See the cypress wreath of saddest hue,The twining destiny threading through;And the serpent coil is twisting there—While regardless of the victim's prayer,The fiend laughs out o'er the mischief done,And the canker-worm makes the heart his throne.THE PROPHECY.
Twelve o'clock tolled heavily and sadly from the steeple of St. Giles.
It was a bleak and cold night. The Lords of the Privy Council, muffled up in their well-furred rocquelaures, with their hats flapped over their periwigs, ascended from the subterranean vaults under the Parliament House where they held their dreaded conclaves, and hurried away to their residences in the various deep and steep wynds of the ancient city. Mersington, who, overcome by sleep and wine, had remained at the table until roused by Macer Maclutchy, was the last to come forth, and he stood rubbing his eyes in the Parliament Square, and watching the black gigantic statue of King Charles with steady gravity, for he could have sworn at that moment that it seemed to be trotting hard towards him. His rallying faculties were scattered again by a stranger violently jostling him.
"Haud ye dyvour loon!" exclaimed the incensed Senator; "I am the Lord Mersington."
"And what art doing here, pumpkinhead?" asked Clermistonlee, who was quite breathless by having rushed up the Back Stairs, as those flights of steps which ascended from the Cowgate to the Parliament Square were named. "Are the proceedings over? Hath the villain confessed? Is he to die?"
"They are over, and he shall die conform to the Act."
"And how went the proceedings?"
"Deil kens; I sleepit the haill time."
"Driveller!" cried Clermistonlee in a towering passion; "'tis like thee; your head is as empty as my purse——"
"Hee, hee, ye seem a bonnie temper to-night. But what detained you frae the board, when ye knew you were principal witness?"
"The sudden indisposition of Lady Clermistonlee made it impossible for me to leave Bruntisfield—but I have this moment galloped in from The Place."
"You are a kind and considerate gudeman," said Mersington drily.
"And what did this fellow confess?"
"His abhorrence of you——"
"Ha! ha!"
"His hatred of the present government, and his weariness o' this life. He spoke unco dreich and sadly, puir callant,—and sae I fell fast asleep and dozed like a top."
"And did not that goosecap, the King's Advocate, give him a twinge or two of the torture?"
"We brought some braw things to light without the help o' rack or screw. The tails o' his coat were as fu' o' treason as an egg's fu' o' meat. There were five and twenty autograph letters frae the bluidy and papistical Duke James——"
"Stuff! But lately he was styled His most Sacred Majesty, by the grace of God, and so forth."
"I speak as we wrote it in the council minutes. Five and twenty letters to the cut-throat Hieland chiefs, to the Murrays of Stormont, the Drummonds and others, some slee tod lowries we have long had our een on. But maist of a' was a notable plot of that d——ned jaud Madame Maintenon to assassinate King William."
"Hah!"
"From a paper found, it appears that a certain Monsieur Dumont is now disguised as a soldier in our confederate army in Flanders, watching an opportunity to shoot the King and escape."
"By St. George, I hope the aforesaid Monsieur Dumont is a good shot—a regular candle-snuffer!"
"Our culprit, Fenton, knew not of Maintenon's plot, or of her papers being among those on his person. He looked black dumbfoundered when Maclutchy drew them frae a neuk in his coat tail."
"And to whom were they directed?"
"To oneWidow Douglas, whilk the King's advocate avers to be no other than the Lady Dunbarton. Fenton grew red with anger on their being read, and smote his forehead, saying, 'Dupe that I have been! the noble Duc de Chartres warned me to beware of De Maintenon; but let it pass:' and here, as I said, I fell fast asleep, until a minute ago. But come, let us have a pint of sack; I am clean brainbraised wi' drouth, and I warrant Lucky Dreep, in the Kirk-o'-field Wynd, keeps open door yet."
"And he dies?" said Clermistonlee, who could think of nothing but glutting his revenge.
"Early to-morrow morning, by the bullet."
"I would rather it had been by the cord. How came our considerate councillors to shoot instead of hang him?"
"Soldiers, ye ken, are often soft-hearted when other men are in stern mood; so auld General Livingstone, after pleading hard for Fenton's life, and failing, procured what he called an honourable commutation of the sentence, for which the puir gomeral cavalier thanked him as if it had been a reprieve."
"Cord or bullet it matters not. So perish all who would cross the purposes of Randal of Clermistonlee."
His Lordship for once resisted the importunities of his friend, and instead of adjourning to a tavern, rode slowly and reluctantly back to his own house. He felt a strange and unaccountable presentiment of impending evil, for which he could not account, but endeavoured to throw it from him. The effort was vain.
He felt himself a villain. A load of long accumulated wickedness oppressed his proud heart; it was not without its better traits, and writhed as he reflected on some events in his past life.
"Alison! Alison!" he exclaimed, turning his dark eyes upwards to the star-studded firmament, "now thy curse is coming heavily upon me."
His principal dread was the death of Lilian, for he had learned to love her with tolerable sincerity, but he knew not the secret which Walter had revealed to her, and the consequent intensity of her horror, aversion, shame, and anger. He knew not the tempest it had raised in her sensitive breast against him.
When he entered the chamber-of-dais she was seated near a tall silver lamp. The glare of the untrimmed light fell full upon her face, and its ghastly and altered expression struck a mortal chillness on the heart of her husband. He said not a word, but walking straight to a beauffet filled a large silver cup several times with wine, and always drained it to the bottom. The liquor mounted rapidly to his brain; he threw himself into a chair opposite Lilian, and heedless of the perfect scorn that quivered in her beautiful nostrils, and sparkled in her brilliant eyes, began leisurely to unbutton his riding gambadoes of red stamped maroquin, whistling a merry hunting tune while he did so.
It was easier for him to requite scorn with scorn than give tenderness for love.
"Confusion on the buttons!" he exclaimed. "Juden! Juden! Tush, I forgot; poor Juden hath been with the devil these three years. There is none now of all my rascally household who will share with me the morrow's glut of vengeance as thou wouldst have done, my faithful Juden."
Lilian wrung her attenuated hands; Clermistonlee regarded her sternly, and then bursting into a loud laugh, as he threw away his boots and spurs, chanted a verse from the old black-letter ballad of Gilderoy:—
"Beneath the left ear so fit for a cord,A rope so charming a zone is;Thy youth in his cart hath air of a Lord,And we cry—there dies an Adonis!"
"Ha! ha! I shall see his head on the Bow Port to-morrow, madam."
"Infamous and wicked!" exclaimed Lilian, feeling all her old love revived with double ardour, and no longer able to restrain her sentiments of grief and indignation. "Walter, dear and beloved Walter, how cruelly have I been deceived!" and drawing from her bosom the ring—his mother's ring, the pledge of his betrothal, she pressed it to her lips with fervour.
The brow of the proud Clermistonlee grew black as thunder, and he grasped her slender arm with the tenacity of a falcon.
"Surrender this bauble, that I may commit it to the flames. Surrender it, madam, lest I dash thee to the earth, for at this moment I feel, by all the devils, my brain spinning like a jenny."
"Give him the ring, Lady Lilian; give it, for the sight of it will arrest his vision even as the letters of fire arrested the eyes of Belshazzar and smote him with dismay. Sweet lady, let him look upon it," said the voice of a woman.
They turned, and beheld the pale, emaciated, and haggard visage of Beatrix Gilruth, half shaded by a tattered tartan plaid. Taking advantage of Lilian's momentary surprise, her husband snatched the ring from her, and was about to hurl it into the fire, when, incited by the woman's words, and impelled by some mysterious and irresistible curiosity, he looked upon it, and the effect of his single glance acted like magic upon him. He quitted his clutch of Lilian's arm, trembled, grew pale, and turning the ring again and again, surveyed it with intense curiosity.
"How cameheto have this ring?" he muttered; "what strange mystery is here? If it should be so—— O, impossible!"
He pressed a spring that must have been known only to himself, for Lilian had never discovered it in all the myriad times she had surveyed it, and Walter himself was ignorant of the secret when he bestowed the trinket upon her. The lapse of years had stiffened the spring; but after a moment's pressure from the finger of Clermistonlee, a little shield of gold unclosed, revealing a minute and beautiful little miniature of himself, which in earlier days had been one of the happiest efforts of the young Medina's pencil.
"'Twas my bridal gift to Alison," he exclaimed in a voice of confusion and remorse. "Oh, Alison, Alison! many have I loved but never one like thee. Never again did my heart feel the same ardour that fired it when I placed this ring on your adorable hand. Unfortunate Alison!"
"This ring was tied by a ribbon around the neck of Walter Fenton, when a little child he was found by the side of his dead mother in the Greyfriars churchyard," said Lilian in a breathless voice.
"Confusion and misery! 'tis impossible this can be true; there is some diabolical mistake here. Woman, say forth."
Beatrix gave Clermistonlee a bitter and malicious smile, and addressed Lilian.
"Walter's mother, sweet lady, gave that ring to Elspat Fenton, who, next to myself, was the most trusted of her attendants, and bade her travel from Paris to Scotland, and deliver the child and the bridal gift together to her husband—to Randal of Clermistonlee."
Lilian covered her face, and the fiery lord, whose first emotions were generally those of anger, surveyed Beatrix as if she had been a coiled up snake. She spoke slowly, and made long pauses, for aware that her words were as daggers, she dealt them sparingly.
"After long suffering and great peril by sea and land, this poor woman reached Edinburgh, but failed to meet the father of the infant committed to her care; for then he was in arms with the men of the Covenant, hoping by any civil broil or commotion to repair the splendid patrimony his excesses had dissipated. Elspat, being unable to give a very coherent account of herself, was declared a nonconformist by the authorities, and thrown with thousands of others into the Greyfriars kirkyard, where in that inclement season she perished; but the child was found and protected by the soldiers of Dunbarton. That child is Walter Fenton; he is your son, Lord Clermistonlee! the child of your once loved Alison Gilford. I call upon Heaven to witness the truth of my assertion! His own name was Walter, (ah! can you have forgotten that?) his nurse's Fenton.I saw her die, and I alone knew the secret, and have treasured it till this hour—this hour of vengeance upon thee, thou false and wicked lord! In my wicked spirit of revenge too long have I kept the secret; but now this blameless and noble youth is doomed to death, and fain would I save him, for he is innocent, and good, and generous; in all things, oh, how much the reverse of thee!"
"Maniac, thou liest!" exclaimed Clermistonlee, whose heart beat wildly. "I cannot believe this tale of a tub, which is told to affright me. And yet, how dare I reject it?—the ring—Walter—my God!"
"Ha! has Beatrix the wronged, the scorned, the despised, the neglected Beatrix, wrung your heart at last? Fool! fool! Did'st thou never suspect the volcano that slumbered here?" she exclaimed, laying her hand upon her heart. "Did'st thou never perceive the flame that smouldered in my breast—the yearnings, the throbbings, the fierce longing to be adequately revenged on thee who had brought me to ruin and madness, and had abandoned me to penury and privation? Wretch! 'tis twenty-five years since ye betrayed me. Time has rolled on—time, that soothes all sorrows and softens every affliction, and teaches us to forget the wrongs of the living—yea, and the virtues of the dead; and perhaps to wonder why we hated one and loved the other,—time, I say, has rolled on to many miserable years, until I have become the hideous thing I am, but it never lessened one tithe of my longing for vengeance for the thousand taunts and contumelies that succeeded my first sacrifice for thee. You say I am mad—perhaps I am—but mark me—a woman's sorrow passes like a summer cloudy but her vengeance endureth for ever!"
Clermistonlee smote his forehead, and Beatrix laughed like a hyæna.
"My God—unhappy Walter!" said Lilian in a voice that pierced the heart of him she abhorred to deem her husband. "Then she who saved and nursed thee on the field of Steinkirke was thy mother—thy mother, and she knew it not? Oh, this was the secret sentiment, the heaven-born thought that spoke within her and made her heart so mysteriously yearn towards thee. Unfortunate Walter! how deeply have we been wronged—how bitterly must we suffer!"
"And till now, thou accursed fiend, this terrible secret has been concealed from me!" said Clermistonlee furiously, as he half drew his sword.
Beatrix laughed and tossed her arms wildly.
"Oh, horror upon horror! woe upon woe!" said Lilian in a voice of the deepest anguish as she rung her hands, and, taking up her little infant from the cradle, kissed it tenderly on the forehead, and retired slowly from the room.
"Lilian—Lilian," cried her husband, "whither go ye, lady?"
"To solitude—to solitude," she murmured. "Any where to save me from my own terrible thoughts—anywhere to hide me from the deep disgrace you have brought upon me; to any place where never again the light of day shall find me."
Clermistonlee heard her light steps on the staircase, and they fell like a knell on his heart: impelled by some secret and mysterious impulse, he followed her to her own apartment, the door of which he had heard close behind her. There was no sound within it.
He entered softly; but she was not there; and from that moment she was never beheld again! Every ultimate search proved fruitless and unavailing. A veil of impenetrable mystery hung over her fate.......
A sudden thought flashed on the mind of Clermistonlee. The day dawn was breaking as he descended the staircase, after fruitlessly calling on Lilian through various apartments.
"I may, I must save him yet—unfortunate youth, a father's arms shall yet embrace him. Oh, my hapless and deeply wronged Alison! fortune may yet enable me in some sort to repair the atrocities of which I have been guilty. My horse! my horse!" and, rushing to the stable, he saddled and bridled a fleet steed, and in five minutes was galloping furiously back to the city, the walls and towers of which arose before him, red and sombre in the rays of the morning sun.
Ay, I had planned full many a sanguine schemeOf earthly happiness—romantic schemes,And fraught with loveliness:—and it is hardTo feel the hand of death arrest one's steps,Throw a chill blight o'er all one's budding prospects,And hurl one's soul untimely to the shades,Lost in the gaping gulph of blank oblivion.HENRY KIRKE WHITE.
The Iron Room of the ancient Tolbooth of Edinburgh was a dreary vault of massive stone-work, and was named so in consequence of its strength and security. A low heavy arch roofed it, and the walls from which it sprung were composed of great blocks of roughly hewn stone elaborately built. Here and there a chain hung from them. The floor was paved, and the door was a complicated mass of iron bars, locks, bolts, and hinges. A single aperture, high up in the wall, admitted the cold midnight wind through its deep recess.
An iron cruise burned on a clumsy wooden table, near which sat Walter Fenton the condemned, with his face covered by his hands and his mind buried in sad and melancholy thoughts.
One bright and solitary star shone down upon him through the grated window, flashing, dilating, and shrinking; often he gazed upon it wistfully—for it was his only companion—the partner or the witness of his solitude and his sorrow. Once he turned to look upon it—but it had passed away.
He reflected that never again would he behold a star shining in the firmament.
Sad, bitter, and solitary reflection—for a few hours was all that was left him now: and, though the sands of life were ebbing fast, one absorbing thought occupied his mind—that Lilian was false and his rival triumphant; that all his long cherished schemes and dreams of love and happiness, glory and ambition, were frustrated and blasted irredeemably and for ever.
He was to die!
The infliction of punishment immediately after trial was anciently practised in all criminal cases, and the victim was usually led from the presence of the judge to the scaffold.
Walter had been doomed to death as a traitor, a raiser of sedition, and a deserter from the Scottish forces: the last accusation, in support of which his signedoath of fealtyto the Estates of Scotland, had been produced in council by General Sir Thomas Livingstone, commander-in-chief of the army, saved him the dishonour of dying on the gibbet.
The door of the Iron Room was opened stealthily, and the heavy bolts and swinging chains were again rattling into their places, when Walter slowly raised his head. His eye had become haggard, and his face was overspread with a deathly pallor. The tall spare form of the Reverend Mr. Ichabod Bummel stood before him, clad in his ample black coat with its enormous cuffs and pocket-flaps, his deep waistcoat, and voluminous grey breeches. He removed his broad hat, and smoothed down the long lank hair which was parted in a seam over the top of his cranium, and fell straight upon each shoulder. He did not advance, but continued to press his hat upon his breast with both hands, to turn up his eyes and groan mournfully.
"Poor youth!" he began, after two or three hems; "poor youth! now truly thou lookest like an owl in the desert, yea, verily, even as one overtaken in the Slough of Despond. Now thou seest how atrocious is the crime of rebellion, and how bitter its meed. Now thou seest how wicked is the attempt to overturn our pure and blessed Kirk as by law established, and to substitute anarchy and confusion for peace and brotherly love, and to involve the innocent with the guilty in one common destruction. Ewhow! O guilty madness—O miserable infatuation, that for the phanton of kingly and hereditary right, would ruthlessly hurl back the land into the dark abyss of Popery, restore the abomination of the mass, and substitute the vile and tyrannical James for that beloved prince of our own persuasion, now seated on Britain's triple throne, if not by that imaginary hereditary right, at least by the laws of the land, and the voice of those that are above it—yea, mark me, youth, above it—the ministers of the Gospel. The pious and glorious William hath been our Saviour from the devilish practices of Popery, and the machinations of all those spurious children of Luther and of Calvin, the Seekers, the Libertines and Independents, Brownists, Separatists and Familists, Antitrinitarians, Arians, Socinians, Anti-Scripturists, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, and a myriad other teachers of heresy and preachers of schism—whilk, my brethren—my brother, I mean—may Beelzebub confound! Oh, youth, how wicked and ungracious it is in thee to reject the stately Fig-tree with its sweetness and good fruit, and raise up the ancient thorn and prickly bramble to reign over us!"
"My good sir," replied Walter, "it is but a poor specimen of Presbyterian charity this, to come hither to a dismal vault, to heap contumely on the head of the fallen, to humble one who is already humbled—to bruise the bruised. Good sir, is it kind or charitable to rail at and exult over me in this my great distress?"
At this unexpected accusation, tears started into the eyes of Ichabod Bummel, who was really a good man at heart, though his virtues were sadly obscured by the fanaticism of the times.
"Do not misunderstand me, good youth," he replied hurriedly; "and do me not this great injustice. I come in the most humble and Christian spirit, to cheer thy last hour in this gloomy hypogeum, and for that godly purpose have brought with me a copy of myBombshell, a most sweet and savoury comforter to the afflicted mind."
He drew that celebrated quarto from his voluminous pocket, laid it on the table, and opening it at certain places, turned down the corners of the leaves. He then produced a thick little black-letter psalm-book, the board of which bore the very decided impression of a Bothwell-brig bullet; he adjusted a great pair of round horn spectacles on his long-hooked nose, and in a shrill voice began his favourite chant:
"I like ane owle in desert am," &c.
So much did he resemble the feathered type of wisdom, that Walter could scarcely repress a smile.
"Young man, wherefore dost thou not join with me?" asked the divine, raising his black eyebrows and looking at Walter alternately under, over, and through his barnacles.
"Reverend sir, I never sung a Psalm in my life, and really cannot do so now."
"I warrant thou canst singClaver'se and his Cavaliers,King James's March,Rub-a-Dub, and other profane ditties and camp-songs of thy wicked faction and ungodly profession," said Ichabod reproachfully.
At that moment the deep-mouthed bell of St. Giles, which seemed to swing immediately above their heads, gave one long and sonorous toll.
"It is the first hour of the last morning I shall ever spend on earth!" exclaimed Walter, starting up and striking his fetters together in the bitterness of his soul. "Oh, Lilian, Lilian, how little could we have foreseen of all this!"
He wept.
"'Tis well—no tears can be more precious than these," said Mr. Bummel, who thought his exhortations had begun to prove effectual. "Soon, good youth, shalt thou reach the end of this vale of tears! Lo! thy bride already waiteth thee, and these tears——"
"You deem those of contrition and remorse. They arenot. I have done nothing to repent of, or for which I ought to feel contrite. I never wronged man nor woman, though many have wronged me in more than a lifetime can repay. These tears spring only from bitterness and unavailing regret. Have I no hope of pardon? I care not for life, but my king and the son of my king require my services, and could my blood restore them I would die happy. Where is old Sir Thomas Dalyell?"
"Gone to a warmer climate than Scotland," said Ichabod spitefully.
"Sir George of Rosehaugh?"
"He is gone where he cannot assist thee."
"Where is old Colin of Balcarris?"
"Fled no one knows whither."
"Where, then, is old Sir Robert of Glenae?"
"Gone to his last account with other persecutors."
"All then are dead or in exile, and none is left to be a friend to the poor cavalier."
"Save one," said Ichabod, pointing upward.
"True, true," replied Walter, and covering his face with his hands he stooped over the table and prayed intently.
Two o'clock struck, three and four followed, but still he remained, as Ichabod thought, absorbed in earnest prayer, and kneeling by his side, the worthy minister joined with true and pious fervour, till his patience became quite exhausted. He stirred him, and Walter, who had fallen asleep, started up.
"Is it time?" he asked.
"Thou hast slept well," said the divine, pettishly; "out of seven hours that were allotted three have already fled."
"My dear and worthy sir, you see how calm my conscience is. Perhaps it is hard to die so young; but for me life has now lost every charm. Death never has terrors to the brave. He opens the gates to a fame and a life that are eternal, and when the coffin lid is closed, sorrow and jealousy, envy and woe are excluded for ever.In four hours more mine will have closed over me. ——— Kingdoms and cities, the trees of the forest, the lakes, the rocks, and the hills themselves, have all their allotted periods of existence, and man has his; for every thing must perish—all must die and all must pass away. Oh, why then this foolish and unavailing regret about a few years more or less? ——— Front to front and foot to foot I have often met death on the field of battle, and if without flinching I have faced the volley of a whole brigade, that hurled a thousand brave spirits into eternity at once, shall I shrink from the levelled musquets of twelve base hirelings of the Stadtholder? ——— Will Lilian ever look on the grave where this heart moulders that loved her so long and so well? Oh no, for now she is the wife of another—oh, my God, another! In all wide Scotland there is not one to regret me, to shed one tear for me. I disappear from the earth like a bubble on a tide of events, leaving not one being behind me to recal my memory in fondness or regret."
* * * * *
The great clock of St. Giles struck the hour of seven.
Musquets rattled on the pavement of the echoing street; the door of the Iron Room opened, and the gudeman of the Tolbooth presented his stern and sinister visage.
"It is time," he announced briefly.
"I am ready," replied Walter cheerfully, and, with a soldier on each side of him and followed by the clergyman, he descended the narrow circular staircase of the prison, and, issuing from an arched doorway at the foot, found himself at the end of the edifice. Here he paused and gazed calmly around him.
An early hour was chosen for his execution, that few might witness it, for there existed in Scotland a strong feeling against William's policy; the massacre of Glencoe, the successive defeats and heavy expenses of the Dutch wars rankled bitterly in the minds of the people.
The lofty streets were silent and shadowy; scarcely a footfall was heard in them, and the dun sunlight of the September morning had not sufficient heat to exhale the haze of the autumnal night.
A company of Argyle's regiment—the perpetrators of the Glencoe atrocity—clad in coarse brick-coloured uniform of the Dutch fashion, were drawn up in double ranks facing inwards on each side of the doorway. They stood with their arms reversed, and each stooped his head on his hands, which rested on the butt of his musket. At the head of this lane were four drummers with their drums muffled and craped, and a plain deal coffin carried upon the shoulders of four soldiers. Walter, as he gazed steadily along these hostile ranks, saw only the sourest fanaticism visible in every face, and in none more so than that of their commander, a hard-featured and square-shouldered personage, with a black corslet under his ample red coat, and wearing a red feather in his broad hat. He introduced himself as—
"Major Duncannon, of the godly regiment of my noble lord Argyle." Walter bowed.
"Duncannon!" he replied; "your name is familiar to me as being the man who issued the orders for the massacre of Glencoe."
Duncannon gave Walter a steady frown in reply to his glance of undisguised hostility and contempt, and said—
"I obeyed the royal orders of King William III., to whom I say be long life—and, like thee, may all his enemies perish from Dan to Beersheba!"
"I do not acknowledge him; he hath never been crowned among us, nor sworn the oath a Scottish king should swear. Shame on you, sir, to rank this false-hearted Dutchman with our brave King William the Lion. Shame be on you, sir, and all your faction," cried Walter, holding up his fettered hands, while his cheek flushed and his eyes kindled with energy. "Let our people recollect that the last man whose limbs were crushed to a jelly by the accursed steel boots and grinding thumbscrews, was subjected to their agonizing torture by the "merciful" William of Orange—by the same wise prince by whose express orders the bravest of the northern tribes was massacred in their sleep and in cold blood! Let our brave soldiers, when the lash that drips with their blood is flaying them alive, remember that, like scourging round the fleet and keelhauling the hapless mariner, it is an introduction of the same pious and magnanimous monarch who planned, signed, and countersigned the mandate for the ruthless atrocity of Glencoe! Oh, Scotland, Scotland! disloyal and untrue to the line of your ancient kings, how long will you waste your treasure and pour forth your gallant sons to the Dutch and German wars of a brutal tyrant, who at once fears and hates and dreads, though he dare not despise you! But the hour is coming," and he shook his clenched hand and clanked his fetters like a fierce prophet—"when war, oppression, exaction, and devastation, will be the meed of the actions of to-day!"
"Silence, traitor!" exclaimed Duncannon, striking him with the hilt of his sword so severely that blood flowed from his mouth.
"Major Duncannon, thou art a coward!" said Walter, turning his eyes of fire upon him. "The brave are ever compassionate and gentle—but thou! away, man—for on thy brow is written the dark curse which the unavenged blood of Glencoe called down from the blessed God!"
Duncannon turned pale.
"Away with him!" he cried. "Drummers, flam off—musqueteers, march!" and the procession began.
The dull rolling of the muffled drums, the regulated tap of the burial march, and the wailing of the fifes, now shrill and high, and anon sweet and low, found a deep echo in Walter's melancholy breast. Sorrowful and solemn was the measure of the Psalm, and he felt his beating heart soothed and saddened; but he could only mentally accompany the clergyman who walked bare-headed by his side, and chaunted aloud while the soldiers marched.
Walter's cheek reddened, for his fearless heart beat high, and he stepped firmly behind his coffin, the most stately in all that sad procession, though marching to that dread strain which a soldier seldom hears,hisown death-march. The vast recesses of the great cathedral and the distant echoes of the central street of the city with all its diverging wynds, replied mournfully to the roll of the funeral drums.
He whose knell they rung seemed the proudest there among two hundred soldiers. Life now had nearly lost every charm, while religion, courage, and resignation had fully robbed death of all its terrors. Roused by the unusual sound, many a nightcapped citizen peered fearfully forth from his lofty dwelling; but their looks of wonder or of pity were unheeded or unseen by Walter Fenton. He saw only his own coffin borne before him and the weapons and the hands by which he was to die; but his bold spirit never quailed, and he resolved, with true Jacobite enthusiasm, to fall with honour to the cause for which he suffered.
"Halt!" cried Duncannon, and the coffin rang hollowly as it was placed beside the square stone pedestal of King Charles's statue, and Walter immediately kneeled down within it, confronting the stern Presbyterians of Argyle's regiment with an aspect of coolness and bravery that did not fail to excite their admiration and pity.
A sergeant approached to bind up his eyes.
"Nay, nay, my good fellow," said Walter, waving him away; "I have faced death too often to flinch now. Major Duncannon, draw up your musqueteers, and I will show you how fearlessly a cavalier of honour can die."
While twelve soldiers were drawn up before him and loaded their muskets, Walter turned his eyes for the last time to the glorious autumnal sun, whose red morning rays were shot aslant between two lofty piles of building into the shadowy and gloomy quadrangle formed by the ancient Parliament House, the Goldsmiths' Hall, the grotesque piazzas, and the grand cathedral. He gave one rapid glance of adieu around him, and then turned towards his destroyers.
"Farewell, good youth," said Mr. Bummel, as the tears of true and heartfelt sorrow trickled over his long hooked nose. "Farewell. When He from whose hand light went forth over the land, even as the rays of yonder sun—when He, I say, returns in His glory we will meet again. Tillthen, farewell." Covering his face with his handkerchief, he withdrew a few paces and prayed with kind and sincere devotion.
At that moment the hoofs of a galloping horse spurred madly down the adjacent street rang through the vaults and aisles of the great church. Walter's colour changed.
A reprieve!
Alas! it was only Lord Clermistonlee who, pale, panting, and breathless, dashed into the square to stay the execution; but the cry he would have uttered died away on his parched lips.
"He comes to exult over me," said Walter bitterly. "Behold, ignoble Lord," he exclaimed, "how a true cavalier can die! Musqueteers," he added, in his old voice of authority, "ready, blow your matches, present, God save King James the Seventh! give fire!"
The death volley rang like thunder in the still quadrangle. Four bullets flattened against the statue, eight were mortal, and with the last convulsive energy of death Walter Fenton threw his hat into the air and fell forward prostrate into his coffin a bleeding corpse.
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Here ends our tale.
From that hour Clermistonlee was a changed man. Though given up to dark, corroding care and moody thoughts, he lived to a great old age, and was one of those who sold his country at the union. Soon after that event he died, unregretted and unrespected, and a defaced monument in the east wall of the Greyfriars Churchyard still marks the place where he lies.
His gossip, Mersington, would no doubt have obtained a comfortable share of "the compensations" in 1707 had he not (as appears from a passage in Carstairs' State Papers) unluckily been found dead one night in the severe winter of 1700, with a half-drained mug of burnt sack clutched in his tenacious grasp.
A few words more of Lilian, and then we part.
From the moment in which, with her child in her arms, she ascended the great staircase of Bruntisfield, she was never again seen.
Every place within the mansion and without, the woods, the lake, the fields, the muir were searched, but the lady and her child were seen no more.
An impenetrable mystery cast a veil of horror over their fate; but Mr. Ichabod Bummel, and the most learned divines of a kirk that was then in the zenith of its wisdom and power, gave it as their decided opinion that they had been spirited away by the fairies; an idea that was unanimously adopted by the people; nevertheless, a pale spectre, wailing and pressing a ghastly babe to its attenuated breast, was often visible on moonlight nights, among the old oak trees, the rocky heron shaws of the Burghmuir, or the reedy rhinns of its beautiful loch, and this terrible fact was solemnly averred and duly sworn to by various decent and sponsible men, such as elders and deacons of the kirk, who chanced to journey that way after nightfall.
In latter years it was to the long gloomy avenue or immediate precincts of the ancient house, that this terrible tenant confined her midnight promenades.
Many sceptical persons, notwithstanding the assertions of the aforesaid elders and deacons, declared the story of the apparition to be downright nonsense. Many more may be disposed to do so at the present day; but we would beg them to withold their decision until they have consulted as carefully as we have done, the MSS. Session Records of Mr. Bummel's kirk, entered in his own hand, and attested by the said elders and deacons at full length.
In the year 1800, when the stately and venerable mansion of Bruntisfield was demolished, to make way for the Hospital of Gillespie, within a deep alcove, or labyrinth of stone, in the heart of its massive walls, the skeletons of a female and child were discovered; some fragments of velvet, brocade, and a gold ring were found with them.
On touching them, they crumbled into undistinguishable dust.
THE END.
LONDON:PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SON,ST. MARTIN'S LANE.