall not be permitted to leave this place ; and thou art 
 to be responsible to this effect, giving thee, as is reasonable, 
 power to command our little garrison at Hazelside, to which 
 I will send a reinforcement on my return to the castle, in 
 case it should be necessary to use the strong hand, or cir- 
 cumstances impose upon me other measures." 
 
 " Worthy sir knight," replied the abbot, " I have no idea 
 that the frowardness of this youth will render any coursp 
 necessary saving that of persuasion ; and I venture to say 
 that yoii yourself will in the highest degree approve of the 
 method in which I shall acquit myself of my present trust." 
 
 The abbot went through the duties of hospitality, enumer- 
 ating what simple cheer tlie cloister of the convent permitted 
 him to offer to the English knight. Sir John de Walton de- 
 clined the offer of refreshment, however, took a courteous 
 leave of the churchman, and did not spare his horse until 
 the noble animal had brought him again before the Castle of 
 Douglas. 
 
 Sir Aymer de Valence met him on the drawbridge, and re- 
 ported the state of the garrison to be the same in which he 
 had left it, excepting that intimation had been received that 
 twelve or fifteen men were expected on their way to the town 
 of Lanark ; and being on march from the neighborhood of 
 Ayr, would that night take up their quarters at the outpost 
 of Hazelside. 
 
 *' I am glad of it," replied the governor : " I was about to 
 strengthen that detachment. This stripling, the son of 
 Bertram the minstrel, or whoever he is, has engaged to de- 
 liver himself up for examination in the morning. As this 
 party of soldiers are followers of your uncle. Lord Pembroke, 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 411 
 
 may I request you will ride to meet them, and command 
 them to remain at Hazelside until you make farther inquiries 
 about this youth, who has still to clear up the mystery 
 which hangs about him, and reply to a letter which I de- 
 livered with my own hand to the abbot of Sc. Bride. I have 
 shown too much forbearance in this matter, and I trust to 
 your looking to the security of this young man, and convey 
 [ing] him hither, with all due care and attention, as being 
 a prisoner of some importance." 
 
 "Certainly, Sir John," answered Sir Aymer ; "your or- 
 ders shall be obeyed, since you have none of greater impor- 
 tance for one who hath the honor to be second only to your- 
 self in this place." 
 
 " I crave your mercy. Sir Aymer," returned the governor. 
 *'if the commission be in any degree beneath your dignity ; 
 but it is our misfortune to misunderstand each other, whea 
 we endeavor to be most intelligible." 
 
 " But what am I to do," said Sir Aymer — " no way dis- 
 puting yorr command, but only asking for information — 
 what am I to do, if the abbot of St. Bride offers opposi- 
 tion ?" 
 
 " How ! " answered Sir John de Walton ; *' with the rein- 
 forcement from my Lord of Pembroke, you will command 
 at least twenty war-men, with bow and spear, against five 
 or six timid old monks, with only gown and hood." 
 
 "True," said Sir Aymer, "but ban and excommunication 
 are sometimes, in the present day, too hard for the mail 
 coat, and I would not willingly be thrown out of the pale of 
 the Christian church," 
 
 " Well, then, thou very suspicious and scrupulous young 
 man," replied De Walton, " know that, if this youth does 
 not deliver himself up to thee of his own accord, the abbot 
 has promised to put him into thy hands." 
 
 There was no farther answer to be made, and De Valence, 
 though still thinking himself unnecessarily harassed with 
 the charge of a petty commission, took the sort of half-arms 
 which were always used when the knights stirred beyond 
 the walls of the garrison, and proceeded to execute the com- 
 mands of De Walton. A horseman or two, together with 
 his squire Fabian, accompanied him. 
 
 The evening closed in with one of those Scottish mists 
 which are commonly said to be equal to the showers of hap- 
 pier climates ; the path became more and more dark, the 
 hills more wreathed in vapors, and more difficult to traverse ; 
 and all the little petty inconveniences which rendered trav- 
 
412 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 eling through the district slow and uncertain were aug- 
 mented by the density of the fog which overhung everything. 
 
 Sir Aymer, therefore, occasionally mended his pace, and 
 often incurred the fate of one who is over-late, delaying 
 himself by his efforts to make greater expedition. The 
 knight bethought himself that he would get into a straight 
 road by passing through the almost deserted town of Dong- 
 las, the inhabitants of which had been treated so severely by 
 the English, in the course of those fierce troubles, that most 
 of them who were capable of bearing arms had left it, and 
 withdrawn themselves to different parts of the country, 
 This almost deserted place was defended by a rude palisade, 
 and a ruder drawbridge, which gave entrance into streets so 
 narrow as to admit with difficulty three horses abreast, and 
 evincing with what strictness the ancient lords of the village 
 adhered to their prejudice against fortifications, and their 
 opinion in favor of keeping the field, so quaintly expressed 
 in the well-known proverb of the family — "It is better to 
 hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep," The streets, or 
 rather the lanes, were dark but for a shifting gleam of moon- 
 light, which, as that planet began to rise, was now and then 
 visible upon some steep and narrow gable. No sound of 
 domestic industry or domestic festivity was heard, and no 
 ray of candle or firelight glanced from the windows of the 
 houses : the ancient ordinance called the curfew, which the 
 Conqueror had introduced into England, was at this time in 
 full force in such parts of Scotland as were thought doubt- 
 ful, and likely to rebel, under which description it need not 
 be said the ancient possessions of the Douglas were most es- 
 pecially regarded. The church, whose Grothic monuments 
 were of a magnificent character, had been, as far as pospi- 
 ble, destroyed by fire ; but the ruins, held together by the 
 weight of "the massive stones of which they were composed, 
 still sufficiently evinced the greatness of the family at whose 
 cost it had been raised, and whose bones, from immemorial 
 time, had been entombed in its crypts. 
 
 Paying little attention to these relics of departed splen- 
 dor. Sir Aymer de Valence advanced with his small detach- 
 ment, and had passed the scattered fragments of the cem- 
 etery of the Douglasses, when, to his surprise, the noise of 
 his horse's feet was seemingly replied to by sounds which 
 rung like those of another knightly steed advancing heavily 
 up the street, as if it were to meet him. Valence was un- 
 able to conjecture what might be the cause of these warlike 
 sounds ; the ring and the clang of armor was distinct, and 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 413 
 
 tlie heavy tramp of a war-hcrse was not to be mistaken bj 
 the ear of a warrior. The difficulty of keeping soldiers from 
 straying out of quarters by night would have sufficiently 
 accounted for the appearance of a straggling foot-soldier ; 
 but it was more difficult to account for a mounted horse- 
 man, in full armor ; and such was the apparition which a 
 peculiarly bright glimpse of moonlight now showed at the 
 bottom of the causewayed hill. Perhaps the unknown war- 
 rior obtained at the same time a glance of Aymer de Valence 
 and his armed followers — at least each of them siiouted, 
 " Who goes there ?" the alarm of the times ; and on the in- 
 stant the deep answers of '' St. George I" on the one side, 
 and "The Douglas !" on the other, awakened the still 
 echoes of the small and ruinous street, and the silent arches of 
 the dilapidated church. Astonished at a war-cry with which 
 so many recollections were connected, the English knight 
 spurred his horse at full gallop down the steep and broken 
 descent leading out at the south or southeast gate of the 
 town ; and it was the work of an instant to call out, " Ho ! 
 St. George ! upon the insolent villain all of you ! To the 
 gate, Fabian, and cut him off from flight ! St. George ! I 
 say, for England ! Bows and bills — bows and bills ! " At 
 the same time Aymer de Valence laid in rest his own long 
 lance, which he snatched from the squire by whom it was 
 carried. But the light was seen and gone in an instant, and 
 though De Valence concluded that the hostile Avarrior had 
 hardly room to avoid his career, yet he could take no aim for 
 the encounter, unless by mere guess, and continued to 
 plunge down the dark declivity, among shattered stones and 
 other encumbrances, without groping out with his lance the 
 object of his pursuit. He rode, in short, at a broken gal- 
 lop, a descent of about fifty or sixty yards, without having 
 any reason to suppose that he had met the figure which had 
 appeared to him, although the narrowness of the street 
 scarcely admitted his having passed him, unless both horse 
 and horseman could have melted at the moment of encoun- 
 ter like an air-bubble. The riders of his suite, meanwhile, 
 were struck with a feeling like supernatural terror, which a 
 number of singular adventures had caused most of them to 
 attach to the name of Douglas ; and when he reached the 
 gate by which the broken street was terminated, there was 
 none close behind him but Fabian, in whose head no sug- 
 gestions of a timorous nature could outlive the sound of his 
 dear master's voice. 
 
 Here there was a post of English archers, who were turn 
 
414 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ing out in considerable alarm, when De Valence and his 
 page rode in amongst them. " Villains ! " shouted De 
 Valence, " why were ye not upon your duty ? Who was it 
 passed through your post even now, with the traitorous cry 
 of ' Douglas ?'" 
 
 " We know of no such," said the captain of the watch. 
 
 " That is to say, you besotted villains," answered the 
 young knight, "you have been drinking, and have slept ?" 
 
 The men protested the contrary, but in a confused man- 
 ner, which was far from overcoming De Valence's suspicions. 
 He called loudly to bring cressets, torches, and candles ; and 
 a few remaining inhabitants began to make their unwilling 
 appearance, with such various means of giving light as they 
 chanced to possess. They heard the story of the young Eng- 
 lish knight Avith wonder : nor, although it was confirmed by 
 all his retinue, did they give credit to the recital, more than 
 that the Englishmen wished somehow or other to pick a 
 quarrel with the people of the place, under the pretense of 
 their having admitted a retainer of their ancient lord by 
 night into the town. They protested, therefore, their in- 
 nocence of the cause of tumult, and endeavored to seem ac- 
 tive in hastening from house to house, and corner to corner, 
 with their torches, in order to discover the invisible cavalier. 
 The English suspected them no less of treachery than the 
 Scottish imagined the whole matter a pretext for bringing 
 an accusation, on the part of the young knight, against the 
 citizens. The women, however, who now began to issue 
 from the houses, had a key for the solution of the appari- 
 tion, which at that time was believed of efficacy sufficient to 
 solve any mystery. "The Devil," they said, "must have 
 appeared visibly amongst them " — an explanation which had 
 already occurred to the followers of the young knight ; for 
 that a living man and horse, both, as it seemed, of a gigan- 
 tic size, could be conjured in the twinkling of an eye, 
 and appear in a street secured at one end by the best of the 
 archers, and at the other by the horsemen under Valence 
 himself, was altogether, it seemed, a thing impossible. The 
 inhabitants did not venture to put their thoughts on the 
 subject into language, for fear of giving offense, and only 
 indicated by a passing word to each other the secret degree 
 of pleasure which they felt in the confusion and embarrass- 
 ment of the English garrison. Still, however, they con- 
 tinued to effect a great deal of interest in tlie alarm which 
 De Valence had received, and the anxiety which he expressed 
 to discover the cause. 
 
CATTLE DANGEROUS 4ir 
 
 At length a female voice spoke above the babel of confused 
 sounds, saying, "Where is the Southron knight ? I am sure 
 that I can tell him where he can find the only person who can 
 help him out of his present difficulty." 
 
 " And who is that, good woman ? " said Aymer de Valence, 
 who was growing every moment more impatient at the loss of 
 time, which was flying fast, in an investigation which had 
 something in it vexatious, and even ridiculous. At the same 
 time, the sight of an armed partizan of the Douglasses, in 
 their own native town, seemed to bode too serious conse- 
 quences, if it should be suffered to pass without being probed 
 to the bottom. 
 
 " Come hither to me," said the female voice, " and I will 
 name to you tlie only person who can explain all matters of 
 this kind that chance in this country." On this tiie knight 
 snatched a torch from some of those who were present, and, 
 holding it up, desoried the person who spoke — a tall woman, 
 who evidently endeavored to render herself remarkable. 
 When he approached her, she communicated her intelligence 
 in a grave and sententious tone of voice. 
 
 '' We had once wise men that could have answered any 
 parables which might have been put to them for exphxnatiou 
 in this country-side. Whether you yourselves, gentlemen, 
 have not had some hand in weeding them out, good troth, it 
 is not for the like of me to say ; at any rate, good counsel is 
 not so easy come by as it was in this Douglas country, nor, 
 maybe, is it a safe thing to pretend to the power of giving 
 it." 
 
 " Good woman," said De Valance, ''if you will give mean 
 explanation of this mystery, I will owe you a kirtle of the 
 best raploch gray." 
 
 " It is not I," said the old woman, " that pretend to possess 
 the knowledge which may assist you ; but I would fain know 
 that the man whom I shall name to you shall be scaithless 
 and harmless. Upon your knighthood and your honor, will 
 you promise to me so much ? " 
 
 " Assuredly," said De Valance, " such a person shall even 
 have thanks and reward, if he is a faithful informer ; ay, and 
 pardon, moreover, although he may liave listened to any 
 dangerous practises, or been concerned in any plots." 
 
 " Oh I not he," replied the female ; "it is old Goodman 
 Powheid, who has tue cnarge of the muniments (meaning 
 probably monuments) — that is, such part of them as you 
 English have left standing ; I mean the old sexton of the kir?; 
 of Douolas, who can tell more stories of these old folk, whom 
 
il6 WAVERLSr IfOVELS 
 
 your honor is not very fond of hearing named, than would 
 last us from this day to Yule/' 
 
 " Does anybody," said the knight, " know wliom it is that 
 this old woman means ? " 
 
 " I conjecture," replied Fabian, " that she speaks of an 
 old dotard, who is, I think, the general referee concerning 
 the history and antiquities of this old town, and of the savage 
 family that lived here, perhaps before the flood." 
 
 "■ And who, I daresay," said the knight, " knows as much 
 about the matter as she herself does. But where is this man ? 
 A sexton is he ? He may be acquainted with places of con- 
 cealment, which are often fabricated in Gothic buildings, and 
 known to those wliose business calls them to frequent them. 
 Come, my good old dame, bring this man to me ; or, what 
 may be better, I will go to him, for we have already spent too 
 much time." 
 
 *'Time!" replied the old woman — "is time an object 
 with yonr honor ? I am sure I can hardly get so mucli for 
 mine as will hold soul and body together. You are not far 
 from the old man's house." 
 
 She led the way accordingly, blundering over heaps of 
 rubbish, and encountering all the embarrassments of a ruin- 
 ous street, in lighting the way to Sir Aymer, who, giving his 
 horse to one of his attendants, and desiring Fabian to be 
 ready at a call, scrambled after as well as the slowness of his 
 guide would jDermit. 
 
 Both were soon involved in the remains of the old church, 
 much dilapidated as it had been by wanton damage done to 
 it by the soldiery, and so much impeded by rubbish, that the 
 knight marveled how the old woman could find the way. 
 She kept talking all the Avhile as she stumbled onward. 
 Sometimes she called out in a screeching tone, " Powheid ! 
 Lazarus Powheid ! " and then muttered — "Ay — ay, the old 
 man will be busy with some of his duties, as he calls them ; 
 I wonder he fasJies wi' them in these times. But never mind, 
 I warrant they will last for his day, and for mine ; and the 
 times. Lord help us ! for all that I can see, are well enough 
 for those that are to live in them." 
 
 " Are you sure, good woman," replied the knight, "that 
 there is any inhabitant in these ruins ? For my part I should 
 rather suppose that you are taking me to the charnel-house 
 of the dead." 
 
 " Maybe you are right," said the old woman, with a ghastly 
 laugh ; *' carles and carlines agree weel with funeral vaults 
 and charnel houses, and when an auld bedral dwells near 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 417 
 
 the dead, he is living, ye ken, among his customers. Halloo, 
 Powheid ! — Lazarus Powheid ! there is a gentleman would 
 speak with you ; " and she added, with some sort of em- 
 phasis — "■ an English noble gentleman, one of the honorable 
 garrison." 
 
 An old man's step was now heard advancing, so slowly that 
 the glimmering light wliich he held in his hand was visible 
 on the ruined walls of the vault some time before it showed 
 the person who bore it. 
 
 The shadow of the old man was also projected upon the 
 illuminated wall re his parson came in view ; his dress was 
 in considerable confusion, oAving to his having been roused 
 from his bed ; and since artificial light was forbidden by the 
 regulations of the garrison, the natives of Douglas Dale spent 
 in sleep the time that they could not very well get rid of by any 
 other means. The sexton was a tall, thin man, emaciated 
 by years and by privations ; his body was bent habitually by 
 his occupation of grave-digging, and his eye naturally in- 
 clined downwards to the scene of his labors. His hand sus- 
 tained the cruise or little lamp, which he held so as to 
 throw light upon liis visitant ; at the same time it displayed 
 to the young knight the features of the person with whom 
 he was now confronted, which, though neither handsome 
 nor pleasing, were strongly marked, sagacious, and vener- 
 able, indicating, at the same time, a certain air of dignity, 
 which age, even mere poverty, may be found occasionally to 
 bestow, as conferring that last melancholy species of inde- 
 pendence proper to those whose situation can hardly, by any 
 imaginable means, be rendered much worse than years and 
 fortune have already made it. The habit of a lay brother 
 added somewhat of religious importance to his appear- 
 ance. 
 
 " What would you with me, young man ? " said the sexton. 
 " Your youthful features and your gay dress bespeak one 
 who stands in need of my ministry neither for himself nor for 
 others." 
 
 ''lam, indeed," replied the knight, ''a living man, and 
 therefore need not either shovel or pick-ax for my own be- 
 hoof. I am not, as you see, attired in mourning, and there- 
 fore need not your offices in behalf of any friend : I would 
 only ask you a few questions." 
 
 " What you would have done must needs be done, you 
 being at present one of our rulers, and, as I think, a man of 
 authority," replied the sexton. ''Follow me this way into 
 my poor habitation ; I have had a better in my day, and jet, 
 
 |7 
 
418 WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 Heaven knows, it is good enough for me, when many men ot 
 much greater consequences must perforce content themselves 
 with worse." 
 
 He opened a lowly door, which was fitted, though irreg- 
 ularly, to serve as the entrance of a vaulted apartment, 
 where it appeared that the old man held, apart from the 
 living world, his wretched and solitary dwelling.* The floor, 
 composed of paving-stones, laid together with some accuracy, 
 and here and there inscribed with letters and hieroglyphics, 
 as if they had once upon a time served to distinguisli sep- 
 ulchers, was indifferently well swept, and a fire at the 
 upper end directed its smoke into a hole which served for a 
 chimney. The spade and pick-ax, with other tools, which 
 the chamberlain of mortality makes use of, lay scattered 
 about the apartment, and, with a rude stool or two and a 
 table, wliere some inexperienced hand had unquestionably 
 supplied the labors of the joiner, were nearly the only fur- 
 niture, if we include the old man's bed of strav/, lying in a 
 corner, and discomposed, as if he had been just raised from 
 it. At the lower end of the ai^artment, the wall was almost 
 entirely covered by a large escutcheon, such as is usually 
 hung over the graves of men of very high rank, having the ap- 
 propriate quarters, to the number of sixteen, eacli properly 
 blazoned and distinct, placed as ornaments around the prin- 
 cipal armorial coat itself. 
 
 "Let us sit," said the old man : "the posture will better 
 enable my failing ears to apprehend your meaning, and the 
 asthma will deal with me more mercifully in jjermitting me 
 to make you understand mine.'' 
 
 A peal of short asthmatic coughs attested the violence of 
 the disorder which he had last named, and the young knight 
 followed his host's example, in sitting down on one of the 
 rickety stools by the side of the fire. The old man brought 
 from one corner of the apartment an apron, Avhich he oc- 
 casionally wore, full of broken boards in irregulai- pieces, 
 some of which were covered with black cloth, or driven full 
 of nails, black, as it might happen, or gilded. 
 
 "You will find this fresh fuel necessary," said the old 
 man, "to keep some degree of heat within this waste apart- 
 ment ; nor are the vapors of mortality, with which this 
 vault is apt to be filled, if the fire is permitted to become ex- 
 tinct, indiilerent to the lungs of the dainty and the healthy, 
 like your worship, though to me they are become habitual. 
 The wood will catch fire, although it is some time ere the 
 * See Ruin of Douglas Church. Note 7. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 419 
 
 damps of the grave are overcome by the dryer air and the 
 warmth of the chimney." 
 
 Accordingly, the relics of mortality with which the old 
 man had heaped his fireplace began by degrees to send forth 
 a thick, unctuous vapor, which at length leaped to light, 
 and, blazing up the aperture, gave a degree of liveliness to the 
 gloomy scene. The blazonry of the huge escutcheon met, 
 and returned the rays with as brilliant a reflection as that 
 lugubrious object was capable of, and the whole apartment 
 looked with a fantastic gaiety, strangely mingled with the 
 gloomy ideas which its ornaments were calculated to im- 
 press upon the imagination. 
 
 " You are astonished," said the old man, " and perhaps, 
 sir knight, you have never before seen these relics of the 
 dead applied to the purpose of rendering the living, in some 
 degree, more comfortable than their condition would other- 
 wise admit of." 
 
 " Comfortable !" returned the knight of Valence, shrug- 
 ging his shoulders ; *' I should be sorry, old man, to know 
 that I had a dog that was as indifferently quartered as thou 
 art, whose gray hairs have certainly seen better days." 
 
 " It may be,'' answered the sexton, "and it may be 
 otherwise ; but it was not, I presume, concerning my own 
 history that your worship seemed disj)Osed to ask me some 
 questions ; and I Avould venture to inquire, therefore, to 
 whom they have relation ?" 
 
 " I will speak plainly to yon," replied Sir Aymer, ''and 
 you will at once acknowledge the necessity of giving a short 
 and distinct reply. I have even now met in the streets of 
 this village a person only shown to me by a single flash of 
 light, who had the audacity to display the armorial insignia 
 and utter the war-cry of the Douglasses ; nay, if I could 
 trust a transient glance, this daring cavalier had the features 
 and the dark complexion proper to the Douglas. I am 
 referred to thee as to one who possesses means of explaining 
 this extraordinary circumstance, which, as an English knight, 
 and one holding a charge under King Edward, I am par- 
 ticularly called upon to make inquiry into." 
 
 *' Let me make a distinction," said the old man. " The 
 Douglasses of former generations are my near neighbors, 
 and, according to my superstitious townsmen, my acquaint- 
 ances and visitors ; I can take it upon my conscience to be 
 answerable for their good behavior, and to become bound 
 that none of the old barons, to whom the roots of that 
 mighty tree may, it is said, be traced, will again disturb 
 
420 WA VERLET NO VEL S 
 
 with their war-cry the towns or villages of their native 
 country : not one will parade in moonshine the black armor 
 which has long rusted upon their tombs. 
 
 The knights are dust, 
 
 And their good swords are rust ; 
 
 Their souls are with the saints, we trust.* 
 
 Look around, sir knight, you have above and around you 
 the men of whom we speak. Beneath us, in a little aisle, 
 which hath not been opened since these thin gray locks were 
 thick and brown, there lies the first man whom I can name 
 as memorable among those of this mighty line. It is he 
 whom the Thane of Athol pointed out to the King of Scotland 
 as Sholto Dhuglass, or the dark, iron-colored man, whose 
 exertions had gained the battle for his native prince ; and 
 who, according to this legend, bequeathed his name to our 
 dale and town, though others say that the race assumed the 
 name of Douglas from the stream so called in unrecorded 
 times, before they had their fastness on its banks. Others, 
 his descendants, called Eachain, or Hector the first, and 
 Orodh, or Hugh, William, the first of that name, and 
 Gilmour, the theme of many a minstrel song, commemorating 
 achievements done under the oriflamme of Charles the 
 Great Emperor of France, have all consigned themselves to 
 their last sleep, nor has their memory been sufiiciently 
 preserved from the waste of time. Something we know 
 concerning their great deeds, their great power, and, alas ! 
 their great crimes. Something we also know of a Lord of 
 Douglas who sat in a parliament at Forfar, held by King 
 Malcolm the First, and we are aware that, from his attach- 
 ment to hunting the wild hart, he built himself a tower called 
 Blackhouse, in the Forest of Ettrick, which perhaps still 
 exists.'" 
 
 " I crave your forgiveness, old man,^' said the knight, " but 
 I have no time at present to bestow upon the recitation of 
 the pedigree of the house of Douglass. A less matter would 
 hold a well-breathed minstrel in subject for recitation for a 
 calendar month, Sundays and holydays included." 
 
 " What other information can you expect from me," said 
 the sexton, "than that respecting those heroes, some of 
 whom it has been my lot to consign to that eternal rest which 
 will forever divide the dead from -the duties of this world? 
 I have told you where the race sleep down to the reign of 
 
 • See Fragment by Coleridge. Note 8. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 421 
 
 the royal Malcolm. I can tell you also of another vault, in 
 which lie Sir John of Douglas Burn, with his son Lord 
 xirchibald, and a third William, known by an indenture with 
 Lord Abernethy. Lastly, I can tell you of him to whom 
 tliat escutcheon, with its appurtenances of splendor and 
 dignity, justly belong. Do you envy that nobleman, whom, 
 if death were in the sound, I would not hesitate to term my 
 honorable patron ? and have you any design of dishonoring 
 Ills remains ? It will be a poor victory ; nor does it become 
 a knight and nobleman to come in person to enjoy such a 
 triumph over the dead, against whom, when he lived, there 
 were few knights dared spur their horses. He fought in 
 defense of his country, but he had not the good fortune of 
 most of his ancestors, to die on the field of battle. Captivity, 
 sickness, and regret for the misfortunes of his native land 
 brought his head to the grave in his prison-house, in the land 
 of the stranger." 
 
 The old man's voice here became interrupted by emotion, 
 and the English knight found it difficult to continue his ex- 
 amination in the stern fashion which his duty required. 
 
 " Old man," he said, " I do not require from thee this de- 
 tail, which must be useless to me, as well as painful to thy- 
 self. Thou dost but thy duty in rendering justice to thy 
 ancient lord ; but thou hast not yet explained to me why I 
 have met in this town, this very night, and not half an hour 
 since, a person in the arms, and bearing the complexion, of 
 one of the Black Douglasses, who cried his war-cry as if in 
 contempt of his conquerors." 
 
 " Surely," replied the sexton, " it is not my business to 
 explain such a falicy, otherwise than by supposing that the 
 natural fears of the Southron will raise the specter of a 
 Douglas at any time, when he is within sight of their sepul- 
 cher. Methinks, in such a night as this, the fairest cavalier 
 would wear the complexion of this swarthy race ; nor can I 
 hold it wonderful that the war-cry which was once in the 
 throats of so many tliousands in this country should issue 
 upon occasion from the mouth of a single champion." 
 
 ''You are bold, old man," returned the English knight ; 
 " do you consider that your life is in my power, and that it 
 may, in certain cases, be my duty to inflict death with that 
 degree of pain at which humanity shudders ?" 
 
 The old man rose up slowly in the light of the blazing 
 fire, displaying his emaciated features, which resembled 
 thoseascribed by artists to St. Anthony of the desert, and 
 pointing to the feeble lamp, which he placed upon the coarse 
 
422 WAVEBLET NOVELS 
 
 table, thus addressed liis interrogator, with an appearance 
 of perfect firmness, and something even resembling dignity : 
 
 " Young knight of England, you see that utensil con- 
 structed for the purpose of dispensing light amidst these 
 fatal vaults ; it is as frail as anything can well be, whose 
 flame is supplied by living element, contained in a frame 
 composed of iron. It is doubtless in your power entirely to 
 end its service, by destroying the frame or extinguishing the 
 light. Threaten it with such annihilation, sir knight, and 
 see whether your menace will impress any sense of fear 
 either on the element or the iron. Know that you have no 
 more power over the frail mortal whom you threaten with 
 similar annihilation. You nuiy tear from my body the skin 
 in which it is now swathed ; but although my nerves might 
 glow with agony during the inhuman operation, it would 
 produce no more imj^ression on me than flaying on the stag 
 which an arrow has previously pierced through the heart. 
 My age sets me beyond your cruelty : if you think other- 
 wise, call your agents, and commence your operations ; 
 neither threats nor inflictions will enable you to extort from 
 me anything that I am not ready to tell you of my own 
 accord.*' 
 
 *'You trifle with me, old man,'* said De Valence : ''^you 
 talk as if you possessed some secret respecting the motions 
 of these Douglasses, who are to you as gods, yet you com- 
 municate no intelligence to me whatever.'" 
 
 " You may soon know,'' replied the old man, " all that a 
 poor sexton has to communicate ; and it will not increase 
 your knowledge respecting the living, though it may throw 
 some light upon my proper domains, which are those of the 
 dead. The spirits of the deceased Douglasses do not rest in 
 their graves during the dishonor of their monuments and the 
 downfall of their house. That, uj^on death, the greater part 
 of any line are consigned to the regions of eternal bliss or 
 of never-ending misery religion will not suffer us to believe, 
 and, amidst a race who had so great a share of worldly 
 triumph and prosperity, we must suppose there have existed 
 many who have been justly subjected to the doom of an in- 
 termediate space of punishment. You have destroyed the 
 temples which were built by their posterity to propitiate 
 Heaven for the welfare of their souls ; you have silenced the 
 prayers and stopped the choirs by the mediation of which the 
 piety of children had sought to appease the wrath of Heaven 
 in behalf of their ancestors, subjected to expiatory fires. 
 Can you wonder that the tormented spirits, thus deprived of 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 423 
 
 the relief which had been proposed to them, should not, 
 according to the common phrase, rest in their graves ? Can 
 you wonder they should show themselves like discontented 
 loiterers near to the places which, but for the manner in 
 which you have prosecuted your remorseless warfare, might 
 have ere now afforded them rest ? Or do you marvel that 
 these fleshless warriors should interrupt your marches, and 
 do what else their airy nature may permit to disturb your 
 councils, and meet as far as they may the hostilities which 
 you make it your boast carry on, as well against those who 
 are deceased as against any who may yet survive your cru- 
 elty?" 
 
 "Old man," replied Aymer de Valence, "you cannot ex- 
 pect that I am to take for answer a story like this, being a 
 fiction too gross to charm to sleep a schoolboy tormented 
 with the toothache ; nevertheless, I thank God that thy 
 doom does not remain in my hands. My squire and two 
 archers shall carry thee captive to the worshipful Sir John 
 de Walton, governor of the castle and valley, that he may 
 ■deal with thee as seems meet ; nor is he a person to believe 
 in your apparitions and ghosts from purgatory. What ho ! 
 Fabian ! Come hither, and bring with thee two archers of 
 the guard." 
 
 Fabian accordingly, who had waited at the entrance of the 
 ruined building, now found his way, by the light of the old 
 sexton's lamp, and the sound of his master's voice, into the 
 singular apartment of the old man, the strange decorations 
 of which struck the youth with great surprise and some 
 horror. 
 
 " Take the two archers with thee, Fabian," said the knight 
 of Valence, " and, with their assistance, convey this old 
 man, on horseback or in a litter, to the presence of the wor- 
 shipful Sir John de Walton. Tell him what we have seen, 
 which thou didst witness as well as I ; and tell him that this 
 old sexton, whom I send to be examined by his superior 
 wisdom, seems to know more than he is willing to disclose 
 respecting our ghostly cavalier, though he will give us no ac- 
 count of him, except intimating that he is a spirit of the old 
 Douglasses from purgatory, to which Sir John de Walton 
 will give what faith he pleases. You may say that, for my 
 part, my belief is, either that the sexton is crazed by age, 
 want, and enthusiasm, or that he is connected with some 
 plot which the country people are hatching. You may also 
 say, that I shall not use much ceremony with the youth un- 
 der the care of the abbott of St. Bride ; there is something 
 
424 WA VERLEY NO VEL 8 
 
 Buspicious in all the occurrences that are now passing around 
 us. 
 
 Fabian promised obedience ; and the knight, pulling him 
 a_side,_ gave him an additional caution to behave with atten- 
 tion in this business, seeing he must recollect that neither 
 the judgment of himself nor that of his master was ap- 
 parently held in very much esteem by the governor, and that 
 it would ill becouie them fco make any mistake in a matter 
 where the safety of the castle was perhaps concerned. 
 
 "Fear me not, worshipful sir," replied the youth ; " lam 
 returning to pure air in the first place, and a good fire in the 
 second, both acceptable exchanges for this dungeon of suffo- 
 cating vapors and execrable smells. You may trust to my 
 making no delay : a very short time will carry me back to 
 Castle Douglas, even moving with suitable attention to this 
 old man's bones." 
 
 " Use him humanely," answered the knight. " And thou, 
 old man, if thou art insensible to threats of personal danger 
 in this matter, remember that, if thou art found paltering 
 with us, thy punishment will perhaps be more severe than 
 any we can inflict upon thy person." 
 
 " Can you administer the torture to the soul ?" said the 
 sexton. 
 
 " As to thee," answered the knight, " we have that power : 
 we will dissolve every monastery or religious establishment 
 held for the souls of these Douglasses, and will only allow 
 the religious people to hold their residence there upon con- 
 dition of their praying for the soul of King Edward the 
 First of glorious memory, the malleus Scotonim ; and if the 
 Douglasses are deprived of the ghostly benefit of the prayers 
 and services of such shrines, they may term thy obstinacy 
 the cause." 
 
 *' Such a species of vengeance," answered the old man, in 
 the same bold unsubdued tone which he had hitherto used, 
 ** were more worthy of the infernal fiends than of Christian 
 men." 
 
 The squire raised his hand. The knight interposed. 
 ** Forbear him," he said, "Fabian, he is very old, and per 
 haps insane. And you, sexton, remember that the ven> 
 geance threatened is lawfully directed towards a family whicxi 
 have been the obstinate supporters of the excommunicated 
 rebel who murdered the Eed Comyn at the High Churct 
 in Dumfries." 
 
 ^So saying, xA.ymer strode out of the ruins, picking his way 
 irith some difficulty ; took his horse, which he found at the 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 425 
 
 entrance ; repeated a caution to Fabian to conduct himself 
 with prudence ; and, passing on to the southwestern gate, 
 gave the strongest injunctions concerning the necessity of 
 keeping a vigihmt watch, both by patrols and by sentinels, 
 intimating at the same time that it must have been neglected 
 during the preceding part of the evening. The men mur- 
 mured an aiDology, the confusion of which seemed to express 
 that there had existed some occasion for the reprimand. 
 
 Sir Aymer then proceeded on his journey to Hazelside, his 
 train diminished by the absence of Fabian and his assistants. 
 After a hasty but not a short journey, the knight alighted 
 at Thomas Dickson's, where he found the detachment from 
 Ayr had arrived before him, and were snugly housed for the 
 night. He sent one of the archers to announce his approach 
 to the abbot of St. Bride and his young guest, intimating at 
 the same time that the archer must keep sight of the latter 
 until he himself arrived at the chapel, which would be 
 instantly. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 When the nightengale singes the wodes waxen grene, 
 Lef , and gras, and bios me springeth in April I wene, 
 And love is to myne herte gone with one speare so kene, 
 Night and day my blood hyt drynkes, mine herte deth me tene. 
 MSS. Hail. Quoted by Warton. 
 
 Sir Aymer de Valence had no sooner followed his archer 
 to the convent of St. Bride than he summoned the abbot to 
 his presence, who came with the air of a man who loves his 
 ease, and who is suddenly called from the couch where he 
 has consigned himself to a comfortable repose, at the sum- 
 mons of one whom he does not think it safe to disobey, and 
 to whom he would not disguise his sense of peevishness, if 
 he durst. 
 
 " It is a late ride," he said, " which has brought your 
 worthy honor hither from the castle. May I be informed of 
 the cause, after the arrangement so recently gone into with 
 the governor ? " 
 
 "It is my hope,'' replied the knight, ''that you, father 
 abbot, are not already conscious of it ; suspicions are afloat, 
 and I myself have this night seen something to confirm them, 
 that some of the obstinate rebels of this country are again 
 setting afoot dangerous practises, to the peril of the garri- 
 son ; and I come, father, to see whether, in requital of many 
 favors received from the English monarch, you will not merit 
 his bounty and protection by contributing to the discovery 
 of the designs of his enemies." 
 
 "Assuredly so," answered Father Jerome, in an agitated 
 voice. " Most unquestionably my information should stand 
 at your command ; that is, if I knew anything the commu- 
 nication of which could be of advantage to you." 
 
 "Father abbot," replied the English knight, "although 
 it is rash to make myself responsible for a North Country 
 man in these times, yet I own I do consider you as one who 
 has ever been faithfully subject to tlie King of England, and 
 I willingly hope that you will still continue so." 
 
 " And a fine encouragement I have !" said the abbot ; to 
 be called out of my bed at midnight, in this raw weather, to 
 426 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 427 
 
 andergo the examination of a knight who is the youngest, 
 perhaps, of his own honorable rank, and who will not tell 
 me the subject of the interrogatories, but detains me on this 
 cold pavement till, according to the opinion of Celsus, the 
 podagra which lurks in my feet may be driven into my 
 stomach, and then good-night to abbacy and examinations 
 from henceforward." 
 
 "Good father," said the young man, "the spirit of the 
 times must teach thee patience ; recollect that I can feel 
 no pleasure in this duty, and that, if an insurrection should 
 take place, the rebels, who are sufficiently displeased with 
 thee for acknowledging the English monarch, would hang 
 thee from thine own steeple to feed the crows ; or that, if 
 thou hast secured thy peace by some private compact with 
 the insurgents, the English governor, who will sooner or 
 later gain the advantage, will not fail to treat thee as a rebel 
 to his sovereign." 
 
 " It may appear to you, my noble son," answered the 
 abbot, obviously discomposed, "that I am hung up, in this 
 case, on the horns of the dilemma which you have stated ; 
 nevertheless, I protest to you that, if any one accuses me of 
 conspiring with the rebels against the King of England, I 
 am ready, provided you give me time to swallow a potion rec- 
 ommended by Celsus in my perilous case, to answer with 
 the most perfect sincerity, every question which thou canst 
 put to me upon that subject." So saying, he called upon a 
 monk who had attended at his levee, and, giving him a 
 large key, whispered something in his ear. The cup which 
 the monk brought was of such capacity as proved Celsus's 
 draught required to be administered in considerable quantity, 
 and a strong smell which it spread through the apartment 
 accredited the knight's suspicion that the medicine chiefly 
 consisted of what were then termed distilled waters — a prep- 
 aration known in the monasteries for some time before that 
 comfortable secret had reached the laity in general. The 
 abbot, neither overawed by the strength nor by the quantity 
 of the potion, took it off Avith what he himself would have 
 called a feeling of solace and pleasance, and his voice became 
 much more composed ; he signified himself as comforted ex- 
 traordinarily by the medicine, and willing to proceed to 
 answer any questions which could be put to him by his 
 gallant young friend. 
 
 " At present," said the knight, " you are aware, father, 
 that strangers traveling through this country must be the 
 first objects of our suspicions and inquiries." What is, for 
 
428 WA VERLEY N O VELS 
 
 example, your own opinion of the youth termed Augustine, 
 the son, or calling himself so, of a person called Bertram the 
 minstrel, who has resided for some days in your convent ? " 
 
 The abbot heard the question with eyes expressive of sur- 
 prise at the quarter from which it came. 
 
 "Assuredly/' said he, "I think of him as a youth who, 
 from anything I have seen, is of that excellent disposition, 
 both with resj^ect to loyalty and religion, which I should have 
 expected, were I to judge from the estimable person who 
 committed him to my care." 
 
 With this the abbot bowed to the knight, as if he had con- 
 ceived that this repartee gave him a silencing advantage in 
 any question which could follow upon that subject, and he 
 was probably therefore surprised when Sir Aymer replied as 
 follows : — 
 
 *' It is very true, father abbot, that I myself did recom- 
 mend this stripling to you as a youth of a harmless dispo- 
 sition, and with respect to whom it would be unnecessary to 
 exercise the strict vigilance extended to others in similar 
 circumstances ; but the evidence which seemed to me to 
 vouch for this young man's innocence has not appeared 
 so satisfactory to my superior and commander, and it is by 
 his orders that I now make farther inquiries of you. You 
 must think they are of consequence, since we again trouble 
 you, and at so unwonted an hour." 
 
 '' I can only protest by my order and by the veil of St. 
 Bride," replied the abbot, the spirit of Celsus appearing to 
 fail his pupil, "that whatever evil may be in this matter is 
 totally unknown to me, nor could it be extorted from me by 
 racks or implements of torture. Whatever signs of disloyalty 
 may have been evinced by this young man, I have witnessed 
 none of them, although I have been strictly attentive to his 
 behavior." 
 
 "In what respect ?" said the knight, "and what is the 
 result of your observation ? " 
 
 " My answer," said the abbot of St. Bride, "shall be sin- 
 cere and downright. The youth condescended upon pay- 
 ment of a certain number of gold crowns, not by any means 
 to repay the hospitality of the church of St. Bride, but 
 merely " 
 
 "Nay, father," interrui^ted the knight, "you may cut 
 that short, since the governor and I well understand the 
 terms upon which the monks of St. Bride exercise their hos- 
 pitality. In what manner, is it more necessary td ask, was 
 it received by this boy ?" 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 429 
 
 " "With the utmost gentleness and moderation, noble sir/' 
 answered the abbot. "Indeed, it appeared to me at first 
 that he might be a troublesome guest, since the amount of 
 his benevolence to the convent was such as to encourage, 
 and in some degree to authorize, his demanding accommo- 
 dation of a kind superior to what we had to bestow." 
 
 *' In which case,'' said Sir Aymer, '^you would have had 
 the discomfort of returning some part of the money you had 
 received ?" 
 
 " That," replied the abbot, '^ would have been a mode of 
 settlement contrary to our vows. What is paid to the treas- 
 ury of St. Bridget cannot, agreeably to our rule, be on any 
 account restored. But, noble knight, there was no occa- 
 sion for this : a crust of white bread and a draught of milk 
 were diet sufficient to nourish this poor youth for a day, and 
 it was my own anxiety for his health that dictated the 
 furnishing of his cell with a softer bed and coverlet than are 
 quite consistent with the rules of our order." 
 
 "Now hearken to what I say, sir abbot, and answer me 
 truly," said the knight of Valence. " What communication 
 has this youth held with the inmates of your convent, or 
 with those beyond your house ? Search your memory con- 
 cerning this, and let me have a distinct answer, for your 
 guest's safety and your own depend upon it." 
 
 "As I am a Christian man," said tlie abbot, "I have ob- 
 served nothing which could give ground for your worship's 
 suspicions. The boy A.ugustine, unlike those whom I have 
 observed who have been educated in the world, showed a 
 marked preference to the company of such sisters as the 
 house of St. Bride contains, rather than for that of the 
 monks, my brethren, although there are among them pleas- 
 ant and conversible men." 
 
 "Scandal," said the young knight, ''might find a reason 
 for that preference." 
 
 " Not in the case of the sisters of St. Bridget," said the 
 abbot, " most of whom have been either sorely misused bv 
 time, or their comeliness destroyed by some mishap pre- 
 viously to their being received into tlie seclusion of the 
 house." 
 
 This observation the good father made with some internal 
 movement of mirth, which was apjDurently excited at the 
 idea of the sisterhood of St. Bridget becoming attractive 
 to any one by dint of their personal beauty, in which, as it 
 happened, they were all notably, and almost ludicrously, 
 deficient. The English knight, to whom the sisterhood 
 
430 WA VSRLEY NO VEL S 
 
 were well known, felt also inclined to smile at this conver- 
 sation. 
 
 " I acquit," he said, ■' the pious sisterhood of charming, 
 otherwise than by their kind wishes and attention to the 
 wants of the suffering stranger." 
 
 " Sister Beatrice," continued the father, resuming his 
 gravity, " is indeed blessed with a winning gift of making 
 comfits and syllbaubs ; but, on minute inquiry, I do not find 
 that the youth has tasted any of them. Neither is sister 
 Ursula so hard-favored by nature as from the effects of an 
 accident ; but your honor knows that, when a woman is 
 ugly, the men do not trouble themselves about the cause of 
 her hard favor. I will go, with your leave, and see in what 
 state the youth now is, and summon him before you." 
 
 " I request you to do so, father, for the affair is instant ; 
 and I earnestly advise you to watch, in the closest manner, 
 this Augustine's behavior : you cannot be too particular. 
 I will wait your return, and either carry the boy to the cas- 
 tle, or leave him here, as circumstances may seem to re- 
 quire." 
 
 The abbot bowed, promised his utmost exertions, and 
 hobbled out of the room to wait on the youth Augustine in 
 his cell, anxious to favor, if possible, the wishes of De Val- 
 ence, whom he looked upon as rendered by circumstances 
 his military patron. 
 
 He remained long absent, and Sir Aymer began to be of 
 opinion that the delay was suspicious, when the abbot re- 
 turned with perplexity and discomposure in his counte- 
 nance. 
 
 " I crave your pardon for keeping your worship waiting," 
 said Jerome, with much anxiety ; " but I have myself been 
 detained and vexed by unnecessary formalities and scruples 
 on the part of this peevish boy. In the first place, hearing 
 my foot approaching his bedroom, my youth, instead of un- 
 doing the door, which would have been but proper respect 
 to my place, on the contrary draws a strong bolt on the in- 
 side ; and this fastening, forsooth, has been placed on his 
 chamber by Ursula's command, that his slumbers might be 
 suitably respected. I intimated to him as I best could that 
 he must attend you without delay, and prepare to accom- 
 pany you to the Castle of Douglas ; but he would not an- 
 swer a single word, save recommending to me patience, to 
 which I was fain to have recourse, as well as your archer, 
 whom I found standing sentinel before the door of the cell, 
 and contenting himself with the assurance of the sisters that 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 431 
 
 there was no other passage by which Aagustiiie could make 
 his escape. At length the door opens, and my young mas- 
 ter presents himself fully arrayed for his journey. The 
 truth is, I think some fresh attack of his malady has affected 
 the youth : he may perhaps be disturbed with some touch of 
 hypochondria or black choler — a species of dotage of the 
 mind which is sometimes found concomitant with and symp- 
 tomatic of this disorder ; but he is at present composed, and 
 if your worshij) chooses to see him, he is at your command." 
 
 " Call him hither," said the knight. And a considerable 
 space of time again elapsed ere the eloquence of the abbot, 
 half chiding and half soothing, prevailed on the lady, in her 
 adopted character, to approach the parlor, in which a,t last 
 she made her appearance, with a countenance on which the 
 marks of tears might still be discovered, and a pettish sul- 
 •lenness, like that of a boy, or, with reverence, that of a girl, 
 who is determined upon taking her own way in any matter, 
 and equally resolved to give no reason for her doing so. Her 
 hurried levee had not prevented her attending closely to all 
 the mufflings and disguisings by which her pilgrim's dress 
 ■was arranged, so as to alter her appearance, and effectually 
 disguise her sex. But as civility prevented her wearing her 
 large slouched hat, she necessarily exposed her countenance 
 more than in the open air ; and though the knight beheld a 
 most lovely set of features, yet they were not such as were 
 inconsistent with the character she had adopted, and which 
 she had resolved upon maintaining to the last. She had, ac- 
 cordingly, mustered up a degree of courage which was not 
 natural to her, and which she perhaps supported by hopes 
 which her situation hardly admitted. So soon as she found 
 herself in the same apartment with De Valence, she assumed 
 a style of manners bolder and more determined than she had 
 hitherto displayed. 
 
 " Your worship," she said, addressing him even before he 
 spoke, " is a knight of England, and possessed, doubtless, of 
 the virtues which become that noble station. I am an un- 
 fortun*ate lad, obliged, by reasons which I am under the 
 necessity of keeping secret, to travel in a dangerous country, 
 where I am suspected, without any just cause, of becoming 
 accessary to plots and conspiracies which are contrary to my 
 own interest, and which my very soul abhors, and which I 
 might safely abjure, by imprecating upon myself all the 
 curses of our religion and renouncing all its promises, if I 
 were accessary to such designs in thought, word, or deed. 
 Nevertheless, you, who will not believe my solemn protesta- 
 
432 WA VERLE Y NO YEL S 
 
 tions, are about to j^i'oceed against me as a guilty person, 
 and in so doing I must warn you, sir knight, that you will 
 commit a great and cruel injustice." 
 
 " I shall endeavor to avoid that," said the knight, " by re- 
 ferring the duty to Sir John de Walton, the governor, who 
 will decide what is to be done ; in this case, my only duty 
 will be to place you in his hands at Douglas Castle." 
 
 " Must you do this ?" said Augustine. 
 
 " Certainly," replied the knight, " or be answerable for 
 neglecting my duty." 
 
 " But if I become bound to answer your loss with a large 
 sum of money, a large tract of land " 
 
 " No treasure, no land, supposing such at your disposal," 
 answered the knight, " can atone for disgrace ; and besides, 
 boy, how should I trust to your warrant, were my avarice 
 such as would induce me to listen to such proposals ? " 
 
 "I must then prepare to attend you instantly to the 
 Castle of Douglas and the presence of Sir John de Walton ?" 
 replied Augustine. 
 
 " Young man," answered De Valence, " there is no 
 remedy, since, if you delay me longer, I must carry you 
 thither by force." 
 
 " What will be the consequence to my father ? " said the 
 youth. 
 
 " That," replied the knight, '' will depend exactly on the 
 nature of your confession and his ; something you both have 
 to say, as is evident from the terms of the letter Sir John de 
 Walton conveyed to you ; and I assure you, you were better 
 to speak it out at once than to risk the consequences of more 
 delay. I can admit of no more trifling ; and, believe me, 
 that your fate will be entirely ruled by your own frankness 
 and candor." 
 
 " I must prepare, then, to travel at your command," said 
 the youth. " But this cruel disease still hangs around me, 
 and Abbot Jerome, whose leechcraft is famous, will himself 
 assure you that I cannot travel without danger of my life ; 
 and that, while I was residing in this convent, I declined 
 every op^iortunity of exercise which was ofi'cred me by the 
 kindness of the garrison at Hazelside, lest I might by mis- 
 hap bring the contagion among your men." 
 
 "The youth says right," said the abbot: "the archers 
 and men-at-arms have more than once sent to invite this lad 
 to join in some of their military games, or to amuse them, 
 perhaps, with some of his minstrelsy ; but he has uniformly 
 declined doing so ; and, according to my belief, it is the 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 433 
 
 effects of this disorder which have prevented his accepting 
 an indulgence so natural to his age, and in so dull a place as 
 the convent of St. Bride must needs seem to a youth bred up 
 in the world." 
 
 " Do you then hold, reverend father," said Sir Aymer, 
 " that there is real danger in carrying this youth to the castle 
 to-night, as I proposed ? " 
 
 " I conceive such danger," replied the abbot, '' to exist, 
 not only as it may occasion the relapse of the poor youth him- 
 self, but as particularly likely, no preparations having been 
 made, to introduce the infection among your honorable gar- 
 rison ; for it is in these relapses, more than in the first vio- 
 lence of the malady, that it has been found most contagious." 
 
 " Then," said the knight, " you must be content, my friend, 
 to give a share of your room to an archer, by way of sen- 
 tinel." 
 
 " I cannot object," said Augustine, ''provided my unfor- 
 tunate vicinity does not endanger the health of the poor 
 soldier." 
 
 •' He will be as ready to do his duty," said the aobot, " with- 
 out the door of the apartment as within it ; and if the youth 
 should sleep soundly, which the presence of a guard in his 
 chamber might prevent, he is the more likely to answer your 
 purpose on the morrow." 
 
 " Let it be so," said Sir Aymer, ''so you are sure that you 
 do not minister any facility of escape." 
 
 "The apartment," said the monk, "hath no other en- 
 trance than that which is guarded by the archer ; but to 
 content you I shall secure the door in your presence." 
 
 " So be it, then," said the knight of Valence ; " this done, 
 I myself will lie down without doffing my mail-shirt, and 
 snatch a sleep till the ruddy dawn calls me again to duty, 
 when you, Augustine, will hold yourself ready to attend me 
 to our Castle of Douglas." 
 
 The bells of the convent summoned the inhabitants and 
 inmates of St. Bride to morning prayers at the first peep of 
 day. When this duty was over, the knight demanded his 
 prisoner. The abbot marshaled him to the door of Augus- 
 tine's chamber. The sentinel v\^ho was stationed there, armed 
 with a brown-bill, or species of partisan, reported that he had 
 heard no motion in the apartment during the whole night. 
 The abbot tapped at the door, but received no answer. He 
 knocked again louder, but the silence was unbroken from 
 within. 
 
 " What means this ? " said the reverend ruler of the con- 
 
 88 
 
434 WAVERLEY J^^OVELS 
 
 vent of St. Bride ; " my young patient has certainly fallen 
 into a syncope or swoon ! " 
 
 ''I wish, father abbot/' said the knight, "that he may 
 not have made his escape instead — an accident which both 
 you and I may be required to answer, since, according to our 
 strict duty, we ought to have kept sight of him, and detained 
 him in close custody until daybreak." 
 
 " I trust your worship," said the abbot, " only anticipates 
 a misfortune which I cannot think possible." 
 
 " We shall speedily see," said the knight ; and, raising his 
 voice, he called aloud, so as to be heard witiiin, " Bring crow- 
 bars and levers, and burst me that door into s^^linters with- 
 out an instant's delay !" 
 
 The loudness of his voice, and the stern tone in which he 
 spoke, soon brougnt around him the brethren of the house, 
 and two or three soldiers of his own party, who were already 
 busy in caparisoning their horses. The displeasure of the 
 young kniglit was manifested by his flushed features and the 
 abrupt manner in which he again repeated his commands for 
 breaking open the door. This was speedily performed, though 
 it required the aioplication of considerable strength, and as 
 the shattered remains fell crashing into the apartment, De 
 Valence sprung, and the abbot iiobbled, into the cell of the 
 prisoner, whicli, to the fulfilment of their worst suspicions, 
 they found empty. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Where is he ? Has the deep earth swallow'd him? 
 
 Or hath he melted like some airy phantom 
 
 That shuns the approach of morn and the young sun ? 
 
 Or hath he wrapped him in Cimmerian darkness, 
 
 And pass'd beyond the circuit of the sight 
 
 With things of the night's shadows ? 
 
 Anonym(ms. 
 
 The disappearance of the youth, whose disguise and whose 
 fate have, we hope, inclined our readers to take some interest 
 in him, will require some explanation ere we proceed with 
 the other personages of the story, and Wb shall set about 
 giving it accordingly. 
 
 When Augustine was consigned to his cell for the second 
 time on the preceding evening, both the monk and the young 
 knight of Valence had seen the key turned upon him, and 
 had heard him secure the door on the inside with the bolt 
 which had been put on at his request by Sister Ursula, in 
 whose affections the youth of Augustine, his extreme hand- 
 someness, and, above all, his indisposition of body and hia 
 melancholy of mind, had gained him considerable interest. 
 
 So soon, accordingly, as Augustine re-entered his apart- 
 ment, he was greeted in a whisper by the sister, who, during 
 the interval of his absence, had contrived to slip into the cell, 
 and having tappiced herself behind the little bed, came out, 
 with great appearance of ]oy, to greet the return of the 
 youth. The number of little attentions, the disposal of 
 holly boughs and such other evergreens as the season per- 
 mitted, showed the anxiety of the holy sisters to decorate 
 the chamber of their guest, and the greetings of Sister Ursula 
 expressed the same friendly interest, at the same time in- 
 timating that she was already in some degree in possession 
 of the stranger's mystery. 
 
 As Augustine and the holy sister were busied in exchange 
 of confidence, the extraordinary difference between their 
 countenances and their persons must have struck any one 
 who might have been accidentally a Avitness of their inter- 
 view. The dark pilgrim's robe of the disguised female was 
 not a stronger contrast to the white woolen garment worn 
 435 
 
438 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 by the votaress of St. Bride than the visage of the nun, 
 seamed with muny a ghastly scar, and the light of one of hei 
 eyes extinguished forever, causing it to roll a sightless 
 luminary in her head, was to the beautiful countenance of 
 Augustine, now bent with a confidential, and even affec- 
 tionate, look upon the extraordinary features of her com- 
 panion. 
 
 " You know," said the supposed Augustine, " the princi 
 pal part of my story ; can you, or will you, lend me youi 
 assistance ? If not, my dearest sister, you must consent 
 to witness my death, rather than my shame. Yes, Sister 
 iijrsuhi, I will not be pointed at by the finger of scorn, as 
 the thoughtless maiden who sacrificed so much for a young 
 man of whose attachment she was not so well assured as she 
 ought to have been. I will not be dragged before De Walton, 
 for the purpose of being compelled, by threats of torture, to 
 declare myself the female in honor of whom he holds the 
 Dangerous Castle. No doubt he might be glad to give his 
 hand in wedlock to a damsel whose dowry is so ample ; but 
 who can tell whether he will regard me with that respect 
 which every woman would wish to command, or pardon that 
 boldness of which I have been guilty, even though its con- 
 sequences have been in his own favor ?" 
 
 "Nay, my darling daughter," answered the nun, '^ com- 
 fort yourself ; for in all I can aid you, be assured I will. My 
 means are somewhat more than my present situation may 
 express, and be assured they shall be tried to the uttermost. 
 Methinks I still hear that lay which you sung to the other 
 sisters and myself, although I alone, touched by feelings kin- 
 dred to yours, had the address to comprehend that it told 
 your own tale." 
 
 " I am yet surprised," said Augustine, speaking beneath 
 her breath, "how I had the boldness to sing in your eara 
 the lay, which, in fact, was the history of my disgrace." 
 
 "Alas ! that you will say so," returned the nun ; "there 
 was not a word but what resembled those tales of love and 
 of high-spirited daring which the best minstrels love to cele- 
 brate, and the noblest knights and maidens weep at onco 
 and smile to hear. The Lady Augusta of Berkely, a great 
 heiress, according to the world, both in land and movable 
 goods, becomes the king's ward by the death of her parents ; 
 and thus is on the point of being given away in marriage to 
 a minion of the King of England, whom in these Scottish 
 valleys we scruple not to call a peremptory tyrant." 
 
 ** I must not say so, my sister," said the pilgrim ; " and 
 
CAS TL E DAN GEE O US 4^? 
 
 yet, true it is that the cousin of the obscure parasite Gaves- 
 ton, on whom the King wished to confer my poor hand, was 
 neither by birth, merit, nor circumstance worthy of such an 
 alliance. Meantime I heard of the fame of Sir John de 
 Walton ; and I heard of it not with the less interest that his 
 feats of chivalry were said to adorn a knight who, rich in 
 everything else, was poor in worldly goods and in the smiles 
 of fortune. I saw this Sir John de Walton, and I acknowl- 
 edge that a thought, which had already intruded itself on 
 my imagination, became after this interview, by frequent 
 recurrence, more familiar and more welcome to me. Me- 
 thought that the daughter of a powerful English family, if 
 she could give away with her hand such wealth as the world 
 spoke of, would more justly and honorably bestow it in 
 remedying the errors of fortune in regard to a gallant knight 
 like De Walton than in patching the revenues of a beggarly 
 Frenchman, whose only merit was in being the kinsman of 
 a man who was very generally detested by the whole king- 
 dom of England, excepting the infatuated monarch him- 
 self." 
 
 " Nobly designed, my daughter," said the nun ; " what 
 more worthy of a noble heart, possessing riches, beauty, 
 birth, and rank, than to confer them all upon indigent and 
 chivalrous merit ?" 
 
 " Such, dearest sister, was my intention," replied Augus- 
 tine ; " but I have, perhaps, scarce sufficiently explained 
 the manner in which I meant to proceed. By the advice of 
 a minstrel of our house, the same who is now prisoner at 
 Douglas, I caused exhibit a large feast upon Christmas eve, 
 and sent invitations abroad to the young knight^ of noble 
 name who were known to spend their leisure in quest of 
 arms and adventures. When the tables were drawn and the 
 feast concluded, Bertram, as had been before devised, was 
 called upon to take his harp. He sung, receiving from all 
 who were present the attention due to a minstrel of so much 
 fame. The theme which he chose was the frequent capture 
 of this Douglas Castle, or, as the poet termed it. Castle 
 Dangerous. ''Where are the champions of the renowned 
 Edward the First," said the minstrel, " when the realm of 
 England cannot furnish a man brave enough, or sufficiently 
 expert in the wars, to defend a miserable hamlet of the North 
 against the Scottish rebels, who have vowed to retake it over 
 our soldiers' heads ere the year rolls to an end ? Where are 
 the noble ladies whose smiles used to give countenance to the 
 knights of St. George's cross ? Alas ! the spirit of love and 
 
488 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 of cliiralry is alike dead amongst lis : our knights are limited 
 to petty enterprises, and our noblest heiresses are given as 
 prizes to strangers, as if their own country had no one to 
 deserve them." Here stopped the harp ; and I shame to say 
 that I myself, as if moved to enthusiasm by the song of the 
 minstrel, arose, and taking from my neck the chain of gold 
 which supported a crucifix of special sanctity, I made my 
 vow, always under tlie King's permission, that I would give 
 my hand, and the inheritance of my fathers, to the good 
 knight, being of noble birth and lineage, who should keep 
 the Castle of Douglas in the King of England's name for a 
 year and a day. I sat down, my dearest sister, deafened 
 with the jubilee in which my guests expressed their applause 
 of my supposed patriotism. Yet some degree of pause took 
 place amidst the young knights, who might reasonably have 
 been supposed ready to embrace this offer, although at the 
 risk of being encumbered with Augusta of Berkely." 
 
 " Shame on the man," said Sister Ursula, "who should 
 think so ! Put your beauty alone, my dearest, into con- 
 sideration, and a true knight ought to have embraced the 
 dangers of twenty Castles of Douglas, rather than let such 
 an invaluable opportunity of gaining your favor be lost." 
 
 " It may be that some in reality thought so," said the pil- 
 grim ; "but it Avas supposed that the King's favor might be 
 lost by those who seemed too anxious to thAvart his royal 
 purpose upon his ward's hand. At any rate, greatly to my 
 joy, the only person who availed himself of the offer I had 
 made was Sir John de Walton ; and as his acceptance of it 
 was guarded by a clause, saving and reserving the King's 
 approbation, I hope he has not suffered any diminution of 
 Edward's favor." 
 
 *' Assure yourself, noble and high-spirited young lady," 
 replied the nun, " that there is no fear of thy generous de- 
 votion hurting thy lover with the King of England. Some- 
 thing we hear concerning worldly passages, even in this re- 
 mote nook of St. Bride's cloister, and the report goes among 
 the English soldiers that their king was indeed offended at 
 your putting your will in opposition to his own ; yet, on the 
 other liand, this preferred lover. Sir John de Walton, wasa 
 man of such extensive fame, and your offer was so much in 
 the character of better but not forgotten times, that even a 
 king could not at the beginning of^a long and stubborn war 
 deprive an errant cavalier of his bride, if she should be duly 
 won by his sword and lance." 
 
 " Ah I dearest Sister Ursula ! " sighed the disguised pil- 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 439 
 
 grim, " but, on the other haud, how much time must pass 
 by in the siege by defeating vvliich that suit must needs be 
 advanced ? While I sat in my lonely castle, tidings after 
 tidings came to astound me with the numerous, or rather the 
 constant, dangers with which my lover was surrounded, until 
 at length, in a moment I think of madness, I resolved to set 
 out in this masculine disguise ; and having myself with my 
 own eyes seen in what situation I had placed my knight, I 
 determined to take such measures in respect to shortening 
 the term of his trial, or otherwise, as a sight of Douglas 
 Castle, and — why should I deny it ? — of Sir John de Walton, 
 might suggest. Perhaps you, my dearest sister, may not so 
 well understand my being tempted into flinching from the 
 resolution which I had laid down for my own honor and that 
 of my lover ; but consider that my resolution was the conse- 
 quence of a moment of excitation, and that the course which 
 I adopted was the conclusion of a long, wasting, sickening 
 state of uncertainty, the effect of which was to weaken the 
 nerves which were once highly strung with love of my 
 country, as I thought ; but in reality, alas ! with fond and 
 anxious feelings of a more selfish description/' 
 
 " Alas ! " said Sister Ursula, evincing the strongest symp- 
 toms of interest and compassion, '' am I the person, dearest 
 child, whom you suspect of insensibility to the distresses 
 which are the fruit of true love ? Do you suppose that the 
 air which is breathed within these walls has the property, 
 upon the female heart, of such marvelous fountains as they 
 say change into stone the substances which are immersed 
 into their waters ? Hear my tale, and judge if it can be 
 thus with one who possesses my causes of grief. And do not 
 fear for loss of time : we must let our neighbors at Hazelside 
 be settled for the evening ere I furnish you with the means 
 of escape ; and you must have a trusty guide, for whose 
 fidelity I will be responsible, to direct your path through 
 these woods, and protect you in case of any danger, too 
 likely to occur in these troublesome times. It will thus be 
 nigh an hour ere you depart ; and sure I am that in no manner 
 can you spend the time better than in listening to distresses 
 too similar to your own, and flowing from the source of disap- 
 pointed affection which you must needs sympathize with." 
 
 The distresses of the Lady Augusta did not prevent her 
 being in some degree affected almost ludicrously with the 
 singular contrast between the hideous countenance of this 
 victim of the tender passion and the cause to which she im- 
 puted her sorrows ; but it was not a moment for giving way 
 
440 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 to a sense of the ridiculous, which would have been in the 
 highest degree offensive to the sister of St. Bride, whose 
 good-will she had so many reasons to conciliate. She readily, 
 therefore, succeeded in preparing herself to listen to the 
 votary with an appearance of sympathy, which might reward 
 that which she had herself experienced at the hands of Sister 
 Ursula ; while the unfortunate recluse, with an agitation 
 which made her ugliness still more conspicuous, narrated, 
 nearly in a whisper, the following circumstances : — 
 
 " My misfortunes commenced long before I was called Sis- 
 ter Ursula, or secluded as a votaress within these walls. My 
 father was a noble Norman, who, like many of his country- 
 men, sought and found fortune at the court of the King of 
 Scotland. He was endowed with the sheriffdom of this 
 county, and Maurice de Hattely, or Hautlieu, was numbered 
 among the wealthy and powerful barons of Scotland. Where- 
 fore should I deny it, that the daughter of this baron, then 
 called Margaret de Hautlieu, was also distinguished among 
 the great and fair of the land ? It can be no censurable 
 vanity which provokes me to speak the truth, and unless I 
 tell it myself, you could hardly suspect what a resemblance 
 I once bore even to the lovely Lady Augusta of Berkely. 
 About this time broke out those unfortunate feuds of Bruce 
 and Baliol which have been so long the curse of this country. 
 My father, determined in his choice of party by the argu- 
 ments of his wealthy kinsmen at the court of Edward, em- 
 braced with passion the faction of the English interests, and 
 became one of the keenest partisans, at first of John Baliol, 
 and afterwards of the English monarch. None among the 
 Anglicized Scottish, as his party was called, were so zealous 
 as he for the red cross, and no one was more detested by his 
 countrymen who followed the national standard of St. An- 
 drew and the patriot Wallace. Among those soldiers of the 
 soil, Malcolm Fleming of Biggar was one of the most distiji- 
 guished by his noble birth, his high acquirements, and his 
 fame in chivalry. I saw him ; and the ghastly specter who 
 now addresses you must not be ashamed to say that she 
 loved, and was beloved by, one of the handsomest youths in 
 Scotland. Our attachment was discovered to my father 
 almost ere we had owned it to each other, and he was furious 
 both against my lover and myself ; he placed me under the 
 charge of a religious woman of this rule, and I was immured 
 within the house of St. Bride, where my father shamed not 
 to announce he would cause me to take the veil by force, 
 unless I agreed to wed a youth bred at the English courts 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 441 
 
 his nopliew ; and, as Heaven had granted him no son, the 
 heir, as he had resolved, of the house of Hautlieu. 1 was 
 not long in making my election. I protested that death 
 should be my choice, rather than any other husband except- 
 ing Malcolm Fleming. Neither was my lover less faithful : 
 he found means to communicate to me a particular night on 
 which he proposed to attempt to storm the nunnery of St. 
 Bride, and carry me from hence to freedom and the green- 
 wood, of which Wallace was generally called the king. In 
 an evil hour — an hour, I think, of infatuation and witchery 
 — I suffered the abbess to wheedle the secret out of me, 
 which I might have been sensible would appear more horri- 
 bly flagitious to her than to any other woman that breathed ; 
 but 1 had not taken the vows, and I thought Wallace and 
 Fleming had the same charms for everybody as for me. and 
 the artful woman gave me reason to believe that her loyalty 
 to Bruce was without a flaw of suspicion, and she took part 
 in a plot of which my freedom was the object. The abbess 
 engaged to have the English guards removed to a distance, 
 and in appearance the troops were withdrawn. Accordingly, 
 in the middle of the night appointed, the window of my cell, 
 which was two stories from the ground, was opened without 
 noise ; and never were my eyes more gladdened than; as 
 ready disguised and arrayed for flight, even in a horseman's 
 dress, like yourself, fairest Lady Augusta, I saw Malcolm 
 Fleming spring into the apartment. He rushed towards 
 me ; but at the same time my father with ten of his strong- 
 est men filled the room, and cried their war-cry of ' Baliol.' 
 Blows were instantly dealt on every side. A form like a 
 giant, however, appeared in the midst of the tumult, and 
 distinguished himself, even to my half-giddy eye, by the ease 
 with which he bore down and dispersed those who fought 
 against our freedom. My father alone offered an opposition 
 which threatened to prove fatal to him ; for Wallace, it was 
 said, could foil any two martial champions that ever drew 
 sword. Brushing from him the armed men, as a lady would 
 drive away with her fan a swarm of troublesome flies, he se- 
 cured me in one arm, used his other for our mutual protec- 
 tion, and I found myself in the act of being borne in safety 
 down the ladder by which my deliverers had ascended from 
 without ; but an evil fate awaited this attempt. 
 
 " My father, whom the Champion of Scotland had spared 
 for my sake, or rather for Fleming's, gained by his victor's 
 compassion and lenity a fearful advantage, and made a re- 
 morseless use of it. Having only his left hand to oppose to 
 
4i2 WA VERLEY N VELS 
 
 the maniac attempts of my father, even the strength of Wal- 
 lace could not prevent the assailant, with all the energy of 
 desperation, from throwing down the ladder, on which his 
 daughter was perched like a dove in the grasp of an eagle. 
 The Champion saw our danger, and, exerting all his inimit- 
 able strength and agility, cleared himself and me from the 
 ladder, and leaped free of the moat of the convent, into 
 which we must otherwise have been precipitated. The 
 Champion of Scotland was saved in the desperate attempt, 
 but I, who fell among a lieap of stones and rubbish — I, the 
 disobedient daughter, wellnigh the apostate vestal — waked 
 only from a long bed of sickness to find myself the disfigured 
 wretch which you now see me. I then learned that Malcolm 
 had escaped from the fray, and shortly after I heard, with 
 feelings less keen, perhaps, than they ought to have been, 
 that my father was slain in one of the endless battles which 
 took place between the contending factions. If he had lived 
 I might have submitted to the completion of my fate ; but 
 since he was no more, I felt that it would be a preferable lot 
 to be a beggar in the streets of a Scottish village than an 
 abbess in this miserable house of St. Bride ; nor was even 
 that poor object of ambition, on which my father used to 
 expatiate when desirous of persuading me to enter the mon- 
 astic state, by milder means than throwing me off the battle- 
 ments, long open to me. The old abbess died of a cold caught 
 the evening of the fray ; and the place, which might have 
 been kept open until I was capable of filling it, was disposed 
 of otherwise, when the English thought fit to reform, as they 
 termed it, the discipline of the house ; and, instead of elect- 
 ing a new abbess, sent hither two or three friendly monks, 
 who have now the absolute government of the community, 
 and wield it entirely according to the pleasure of the English. 
 But I, for one, Avho have had the honor to be supported by 
 the arms of the Champion of my country, will not remain 
 here to be commanded by this Abbot Jerome. I will go 
 forth, nor do I fear to find relations and friends who will pro- 
 vide a more fitting place of refuge for Margaret de Hautlieu 
 than the convent of St. Bride ; you, too, dearest lady, shall 
 obtain your freedom, and it will be well to leave such infor- 
 mation as will make Sir John de Walton aware of the devo- 
 tion, with which his happy fate has inspired you."' 
 
 "It is not, then, your own intention,"' said the Lady 
 Augusta, "to return into the world again, and you are about 
 to renounce the lover in a union with whom you and he 
 once saw your joint happiness ? '' 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 443 
 
 *'It is a question, my dearest child," said Sister Ursula, 
 "which I dare not ask myself , and to which I am absolutely un- 
 certain what answer I should return. I have not taken the final 
 and irrevocable vows : I have done nothing to alter my situa- 
 tion with regard to Malcolm Fleming. He also, by the vows 
 plighted in the chancery of Heaven, is my affianced bride- 
 groom, nor am I conscious that I less deserve his faith in any 
 respect now than at the moment it was pledged to me ; but 
 I confess, dearest lady, that rumors have reached me which 
 sting me to the quick : the reports of my wounds and scars 
 are said to have estranged the knight of my choice. I am 
 now indeed poor," she added with a sigh, " and I am no 
 longer possessed of those personal charms which they say at- 
 tract the love and fix the fidelity of the other sex. I teach, 
 myself, therefore, to think, in my moments of settled resolu- 
 tion, that all betwixt me and Malcolm Fleming is at an end, 
 saving good wishes on the part of both towards the other ; 
 and yet there is a sensation in my bosom which whispers, in 
 spite of my reason, that, if I absolutely believed that which 
 1 now say, there would be no object on earth worthy my liv- 
 ing for in order to attain it. This insinuating prepossession 
 whispers to my secret soul, and in very opposition to my rea- 
 son and understanding, that Malcolm Fleming, who could 
 pledge his all upon the service of his country, is incapable 
 of nourishing the versatile affection of an ordinary, a coarse, 
 or a venial character. Methinks, were the difference upon 
 his part instead of mine, he would not lose his interest in my 
 eyes because he was seamed with honorable scars, obtained 
 in asserting the freedom of his choice, but that such wounds 
 would, in my opinion, add to his merit, whatever they took 
 away from his personal comeliness. Ideas rise on my soul, as 
 if Malcolm and Margaret might yet be to each other all that 
 their affections once anticipated with so much security, and 
 that a change which took nothing from the honor and virtue 
 of the beloved person must rather add to than diminish the 
 charms of the union. Look at me, dearest Lady Augusta — 
 look me, if you have courage — full in the face, and tell me 
 whether I do not rave when my fancy is thus converting 
 mere possibilities into that which is natural and probable." 
 The Lady of Berkely, conscious of the necessity, raised 
 her eyes on the unfortunate nun, afraid of losing her own 
 chance of deliverance by the mode in which she should con- 
 duct herself in this crisis, yet not willing at the same time to 
 flatter the unfortunate Ursula with suggesting ideas for 
 which her own sense told her she could hardly find any 
 
444 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 rational grounds. But lier imagination, stored with the 
 minstrelsy of the time, brouglit back to her recollection the 
 Loatlih^ Lady in The Marriage of Sir Gawain, and she 
 conducted her reply in the following manner : — 
 
 " You ask me, my dear Lady Margaret, a trying question, 
 which it would be unfriendly to answer otherwise than sin- 
 cerely, and most cruel to answer with too much rashness. 
 It is true, that what is called beauty is the first quality on 
 which we of the weaker sex learn to set a value : we are 
 flattered by the imputation of personal charms, whether we 
 actually possess them or not ; and no doubt we learn to place 
 upon them a great deal more consequence than in reality is 
 found to belong to them. Women, however, even such as 
 are held by their own sex, and perhaps in secret by them- 
 selves, as devoid of all pretensions to beauty, have been known 
 to become, from their understanding, their talents, or their 
 accomplishments, the undoubted objects of the warmest 
 attachment. Wherefore, then should you, in the mere rash- 
 ness of your apprehension, deem it impossible that your 
 Malcolm Fleming should be made of that porcelain clay of 
 the earth which despises the passing captivations of outward 
 form, in comparison to the charms of true affection and the 
 excellence of talents and virtue ?" 
 
 The nun pressed her companion's hand to her bosom, and 
 answered her with a deep sigh. 
 
 "I fear," she said, " you flatter me ; and yet, in a crisis 
 like this, it does one good to be flattered, even as cordials, 
 otherwise dangerous to the constitution, are wisely given to 
 support a patient through a paroxysm of agony, and enable 
 him to endure at least what they cannot cure. Answer only 
 one question, and it will be time we drop this conversation. 
 Could you, sweet lady — you upon whom fortune has bestowed 
 so many charms — could any argument make you patient 
 under the irretrievable loss of your personal advantages, with 
 the concomitant loss, as in my case is most probable, of that 
 lover for whom you have already done so much ?" _ 
 
 The English ladv cast her eyes again on her friend, and 
 could not help shuddering a little at the thought of her own 
 beautiful countenance being exchanged for the seamed and 
 scarred features of the Lady of Hautlieu, irregularly lighted 
 by the beams of a single eye. 
 
 " Believe me," she said, looking solemnly upwards. " that, 
 even in the case which you suppose, I would not sorrow so 
 much for myself as I would for the poor-spirited thoughts of 
 the lover who could leave me because those transitory charms 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 445 
 
 — which must in my case ere long take their departure — had 
 fled ere yet the bridal day. It is, liowever, concealed by the 
 decrees of Providence in what manner, or to wliat extent, 
 other persons, with whose disposition we are not fully ac- 
 quainted, may be affected by such changes. I can only as- 
 sure you that my hopes go with yours, and that there is no 
 difficulty which shall remain in your path in future, if it is 
 in my power to remove it. Hark ! " 
 
 " It is the signal of our freedom," replied Ursula, giving 
 attention to something resembling the Vv^hoop of the night- 
 owl. *''We must prepare to leave the convent in a few 
 minutes. Have you anything to take with you ? " 
 
 ''Nothing/' answered the Lady of Berkely, " except the 
 few valuables, wliich I scarce know why I brought with me 
 on my flight hither. This scroll, which I shall leave behind, 
 gives my faithful minstrel permission to save himself, by 
 confessing to Sir John de Walton who the person really is 
 whom he has had within his roach." 
 
 " It is strange," said the novice of St. Bride, "through 
 what extraordinary labyrinths this Love, this will-of the-wisp, 
 guides his votaries. Take heed as you descend ; this trap- 
 door, carefully concealed, curiously jointed and oiled, leads 
 to a secret postern, where I conceive the horses already wait, 
 which will enable us speedily to bid adieu to St. Bride's — 
 Heaven's blessing on her and on her convent f We can have 
 no advantage from any light until we are in the open air." 
 
 During this time. Sister Ursula, to give her for the last 
 time her conventual name, exchanged her stole, or loose 
 Tipper garment, for the more succinct cloak and hood of a 
 horseman. She led the way through divers passages, studi- 
 ously complicated, until the Lady of Berkely, with throbbing 
 heart, stood in the pale and douljtful moonlight, which was 
 shining with gray uncertainty upon the walls of the ancient 
 building. The imitation of an owlet's cry directed them to 
 a neighboring large elm, and on approaching it they were 
 aware of three horses, held by one concerning whom they 
 could only see that he was tall, strong, and accoutered in the 
 dress of a man-at-arms. 
 
 "The sooner," he said, "we are gone from this place. 
 Lady Margaret, it is so much the better. You have only to 
 direct the course which we shall hold." 
 
 Lady Margaret's answer was given beneath her breath ; 
 and replied to with a caution from the guide to ride slowly 
 and silently for the first quarter of an hour, by which time 
 inhabited places would be left at a distance. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 trREAT was the astonishment of the young knight of Valence 
 and the reverend Father Jerome, when, upon breaking into 
 the cell, they discovered the youthful pilgrim's absence ;and, 
 from the garments which were left, saw every reason to think 
 that the one-eyed novice, Sister Ursula, had accompanied 
 him in his escape from custody. A thousand thoughts 
 thronged upon Sir Aymer, how shamefully he had suffered 
 himself to be outwitted by the artifices o± a boy and a novice. 
 His reverend companion in error felt no less contrition for 
 having recommended to the knight a mild exercise of his 
 authority. Father Jerome had obtained his preferment 
 as abbot upon the faith of his zeal for the cause of the 
 English monarch, with the affected interest in which he was 
 at a loss to reconcile his proceedings of the last night. A 
 hurried inquiry took place, from which little could be 
 learned, save that the young pilgrim had most certainly gone 
 off with the Lady Margaret de Hautlieu— an incident at 
 which the females of the convent expressed surprise, 
 mingled with a great deal of horror ; while that of the males, 
 whom the news "soon reached, was qualified with a degree of 
 wonder, which seemed to be founded upon the very different 
 personal appearance of the two fugitives. 
 
 " Sacred Virgin," said a nun, " who could have conceived 
 the hopeful votaress. Sister Ursula, so lately drowned in 
 tears for her father'is untimely fate, capable of eloping with 
 a boy scarce fourteen years old ? " 
 
 "And, holy St. Bride! ''said the Abbot Jerome, ''what 
 could have made so handsome a young man leud his arm to 
 assist such a nightmare as Sister Ursula in the commission 
 of so great an enormity ? Certainly he can neither plead 
 temptation nor seduction, but must have gone, as the worldly 
 phrase is, to the devil with a dish-clout." 
 
 " I must disperse the soldiers to pursue the fugitives," 
 said De Valence, "unless this letter, which the pilgrim must 
 have left behind him, shall contain some explanations re- 
 specting our mvsterious prisoner." 
 
 After viewing the contents with some surprise, he read 
 aloud — "The undersigned, late residing in the house of St 
 446 
 
CA StLE DA NGEROUS 447 
 
 Bride, do you, Father Jerome, the abbot of said house, to 
 know that, finding you were disposed to treat me as a prisoner 
 and a spy, in the sanctuary to which you had received me 
 as a distressed person, I have resolved to use my natural 
 libert}^, with which you have no right to interfere, and there- 
 fore have withdrawn myself from your abbacy. Moreover, 
 finding that the novice called in your convent Sister Ursula 
 — who hath, by monastic rule and discipline, a fair title to 
 return to the world unless she is pleased, after a year's novi- 
 ciate, to profess herself sister of your order — is determined 
 to use such privilege, I joyfully take the opportunity of her 
 company in this her lawful resolution, as being what is in 
 conformity to the law of God, and the precepts of St. Bride, 
 which gave you no authority to detain any person in your 
 convent by force, who hath not taken upon her irrevocably 
 the vows of the order. 
 
 " To you, Sir John de Walton, and Sir Aymer de Valence, 
 knights of England, commanding the garrison of Douglas 
 Dale, I have only to say, that you have acted and are acting 
 against me under a mystery, the solution of which is com- 
 prehended in a secret known only to my faithful minstrel, 
 Bertram of the many Lays, as whose son I have found it 
 convenient to pass myself. But, as I cannot at this time 
 prevail upon myself personally to discover a secret which 
 cannot well be unfolded without feelings of shame, I not only 
 give permission to the said Bertram the minstrel, but I charge 
 and command him, that he tell to you the purpose with 
 which I came originally to the Castle of Douglas. When 
 this is discovered, it will only remain to express my feelings 
 towards the two knights, in return for the pain and agony of 
 mind which their violence and threats of further severities 
 have occasioned me. 
 
 '' And first, respecting Sir Aymer de A^alence, I freely and 
 willingly forgive him for having been involved in a mistake 
 to which I myself led the w^ay, and I shall at all times be 
 happy to meet with him as an acquaintance, and never to 
 think farther of his part in these few days' history, saving 
 as matter of mirth and ridicule. 
 
 "But respecting Sir John de Walton, I must request of 
 him to consider whether his conduct towards me, standing 
 as we at present do towards each other, is such as he himself 
 ought to forget, or I ought to forgive ; and I trust he will 
 understand me when I tell him that all former connections 
 must henceforth be at an end between him and the supposed 
 
 "Augustine." 
 
448 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 *' This is madness/' said the ahbot, when he had read the 
 letter — " very midsummer madness, not unfrequently an 
 accompaniment of this pestilential disease, and I should do 
 well in requiring of those soldiers who shall first apprehend 
 this youth Augustine, that they reduce his victuals imme- 
 diately to water and bread, taking care that the diet do not 
 exceed in measure what is necessary to sustain nature ; nay, 
 I should be warranted by the learned, did I recommend a 
 sufficient intermixture cf flagellation with belts, stirrup- 
 leathers, or surcingles, and failing those, with riding-whips, 
 switches, and the like/' 
 
 " Hush ! my reverend father," said De Valence, ''a light 
 begins to break in upon me. John de Walton, if my suspi- 
 cion be true, would sooner expose his own flesh to be hewn 
 from his bones than have this Augustine's finger stung by a 
 gnat. Instead of treating this youth as a madman, I, for 
 my own part, will be contented to avow that I myself have 
 been bewitched and fascinated ; and by my honor, if I send 
 out my attendants in quest of the fugitives, it shall be with 
 the strict charge that, when apprehended, they treat them 
 with all respect, and protect them, if they object to return 
 to this house, to any honorable place of refuge which they 
 may desire." 
 
 "I hope," said the abbot, '* looking strangely confused, 
 ** I shall be first heard in behalf o£ the church concerning 
 this alfair of an abducted nun ? You see yourself, sir kniglit, 
 that this scapegrace of a minstrel avouches neither repen- 
 tance nor contrition at his share in a matter so flagitious/' 
 
 "You shall be secured an opportunity of being fully 
 heard," replied the knight, "if you shall find at last that 
 you really desire one. Meantime, I must back, without a mo- 
 ment's delay, to inform Sir John de Walton of the turn which 
 affairs have taken. Farewell, reverend father. By my 
 honor, we may wish each other joy that we have escaped from 
 a troublesome charge, which brought as much terror with it 
 as the phantoms of a fearful dream, and is yet found capable 
 of being dispelled by a cure as simple as that of awakening 
 the sleeper. But, by St. Bride ! both churchmen and lay- 
 men are bound to sympathize with the unfortunate Sir John 
 de Walton. I tell thee, father, that if this letter "—touch- 
 ing the missive with his finger — " is to be construed literally, 
 as far as respects him, he is the man most to be pitied be- 
 twixt the brink of Solway and the place where we now stand. 
 Suspend thy curiosity, most worthy churchman, lest there 
 should be more in this matter than I myself see ; so that). 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 449 
 
 while thinking that I have lighted on the true explanation, 
 I may not have to acknowledge that I have been again leading 
 you into error. Sound to horse there ! Ho ! " he called out 
 from the window of tlie apartment ; "and let the party I 
 brought hither prepare to scour tlie woods on their return." 
 
 "By my faith I" said Father Jerome, "I am right glad 
 that this young nutcracker is going to leave me to my own 
 meditation. I hate when a young person pretends to under- 
 stand whatever passes, while his betters are obliged to confess 
 that it is all a mystery to them. Such an assumption is like 
 that of the conceited fool. Sister Ursula, who pretended to 
 read with a single eye a manuscript which I myself could not 
 find intelligible with the assistance of my spectacles." 
 
 This might not have quite pleased the young knight, nor 
 was it one of those truths which the abbot would have chosen 
 to deliver in his hearing. But the knight had shaken him 
 by the hand, said adieu, and was already at Hazehide, issu- 
 ing particular orders to little troops of the archers and otliers, 
 and occasionally chiding Thomas Dickson, who, with a degree 
 of curiosity which the English knight was not very willing 
 to excuse, had been endeavoring to get some account of the 
 occurrences of the night. 
 
 " Peace, fellow ! " he said, " and mind thine own business, 
 being well assured that the hour will come in which it will 
 require all the attention thou canst give, leaving others to 
 take care of their own affairs." 
 
 " If I am suspected of anything," answered Dickson, in a 
 tone rather dogged and surly than otherwise, "methinks it 
 it were but fair to let me know what accusation is brought 
 against me. I need not tell you that chivalry prescribes that 
 a knight should not attack an enemy undefied." 
 
 " When you are a knight," answered Sir Aymer de Val- 
 ence, " it will be time enough for me to reckon with you 
 upon the points of form due to you by the laws of chivalry. 
 Meanwhile, you had best let me know what share you have 
 had in playing off the martial phantom which sounded 
 the rebellious slogan of Douglas in the town of tha: name ?" 
 
 " I know nothing of what you speak," answered the good- 
 man of Hazelside, 
 
 " See then," said tbe knight, " that you do not engage 
 yourself in the affairs of other people, even if your conscience 
 warrants that you are in no danger from your own." 
 
 So saying, he rode off, not waiting any answer. The ideas 
 which iilled his head were to the following purpose : — 
 
 " I know not how it is, but one mist seems no sooner to 
 29 
 
450 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 clear away than we find ourselves engaged in another. 1 take 
 it for granted that the disguised damsel is no other than the 
 goddess of Walton's private idolatry, who has cost him and 
 me 80 much trouble, and some certain degree of misunder- 
 standing, during these lust weeks. By my honor ! this fair 
 lady is right lavish in the pardon which she has so frankly 
 bestowed upon me, and if she is willing to be less complais- 
 ant to Sir John de Walton, why then And what then ? 
 
 It surely does not infer that she would receive me into that 
 place in her affections from which she has just expelled De 
 Walton ? Xor, if she did, could I avail myself of a change 
 in favor of myself, at the expense of my friend and compan- 
 ion-in-arms. " It were a folly even to dream of a thing so im- 
 probable. But with respect to the other business, it is worth 
 serious consideration. Yon sexton seems to have kept com- 
 pany with dead bodies until he is unfit for the society of the 
 living ; and as to that Dickson of Hazelside, as they call him, 
 there is no attempt against the English during these endless 
 wars in which that man has not been concerned ; had my life 
 depended upon it, I could not have prevented myself from 
 intimating mv suspicions of him, let him take it as he lists." 
 
 So saving, the knight spurred his horse, and arriving at 
 Douglas Castle without farther adventure, demanded, in a 
 tone of greater cordiality than he had of late used, whether 
 he could be admitted to" Sir John de Walton, having some- 
 thing of consequence to report to him. He was immediately 
 ushered into an apartment in which the governor was seated 
 at his solitarv breakfast. Considering the terms upon which 
 they had lately stood, the governor of Douglas Dale was some- 
 what surprised at the easy familiarity with which De Valence 
 now approached him. 
 
 " Some uncommon news,'' said Sir John, rather gravely, 
 '' have brought me the honor of Sir Aymer de Valence's 
 company." . i . , . 
 
 ''It-is," answered Sir Aymer, " what seems of high im- 
 portance to your interest. Sir John de Walton, and therefore 
 1 were to blame if I lost a moment in communicating it." 
 
 "I shall be proud to profit by your intelligence/' said Sir 
 John de Walton. 
 
 "And I. too," said the young knight, ''am loth to lose 
 the credit of having penetrated a mystery which blinded Sir 
 John de Walton. At the same time, I do not wish to be 
 thought capable of jesting with you, which might be the case 
 were'l, from misapprehension, to give a false key to this 
 matter. With your permission, then, we will proceed thus ' 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 451 
 
 we go together to the place of Bertram the minstrel's con- 
 finement. 1 have in my possession a scroll from the young 
 person who was entrusted to the care of the Abbot Jerome ; 
 it is written in a delicate female hand, and gives authority 
 to the minstrel to declare the purpose which brought them 
 to this vale of Douglas." 
 
 "It must be as you say/' said Sir John de Walton, *' al- 
 though 1 can scarce see occasion for adding so much form to 
 a mystery which can be expressed in such small compass." 
 
 Accordingly the two knights, a warder leading the way, 
 proceeded to the dungeon to which the minstrel had been 
 removed. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The doors of the stronghold being undone displayed a dun- 
 geon such as in those days held victims hopeless of escape, 
 but in which the ingenious knave of modern times would 
 scarcely have deigned to remain many hours. The huge 
 rings by which the fetters were soldered together and at- 
 tached to the human body were, when examined minutely, 
 found to be clenched together by riveting so very thin that, 
 when rubbed with corrosive acid, or patientiy ground witli 
 a bit of sandstone, the hold of the fetters upon each other 
 might be easily forced asunder, and the purpose of them 
 entirely frustrated. The locks also, large, and apparently 
 very strong, were so coarsely made that an artist of small 
 ingenuity could easily contrive to get the better of their 
 fastenings upon the same principle. The daylight found its 
 way to the subterranean dungeon only at noon, and through 
 a passage which was purposely made tortuous, so as to ex- 
 clude the rays of the sun, while it presented no obstacle to 
 wind or rain. The doctrine that a prisoner was to be es- 
 teemed innocent until he should be found guilty by his peers 
 was not understood in those days of brute force, and he was 
 only accommodated with a lamp or other alleviation of his 
 misery if his demeanor was quiet, and he appeared disposed 
 to give his Jailer no trouble by attempting to make his 
 escape. Such a cell of confinement was that of Bertram, 
 whose moderation of temper and patience had nevertheless 
 procured for him such mitigations of his fate as the warder 
 could grant. He was permitted to carry into his cell the ola 
 book, in the perusal of which he found an amusement of his 
 solitude, together with writing-materials, and such other 
 helps towards spending his time as were consistent with his 
 abode in the bosom of the rock, and the degree of informa- 
 tion with which his minstrel craft had possessed him. He 
 raised his head from the table as the knights entered, while 
 the governor observed to the young knight — 
 
 " As you seem to think yourself possessed of the secret of 
 this prisoner, I leave to you. Sir Aymer de Valence, to bring 
 it to light in the manner which you shall judge most expedi- 
 ent, if the man or his son have suffered unnecessary hard- 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 453 
 
 ship, it shall be my duty to make amends — which, I suppose, 
 can be no very important matter." 
 
 Bertram looked up, and fixed his eyes full upon the gov- 
 ernor, but read nothing in his looks which indicated his 
 being better acquainted than before with the secret of his 
 imprisonment. Yet, upon turning his eye towards Sir 
 Aymer, his countenance evidently lighted up, and the glance 
 which passed between them was one of intelligence. 
 
 " You have my secret, then," said he, " and you know 
 who it is tliat passes under the name of Augustine ?" 
 
 Sir Aymer exchanged with him a look of acquiescence ; 
 while, the eyes of the governor glancing wildly from the 
 prisoner to the knight of Valence, [he] exclaimed— 
 
 " Sir Aymer de Valence, as you are belted knight and 
 Christian man, as you have honor to preserve on earth and 
 a soul to rescue after death, I charge you to tell me the 
 meaning of this mystery ! It may be that you conceive, 
 with truth, that you have subject of complaint against me. 
 If so, I will satisfy you as a knight may." 
 
 The minstrel spoke at the same moment. " I charge this 
 knight," he said, " by his vow of chivalry, that he do not 
 divulge any secret belonging to a person of honor and of 
 character, unless he has positive assurance that it is done 
 entirely by that person's own consent." 
 
 " Let this note remove your scruples," said Sir Aymer, 
 putting the scroll into the hands of the minstrel ; " and for 
 you. Sir John de Walton, far from retaining the least feeling 
 of any misunderstanding which may have existed between 
 :is, I am disposed entirely to bury it in forgetfulness, as 
 having arisen out of a series of mistakes which no mortal 
 could have comprehended. And do not be offended, my 
 dear Sir John, when I protest on my knightly faith, that I 
 pity the pain which I think this scroll is likely to give you, 
 and that, if my utmost efforts can be of the least service to 
 you in unraveling this tangled skein, I will contribute them 
 with as much earnestness as ever I did aught in my life. This 
 faithful minstrel will now see that he can have no difficulty 
 in yielding up a secret which I doubt not, but for the writing 
 I have just put into his hands, he would have continued to 
 keep with unshaken fidelity." 
 
 Sir Aymer now placed in De Walton's hand a note, in 
 which he had, ere he left St. Bride's convent, signified his 
 own interpretation of the mystery ; and the governor had 
 Bcarcely read the name it contained, before the same name 
 was pronounced alo ad by Bertram, who at the same moment 
 
454 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 handed to the governor the scroll which he had received from 
 the knight of Valence. 
 
 The white plume which floated over the knight's cap of 
 maintenance, which was worn as a head-piece within doors, 
 was not more pale in complexion than was the knight him- 
 self at the unexpected and surprising information that the 
 lady who was, in chivalrous phrase, empress of his thoughts 
 and commander of his actions, and to whom, even in less 
 fantastic times, he must have owed the deepest gratitude for 
 the generous election which she had made in his favor, was the 
 same person whom he had threatened with personal violence, 
 and subjected to hardships and affronts which he would 
 not willingly have bestowed even upon the meanest of her sex. 
 
 Yet Sir John de Walton seemed at first scarcely to com- 
 prehend tlie numerous ill consequences which might prob- 
 ably follow this unhappy complication of mistakes. _ He took 
 the paper from the minstrel's hand, and while his eye, as- 
 sisted by the lamp, wandered over the characters without 
 apparently their conveying any distinct impression to his 
 understanding, De Valence even became alarmed that he was 
 about to lose his faculties. 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, sir," he said, "be a man, and sup- 
 port with manly steadiness these unexpected occurrences — ■ 
 I would fain think they will reach to nothing else — which 
 the wit of man could not have prevented. This fair lady, I 
 would fain hope, cannot be much hurt or deeply offended 
 by a train of circumstances the natural consequence of your 
 anxiety to discharge perfectly a duty upon which must de- 
 pend the accomplishment of all the hopes she had permitted 
 you to entertain. In God's name, rouse up, sir ; let it not 
 be said that an apprehended frown of a fair lady hath damped 
 to such a degree the courage of the boldest knight in Eng- 
 land : be what men have called you, 'Walton the Unwaver- 
 ing.' In Heaven's name, let us at least see that the lady is 
 indeed offended before we conclude that she is irreconcil- 
 ably so. To whose fault are we to ascribe the source of all 
 these errors ? Surely, with all due respect, to the caprice 
 of the lady herself, which has engendered such a nest of 
 mistakes. Think of it as a man and as a soldier. Suppose 
 that you yourself, or I, desirous of proving the fidelity of 
 our sentinels, or for any other reason, good or bad, attempted 
 to enter this Dang'-erous Castle of Douglas without giv- 
 ing the password to the warders, would we be entitled to 
 blame those upon duty if, not knowing our persons, they 
 manfully refused us entrance, made us prioners, and mia* 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 455 
 
 handled us while resisting our attempt, in terms of the or- 
 ders which vve ourselves had imposed upon them ? What is 
 there that makes a difference between such a sentinel and 
 yourself, John de Walton, in this curious affair, which, by 
 Heaven ! would rather form a gay subject for the minstrelsy 
 of this excellent bard than the theme of a tragic lay ? 
 Come ! look not thus, Sir John de Walton ; be angry, if you 
 will, with the lady who has committed such a piece of folly -, 
 or with me, who have rode up and down nearly all night on 
 a fool's errand, and spoiled my best horse, in absolute un- 
 certainty how I shall get another till my uncle of Pembroke 
 and I shall be reconciled ; or, lastly, if you desire to be to- 
 tally absurd in your wrath, direct it against this worthy 
 minstrel on account of his rare fidelity, and punish him for 
 that for which he better deserves a chain of gold. Let pas- 
 sion out if you will : but chase this desponding gloom from 
 the brow of a man and a belted knight." 
 
 Sir John de Walton made an effort to speak, and suc- 
 ceeded with some difficulty, " Aymer de Valence," he said, 
 " in irritating a madman you do but sport with your own 
 life ; " and then remained silent. 
 
 " I am glad you can say so much," replied his friend ; 
 **for I was not jesting when I said I would rather that you 
 were at variance with me than that you laid the whole blame 
 on yourself. It would be courteous, I think, to set this 
 minstrel instantly at liberty. Meantime, for his lady's sake, 
 I will entreat him, in all honor, to be our guest till the 
 Lady Augusta de Berkely shall do us the same honor, and 
 to assist us in our search after her place of retirement. 
 Good minstrel," he continued, ''you hear what I say, and 
 you will not, I suppose, be surprised that, in all honor and 
 kind usage, you find yourself detained for a short space in 
 this Castle of Douglas ? " 
 
 "You seem, sir knight," replied the minstrel, "not so 
 much to keep your eye upon the right of doing what you 
 should as to possess the might of doing what you would. 
 I must necessarily be guided by your advice, since you have 
 the power to make it a command." 
 
 " And I trust," continued De Valence, " that, when your 
 mistress and you again meet, we shall have the benefit of 
 your intercession for anything which we may have done to 
 displeasure her, considering that the purpose of our action 
 was exactly the reverse." 
 
 " Let me," said Sir John de Walton, " say a single word. 
 I will offer thee a chain of gold, heavy enough to bear down 
 
i56 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 the weight of ».nese shackles, as a sign of regret for having 
 condemned thee to suffer so many indignities." 
 
 ''Enough said, Sir John," said De Valence; "let us 
 promise no more till this good minstrel shall see some sign of 
 performance. Follow me this way, and I will tell thee in 
 private of other tidings, which it is important that you 
 should know." 
 
 So saying, he withdrew De Walton from the dungeon, and 
 sending for the old knight, Sir Philip de Montentn", already 
 mentioned, who acted as seneschal of the castle,"^ he com- 
 manded that the minstrel should be enlarged from the dun- 
 geon, well looked to in other respects, yet prohibited, tlioiigh 
 with every mark of civility, from leaving the castle without 
 a trusty attendant. 
 
 " And now. Sir John de Walton," he said, " methinksyou 
 are a little churlish in not ordering me some breakfast, after 
 I have been all night engaged in your affairs ; and a cup of 
 muscadel would, I think, be no bad induction to a full con- 
 sideration of this perplexed matter." 
 
 *' Thou knowest," answered De Walton, *' that thou mayst 
 call for what thou wilt, provided always thou tellest me, 
 without loss of time, what else thou knowest respecting the 
 will of the lady against whom we have all sinned so grievously, 
 and I, alas ! beyond hope of forgiveness." 
 
 *' Trust me, I hope," said the knight of Valence, " the 
 good lady bears me no malice, as indeed she has expressly 
 renounced any ilhwill against me. The words you see, are 
 so plain, as yon yourself may read — ' The lady pardons poor 
 Aymer de Valence, and willingly, for having been involved 
 in a mistake to which she herself led the way ; she herself 
 will at all times be happy to meet with him as an acquaint- 
 ance, and never to think farther of these few days' history, 
 except as matter of mirth and ridicule.* So it is expressly 
 written and set down." 
 
 " Yes," replied Sir John de AYalton, " but see you not that 
 her offending lover is expressly excluded from tlie amnestv 
 granted to the lesser offender ? Mark you not the conclud- 
 ing paragraph ?" He took the scroll with a trembling hand, 
 and read with a discomposed voice its closing words. " It 
 is even so : 'All former connection must henceforth be at an 
 end between him and the supposed Augustine.' Explain to 
 me how the reading of these words is reconcilable to any- 
 thing but their plain sense of condemnation and forfeiture 
 of contract, implying destruction of the hopes of Sir John 
 de Walton?" 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 457 
 
 " You are somewhat an older man than I, sir knight," 
 answered De Valence, "and, I will grant, by far the wiser 
 and more experienced ; yet I will uphold that there is no 
 adopting the interpretation which you seem to have affixed 
 in your mind to this letter, without supposing the preliminary 
 that the fair writer was distracted in her understanding — • 
 nay, never start, look wildl}', or lay your hand on your sword, 
 I do not affirm this is the case. I say again, that no woman 
 in her senses would have pardoned a common acquaintance 
 for his behaving to her with uninteufcional disrespect and 
 unkindness during the currency of a certain masquerade, 
 and, at the same time, sternly and irrevocably broken oft' with 
 the lover to whom her troth was plighted, although his error 
 in joining in the offense was neither grosser nor more pro- 
 tracted than that of the person indifferent to her love." 
 
 " Do not blaspheme," said Sir John de Walton ; " and 
 forgive me if, in Justice to truth and to the angel whom I 
 fear I have forfeited forever, I point out to you the differ- 
 ence which a maiden of dignity and of feeling must make 
 between an offense towards her committed by an ordinary 
 acquaintance and one of precisely the same kind offered by 
 a person who is bound by the most undeserved preference, 
 by the most generous benefits, and by everything which can 
 bind human feeling, to think and reflect ere he becomes an 
 actor in any case in which it is possible for her to be con- 
 cerned." 
 
 " Now, by mine honor," said Aymer de Valence, " I am 
 glad to hear thee make some attempt at reason, although it 
 is but an unreasonable kind of reason too, since its object is 
 to destroy thine own hopes, and argue away thine own chance 
 of happiness ; but if I have, in the progress of this affair, 
 borne me sometimes towards thee as to give not only the 
 governor, but even the friend, some cause of displeasure, I 
 will make it up to thee now, John de Walton, by trying to 
 convince thee in spite of thine own perverse logic. But 
 here comes the muscadel and the breakfast ; wilt thou take 
 some refreshment — or shall we go on without the spirit of 
 muscadel ?" 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," replied De Walton, " do as thou 
 wilt, so thou make me clear of thy well-intended babble." 
 
 " Nay, thou shalt not brawl me out of my powers of argu- 
 ment," said De Valence, laughing, and helping himself to 
 a brimming cup of wine ; " if thou acknowledgest thyself 
 conquered, I am contented to give the victory to the in* 
 spiring strength of the jovial liquor." 
 
tSS iVA VIABLE V NO VEL S 
 
 " Do as thou listest," said De Walton, " but make an end 
 of an argument which thou canst not comprehend." 
 
 " I deny the charge," answered the younger knight, 
 wiping his lips, after having finished his draught ; " and 
 listen, Walton the Warlike, to a chapter in the history of 
 women, in which thou art more unskilled than I would 
 wish thee to be. Thou canst not deny that, be it right or 
 wrong, thy Lady Augusta hath ventured more forward with 
 you than is usual upon the sea of affection : she boldly made 
 thee her choice, while thou wert as yet known to her only 
 as a flower of English chivalry. Faith, and I respect her for 
 her frankness ; but it was a choice which the more cold of 
 her own sex might perhaps claim occasion to term rash and 
 precipitate. Nay, be not, I jDray thee, offended — I am far 
 from thinking or saying so ; on the contrary, I will uphold 
 with my lance her selection of John de Walton against the 
 minions of a court to be a wise and generous choice, and her 
 own behavior as alike candid and noble. But she herself 
 is not unlikely to dread unjust misconstruction — a fear of 
 which may not improbably induce her, upon any occasion, to 
 seize some opportunity of showing an unwonted and unusual 
 rigor towards her lover, in order to balance her having ex- 
 tended towards him in the beginning of their intercourse, 
 somewhat of an unusual degree of frank encouragement. 
 Nay, it might be easy for her lover so far to take part against 
 himself, by arguing as thou dost when out of thy senses, 
 as to make it difficult for her to withdraw from an argument 
 which he himself was foolish enough to strengthen ; and 
 thus, like a maiden too soon taken at her first nay-say, she 
 shall perhaps be allowed no opportunity of bearing herself 
 according to her real feelings, or retracting a sentence issued 
 with consent of the party whose hopes it destroys." 
 
 " I have heard thee, De Valence," answered the governor 
 of Douglas Dale ; " nor is it difficult for me to admit that 
 these thy lessons may serve as a chart to many a female 
 heart, but not to that of Augusta de Berkely. By my life, 
 I say I would much sooner be deprived of the merit of those 
 few deeds of chivalry which thou sayest have procui-ed for me 
 such enviable distinction than I would act upon them with 
 the insolence, as if I said that my place in the lady's bosom 
 was too firmly fixed to be shaken even by the success of a 
 worthier man, or by my own gross failure in respect to the 
 object of my attachment. No, herself alone shall have 
 power to persuade me that even goodness equal to that of an 
 interceding saint will restore me to the place in her affec- 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 459 
 
 tions whioli I have most uinvortliily forfeited by a stupidity 
 only to be compared to that of brutes." 
 
 " If you are so minded," said Aymer cle Valence, " I have 
 only one word more — forgive me if I speak it peremptorily — 
 the lady, as you say, and say truly, must be the final arbitress 
 in this question. My arguments do not extend to insisting 
 that you should claim her hand whether she herself will or 
 no ; but to learn her determination, it is necessary that you 
 should find out where she is, of which I am unfortunately 
 not able to inform you." 
 
 " How ! what mean you ? " exclaimed the governor, who 
 now only began to comprehend the extent of his misfortune. 
 " Whither hath she fled, or with whom ?" 
 
 " She is fled, for what I know," said De Valence, *' in 
 search of a more enterprising lover than one who is 80 willing 
 to interpret every air of frost as a killing blight to his hopes ; 
 perhaps she seeks the Black Douglas, or some such hero of 
 the thistle, to reward with her lands, her lordships, and 
 beauty those virtues of enterprise and courage of which 
 John de Walton was at one time thought possessed. But, 
 seriously, events are passing around us of strange import. 
 I saw enough last night, on my way to iSt. Bride's, to make 
 me suspicious of every one. I sent to you as a prisoner 
 the old sexton of the church of Douglas. I found him 
 contumacious as to some inquiries which I thought it 
 proper to prosecute ; but of this more at another time. 
 The escape of this lady adds greatly to the diflficulties 
 which encircle this devoted castle." 
 
 " Aymer de Valence," replied De Walton, in a solemn 
 and animated tone, " Douglas Castle shall be defended, as 
 we have hitherto been able, with the aid of Heaven, to 
 Bpread from its battlements the broad banner of St. George. 
 Come of me what list during my life, I will die the faithful 
 lover of Augusta de Berkely, even although I no longer 
 live as her chosen knight. There are cloisters and hermit- 
 ages — " 
 
 " Ay, marry are there," replied Sir Aymer, " and girdles 
 of hemp, moreover, and beads of oak ; but all these we omit 
 in our reckonings till we discover whei-e the Lady Augusta 
 is, and what she purposes to do in this matter." 
 
 "You say well," replied De Walton ; '*let us hold coun- 
 sel together by what means we shall, if possible, discover 
 the lady's too hasty retreat, by which she has done me great 
 wrong — I mean, if she supposed her commands would not 
 have been fully obeyed, had she honored with them the 
 
460 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 governor of Douglas Dale, or any who are under his com. 
 mand." 
 
 "Now/' replied De Valence, "you again speak like a 
 true son of chivalry. With your permission, I would sum- 
 mon this minstrel to our presence. His fidelity to his mis- 
 tress has been remarkable ; and, as matters stand now, we 
 must take instant measures for tracing the place of hei 
 retreat." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The way is long, my children — long and rough, 
 The moors are dreary, and the woods are dark ; 
 But he that creeps from cradle on to grave, 
 Unskilled save in the velvet course of fortune, 
 Hath missed the discipline of noble hearts. 
 
 Old Play. 
 
 H was yet early in the day when, after the governor and De 
 Valence had again summoned Bertram to their councils, the 
 garrison of Douglas was mustered, and a number of small 
 parties, in addition to those already despatched by De Val- 
 ence from Hazelside, were sent out to scour the woods in 
 pursuit of the fugitives, with strict injunctions to treat them, 
 if overtaken, with the utmost respect, and to obey their 
 commands, keeping an eye, however, on the place where 
 they might take refuge. To facilitate tliis result, some who 
 were men of discretion were entrusted with the secret who 
 the supposed pilgrim and the fugitive nun really were. The 
 whole ground, whether forest or moorland, within many 
 miles of Douglas Castle was covered and traversed by parties, 
 whose anxiety to detect the fugitives was equal to the re- 
 ward for their safe recovery liberally offered by De Walton 
 and De Valence. They spared not, meantime, to make such 
 inquiries in all directions as might bring to light any machi- 
 nations of the Scottish insurgents which might be on foot 
 in those wild districts, of which, as we have said before, De 
 Valence, in particular, entertained strong suspicions. Their 
 instructions were, in case of finding such, to proceed against 
 the persons engaged, by arrest and otherwise, in the most 
 rigorous manner, such as had been commanded by De Wal- 
 ton himself at the time when the Black Douglas and his ac- 
 complices had been the principal objects of his wakeful sus- 
 picions. These various detachments had greatly reduced the 
 strength of the garrison ; yet, although numerous, alert, and 
 despatched in every direction, they had not the fortune 
 either to fall on the trace of the Lady of Berkely or to en- 
 encounter any party whatever of the insurgent Scottish. 
 
 Meanwhile our fugitives had, as we have seen, set out 
 from the convent of St. Bride under the guidance of a oav- 
 461 
 
462 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 alier, of whom the Lady Augusta knew nothing save that 
 he was to guide their steps in a direction where they would 
 not be exposed to the risk of being overtaken. At length 
 Margaret de Hautlieu herself spoke upon the subject. 
 
 " You have made no inquiry/' she said, " Lady Augusta, 
 whither you are traveling, or under whose charge, although 
 methinks it should much concern you to know." 
 
 " Is it not enough for me to be aware," answered Lady 
 Augusta, ''that I am traveling, kind sister, under the pro- 
 tection of one to whom you yourself trust as to a friend ; 
 and why need I be anxious for any farther assurance of mv 
 safety?'' ^ 
 
 " Simply," said Margaret de Hautlieu, " because the per- 
 sons with whom, from national as well as personal circum- 
 stances, I stand connected are perhaps not exactly the pro- 
 tectors to whom you, lady, can with such perfect safety en- 
 trust yourself." 
 
 " In what sense," said the Lady Augusta, "do you use 
 these words ?" 
 
 " Because," replied Margaret de Hautlieu, " the Bruce, 
 the Douglas, Malcolm Fleming, and others of that party, 
 although .they are incapable of abusing such an advantage 
 to any dishonorable purpose, might nevertheless, under a 
 strong temptation, consider you as an hostage thrown into 
 their hands by Providence, through whom they might med- 
 itate the possibility of gaining some benefit to their dispersed 
 and dispirited party." 
 
 "They might make me," answered the Lady Augusta, 
 **the subject of such a treaty when I Avas dead, but, believe 
 me, never while I drew vital breath. Believe me also that, 
 with whatever pain, shame, or agony I would again deliver 
 myself up to the power of De Walton — yes, I would rather 
 put myself in his hands. What do I say ? His ! I would 
 rather surrender myself to the meanest archer of my native 
 country than combine with its foes to work mischief to 
 Merry England — my own England — that country which is 
 the envy of every other country, and the pride of all who 
 can term themselves her natives ! " 
 
 " I thought that your choice might prove so," said Lady 
 Margaret ; " and since you have honored me with your 
 confidence, gladly would I provide for your liberty by plac- 
 ing you as nearly in the situation which you yourself desire 
 as my poor means have the power of accomplishing. In 
 half an hour we shall be in danger of being taken by the 
 English parties, which will be instantly dispersed in every 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 463 
 
 direction in quest of us. Now take notice, lady, I know a 
 place in which I can take refuge with my friends and 
 countrymen, those gallant Scots, who have never even in 
 this dishonored age bent the knee to Baal. For their honor 
 — their nicety of honor, I could in other days have answered 
 with my own ; but of late, I am bound to tell you, they have 
 been put to those trials by which the most generous affec- 
 tions may be soured, and driven to a species of frenzy the 
 more wild that it is founded originally on the noblest feel- 
 ings. A person wlio feels himself deprived of his natural 
 birthright, denounced, exposed to confiscation and death, 
 because he avouches the riglits of his king, the cause of his 
 country, ceases on his part to be nice or precise in estimat- 
 ittg the degree of retaliation which it is lawful for him to 
 exercise in the requital of such injuries ; and, believe me, 
 bitterly should I lament having guided you into a situation 
 which you might consider afflicting or degrading." 
 
 " In a word, then," said the English lady, " what is it you 
 apprehend I am like to suffer at the hands of your friends, 
 whom I must be excused for terming rebels ? " 
 
 " If," said the Sister Ursula, " your friends, whom I 
 should term oppressors and tyrants, take our land and our 
 lives, seize our castles and confiscate our property, you must 
 confess that the rough laws of war indulge mine with the 
 privilege of retaliation. There can be no fear that such 
 men, under any circumstances, would ever exercise cruelty 
 or insult upon a lady of your rank ; but it is another thing 
 to calculate that they will abstain from such means of ex- 
 torting advantage from your captivity as are common in war- 
 fare. You would not, 1 think, wish to be delivered up to 
 the English, on consideration of Sir John de Walton sur- 
 rendering the Castle of Douglas to its natural lord ; yet, 
 were you in the hands of the Bruce or Douglas, although I 
 I can answer for your being treated with all the respect 
 which they have the means of showing, yet I own their put- 
 ting you at such a ransom might be by no means unlikely." 
 
 " I would sooner die," said the Lady Berkely, " than have 
 my name mixed up in a treaty so disgraceful ; and De Wal- 
 ton's reply to it would, I am certain, be to strike the head 
 from the messenger, and throw it from the highest tower of 
 Douglas Castle." 
 
 "Where, then, lady, would you now go," said Sister 
 Ursula, "were the choice in your power ?" 
 
 " To my own castle," answered Lady Augusta, " where, if 
 •necessary, I could be defended even against the King him- 
 
M4 WAVEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 self, until I could place at least my person under the pra 
 tection of the church." 
 
 " In that case," replied Margaret de Hautlieu, ''my power 
 of rendering you assistance is only precarious, yet it com- 
 prehends a choice \A'hich I will -willingly submit to your de- 
 cision, notwithstanding I thereby subject the secrets of my 
 friends to some risk of being discovered and frustrated. 
 But the confidence which you have placed in me imposes on 
 me the necessity of committing to you a like trust. It rests 
 with you whether you will proceed with me to the secret 
 rendezvous of the Douglas and his friends, which I may be 
 blamed for making known, and there take your chance of 
 the reception which you may encounter, since I cannot 
 warrant you of anything save honorable treatment, so far as 
 your person is concerned ; or, if you should think this too 
 hazardous, make the best of your way at once for the Border, 
 in which last case I will proceed as far as I can with you 
 towards the English line, and then leave you to pursue your 
 journey, and to obtain a guard and a conductor among your 
 own countrymen. Meantime, it will be well for me if I 
 escape being taken, since the abbot would not shrink at in- 
 flicting upon me the death due to an apostate nun." 
 
 "■ Such cruelty, my sister, could hardly be inflicted upon 
 one who had never taken the religious vows, and who still, 
 according to the laws of the church, had a right to make a 
 choice between the world and the veil." 
 
 " Such choice as they gave their gallant victims," said 
 Lady Margaret, " who have fallen into English hands during 
 these merciless wars — such choice as they gave to Wallace, 
 the Champion of Scotland ; such as they gave to Hay, the 
 gentle and the free ; to Sommerville, the flower of chivalry ; 
 and to Athol, the blood relation of King Edward himself — 
 all of whom were as much traitors, under which name they 
 were executed, as Margaret de Hautlieu is an apostate nun, 
 and subject to the rule of the cloister." 
 
 She spoke with some eagerness, for she felt as if the Eng- 
 lish lady imputed to her more coldness than she was, in such 
 doubtful circumstances, conscious of manifesting. 
 
 " And after all," she proceeded, " you. Lady Augusta de 
 Berkely, what do you venture, if you run the risk of falling 
 into the hands of your lover ? What dreadful risk do you 
 incur ? You need not, methinks, fear being immured be- 
 tween four walls, with a basket of bread and a cruise of water, 
 which, were I seized, would be the only support allowed to 
 me for the short space that my life would be prolonged. 
 
CASTLE DANGEEOUS 463 
 
 Nay, even were yon to be betrayed to the rebel Scots, as you 
 call them, a captivity among the hills, s\Teeteued by the hope 
 of deliverance, and rendered tolerable by all the allevia- 
 tions which the circumstances of your captors allowed them 
 the means of supplying, were not, I think, a lot so very hard 
 to endure." 
 
 " Nevertheless," answered the Lady of Berkely, "fright- 
 ful enough it must have appeared to me, since, to fly from 
 such, I threw myself upon your guidance." 
 
 "And whatever you think or suspect," answered the 
 novice, "I am as true to you as ever was one maiden to 
 another and as sure as ever Sister Ursula was true to her 
 vows, although they were never comjoleted, so will I be faith- 
 ful to your secret, even at the risk of betraying my own. 
 Hearken, lady ! " she said, suddenly pausing, " do you hear 
 that?" 
 
 The sound to which she alluded was the same imitation of 
 the cry of an owlet which the lady had before heaid under 
 the wails of the convent. 
 
 " These sounds," said Margaret de Hautlieu, " announce 
 that one is near more able than I am to direct us in this 
 matter. I must go forward and speak with him ; and this 
 man, our guide, will remain by you for a little space ; nor, 
 when he quits your bridle, need you wait for any other 
 signal, but ride forward on the woodland path, and obey the 
 advice and directions which will be given you." ■ 
 
 " Stay — stay, Sister Ursula ! " cried the Lady de Berkely 
 — " abandon me not in this moment of uncertainty and 
 distress ! " 
 
 "It must be, for the sake of both," returned Margaret de 
 Hautlieu. *' I also am in uncertainty, I also am in distress, 
 and patience and obedience are the only virtues which can 
 save us both." 
 
 So saying, she struck her horse with the riding-rod, and 
 moving briskly forward, disappeared among the boughs of a 
 tangled thicket. The Lady of Berkely would have followed 
 her companion, but the cavalier who attended them laid a 
 strong hand upon the bridle of her palfrey, with a look which 
 implied that he would not permit her to proceed in that direc- 
 tion. Terrified, therefore, though she could not exactly state 
 a reason wliy, the Lady of Berkely remained with her eyes 
 fixed upon the thicket, instinctively, as it were, expecting to 
 see a band of English archers, or rugged Scottish insurgents, 
 issue from its tangled skirts, and doubtful which she should 
 have most considered as the objects of her terror. In the 
 30 
 
466 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 distress of her uncertainty, she again attempted to move 
 forward, but the stern check wliich lier attendant again be- 
 stowed upon her bridle proved sufficiently that, in restrain- 
 her wishes, the stranger was not likely to spare the strength 
 which he certainly possessed. At length, after some ten 
 minutes had elapsed, the cavalier withdrew his hand from 
 her bridle, and pointing with his lance towards the thicket, 
 through which there winded a narrow, scarce visible path, 
 seemed to intimate to the lady that her road lay in that direc- 
 tion, and that he would no longer prevent her following it. 
 
 "^ Do you not go with me?" said the lady, who, having 
 been accustomed to this man's company since they left the 
 convent, had by degrees come to look upon him as a sort of 
 protector. He, however, gravely shook his head, as if to ex- 
 cuse complying with a request which it was not in his power to 
 grant ; and, turning his steed in a different direction, retired 
 at a pace which soon carried him from her sight. She had 
 then no alternative but to take the path of the thicket which 
 had been followed by Margaret de Hautlieu, nor did she pur- 
 sue it long before coming in sight of a singular spectacle. 
 
 The trees grew wider as the lady advanced, and when she 
 entered the thicket she perceived that, though hedged in as 
 it were by an enclosure of copsewood, it was in the interior 
 altogether occupied by a few of the magnificent trees, such 
 as seemed to have been the ancestors of the forest, and which, 
 though few in number, were sufficient to overshade all the 
 unoccupied ground by the great extent of their complicated 
 branches. Beneath one of these lay stretched something of 
 a gray color, which, as it drew itself together, exhibited the 
 figure of a man sheathed in armor, but strangely accoutered, 
 and in a manner so bizarre as to indicate some of the wild 
 fancies peculiar to the knights of that period. His armor 
 was ingeniously painted so as to represent a skeleton, the ribs 
 being constituted by the corslet and its back-piece. The 
 shield represented an owl with its wings spread, a device 
 which was repeated upon the helmet, which appeared to be 
 completely covered by an image of the same bird of ill omen. 
 But that which was particularly calculated to excite surprise 
 in the spectator was the great height and thinness of the 
 figure, which, as it arose from the ground and placed itself 
 in an erect posture, seemed rather to resemble an apparition 
 in the act of extricating itself from the grave than that of an 
 ordinary man rising upon his feet. The horse, too, upon 
 which the lady rode started back and snorted, either at the 
 gudden change of posture of this ghastly specimen of chivalry. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 467 
 
 or disagreeably affected by some odor which accompanied his 
 presence. The lady herself manifested some alarm, for al- 
 thongh she did not utterly believe she was in the presence of 
 a supernatural being, yet, among all the strange half-frantic 
 disguises of chivalry, this was assuredly the most uncouth 
 which she had ever seen ; and considering how often the 
 knights of the period pushed their dreamy fancies to the 
 borders of insanity, it seemed at best no very safe venture to 
 meet one accoutered in the emblems of the King of Terrors 
 himself, alone, and in the midst of a wild forest._ Be the 
 knight's character and purposes what they might, she 
 resolved, however, to accost him in the language and manner 
 observed in romances upon such occasions, in the hope even 
 that if he were a madman he might prove a peaceable one, 
 and accessible to "civility. 
 
 " Sir knight," she said, in as firm a tone as she could as- 
 sume, " right sorry am I if, by my hasty approach, I have 
 disturbed your solitary meditations. My horse, sensible, I 
 think, of the presence of yours, brought me hither, without 
 my being aware whom or what I was to encounter.'" 
 
 '' I am one," answered the stranger, in a solemn tone, 
 " whom few men seek to meet, till the time comes that they 
 can avoid me no longer." 
 
 ''You speak, sir knight," replied the Lady de Berkely, 
 " according to the dismal character of which it has pleased 
 you to assume the distinction. May I appeal to one whose 
 exterior is so formidable, for the purpose of requesting some 
 directions to guide me through this wild wood ; as, for in- 
 stance, what is the name of the nearest castle, town, or hos- 
 telry, and by what course I am best likely to reach such ? " 
 
 " It is a singular audacity," answered the Knight of the 
 Tomb, " that would enter into conversation with him who is 
 termed the Inexorable, the Unsparing, and the Pitiless, whom 
 even the most miserable forbears to call to his assistance, lest 
 his prayers should be too soon answered." 
 
 " Sir knight," replied the Lady Augusta, "the character 
 which you have assumed, unquestionably for good reasons, 
 dictates to you a peculiar course of speech ; but although 
 your part is a sad one, it does not, I should suppose, render 
 it necessary for you to refuse those acts of civility to which 
 you must have bound yourself in taking the high vows of 
 chivalry." 
 
 " If you will trust to my guidance," replied the ghastly 
 figure, " there is only one condition upon which I can grant 
 you the information which you require ; and that is, that 
 
468 WAVERLET NOVELS 
 
 you follow my footsteps without any questions asked as to 
 the tendency of our journey." 
 
 "I suppose I must submit to your conditions/' she an- 
 swered, " if you are indeed pleased to take upon yourself the 
 task of being my guide. In my lieart I conceive you to be 
 one of the unhappy gentlemen of Scotland who are now in 
 arms, as they say, for the defense of their liberties. A rash 
 undertaking has brought me within the sphere of your influ- 
 ence, and now the only favor I have to request of you, against 
 whom I never did nor planned any evil, is the guidance 
 which your knowledge of the country permits you easily to 
 afford me in my way to the frontiers of England. Believe 
 that what I may see of your haunts or of your practises shall 
 be to me things invisible, as if they were actually concealed 
 by the sepulcher itself of the king of which it has pleased you to 
 assume the attributes; and if a sum of money, enough to be the 
 ransom of a wealthy earl, will purchase such a favor at need, 
 such a ransom will be frankly paid, and with as much fidelity 
 as ever it was rendered by a prisoner to the knight by whom 
 he was taken. Do not reject me, princely Bruce — noble 
 Douglas — if indeed it is to either of these that I address my- 
 self in this my last extremity ; men speak of both as fearful 
 enemies, but generous knights and faithful friends. Let me 
 entreat you to remember how much you would wish your own 
 friends and connections to meet with compassion under simi- 
 lar circumstances at the hands of the knights of England." 
 
 "And have they done so ?" replied the knight, in a voice 
 more gloomy than before, " or do you act wisely, while im- 
 ploring the protection of one whom you believe to be a true 
 Scottish knight, for no other reason than the extreme and 
 extravagant misery of his appearance — is it, I say, well or 
 wise to remind him of the mode in which the lords of Eng- 
 land have treated the lovely maidens and the high-born 
 dames of Scotland ? Have not their prison-cages been sus- 
 pended from the battlements of castles, that their captivity 
 might be kept in view of every base burgher who should 
 desire to look upon the miseries of the noblest peeresses, yea, 
 even the queen of Scotland ?* Is this a recollection which 
 can inspire a Scottish knight with compassion towards an 
 English lady ? or is it a thought which can do aught but 
 swell the deeply sworn hatred of Edward Tlantaganet, the 
 author of these evils, that boils in every drop of Scottish 
 blood which still feels the throb of life ? Xo ; it is all you can 
 expect if, cold and pitiless as the sepulcher I represent, I 
 * See Prison Cages, Note 9. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 469 
 
 leave you unassisted in the helpless condition in which you 
 describe yourself to be." 
 
 " You will not be so inhuman," replied the lady ; " in do- 
 ing so, you must surrender every right to honest fame which 
 you have won either by sword or lance. You must surrender 
 every pretense to that justice which affects the merit of 
 supporting the weak against the strong. You must make it 
 your principle to avenge the wrongs and tyranny of Edward 
 Plantagenet upon the dames and damosels of England who 
 have neither access to his councils nor perhaps give him their 
 approbations in his wars against Scotland." 
 
 ''It would not, then," said the Knight of the Sepulcher, 
 'Mnduce you to depart from your request, should I tell you 
 the evils to which you would subject yourself should we fall 
 into the hands of the English troops, and should they find 
 you under such ill-omened protection as my own ?" 
 
 " Be assured," said the lady, "the consideration of such 
 an event does not in the least shake my resolution or desire 
 of confiding in your protection. You may probably know 
 who I am, and may judge how far even Edward would hold 
 himself entitled to extend punishment towards me." 
 
 " How am I to know you," replied the ghostly cavalier, 
 '' or your circumstances ? They must be extraordinary in- 
 deed if they could form a check, either of justice or human- 
 ity, upon tlie revengeful feelings of Edward. All who know 
 him are well assured that it is no ordinary motive that will 
 induce him to depart from the indulgence of his evil temper. 
 But be it as it may, you, lady, if a lady you be, throw your- 
 self as a burden upon me, and I must ' discharge myself of 
 my trust as I best may ; for this purpose you must be guided 
 implicitly by my directions, which will be given after the 
 fashion of those"^ of the spiritual world, being intimations, 
 rather than detailed instructions, for your conduct, and ex- 
 pressed rather by commands than by any reason or argument. 
 In this way it is possible that I may be of service to you ; in 
 any other case, it is most likely that I may fail you at need, 
 and melt from your side like a phantom which dreads the 
 approach of day." 
 
 ''You cannot be so cruel!" answered the lady, *'A 
 gentleman, a knight, and a nobleman — and I persuade my- 
 self I speak to all— hath duties which he cannot abandon," 
 
 " He has, I grant it, and they are most sacred to me," 
 answered the Spectral Knight f" but I have also duties 
 whose obligations are doubly binding, and to which I must 
 sacrifice those which would otherwise lead me to devotp my- 
 
m WA VERLE Y NO VEL S 
 
 self to your rescue. The only question is, whether you feel 
 inclined to accept my protection on the limited terms on 
 which alone I can extend it, or whether you deem it better 
 that each go their own way, and limit themselves to their 
 own resources, and trust the rest to Providence ? " 
 
 "Alas I" replied the lady, "beset and hard pressed as I 
 am, to ask me to form a resolution for myself is like calling 
 on a wretch, in the act of falling from a precipice, to form 
 a calm judgment by what twig he may best gain the chance 
 of breaking his fall. His answer must necessarily be, that 
 he will cling to that which he can easiest lay hold of, and 
 trust the rest to Providence. I accept, therefore, your 
 offer of protection, in the modified way you are pleased to 
 limit it, and I put my faith in Heaven and in you. To aid 
 me effectually, however, you must know my name and my 
 circumstances." 
 
 "All these," answered the Knight of the Sepulcher, 
 " have already been told me by your late companion; for 
 deem not, young lady, that either beauty, rank, extended 
 domains, unlimited wealth, or the highest accomplishments 
 can weigh anything in the consideration of him who wears 
 the trappings of ihe tomb, and whose affections and desires 
 are long buried in the charnel-house." 
 
 " May your faith," said the Lady Augusta de Berkely, 
 " be as steady as your words appear severe, and I submit to 
 your guidance without the least doubt or fear that it will 
 prove otherwise than as I venture to hope.*' 
 
CHAPTEE XV 
 
 Like the dog following its master, when engaged in train- 
 ing him to the sport in which he desires he should excel, 
 the Lady Augusta felt herself occasionally treated with a 
 severity calculated to impress upon her the most implicit 
 obedience and attention to the Knight of the Tomb, in whom 
 she had speedily persuaded herself she saw a principal man 
 among the retainers of Douglas, if not James of Douglas 
 himself. Still, however, the ideas which the lady had 
 formed of the redoubted Douglas were those of a knight 
 highly accomplished in the duties of chivalry, devoted in 
 particular to the service of the fair sex, and altogether un- 
 like the personage with whom she found herself so strangely 
 united, or rather for the present enthralled to. Neverthe- 
 less, when, as if to abridge farther communication, he 
 turned short into one of the mazes of the wood, and seemed 
 to adopt a pace which, from the nature of the ground, 
 the horse on which the Lady Augusta was mounted 
 had difficulty to keep up with, she followed him with the 
 alarm and speed of the young spaniel, which, from fear 
 rather than fondness, endeavors to keep up with the track 
 of its severe master. The simile, it is true, is not a very 
 polite one, nor entirely becoming an age when women were 
 worshiped with a certain degree of devotion ; but such cir- 
 cumstances as the present were also rare, and the Lady 
 Augusta de Berkely could not but persuade herself that the 
 terrible Champion, whose name had been so long the theme 
 of her anxiety, and the terror indeed of the whole country, 
 might be able, some way or other, to accomplish her deliv- 
 erance. She, therefore, exerted herself to the utmost so as 
 to keep pace with the phantom-like apparition, and followed 
 the knight, as the evening shadow keeps watch upon the 
 belated rustic. 
 
 • As the lady obviously suffered under the degree of exer- 
 tion necessary to keep her palfrey from stumbling in these 
 steep and broken paths, the Knight of the Tomb slackened 
 his pace, looked anxiously around him, and muttered ap- 
 parently to himself, though probably intended for his com- 
 panion's ear, ** There is no occasion for so much haste.'' 
 471 
 
472 WAVJi'BLET NOVELS 
 
 He proceeded at a slower rate until they seemed to be on 
 the brink of a ravine, being one of many irregularities on 
 the surface of the ground, effected by the sudden torrents 
 peculiar to that country, and which, winding among the 
 trees and copsewood, formed, as it were, a net of places of 
 concealment, opening into each other, so that there was per- 
 haps no place in the world so fit for the purpose of ambus- 
 cade. The spot where the Borderer Turnbull had made his 
 escape at the hunting-match was one specimen of this broken 
 country, and perhaps connected itself with the various 
 thickets and passes through which the knight and pilgrim 
 occasionally seemed to take their way, though that ravine 
 was at a considerable distance from their present route. 
 
 Meanwhile the knight led the way, as if rather with the 
 purpose of bewildering the Lady Augusta amidst these in- 
 terminable woods than following any exact or fixed path. 
 Here they ascended, and anon appeared to descend in the 
 same direction, finding only boundless wildernesses and 
 varied combinations of tangled woodland scenery. Such 
 part of the country as seemed arable the knight appeared 
 carefully to avoid ; yet he could not direct his course with 
 so much certainty but that he occasionally crossed the path 
 of inhabitants and cultivators, Avho showed a consciousness 
 of so singular a presence, but never, as the lady observed, 
 evinced any symptom of recognition. The inference was 
 obvious, that the Specter Knight was known in the country, 
 and that he possessed adherents or accomplices there, who 
 were at least so far his friends as to avoid giving any alarm, 
 which might be the means of his discovery. The well-imi- 
 tated cry of the night-owl, too frequent a guest in the wilder- 
 ness that its call should be a subject of surprise, seemed to 
 be a signal generally understood among them ; for it w^as 
 heard in different parts of the wood, and the Lady Augusta, 
 experienced in such journeys by her former travels under 
 the guidance of the minstrel Bertram, was led to observe 
 that, on hearing such wild notes, her guide changed the di- 
 rection of his course, and betook himself to paths which led 
 through deeper wilds and more impenetrable thickets. 
 This happened so often, that a new alarm came upon the 
 unfortunate pilgrim, which suggested other motives of 
 terror. Was she not the confidante, and almost the tool, of 
 some artful design, laid with a view to an extensive opera- 
 tion, which was destined to terminate, as the efl"orts of 
 Douglas had before done, to the surprise of his hereditary 
 castle, the massacre of the English garrison, and finally in 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 473 
 
 the dishonor and death of that Sir John de "Walton upon 
 whose fate she had long believed, or taught herself to believe, 
 that her own was dependent ? 
 
 It no sooner flashed across the mind of the Lady Augusta 
 that she was engaged in some such conspiracy with a Scot- 
 tish insurgent than she shuddered at the consequences of the 
 dark transactions in which she had now become involved, 
 and which appeared to have a tendency so very different from 
 what she had at first apprehended. 
 
 The hours of the morning of this remarkable day, being 
 that of Palm Sunday, were thus drawn out in wandering 
 from place to place ; while the Lady de Berkely occasionally 
 interposed by petitions for liberty, which slie endeavored to 
 express in the most moving and pathetic manner, and by 
 offers of wealth and treasures, to which no answer whatever 
 was returned by her strange guide. 
 
 At length, as if worn out by his captive's importunity, 
 the knight, coming close up to the bridle-i-ein of the Lady 
 Augusta, said in a solemn tone — 
 
 " I am, as you may well believe, none of those knights 
 who roam through wood and wild seeking adventures, by 
 which I may obtain grace in the eyes of a fair lady. Yet 
 will I to a certain degree grant the request which thou dost 
 sojicit so anxiously, and the arbitration of thy fate shall de- 
 pend upon the pleasure of him to whose will thou hast 
 expressed thyself ready to submit thine own. I will, on our 
 arrival at the place of our destination, which is now at hand, 
 write to Sir John de Walton, and send my letter, together 
 with thy fair self, by a special messenger. He will, no 
 doubt, speedily attend our summons, and thou shalt thyself 
 be satisfied that even he who has as yet appeared deaf to 
 entreaty, and insensible to earthly affections, has still some 
 sympathy for beauty and for virtue. I will put the choice 
 of safety and thy future happiness into thine own hands and 
 those of the man whom thou hast chosen ; and thou mayst 
 select which thou wilt betwixt those and misery." 
 
 "While he thus spoke, one of those ravines or clefts in the 
 earth seemed to yawn before them, and entering it at the 
 upper end, the Specter Knight, with an attention which he 
 had not yet shown, guided the lady's courser by the rein 
 down the broken and steep path by which alone the bottom 
 of the tangled dingle was accessible. 
 
 "When placed on firm ground after the dangers of a descent, 
 in which her palfrey seemed to be sustained by the personal 
 strength and address of the singular being who had hold of 
 
474 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 the bridle, the lady looked with some astonishment at aplaoe 
 60 well adapted for cojicealment as Ihat which she had now 
 reached. It appeared evident that it was nsed for this pur- 
 pose, for more than one stifled answer was given to a very 
 low bugle-note emitted by the Knight of tlie Tomb ; and 
 when the same note was repeated, about half a score of armed 
 men, some wearing the dress of soldiers, others those of 
 shepherds and agriculturists, showed themselves imperfectly, 
 as if acknowledging the summous. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 " Hail to you, my gallant friends ! " said the Knight of 
 the Tomb to his companions, who seemed to welcome him 
 with the eagerness of men engaged in the same perilous un- 
 dertaking. " The winter has passed over, the festival of 
 Palm Sunday is come, and as surely as the ice and snow of 
 this season shall not remain to chill the earth through the 
 ensuing summer, so surely we, in a few hours, keep our word 
 to those Southron braggarts, who think their language of 
 boasting and malice has as much force over our Scottish 
 bosoms as the blast possesses over the autumn fruits ; but it 
 is not so. While we choose to remain concealed, they may 
 as vainly seek to descry us as a housewife would search for 
 the needle she had dropped among the withered foliage of 
 yon gigantic oak. Yet a few hours, and the lost needle shall 
 become the exterminating sword of the Genius of Scotland, 
 avenging ten thousand injuries, and especially the life of the 
 gallant Lord Douglas, cruelly -done to death as an exile from 
 his native country." 
 
 An exclamation between a yell and a groan burst from 
 the assembled retainers of Douglas, upon being reminded of 
 the recent death of their chief tian ; while they seemed at the 
 same time sensible of the necessity of making little noise, 
 lest they should give the alarm to some of the numerous 
 English parties which were then traversing different parts of 
 the forest. The acclamation, so cautiously uttered, had 
 scarce died away in silence, when the Knight of the Tomb, or, 
 to call him by his proper name, Sir James Douglas, again 
 addressed his handful of faitliful followers. 
 
 " One effort, my friends, may yet be made to end our 
 strife with the Southron without bloodshed. Fate has with- 
 in a few hours thrown into my power the young heiress of 
 Berkely, for whose sake it is said Sir John de Walton keeps 
 with such obstinacy the castle which is mine by inheritance. 
 Is there one among you who dare go, as the honorable escort 
 of Augusta de Berkely, bearing a letter, explaining the terms 
 on which I am willing to restore her to her lover, to freedom, 
 and to her English lordships ?" 
 
 "If there is none other/' said a tall man, dressed in the 
 475 
 
476 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 tattered attire of a woodsman, and, being, in fact, no other 
 than the very Michael Turnbull who had already given so ex- 
 traordinary a proof of his undaunted manhood, " I will gladly 
 be the person who will be the lady's henchman on this 
 expedition." 
 
 *'Thou art never wanting,'' said the Douglas, ''where a 
 manly deed is to be done ; but remember, this lady must 
 pledge to us her word and oath that she will hold herself our 
 faithful prisoner, rescue or no rescue ; that she will consider 
 herself as pledged for the life, freedom, and fair usage of 
 Michael Turnbull ; and that, if Sir John de Walton refuse 
 my terms, she must hold herself obliged to return with Turn- 
 bull to our presence, in order to be disposed of at our 
 pleasure." 
 
 There was much in these conditions which struck the Lady 
 Augusta with natural doubt and horror ; nevertheless, strange 
 as it may seem, the declaration of the Douglas gave a species 
 of decision to her situation which might have otherwise been 
 unattainable ; and, from the high opinion which she enter- 
 tained of the Douglas's chivalry, sho could not bring herself 
 to think that any part which he might play in the approach- 
 ing drama would be other than that which a perfect good 
 knight would, under all circumstances, maintain towards 
 his enemy. Even with respect to De Walton she felt her- 
 self relieved of a painful difficulty. The idea of her being 
 discovered by the knight himself in a male disguise had 
 preyed upon her spirits ; and she felt as if guilty of a depar- 
 ture from the laws of womanhood, in having extended her 
 favor towards him beyond maidenly limits — a step, too, which 
 might tend to lessen her in the eyes of the lover for whom 
 she had hazarded so much. 
 
 The heart, she said, is lightly prized 
 
 That is but lightly won ; 
 And long shall mourn the heartless man 
 
 That leaves his love too soon. 
 
 On the other hand, to be brought before him as a prisoner 
 was indeed a circumstance equally perplexing and unpleas- 
 ing, but it was one which was beyond her control, and the 
 Douglas into whose hands she had fallen, appeared to her to 
 represent the deity in the play, whose entrance was almost 
 sufficient to bring its perplexities to a conclusion ; she there- 
 fore not unwillingly submitted to take what oaths and prom- 
 ises were required by the party in whose hands she found 
 herself, and accordingly engaged to be a true prisoner, what" 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 477 
 
 ever might occur. Meantime, she strictly obeyed the di- 
 rections of those who had her motions at command, devoutly 
 praying that circumstances, in themselves so adverse, might 
 nevertheless work together for the safety of her lover and 
 her own freedom. 
 
 A pause ensued, during which a slight repast was place-d 
 before the Lady Augusta, who was well-nigh exhausted with 
 the fatigues of her journey. 
 
 Douglas and his partisans, meanwhile, whispered together, 
 as if unwilling she should hear their conference ; while, to 
 purchase their good-will, if possible, she studiously avoided 
 every appearance of listening. 
 
 After some conversation, Turnbull, who appeared to con- 
 sider the lady as peculiarly his charge, said to her in a harsh 
 voice, "Do not fear, lady; no wrong shall be done you ; 
 nevertheless, you must be content for a space to be blind- 
 folded. 
 
 She submitted to this in silent terror ; and the trooper, 
 wrapping part of a mantle round her head, did not assist her 
 to remount her palfrey, but lent her his arm to support her 
 in this blinded state. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The ground which they traversed was, as Lady Augusta could 
 feel, very broken and uneven, and sometimes, as she thought, 
 encumbered with ruins, which were difficult to surmount. 
 The strength of her comrade assisted her forward on such 
 occasions ; but his help was so roughly administered that the 
 lady once or twice, in fear or suffering, was compelled to 
 groan or sigh heavily, whatever was her desire to suppress 
 such evidence of the apprehension which she underwent, or 
 the pain which she endured. Presently, upon an occasion 
 of this kind^ she was distinctly sensible that the rough woods- 
 man was removed from her side, and another of the party 
 substituted in his stead, whose voice, more gentle than that 
 of his companion, she thought she had lately heard. 
 
 " Noble lady," were the words, "fear not the slightest in- 
 jury at our hands, and accept of my ministry instead of that 
 of my henchman, who has gone forward with our letter ; do 
 not think me presuming on my situation if I bear you in my 
 arms through ruins where you could not easily move alone 
 and blindfold." 
 
 At the same time, the Lady Augusta Berkely felt herself 
 raised from the earth in the strong arms of a man, and borne 
 onward with the utmost gentleness, without the necessity of 
 making those painful exertions which had been formerly 
 required. She was ashamed of her situation ; but. however 
 delicate, it was no time to give vent to complaints, which 
 might have given offense to persons whom it was her interest 
 to conciliate. She, therefore, submitted to necessity, and 
 heard the following words whispered in her ear — 
 
 "Fear nothing, there is no evil intended you ; nor shall 
 Sir John de Walton, if he loves you as you deserve at his 
 hand, receive any harm on our part. We call on him but 
 to do justice to ourselves and to you ; and be assured you 
 will best accomplish your own happiness by aiding our views, 
 which are equally in favor of your wishes and you'r freedom." 
 
 The Lady Augusta would have made some answer to this, 
 
 but her breath, betwixt fear and the speed with whicli she 
 
 was transported, refused to permit her to use intelligible ac- 
 
 oentB. Meantime, she began to be sensible that she" was in" 
 
 478 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 479 
 
 closed within some building, and probably a ruinous one ; 
 for although the mode of her transportation no longer per- 
 mitted her to ascertain the nature of her path in any respect 
 distinctly, yet the absence of the external air — which was, 
 however, sometimes excluded and sometimes admitted in furi- 
 ous gusts — intimated tliat she was conducted through build- 
 ings partly entire, and in other places admitting the wind 
 through wide rents and gaps. In one place it seemed to the 
 lady as if she passed through a considerable body of people, all 
 of whom observed silence, although there was sometimes heard 
 among them a murmur, to which every one present in some 
 degree contributed, although the general sound did not ex- 
 ceed a whisper. Her situation made her attend to every 
 circumstance, and she did not fail to observe that these per- 
 sons made way for him who bore her, until at length she 
 became sensible that he descended by the regular steps of a 
 stair, and that she was now alone excepting his company. 
 Arrived, as it appeared to the lady, on more level ground, 
 they proceeded on their singular road by a course which ap- 
 peared neither direct nor easy, and through an atmosphere 
 which was close to a smothering degree, and felt at the same 
 time damp and disagreeable, as if from the vapors of a new- 
 made grave. 
 
 Her guide again spoke. " Bear up. Lady Augusta, for a 
 little longer, and continue to endure that atmosphere which 
 must be one day common to us all. By the necessity of my 
 situation, I must resign my present office to your original 
 guide, and can only give you my assurance that neither he 
 nor any one else shall offer you the least incivility or insult, 
 and on this you may rely, on the faith of a man of honor." 
 
 He placed her, as he said these w^ords, upon the soft turf, 
 and, to her infinite refreshment, made her sensible that she 
 was once more in the open air, and free from the smothering 
 atmosphere which had before oppressed her like that of a 
 charnel-house. At the same time, she breathed in a whisper 
 an anxious wish that she might be permitted to disencumber 
 herself from the folds of the mantle, which excluded almost 
 the power of breathing, though intended only to prevent her 
 seeing by what road she traveled. She immediately found 
 it unfolded, agreeably to her request, and hastened, with 
 uncovered eyes to take note of the scene around her. 
 
 It was overshadowed by tliick oak-trees, among which 
 stood some remnants of buildings, or what might have 
 seemed such, being perhaps the same in which she had been 
 lately wandering. A clear fountain of living water bubbled 
 
480 WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 forth from under the twisted roots of one of those trees, and 
 oifered the lady the opportunity of a draught of the pure 
 element, and in which she also bathed her face, which had 
 received more than one scratch in the course of her journey, 
 in spite of the care, and almost the tenderness, with which 
 she had latterly been borne along. The cool water speedily 
 stopt the bleeding of those trifling injuries, and the applica- 
 tion served at the same time to recall the scattered senses of 
 the damsel herself. Her first idea was whether an attempt 
 to escape, if such should appear possible, was not advisable. 
 A moment's reflection, however, satisfied her that such a 
 scheme was not to be thought of; and such second thoughts 
 were confirmed by the approach of the gigantic form of the 
 huntsman Turnbull, the rough tones of whose voice were 
 heard before his figure was obvious to her eye. 
 
 " Were you impatient for my return, fair lady ? Such as 
 I," he continued, in an ironical tone of voice, "' who are 
 foremost in the chase of wild stags and sylvan cattle, are not 
 in use to lag behind when fair ladies like you are the objects 
 of pursuit ; and if I am not so constant in my attendance as 
 you might expect, believe me, it is because I was engaged in 
 another matter, to which I must sacrifice for a little even 
 the duty of attending on you," 
 
 " I offer no resistance," said the lady ; " forbear, however, 
 in discharging thy duty, to augment my uneasiness by thy 
 conversation, for thy master hath pledged me his word that 
 he will not suffer me to be alarmed or ill-treated." 
 
 " Nay, fair one," replied the huntsman, " I ever thought 
 it was fit to make interest by soft words with fair ladies ; but 
 if you like it not, I have no such pleasure in hunting for 
 fine holyday terms but that I can with equal ease hold my- 
 self silent. Come, then, since we must wait upon this 
 lover of yours ere morning closes, and learn his last resolu- 
 tion touching a matter which is become so strangely com- 
 plicated, I will hold no more intercourse with you as a 
 female, but talk to you as a person of sense, although an 
 Englishwoman." 
 
 " You will," replied the lady, "best fulfil the intentions 
 of those by whose orders you act by holding no society with 
 me whatever, otherwise than is necessary in the character of 
 guide." 
 
 The man lowered his brows, yet seemed to assent to what 
 the Lady of Berkely proposed, and remained silent as they 
 for some time pursued their course, each pondering 'over 
 their own share of meditation, which probably turned upon 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 481 
 
 matters essentially different. At length the loud blast of a 
 bugle was heard at no great distance from the unsocial 
 fellow-travelers. " That is the person we seek," said Turn- 
 bull : '•' 1 know his blast from any other who frequents this 
 forest, and my orders are to bring you to sjDeech of him." 
 
 The blood darted rapidly through the lady's veins at the 
 thought of being thus unceremoniously presented to the 
 knight in whose favor she had confessed a rash preference 
 more agreeable to the manners of those times, when exag- 
 gerated sentiments often inspired actions of extravagant 
 generosity, than in our days, when everything is accounted 
 absurd which does not turn upon a motive connected with 
 the immediate selfish interests of the actor himself. When 
 Turabull, therefore, winded his horn, as if \\\ answer to the 
 blast which they had heard, the lady was disposed to fly at 
 the first impulse of sliame and of fear. Turnbull perceived 
 her intention, and caught hold of her with no very gentle 
 grasp, saying, " Nay, lady, it is to be understood that you 
 play your own part in the drama, which, unless you continue 
 on the stage, will conclude unsatisfactorily to us all, in a 
 combat at entrance between your lover and me, wlien it will 
 appear which of us is most worthy of your favor." 
 
 *' I will be patient," said the lady, bethinking her that 
 even this strange man's presence, and the compulsion which 
 he appeared to use towards her, was a sort of excuse to her 
 female scruples for coming into the presence of her lover, at 
 least at her first appearance before him, in a disguise which 
 her feelings confessed was not extremely decorous, or recon- 
 cilable to the dignity of her sex. 
 
 The moment after these thoughts had passed through her 
 mind, the tramp of a horse was heard approaching ; and Sir 
 John de Walton, pressing through the trees, became aware 
 of the presence of his lady, captive, as it seemed, in the 
 grasp of a Scottish outlaw, who was only known to him by 
 his former audacity at the hunting-match. 
 
 His surprise and joy only supplied the knight with these 
 hasty expressions — " Caitiff, let go thy hold ! or die in thy 
 profane attempt to control the motions of one whom the 
 very sun in heaven should be proud to obey." At the same 
 time, apprehensive that the huntsman migiit hurry the lady 
 from his sight by means of some entangled path — such as 
 upon a former occasion had served him for escape — Sir John 
 de Walton dropped his cumbrous lance, of which the trees did 
 not permit him the perfect use, and, springing from his 
 horse, approached Turnbull with his drawn sword. 
 
482 WAVEBLEY NOVEL H 
 
 The Scottishraan, keeping liis left hand still upon the 
 lady's mantle, uplifted with his right his battle-ax, or Jed- 
 wood staff, for tiie purpose of parrying and returning the 
 blow of his antagonist ; but the lady spoke. 
 
 "Sir John de Walton," she said, "for Heaven's sake, 
 forbear all violence, till yon hear npon what pacific object I 
 am brought hither, and by wliat peacefnl means these wars 
 may be put an end to. This man, though an enemy of yours, 
 has been to me a civil and respectful guardian ; ancl I en- 
 treat you to forbear him while he speaks the purpose for 
 which he has brought me hither." 
 
 " To speak of compulsion and the Lady de Berkely in the 
 same breath would itself because enough for instant death," 
 said the governor of Douglas Castle ; "but 3'ou command, 
 lady, and I spare his insignificant life, altliougli I have causes 
 of complaint against him the least of which were good war- 
 rant, had he a thousand lives, for the forfeiture of them 
 all." 
 
 "John de Walton," replied Turnbull, "this lady well 
 knows that no fear of thee operates in my mind to render 
 this a peaceful meeting ; and were I not withheld by other 
 circumstances of great consideration to the Douglas, as well 
 as thyself, I should have no more fear in facing the utmost 
 thou couldst do than I have now in leveling that sapling to 
 the earth it grows upon." 
 
 So saying, Michael Turnbull raised his battle-ax, and 
 struck from a neighboring oak-tree a branch, wellnigh as 
 thick as a man's arm, which, with all its twigs and leaves, 
 rushed to the ground between De Walton and the Scotchman, 
 giving a singular instance of the keenness of his weapon, and 
 the strength and dexterity with which he used it. 
 
 " Let there be truce, then, between us, good fellow," said 
 Sir John de Walton, " since it is the lady's pleasure that such 
 should be the case, and let me know what thou hast to say 
 to me respecting her ? " 
 
 "' On that subject," said Turnbull, *' my words are few, 
 but mark them, sir Englishman. The Lady Augusta 
 Berkely, wandering in this country, has become a prisoner 
 of tlie noble Lord Douglas, the rightfnl inheritor of the 
 castle and lordship, and he finds himself obliged to attach to 
 the liberty of this lady the following conditions, being in all 
 respects such as good and lawful warfare entitles a knight to 
 exact. That is to say, in all honor and safety the Lady 
 Augusta shall be delivered to Sir John de Walton, or those 
 whom he shall name for the purpose of receiving her. On 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 483 
 
 the other hand, the Custle of Douglas itself, together with 
 all outposts or garrisons thereunto belonging, shall be made 
 over and surrendered by Sir John de Walton, in the same 
 situation, and containing the same provisions and artillery, 
 as are now within their walls ; and the space of a month of 
 truce shall be permitted to Sir James Douglas and Sir Johr* 
 de Walton fartlier to regulate the terms of surrender on both 
 parts, having first piigiited their knightly word and oath 
 that in the exchange of the honorable lady for the foresaid 
 castle lies the full import of the present agreement, and that 
 every other subject of dispute shall, at the pleasure of the 
 noble knights foresaid, be honorably compounded and agreed, 
 betwixt them ; or, at their pleasure, settled knightly bj 
 single combat, according to usage, and in a fair field, before 
 any honorable person that may possess power enough to 
 preside." 
 
 It is not easy to conceive the astonishment of Sir John 
 de Walton at hearing the contents of this extraordinary 
 cartel ; he looked towards the Lady of Berkely with that as- 
 pect of despair with which a criminal may be supposed to see 
 his guardian angel prepare for departure. Through her 
 mind also similar ideas flowed, as if they contained a conces- 
 sion of what she had considered as the summit of her wishes, 
 out under conditions disgraceful to her lover, like the 
 cherub's fiery sword of yore, which was a barrier between 
 our first parents and the blessings of Paradise. 
 
 Sir John de Walton, after a moment's hesitation, broke 
 silence in these words : '•' Noble lady, you may be surprised 
 if a condition be imposed upon me, having for its object 
 your freedom, and if Sir John de Walton, already standing 
 under those obligations to you which he is proud of ac- 
 knowledging, should yet hesitate on accepting, with the 
 utmost eagerness, what must ensure your restoration to 
 freedom and independence ; but so it is, that the words now 
 spoken have thrilled in mine ear without reaching to my 
 understanding, and I must pray the Lady of Berkely for 
 pardon if I take time to reconsider them for a short space.'' 
 
 " And I," replied Turnbull, " have only power to allow 
 you half an hour for the consideration of an offer in accept- 
 ing which, methinks, you should jump shoulder-height, 
 instead of asking any time for reflection. What does this 
 cartel exact, save what your duty as a knight implicitly 
 obliges you to ? You have engaged yourself to become the 
 agent of the tyrant Edward, in holding Douglas Castle, as 
 his commander, to the prejudice of the Scottish nation and of 
 
484 WA VERLEY NO VELS 
 
 knight of Douglas Dale, '^lio never, as a community or as an 
 individual, were guilty of the least injury towards you ; you 
 are therefore prosecuting a false path, unworthy of a good 
 knight. On the other hand, the freedom and safety of your 
 lady is now proposed to be pledged to you, with a full as- 
 surance of her liberty and honor, on consideration of your 
 withdrawing from the unjust line of conduct in which"^you 
 have suffered yourself to be imprudently engaged. If you per- 
 severe in it, you place your own honor and the lady's happiness 
 in the hands of men whom 3'ou have done everything in your 
 power to render desperate, and whom, thus irritated, it is 
 most probable you may find such. 
 
 " It is not from thee at least/' said the knight, " that I 
 shall learn to estimate the manner in which Douglas will ex- 
 plain the laws of war, or De Walton receive them at his dic- 
 tating." 
 
 "I am not, then," said Turnbiill, "^received as a friendly 
 messenger ? Farewell, and think of this lady as being in 
 any hands but those which are safe, while you make up at 
 leisure your mind upon the message I have brought you. 
 Come, madam, we must be gone." 
 
 So saying, he seized upon the lady's hand, and pulled her, 
 as if to force her to withdraw. • The lady had stood motion- 
 less, and almost senseless, while these speeches were ex- 
 changed between the warriors ; but when she felt the grasp 
 of Michael Turnbull she exclaimed, like one almost beside 
 herself with fear — ••'' Help me, De Walton ! " 
 
 The knight, stung to instant rage, assaulted the forester 
 mith the utmost fury, and dealt him with his long sword, 
 almost at unawares, two or three heavy blows, by which he 
 was so wounded that he sunk backwards in the thicket, and 
 De Walton was about to despatch him when he was prevented 
 by the anxious cry of the lady — " Alas ! De Walton, what 
 have you done ? This man was only an ambassador, and 
 should have passed free from injury, while he confined him- 
 self to the delivery of what he was charged with ;and if thou 
 hast slain him, who knows how frightful may prove the ven- 
 geance exacted ! " 
 
 The voice of the lady seemed to recover the huntsman from 
 the effects of the blows he had received : he sprung on his 
 feet, saying, " Xever mind me, nor think of my becoming 
 the means of making mischief. The knight, in his haste, 
 spoke without giving me warning and defiance, which gave 
 him an advantage wliich, I think, he would otherwise have 
 Bcomed to have taken in such a case. I will renew the com- 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 485 
 
 bat on fairer terms, or call another champion, as the knight 
 pleases." With these words he disappeared. 
 
 " Fear not, empress of De Walton's thoughts," answered 
 the knight, "but believe that, if we regain together the 
 shelter of Douglas Castle and the safeguard of St-George^s 
 cross, thou mayst laugh at all. And if you can but pardon, 
 what I shall never be able to forgive myself, the mole-like 
 blindness which did not recognize the sun while under a 
 temporary eclipse, the task cannot be named too hard for 
 mortal valor to achieve which I shall not willingly under- 
 take to wipe out the memory of my grievous fault." 
 
 " Mention it no more," said the lady ; it is not at such a 
 time as this, when our lives are for the moment at stake, 
 that quarrels upon slighter topics are to be recurred to. I 
 can tell you, if you do not yet know, that the Scots are in 
 arms in this vicinity, and that even the earth has yawned to 
 conceal them from the sight of your garrison." 
 
 " Let it yawn, then," said Sir John de Walton, " and suf- 
 fer every fiend in the infernal abyss to escape from his prison- 
 house and reinforce our enemies ; still, fairest, having 
 received in thee a pearl of matchless price, my spurs shall 
 be hacked from my heels by the basest scullion if I turn my 
 horse's head to the rear before the utmost force these ruffians 
 can assemble, either upon earth or from underneath it. In 
 thy name I defy them all to instant combat." 
 
 As Sir John de Walton pronounced these last words in 
 something of an exalted tone, a tall cavalier, arrayed in black 
 armor of the simplest form, stepped forth from that part of 
 the thicket where Turnbull had disappeared. " I am," he 
 said, " James of Douglas, and your challenge is accepted. 
 I, the challenged, name the arms our knightly weapons as 
 we now wear them, and our place of combat this field or din- 
 gle called the Bloody Sykes,* the time being instant, and 
 the combatants, like true knights, foregoing each advantage 
 on either side/' 
 
 " So be it, in God's name," said the English knight, who, 
 though surprised at being called upon to so sudden an en- 
 counter with so formidable a warrior as young Douglas, was 
 too proud to dream of avoiding the combat. Making a sign 
 to the lady to retire behind him, that he might not lose the 
 advantage which he had gained by setting her at liberty from 
 the forester, he drew his sword, and with a deliberate and 
 prepared attitude of offense moved slowly to the encounter. 
 It was a dreadful one, for the courage ^jxd skill both of the 
 *See Note 10, 
 
486 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 native Lord of Douglas Dale and of De Walton were among 
 the most renowned of the times, and perhaps the world of 
 chivalry could hardly have produced two knights more 
 famous. Their blows fell as if urged by some migiity engine, 
 where they were met and parried with equal strength and 
 dexterity ; nor seemed it likely, in the course of ten minutes' 
 encounter, that an advantage would be gained by either 
 combatant over the other. An instant they stopped by 
 mutually implied assent, as it seemed, for the purpose of 
 taking breath, during which Douglas said, "I beg that this 
 noble lady may understand that her own freedom is no way 
 concerned in the present contest, which entirely regards the 
 injustice done by this Sir John de Walton, and by his nation 
 of England, to the memory of my father, and to my own 
 natural rights." 
 
 *' You are generous, sir knight," replied the lady ; " but 
 in what circumstances do you place me, if you deprive me 
 of my protector by death or captivity, and leave me alone in 
 a foreign land ? " 
 
 " If such should be the event of the combat," replied Sir 
 James, " the Douglas himself, lady, will safely restore thee 
 to thy native land"; for never did his sword do an injury for 
 which he was not willing to make amends with the same 
 weapon : and if Sir John de Walton will make the slightest 
 admission that he renounces maintaining the present strife, 
 were it only by yielding up a feather from the plume of his 
 helmet, Douglas will renounce every purpose on his part 
 which can touch the lady's honor or safety, and the combat 
 may be suspended until the national quarrel again brings us 
 together." 
 
 Sir John de Walton pondered a moment, and the lady, 
 although she did not speak, looked at him with eyes which 
 plainlv expressed how much she wished that he would choose 
 the less hazardous alternative. But the knight's own scruples 
 prevented his bringing the case to so favorable an arbitra- 
 ment. 
 
 " Xever shall it be said of Sir John de Walton," he re- 
 plied, "that he compromised, in the slightest decree, his 
 own honor or that of his country. This battle may end in 
 my defeat, or rather death, and in that case my earthly 
 prospects are closed, and I resign to Douglas, with my last 
 breath, the charge of the Lady Augusta, trusting that he 
 will defend her with his life, and find the means of replacing 
 her with safety in the halls of her father. But while I 
 survive she may have abetter, but will not need another, pro' 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 487 
 
 tector tliau he who is honored by being her own choice ; nor 
 will I yield np, were it a plnme from my helmet, implying 
 that I have maintained an nnjust quarrel, either in the 
 cause of England or of the fairest of her daughters. Thus 
 far alone I will concede to Douglas — an instant truce, pro- 
 vided the lady shall not be interrupted in her retreat to 
 England, and the combat be fought out upon another day. 
 The castle and territory of Douglas is the property of 
 Edward of England, the governor in his name is the rightful 
 governor, and on this point I will fight while my eyelids are 
 unclosed." 
 
 " Time flies," said Douglas, " without waiting for our re- 
 solves ; nor is there any part of his motions of such value a? 
 that which is passing with every breath of vital air which we 
 presently draw. Why should we adjourn till to-morrow 
 that which can be as well finished to-day ? Will our swords 
 be sharper or our arms stronger to wield them than they 
 are at this moment ? Douglas will do all which knight can 
 do to succor a lady in distress ; but he will not grant to 
 her knight the slighest mark of deference, which Sir John 
 de Walton vainly supposes himself able to extort by force of 
 arms." 
 
 With these words, the knights engaged once more in mor- 
 tal combat, and the lady felt uncertain whether she should 
 attempt her escape through the devious paths of the wood 
 or abide the issue of this obstinate fight. It was rather her 
 desire to see the fate of Sir John de Walton than any other 
 consideration which induced her to remain, as if fascinated, 
 upon the spot, where one of the fiercest quarrels ever fought 
 was disputed by two of the bravest champions that ever drew 
 sword. At last the lady attempted to put a stop to the com- 
 bat by appealing to the bells which began to ring for the 
 service of the day, which was Palm Sunday. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," she said, "for your own sakes, and 
 for that of lady's love, and the duties of chivalry, hold your 
 hands only for an hour, and take chances that, where 
 strength is so equal, means will be found of converting the 
 truce into a solid peace. Think, this is Palm Sunday, and 
 will you defile with blood such a peculiar festival of Chris- 
 tianity ? Intermit your feud at least so far as to pass to the 
 nearest church, bearing with you branches, not in the 
 ostentatious mode of earthly conquerors, but as rendering due 
 homage to the rules of the blessed church and the institutions 
 of our holy religion." 
 
 " I was on my road, fair lady, for that purpose, to the 
 
488 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 holy church of Douglas/' said the Englishman, ''when I 
 was so fortunate as to meet you at this place , nor do I 
 object to proceed thither even now, holding truce for an 
 hour, and I fear not to find there friends to whom I can 
 commit you with assurance of safety, in case I am unfor- 
 tunate in the combat which is now broken off, to be resumed 
 after the service of the day/* 
 
 ''I also assent," said the Douglas, "to a truce for such 
 short space ; nor do I fear that there may be good Christians 
 enough at the church who will not see their master over- 
 powered by odds. Let us go thither, and each take the 
 chance of what Heaven shall please to send us." 
 
 From these words, Sir John de Walton little doubted that 
 Douglas had assured himself of a party among those wlio 
 should there assemble ; but he doubted not of so many ol 
 the garrison being present as would bridle every attempt eit 
 rising ; and the risk, he thought, was worth incurring, since 
 he should thereby secure an opportunity to place Lady 
 Augusta de Berkely in safety, at least so far as to make her 
 liberty depend on the event of a general conflict, instead 
 of the precarious issue of a combat between himself and 
 Douglas. 
 
 Both these distinguished knights were inwardly of opinion 
 that the proposal of the lady, though it relieved them from 
 their present conflict, by no means bound them to abstain 
 from the consequences which an accession of force might add 
 to their general strength, and each relied upon his superior- 
 ity, in some degree provided for by their previous proceed- 
 ings. Sir John de Walton made almost certain of meeting 
 with several of his bands of soldiers, who were scouring the 
 country and traversing the woods by his direction ; and 
 Douglas, it may be supposed, had not ventured himself in 
 person wdiere a price was set upon his head without being 
 attended by a sufficient number of approved adherents, 
 placed in more or less connection with each other, and 
 stationed for mutual support. Each, therefore, entertained 
 well-grounded hopes that, by adopting the truce proposed, 
 he would ensure himself an advantage over his antagonist, 
 although neither exactly knew in what manner or to what 
 extent this success was to be obtained. 
 
CHAPTER XVm 
 
 Eis talk was of another world— his bodements 
 
 Strange, dovibtful, and mysterious ; those who heard him 
 
 Listen'd as to a man in feverish dreams, 
 
 Who speaks of other objects than the present, 
 
 And mutters like to him who sees a vision. 
 
 Old Play. 
 
 On the same Palm Sunday when De Walton and Douglas 
 measured together their mighty swords, the minstrel Ber- 
 tram was busied with the ancient book of prophecies, which 
 we have already mentioned as the supposed composition of 
 Thomas the Rhymer, but not without many anxieties as to 
 the fate of his lady, and the events which were passing around 
 him. As a minstrel, he was desirous of an auditor to enter 
 into the discoveries which he should make in that mystic 
 volume, as well as to assist in passing away the time ; Sir 
 John de Walton had furnished him, in Gilbert Greenleaf the 
 archer, with one who was well contented to play the listener 
 " from morn to dewy eve," provided a flask of Gascon wine, 
 or a stoup of good English ale, remained on the board. It 
 may be remembered that De Walton, when he dismissed the 
 minstrel from the dungeon, was sensible that he owed him 
 some compensation for the causeless suspicion which had 
 dictated his imprisonment, more particularly as he was a 
 valued servant, and had shown himself the faithful confidant 
 of the Lady Augusta de Berkely, and the person who was 
 moreover likely to know all the motives and circumstances 
 of her Scottish journey. To secure his good wishes was, 
 therefore, politic ; and De Walton had intimated to his 
 faithful archer that he was to lay aside all suspicion of 
 Bertram, but at the same time keep him in sight, and, if 
 possible, in good humor with the governor of the castle and 
 his adherents. Greenleaf, accordingly, had no doubt in his 
 own mind that the only way to please a minstrel was to listen 
 with patience and commendation to the lays which he liked 
 best to sing, or the tales which he most loved to tell ; and 
 in order to insure the execution of his master's commands, he 
 judged it necessary to demand of the butler such store of good 
 liquor as could not fail to enhance the pleasure of his society. 
 489 
 
490 WA VERLEY NO VEL S 
 
 Having thus fortified himself with the means of bearing 
 a long interview with the minstrel, Gilbert Greenleaf pro- 
 posed to confer upon him the bounty of an early breakfast, 
 which, if it pleased him, they might wash down with a cup 
 of sack, and, having his master's commands to show the 
 minstrel anything about the castle whicb he might wish to 
 see, refresh their overwearied spirits by attending a part of 
 the garrison of Douglas to the service of the day, which, as 
 we have already seen, was of peculiar sanctity. Against 
 such a proposal the minstrel, a good Christian by profession, 
 and, by his connection with the joyous science, a good fellow, 
 having no objections to offer, the two comrades, who had 
 formerly little good-will towards each other, commenced 
 their morning's repast on that fated Palm Sunday with all 
 manner of cordiality and good fellowship. 
 
 '' Do not believe, worthy miiistrel," said the archer, 
 " that my master in any respect disparages your worth or 
 rank in referring you for company or conversation to so 
 poor a man as myself. It is true, I am no officer of this 
 garrison ; yet for an old archer, who for these thirty years 
 has lived by bow and bowstring, I do not — Our Lady make 
 me thankful ! — hold less share in the grace of Sir John de 
 Walton, the Earl of Pembroke, and other approved good 
 soldiers, than many of those giddy young men on whom 
 commissions are conferred, and to whom confidences are 
 entrusted, not on account of what they have done, but what 
 their ancestors have done before them. I pray you to notice 
 among them one youth placed at our head in De Walton's 
 absence, and who bears the honored name of Aymer de 
 Valence, being the same with that of the Earl of Pembroke, 
 of whom I have spoken ; this knight has also a brisk young 
 page, whom men call Fabian Ilarbothel." 
 
 "Is it to these gentlemen that your censure applies?" 
 answered the minstrel. ''^I should have judged differently, 
 having never, in the course of my experience, seen a young 
 man more courteous and amiable than the young knight you 
 named." 
 
 "I nothing dispute that it may be so," said the archer, 
 hastening to amend the false step which he had made ; " but 
 in order that it should be so, it will be necessary that he 
 conform to the usages of his uncle, taking the advice of ex- 
 perienced old soldiers in the emergencies which may present 
 themselves ; and not believing that the knowledge which it 
 takes many years of observation to acquire can be at once con- 
 ferred by the slap of the flat of a sword, and the magic 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 491 
 
 words, " Rise up. Sir Arthur," or however the case may 
 be." 
 
 "Doubt not, sir archer," replied Bertram, **that I am 
 fullj aware of the advantage to be derived from conversing 
 with men of experience like you : it benefiteth men of every 
 persuasion, and I myself am oft reduced to lament my want 
 of sufficient knowledge of armorial bearings, signs, and 
 cognizances, and would right fain have thy assistance, where 
 I am a stranger alike to the names of places, and persons and 
 description of banners and emblems by which great families 
 are distinguished from eacli other, so absolutely necessary to 
 the accomplishment of my present task." 
 
 "Pennons and banners," answered the archer, "I have 
 seen right many, and can assign, as is a soldier's wont, the 
 name of the leader to the emblem under which he musters 
 his followers ; nevertheless, worthy minstrel, I cannot pre- 
 sume to understand what you call prophecies, with or under 
 warranted authority of old painted books, expositions of 
 dreams, oracles, revelations, invocations of damned spirits, 
 Judicials, astrologicals, and other gross and palpable offenses, 
 whereby men, pretending to have the assistance of the Devil, 
 do impose upon the common people, in spite of the warnings 
 of the privy council ; not, however, that I suspect you, 
 worthy minstrel, of busying yourself with tliese attempts to 
 explain futurity, which are dangerous attempts, and may be 
 truly said to be penal, and part of tx-eason." 
 
 " There is something in what you say," replied the 
 minstrel ; " yet it applieth not to books and manuscripts 
 such as I have been consulting ; part of which things, therein 
 written, having already come to pass authorize us surely to 
 expect the completion of the rest ; nor would I have much 
 difficulty in showing you from this volume that enough 
 has been already proved true to entitle us to look with cer- 
 tainty to the accomplishment of that which remains." 
 
 " I should be glad to hear that," answered the archer, who 
 entertained little more than a soldier's belief respecting proph- 
 ecies and auguries, but yet cared not bluntly to contradict 
 the minstrel upon such subjects, as he had been instructed 
 by Sir John de Walton to comply with his humor. 
 
 Accordingly the minstrel began to recite verses which, in 
 our time, the ablest interpreter could not make sense out of, 
 
 " When the cock crows, keep well his comb. 
 For the fox and the fvilmai't they are false both. 
 When the raven and the rook have rounded together, 
 And the kid in his cliff shall accord to the same. 
 
492 WAVERLEV NOVELS 
 
 Then shall they be bold, and soon to battle thereafter. 
 
 Then the birds of the raven rugs and reives. 
 
 And the leal men of Lothian are louping on their horse ; 
 
 Then shall the poor people be spoiled full near, 
 
 And the abbeys be bunit truly that stand upon Tweed ; 
 
 They shall burn and slay, and great reif make ; 
 
 There shall no poor man who say whose man he is : 
 
 Then shall the land be lawless, for love there is none. 
 
 Then falset shall have foot fully five years ; 
 
 Then truth surely shall be tint, and none shall lippen to other ; 
 
 The one cousin g shall not ti-ust the other, 
 
 Not the son the father, nor the father the son : 
 
 For to have his goods he would have him hanged." 
 
 The archer listened to these mystic prognostications, 
 which were not the less wearisome that they were, in a con- 
 siderable degree, unintelligible : at the same time subduing 
 his Hotspur-like disposition to tire of the recitation, yet at 
 brief intervals comforting himself with an application to 
 the wine flagon, and enduring as he might what he neither 
 understood nor took interest in. Meanwhile the minstrel 
 proceeded with his explanation of the dubious and imper- 
 fect vaticinations of which we have given a sufficient speci- 
 men. 
 
 " Could you wish," said he to Greenleaf, "a more exact 
 description of the miseries Avhich have passed over Scotland 
 in these latter days ? Have not these the raven and rook, 
 the fox and the fulmart, explained ; either because the na- 
 ture of the birds or beasts bear an individual resemblance 
 to those of the knights who display them on their banners, 
 or otherwise are bodied forth by actual blazonry on their 
 shields, and come openly into the field to ravage and de- 
 stroy ? Is not the total disunion of the land plainly in- 
 dicated by these words, that connections of blood shall be 
 broken asunder, that kinsmen shall not trust each other, 
 and that the father and son, instead of putting faith in their 
 natural connection, shall seek each other's life, in order to 
 enjoy his inheritance ? The leal men of Lothian are dis- 
 tinctly mentioned as taking arms, and there is plainly allu- 
 sion to the other events of these late Scottish troubles. The 
 death of this last William is obscurely intimated under the 
 type of a hound, which was that good lord's occasional cog- 
 nizance. 
 
 The hound that was harmed then muzzled shall be, 
 Who loved him worst shall weep for his wreck ; 
 Yet shall a whelp rise of the same race, 
 Thati rudely shall roar, and rule the whole north, 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 493 
 
 And quit the whole quarrel of old deeds done. 
 Though he from his hold be kept back a while. 
 True Tliomas told me tliis in a troublesome time, 
 In a harvest morning at Eldoun Hills. 
 
 This hath a meaning, sir archer," continued the minstrel, 
 " and which flies as directly to its mark as one of your own 
 arrows, althougli there may be some want of wisdom in 
 making the direct explication. Being, however, upon as- 
 surance with you, I do not hesitate to tell you that in my 
 opinion this lion's whelp that waits its time means this same 
 celebrated Scottish prince, Robert the Bruce, who, though 
 repeatedly defeated, has still, while hunted with blood- 
 hounds and surrounded by enemies of every sort, main- 
 tained his pretensions to the crown of Scotland in despite of 
 King Edward, now reigning," 
 
 " Minstrel," answered the soldier, " you are my gaest, 
 and we have sat down together as friends to thif simple 
 meal in good comradeship. I must tell thee, however, 
 thougii I am loth to disturb our harmony, that thou art the 
 first who hast adventured to speak a word before Gilbert 
 Greenleaf in favor of that outlawed traitor, Robert Bruce, 
 who has by his seditions so long disturbed the peace of this 
 realm. Take my advice, and be silent on this topic ; for, 
 believe me, the sword of a true English archer will spring 
 from its scabbard without consent of its master should it 
 hear aught said to the disparagement of bonny St. George 
 and his ruddy cross ; nor shall the autliority of Thomas the 
 Rhymer, or any other prophet in Scotland, England, or 
 AYales, be considered as an apology for such unbecoming 
 predictions." 
 
 " I were loth to give offense at any time," said the min- 
 strel, ''much more to provoke you to anger, when I am in 
 the very act of experiencing your hospitality. I trust, how- 
 ever, you will remember that I do not come your uninvited 
 guest, and that, if I speak to you of future events, I do so 
 without having the least intention to add my. endeavor to 
 bring them to pass ; for, God knows, it is many years since 
 my sincere prayer has been for peace and happiness to all 
 men, and particularly honor and happiness to the land of 
 bowmen, in which I was born, and which I am bound to re- 
 member in my prayers beyond all other nations in the 
 world." 
 
 "It is well that you do so," said the archer ; " for so you 
 shall best maintain your bounden duty to the fair land of 
 your birth, which is the richest that the sun shines upon. 
 
494 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Something, however, I would know, if it suits with your 
 pleasure to tell me, and tliat is, whether you find anything 
 in these rude rhymes appearing to affect the safety of the 
 Castle of Douglas, where we now are ? for, mark me, sir 
 minstrel, I have observed that tliese mouldering parcli- 
 ments, when or by whomsoever composed, have so far a cer- 
 tain coincidence with the truth, that when such predictions 
 which they contain are spread abroad in the country, and 
 create rumors of plots, conspiracies, and bloody wars, they 
 are very apt to cause the very mischances which they would 
 be thought only to predict." 
 
 " It were not very cautious in me," said the minstrel, " to 
 choose a prophecy for my theme which had reference to any 
 attack on this garrison ; for in such case I should, accord- 
 ing to your ideas, lay myself under suspicion of endeavoring 
 to forward what no person could more heartily regret than 
 myself," 
 
 " Take my word for it, good friend," said the archer, 
 " that it shall not be thus with thee ; for I neither will my- 
 self conceive ill of thee nor report thee to Sir John de Wal- 
 ton as meditating harm against him or his garrison ; nor, to 
 speak truth, would Sir John de Walton be willing to believe 
 any one who did. He thinks highly, and no doubt deservedly, 
 of thy good faith towards thy lady, and would conceive it 
 unjust to suspect the fidelity of one who had given evidence 
 of his Vv'illingnsss to meet death rather than betray the least 
 secret of his mistress." 
 
 " In preserving her secret," said Bertram, " I only dis- 
 charged the duty of a faithful servant, leaving it to her to 
 judge how long such a secret ought to be preserved ; for a 
 faithful servant ought to think as little of the issue towards 
 himself of the commission which he bears as the band of 
 flock-silk concerns itself with the secret of the letter which 
 it secures. And touching your question, I have no objec- 
 tions, although merely to satisfy your curiosity, to unfold to 
 you that these old prophecies do contain some intimations 
 of wars befalling in Douglas Dale between an haggard, or 
 wild hawk, which I take to be the cognizance of Sir John de 
 Walton, and the three stars, or marlets, which is the cog- 
 nizance of the Douglas ; and more particulars I could tell 
 of these onslaughts, did I know whereabouts is a place in 
 these woods termed Bloody Sykes, the scene also, as I com- 
 prehend, of slaughter and death between the followers of the 
 three stars and those who hold the part of the Saxon, or King 
 of England." 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 495 
 
 "Such a place," replied Gilbert Greenleaf, "I have heard 
 often mentioned by that name among the natives of these 
 parts ; nevertheless, it is in vain to seek to discover the pre- 
 cise spot, as these wily Scots conceal from us with care every- 
 thing respecting the geography of their country, as it is called 
 by learned men ; but we may here mention tlie Bloody Sykes, 
 Bottomless Myre, and other jDlaces as portentous names, to 
 which their traditions attach some signification of war and 
 slaughter. If it suits your wish, however, we can, on our 
 way to the church, try to find this place called Bloody 
 Sykes, which I doubt not we shall trace out long before the 
 traitors who meditate an attack upon us will find a power 
 sufficient for the attempt." 
 
 Accordingly, the minstrel and archer, the latter of whom 
 was by this time resonably Avell refreshed with wine, marched 
 out of the Castle of Douglas, without waiting for others of 
 the garrison, resolving to seek the dingle bearing the om- 
 inous name of Bloody Sykes, concerning which the archer 
 only knew that by mere accident he had heard of a place 
 bearing such a name, at the hunting-match made under the 
 auspices of Sir John de Walton, and knew that it lay in the 
 woods somewhere near the town of Douglas, and in the 
 yicinage of the castle. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Hotspur. I cannot choose ; sometimes he angers me 
 With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant, 
 Of the dreamer Merlin, and his prophecies, 
 And of a dragon and a finless fish, 
 A clipt-wing'd griffin and a moulten raven, 
 A couching lion, and a ramping cat, 
 And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff 
 As puts me from my faith. 
 
 King Henry TV. 
 
 The conversation between the minstrel and the ancient 
 archer naturally pursued a train somewhat resembling that 
 of Hotspur and Glendower, in which Gilbert Greenleaf by 
 degrees took a larger share than was apparently consistent 
 with his habits and education ; but the truth was that, as he 
 exerted himself to recall the recognizances of military chief- 
 tains, their war-cries, emblems, and other types by which they 
 distinguished themselves in battle, and might undoubtedly 
 be indicated in prophetic rhymes, he began to experience 
 the pleasure which most men entertain when they find them- 
 selves unexpectedly jDossessed of a faculty which the moment 
 calls upon them to employ, and renders them important in 
 the possession of. The minstrel's sound good sense was cer- 
 tainly somewhat surprised at the inconsistencies sometimes 
 displayed by his companion, as he was carried off by the 
 willingness to make show of his newly-discovered faculty on 
 the one hand, and, on the other, to call to mind the prejudices 
 which he had nourished during his whole life against min- 
 strels, who with the whole train of legends and fables, were 
 the more likely to be false, as being generally derived from 
 the "North Countrie." 
 
 As they strolled from one glade of the forest to another, 
 the minstrel began to be surprised at the number of Scottish 
 votaries whom they met, and who seemed to be hastening to 
 the church, and, as it appeared by the boughs which they 
 carried, to assist in the ceremony of the day. To each of 
 these the archer put a question respecting the existence of 
 a place called Bloody Sykes, and where it was to be found ; 
 but all seemed either tobe ignorant on the subject or desirous 
 '" 496 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 497 
 
 of evading it, for which they found some pretext in thejoily 
 archer's manner of interrogation, which savored a good deal 
 of the genial breakfast. The general answer was, that they 
 knew no such place, or had other matters to attend to upon 
 the morn of a holy-tide than answering frivolous questions. 
 At last, when, in one or two instances, the answer of the 
 Scottish almost approached to sullenness, the minstrel re- 
 marked it, observing, that there was ever some mischief on 
 foot when the people of this country could not find a civil 
 answer to their betters, which is usually so ready among them, 
 and that they appeared to be making a strong muster for the 
 service of Palm Sunday. 
 
 " You will doubtless, sir archer," continued the minstrel, 
 " make your report to your knight accordingly ; for I promise 
 you that, if you do not, I myself, whose lady's freedom is 
 also concerned, will feel it my duty to place before Sir John 
 de Walton the circumstances which make me ente.-tain sus- 
 picion of this extraordinary confluence of Scottish men, and 
 the surliness which has replaced their wonted courtesy of 
 manners," 
 
 " Tush, sir minstrel," replied the archer, displeased at 
 Bertram's interference, " believe me, that armies have ere 
 now depended on my report to the general, which has always 
 been perspicuous and clear, according to the duties of war. 
 Your walk, my worthy friend, has been in a separate depart- 
 ment, such as affairs of peace, old songs, prophecies, and the 
 like, in which it is far from my thoughts to contend with 
 you ; but credit me, it will be most for the reputation of both 
 that we do not attempt to interfere with what concerns each 
 other." 
 
 " It is far from my wish to do so," replied the minstrel ; 
 " but I would wish that a speedy return should be made to 
 the castle, in order to ask Sir John de Walton's opinion of 
 that which we have but just seen." 
 
 "To this," replied Greenleaf, " there can be no objection ; 
 but, would you seek the governor at the hour which now is, 
 you will find him most readily by going to the church of 
 Douglas, to which he regularly wends on occasions such as 
 the present, with the principal part of his officers, to ensure 
 by his presence that no tumult arise — of which there is no 
 little dread — between the English and the Scottish, Let us 
 therefore hold to our original intention of attending the ser- 
 vice of the day, and we shall rid ourselves of these entangled 
 woods, and gain the shortest road to the church of Douglas," 
 
 " Let us go then with all despatch," said the minstrel j 
 32 
 
498 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 " and with tlie greater haste, that it appears to me that 
 something has passed on this very spot tliis morning which 
 argues that the Christian peace due to the day has not been 
 inviohibly observed. What mean these drops of blood ? " 
 alluding to those which had flowed from the wounds of Turn- 
 bull. Wherefore is the earth impressed with these deep 
 dints, the footsteps of armed men advancing and retreating, 
 doubtless, according to the chances of a fierce and heady 
 conflict ? " 
 
 " By Our Lady," returned Greenleaf, "I must own that 
 thou seest clear. What were my eyes made of when they 
 permitted thee to be the first discoverer of these signs of 
 conflict ? Here are feathers of a blue plume, which I ought 
 to remember, seeing my knight assumed it, or at least per- 
 mitted me to place it in his helmet, this morning, in sign of 
 returning hope, from the liveliness of its color. But here it 
 lies, shorn from his head, and, if I may guess, by no friendly 
 hand. Come, friend, to the church — to the church, and thou 
 shalt have my example of the manner in which De Walton 
 ought to be supported Avhen in danger." 
 
 He led the way through the town of Douglas, entering at 
 the southern gate, and up the very street in which Sir Aymer 
 de Valence had charged the Phantom Knight. 
 
 We can now say more fully that the church of Douglas 
 had originally been a stately Gothic building, whose towers, 
 arising high above the walls of the town, bore witness to the 
 grandeur of its original construction. It w^as now partly 
 ruinous, and the small portion of open space which was re- 
 tained for public worship was fitted up in the family aisle, 
 where its deceased lords rested from worldly labors and the 
 strife of war. From the open ground in the front of the 
 building their eyes could pursue a considerable part of the 
 course of the river Douglas, vv^hich approached the town from 
 the southwest, bordered by a line of hills fantastically diversi- 
 fied in their appearance, and in many places covered with copse- 
 wood, which descended towards the valley, and formed a part 
 of the tangled and intricate woodland by which the town was 
 surrounded. The river itself, sweeping round the west side 
 of the town, and from thence northward, supplied that large 
 inundation or artificial piece of water which we have already 
 mentioned. Several of the Scottish people, bearing willow 
 branches, or those of yew, to represent the palms wliicli 
 were the symbol of the day, seemed wandering in the church- 
 yard as if to attend the approach of some person of peculiar 
 / sanctity, or procession of monks and friars, come to render 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 499 
 
 the homage dne to tlie solemnity. At the moment almost 
 that Bertram and his companion entered the churchj^ard, 
 the Lady of Berkely, who was in the act of following Sir 
 John de" Walton into the church, after having witnessed his 
 conflict with the young knight of Douglas, caught a glimpse 
 of her faithful minstrel, and instantly determined to regain 
 the company of that old servant of her house and conhdant 
 of her fortunes, and trust to the chance afterwards of being 
 rejoined by Sir John de Walton, with a sufficient party to 
 provide for her safety, which she in no respect doubted it 
 would be his care to collect. She darted away accordingly 
 from the path in which she was advancing, and reached the 
 place where Bertram, with his new acquaintance Greenleaf, 
 were making some inquiries of the soldiers of the English 
 garrison, whom the service of the day had brought there. 
 
 Lady Augusta Berkely, in the mean time, had an oppor- 
 tunity to say privately to her faithful attendant and guide, 
 "Take no notice of me, friend Bertram, but take heed, if 
 possible, that we be not again separated from each other." 
 Having given him this hint, she observed that it was adopted 
 by the minstrel, and that he presently afterwards looked 
 round and set his eyes upon her, as, muffled in her pilgrim's 
 cloak, she slowly withdrew to another part of the cemetery, 
 and seemed to halt until, detaching himself from Greenleaf, 
 he should find an opportunity of joining her. 
 
 Nothing, in truth, could have more sensibly affected the 
 faithful minstrel than the singular mode of communication 
 which acquainted him that his mistress was safe, and at 
 liberty to choose her own motions, and, as he might hope,, 
 disposed to extricate herself from the dangers which sur- 
 rounded her in Scotland, by an immediate retreat to her own 
 country and domain. He would gladly have approached 
 and joined her, but she took an opporUinity by a sign to 
 caution him against doing so, while at the same time he re- 
 mained somewhat apprehensive of the consequences of 
 bringing her under the notice of his new friend, Greenleaf, 
 who might perhaps think it proper to busy himself so as to 
 gain some favor with the knight who was at the head of the 
 garrison. Mean time the old archer continued his conversa- 
 tion with Bertram, while the minstrel, like many other men 
 similarly situated, heartily wished that his well-meaning 
 companion had been a hundi'ed fathoms under ground, so 
 his evanishment h.ad given him license to join his mistress ; 
 hut all he had in his power was to approach her as near as 
 he could without creating any suspicion. 
 
500 WA VEBLEY NOVELS 
 
 " I would pray you, worthy minstrel,'' said Greenleaf, aftei 
 looking carefully round, " that we may prosecute together 
 the theme which we were agitating before we came hither : 
 is it not your opinion that the Scottish natives have fixed this 
 very morning for some of those dangerous attempts which 
 they have repeatedly made,and which are so carefully guarded 
 against by the governors placed in this district of Douglas by 
 our good King Edward, our riglitful sovereign ? " 
 
 " I cannot see," replied the minstrel, "on what grounds 
 you found such an apprehension, or what you see here in the 
 the churchyard different from that you talked of as we ap- 
 proached it, when you held me rather in scorn for giving 
 way to some suspicions of the same kind." 
 
 "Do you not see," added the arclier, *'the numbers of 
 men with strange faces, and in various disguisements, who 
 are thronging about these ancient ruins, which are usually 
 BO solitary ? Yonder, for example, sits a boy, who seems to 
 shun observation, and whose dress, I will be sworn, has never 
 been shaped in Scotland." 
 
 " And if 1ie is an English pilgrim," replied the minstrel, 
 observing that the archer pointed towards the Lady of 
 Berkely, " he surely affords less matter of suspicion." 
 
 "I know not that," said old Greenleaf, "but I think it 
 will be my duty to inform Sir John de AValton, if I can reach 
 him, that"^ there are many persons here who in outward ap- 
 pearance neither belong to the garrison nor to this part of 
 the country." 
 
 " Consider," said Bertram, " before you harass with ac- 
 cusation a poor young, man, and subject him to the conse- 
 quences which must necessarily attend upon suspicions of 
 this nature, how many circumstances call forth men pecul- 
 iarly to devotion at this period. Not only is this the time of 
 the triumphal entrance of the Founder of the Christian re- 
 ligion into Jerusalem, but the day itself is called Dominica 
 Confitentium, or the Sunday of Confessors, and the palm- 
 tree, or the box and yew, which are used as its substitutes, 
 and which are distributed to the priests, are burnt solemnly 
 to ashes, and those ashes distributed among the pious by the 
 priests upon the Ash Wednesday of the succeeding year— all 
 which rites and ceremonies in our country are observed by 
 order of the Christian Church ; nor ought you, gentle archer, 
 nor can you without a crime, persecute those as guilty of 
 designs upon your garrison who can ascribe their presence 
 here to their desire to discharge the duties of the day ; and 
 look ye at yon numerous procession approaching with bannei 
 
CA STLE DA XGSROUS 501 
 
 and cross, and, as it apjiears. consisting of some churchman 
 of rank and his attendants ; let us first inquire who he is, 
 and it is probable we shall find in his name and rank suffi- 
 cient security for the peaceable and orderly behavior of those 
 whom piety has this day assembled at the church of Doug- 
 las." 
 
 Greenleaf accordingly made the investigation recommended 
 by his companion, and received information that the holy 
 man who headed the procession was no other than the dio- 
 cesan of the district, the Bishop of Glasgow, who had come 
 to give his countenance to the rites with which the day was 
 to be sanctified. 
 
 The prelate accordingly entered the walls of the dilapidated 
 churchyard, preceded by his cross-bearers, and attended by 
 numbers, with boughs of yew and other evergreens, used on 
 tlie festivity instead of palms. Among them the holy father 
 showered his blessing, accompanied by signs of th*^- cross, 
 which were met with devout exclamations by such of the wor- 
 shipers as crowded around him — ''To thee, reverend father, 
 we apply for pardon for our offenses, which we humbly desire 
 to confess to thee, in order that we may obtain pardon from 
 Heaven.*' 
 
 In this manner the congregation and the dignified clergy- 
 man met together, exchanging pious greetings, and seemingly 
 intent upon nothing but the rites of the day. The acclama- 
 tions of the congregation mingled with the deep voice of the 
 officiating priest, dispensing the sacred ritual, the whole form- 
 ing a scene which, conducted with the Catholic skill and 
 ceremonial, was at once imposing and aft'ecting. 
 
 The archer, on seeing the zeal with which the peoi^le in the 
 churchyard, as well as a number who issued from the church, 
 hastened proudly to salute the bishop of the diocese, was rather 
 ashamed of the" suspicions which he had entertained of the 
 sincerity of the good man's purpose in coming hither. Tak- 
 ing advantage of a fit of devotion, not perhaps very common 
 with old Greenleaf, who at this moment thrust himself forward 
 to share in those spiritual advantages which the prelate was 
 dispensing, Bertram slipped clear of his English friend, and, 
 gliding to the side of the Lady Augusta, exchanged, by the 
 pressure of the hand, a mutual congratulation upon having 
 rejoined company. On a sign by the minstrel, they withdrew 
 to' the inside of the church, so as to remain unobserved amidst 
 the crowd, in which they were favored by the dark shadows 
 of some parts of the building. 
 
 The body of the church, broken as it was, and hung round 
 
m WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 with the armorial trophies of the last Lords of Douglas, fur- 
 iiished rather the appearance of a sacrilegiously desecrated 
 ruiu than the inside of a holy place ; yet some care appeared 
 to have been taken to prepare it for the service of the day. 
 At the lower end hung the great escutcheon of William Lord 
 of Douglas,who had lately died a prisoner in England ; around 
 that escutcheon were ])laced the smaller shields of his sixteen 
 ancestors, and a deep black shadow was diffused by the whole 
 mass, unless where relieved by the glance of the coronets or 
 the glimmer of bearings particularly gay m emblazonry. I 
 need not say that in other respects the interior of the church 
 was much dismantled ; it being the very same place in which 
 Sir Aymer de Valence held an interview with the old sexton, 
 and who now, drawing into a separate corner some of the 
 straggling parties wliom he had collected and brought to the 
 church, kept on the alert, and appeared ready for an attack 
 as well at midday as at the witching hour of midnight. This 
 was the more necessary, as the eye of Sir John de Walton 
 seemed busied in searching from one place to another, as if 
 unable to find the object he was in quest of, which the reader 
 will easily understand to be the Lady Augusta de Berkely, 
 of whom he had lost sight in the pressure of the multitude. 
 At the eastern part of the church was fitted up a temporary 
 altar, by the side of Avhich, arrayed in his robes, the bishop 
 of Glasgow had taken his place, with such priests and atten- 
 dants as composed his episcopal retinue. His suite was neither 
 numerous nor richly attired, nor did his own appearance 
 present a splendid specimen of the wealth and dignity of the 
 episcopal order. When he laid down, however, his golden 
 cross, at the stern command of the King of England, that of 
 simple wood, which he assumed, instead thereof, did not 
 possess less authority nor command less awe among the clergy 
 and people of the diocese. 
 
 The various persons, natives of Scotland, now gathered 
 around seemed to watch his motions, as those of a descended 
 saint, and the English waited in mute astonishment, appre- 
 hensive that at some unexpected signal an attack would be 
 made upon them, either by the powers of earth or heaven, or 
 perhaps by both in combination. The truth is, that so great 
 was the devotion of the Scottish clergy of the higher ranks 
 to the interests of the party of Bruce, that the English had 
 become jealous of permitting them to interfere even with 
 those ceremonies of the church which were placed under 
 their proper management, and thence the presence of the 
 Bishop of Glasgow, officiating at a high festival in the church 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 503 
 
 of Douglas, was a circumstance of rare occurrence, and not 
 unattended both with wonder and suspicion. A council of 
 the church, however, had lately called the distinguished pre- 
 lates of Scotland to the discharge of their duty on the fes- 
 tivity of Palm Sunday, and neither English nor Scottish saw 
 the ceremony with indifference. An unwonted silence which 
 prevailed in the church, filled, as it appeared, with persons 
 of different views, hopes, wishes, and expectations, resembled 
 one of those solemn pauses which often take place before a 
 strife of the elements, and are well understood to be the 
 forerunners of some dreadful concussion of nature. All 
 animals, according to their various nature, express their 
 sense of the approaching tempest : the cattle, the deer, and 
 other inhabitants of the walks of the forest, withdraw to the 
 inmost recesses of their pastures ; the sheep crowd into their 
 fold ; and the dull stupor of universal nature, whether ani- 
 mate or inanimate, presages its speedily awaking into general 
 convulsion and disturbance, when the lurid lightning shall 
 hiss at command of the diapason of the thunder. 
 
 It was thus that, in deep suspense, those who had come to 
 the church in arms at the summons of Douglas awaited and 
 expected every moment a signal to attack ; while the soldiers 
 of the English garrison, aware of the evil disposition of 
 the natives towards them, were reckoning every moment 
 when tlie well-known shouts of " Bows and bills \" should 
 give signal for a general conflict, and both parties, gazing 
 fiercely upon each other, seemed to expect the fatal onset. 
 
 Notwithstanding the tempest, which appeared every mo- 
 ment ready to burst, the Bishop of Glasgow proceeded with 
 the utmost solemnity to perform the ceremonies proper to 
 the day ; he paused from time to time to survey the throng, 
 as if to calculate whether the turbulent passions of those 
 around him would be so long kept under as to admit of his 
 duties being brought to a close in a manner becoming the 
 time and place. 
 
 The prelate had just concluded the service, when a person 
 advanced towards him with a solemn and mournful aspect, 
 and asked if the reverend father could devote a few moments 
 to administer comfort to a dying man who was lying wounded 
 close by. 
 
 The "churchman signified a ready acquiescence, amidst a 
 stillness which, when he surveyed the lowering brows of one 
 party at least of those who were in the church, boded no 
 peaceable termination to this fated day. The father mo- 
 tioned to the messenger to show him the way, and proceeded 
 
504 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 on his mission, attended by some of those who weie under- 
 stood to be followers of the Douglas. 
 
 There was something peculiarly striking, if not suspicious 
 in the interview which followed. In a subterranean vaull 
 was deposited the person of a large, tall mail, whose blooc 
 flowed copiously through two or three ghastly wounds, anc 
 streamed amongst the trusses of straw on which he lay ; whih 
 his features exhibited a mixture of sternness and ferocity 
 which seemed prompt to kindle into a still more savagf 
 expression. 
 
 The reader will probably conjecture that the person in 
 question was no other than Michael Turnbull, who, wounded 
 in the rencounter of the morning, had been left by some ol 
 his friends upon the straw, which was arranged for him by 
 way of couch, to live or die as he best could. The prelate 
 on entering the vault, lost no time in calling the attention 
 of the wounded man to the state of his spiritual affairs, and 
 assisting him to such comfort as the doctrine of the church 
 directed should be administered to departing sinners. The 
 words exchanged between them were of that grave and severe 
 character which jjasses between the ghostly father and his 
 pupil, when one world is rolling away from the view of the 
 sinner and another is displaying itself in all its terrors, and 
 thundering in the ear of the penitent that retribution which 
 the deeds done in the flesh must needs prepare him to ex 
 pect. This is one of the most solemn meetings which can 
 take place between earthly beings, and the courageous char- 
 acter of the Jedwood forester, as well as the benevolent and 
 pious expression of the old churchman, considerably en- 
 hanced the pathos of the scene. 
 
 " Turnbull," said the churchman, " I trust you will be 
 lieve me when I say that it grieves my heart to see thee 
 brought to this situation by wounds which, it is my duty to 
 tell you, you must consider mortal." 
 
 " Is the chase ended then ? " said the Jedwood man with a 
 sigh. " I care not, good father, for I think I have borne me 
 as becomes a gallant quarry, and that the old forest has lost 
 no credit by me, whether in pursuit or in bringing to bay ,: 
 and even in this last matter, methinks this gay English 
 knight would not have come off with such advantage had the 
 ground on which we stood been alike indifferent to both, or 
 had I been aware of his onset ; but it will be seen by any 
 one who takes the trouble to examine, that poor Michael 
 Turnbull's foot slipped twice in the melee, otherwise it had 
 not been his fate to be lying here in the dead-thraw ; while 
 
CASTLE DAKGEROVS 50j 
 
 yonder Southron would probably have died like a dog upon 
 
 this bloody straw in his place." 
 
 The bishop replied, advising his penitent to turn from vin- 
 dictive thoughts respecting the death of otliers,and endeavor 
 to fix his attention upon his own departure from existence, 
 which seemed shortly about to take place. 
 
 " Nav," replied the wounded man, " you, father, un- 
 doubtedly know best what is fit for me to do ; yet methiiiks it 
 would not be very well with me if I had prolonged to this 
 time of day the task of revising my life, and I am not the 
 man to deny that mine has been a bloody and a desperate 
 one. But you will grant me I never bore malice to a brave 
 enemy for having done me an injury, and show me the man. 
 being"^ a Scotchman born and having a natural love for his 
 own country, who hath not, in these times, rather preferred a 
 steel cap to a hat and feather, or who hath not been more 
 conversant with drawn blades than with prayer-book ; and you 
 yourself know, father, whether, in our proceedings against 
 the English interest, we have not uniformly had the counte- 
 nance of the sincere fathers of the Scottish Church, and 
 whether we have not been exhorted to take arms and mak 
 use of them for the honor of the King of Scotland and the 
 defense of our own rights." 
 
 "Undoubtedly," said the prelate, ''such have been our 
 exhortations towards our oppressed countrymen, nor do I now 
 teach you a different doctrine ; nevertheless, having now 
 blood around me, and a dying man before me, I have need to 
 pray that I have not been misled from the true i-)ath, and thus 
 become the means of misdirecting others. May Heaven for- 
 give me if I have done so, since I have only to plead my sin- 
 cere and honest intention in excuse for the erroneous counsel 
 which I may have given to you and others touching these 
 wars. I am conscious that, encouraging you so to stain your 
 swords in blood, I have departed in some degree from the 
 character of my profession, which enjoins that we neither 
 shed blood nor are the occasion of its being shed. May 
 Heaven enable us to obey our duties and to repent of our 
 errors, especially such as have occasioned the death or dis- 
 tress of our fellow-creatures ! And, above all, may this dying 
 Christian become aware of his errors, and repent with sin- 
 cerity of having done to others that which he would not will- 
 ingly have suffered at their hand \" 
 
 "For that matter," answered Turnbull, "the time has 
 never been when I would not exchange a blow with the best 
 man who ever lived ; and if I was not in constant practise of 
 
506 iVA VERLET NO VELS 
 
 the sword, it was because I liave been brought i;p to the use 
 of the Jedwood-ax, wliich the English call a partizan, and 
 which makes little difference, I understand, from the sword 
 and poniard." 
 
 "The distinction is not great," said the bishop ; "but I 
 fear, my friend, that life taken witli what you call a Jedwood- 
 ax gives you no privilege over him who commits the same 
 deed, and inflicts the same injury, with any other weapon/' 
 
 "Nay, worthy father," said the penitent, "I must own 
 that the effect of the weapons is the same as far as concerns 
 the man who suffers ; but I would pray of you information, 
 why a Jedwood man ought not to use, as is the custom of his 
 country, a Jedwood-ax, being, as is implied in the name, 
 the offensive weapon proper to his country ? " 
 
 " The crime of murder," said the bishop, '''consists not 
 in the weapon with which the crime is inflicted, but in the 
 pain which the murderer inflicts upon his fellow-creature, 
 and the breach of good order which he introduces into 
 Heaven's lovely and peaceable creation ; and it is by turning 
 your repentance upon this crime that you may fairly expect 
 to propitiate Heaven for your offenses, and at the same time 
 to escape the consequences which are denounced in Holy 
 Writ against those by whom man's blood shall be shed." 
 
 ''But, good father," said the wounded man, "you know 
 as well as any one that in this comj)any, and in this very 
 church, there are upon the watch scores of both Scotchmen 
 and Englishmen, who come here not so much to discharge 
 the religious duties of the day as literally to bereave each 
 other of their lives, and give a new example of the horror of 
 those feuds which the two extremities of Britain nourish 
 against each other. What conduct, then, is a poor man like 
 me to hold ? Am I not to raise this hand against the English, 
 which methinks I still can make a tolerable efficient one ; or 
 am I, for the first time in my life, to hear the war-cry when 
 it is raised, and hold back my sword from the slaughter ? 
 Methinks it will be difficult, perhaps altogether impossible, 
 for me to do so ; but if such is the pleasure of Heaven, and 
 your advice, most reverend father, unquestionably I must 
 do my best to be governed by your directions, as of one who 
 has a right and title to direct us in every dilemma, or case, 
 as they term it, of troubled conscience." 
 
 " Unquestionably," said the bishop, " it is my. duty, as I 
 have already said, to give no occasion this day for the shed- 
 ding of blood or the breach of peace ; and I must charge you, 
 as my penitent, that, upon your soul's safety, you do not 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 507 
 
 minister any occasion to affray or bloodshed, either by main^ 
 taining such in your own person or inciting others to the 
 Bame ; for, by following a diiferent course of advice, I am 
 certain that you, as well as myself, would act sinfully and 
 out of character/' 
 
 " So I will endeavor to think, reverend father," answered 
 the huntsman ; "nevertheless, I hope it will be remembered 
 in my favor that I am the first person bearing the surname 
 of Turnbull, together with the proper name of the Prince of 
 Archangels himself, who has at any time been able to sustain 
 the affront occasioned by the presence of a Southron with a 
 drawn sword, and was not thereby provoked to pluck forth 
 his own weapon and to lay about him," 
 
 '* Take care, my son," returned the prelate of Glasgow, 
 "and observe that even now thou art departing from those 
 resolutions which, but a few minutes since, thou didst adopt 
 upon serious and just consideration ; wherefore do not be, 
 my son ! like the sow that has wallowed in the mire, and, 
 having been washed, repeats its act of pollution, and becomes 
 again yet fouler than it was before." 
 
 " Well, reverend father," replied the wounded man, "al- 
 though it seems almost unnatural for Scottish men and 
 English to meet and part without a buffet, yet I will en- 
 deavor most faithfully not to minister any occasion of strife, 
 nor, if possible, to snatch at any such occasion as shall be 
 ministered to me." 
 
 " In doing, so," returned the bishop, " thou wilt best atone 
 for the injury which thou hast done to the law of Heaven 
 upon former occasions, and thou shalt prevent the causes for 
 strife betwixt thee and thy brethren of the southern land, 
 and shalt eschew the temptation towards the bloodguiltiness 
 which is so rife in this our day and generation. And do not 
 think that I am imposing upon thee, by these admonitions, 
 a duty more difficult than it is in thy covenant to bear, as a 
 man and as a Christian. I myself am a man, and a Scotch- 
 man, and, as such, I feel offended at the unjust conduct of 
 the English towards our country and sovereign ; and think- 
 ing as you do yourself, I know what you must suffer when 
 you are obliged to submit to national insults, unretaliated 
 and unrevenged. But let us not conceive ourselves the agents 
 of that retributive vengeance which Heaven has, in a peculiar 
 t5egree, declared to be its own attribute. Let us, while we 
 see and feel the injuries inflicted on our own country, not 
 forget that our own raids, ambuscades, and surprisals have 
 been at least equally fatal to the English as their attacks and 
 
506 WA VEKLEY NO VELS 
 
 forays have been to us ; and, in short, let the mutual injuries 
 of the crosses of St. Andrew and of St. George be no longer 
 considered as hostile to the inhabitants of the opposite dis- 
 trict, at least during the festivals of religion ; but, as they 
 are mutually signs of redemption, let them be, in like man- 
 ner, intimations of forbearance and peace on both sides/' 
 
 "I am contented," answered Turnbull, "to abstain from 
 all offenses towards others, and shall even endeavor to keep 
 myself from resenting those of others towards me, in the 
 hope of bringing to pass such a quiet and godly state of 
 things as your words, reverend father, induce me to expect." 
 Turning his face to the wall, the Borderer lay in stern ex- 
 pectation of approaching death, which the bishop left him 
 to contemplate. 
 
 The peaceful disposition which the prelate had inspired 
 into Michael Turnbull had in some degree infused itself 
 among those present, who heard with awe the spiritual ad- 
 monition to suspend the national antipathy, and remain in 
 truce and amity with each other. Heaven had, however, 
 decreed that the national quarrel, in which so much blood 
 had been sacrificed, should that day again be the occasion of 
 deadly strife. 
 
 A loud flourish of trumpets, seeming to proceed from be- 
 neath the earth, now rung through the church, and roused 
 the attention of the soldiers and worshipers then assembled. 
 Most of those who heard these warlike sounds betook them- 
 selves to their weapons, as if they considered it useless to 
 wait any longer for the signal of conflict. Hoarse voices, 
 rude exclamations, the rattle of swords against their sheaths, 
 or their clashing against other pieces of armor, gave an 
 awful presage of an onset, which, however, was for a time 
 averted by the exhortations of the bishop. A second flourish 
 of trumpets having taken place, the voice of a herald made 
 proclamation to the following purpose : — 
 
 " That whereas there were many noble pursuivants of 
 chivalry presently assembled in the kirk of Douglas, and 
 whereas there existed among them the usual causes cf 
 quarrel and points of debate for their advancement in chiv- 
 alry, therefore the Scottish knights were ready to fight any 
 number of the English who might be agreed, either upon 
 the superior beauty of their ladies, or upon the national 
 quarrel in any of its branches, or upon whatsoever point 
 might be at issue between them, which should be deemed 
 satisfactory ground of quarrel by both ; and the knights who 
 should chance to be worsted in such dispute should renounce 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS . 509 
 
 fche prosecution thereof, or the bearing arms therein there- 
 after, with such other conditions to ensue upon their defeat 
 as might be agreed upon by a council of the knights jn-eseut 
 at the kirk of Douglas aforesaid. But foremost of all, any 
 number of Scottish knights, from one to twenty, will defend 
 the quarrel which has already drawn blood, touching the 
 freedom of Lady Augusta de Berkely, and the rendition of 
 Douglas Castle to the owner here present. Wherefore it is 
 required that the English knights do intimate their consent 
 that such trial of valor take place, which, according to the 
 rules of chivalry, they cannot refuse, without losing utterly 
 the reputation of valor, and incurring the diminution of such 
 other degree of estimation as a courageous pursuivant of 
 arms would willingly be held in, both by the good knightc 
 of his own country and those of others.'* 
 
 This unexpected gage of battle realized the worst fears of 
 those who had looked with suspicion on the extraordinary 
 assemblage this day of the dependants of the house of 
 Douglas. After a short pause, the trumpets again flourished 
 lustily, when the reply of the English knights was made in 
 the following terms : — 
 
 "That God forbid the rights and privileges of England's 
 knights, and the beauty of her damsels, should not be as- 
 serted by her children, or that such English knights as were 
 here assembled should show the least backwardness to accept 
 the combat offered, whether grounded upon the superior 
 beauty of their ladies or whether upon the causes of dispute 
 between the countries, for either or all of which the knights 
 of England here present were willing to do battle in the 
 termj of the indenture aforesaid, while sword and lance 
 shall endure. Saving and excepting the surrender of the 
 Castle of Douglas, which can be rendered to no one but 
 "Dngland's king, or those acting under his orders." 
 
CHAPTEK XX 
 
 Cry the wild war-note, let the champions pass, 
 
 Do bravely each, and God defend the right : 
 
 Upon St. Andrew thrice can they thw cry, 
 
 And thrice they shout on height, 
 
 And then marked them on the Englishmen, 
 
 As I have told you right. 
 
 St. George the bright, our ladies' knight, 
 
 To name they were full fain ; 
 
 Our Englishmen they cried on height, 
 
 And thrice they shout again. 
 
 Old Ballad. 
 
 The extraordinary crisis n^entioned in the preceding chapter 
 was the cause, as may be supposed, of the leaders _ on both 
 sides now throwing aside all concealment, and displaying 
 their utmost strength, by marshaling their respective ad- 
 herents ; the renowned knight of Douglas, with Sir Mal- 
 colm Fleming and other distinguished cavaliers, were seen 
 in close consultation. 
 
 Sir John de Walton, startled by the first flourish of trum- 
 pets, while anxiously endeavoring to secure a retreat for the 
 Lady Augusta, was in a moment seen collecting his fol- 
 lowers, in which he was assisted by the active friendship of 
 the knight of Valence. 
 
 The Lady of Berkely showed no craven spirit at these 
 warlike preparations : she advanced, closely followed by the 
 faithful Bertram, and a female in a riding-hood, whose face, 
 though carefully concealed, was no other than that of 
 the unfortunate Margaret de Hautlieu, whose worse fears 
 had been realized as to the faithlessness of her betrothed 
 knight. 
 
 A pause ensued, which for some time no one present 
 thought himself of authority sufficient to break. 
 
 At'last the knight of Douglas stepped forward and said 
 loudly, "1 wait to know whether Sir John De Walton re- 
 quests leave of James of Douglas to evacuate his castle with- 
 out further wasting that daylight which might show us to 
 judge a fair field, and whether he craves Douglas's protec- 
 tion in doing so ? ** 
 
 610 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 511 
 
 The knight of Walton drew his sword, "I hold the 
 Castle of Douglas/' he said, " in spite of all deadly ; and 
 never will I ask the protection from any one which my own 
 sword is competent to afford me." 
 
 " I stand by you, Sir John," said Aymer de Valence, " as 
 your true comrade, against whatever odds may oppose them- 
 selves to us." 
 
 " Courage, noble English," said the voice of Greenleaf ; 
 " take your weapon, in Grod's name. Bows and bills — bows 
 and bills ! A messenger brings us notice that Pembroke is 
 in full march hither from the borders of Ayrshire, and will 
 be with us in half an hour. Fight on, gallant English ! 
 Valence to the rescue ! and long life to the gallant Earl of 
 Pembroke ! " 
 
 Those English within and around the church no longer 
 delayed to take arms, and De Walton, crying out at, the 
 height of his voice, "I implore the Douglas to look nearly 
 to the safety of the ladies," fought his way to the church 
 door, the Scottish finding themselves unable to resist the 
 impression of terror which affected them at the sight of this 
 renowned knight, seconded by his brother-in-arms, both of 
 whom had been so long the terror of the district. In the 
 meantime, it is possible that De Walton might altogether 
 have forced his way out of the church, had he not been met 
 boldly by the young son cTf Thomas Dickson of Hazelside, 
 while his father was receiving from Douglas the charge of 
 preserving the stranger ladies from all harm from the fight, 
 which, so long suspended, was now on the point of taking 
 place. 
 
 De Walton cast his eye upon the Lady Augusta, with a 
 desire of rushing to the rescue ; but was forced to conclude 
 that he provided best for her safety by leaving her under 
 the protection of Douglas's honor. 
 
 Young Dickson, in the meantime, heaped blow on blow, 
 seconding with all his juvenile courage every effort he could 
 make, in order to attain the prize due to the conqueror of 
 the renowned De Walton. 
 
 " Silly boy," at length said Sir John, who had for some 
 time forborne the stripling, " take, then, thy death from a 
 noble hand, since thou preferrest that to peace and length 
 of days." 
 
 " I care not," said the Scottish youth, with his dying 
 breath : " I have lived long enough, since I have kept you 
 Bo long in the place where you stand." 
 
 And the youth said truly, for, as he fell never again to rise. 
 
512 WAVER LEV NOVELS 
 
 the Douglas stood in his place, and without a word spoken, 
 again engaged with De Walton in the same formidable single 
 combat by which they had already been distinguished, but 
 with even additional fury. Aymer de Valence drew up to 
 his friend De Walton's left hand, and seemed hvit to desire 
 the apology of one of Douglas's people attempting to second 
 him to join in the fray ; but as he saw no person who seemed 
 disposed to give him such opportunity, he represed the in 
 clination, and remained an unwilling spectator. At length 
 it seemed as if Fleming, who stood foremost among the Scot- 
 tish knights, was desirous to measure his sword with De 
 Valence. Aymer himself, burning with the desire of combat, 
 at last called out, "Faithless knight of Bogliall, step forth 
 and defend yourself against the imputation of having de- 
 serted your lady-love, and of being a man sworn disgrace to 
 the rolls of chivalry ! " 
 
 " My answer," said Fleming, "even to a less gross taunt, 
 hangs by my side." In an instant his sword was in his hand, 
 andeven the practised warriors who looked on felt difficulty 
 in discovering the progress of the strife, which rather re- 
 sembled a thunderstorm in a mountainous country than tlie 
 stroke and parry of two swords, oifending on the one side 
 and keeping the defensive on the other. 
 
 Tlieir blows were exchanged with surprising rapidity ; and 
 although the two combatants did- not equal Douglas and De 
 Walton in maintaining a certain degree of reserve, founded 
 upon a respect which these knights mutually entertained for 
 each other, yet the want of art was supplied by a degree of 
 fury which gave chance at least an equal share in the issue. 
 
 Seeing their superiors thus desperately engaged, the par- 
 tizans, as they were accustomed, stood still on either side, 
 and looked on with the reverence which they instinctively 
 paid to their commanders and leaders in arms. One or two 
 of the women were in the meanwhile attracted, according to 
 the nature of the sex, by compassion for those who had al- 
 ready experienced the casualties of war. Young Dickson, 
 breathing his last among the feet of his combatants,* was in 
 Bome sort rescued from the tumult by the Lady of Berkely, 
 in whom the action seemed less strange, owing to the 
 pilgrim's dress which she still retained, and who in vain en- 
 deavored to solicit the attention of the boy's father to the 
 task in which she was engaged. 
 
 " Cumber yourself not, lady, about that which is bootless," 
 Bald old Dickson, " and distract not your own attention and 
 ♦See Death of Young Dickson. Note 11. 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 518 
 
 mine from preserving you, whom it is the Douglas's wish to 
 rescue, and whom, so please God and St. Bride, T consider 
 as placed by my chieftain under my charge. Believe me, 
 this youth's death is in no way forgotten, though this be not 
 the time to remember it. A time will come for recollection, 
 and an hour for revenge." 
 
 So said the stern old man, reverting his eyes from the* 
 bloody corpse which lay at his feet, a model of beauty and 
 strength. Having taken one more anxious look, he turned 
 round, and placed himself where he could best protect the 
 Lady of Berkely, not again turning his eyes on his son's 
 body. 
 
 In the interim the combat continued, without the least 
 cessation on either side, and without a decided advantage. 
 At length, however, fate seemed disposed to interfere : the 
 knight of Fleming, pushing fiercely forward, and brought 
 by chance almost close to the person of the Lady Margaret 
 De Hautlieu, missed his blow, and his foot sliding m the 
 blood of the young victim, Dickson, he fell before his antago- 
 nist, and was in imminent danger of being at his mercy, 
 when Margaret de Hautlieu, who inherited the soul of a war- 
 rior, and, besides, was a very strong, as well as undaunted, 
 person, seeing a mace of no great weight lying on the floor, 
 where it had been dropped by the fallen Dickson — it at the 
 same instant caught her eye, armed her hand, and inter- 
 cepted or struck down the sword of Sir Aymer de Valence, 
 who would otherwise have remained the master of the day 
 at that interesting moment. Fleming had more to do to 
 avail himself of an unexpected chance of recovery than to 
 make a commentary upon the manner in which it had been 
 so singularly brought about : he instantly recovered the ad- 
 vantage he had lost, and was able in the ensuing close to 
 trip up the feet of his antagonist, who fell on the pavement, 
 while the voice of his conqueror, if he could properly be 
 termed such, resounded through the church with the fatal 
 words, " Yield thee, Aymer de Valence — rescue or no rescue ; 
 yield thee — yield thee ! " he added, as he placed his sword to 
 the throat of the fallen knight, ''not to me, but to this 
 noble lady — rescue or no rescue." 
 
 Witli a heavy heart the English knight perceived that he 
 had fairly lost so favorable an opportunity of acquiring fame, 
 and was obliged to submit to his destiny, or be slain upon 
 the spot. There was only one consolation, that no battle 
 was ever more honorably sustained, being gained as much by 
 accident as by valor. 
 33 
 
514 WA VERLEY NO VEL A 
 
 The fate of the protracted and desperate combat between 
 Douglas and De Walton did not much longer remain in sus- 
 pense ; indeed, the number of conquests in single combat 
 achieved by the Douglas in these wars was so great as to 
 make it doubtful whether he was not, in personal strength 
 and skill, even a superior knight to Bruce himself, and he 
 was at least acknowledged nearly his equal in the art of war. 
 
 So, however, it was that, when three-quarters of an hour 
 had passed in hard contest, Douglas and De AValton, whose 
 nerves were not actually of iron, began to show some signs 
 that their human bodies were feeling the effect of the dread- 
 ful exertion. Their blows began to be drawn more slowly, 
 and were parried with less celerity. Douglas, seeing that 
 the combat must soon come to an end, generously made a 
 signal, intimating to his antagonist to hold his hand for an 
 instant. 
 
 " Brave De Walton," he said, " there is no mortal quar- 
 rel between us, and you must be sensible that in this passage 
 of arms Douglas, though he is only worth his sword and his 
 cloak, has abstained from taking a decisive advantage when 
 the chance of arms has more than once offered it. My 
 father's house, the broad domains around it, the dwelling, 
 and the graves of my ancestors, form a reasonable reward 
 for a knight to fight for, and call upon me in an imperative 
 voice to prosecute the strife which has such an object, while 
 you are as welcome to the noble lady, in all honor and safety, 
 as if you had received her from the hands of King Edward 
 himself ; and I give you my word, that the utmost honors 
 which can attend a prisoner, and a careful absence of every- 
 thing like injury or insult, shall attend De Walton when 
 he yields up the castle, as well as his sword, to James of 
 Douglas." 
 
 " It is the fate to which I am perhaps doomed," replied 
 Sir John de Walton ; " but never will I voluntarily embrace 
 it, and never shall it be said that my own tongue, saving in 
 the last extremity, pronounced upon me the fatal sentence 
 to sink the point of my own sword. Pembroke is upon the 
 march with his whole army to rescue the garrison of Douglas. 
 I hear the tramp of his horse's feet even now ; and I will 
 maintain my ground while I am within reach of support ; 
 nor do I fear that the breath which now begins to fail will 
 not last long enough to uphold the struggle till the arrival 
 of the expected succor. Come on, then, and treat me not 
 as a child, but as one who, whether I stand or fall, fears not 
 to encounter the utmost force of my knightly antagonist." 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 515 
 
 "So be it, then," said Douglas, a darksome hue, like the 
 lurid color of the thunder-cloud, changing his brow as he 
 spoke, intimating that he meditated a speedy end to the 
 contest, when, just as the noise of horses' feet drew nigh, a 
 Welsh knight, known as such by the diminutive size of his 
 steed, his naked limbs, and his bloody spear, called out 
 loudly to the combatants to hold their hands. 
 
 " Is Pembroke near ?" said De Walton. 
 
 "No nearer than Loudon Hill," said the Prestantin ; 
 ** but I bring his commands to John de Walton." 
 
 " I stand ready to obey them through every danger," an- 
 swered the knight. 
 
 "Woe is me," said the Welshman, "that my mouth should 
 bring to the ears of so brave a man tidings so unwelcome ! 
 The Earl of Pembroke yesterday received information that 
 the Castle of Douglas was attacked by the son of the deceased 
 earl and the whole inhabitants of the district. Pembroke, 
 on hearing this, resolved to march to your support, noble 
 knight, with all the forces he had at his disposal. He did 
 so, and accordingly entertained every assurance of relieving 
 the castle, when unexpectedly he met, on Loudon Hill, a 
 body of men of no very inferior force to his own, and hav- 
 ing at their head the famous Bruce whom the Scottish 
 rebels acknowledge as their king. He marched instantly to 
 the attack, swearing he would not even draw a comb through 
 his gray beard until he had rid England of this recurring 
 plague. But the fate of war was against us." 
 
 He stopped here for lack of breath. 
 
 "I thought so!" exclaimed Douglas. " Eobert Bruce 
 will now sleep at night, since he has paid home Pembroke 
 for the slaughter of his friends and the dispersion of his army 
 at Methuen Wood. His men are, indeed, accustomed to 
 meet with dangers, and to conquer them : those who follow 
 him have been trained under Wallace, besides being partakers 
 of the perils of Bruce himself. It was thought that the 
 waves had swallowed them when they shipped themselves 
 from the west ; but know that the Bruce was determined 
 with the present reviving spring to awaken his pretensions, 
 and that he retires not from Scotland again while he lives, 
 and while a single lord remains to set his foot by his sover- 
 eign, in spite of all the power which has been so feloniously 
 employed against him." 
 
 " It is even too true," said the Welshman Meredith, 
 " although it is said by a proud Scotchman. The Earl of 
 Pembroke, completely defeated, is unable to stir from Ayr, 
 
516 WAVEELEY NOVELS 
 
 towards which he has retreated with great loss ; and he 
 sends his instructions to Sir John de Walton to make the 
 best terras he can for the surrender of the Castle of Douglas, 
 and trust nothing to his support." 
 
 The Scottish, who heard this unexpected news, joined in 
 a shout so loud and energetic, that the ruins of the ancient 
 church seemed actually to rock, and threaten to fall on the 
 heads of those who were crowded within it. 
 
 The brow of De Walton was overclouded at the news of 
 Pembroke's defeat, although in some respects it placed him 
 at liberty to take measures for the safety of the Lady of 
 Berkely. He could not, however, claim the same honorable 
 terms which had been offered to him by Douglas before the 
 news of the battle of Loudon Hill had arrived. 
 
 " Noble Knight," he said, " it is entirely at your pleasure 
 to dictate the terms of surrender of your paternal castle ; 
 nor have I a right to claim from you those conditions which, 
 a little while since, your generosity put in my offer. But I 
 submit to my fate ; and upon whatever terms you think fit 
 to grant me, I must be content to offer to surrender to you 
 the weapon of which I now put the point in the earth, in 
 evidence that I will never more direct it against you until 
 a fair ransom shall place it once more at my own disposal." 
 
 " God forbid," answered the noble James of Douglas, 
 " that I should take such advantage of the bravest knight 
 out of not a few who have found me work in battle ! I will 
 take example from the knight of Fleming, who has gallantly 
 bestowed his captive in guerdon upon a noble damsel here 
 present ; and in like manner I transfer my claim upon the 
 person of the redoubted knight of Walton to the high and 
 noble Lady Augusta Berkely, who, I hope, will not scorn to 
 accept from the Douglas a gift which the chance of war has 
 thrown into his hands." 
 
 Sir John de Walton, on hearing this unexpected decision, 
 looked up like the traveler who discovers the beams of the 
 snn breaking through and dispersing the tempest which has 
 accompanied him for a whole morning. The Lady of 
 Berkely recollected what became her rank, and showed her 
 sense of the Douglas's chivalry. Hastily wiping off the tears 
 which had unwillingly flowed to her eyes, while her lover's 
 safety and her own were resting on the precarious issue of a 
 desperate combat, she assumed the look proper to a heroine 
 of that age, who did not feel averse to accept the importance 
 which was conceded to her by the general voice of the 
 chivalry of the period. Stepping forward, bearing her 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 517 
 
 person gracefully, yefc modestly, in the attitude of a lady 
 accustomed to be looked to in difficulties like the present, 
 she addressed the audience in a tone which might not have 
 misbecome the Goddess of Battle dispensing her influence at 
 the close of a field covered with the dead and the dying. 
 
 " The noble Douglas," she said, "shall not pass without 
 a prize from the field which he has so nobly won. This 
 rich string of brilliants, which my ancestor won from the 
 Sultan ot Trebizond, itself a prize of battle, will be honored 
 by sustaining, under the Douglas's armor, a lock of hair of 
 the fortunate lady whom the victorious lord has adopted for 
 his guide in chivalry ; and if the Douglas, till he shall adorn 
 it with that lock, will permit the honored lock of hair which 
 it now bears to retain its station, she on whosro head it grew 
 will hold it as a signal that poor Augusta de Berkely^ is 
 pardoned for having gaged any mortal man in strife with 
 the knight of Douglas." 
 
 " Woman's love," replied the Douglas, "shall not divorce 
 this locket from my bosom, which I will keep till the last 
 day of ray life, as emblematic of female worth and female 
 virtue. And, not to encroach upon the valued and honored 
 province of Sir John de Walton, be it known, to all men, 
 that whoever shall say that the Lady Augusta of Berkely 
 has, in this entangled matter, acted otherwise than becomes 
 the noblest of her sex, he will do well to be ready to maintain 
 such a proposition with his lance against James of Douglas, 
 in a fair field. 
 
 This speech was heard with approbation on all sides ; and 
 the news brought by Meredith of the defeat of the Earl of 
 Pembroke, and his subsequent retreat, reconciled the fiercest 
 of the English soldiers to the surrender of Douglas Castle. 
 The necessary conditions were speedily agreed on, which put 
 the Scottish in possession of this stronghold, together with 
 the stores, both of arms and ammunition, of every kind 
 which it contained. The garrison had it to boast, that they 
 obtained a free passage, with their horses and arms, to return 
 by the shortest and safest route to the marches of England, 
 without either suffering or inflicting damage. 
 
 Margaret of Hautlieu was not behind in acting a generous 
 part : the gallant knight of Valence was allowed to accom- 
 pany his friend De Walton and the Lady Augusta to England, 
 and without ransom. 
 
 The venerable prelate of Glasgow, seeing what appeared 
 at one time likely to end in a general conflict terminate so 
 auspiciously for his country, contented himself with bestow- 
 
518 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 ing his blessing on the assembled multitude, and retiring 
 with those who came to assist in the service of the day. 
 
 This surrender of Douglas Castle upon the Palm Sunday 
 of 19th March, 1306-7 was the beginning of a career of con- 
 quest which was uninterrupted, in which the greater part 
 of the strengths and fortresses of Scotland were yielded to 
 those who asserted the liberty of their country, until the 
 crowning mercy was gained in the celebrated field of Ban- 
 nockburn, where the English sustained a defeat more disas- 
 trous than is mentioned upon any other occasion in their 
 annals. 
 
 Little need be said of the fate of the persons of this story. 
 King Edward was greatly enraged at Sir John de Walton for 
 having surrendered the Castle of Douglas, securing at the 
 same time his own object, the envied hand of the heiress of 
 Berkely. The knights to whom he referred the matter as a 
 subject of inquiry gave it nevertheless as their opinion that 
 De Walton was void of all censure, having discharged his 
 duty to the fullest extent, till the commands of his superior 
 officer obliged him to surrender the Dangerous Castle. 
 
 A singular renewal of intercourse took place, many months 
 afterwards, betAveeu Margaret of Hautlieu and her lover, Sir 
 Malcolm Fleming. The use which the lady made of her 
 freedom, and of the doom of the Scottish Parliament, wdiich 
 put her in possession of her father's inheritance, was to follow 
 her adventurous spirit through dangers not usually encount- 
 ered by those of her sex ; and the Lady of Hautlieu was not 
 only a daring follower of the chase, but it was said that she 
 was even not daunted in the battlefield. She remained 
 faithful to the political principles which she had adopted at 
 an early period ; and it seemed as if slie had formed the gal- 
 lant resolution of shaking the god Cupid from her horse's 
 mane, if not treading him beneath her horse's feet. 
 
 The Fleming, although he had vanished from the neigh- 
 borhood of the counties of Lanark and Ayr, made an attempt 
 to state his apology to the Lady of Hautlieu herself, who re- 
 turned his letter unopened, and remained to all appearance 
 resolved never again to enter upon the topic of their original 
 engagement. It chanced, however, at a later period of the 
 war with England, while Fleming was one night traveling 
 upon the Border, after the ordinary fashion of one who 
 sought adventures, a waiting-maid, equipped in a fantastic 
 habit, asked the protection of his arm in the name of her 
 lady, who, late in the evening, had been made captive, she 
 said, by certain ill-disposed caitiffs, who were carrying her 
 
CASTLE DANGEROUS 519 
 
 by force through the forest. The Fleming's lance, was, of 
 course, in its rest, and woe betide the faitour whose lot it 
 was to encounter its thrust : the first fell, incapable of farther 
 combat, and another of the felons encountered the same fate 
 with little more resistance. The lady, released from the dis- 
 courteous cord which restrained her liberty, did not hesitate 
 to join company with the brave knight by whom she had 
 been rescued ; and although the darkness did not permit her 
 to recognize her own lover m her liberator, yet she could not 
 but lend a willing ear to the conversation with which he en- 
 tertained her, as they proceeded on the way. He spoke of 
 the fallen caitiffs as being Englishmen, who found a pleasure 
 in exercising oppression and barbarities upon the wandering 
 damsels of Scotland, and whose cause, therefore, the cham- 
 pions of that country were bound to avenge while the blood 
 throbbed in their veins. He spoke of the injustice of the 
 national quarrel which had afforded a pretense for such 
 deliberate oppression ; and the lady, who herself had 
 suffered so much by the interference of the English in 
 the affairs of Scotland, readily acquiesced in the sentiments 
 which he expressed on a subject which she had so much 
 reason for regarding as an afflicting one. Her answer was 
 given in the spirit of a person who would not hesitate, if the 
 times should call for such an example, to defend even with 
 her hand the rights which she asserted with her tongue. 
 
 Pleased with the sentiments wliich she expressed and rec- 
 ognizing in her voice that secret charm which, once im- 
 pressed upon the human heart, is rarely wrought out of the 
 remembrance by along train of subsequent events, he almost 
 persuaded himself that the tones were familiar to him, and 
 had at one time formed the key to his innermost affections. 
 In proceeding on their journey, the knight's troubled state 
 of mind was augmented instead of being diminished. The 
 scenes of his earliest youth were recalled by circumstances so 
 slight as would in ordinary cases have produced no effect 
 whatsoever ; the sentiments appeared similar to those which 
 his life had been devoted to enforce, and he half persuaded 
 himself that the dawn of day was to be to him the beginning 
 of a fortune equally singular and extraordinary. 
 
 In the midst of his anxiety Sir Malcolm Fleming had no 
 anticipation that the lady whom he had heretofore rejected 
 was again thrown into his path, after years of absence ; still 
 less, when daylight gave him a partial view of his fair com- 
 panion's countenance, was he prepared to believe that he was 
 once again to term himself the champion of Margaret de 
 
520 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 Hautlieu,. but it was so. The lady, on that direful morning 
 when she retired from the church of Douglas, had not re- 
 solved (indeed, v/hat lady ever did ? ) to renounce, without 
 some struggle, the beauties which slie had once possessed. 
 A long process of time, employed under skilful hands, had 
 succeeded in obliterating the scars which remained as the 
 marks of her fall. These were now considerably effaced, and 
 the lost organ of sight no longer appeared so great a blemish, 
 concealed as it was by a black ribbon and the arts of the 
 tirewoman, who made it her business to shadow it over by a 
 lock of hair. In a word, he saw the same Margaret de 
 Hautlieu, with no very different style of expression from 
 that which her face, partaking of the high andpassionate char- 
 acter of her soul, had always presented. It seemed to both, 
 therefore, that their fate, by bringing them together after a 
 reparation which appeared so decisive, had intimated its fiat 
 that their fortunes were inseparable from each other. By 
 the time that the summer sun had climbed high in the heav- 
 ens, the two travelers rode apart from their retinue, convers- 
 ing together with an eagerness which marked the important 
 matters in discussion between them ; and in a short time it 
 was made generally knoAvn through Scotland that Sir Mal- 
 colm Fleming and the Lady Margaret de Hautlieu were to 
 be united at the court of the good King Robert, and the 
 husband invested with honors of Biggar and Cumbernauld, 
 an •arldoin so long known in the family of Fleming. 
 
CASTLE DAMGEROUS 521 
 
 [CONCLUSION] 
 
 The gentle reader is acquainted that these are, in all prob- 
 ability, the last tales which it will be the lot of the Author 
 to submit to the public. He is now on the eve of visiting 
 foreign parts : a ship of war is commissioned by its royal 
 master to carry the Author of Waverley to climates in which 
 he may possibly obtain such a restoration of health as may 
 serve him to spin his thread to an end in his own country. 
 Had he continued to prosecute his usual literary labors, it 
 seems indeed probable that, at the term of years he has al- 
 ready attained, the bowl, to use the pathetic language of the 
 Scripture, would have been broken at the fountain ; and 
 little can one who has eujoyed on the whole an uncommon 
 share of the most inestimable of worldly blessings be entitled 
 to complain that life, advancing to its period, should be 
 attended with its usual proportions of shadows and storms. 
 They had affected him at least in no more painful manner 
 than is inseparable from the discharge of this part of the 
 debt of humanity. Of those whose relation to him in the 
 ranks of life might have ensured him their sympathy under 
 indisposition, many are now no more ; and those who may 
 yet follow in his wake are entitled to expect, in bearing in- 
 evitable evils, an example of firmness and patience, more 
 especially on the part of one who has enjoyed no small good 
 fortune during the course of his pilgrimage. 
 
 The public have claims on his gratitude for which the 
 Author of Waverley has no adequate means of expression ; 
 but he may be permitted to hope that the powers of his mind, 
 such as they are, may not have a different date from those 
 of his body ; and that he may again meet his patronizing 
 friends, if not exactly in his old fashion of literature, at 
 least in some branch which may not call forth the remark 
 that — 
 
 Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage. 
 
 Abbotsfokd, September, 1831. 
 
APPENDIX TO INTEODUCTION 
 
 TO 
 
 THE TALISMAN 
 
 While warring In the Holy Land, Richard was seized with an ague. The besc 
 leeches of the camp were unable to effect the cure of the King's disease ; but 
 the prayers of the army were more successful. He became convalescent, and 
 the first symptom of his recovery was a violent longing for porlc. But pork was 
 not likely to be plentiful ia a country whose inhabitants had an abhorrence for 
 swine's flesh ; and , , , . 
 
 Though his men should be hanged. 
 
 They ne might, in that countrey. 
 
 For gold, ne silver, ne no money, 
 
 No pork find, take, ne get. 
 
 That King Richard might aught of eat. 
 
 An old knight with Richard biding. 
 
 When he heard of that tiding. 
 
 That the kingis wants were swyche, 
 
 To the steward he spake privyliche— 
 
 " Our lord the king sore is sick, I wis. 
 
 After porck he alonged is. 
 
 Ye may none find to selle. 
 
 No man be hardy him so to telle ; 
 
 If he did he might die. 
 
 Now behoves to done as I shall say, 
 
 Tho' he wete nought of that. 
 
 Take a Saracen, young and fat ; 
 
 In haste let the thief be slain. 
 
 Opened, and his skin off flayn. 
 
 And sodden full hastily. 
 
 With powder and with spicery. 
 
 And with saffron of good colour. 
 
 When the king feels thereof savour, 
 
 Out of ague if he be went. 
 
 He shall have thereto good talent. 
 
 When he has a good taste. 
 
 And eaten well a good repast. 
 
 And supped of the brewis a sup. 
 
 Slept after and swet a drop. 
 
 Through Goddis help and my counsail. 
 
 Soon he shall be fresh and hail." 
 
 The sooth to say, at wordes few, 
 
 Slain and sodden was the heathen shrew. 
 
 Before the king it was forth brought : 
 
 guod his men, " Lord, we have pork sought ' 
 ates and suppes of the brewis soote. 
 Thorough grace of God it shall be your boot.*- 
 Before King Richard carff a knight. 
 He ate faster than he carve might. 
 The king ate the flesh and gnew the bones. 
 And drank well after for the nonce. 
 And when he had eaten enough. 
 His folk hem turned away, and lough. 
 He lay still and drew in his arm ; 
 His chamberlain him wrapped warm. 
 523 
 
624 APPENDIX TO INTROlJUCTlON 
 
 He lay and slept, and swet a stound, 
 And became whole and sound. 
 King Richard clad hiin and arose, 
 And walked abouten in the close. 
 
 An attack erf the Saracens was repelled by Richard in person, the consequent 
 of which is told in the following lines : — 
 
 When King Richard had rested a whyle. 
 
 A knight his arms 'gan unlace, 
 
 Him to comfort and solace. 
 
 Him was brought a sop in wine. 
 
 "The head of that ilke swine, 
 
 That I of ate," the cook he bade, 
 
 " For feeble I am, and faint and mad. 
 
 Of mine evil now I am fear ; 
 
 Serve me therewith at my soupere." 
 
 Quod the cook, "That head I ne have." 
 
 Then said the king, " So God me save. 
 
 But I see the head of that swine, 
 
 For sooth, thou shalt lesen thine." 
 
 The cook saw none other might be ; 
 
 He fet the head and let him see. 
 
 He fell on knees, and made a cry — 
 
 " Lo, here the head 1 my Lord, mercy I " 
 
 The cook had certainly some reason to fear that his master would be strucK 
 with horror at the recollection of the dreadful banquet to which he owed his re- 
 covery, but his fears were soon dissipated. 
 
 The swarte vis when the king seeth. 
 
 His black beard and white teeth. 
 
 How his lippes grinned wide, 
 
 " What devil is this f " the king cried. 
 
 And 'gan to laugh as he were wode. 
 
 " What 1 is Saracen's flesh thus good f 
 
 That, never erst I nought wist I 
 
 By Godes death and his uprist. 
 
 Shall we never die for default. 
 
 While we may in any assault, 
 
 Slee Saracens, the flesh may take. 
 
 And seethen and roaston and do hem bake, 
 
 {And! Gnawen her flesh to the bones I 
 fow I have it proved once. 
 For hunger ere I be wo, 
 I and my folk shall eat mo I " 
 
 The besieged now offered to surrender, upon conditions of safety to the inhabi- 
 tants ; while all the public treasure, military machines, and arms were deliv- 
 ered to the victors, together with the further ransom of one hundred thousand 
 byzants. After this capitulation, the following extraordinary scene took place. 
 We shall give it in the words of the humorous and amiable George Ellis, the col- 
 lector and the editor of these romances :— 
 
 Though the garrison had faithfully performed the other articles of their con- 
 tract, they were unable to restore the Cross, which was not in their possession, 
 and were therefore treated by the Christians with great cruelty. Daily reports 
 of their sufferings were carried to Saladin ; and as many of them were persons 
 of the highest distinction, that monarch, at the solicitation of their friends, dis- 
 patched an embassy to King Richard with magnificent presents, which he offereu 
 for the ransom of "the captives. The ambassadors were persons the most re- 
 spectable from their age, their rank, and their eloquence. They delivered their 
 message in terms of the utmost humility, and, without arraigning the justice of 
 the conqueror in his severe treatment of their countrymen, only solicited a pe- 
 riod to that severity, laying at his feet the treasures with which they were In- 
 trusted, and pledging themselves and their master for the payment of any further 
 sums which ne might demand as the price of mercy. 
 
 King Richard spake with wordes mild, 
 " The gold t-o take, God me shield ! 
 Among you partes every charge. 
 I brought, in ahlppes and in barge. 
 
TO THE TALISMAN 625 
 
 More gold and silver with me 
 
 Than has your lord, and swilke three. 
 
 To his treasure have I no need I 
 
 But for my love I you bid, 
 
 To meat with me that ye dwell ; 
 
 And afterward I shall you tell. 
 
 Thorough counsel I sliall you answer. 
 
 What bode ye shall to your lord bear." 
 
 The invitation was gratefully accepted. Eichard, in the mean time, g:ave secret 
 orders to his marshal that he should repair to the prison, select a certain number 
 of the most distinguished captives, and, after carefully noting their names on a 
 roll of parchment, cause their heads to be instantly struck off ; that these heads 
 should be delivered to tlie cook with instructions to clear away the hair, and, 
 after boiling them in a caldron, to distribute them on several platters, one to 
 each guest, observing to fasten on the forehead of each the piece of parchment 
 expressing the name and family of the victim. 
 
 " An hot head bring me beforn, 
 As I were well apayed withall, 
 Eat thereof fast I shall. 
 As it were a tender chick. 
 To see how the others will like." 
 
 This horrible order was punctually executed. At noon the guests were sum- 
 moned to wash by the music of the waits; the King took his seat, attended by 
 the principal officers of his court, at the high table, and the rest of tie company 
 were marshaled at a long table below ;im On the cloth were placed portions 
 of salt at the usual distances, but neither oread, wine, nor water. The ambassa- 
 dors, rather surprised at this omission, but still free from apprehension, awaited 
 in silence the arrival of the dinner, which was announced by the sound of pipes, 
 trumpets, and tabours ; and beheld, with horror and dismay, the unnatural ban- 
 quet introduced by the steward and his officers. Yet their sentiments «f disgust 
 and abhorrence, and even their fears, were for a time suspended by their cu- 
 riosity. Their eyes were fixed on the King, who, without the slightest change of 
 countenance, swallowed the morsels as fast as they could be supplied by the 
 knight who carved them. 
 
 Every man then poked other ; 
 
 They said, " This is the devil's brother, 
 
 That slays our men, and thus hem eats I " 
 
 Their attention was then involuntarily fixed on the smoking heads before 
 them ; they traced in the swollen and distorted features the resemblance of a 
 friend or near relation, and received from the fatal scroll which accompanied 
 each dish the sad assurance that this resemblance was not imaginary. They sat 
 in torpid silence, anticipating their own fate in that of their countrymen, while 
 their ferocious entertainer, with fury in his eyes, but with courtesy on his lips, 
 insulted them by frequent invitations to merriment. At length this first course 
 was removed, and its place supplied by venison, cranes, and other dainties, ac- 
 companied by the richest wines. The King then apologized to them for what 
 had passed, which he attributed to his ignorance of their taste ; and assured 
 them of his religious respect for their character as ambassadors, and of his 
 readiness to grant them a safe-conduct for their return. This boon was all that 
 they now vvished to claim ; and 
 
 King Richard spake to an old man, 
 
 " Wendes home to your Soudan 1 
 
 His melancholy that ye abate ; 
 
 And sayes that ye came too late. 
 
 Too slowly was your time y-guessed; 
 
 Ere ye came, the flesh was dressed. 
 
 That men shoulden serve with me. 
 
 Thus at noon, and my meynie. 
 
 Say him, it shall him nought avail. 
 
 Though he for-bar us our vitail, 
 
 Bread, wine, fish, flesh, salmon, and conger ; 
 
 Of us none shall die of hunger, 
 
 While we may wenden to fight. 
 
 And slay the Saracens downright, 
 
 "Wash the flesh, and roast the head. 
 
 With DO Saracen I may well feed 
 
526 APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 Well a nine or a ten 
 
 Of my good Christian men. 
 
 King Richard shall warrant, 
 
 There is no flesh so nourissant 
 
 Unto an English man, 
 
 Partridge, plover, heron, ne swan. 
 
 Cow ne ox, sheep ne swine. 
 
 As the head of a Sarazyn. 
 
 There he is fat, and thereto tender. 
 
 And my men be lean and slender. 
 
 While any Saracen quick be, 
 
 Livand now in this Syrie, 
 
 For meat will we nothing care. 
 
 Abouten fast we shall fare. 
 
 And every day we shall eat 
 
 All so many as we may get. 
 
 To England will we nought gon 
 
 Till they be eaten every one." * 
 
 The reader may be curious to know owing to what circumstanw» ^ tsxtraor- 
 dinary an invention as that which imputed cannabalism to the King of England 
 should have found its way into his history. Mr. [G. P. Rainsford] James, to 
 whom we owe so much that is curious, seems to have traced the origin of this 
 extraordinary rumor. 
 
 " With the army of the cross also was a multitude of men," the same author 
 [Guibert] declares, " who made it a profession to be without money ; they walked 
 barefoot, carried no arms, and even preceded the beasts of burden in the march, 
 living upon roots and herbs, and presenting a spectacle both disgusting and 
 pitiable. A Norman, who according to all accounts was of noble birth, but who, 
 having lost his horse, continued to follow as a foot soldier, took the strange res- 
 olution of putting himself at the head of this race of vagabonds, who willingly 
 received him for their king. Amongst the Saracens these men became well 
 known under the name of Thafurs (which Guibert translates Trudentes), and 
 were held in great horror from the general persuasion that they fed on the dead 
 bodies of their enemies— a report which was occasionally justified, and which 
 the king of the Thafurs took care to encourage. This respectable monarch was 
 frequently in the habit of stopping his followers, one by one, in any narrow 
 defile, and of causing them to be searched carefully, lest the possession of the 
 least sum of money should render them unworthy of the name of his subjects. 
 If even two sous were found upon any one, he was instantly expelled the society 
 
 .^rJl^"*'®' *^® '''"^ bidding him contemptuously buy arms and fight. 
 This troop, so far from being cumbersome to the army, was infinitely ser- 
 viceable, carrymg burdens, bringing in forage, provisions, and tribute, working 
 the machmes in the sieges, and, above all, spreading consternation among the 
 Turks, who feared death from the lances of the knights less than that further 
 consummation they heard of under the teeth of the thafurs." t 
 
 It is easy to conceive, that, an ignorant minstrel, finding the taste and ferocity 
 of the Thafurs commemorated in the historical accounts of the Holy wars, has 
 ascribed their practises and propensities to the monarch of England, whose 
 ferocity was considered as an object of exaggeration as legitimate as his valor. 
 
 • Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. U. pp. 
 t JsuMs's History of Chivalry, led. 1880], p. ITS 
 
NOTES TO THE TALISMAN 
 
 Note 1.— The Lee Penny, p. viii 
 
 At a meeting oi me cicottish Society of Antiquaries (8th April 1861), an interest- 
 ing communication " On some Scottish Magical Chai-m-Stones, or Curing-Stones," 
 was read by the late Professor Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart., when the Lee Penny 
 was among the articles exhibited. In his paper the eminent writer observes, 
 that "In the present century this ancient medical charm-stone has acquired a 
 world-wide reputation as the original of the Talisman of Sir Walter Scott, 
 though latterly its therapeutic reputation has greatly declined, and almost en- 
 tirely ceased."— See the Proceedings, vol. iv. p. 223 (Laing). 
 
 [Original later edition.] Since the last sheet of this volume was printed off, a 
 kind friend has transmitted the following curious document, by which it would 
 appear that the alleged virtues of the Lee Penny had at one time given uneasi- 
 ness to our Presbyterian brethren of Clydesdale. 
 
 (Copy) 
 
 Extract from the Assemblie Books at Glasgow, anent the Lee Penny stone. 
 
 Apud Glasgow, 21 of October.* 
 
 Synod. Sess. 2 
 
 QuHiLK day, amongest the referries of the Brethren of the Ministry of Lanark, 
 It was proponed to the Synod that Gavin Hamilton of Raploch had pursueit an 
 Complaint before them against Sir James Lockhart of Lee, anent the superstiti- 
 ous using of an Stone, set in silver, for the curing of deseased Cattle, qlk the 
 said Gavin affirmed could not be lawfully usit, and that they had deferrit to 
 give ony decisionne thairin till the advice of the Assemblie might be had con- 
 cerning the same. The Assemblie having inquirit of the manner of using thereof, 
 and particularly understood, be examination of the said Laird of Lee and other- 
 wise, that the custom is only to cast the stone in some water, and give the deseasit 
 Cattle thereof to drink, and that the same is done without using any words, 
 such as Charmers and Sorcereirs use in thair unlawfull practices ; and consider- 
 ing that in nature thair are many things seen to work strange effects, whereof 
 no human wit can give a reason, it having pleast God to give to stones and herbs 
 a speciall vertue for healing of many infirmities in man and beast, advises the 
 Brethren to surcease thair process, as therein they perceive no ground of Offence, 
 and admonishes the said Laird of Lee, in the using of the said stone, to take held 
 that it be usit hereafter with the least scandle that possibly maybe. Extract 
 out of the Books of the Assemblie holden at Glasgow, and subscribed at their 
 command. 
 
 M. Robert Young, Clerk to the 
 Assemblie at Glasgow. 
 
 Note 2.— Gab, Gaber, p. 11 
 
 This French word signified a sort of sport much used among the French 
 chivalry, which consisted in vying with each other in making the most romantic 
 gasconades. The verb and the meaning are retained in Scottish. 
 
 Note 3.— Giamschid, p. 28 
 
 [The legend is generally told thus :— Jamshid, a great and good king of Persia, 
 grew proud in his old days and turned a terrible tyrant. The people, in despair, 
 
 * The year is unfortunately not given ; but the Sir James Lockhart named in 
 the extract was bom in 1596 and died in 1674. 
 587 
 
528 WAVEELET NOVELS 
 
 called in to their aid Zohak, a king who ruled on the western confines of Persia, 
 and who had slain his own father {not of the house of Jamshid). Out of each 
 shoulder of Zohak there grew a black serpent, which he fed on men's brains. 
 The Persians found that Zohak was as great a tyrant as Jamshid, and at last a 
 brave blacksmith, Kaweh by name, called all the people together in the market- 
 place, put his leather apron on a spear, as a sort of banner, proclaimed a revolt 
 against Zohak, and made Feridun, great-grandson of Jamshid, king over Persia 
 in that king's stead.] 
 
 Note 4.— Hymn to Ahkiman, p. 32 
 
 The worthy and learned clergyman by whom this species of hymn has been 
 translated desires that, for fear of misconception, we should warn the reader to 
 recollect that it is composed by a heathen, to whom the real causes of moral and 
 ' evil are unknown, and who views their predominance in the system of 
 universe as all must view that appalling fact who have not the bene'fit of the 
 Christian revelation. On our own part, we beg to add, that we understand the 
 style of the translator is more paraphrastic than can be approved by those who 
 are acquainted with the singularly curious original. The translator seems to 
 have despaired of rendering into English verse the flights of oriental poetry ; 
 and, possibly, like many learned and ingenious men, finding it impossible to dis- 
 cover the sense of the original, he may have tacitly substituted his own. The 
 gentle and candid reader may believe this worthy and learned clergyman or not, 
 as shall be most pleasing to himself. 
 
 Note 5.— Sib Thomas Multon op Gilsland, p. 69 
 
 He was a historical hero, faithfully attached, as is here expressed, to King 
 Richard, and is noticed with distinction in the romance mention&i in the Intro- 
 duction. At the beginning of the romance, mention is made of a tournament, 
 in which the king returns three times with a fresh suit of armor, which acted as 
 a disguise ; and at each appearance some knight of great prowess had a sharp 
 encounter with him. When Richard returned the second time, the following is 
 Mr. Ellis's account of his proceedings ;— 
 
 He now mounted a bay horse, assumed a suit of armor painted red. and a hel- 
 met, the crest of which was a red hound, with a long tail which reached to the 
 earth— an emblem intended to convey his indignation against the heathen hounds 
 who defiled the Holy Land, and his determination to attempt their destruction. 
 Having sufficiently signalized himself in his new disguise, he rode into the ranks 
 for the purpose of selecting a more formidable adversary ; and, delivering his 
 spear to his squire, took his mace and assaulted Sir Thomas de Multon, a knight 
 whose prowess was deservedly held in the highest estimation. Sir Thymas, ap- 
 parently not at all disordered by a blow which would have felled a common 
 adversary, calmly advised him to go and amuse himself elsewhere ; but Richard 
 having aimed at nim a second and piore violent stroke, by which his helmet was 
 nearly crushed, he returned it with such vigor that the king lost his stirrups. 
 and, recovering himself with some difficulty, rode off with all speed into the 
 forest.— Ellis's Specimeiis, p. 187. 
 
 Note 6.— Assisses de Jerusalem, p. 107 
 
 The Assisses de Jerusalem were the digest of feudal law, composed by Godfrey 
 of Boulogne, for the government of the Latin Kingdom of Palestine, when re- 
 conquered from the Saracens. It was composed with advice of " the patriarch 
 and barons, of the clergy and laity," and is, says the historian Gibbon, " a precious 
 monument of feudatory jurisprudence," founded upon those principles of 
 freedom which were essential to the system. 
 
 Note 7.— Proposal of Marrl4GE, p. 153 
 
 This may appear so extraordinary and improbable a preposition, that It Is 
 necessary to say such a one was actually made. The historians, however, sub- 
 stitute the widowed Queen of Naples, sister of Richard, for the bride, and Sala- 
 din's brother for the bridegroom. They appear to have been ignorant of the 
 existence of Edith of Plantagenet.— See Mill's History of the Crusades, vol. ii. p. 
 61. 
 
 Note 8.— Scots, Fair and False, p. 159 
 8uob wore the terms In which the English used to speak of ttieir poor nortb*n> 
 
NOTES TO THE TALISMAN 529 
 
 neighbors, forgetting that their own encroachments upon the independence of 
 Scotland obliged the weaker nation to defend themselves by policy as well a3 
 force The disgrace must be divided between Edward I. and III., who enforced 
 their domination over a free country, and the Scots who were compelled to take 
 compulsory oaths without any purpose of keeping them. 
 
 Note 9.— Montrose's Lines, p. 260 
 
 In this extract it has been pointed out that th? Author, quoting from memory, 
 committed originally a mistake by substituting in line first " inconsistency," 
 and in line third repeating " love," with the still graver error of giving them as 
 " Montrose's Lines." They bear such a striking resemblance to Montrose's 
 "New Ballad to the Tune of " I'll never love thee more " as to render this quite 
 excusable. The true author was Richard Lovelace, in his collection, Lucasta 
 (1649), in a song addressed to his mistress, of three stanzas, set to music, on his 
 " going to the wars." The last stanza reads thus— 
 
 Yet this inconstancy is such, 
 
 As you too shall adore ; 
 I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 
 Lov'd I not honor more. 
 
 In like manner, Mr. Mark Napier, in his Memoirs of Montrose, complains of 
 the quotation at the head of chap. xv. of A Legend of Montrose, but Sir Walter 
 Scott only Uterally copied the words as published by Ritson in 1794 (Laing). 
 
 Note 10.— Sir Tristrem, p. 260 
 
 An universal tradition ascribed to Sir Tristrem, famous for his love of the fair 
 Queen Yseult, the laws concerning the practice of woodcraft, or venerie, as it 
 was called, being those that related to the rules of the chase, which were deemed 
 of so much consequence during the Middle Ages. 
 
 Note 11.— Death of Grand Master, p. 310 
 
 The manner of the death of the supposed Grand Master of the Templars was 
 taken from the real tragedy enacted by Saladin upon tlie person of Arnold or 
 Reginald de Chatillon. This person, a soldier of fortune, had seized a castle on 
 the verge of the desert, from whence he made plundering excursions, and in- 
 sulted and abused the pilgrims who were on their journey to Mecca. It was 
 chiefly on his account that Saladin declared war against Guy de Lusignan, the 
 last Latin king of the Holy Land. The Christian monarch was defeated by 
 Saladin with the loss of 30,000 men, and having been made prisoner, with Chatillon 
 and others, was conducted before the Soldan. The victor presented to his ex- 
 hausted captive a cup of sherbet, cooled in snow. Lusignan, having drank, was 
 about to hand the cup to Chatillon, when the Soldan interfered. " Your person," 
 he said, " my royal prisoner, is sacred, but the cup of Saladin must not be pro- 
 faned by a blasphemous robber and ruffian." So saying, he slew the captiTO 
 knight by a blow of his scimitar.— See Gibbon's History, xL p. 129, ed. 1880. 
 
APPENDICES TO INTRODUCTION" 
 
 TO 
 
 CASTLE DANGEROUS 
 
 No. I 
 
 Extracts from Tlie History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus 
 By Mast r David Hume of Godscrof t. Fol. Edit. 
 
 And here indeed the course of the King's misfortunes begins to make some halt 
 and stay by thus much prosperous success in his own person, but more in the 
 person of Sir James, by the recouquests of his owne castles and countries. From 
 hence he went into Douglasdale, where, by the means of his father's old servant, 
 Thomas Dickson, he took in the'Castle of Douglas, and not being able to keep it, 
 he caused burn it, contenting himself with this, that his enemies hiid one strength 
 fewer in that countrey than before. The manner of his taking of it is said to 
 have beene thus : — Sir James, taking onely with him two of his servants, went to 
 Thomas Dickson, of whom he was received with tears, after he had revealed liiiii- 
 selfe to him, for the good old man knew him not at first, being in meane and 
 homely apparell. There he kept him secretly in a quiet chamber, and brought 
 unto him such as had beene trusty servants to his father, not all at once, but 
 apart by one and one, for feare of discoverie. Their advice was, that on Palm- 
 sunday, when the English would come forth to the church, being a solemne holi- 
 day, he with his two servants should come thither apparelled like countrey 
 taskers, with mantles to cover their armour, and when he should perceive that 
 the English were in the church, and his partners were conveened, that then he 
 should give the word, and cry the Douglas slogan, and presently set upon them 
 that should happen to be there, who being despatched, the castle might be taken 
 easily. This being concluded, and they come, so soon as the English were entred 
 into the church with palms in their hands (according to the custome of that 
 day), little suspecting or fearing any such thing, Sir James, according to their 
 appointment, cryed too soone (a Douglas, a Douglas !) which being heard in the 
 church (this was St. Bride's church of Douglas), Thomas Dickson, supposing he 
 had beene hard at hand, drew out his sword, and ran upon them, having none to 
 second him but another man, so that, oppressed with the multitude of his ene- 
 mies, he was beaten downe and slaiue. In the meanetime. Sir James being come, 
 the English that were in the chancel kept off the Scots, and. having the advantage 
 of the strait and narrow entrie, defended themselves manfully. But Sir James 
 encouraging his men, not so much by words as by deeds and good example, and 
 having slain the boldest resisters, prevailed at last, and, entring the place, slew- 
 some twenty-six of their number, and tooke the rest, about ten or twelve per- 
 sons, intend'ing by them to get the castle upon composition, or to enter with them 
 when the gates should be opened to let them in ; but it needed not, for they of 
 the castle were so secure, tlaat there was none left to keepe it save the porter and 
 the cooke, who, knowing nothing of what had hapned at the church, which stood 
 a large quarter of a mile from thence, had left the gate ivide open, the porter 
 standing without, and the cooke dressing the dinner within. They entred with- 
 out resistance, and meat being ready, and the cloth laid, they shut the gates, and 
 tooke their refection at good leasure. 
 
 Now that he had gotten the castle into his hands, considering with himself (as 
 he was a man no lesse advised than valiant I that it was hard for him to keep it, 
 the English being as yet the stronger in that ccuntrey, who if they should besiege 
 him, he knew of no feliefe, he thought better to carry away such thines as be 
 most easily transported, gold, silver, and apparell, with ammunition and armour, 
 530 
 
APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 531 
 
 whereof he had greatest use and need, and to destroy the rest of the provision, 
 together with the castle itselfe, than to diminish the number of his followers for 
 a garrison there where they could do no good. And so he caused carrie the 
 meale and malt, and other cornes and graine, into the cellar, and layd all 
 together in one heape ; then he took the prisoners and slew them, to revenge the 
 death of his trustie and valiant servant, Thomas Dickson, mingling the victuals 
 with their bloud, and burying their carcasses in the heap of corne ; after that he 
 struck out the heads of the barrells and puncheons, and let the drink runne 
 through all ; and then he cast the carkasses of dead horses and other carrion 
 amongst it, throwing the salt above all, so to make altogether unusefull to the 
 enemie ; and this cellar is called yet the Douglas Lairder. Last of all, he set the 
 house on fire, and burnt all the timber, and what else the Are could overcome, 
 leaving nothing but the scorched walls behind him. And this seemes to be the 
 first taking of the Castle of Douglas, for it is supposed that he took it twice. For 
 this service, and others done to Lord William his father, Sir James gave unto 
 Thomas Dickson the lands of Hisleside, which hath beene given him before the 
 castle was taken as an encouragement to whet him on, and not after, for he was 
 slaine in the church ; which was both liberally and wisely done of him, thus to 
 hearten and draw men to his service by such a noble beginning. The castle being 
 burnt, Sir James retired, and parting his men into divers companies, so as they 
 might be most secret, he caused cure such as were wounded in the flght, and he 
 himselfe kept as close as he could, waiting ever for an occasion to enterprise 
 something against the enemie. So soone as he was gone, the Lord Clifford being 
 advertised of what had happened, came himselfe in person to Douglas, and 
 caused re-edifle and repair the castle in a very short time, unto which he also 
 added a tower, which is yet called Harries Tower from him, and so returned into 
 England, leaving one Thruswall to be captain thereof. . . 
 
 He (Sir James Douglas) therefore, getting him into Douglasdale, aid use this 
 stratagem against Thruswall, Captaine of the Castle of Douglas, un:ler the Lori 
 Clifford. Hee caused some of his folkes drive away the cattell that fed neare 
 unto the castle, and when the captaine of the garrison followed to rescue, gave 
 orders to his men to leave them and to flee away. Thus he did often to make the 
 captaine to slight such frayes, and to make him secure, that he might not sus- 
 pect any further end to be in it ; which when he had wrought sufficiently (as he 
 thought,) he laid some men in ambuscado, and sent others away to drive away 
 such beasts as they should flnde in the view of the castle, as if they had been 
 theeves and robbers, as they had done often before. The captaine hearing of it, 
 and supposing there was no greater danger now then had beene before, issued 
 forth of the castle, and followed after them with such haste that his men 
 (running who should be first) were disordered and out of their ranks. The 
 drivers also fled as fast as they could till they had drawne the captaine a little 
 beyond the place of the ambuscado, which when they perceived, rising quickly 
 out of their covert, set fiercely upon him and his companie, and so slew himselfe 
 and chased his men back to the castle, some of which were overtaken and slaine, 
 others got into the castle and so were saved. Sir James, not being able to force 
 the house, took what bootie he could get without in the fields, and so departed. 
 By this means, and such other exploits, he so affrighted the enemie, that it was 
 counted a matter of such great jeopardie to keepe this castle, which began to be 
 called the adventurous (or hazzardous) Castle of Douglas. Whereupon Sir John 
 Walton being in suit of an English lady, she wrote to him that when he had kept 
 the adventurous Castle of Douglas seven yeares, then he might think himselfe 
 worthy to be a sutor to her. Upon this occasion, Walton tooke upon him the 
 keeping of it, and succeeded to Thruswall : but he ran the same fortune with the 
 rest that were before him. 
 
 For, Sir James having first dressed an ambuscado near unto the place, he made 
 fourteen of his men take so many sacks, and fil them with grasse, as though it 
 had been corn, which they carried in the way toward Lanerik, the chief market- 
 town in that county ; so hoping to draw forth the captain by that bait, and either 
 to take him or the castle, or both. 
 
 Neither was this expectation frustrate, for the captain did bite, and came forth 
 to have taken this victuall(as he supposed). But ere he could reach these car- 
 riers. Sir James, with his company, had gotten between the castle and him ; and 
 these disguised carriers, seeing the captain following after them, did q uickly cast 
 off their upper garments, wherein they had masked themselves, and throwing off 
 their sacks, mounted themselves on horseback, and met the captain with a sharp 
 encounter, being so much the more amazed as it was unlooked for ; wherefore, 
 when he saw these carriers metamorphosed into warriours, and ready to assault 
 him, fearing that which was, that there was some train laid for them, he turned 
 about to have retired to the castle ; but there also hee met with his enemies ; 
 between which two companies he and his whole followers were slain, so that none 
 escaped ; the captain afterwards being searched, they found (as it is reported) 
 his mistress's letters about him. Then hee went and tooke in the castle, but it is 
 uncertain (say our writers) whether by force or composition ; but it seems that 
 
532 
 
 APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 the Constable, and those that were within, have yeelded it up without force: 
 in regard that hee used them so gently, which he would not have done if he had 
 taken it at utterance. For he sent them all safe home to the Lord Clifford, and 
 gave them also provision and mony for their entertainment by the way. The 
 castle, which he had burnt onely before, now he razeth, and casts down the 
 walls thereof to the ground. By these and the like proceedings, within a sliort 
 while he freed Douglasdale, Attrick Forrest, and Jedward Forrest of the English 
 garrisons and subjection.— Pages 26-30. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 Extracts from— TZie Bruce— Liher Compositus per Magistrvm 
 Johannem Barber, Archidiaconmim Abyrdonensevi, de Gestis, 
 Bellis, et Virtutibus, Domini Roberti Brwyss, Regis Scocie Illus- 
 irissimi, et de Conquestu Regni Scocie per eundevi, et de Doviino 
 Jacobo de Douglas. Edited by John Jamieson, D.D., F.R.S.E. 
 etc., etc. Edinburgh, 1820. 
 
 Now takis James his wiage 
 Towart Dowglas, his heretage, 
 With twa yemen, for owtyn ma ; 
 That wes a symple stuff to ta, 
 A land or a castell to wyn. 
 The quhethir he yarnyt to begyn 
 Till bring purposs till ending ; 
 For gud help is in gud begynnyng 
 For gud begynnyng, and hardy, 
 Gyff it be f olovvit wittily. 
 May ger oftsyss unlikly thing 
 Cum to full conabill ending. 
 Swa did it here : but he wes wyss 
 And saw he mycht, on nakyn wyss, 
 Werray his fa with ewyn mycht ; 
 Tharfor he thocht to wyrk with slycht. 
 And in Dowglas daile, his covintr6. 
 Upon an ewynnyug entryt he. 
 And than a man wonnyt tharby, 
 That was off f reyndis weill mychty. 
 And ryche of moble, and off cateill, 
 And had bene till his fadyr leyll ; 
 And till him selff, in his yowthed. 
 He haid done mony a thankf uU deid. 
 Thom Dicson wes his name perfay 
 T.=ll him he send ; and gan him pray. 
 That he wald cum all anerly 
 For to spek with him priuely. 
 And he but daunger till him gals : 
 Bot fra he tauld him quhat he wais, 
 He gret for joy, and for pit6 ; 
 And him rycht till his houss had he ; 
 Quliar in a chambre priuely 
 He held him, and his cumpany. 
 That nane had off him persawing. 
 Off mete, and drynk, and othyr thing. 
 That mycht thaim eyss, thai had plent6 
 Sa wrocht he throw suteltB, 
 That all the lele men off that land, 
 Tliat with his fadyr war duelland. 
 This gud man gert cum, ane and ane. 
 And mak him manrent euir likane ; 
 And he him selff f yrst homage maid. 
 Dowglass in hart gret glaidschip haid, 
 That the gud men off his cuntrS 
 Wald swagate till him bundyn be. 
 He speryt the conwyne off the land, 
 And quha the castell had in hand. 
 And thai him tauld all halily ; 
 
 And syne amang them priuely 
 f hai ordanyt, that he still suld be 
 In hidtlillis, and in priwete. 
 Till Palme Sonday, that wes ner hand. 
 The thrid day ef tyr folowand. 
 For than the folk off that countr6 
 Assemblyt at the kyrk wald be ; 
 And th<*i, that in the castell wer, 
 Wald als be thar, thar palmys to ber, 
 As folk that had na dreid off ill ; 
 For thai thoucht all wes at thair will. 
 Than suld he cum with his twa men. 
 Bot for that men suld nocht him ken. 
 He suld ane mantill haiff auld and bar, 
 And a tlaill, as he a thresscher war. 
 Wndyr the mantill nocht for thi 
 He suld be armyt priuely. 
 And quhen the men off his countr6, 
 That suld all boune befor him be. 
 His ensenye mycht her hym cry. 
 Then suld thai, full enforcely, 
 Ryclit yinyddys the kyrk assaill 
 The Ingliss men with hard bataill, 
 Swa that nane mycht eschap tham fra ; 
 For thar throvvch trowyt thai to ta 
 The castell, that besid wes ner. 
 And quhen this, that I tell you her, 
 Wes diuisyt, and wndertane, 
 Ilkane till his howss hame is gane ; 
 And held this spek in priuetS, 
 Till the day off thar assembly. 
 
 The folk upon the Sonounday 
 Held to Saynct Bridis kyrk thair way , 
 And tha that in the castell war 
 Tschyt owt, bath les and mar. 
 And went thair palyms for to ber ; 
 Owtane a cuk and a porter. 
 James off Dowglas off thair cummyng, 
 And quhat thai war, had witting ; 
 And sped him till the kyrk in hy. 
 Bot or lie come, too hastily 
 Aneoff hiscriyt, " Dowglas! Dowglas! " 
 Thomas Dikson, that nerrest was 
 Till thaim that war off the castell. 
 That war all innouth the chancell, 
 Quhen he " Douglas 1 " swa hey herd 
 
 cry. 
 Drew owt his swerd ; and f ellely 
 
fO CASTLE DA NGEROVS 
 
 533 
 
 Ruschyt amang thaim to and fra. 
 Bot ane or twa, for owtyn ma, 
 Than in hj' war left lyand. 
 Quhill Dowglas come rycht at hand, 
 And then enforcyt on thaim the cry. 
 Bot thai the chansell sturdely 
 Held, and thaim defendyt wele, 
 Till ofC thair men war slayne sumdell. 
 Bot the Dowglace sa weill him bar. 
 That all the men, that with him war, 
 Had comfort oflE his wele doyng ; 
 And he him sparyt nakyn thing. 
 But prowyt swa his force in fyclit, 
 That throw his worschip and his mycht 
 His men sa keynly helpyt than. 
 That thai the chansell on thaim wan. 
 Than dang thai on swa hardyly. 
 That in schort tyme men mycht se ly 
 The twa part dede, or then deand. 
 The lave war sesyt sone in hand, 
 Swa that off thretty levyt nane. 
 That thai ne war slayne ilkan, or tane. 
 
 James off Dowglas, quhen this wes 
 
 done. 
 The presoneris has he tane alsone ; 
 And. with thaim off his cumpany, 
 Towart the castell went in hy. 
 Or noyiss or cry suld ryss. 
 And for he wald thaim sone suppriss, 
 That lewyt in the castell war. 
 That war but twa for owtyn mar, 
 Fyve men or sex befor send he, 
 That faud all opyn the entr6 ; 
 And entryt, and the porter tuk 
 Rycht at the gate, and syne the cuk. 
 With that Dowglas come to the yat, 
 And entryt in for owtyn debate ; 
 And fand the mete all redy grathit. 
 With burdys set, and clathis layit. 
 The yhaitis then he gert sper. 
 And sat, and eyt all at layser. 
 Syne all the gudis turssyt thai 
 That thaim thocht thai mycht haiff 
 
 away ; 
 And namly wapnys, and armyng, 
 Siluer, and tresour, and clethyng. 
 Wyctallis, that mycht nocht tursyt be, 
 On this maner destroyit he. 
 All the wictalis, owtane salt, 
 Als quheyt, and flour, and meill, and 
 
 malt 
 In the wyne sellar gert he bring ; 
 And samyn on the flur all flyng. 
 And the presoneris that he had tane 
 Rycht thar in gert he held ilkane ; 
 Syne off the townnys he hedis outstrak ; 
 A foule mellS thar gane he mak. 
 For meile, and malt, and blud, and 
 
 wyne. 
 Ran all to gidder in a mellyne, 
 That was wnsemly for to se. 
 Tharfor the men off that countr6 
 For swa fele thar mellyt wer, 
 Callit it the " Dowglas Lardner." 
 Syne tuk he salt, as Ic hard tell. 
 And ded horss, and sordid the well ; 
 And brynt all, owtakyn stane ; 
 And is forth, with his menye, gayne 
 Till his resett : for him thoucht weill, 
 Giff he had haldyn the castell, 
 It had bene assegyt raith ; 
 
 And that him thoucht to mekil 
 
 waith. 
 For he ue had hop off reskewyng. 
 And it is to peralous thing 
 In casteil assegyt to be, 
 Quhar want is off thir thingis thre— 
 Victaill, or men with thair armyng. 
 Or than gud hop oft' rescuyng. 
 And for he dred thir thingis suld faile, 
 He chesyt furthwart to trawaill, 
 Quhar he mycht at his larges be ; 
 And swa dry ve furth his destan6. 
 
 On this wise was the castell tan, 
 And slayne that war tharin ilkan. 
 The Dowglas syne all his menye 
 Gert in ser placis depertyt be ; 
 For men suld wyt quhar thai war. 
 That yeid depertyt her and thar. 
 Thaim that war woundyt gert he ly 
 In till hiddillis, all priuely ; 
 And gert gud leechis till thaim bring 
 Quhill that thai war in till heling. 
 And him selff, with a few menye, 
 Quhile ane, quhile twa, and quhil thre. 
 And wmquhill all him allane. 
 In hiddillis throw the land is gane. 
 Sa dred he Inlgis men his mycht. 
 That he durst nocht wele cum in sycht. 
 For thai war that tyme all weldand 
 As maist lordis, our all the land. 
 
 Bot tythandis, that scalis sone, 
 Off this deid that Dowglas has done 
 Come to the Cliffurd his ere, in hy, 
 That for his tynsaill wes sary ; 
 And menyt his men that thai had 
 
 slayne. 
 And syne has to purpos tane. 
 To big the castell wp agayne. 
 Thar for, as man of mekill mayne. 
 He assemblit gret cumpany. 
 And till Dowglas he went in hy. 
 And biggyt wp the castell swyth ; 
 And maid it rycht stalwart and styth 
 And put tharin wictallis and men. 
 Ane off the Thyrwallys then 
 He left behind him capitane. 
 And syne till Ingland went agayne. 
 Book IV. 25" 
 
 BoT yeit than James of Dowglas 
 In Dowglas Daile trawailland was ; 
 Or ellys weill ner hand tharby. 
 In hyddillys sumdeill priuely. 
 For he wald se his gouernyng 
 That had the castell in keping : 
 And gert mak mony juperty. 
 To se quhethyr he wald ische blythly 
 And quhen he persawyt that he 
 Wald blythly ische with his menye, 
 He maid a gadring priuely 
 Off thaim that war on his party ; 
 That war sa fele, that thai durst fycht 
 With Thyrwall, and all the mycht 
 Off thaim that in the castell war. 
 He schupe him in the nycht to far 
 To Sandylandis ; and thar ner by- 
 He him enbuschyt priuely. 
 And send a few a trane to ma ; 
 That sone in the mornyng gan ga, 
 And tuk oatell, that wes the castell by, 
 
534 
 
 APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 And syne withdrew thaim hastily 
 Towart thaim that enbuschit war. 
 Than Thyrwall, for owtyn mar, 
 Gert arms his men, forowtyn baid ; 
 And ischyt with all the men he haid : 
 And folowyt fast eftir the cry. 
 He wes armyt at poynt clenly, 
 Owtaue [that] his hede wes bar. 
 Than, with the men that with him war, 
 The cateil folowit he gud speid, 
 Rycht as a man that had na dreid, 
 TiU that he gat off thaim a sycht. 
 Than prekyt that with all thar mycht, 
 Folowand thaim owt off aray ; 
 And thai sped thaim tteand, quhil 
 
 thai 
 Far by thair buschement war past : 
 And Thyrwall ay chassyt fast. 
 And than thai that enbuschyt war 
 
 Ischyt till him, bath les and mar, 
 And rayssyt sudanly the cry 
 And thai that saw sa sudandly 
 That folk come egyrly prikand 
 Rycht betuix thaim and thair warand, 
 Thai war in to full gret effray. 
 And, for thai war owt ofE aray. 
 Sum off thaim fled, and sum abad, 
 And Dowglas, that thar with him had 
 A great mengye, full egreJy 
 Assaylyt, and scalyt thaim hastyly : 
 And in schort tyme ourraid thaim 
 
 swa. 
 That weile nane eschapyt thaim fra. 
 Thyrwall, that wes thair capitane, 
 Wes thar in the bargane slane, 
 And off his men the mast party. 
 The lave fled full effray tly. 
 
 Book V. 7-6?, 
 
NOTES TO CASTLE DANGEROUS 
 
 Note 1.— Castle of Douglas, p. 320 
 
 The following notice of Douglas Castle, etc., is from the Description of the 
 Sheriffdom of Lanark, hy William Hamilton of Wishaw, written in the begin- 
 ning of the 18th century, and printed by the Maitland Club of Glasgow in 1831 :— 
 
 Douglas parish, and baronie and lordship, heth very long appertained to the 
 family of Douglass, and coscinued with the Earles of Douglass until their fatall 
 forfeiture, auno 1455 ; during which tyme there are many noble and important 
 actions recorded in histories performed by them, by the lords and earls of that 
 great family. It was thereafter given to Douglass Earl of Anguse, and continued 
 with them until William Earle of Anguse was created Marquess of Douglass, 
 anno 1633 ; and is now the principal seat of the Marquess of Douglass his family. 
 It is a large baronie and parish, and ane laick patronage, and the Marquess is 
 both titular and patron. He heth thei-e, near to the church, a very considerable 
 great house, called the Castle of Douglass ; and near the church is afyne village, 
 called the town of Douglass, long since erected in a burgh of baronie. It heth 
 ane hansome church, with many ancient monuments and inscriptions on the old 
 interments of the earles of this place. 
 
 The water of Douglas runs quyte through the whole length of this parish, and 
 upon either syde of the water it is called Douglas Dale. It toucheth Clyde tow- 
 ards the north, and is bounded by Lesmahagow to the west, Kyle to the south- 
 west, Crawfurd John and Carmichaell to the south and southeast. It is a pleas- 
 ant strath, plentifuU in grass and corne, and coall ; and the minister is well pro- 
 vyded. 
 
 The lands of Heyslesyde, belonging to Samuel Douglass, has a good house and 
 pleasant seat close by a wood, etc.— Pp. 64, 65 (Lockhart). 
 
 Note 2.— John Loudon MacAdam, p. 323 
 
 John Loudon MacAdam, a great improver of public roads, was awarded [1827] 
 by Parliament the sum of £10,000 and made surveyor of the Metropolitan roads ; 
 died 1836 (Laing). 
 
 Note 3.— Hazblside, p. 340 
 
 Hazelside Place, the fief granted to Thomas Dickson by WilHam the Hardy, 
 seventh Lord Douglas, is still pointed out about two miles to the southwest of 
 the Castle Dangerous. Dickson was sixty years of age at the time when Lord 
 James first appeared in Douglas Dale. His heirs kept possession of the fief for 
 centuries ; and some respectable gentlemen's families in Lanarkshire still tracfl 
 themselves to this ancestor [Note by Mr. Hadclow). 
 
 Note 4.— Maker or TROinfEUR, p. 350 
 
 The name of maker stands for poet (with the original sense of which word it 
 exactly corresponds) in the old Scottish language. That of trouveur or trouba- 
 dour— finder, in short— has a similar meaning, and almost in every country the 
 poetical tribes have been graced with the same epithets, inferring the property 
 of those who employ invention or creation. 
 
 Note 5.— Sir Tristrem, p. 361 
 
 •The metrical romance of Sir Tristrem. first published by Sir W^alter Scott in 
 1804, who ascribed it to Thomas of Ercildoune, called the Rhymer {Laing). 
 
 Note 6.— Wild Cattle, p. 375 
 
 These bulls are thus described by Hector Boetius, concerning which he says :— 
 
 In this wood (namely the Caledonian wood> were sometime white bulls with 
 535 
 
536 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 crisp and curling manes, like fierce lions ; and though they seemed meek and 
 tame in the remanent figure of their bodies, they were more wild than any other 
 beasts, and had such hatred against the seciety and company of men, that they 
 came never in the woods nor lesuries where they found any foot or hand thereof, 
 and many days after they eat not of the herbs that were touched or handled by 
 man. These bulls were so wiid, that they were never taken but slight and crafty 
 labor, and so impatient, that after they were taken they died from insupport- 
 able dolour. As soon as any man invaded these bulls, they rushed with such 
 terrible press upon him that they struck him to the earth, taking no fear of 
 hounds, sharp lances, or other most penetrative weapons.— Boetius, Chron. Scot., 
 vol. i. p. xxxix. 
 
 The wild cattle of this breed, which are now only known in one manor in Eng- 
 land, that of Chillingham Castle in Northumberland (the seat of the Earl of 
 Tankerville), were, in the memory of man, still preserved in three places in Scot- 
 land, namely, Drumlanrig, Cumbernauld, and the upper park at Hamilton Palace, 
 at all of which places, except the last, I believe, they have now been destroyed, 
 on account of their ferocity. But though those of modern days are remarkable 
 for their white colour, with black muzzles, and exhibiting, in a small degree, the 
 black mane, about three or four inches long, by which the bulls in particular are 
 distinguished, they do not by any means come near the terrific description given 
 us by the ancient authors, which has made some naturalists think that these 
 animals .should probably be referred to a different species, though possessing 
 the same general habits, and included in the same genus. The bones which are 
 often discovered in Scottish mosses belong certainly to a race of animals much 
 larger than those of Chillingham, which seldom grow to above 80 stone (of 14 
 lbs.), the general weight varying from 00 to 80 stone. We should be accounted 
 very negligent by one class of readers did we not record that the beef furnished 
 by those cattle is of excellent flavor, and finely marbled. 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter received by Sir Walter Scott some 
 time after the publication of the novel : — 
 
 When it is wished to kill any of the cattle at Chillingham, the keeper goes 
 into the herd on horseback, in which way they are quite accessible, and singling 
 out his victim, takes aim with a large ritte-gun, and seldom fails in bringing him 
 down. It the poor animal makes much bellowing in his agony, and especially if 
 the ground be stained with his blood, his companions become very furious, and 
 are themselves, I believe, accessory to his death. After which, they fly off to a 
 distant part of the park, and he iS drawn away on a sledge. Lord Tankerville is 
 very tenacious of these singular animals : he will on no account part with a liv- 
 ing one, and hardly allows of a sufficient number being killed to leave pasturage 
 for those that remain. 
 
 It happened on one occasion, three or four years ago, that a party visiting at 
 the castle, among whom were some men of war, who had hunted buffaloes in 
 foreign parts, obtained permission to do the keeper's work and shoot one of the 
 wild cattle. They sallied out on horseback, and, duly equipped for the enter- 
 prise, attacked their object. The poor animal received several wounds, but 
 none of them proving fatal, he retired before his pursuers, roaring with pain 
 and rage, till, planting himsdf against a wall or tree, he stood at bay, offering a 
 front of defiance. In this position the youthful heir of the castle. Lord Ossul- 
 ston, rode up to give him the fatal shot. Though warned of the danger of ap- 
 proachmg near to the enraged animal, and especiallv of firing without first hav- 
 ing turned his horse's head in a direction to be ready for flight, he discharged 
 his piece ; but ere he could turn his horse round to make his retreat, the raging 
 beast had plunged his immense horns into its flank. The horse staggered and 
 was near falling, but recovering by a violent effort, he extricated himself from 
 his infuriated pursuer, making off with all the speed his wasting strength sup- 
 plied, his entrails meanwhile dragging on the ground ; till at length he fell, and 
 died at the same moment. The animal was now close upon his rear, and the 
 young lord would unquestionably have shared the fate of his unhappy steed, 
 had not the keeper, deeming it full time to conclude the day's diversion, fired at 
 the instant. His shot brought the beast to the ground, and running in with his 
 large knife, he put a period to its existence. 
 
 This scene of gentlemanly pastime was viewed from a turret of the castle by 
 Lady Tankerville and her female visitors. Such a situation for the mother o"f 
 the young hero was anything but enviable. 
 
 Note 7.— Ruin op Douglas Church, p. 418 
 
 This is a most graphic and accurate description of the present state of the 
 ruin. Its being occupied by the sexton as a dwelling-place, and the whole scene 
 
NOTES TO CASTLE DANGEROUS 537 
 
 of the old man's interview with De Valence, may be classed with our illustrious 
 author's most felicitous imaginings (Note by the Rev. Mr. Stewart of Douglas). 
 
 Note 8.— Fragment by Coleridge, p. 420 
 
 The author has somewhat altered part of a beautiful unpublished fragment 
 of Coleridge :— 
 
 Where is the grave of Sir Arthur Orellan,— 
 Where may the grave of that good knight be ? 
 
 By the marge of a brook, on the slope of Helvellyn, 
 Under the boughs of a young birch-tree. 
 The oak that in summer was pleasant to hear, 
 That rustled in autumn all withered and sear. 
 That whistled and groaned thro' the winter alone — 
 He hath gone, and a birch in his place is grown. 
 The knight's bones are dust. 
 His good sword is rust ; 
 His spirit is with the saints, we trust. 
 
 (Lockhart.) 
 Note 9.— Prison Cages, p. 468 
 
 The queen of Robert the Bruce, and the Countess of Buchan, by whom, as one 
 of Macduff's descent, he was crowned at Scone, were secured in the manner des- 
 cribed. 
 
 Note 10.— Bloody Sykes, p. 485 
 
 The ominous name of Bloodmire Sink or Syke marks a narrow iiollow to the 
 north-west of Douglas Castle, from which it is distant about the third of a mile. 
 Mr. Haddow states that, according to local tradition, the name was given in con- 
 sequence of Sir James Douglas having at this spot intercepted and slain part of 
 the garrison of the castle while De Walton was in command. 
 
 Note 11.— Death op Young Dickson, p. 512 
 
 The fall of this brave stripling by the hand of the English governor, and the 
 stern heroism of the father in turning from the spot where he lay, " a model of 
 beauty and strength," that he might not be withdrawn from the duty which 
 Douglas had assigned him of protecting the Lady of Berkely, excites an interest 
 for both, with whict it is almost to be regretted that history interferes. It was 
 the old man, Thomas Dickson, not his son, who fell. The slogan, " a Douglas— 
 a Douglas," having been prematurely raised. Dickson, who was within the 
 church, thinking that his young lord with his armed band was at hand, drew his 
 sword, and. with only one man to assist hftn, opposed the English, who now 
 rushed to the door. Cut across the middle by an English sword, he still continued 
 his opposition, till he fell lifeless at the threshold. Such is the tradition, and it 
 is supported by a memorial of some authority— a tombstone, still to be seen in 
 the churchyard of Douglas, on which is sculptured a figure of Dickson, support- 
 ing with his left arm his protruding entrails, and raising his sword with the other 
 in the attitude of combat (Note by the Rev. Mr.Stewart of Douglas). 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 OF 
 
 WORDS, PHRASES, AND ALLUSIONS 
 
 abacus, correctly, a frame 
 with colored beads 
 strung on vertical wires. 
 But here probably con- 
 founded with the thyr- 
 sus, the mystic staff of 
 the phallic worshipers 
 Abouten, about 
 Abubeker Alwakel (the 
 Father of the Virgin, the 
 Representative), or bet- 
 ter, Abubekr, as-Saddik 
 (the Truthful), the 
 father-in-law of Moham- 
 med and his first succes- 
 sor (caliph) 
 Accipe hoc, take that 
 AfflictoB sponsce ne oblivis- 
 canis, forget not the 
 bride in her tribulation 
 Ahriman. See Arimanes 
 Ainsell, ownself 
 Alan, wolf-greyhound 
 All, the nephew and son- 
 in-law of Mohammed, 
 and fourth Caliph 
 illah ackbar, God is vic- 
 torious ; Alia hu, God is 
 God ; Allah kerim, God 
 is merciful 
 Alonged is, longeth for 
 Anastashcs, or. Memoirs of 
 a Greek written at the 
 Close of the Eighteenth 
 Century (1819), a ro- 
 mance, by Thomas Hope, 
 an art-collector and vir- 
 tuoso 
 Apayed, pleased 
 Araunah the Jebusite, an 
 allusion to 3 Samuel 
 xxiv. 16 
 Arblast, a cross-bow 
 Arimanes or Ahriman, 
 the Principle of Evil in 
 Zoroaster's religion, the 
 ancient religion of Persia 
 Astrolabe, a circular in- 
 strument for observing 
 the stars 
 dstucious, astute, cunning 
 Asturias, a Christian king- 
 dom of Spain (8th to 10th 
 cent. ; then united to 
 Leon) 
 
 Atdbal, Arab kettle-drum 
 
 Baarenhauters, more cor- 
 rectly bar enhdut er, 
 meaning " bear-skin- 
 ners," a nickname given 
 to the landsknechte, or 
 lanzknechte, of "the 
 16th and 17th centuries 
 in Germany, from their 
 love of lying stretched 
 indolently on bear-skin 
 rugs 
 
 Bagnio, a prison for slaves 
 
 Balsora, Bassora, Bus- 
 sorah, or Basrah, for- 
 merly one of the great 
 cities of the Orient, 
 stands on the river 
 Tigris-Euphrates, 60 or 
 70 miles from its mouth 
 
 Barb, a horse of Barbary 
 (Morocco) breed 
 
 Bayard, blind. See Blind 
 Bayard 
 
 Beau garqon, beau, man 
 of fashion 
 
 Beau-seant, the black and 
 white standard of the 
 Knights Templars. See 
 Ivanhoe, footnote, p. 115 
 
 Belle aniie, mistress 
 
 Benedictio Domini, etc. (p. 
 90), the Lord's blessing 
 be with thee ! 
 
 Benefit of clergy, the priv- 
 ilege claimed by one who 
 could read, to escape the 
 sentence, on his first 
 conviction for certain 
 offenses ; finally abol- 
 ished in 1837 
 
 Benevent, or Benevento, 
 a city of Southern Italy 
 
 Blind Bayard, the famous 
 steed of Amadisof Gaul, 
 afterwards belonged to 
 the hero Rinaldo 
 
 Blond el, the favorite 
 minstrel of Richard, 
 who. according to the 
 well-known legend, dis- 
 covered his place of im- 
 prisonment in Germany 
 
 Bode, a message 
 539 
 
 Borak of the Prophet, a 
 new sort of beast, with 
 the face of a man, emer- 
 alds for eyes, and bright 
 jewels in its wings, 
 which, as Mohammed 
 saw in a vision, carried 
 him through the air to 
 the gate of Jerusalem 
 
 B oru ss i a, the eastern 
 parts of modern Prussia 
 
 Brigandine, or brigantine, 
 a coat of scale or plate 
 armor 
 
 Burgonet, a kind of hel- 
 met 
 
 Byzant, a gold coin=10s. 
 to £1, struck at Byzan- 
 tium, and widely current 
 in the Middle Ages 
 
 Caaba, Holy, the holiest 
 temple in Mecca, the 
 spot to which all Moham- 
 medans long to make a 
 pilgrimage, at least 
 once, before they die ; 
 also a greatly venerated 
 black stone in that tem- 
 ple 
 
 Caftan, a long vest with 
 sleeves, worn under an 
 outer coat, and fastened 
 by a girdle round the 
 waist 
 
 Caliph, the title of the suc- 
 cessors of the Prophet 
 Mohammed as political 
 and religious head of the 
 Moslem world 
 
 Camel-driver of Mecca, 
 Mohammed, who origin- 
 ally followed that call- 
 ing 
 
 Camiscia, or camicia, a 
 large kind of shirt 
 
 Cangiar, or canjiar, a 
 small two-edged Arab 
 cutlass, a poniard 
 
 Curcanet, a jeweled 
 chain, necklace, collar 
 
 Carff, carved 
 
 Castrametation, the art of 
 measuring and laying 
 out a camp 
 
540 
 
 WAVM^BLJiY NOVELS 
 
 Chappe, a long riding 
 cloak or mantle 
 
 Charegites, more properly 
 Kharijis, a puritanical 
 sect or party of Islam, 
 who originated in the 7th 
 century 
 
 Chios, an island off the 
 west coast of Asia Minor 
 
 Christian maiden brought 
 Saracens into Spain (p. 
 278). Count Julian, a 
 vassal of Roderick, king 
 of the Goths, is said to 
 have invited the Moors 
 or Saracens over from 
 Africa into Spain be- 
 cause the king had rav- 
 ished F 1 o r i n d a his 
 daughter 
 
 Clergy, benefit, of. 
 
 Benefit of clergy 
 '/•, I confes 
 
 See 
 it, I 
 
 Confiteo, 
 admit it 
 
 Consecrated bread, to 
 swallow a piece was the 
 ordeal imposed upon 
 those accused of perjury 
 
 Coptish. The Copts were 
 the Christian descend- 
 ants of the ancient Egyp- 
 tians 
 
 Costard, the head— a term 
 of contempt 
 
 Cote, to outrun and get be- 
 fore 
 
 Coz, contraction for cousin 
 —a familiar term of ad- 
 dress 
 
 Cranes, flight of. See 
 Phalanx 
 
 Curtal, short 
 
 Cymar, a thin, almost 
 transparent tissue 
 
 Cyprus, King of, Isaac 
 Comnenus, a nephew of 
 the reigning emperor of 
 Byzantium (Constanti- 
 nople), who was de- 
 throned by Richard 
 when on his way to Pal- 
 estine 
 
 Damavend, a mountain in 
 the norlh (if Persia 
 
 Denis Mumit jnir, ilii' war- 
 cry of the KnMirlL. Ill full 
 form U- MoHtJnir de St. 
 Denis, alhidiiig to the 
 hill (Montjoie) near Paris 
 on which St. Denis suf- 
 fered (joyful) martyr- 
 dom 
 
 Descant, a discourse 
 
 Despardieux, probably a 
 stronger form of Par 
 Dieu 7 By God 
 
 Dickon, a diminutive for 
 Richard 
 
 Dimarjet, or Dunmyat, a 
 prominent hill 3 miles 
 northeast of Stirling 
 
 Discipline, a scourge 
 
 Divan, a council 
 
 Dog, duel betwixt man 
 and See Duel, etc. 
 
 Dromond, a large ship or 
 transport vessel 
 
 Droves, Highland. See 
 Highland droves 
 
 Dudgeon-dagger, a dagger 
 with a boxwood haft 
 
 Duel betwixt man and dog 
 (p. 254), no doubt the 
 figlit between the " dog 
 of Montargis" and the 
 murderer of the animal's 
 master, which took 
 place, however, in 1371. 
 See the World, No. 113 
 
 Eblis, chief of the jinn, or 
 evil spirits of Moham- 
 medan belief who was 
 cast out of Paradise by 
 Allah (God) because he 
 refused to worship 
 Adam 
 
 Egypt and Syria, King of, 
 Saladin, who, whilst 
 lieutenant for Nureddin, 
 emir of Damascus, con- 
 quered Egypt (1170-71) 
 
 Eke, also, likewise 
 
 Eld, elders, old men 
 
 El Hakim, means " the 
 
 Elias, our founder (p. 
 176), according to an old 
 legend, the Carmelite 
 order was founded by 
 Elijah (Elias) the pro- 
 phet, who was so closely 
 associated with Mount 
 Carmel 
 
 Elritch, or Eldritch, 
 weird, wild, strange 
 
 Emir, an independent 
 prince, or the governor 
 of a province 
 
 Engaddi, or Engedi, on the 
 west shore of the Dead 
 Sea 
 
 Enow, enough, several 
 
 Erst, before 
 
 Fakir, a Hindu ascetic or 
 mendicant 
 
 Famagosta, a seaport on 
 the east side of (Cyprus, 
 and capital of Isaac, the 
 king whom Richard de- 
 posed on his way to the 
 Holy Land 
 
 Faun, a Roman rustic div- 
 inity, with short horns, 
 pointed ears, a goat's 
 tail, and cloven feet 
 
 Feriatur leo, let the lion 
 be struck down 
 
 Flayn, flayed 
 
 Forbar, deny, refuse 
 
 Frangistan, the country 
 of the Franks, i.e. 
 Europe 
 
 Frank, the name given by 
 Orientals to the peoples 
 of Western Europe 
 
 Front-stall, the piece of 
 armor that protected a 
 horse's face 
 
 Fytte, or Jit, a song, story 
 in verse 
 
 Gaber, to vie in telling 
 marvelous stories d ki 
 Munchhausen 
 
 Gaie science, the art of 
 the minstrel or trouba- 
 dour 
 
 Gaze-hoitnd, a hound that 
 pursues by sight rather 
 than by scent, a grey- 
 hound 
 
 Gear, business, affair 
 
 Genii (pi.), the jinn or evil 
 spirits of Moslem belief 
 
 Ghittern, or gittern, a 
 stringed instrument of 
 music resembling a 
 guitar 
 
 Giaougi, or Gyges, a 
 Lydian king, who pos- 
 sessed a ring which, 
 when he wore it, ren 
 dered him invisible 
 
 Giaour, a contemptuous 
 Iby] 
 medans to all non-Mo- 
 
 term applied by Moham- 
 
 hammedans 
 
 Ginnistan, the mythical 
 land of the jinn or evil 
 spirits 
 
 Gloria Patri, Glory to the 
 Father 
 
 Godfrey (p. 189), or f?od- 
 frey of Bouillon, leader 
 of the first Crusade, de- 
 clined the crown of Je- 
 rusalem, after the cap- 
 ture of the Holy City in 
 1099, on the plea that he 
 could not wear a crown 
 of gold where his Master 
 had worn one of thorns 
 
 Gramarye, magic or nec- 
 romancy 
 
 Guy, King of Jerusalem, 
 Guy of Lusignan, chosen 
 king of Jerusalem in 1186 
 
 Hadgi, or Hajji, a Moham- 
 medan who l.ias made 
 the pilgrimage to Mecca 
 
 Hadji Baba, two romances 
 entitled Tlie adventures 
 of Hajji Baba of Ispahan 
 (1824) and Hajji Baba in 
 England (1828), by James 
 Morier 
 
 Haik, a kind of shawl or 
 cloak 
 
 Hamako, a person touched 
 with insanity 
 
 Haroun, Aaron, the 
 brother of Moses 
 
 Hegira, orHejira, Moham- 
 
0L08SABT 
 
 541 
 
 med's {Light from Mecca 
 on 13th September (522 
 
 Henry the iStern, the Em- 
 peror Henry VI. 
 
 Hie, high, uoble 
 
 Boch lebe der Herzog 
 Leopold, Long live Duke 
 Leopold 1 
 
 Hoffnarr, more correctly 
 hofnarr, court jester 
 
 Homage (Scottish) to Eng- 
 land (p. 97), extorted 
 from WiUiam the Lion 
 of Scotland, after he 
 was captured at Aln- 
 wick by the men of 
 Yorkshire in 1174 
 
 Houris, the beautiful dam- 
 sels that are to wait 
 upon faithful Moham- 
 medans in Paradise 
 
 Hke, the same 
 
 Jmaum, the official who 
 recites the prayers in a 
 mosque, and leads the 
 worshipers in their de- 
 votions 
 
 Jn articulo mortis, at the 
 point of death 
 
 In pari casu, in the same 
 condition, on the same 
 terms 
 
 Irak, Persia, more proper- 
 ly a (western) province 
 of that country 
 
 Isaack, a celebrated Arab 
 musician, who lived in 
 the reigns of the Caliph 
 Haroun ar-Rashid and 
 his son Al-Mamun 
 
 Issa ben Mariam, Jesus, 
 the son of Mary 
 
 Istakhar, an ancient city 
 of southern Persia, near 
 the still older Persepo- 
 lis, and the capital of 
 the Sassanian dynasty 
 of Persian king 
 
 Jerid, or Jereed, a wooden 
 javehn, five feet long, 
 used in mimic combats 
 
 Jerusalem, dethroned 
 
 queen of, Sybilla, sis- 
 ter and second successor 
 of Baldwin IV., king of 
 Jerusalem, who, when 
 she married Guy of Lu- 
 signan in 1186, resigned 
 her crown to hira 
 
 Jerusalem, Latin king- 
 dom of, founded by the 
 chiefs of the first Cru- 
 sade in 1099, destroyed 
 by the Turkish Charis- 
 niians in 1244 
 
 Jongleur, traveling min- 
 strel who frequented 
 tournaments. castles, 
 and popular festivals 
 
 Joyeuse science, art of 
 
 minstrelsy 
 Jure divino, by divine 
 
 right 
 
 Kaiser, emperor of the 
 Holy Roman Empire 
 
 Kebla, the point towards 
 which Mohammedans 
 turn when they pray, 
 i.e. Mecca 
 
 Kliirkhah, a dervish's 
 habit or robe 
 
 Lai, a short lyric, song, 
 lay 
 
 Lanceknecht, lands- 
 
 knechte, or lanzknechte, 
 mercenary soldiers 
 armed with pikes and 
 swords, and first organ- 
 ized by the Emperor 
 Maximilian in 1487 
 
 Lanercost, a celebrated 
 Augustinian priory, 
 
 some 16 miles northeast 
 of Carlisle 
 
 Leasing, fibbing, telling 
 falsehoods 
 
 Lelies, a corruption of 
 the Arab war-cry, " La 
 ilaha ilia Hlah," i.e. 
 There is no god but 
 God 
 
 Leon, a Christian kingdom 
 of Spain (10th to 13th 
 cent.) 
 
 Leopold, Grand Duke of 
 Austria (p. 115). It was 
 his father Henry, not 
 Leopold himself, who 
 was made " duke," and 
 by Frederick I., not 
 Henry the Stern 
 
 Libbard, leopard 
 
 Lingua franca, a lan- 
 guage that is used as a 
 common medium of 
 communication 
 
 Livand, living 
 
 Lokman, a mythical per- 
 sonage, variously identi- 
 fied as Balaam, as Job"s 
 nephew or grandson, as 
 a Nubian contemporary 
 of David, and the tra- 
 ditionary author of a 
 collection of Arabic 
 fables 
 
 Lombardy peddlers. The 
 people of the Italian 
 cities of Lombardy were 
 famous traders to all 
 parts of Europe in the 
 times of the Crusades 
 
 Lord of speech, the tongue 
 
 Los, i. e. laus, praise, re- 
 nown 
 
 Lower Empire, the East- 
 ern, Byzantine, or Greek 
 empire 
 Lyme-hound, a dog held 
 
 in a learn or strap, a 
 boar-hound 
 
 Magi, the priests of the 
 religion of Zoroaster ; 
 they practised divina- 
 tion and magic 
 
 Magna est Veritas et prcev- 
 alebit. Truth is great 
 and it will prevail 
 
 Mahound, a contempt- 
 uous name for Mahomet, 
 represented as a devil in 
 the medi£eval mystery 
 plays of Europe 
 
 Mangonel, a large cata- 
 pult for hurling stones 
 
 Mansour. the pen-name of 
 Firdousi, the great Per- 
 sian poet (940-1020) 
 
 Marabout, a Moham- 
 medan ascetic or saint, 
 especially in North 
 Africa 
 
 Maravedi, a copper coin 
 of Portugal=l-13 penny 
 
 Marmoset, a conceited 
 puppy 
 
 Maronites, an ancient 
 Christian sect of Syria 
 
 Maugis, a knight skilled in 
 magic, the hero of the 
 mediaeval romance 
 Maugis VAygremont 
 
 Mazer, a large wooden 
 drinking-bowl, mounted 
 with silver 
 
 Mea. culpa, the fault is 
 mine, I am to blame 
 
 Melech Ric, King Richard 
 
 Momenta mori, remem- 
 ber, you must die 
 
 Menus plaisirs, little 
 pleasures 
 
 Merlin, the magician in 
 the stories of King Ar- 
 thur and his knights of 
 the Round Table 
 
 Meynie, retinue, house- 
 hold 
 
 Minnesinger, the love- 
 poets and minstrels of 
 mediaeval Germany 
 
 Mirglip (the water- 
 drinker). See Weber's 
 Tales of the East, vol. 
 iii. p. 556 
 
 Mohammed Mohadi. See 
 Twelfth imaum 
 
 Mollahs, the Mohamme- 
 dan clergy, who inter- 
 pret the Koran 
 
 Monofroch, a one-wheeled 
 car or vehicle 
 
 Montserrat, or monte ser- 
 rato, a serrated or saw- 
 edged mountain. This 
 name is given to a fan- 
 tastically-shaped moun- 
 tain, 30 miles from Bar- 
 celona in Spain. The 
 real Marquis's name was 
 
542 
 
 WA VERLE Y N VEL S 
 
 Montferrat, and he was 
 of Italian descent 
 
 Moor, Moorish, taken, in- 
 correctly, as synony- 
 mous with Arab, Turk, 
 Saracen {q. v.) 
 
 Mortier, a steel morion or 
 soldier's cap 
 
 Mosleviah, Moslems or 
 Mohammedans 
 
 Moiissa ben Aniran, Moses 
 the son of Ainran. The 
 allusion on p. 183 is to 
 Numbers xx. 11 
 
 Muezzin, the officer of a 
 mosque who proclaims 
 the hours of prayer from 
 the highest stage of the 
 minaret or tower 
 
 Murrey-colored, mulberry 
 or dark red 
 
 Nazareiie, a term applied 
 in contempt to the early 
 Christians, as followers 
 of Jesus of Nazareth 
 
 Ne, not, nor 
 
 Nierenstein, a Rhine wine 
 grown at Nierenstein, 10 
 miles south of Mainz 
 
 Nourissaiit, nourishing 
 
 Old Man of the Mountain, 
 the head of the Moham- 
 medan sect of the Ish- 
 maelites or Assassins, 
 who practised political 
 assassination as part of 
 their religious creed. 
 He lived on the moun- 
 tain of Alamut in Persia 
 
 Omrah, court officer, 
 strictly the title of the 
 twenty-four councilloi-s 
 of the Great Mogul (em- 
 peror) of Delhi 
 
 Oriflamme, the sacred 
 banner of France 
 
 Orvietan, an antidote to 
 poison, said to have been 
 first compounded at Or- 
 vieto in Spain 
 
 Oui, yes ; this word was 
 used in the north of 
 France, in contradistinc- 
 tion to oc (yes), employed 
 in the south of France 
 
 Par amours, for love 
 (illicit) 
 
 Partes, divide share 
 amongst 
 
 Par vote du fait, by a 
 duel, by violence 
 
 Passant, walking — a term 
 in heraldry 
 
 Pavesse, or pavise. a large 
 triangular shield, cover- 
 ing the entire person 
 
 Paynim, pagan ; paynim- 
 rie, heathendom 
 
 Pennoncelle, a small flag 
 at the end of a spear 
 
 Perdu, hidden, concealed 
 
 Periapt, an amulet, charm 
 
 Phalanx (of cranes). 
 These birds usually fly 
 in a wedge-shaped body, 
 a single bird leading the 
 w^ay, closely followed by 
 two others, and they by 
 three more, and so on. 
 Compare Schiller's Kra- 
 niche des Ibykus 
 
 Pilau, a dish of mutton, 
 kid, or fowl, boiled with 
 rice, butter, and spices 
 
 Pouncet-box, a box to hold 
 perfumes 
 
 Precept o ries, religious 
 houses of the Templars 
 
 Prester John, a mythical 
 Christian priest-king 
 ruling somewhere in the 
 far east of Asia, later 
 identified with th^ Chris- 
 tian king of Abyssinia 
 
 Prometheus, according to 
 one version of the legend 
 made men out of clay 
 and water 
 
 Prone, extolled, cried up 
 
 ProvediTore, a high officer 
 of state of Venice 
 
 Qtiod erat demonstran- 
 dum, which was to be 
 proved 
 
 Quotha, forsooth 
 
 Rashid, an observatory 
 Red-hot globe of iron, was 
 carried a certain dis- 
 tance as an ordeal to 
 determine guilt or inno- 
 cence 
 Rood, a cross, crucifix 
 Rote, a stringed instru- 
 ment played by turning 
 a wheel 
 Rudpiki, probably a slip 
 for Rudiki, a poet who 
 lived at the court of 
 Bokhars and Samar- 
 cand, in the 10th cen- 
 tury. The sentiment in 
 the text (p. 27), was how- 
 ever, uttered by the 
 great Persian poet Hafiz 
 Rustan, or Rustem, the 
 traditionary hero of 
 Persia, was a brave and 
 a faithful general 
 
 Saladin, a Turh(p. 106). 
 Saladin was by birth a 
 Kurd, but he ruled the 
 Turks of Asia Minor, 
 who were the most in- 
 veterate foes of the 
 Crusaders 
 
 Salam aliciim. Peace be 
 
 with you, the usual Mo 
 hammedan greeting 
 
 Samite, a special kind of 
 gold clotii 
 
 Suatvn, a Moslem saint 
 
 Saracen, is not correctly, 
 the name of a nation, 
 but the common desig- 
 nation which the Cru- 
 saders gave to all their 
 3Ioslem enemies 
 
 Saracens brought into 
 Spain (p. 278). See 
 Christian maiden, etc. 
 
 Sarbacane, tube for blow- 
 ing small poisoned darts 
 through, blow-gun 
 
 Sathanas, Satan, devil 
 
 Scheik. See Old Man of 
 the Mountain 
 
 Schiraz, an ancient and 
 renowned city of Persia 
 
 Scrub, in George Far- 
 quhar's Beaux's Strata- 
 gem (1707), Act iii. sc.l 
 
 Secret, a shirt of mail worn 
 under the armor 
 
 Seljook, or Seljuk, the 
 name, properly, of a 
 ruling dynasty of the 
 Turks, who are by race 
 quite distinct from the 
 Kurds. Saladin's father 
 was a provincial gover- 
 nor under the Seljuk 
 rulers 
 
 Seven oceans, according to 
 Arab geographers, there 
 are seven earths 
 
 Shag, stuff of coarse cloth 
 or rough hair 
 
 Shalm. or Sharvm, a kind 
 of clarinet or hautboy 
 I Sheerkohf. or Shirkoh, the 
 name of Saladin's uncle, 
 and a Kurd by race 
 
 Siddim. valley of, where 
 Sodom and Gomorrah 
 formerly stood, now in 
 great part covered by 
 the Dead Sea 
 
 Simoom a hot, suffocating 
 wind that blows in the 
 deserts of Africa and 
 Arabia 
 
 Soldan, or soudan, sultar 
 
 S ol im aim ben Dacrud. 
 Solomon, the son of 
 David 
 
 Spain, Saracens brought 
 into (p. 278). See Chris- 
 tian maiden, etc. 
 
 Speech lord of, the tongue 
 
 Spinichsprecher, sayer of 
 sayings 
 
 Standard battle of the, 
 fought near Northaller- 
 ton in Yorkshire, be- 
 tween the English and 
 the Scotch led by David 
 I. in li:W. the latter suf- 
 fering defeat 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 543 
 
 Stoop, swoop of a falcon 
 
 Stradiots, or titratiots, 
 light cavalry recruited 
 by Venice in Albania and 
 Morea (Greece; 
 
 S t yp i c, a medicine to 
 check the flow of blood 
 from a wound 
 
 Surcoat, a long loose gar- 
 ment worn over armor 
 
 Swarte, black, swarthy 
 
 Swilke, of such like, of 
 that kind 
 
 Swyche, such 
 
 Tabard, a long tunic or 
 upper cloak 
 
 Tabour, a kind of kettle- 
 drum 
 
 Tabouret, a low seat with- 
 out arms or back ; a 
 tabour, i. e. a musical 
 instrument 
 
 Tarriance, delay 
 
 Tecbir, the formula Allah 
 akbar (God is great), the 
 Arab war-cry 
 
 Tent (a wound), to ex- 
 amine or probe 
 
 Terniagaunt, an Oriental 
 spirit of violent and 
 tumultuous behavior, 
 represented as a devil in 
 the mediaeval mystery 
 plays of Europe 
 
 Teutonic Knights, a re- 
 ligious, military order, 
 founded in Palestine in 
 1190 (1197), but from 1325 
 to 1386 engaged in fight- 
 ing the heathen Prus- 
 sians and Lithuanians, 
 and still (1S94) in exis- 
 tence as an (aristocratic) 
 secular order, with 
 
 branches in Vienna and 
 Utrecht 
 
 Tishbite Elijah the pro- 
 phet 
 
 Tolpach, a Tartar hat 
 made of black lamb's- 
 wool 
 
 Tophet, or Toxiheth, a 
 valley near Jerusalem, 
 where the filth and 
 sewage of the city were 
 deposited and burnt 
 
 Trained, enticed away by 
 a trick or stratagem 
 
 Trouveur, poets of chiv- 
 alry in Northern France 
 
 Turks, regarded in this 
 novel as synonymous 
 with Saracens 
 
 Twelfth iniaum, or caliph, 
 named Mohammed, dis- 
 appeared when only 
 twelve years of age. The 
 Mohammedans expect 
 him to return some day, 
 to inaugurate a reign of 
 peace and happiness. 
 This expected prophet 
 is called the Mahdi 
 (Mohadi) 
 
 Ulemat, a Moslem ecclesi- 
 astic of high rank 
 
 Untented (conscience,) 
 one the pain of which is 
 not lessened 
 
 Venerie, the chase 
 
 Venetian skip2}ers. The 
 Venetians made great 
 gains by shipping the 
 Crusaders and their sup 
 piles to the East 
 
 Vera crux, the true cross 
 
 Vert, a game forest 
 
 T7s, face, visage 
 
 Waits, hautboys, oboes 
 Warlock, a wizard 
 Wetc, knoweth 
 Williebnus, William, i.e 
 
 William III. 
 Wrest, a key for tuning 4 
 
 harp 
 
 Yacoun, or Zakum, in Mo- 
 hammedan faith, a tree 
 of the infernal regions, 
 that produces heads of 
 demons instead of fruit 
 
 Yemen, the most south- 
 erly province of Arabia 
 
 Yezed ben Soi^hian, one 
 of the Arab generals 
 sent to conquer Syria, 
 though the real head of 
 the invading army was 
 Khelid (the sword of the 
 Lord) 
 
 Ysop, or ^a^sop, the fable- 
 teller, is traditionally 
 said to have been de- 
 formed and a monster of 
 ugliness 
 
 Yso uf ben Yago w b e, 
 Joseph, the son of (the 
 patriarch) Jacob 
 
 Zablestan, or Zabulistan, 
 is Ghazni. in modern 
 Afghanistan 
 
 Zee h in, or zecchino, 
 sequin, a gold coin of 
 Venice worth about 9s. 
 4d. 
 
 Zenana, the women's 
 apartments in an Ori- 
 ental house 
 
 Zohauk, or Zohak. Set 
 Note 3, p. 416 
 
INDEX TO THE TALISMAN 
 
 A.BDALLAH EL HADGI, 281 
 
 A.bouker, Caliph, advice to his general, 
 
 19 
 Adonbec el Hakim. See Saladin 
 Ahrirnan, hymn of, 31, 528 
 Allen, Long, English soldier, 216 
 Amaury, Giles de. See Templars, Grand 
 
 Master of 
 Arab horses, 9, 235 
 Arimanes, Principle of Evil, 31 
 Assisses de Jerusalem, 108, 528 
 Austria, Archduke of. See Leopold 
 Author's Introduction, v 
 
 Berengaria, Queen, at Engaddi, 49 ; 
 her jest with Sir Kenneth, 141 ; dis 
 tress at the result, 145, 167 ; her his- 
 tory, 165 ; intercedes for Sir Kenneth, 
 172 ; is visited by Richard, 207 
 
 Betrothed, the novel, v 
 
 Blaeklees, Tomalin, English soldier, 217 
 
 Blondelde Nesle, 268 ; his song of " The 
 Bloody Vest," 273, 275 
 
 " Bloody Vest," song, 273, 275 
 
 Calista, Lady, 141, 166, 177; tells the 
 story of the banner to Richard, 206 
 
 Charegite, the, made to dance, 215 ; 
 attempts to stab Richard, 220 
 
 Chatillon, Reginald de, 529 
 
 Cceur-de-Lion. See Richard 
 
 Couchant Leopard, Knight of the. See 
 Kenneth, Sir 
 
 Crusaders, discords amongst, 59 ; treat 
 secretly with Saladin, 97, 154 ; desire 
 to abandon the Crusade, 193 ; in coun- 
 cil, 197 ; salute Richard's standard, 
 247 
 
 Crusaders, Tales of the, v 
 
 "Dark Ahriman, whom Irak still,' 31 
 David, Prince of Scotland, 304, vi 
 Dead Sea, 1 
 Diamond of the Desert, 11, 21 ; lists at. 
 
 Edith, Lady. See Plantagenet, Edith 
 
 Ellis, Early English Metrical Romances, 
 quoted, ix, .534, ,528 
 
 Engaddi, wilderness of, 26 ; Theo- 
 dorick's cave, 37 ; chapel of, 45 
 
 England, relations with Scotland, 25. 70, 
 528 ; factions in, during Richard's ab- 
 sence, 214 1 
 545 
 
 Florse, Lady, 143, 177 
 
 Gab, gaber, 11, 527 
 
 Genii, Mohammedan belief in, 28 
 
 Georgian cavalry. 285 
 
 Germans, manners of, 116 
 
 Giamschid, legend of, 29, 527 
 
 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, quoted, 529 
 
 Gilsland, Thomas of, or Thomas de 
 Vaux, 61 ; beside Richard's s.ck-bed, 
 65; His prejudice against the Scots, 
 71 ; meets Sir Kenneth, 73; grants 
 protection to his hound. dO ; seeks 
 counsel of the Archbishop of Tyre, 
 86; restrains Richard, '59; compas- 
 sion for Sir Kenneth, Id's ; charged to 
 defy Leopold of Austria, 184 ; returns 
 to Richard's camp, 268 ; suspicious of 
 the Saracens, 283 ; of Saladin, 287 ; 
 note on, 528 
 
 Glossary, 539 
 
 Guenevra, female dwarf, 55 
 
 Hakim, El. See Saladin 
 
 Hamako. See Theodorick 
 
 Hassan, the story-teller, 230 
 
 Holy Land, Author's knowledge of, v 
 
 Horses, Arab, 9, 235 
 
 Hospitallers of St. John, Grand Master 
 
 of, 67 
 Huntinglen, Earl of. See Kenneth, Sir 
 
 Ilderim. See Saladin 
 Introduction, Author's, v 
 
 James, History of Chivalry, quoted, 526 
 Jamshid, legend of, 29, 527 
 Jerusalem, kingdom of, 107 ; Assisseg 
 of, 108, 528 
 
 Kenneth, Sir, in the Dead Sea wilder- 
 ness, 1 ; his armor described, 2 : en- 
 counter with tlie Saracen, 5 ; his per- 
 sonal apjiparance, 12 ; conversation 
 with the Saracen, 14 ; declares his 
 name, 2t ; in the wilderness of the 
 Temptation, 26 ; first view of Theo- 
 dorick, 32 ; reproached by Sheerkohf, 
 35 ; in Theodoriek's cave, 37 ; led into 
 the chapel, 43 ; sees the true cross, 46 ; 
 surprised by the dwarfs, 54 ; brings a 
 physician to Richard, 73 ; his poverty, 
 77 ; interview with Richard, 94 ; un- 
 dertakes the watch, 130 ; decoyed 
 away, 134 ; interview with Edith, 146 ; 
 
546 
 
 INDEX TO THE TALISMAN 
 
 finds the banner gone, 148 ; tempted 
 to turn renegade, 153 ; confesses his 
 fault to Richard, 158 ; condemned to 
 die, 163 : reprieved, 183 ; disguised as 
 a Nubian, 'i\\ ; saves Richards life, 
 220; undertakes to discover the stealer 
 of the banner, 222 ; carried away by 
 the Hakim. 22? ; takes the opiate, 236 ; 
 in the camp of Ilderim, 240 ; talks with 
 him about Edith, 242; disguised by 
 bim, 246 ; Roswal tears down Conrade 
 of Montserrat, 251 ; mute interview 
 with Edith, 2M ; fights with Conrade, 
 301 ; his rank disclosed, 304 
 
 Lee Penny, viii, 527 
 
 Leopard, Knight of the. See Kenneth, 
 Sir 
 
 Leopold, Duke of Austria, character- 
 ized by Richard, 66 ; description of, 
 114 ; his liabits and manners, 116 ; 
 jealousy of Richard, 119 ; at the gen- 
 eral council, 198 ; supports Conrade, 
 258 
 
 Lockhart, Sir Simon, of Lee, vii 
 
 Longsword, William, 856 
 
 Melech Rig. See Richard 1. 
 
 Mills, History of the Crusades, vi, 588 
 
 Mohammedans, their ideas of women, 
 15 ; belief in genii, 28; morning prayers 
 of, 231, 297 
 
 Montrose's Lines, 260, 529 
 
 Montserrat, Conrade of. his death, ix, 
 characterized by Richard. 67 ; per- 
 sonal appearance of, 100 ; visits Rich- 
 ard, 101 ; plots against him, 105, 202 ; 
 incites Leopold against him, 119 ; tells 
 Richard of Leopold's insult, 122 ; torn 
 to the ground by Roswal, 251 ; defied 
 to combat by Richard, 255 ; his con- 
 fession interrupted, 298 ; overthrown 
 by Sir Kenneth. 302 ; stabbed Dy the 
 Grand Master of the Templars, 311 
 
 Mortemar, Alberick of. See Theodorick 
 
 Multon, Sir Thomas, 528 
 
 Nectabanus, the dwarf, in the chapel, 
 54 ; decoys Kenneth from the banner, 
 134 ; driven out by Queen Berengaria, 
 145 ; tells of Conrade's assassination, 
 309 
 
 Neville, Sir Henry, chamberlain to 
 Richard, 159 ; brings despatches, 214 ; 
 expostulates with Richard, 223; in 
 attendance, 262, 267 
 
 Nubian slave. See Kenneth, Sir 
 
 Palestine, Author's knowledge of, v 
 Philip, king of France, described by 
 Richard, 66 ; intervenes between him 
 and Leopold, 127 ; his desire to return 
 to Europe, 198 ; presides over the 
 council, 254 
 Plantagenet. Edith, in the chapel at 
 Engaddi, 49 ; her relations to Sir Ken- 
 neth, 51 ; rallied by the Queen, 142, 
 discovers Sir Kenneth in the tent, 145; 
 entreats him to return to his duty, 
 146: proposal towed her to Saladin, 
 154, 161, 195, 528 ; her history. 166 ; " 
 
 tercedes for Sir Kenneth, 174 ; con- [ ^ 
 
 ciliatory visit from Richard, 309; 
 interview with Sir Kenneth, 264 ; 
 tramples on Saladin's proposal, 277; 
 her conversation with Richard, 294 ; 
 unarms Sir Kenneth, 304 
 
 "Remember the Holy Sepulchre," 113 
 Richard I., romantic character of, vi, 
 vii ; illness of, 60 ; his impatience of 
 inactivity, 64 ; receives Saladin's let- 
 ter, 84 ; interview with Sir Kenneth, 
 94 ; consents to be treated by El Ha- 
 kim, 102 ; his contempt for Leopold, 
 115 ; tramples on his banner, 125 ; 
 throws Earl Wallenrode, 126 ; charges 
 Sir Kenneth to watch his standard, 
 130 ; his rage at him for losing it, 158 ; 
 instructions to the executioner, 170; 
 Berengaria's intercession for Sir Ken- 
 neth, ir2 ; El Hakim prevails with 
 him, 180; his assassination threatened. 
 186 ; gives audience to Archbishop of 
 Tyre,^ 193 ; attends the Crusaders' 
 council, 197 ; is charged with arro- 
 gance by the Grand Master of tlie 
 Templars, 199 ; his reply, 201 ; visits 
 Berengaria, 207 ; interview with 
 Edith, 209 ; receives the Nubian, 211 ; 
 hears of factions in England, 214 ; 
 attempt to assassinate him, 220 ; 
 watches the procession, 247 ; im- 
 pfaaches Conrade, 252 ; challenges him 
 to combat, 2.55 ; welcomes Blondel, 
 268 ; criticises his song, 274 ; his bitter 
 reflections, 280 ; on the way to the 
 duel, 282 ; his meeting with Saladin. 
 286 ; shows the strength of his arm, 
 288 ; challenges Saladin, 312 ; metrical 
 romance of, 523 
 Roswal, Sir Kenneth's hound, 77. 79 ; on 
 the watch, 133 ; woimded, 147, 149 ; 
 taken care of by El Hakim, 152 ; tears 
 down Conrade, 251 
 
 St. George's Mount, 113 ; disorderly 
 scene on, 124 ; procession of crusading 
 host past, 247 
 
 Saladin, his encounter with Sir Kenneth, 
 5 ; his personal appearance, 13 : con- 
 versation with Sir Kenneth, 14 ; de- 
 clares his name. 22 ; sings, 27 ; at- 
 tacked by Theodorick of Engaddi, 33 ; 
 heals Sir Kenneth's squire, 77 ; his 
 message to Richard, 84 : questioned 
 by the Archbishop of Tyre, 88 : at- 
 tends Richard, 102 ; begs to cure Ros- 
 wal, 150 ; tempts Sir Kenneth to join 
 his host, 152 ; proposal to wed Edith, 
 154. 161, 195, 528; intercedes for Sir 
 Kenneth, 179 ; sends the Nubian slave 
 to Richard, 211 ; carries him off. 227,- 
 gives him the opiate. 2.36 ; reveals 
 himself as Ilderim, 240 ; talks of Edith, 
 242 ; his meeting with Richard, 286 ; 
 his dexterous swordsmanship, 289; 
 impressive inscription in his banquet- 
 ing-tent, 308; strikes oflf the Templar's 
 head, 310 ; declines Richard's chal- 
 lenge, 313 
 
 Saracens, 8 ; their reception of Richard 
 
INDEX TO THE TALISMAN 
 
 547 
 
 Schwanker, Jonas, Leopold's fool, 117, 
 128, 258 
 
 Scotland, relations with England, 25, 70, 
 528 
 
 Scots. " fair aud false," 160, 528 
 
 Sheerkohf. See Saladin 
 
 Simpson, Sir J. Y., 527 
 
 Spi-Hchsprecher, Leopold's, 117, 128, 258 
 
 Stradiots, 250 
 
 Strauchan, Sir Kenneth's squire, 77, 90 
 
 Tales of the Ci-usaders, v 
 
 Talisman, the novel, vi 
 
 Talisman, Saladin's, 181 ; presented to 
 Sir Kenneth, 314. See also Lee Penny 
 
 Templars, character of, 233 
 
 Templars, Grand Blaster of, described 
 by Richard, &' ; personal appearance, 
 100 ; visits Richard, 101 ; plots against 
 him, 105, 202 ; charges him with arro- 
 gance, 190 • interrupts Conrade's con- 
 fession, 298 ; death of, 310, 529 
 
 ThaJurs, or Trudentes, 526 
 
 Theodorick of Engaddi, attacks Saladin, 
 83 ; his cave, 37 ; account of his life, 
 89, 18"; leads Sir Kennetk into the 
 
 chapel, 45 ; intercedes for him, 176 ; 
 stops Gilsland, 185 ; foretells danger 
 to Richard. 186 ; dismissed by the 
 Grand Master, 298 
 
 Tristrem, Sir, and forest laws, 260, 529 
 
 Trudentes, or Thafurs, 526 
 
 " 'Twas near the fair city of Benevent," 
 273 
 
 Tyre, Archbishop of, advises Gilsland, 
 86 ; cross-examines El Hakim, 88 ; his 
 agitation, 92 ; has audience of Rich- 
 ard, 193 ; intervenes between Richard 
 and Conrade, 256 
 
 Vaux, Thomas de. See Gilsland, Thorn 
 
 as of 
 Venetian, proveditore, 251, 255 
 
 Wallenrode, Earl, 126 
 
 Wilderness, of the Dead Sea, 1 ; of the 
 
 Temptation, 26 
 Woodstall, Henry, English soldier, 816 
 
 ZoHAUK, legend of, 29 
 
INDEX TO CASTLE DANGEROUS 
 
 AxE3^ANDER III., Story of, 353 
 Anthony, English soldier, 337 
 Augustine, minstrel's boy. See Berke- ] 
 
 ly, Augusta de „,^ ^ 
 
 Author, his Introduction, 317 ; Conclu- 
 sion, 521 
 Barbour, Bruce, quoted, 317, 320, 532 
 Bend-the-Bow, English soldier, 337 
 Berkely, Augusta de, 327 ; at Hazelside, 
 339 ; left at St. Bride' s abbey, 34o ; 
 interrogated by Aymer de "^^a ^nce, 
 431 ; escapes from the abbey, 434, 4W ; 
 her vow, 436 ; her letter to De Walton 
 and De Valence, 447 ; guided by Lord 
 James Douglas, 406; taken to De 
 Walton, 476 ; at Bloody bykes, 481 ; 
 at Douglas church, 499 ; given up to 
 De Walton, 517 
 Bertram, the minstrel, 326 ; hails Dick- 
 son, 3*4 ; reads the soldiers' instruc- 
 tions, 340 : taken to Castle Douglas, 
 347 ; his story of Alexander III., 352 ; 
 of James of Douglas, 334 ; of Thomas 
 the Rhymer, 360; examined by De 
 Walton, 401 ; his missive to Augusta 
 de Berkely, 407 ; visited in the dun- 
 geon, 452; in Greenleaf's custody, 
 489 ; in Douglas churchyard, 499 
 Black stock, table, 328 
 Bloody Sykes, 485, 495, 537 
 Blore, Sepulchral Antiquities, 321 
 Bruce, extracts from, 317, 320, 532 
 Bruce, Robert, 515 
 Cages, for prisoners, 469, 537 
 Cairutable Hills, 325 , ^ , 
 
 Castle Dangerous. See Douglas Castle 
 Castle Dangerous, the novel, 317 
 Cattle, wild, 379, 535 
 Chillingham, 536 
 Coleridge, fragment by, 420, 537 
 
 Dickson, Charles, 3:35; death of, 311, 
 537 
 
 Dickson, Thomas, 330, 334, 530, 632 ; wit- 
 nesses his son's death, 512 
 
 Dougl IS, Lord James, 317, 354 ; his war- 
 like energy, 373 ; appears in Douglas 
 town, 412 ; guides Augusta de Berke- 
 ly, 466 ; meets his adherents, 475 ; 
 fights De Walton, 485 ; challenges him 
 again, 509 ; Hume of Godscroft's ac- 
 count of him, 5-30 ; Barbour's, 532 
 
 Douglus, village, 254 ; church, 412, 498 
 536 
 
 Douglas Burn, 323, 535 
 
 Douglas Castle, 318, 354, 364 ; Augusta 
 de Berkely's vow regarding, 436 ; dun- 
 geon of, 451 ; surrendered to Lord 
 James Douglas, 516; Hamilton of 
 Bangour's account of, 535 
 
 Douglas Dale, 319, 323 
 
 Douglas Larder, 357, 533 
 
 Fabian, squire. See Harboth el, Fabian 
 
 Finlay, Alexander, 319 
 
 Fleming, Malcolm, of Biggar, 410 ; 
 rescued by Margaret de Hautlieu, 
 513 ; subsequent relations with her, 
 518 
 
 Glasgow, Bishop of, 501 ; visits Turn- 
 bull, 504 
 
 Gordon, Patrick, quoted, 317 
 
 Greenleaf, Gilbert. 306 ; his jealous sus- 
 picions, 370 ; conference with De Wal- 
 ton, 397 ; as Bertram's custodian, 
 489 ; in Douglas churchyard, 499 
 
 Haddow, Thomas, 319; notes by, 535, 
 
 537 
 Hamilton of Wishaw, quoted, 535 
 HarbotheL Fabian, 366 ; eavesdropping, 
 
 371 ; at St. Bride's church, 423 
 Hattely, or Hautlieu, Maurice de, 440 
 Hautlieu, Margaret de, 435 ; her story, 
 
 440 ; guides Augusta de Berkely, 462 ; 
 
 saves Malcolm Fleming, 513; subse 
 
 quent relations with him, 518 
 Hazelside, .332. 341, 535 
 HoUinshed. quoted, 318 
 Hugonet, Hugo. 360 
 Hume of Godscroft, quoted, 321, 530 
 Hunting, in Douglas Dale, 477 
 
 Introduction, Author's, 317 
 
 Jerome, Abbot, 408 ; under examina 
 tion, 426 
 
 Loudon Hill, battle of, 515 
 MacAdam, roadmakor, 3X13, 535 
 Maker, or poet, 4.50. 535 
 Meredith, Welsh knight, 515 
 Minstrel. See Bertram 
 Minstrelsy, 349 
 
 Monteney, Sir Philip de, 389, 466 
 OssuLSTON, Lord, 375 
 
 Pembroke, Earl of, 390, 515 
 
 648 
 
INDBX TO CASTLE DANGEROUS 
 
 549 
 
 Poet, or maker, 450, 535 
 
 Powheid, Lazarus, sexton, 417; defies 
 
 De Valence, 424 
 Prison cages, 469, 537 
 
 Rhymer, Thomas the, tale of, 360 ; his 
 book of prophecies, 491 
 
 St. Bride's abbey, 319, 333, 418 
 
 Sir Tristrein, poem, 361, 535 
 
 Stewart, Rev. Mr., of Douglas, 536, 537 
 
 ■"hirlwall, Thruswall, or Thyrwall, 
 
 James of, 357, 531, 53;} 
 Ihomas the Rhymer. See Rhymer, 
 
 Thomas the 
 Trouveur, 5.35 
 Turnbull, Michael, 383 ; leads Augusta 
 
 de Berkely to De Walton, 477, 480 ; 
 
 struck down by him, 484 ; death of. 
 
 504 
 
 Ursula, Sister. See Hautlieu. Mar- 
 garet de 
 
 Valence, Aymer de, 344 ; takes Ber- 
 tram to Douglas Castle, »47 ; ent«rs 
 
 the castle, 366; differences with De 
 Walton, 375, 388, 393 ; receives a let- 
 ter from Pembroke, .390 ; encounters 
 the mysterious knight, 412; seeks the 
 sexton, 416; questions Abbot Jerome. 
 426 ; interview with Augusta de 
 Berkely, 431 ; visits Bertram in the 
 dungeon, 452 ; fights Fleming, 513 
 
 Wallace, Sir William, 442 
 
 Walton, Sir John de, 356 ; his suspicions 
 aroused, 370 ; differences with Aymer 
 de Valence, 375, 388, 1.3; warned by 
 Turnbull, 384, 388, oC3 ; consults 
 Greenleaf, 397 ; examines Bertram, 
 401 ; rides to St. Bride's, 408 ; Augusta 
 de Berkely's vow, 436 ; her letter to 
 him, 447 ; visits Bertram in the dun- 
 geon, 452 ; meets Augusta de Berkely, 
 481 : strikes down Turnbull, 484 ; 
 fights Lord James Douglas, 485 ; fight 
 in the church, 510 ; surrenders Doug- 
 las Castle, 516 ; Hume of Godscroft's 
 account of him, 531 
 
 " When the cock crows," 498 
 
 Wild cattle, 379, 535 
 
 Wolves, in Scotland, 381 
 
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