Oh, name the mighty ransom; task my power;
Let there be danger, difficulty, death,
To enhance the price.—Tamerlane.

It may easily be supposed that, with all his anxiety for the fate of his kinsman, Sir Patrick's desire to see, or be near Murielle, was also near his heart; and inspired by this double object, he rode rapidly, and tasking the speed of his horse, passed through districts the features of which have long since been changed by time and cultivation: for rivers that were then broad and deep have shrunk to mere rills, and rills have disappeared; stone bridges have superseded dangerous and subtle fords, where the luring kelpie lurked for the drowning wayfarer; lochs and morasses have become fertile fields; dense forests, where the wild bull bellowed, and the savage boar whetted his tusks on the gnarled oak, have been cleared away; populous towns have sprung into existence, where whilom the thatched hamlet stood; churches, wherein generations had worshipped God in fervour and holiness, and where Scotland's best and bravest men were laid under tombs of marble and brass, have been ruined and desecrated, as if by the hands of sikhs or sepoys; but hills whereon the mosstrooper drove herd and hirsel, and where the wild furze and whin grew in luxuriance, have been rendered arable to their steepest summits, and fertile, even, as the most fertile parts of Lothian.

By many an old Roman road formed by the warriors of the adventurous Agricola, and those of the discomfited emperor Severus—old ways, where the rank grass grew among the causeway stones, he travelled, and soon reached the wild heathy uplands of Stobo that look down on the green vale of the Tweed, and then the steeps of Hells Cleuch, which are furrowed by a mountain torrent that rushes red and foaming to join the broader waters of the Forth. On by the wild morasses of Tweedsmuir, where an ancient Celtic cross that stood amid the rough obelisks of a Druid Temple of the Sun, was the only landmark for that savage and solitary pass, which was overlooked by the barred and battlemented tower of many a rude mosstrooping laird.

On—on yet past Moffat, secluded in its lovely vale amid its almost inaccessible hills, above the dim summits of which the pale blue mist was floating, and the black eagles were soaring, past its naked or heathy mountain gorges, through which the yellow rays of the setting sun were falling on the moss-covered shealing, and the browsing herd and hirsel; and on the old square castles of red sandstone, built with seashell mortar, the abode of many a turbulent baron.

He was now amid the tremendous scenery of the Southern Highlands; and there, after a ride of fifty miles from Edinburgh, he tarried for the night with the priest of the village church, as he wanted rest, seclusion, and secrecy. There, as at one or two other places, he arranged for a relay of horses, as he knew not what might be the issue of his expedition; and ere it was over, he had reason to thank Heaven for his foresight.

Refreshed and newly horsed, he departed next day with the rising sun, and soon saw the moors of Kirkmichael and the mossy monolith of the six corpses, where Wallace slew Sir Hugh of Moreland and five other Englishmen; and ere long Dumfries, so red and sombre, with its spires of St. Michael and of many a convent and friary, rose before him, and with its long bridge of the thirteenth century—then considered the rival of that of London—spanning by thirteen carved Gothic arches the broad blue waters of the lovely Nith, where, between green and undulating shores, they rolled, glittering in the sunshine, towards the Solway Firth.

The ruined castle of the false Comyns yet overlooked the river; and the jangle of the convent-bell at Nunholm came and went on the noonday wind.

He advanced along the bridge, the passage of which was barred by an iron gate and portal of old red sandstone. It was quaint and time-worn, having been built by the Lady Devorgilla, of Galloway, the mother of the mock-king, John Baliol. Above it were the arms of the burgh—a chevron with three fleurs-de-lys; St. Michael winged and trampling on a serpent, with the motto, "a' at the Lower Burn," the slogan and the muster-place of the inhabitants. At this gate a toll on corn, merchandise, and passengers was collected for the benefit of the Franciscan monastery, which the pious Lady Devorgilla had founded for the salvation of her soul, and of the souls of her ancestors and posterity, in the full-flowing Christian charity of an age which is branded as the dark and superstitious simply because we know little or nothing about it. After this gate was passed, and its iron grille had clanked behind him, the heart of Gray beat faster, for he was now completely in Galloway—the land of his love and of his enemies.

The warder or loiterer, who looked across the Nith from the old castle of Dumfries, saw the flashing of armour in the noonday sunshine, as our solitary horseman rode furiously on, and, from his speed, supposed that some warden-raid or invasion was at hand; and the old Franciscan who dosed on a seat by the friary wall woke up from his dreams, and, in dread of either, muttered an Ave Maria gratia plena, &c., and dosed off to sleep again.

The peasant on the rigs of Teregles saw him passing like a whirlwind, and thought, with an angry sigh, that he might soon have to exchange his blue bonnet and grey maud for a breastplate and bourgoinette; for such speed never betokened an errand of peace, but of tumult and war.

Evening saw the messenger traversing the uplands of Tracquair, where the heaths are dark, the rocks are bleak, and where the black cattle browse in the grassy haughs; and past "the Bush" so famed in song; it was then a thicket of birchen-trees, through which a mounted trooper could ride unseen, even with his Scottish lance, six ells long, uplifted at arm's length.

Here, by the side of a lonely bridle-path which crossed a waste moorland, he found a man lying dead. His breast was exposed and exhibited a deep spear-wound, in which a sprig of thorn was inserted, and around which the last drops of blood had grown black and coagulated. A grey-robed priest was near the body on his knees, engaged in prayer. Gray reined in his horse, and, waiting until the churchman had ended, said,

"What does this slaughter mean, father?"

"It is the thorn-twig," said the monk, with a bewildered air.

"Explain?" said Gray, impatiently; "I have no time to read riddles."

"It is the cognisance of the Laird of Pompherston."

"And what does it mean, now?"

"Art so dull, or come from such a distance, as not to know?" asked the monk, throwing back his cowl and looking up with surprise in his grim and bearded visage.

"I confess that I am."

"Well, it signifies that this unfortunate, Donacha MacKim, the gudeman of Bourick, has been slain by the Douglases, for having been in arms against them at Raeberry; so Pompherston took a twig from his helmet and placed it where you see—in that bloody lance-wound. And now, sir, for our Blessed Lady's sake, aid me to convey him to Tracquair, that he may have the rites of a Christian burial."

"Under favour, good father, that I cannot do, as I ride for life and death on the king's service," replied Gray, in a tone of regret.

"A perilous errand here, while the Douglases are all abroad," replied the monk, shaking his shaven head.

"In arms?" said Gray, starting.

"No—hunting, and they have ridden over all the countryside, from the Bush aboon Tracquair to the Carlinwark at Thrave."

The setting of the sun found Gray beyond the waters of Urr, which he crossed near that mysterious mound known as the Moat of Urr, and on his left saw the Dub o' Hass, where many a foreign galliot and Scottish caravel were at anchor, and the banks of which were then and for long after, according to local tradition, the haunt of the Mermaid of Galloway, whose wondrous beauty was such that no man could behold her without a love that became madness, and whose hair was like shining gold, through the links of which her white shoulders and bosom shone, as she floated on the crystal water, inspiring men with passion that ended in death.

Her comb was o' the whitely pearl,
Her hand like new-won milk;
Her breasts were like the snowy curd
In a net o' seagreen silk.

But, thinking more of armed men than of alluring mermaids, Gray rode to where stood a little hostelry, kept apparently by a vassal of the kirk, as the signboard bore the papal crown and cross-keys; so he tarried there to refresh himself and horse again. He was received with profound respect, but with a curiosity the suppression of which seemed difficult, as the royal blazon which he wore upon his surcoat was seldom seen on that side of the Nith, though the hostelry was established as a halting-place for the wealthy abbots of Tongland, Newabbey, and the priors of St. Mary and Lincluden, when passing that way with their retinues.

The edifice was simply a large thatched cottage, divided in two by a partition named the hallan; beyond it was the principal fireplace, the lintel of which projected far over the hearth, and was wide enough to show the row of hams hung there to be smoked, and the iron bar whereon the kail-pot swung. Within this apartment—for the fireplace was really one—lay a whinstone seat, called the cat-hud, and a stone bench, the place of honour for strangers, and thereon Sir Patrick seated himself, by the gudeman's request.

Above the mantelpiece hung the black iron morion and two-handed whinger of the latter—with kirn-cuts of corn gaily ornamented with ribbons—the trophies of the last year's harvest home. The floor was of sanded clay; the ceiling showed the open cabers of the roof; while a long dresser laden with shining utensils, a few wooden creepies or stools and meal-arks, formed the furniture of this Scottish hotel of the fifteenth century.

The adjacent Moat of Urr was alleged to be full of fairies who danced in the moonlight round its strange concentric circles; and they were further said to be great bibbers of the good wine kept for the use of the before-mentioned abbots and priors; thus "mine host" of the papal tiara and keys had always a fair red cross painted on the ends of his runlets when they were landed at the Dub o' Hass; but the green imps nevertheless found a key to his cellars, and used gimlets of mortal mould to draw off the Canary and Alicant.

The gudewife of the house had just increased the number of King James's subjects and Earl Douglas's vassals by a male child, when Gray arrived; and near him, in the ingle, the nurse was administering to it the ash-sap, with due solemnity, by putting an ash-stick in the fire of peats and bog-pine that blazed on the hearth, and receiving in a horn spoon the juice which oozed from the other end. This was the first food of the newly-born children of the Gael, and when older they received their first flesh on the point of their father's sword or dagger.

With half his armour off, listless and weary, Sir Patrick Gray sat by the rustic fire on the ingle-seat, and some time elapsed before he became aware that the eyes of a stranger, who reclined on an oak settee in a shaded corner, were fixed with calm but firm scrutiny upon him.

This personage wore a scarlet cloth hood, which was buttoned from his chin to his breast, having a cape that covered his back and shoulders. His massive frame, which was of herculean proportions, was cased in a doublet of black bull's hide, having the hair smoothly dressed, and it was tied with a succession of thongs and little iron skewers. A kilt of coarse tartan, with hose of untanned deerskin, revealed his sturdy knees, which seemed strong as oak knots, and hairy as those of a gorilla. Secured by a square steel buckle, a broad buff belt encircled his waist, at which hung a double-handed sword and poniard of mercy. His great brawny hands were crossed upon the shaft of a ponderous iron mace, having a chain and "morning star," and as he rested his chin thereon, his vast black beard hung over them, while he surveyed the Captain of the Guard with his wild, keen, and fierce dark eyes, the natural expression of which, under their black and shaggy brows, seemed a scowl.

Everything about this man seemed expressive of colossal proportions and brutal strength. As if danger might not be distant, with an air that in another would have seemed bravado, but in him was quite natural, he drew his mighty sword, examined the point, tested the spring of the blade, and smiled with a grim satisfied air, as he sheathed it again.

In most of the incidents of our story we have been compelled to follow and to portray the course of events with the care of an historian rather than of a romancer; and thus must we detail, or rather translate, the conversation which ensued between Sir Patrick Gray and this burly Celtic giant, as it was maintained in a strange mixture of old Doric Scottish and the Celtic language then spoken by the inhabitants of Galloway.

"What may the last news be among you here?" asked Sir Patrick.

"What could they be but of sorrow?" growled the other.

"I doubt it not where Earl James abides."

"You are a bold man to say so," replied the Galwegian.

"I am in the king's service, my friend, and a good cause gives courage; but, beside the storming of Raeberry, and the lawless capture of Sir Thomas MacLellan, what is there new in Galloway?"

"The foul slaughter of the laird of Sandwick, whom the Douglas troopers fell upon in Kirkandrews, and killed when at his prayers,—and this was yesternight."

"Another act of sacrilege?"

"Air mhuire! so my lord the abbot of Tongland terms it; but they were dainty gentlemen who followed the laird of Glendoning," said the other, with bitter irony; "they cared not to stain the floor or altar of God's consecrated church with blood; so they dragged old Sandwick forth, though he clung to the iron altar-rail, and drew him to the louping-on-stane at the grave-yard gate, and there hacked him to pieces."

"It was like these men of Thrave," said Sir Patrick; "but a day of vengeance for these continued atrocities must come, and speedily too."

As he said this the host, who was making a posset of Alicant on the hearth, looked up with terror; but the strong man with the mace laughed bitterly, and added, as he struck the floor with his mace,

"Dioul! the sooner the better for me."

"And who are you?" asked Sir Patrick.

"Would you be a wiser man for knowing?" was the cautious and not over-courteous response; "yet I care not if I tell: I am Malise MacKim,—"

"What—Malise, the hereditary smith of Thrave—MacKim the Brawny?" exclaimed Gray, with something of alarm in his tone.

"Yes," said the other through his clenched teeth.

Gray, by a twitch of his belt, brought his dagger conveniently to his hand; MacKim saw the movement, and smiled disdainfully.

"Has the earl wronged you?" asked Sir Patrick.

"To the heart's core," was the emphatic reply. "Oh, mhuire as truidh! mhuire as truidh! that I should ever have it to say—I, whose fathers have eaten the bread of his race for generations—ay, since the first handful of earth was laid there to form the Moat of Urr—yea, yea, since first the Urr waters ran, and leaves grew in the wood of Dalbeattie!"

"What has happened?"

"His people have this day slain my brother Donacha MacKim, near the Bush aboon Tracquair, and have carried off his daughter, who was the love of my youngest son; but I have seven—SEVEN sons, each taller and stronger than myself, and I will have sure vengeance on Douglas, if he grants it not to me; and this I have sworn by the cross of St. Cuthbert, and by the soul of her I love best on earth, my wife Meg."

The black eyes of the gigantic smith glared with genuine Celtic fury and hate as he said this; he beat the floor with his roughly-shod feet, and his strong fingers played nervously with the shaft of his mace, the chain and morning-star of which (a ball a pound in weight, furnished with four sharp iron spikes) lay on the floor. Gray, as he surveyed him, reflected that it was extremely fortunate that the smith's fealty to Douglas had been broken, otherwise he might have proved a very unpleasant companion for the night in that small and solitary hostelry, situated, as it was, in a hostile and lawless district. This meeting, however, taught Gray to be wary, and thus, though knowing the country well, he affected to be a stranger.

"Is the abbot of Tongland at Thrave?" he asked.

"No; the earl, in sport, poured a ladleful of gold down the throat of the Raeberry warder; so his father confessor pronounced a malediction upon him, and retired to the abbey at Tongland, in disgust and despair at his cruelty."

"How far is it from hence to the clachan?"

"About ten miles."

"And to the abbey?"

"It is beside the clachan."——"Good."

During that night Gray slept with his door and window well secured, with his sword drawn under his head, and his armour on a chair by his bedside, to be ready for any emergency. The lassitude incident to his long journey on horseback by such rough roads—for then they went straight over hill and down valley, through forest, swamp, and river—made him sleep long and late on his bed of freshly-pulled heather; thus the noon of the next was far advanced before he set out once more.

Malise MacKim, his sullen acquaintance of the preceding evening, conducted him for some distance beyond the Urr, and told him, what Gray already knew well, that if he wished to reach the clachan of Tongland, he must pass the Loch of Carlinwark on his right, and pursue the road that lay through the wood on the left bank of the Dee.

"And whither go you, my friend?" he asked, as the gigantic smith was about to leave him.

"To join my seven sons, and scheme our vengeance; yet what can mortal vengeance avail against the earl of Douglas?"——"How?" said Gray; "in what manner?"

"Know you not that he wears a warlock jacket, against which the sharpest swords are pointless?"

"What do you mean?" asked the soldier, keeping his horse in check.

"I mean a doublet made for him by a warlock in Glenkens, woven of the skins of water-snakes caught in a south-running burn where three lairds' lands met, and woven for him under the beams of a March moon, on the haunted Moat of Urr."

Gray laughed and said, "I should like to test this dagger, my poor MacLellan's gift, upon that same doublet."

"Moreover," said the smith, lowering his voice, while a deeper scowl impressed his grisly visage, "it is said in Galloway here, that when Earl James, a child, was held by his godmother at the font in Tongland Abbey Kirk, the blessed water, as it fell from the hand of Abbot John, hissed upon his little face as upon iron in a white heat."

"Peace, carle! can a stout fellow like thee be moonling enough to give such stories credence?"

"'Tis folly, perhaps, to think of them, betouch us, too! so near the Moat of Urr," said the smith, with a perceptible shudder, as he glanced covertly over his shoulder.

"And why here more than elsewhere?"

"Know ye not?" asked the smith, in a whisper.

"You forget that I am a stranger."

"True. Then it was on this spot that James Achanna, the earl's sooth fast-friend and henchman, sold himself to Satan, after conjuring him up by performing some nameless rites of hell."

"Adieu, and God be wi' you," said Gray, laughing, yet nevertheless making the sign of the cross, for the place was savage and solitary, and he was not without a due share of the superstition incident to his age and country. Turning his horse, he rode rapidly off.

As he did so, a cunning smile passed over the swarthy face of Malise MacKim, who swung his mace round his head as if he were about to brain an enemy.

The day was far advanced, when, at Kelton, Gray crossed the Dee by a flat-bottomed boat, near a place where a group of peasants were assembled under a gallows-tree. Thereon hung a man, and there, by paying a fee to the doomster of Thrave, persons afflicted by wens, or similar excrescences, came to obtain the benefit of the deid-strake—a touch of the dead hand being deemed a certain cure.

When Gray saw the poor corse swinging in the wind, he remembered the fate of Sir Herbert Maxwell, and reflected how easily Douglas might release Murielle from her marriage-ties by putting him to death, as he had done that powerful baron; yet his heart never trembled, nor did he swerve from his resolution of attempting to save MacLellan, in spite of every danger.