Lift not the shroud! a speaking stain
Of blood upon its sable seen,
Tells how the spirit fled from plain,
For there the headsman's axe hath been.
Ballad.

"The king's demand shall be granted, but rather for your sake—come hither," said the earl.

There was a cruel banter in his manner, a bitter smile on his face, and Gray grew pale, and felt the blood rush back upon his heart with a terrible foreboding as they crossed the court-yard.

Then his eye at once detected something like a human form stretched at full length upon the ground, and covered by a sheet. About it there could be no doubt—it was so cold, white, angular, and fearfully rigid. Upon the breast was placed a platter filled with salt—a Scottish superstition as old as the days of Turpin—and close by lay an axe and bloodstained billet, about which the brown sparrows were hopping and twittering in the warm morning sunshine. With a choking sensation in his throat, Gray stepped resolutely forward.

"Remove this cloth," said the earl to some of his people who were near; and on their doing so, there was seen the body of a headless man—a body which Gray knew too well to be that of his friend and kinsman, for on the breast of the soiled and faded pourpoint was embroidered a gold scutcheon, with the three black chevrons of MacLellan.

"Sir Patrick, you have come a little too late," said the sneering earl; "here lies your father's sister's son; but, unfortunately, he wants the head, and a head is an awkward loss. The body, however, is completely at your service."

Grief and indignation almost choked Gray's utterance. He knelt down and kissed the cold right hand, which yet bore the mark of an iron fetter, and then turning to the earl, said, "My lord, you may now dispose of the body as you please; but the head——"

"Behold it on the battlement above you!"[4]

Gray mounted his horse, which was at that moment led to the outer gate by the earl's grooms; and mistrusting them, though feeling as one in a terrible dream, before putting his foot in the stirrup he carefully examined his bridle, girths, and crupper. Then, says Sir Walter Scott in his history, "his resentment broke forth in spite of the dangerous situation in which he was placed":—

"My lord," said he, shaking his gauntleted hand close to the earl's beard, "if I live you shall bitterly pay for this day's work; and I—Patrick Gray of Foulis—tell thee, that thou art a bloodthirsty coward—a disgrace to knighthood and nobility!"

He then wheeled round his horse, pressed the sharp Rippon spurs into its flanks, and galloped off.

"To horse and chase him!" cried the earl, furiously. "I will ride to Stirling, false minion, with your head at my saddle-bow! To horse and follow him—this venturesome knight must sleep beside his kinsman!"

"But he came on the king's service," urged Sir Alan Lauder, as he put his foot in the stirrup of his horse, when some twenty or thirty mounted moss-troopers came hurriedly from the stable court.

"Bah! love-lured and destiny dragged him hither. Let slip Souyllard the sleuth-bratch. Horse and spear, I say, Lauder and Achanna—a hundred crowns for the head of yonder minion! I swear by St. Bryde of Douglas and Kildara, by the Blessed Virgin and her son, never to eat at a table, sleep in a bed, to rest under a Christian roof, or to lay aside sword and armour, till I have passed my dagger through the heart of Patrick Gray, dead or alive!"——"If you break this terrible vow," said Sir Alan, aghast at the earl's fury, and the form it took in words.

"Then I pray Heaven, at the judgment day, to show such mercy to me as I shall show my enemies," was the fierce response.

It was fortunate for the earl that he soon found a friar to release him from a vow, the fulfilment of which must have entailed a vast deal of trouble, fuss, and discomfort upon him and his followers.

"A hundred crowns and St. Bryde for Douglas!" was the shout of the moss-troopers, as they dashed through the outer gate, and with their light active horses, their steel caps, jacks, and spears, they clattered over the drawbridge; but Gray, after escaping six or eight crossbow bolts, was already three miles before them, and spurring in hot haste along the road towards Dumfries.

It was a fortunate circumstance for him that he was well mounted on a fleet, strong, and active horse; for he was a muscular man, and heavily mailed, while his pursuers, being Border Prickers, wore but little armour, and their wiry nags were used to scamper on forays in all weathers and seasons by day and night, over moor, and moss, and mountain sides.

Gray knew well that if taken his death was certain; for Douglas, reckless, ruthless, and bloodthirsty, by nature, was certain now to give full scope to his long-treasured hatred.

He no longer heard the whooping of his pursuers; he had either distanced them, or they were husbanding their energies for a long chase; but there came after him at times, upon the hollow wind, the grunting bark of the sleuth-bratch, by which he was surely and savagely tracked, Souyllard, the earl's favourite white bloodhound, and the heart of the fugitive swelled anew, with grief and rage, and hatred of his unrelenting tormentor.

He was far from shelter or succour, for until he reached the Lothians, all the land belonged to his enemies, or to those who dared not protect him. For miles and miles before him stretched flattened hills and open plains covered with waving heather, the purple tints of which were glowing in the noonday sun, and these tints deepened into blue or black on the shaded sides of the glens. The whirr of the blackcock was heard at times, as it rose from the pale green or withered yellow leaves of the ferns that grew among the rushes, where the trouting burn brawled, or by the lonely ravine, the red-scaured bank, or stony gulley, which Gray made his foam-covered horse clear by a flying leap.

Louder and nearer came the savage bay of the sleuth-bratch, and Gray, as he looked back, could see it tracking him closely and surely; while about three miles distant the border spears of his pursuers glittered on the summit of a hill.

He had swam his horse through the Urr and spurred on for miles, and now before him lay Lochrutton, with its old peel-house, named, from its loneliness, the castle-of-the-hills; then, as he was about to cross a foaming tributary of the loch—a stream that tore, all red and muddy, through a stony ravine—the bounding sleuth-bratch came upon him, and sprang at his horse's flanks, just as the terrified animal rose into the air to cross by a flying leap.

Clenching his gauntleted hand, Gray struck the fierce brute on the head, and it fell into the rushing torrent; but gained the other side as soon as he, and sent its deep, hoarse bay into the air, as if to summon the pursuers. Now, the terrible sleuth-bratch was running parallel with his horse's flanks, and vainly he strove to strike at it with his sword. His temples throbbed as if with fever, and now, for air, for coolness, and relief, he drew off his barred helmet; then he tossed it into a bush, for the double purpose of staying the hound and concealing it as a trace of his flight. Spurring on—he redoubled his efforts to escape; he called to his horse—he cheered and caressed it, while the perspiration of toil oozed through the joints of his armour, from his gorget to his spurs.

The terrible white hound was preparing for a final, and, doubtless, a fatal spring, when a man, whose head and shoulders were enveloped in a scarlet hood, suddenly rose from the whin bushes amid which Gray was galloping, and, by a single blow from his ponderous mace, dashed out the brains of the dog, killing it on the spot.

Gray had just time to perceive that his preserver was Malise MacKim, the smith of Thrave, when he passed on like a whirlwind; and now he saw before him, in the distance, the lovely and far-stretching valley of the Nith, the long bridge, the red-walled town, the spires, and the old castle of Dumfries. He dashed through the portal of the bridge, and pushed on by the way for Edinburgh; but, owing to the rough and devious nature of the roads, night overtook him among the wilds of Tweedmuir. If he drew bridle for a moment, he still heard the tramp of hoofs in his rear, for now fresh horsemen had joined in the pursuit; and, but for the relays he had so wisely provided, and of which he only once availed himself, he had assuredly been taken and slain.

At Moffat, he obtained his own favourite horse from the priest of the village church.

"Will you not, for safety, have your charger's shoes reversed?" said the churchman, as Gray mounted.

"Like King Robert of old; but there is no snow to reveal the track."

"But there is mud, and the ways are deep and soft."

"True; but who is here to do it for me?"

"The smith at the forge."

"Nay, nay, good father," said Gray, shortening his reins; "hear you that!" a whoop and a bugle blast, came together on the night breeze; "I must even trust me to my good Brechin blade and Clydesdale nag; for both are our good king's gift," and he set forth with renewed speed.

He had good reason for declining to loiter, for just as he rode off, the mountain pass, which opens into the valley, rang with shouts and the rush of many iron hoofs, as the laird of Hawkshaw and the Hunters of Palmood, with Sir Alan Lauder and a band of Douglas moss-troopers, came galloping down.

On, on, rushed the fleet horse, with its small head outstretched, and cutting the night air, as the prow of a ship cleaves the water. The taper ears lay flat on its neck, the mane streamed behind like smoke from a funnel, and the quivering nostrils shot forth white puffs of steamy breath at every bound; while foam and blood mingled together on its flanks, as the sharp Rippon spurs of the daring rider urged it fast and furiously on.

This flight of Sir Patrick Gray from Thrave suggested to Scott the escape of Marmion from the future chief of the Douglases—the earl of Angus, at Tantallan.

FOOTNOTES: