"I wake to sad reality, the days of youth have fled—
The flower, the shrub, the velvet turf have long ere now been dead;
The brook that ran so merrily has ceased to bubble by,
The pebble bed whereon it flowed is broken up and dry."

As Sir Patrick Gray had no desire to traverse again the swampy wastes of the Peel Morass, with the chance of perhaps encountering, when alone, Ludwig of Endhoven, and his ruffianly Brabanciones, he took the way which led towards the principality of Ravenstein, intending to cross the Maese and travel to Breda through Dutch Brabant.

Eagerness to see, to meet, to rejoin Murielle, or to make his presence there known to her, made him travel without delay; but in his ignorance of the route, through a flat country, destitute of those strong natural features, to which his eyes were accustomed at home, caused him frequently to make mistakes and detours; thus the evening of the first day found him only at the town of Grave, which had a fortress, situated by the margin of the Maese, and of such strength that it was deemed the Key of Gueldreland, and had thus been the object of many a bloody contest between the dukes of Brabant and the earls of Holland.

As the town was small, he soon found an hostelry, and delivered his horse to the groom and his sword to the tapster, according to what was then, and for long after, the custom in all places of entertainment; but retained his chain shirt and dagger while he sat at supper in the large public room, or chamber-of-dais, in which were two gentlemen, apparently travellers like himself, and similarly employed, in deciding upon the merits of broiled fowls and a stoup of Burgundy.

Full of his own thoughts and of Murielle, reckoning the miles of flat and monotonous Flemish scenery that lay between them, the hours that must intervene ere he could see her; the mode in which he should discover himself, the promises he would exact, and the vows he would repeat, Gray took no notice of the strangers, who conversed freely, and somewhat noisily, over their wine, their brusquerie of manner appearing to increase as the twilight deepened with their potations; so that when Gray was at last roused from his reveries and looked towards them, the dusk was so great that he could scarcely discern their features.

They were talking of the proceedings of the great ecclesiastical council, which was then sitting in the Swiss archbishopric of Basle, and of the laws it was framing for the extirpation of heresy—topics upon which all men were beginning to question, or rather to sound each other, as such questions, in those days of the stake and faggot, were fraught with danger. They conversed in French; but finding that Gray sat resolutely silent, one turned and said to him abruptly, "Pray, sir, what think you of Procopius?"

"Of—who?" said Gray, with hesitation.

"Procopius, the Shaved."

"The leader of the Hussites?"

"Yes—the protesting heretics."

"I think him a bold Bohemian captain," was the cautious reply.

"What think you of his disputation at the holy council of Basle?" continued the other.

"I am not capable of judging."

"Peste! Did he not bear hard on the monks?" persisted the querist.

"I am not aware," replied Gray, with increasing reserve, "as I have not heard; but what said he?"

"At the head of two hundred gentlemen of his party, the valiant Procopius came before the council, and stoutly maintained that monkery was an invention of the devil.

"'Can you prove this?' asked Cardinal St. Julien, while his face flushed red as his stockings.

"'Yes!' replied the Bohemian, stoutly.

"'How?' thundered the cardinal, knitting his brows.

"'Thus; will you deny that the Saviour did not institute it?'

"'We do not.'

"'Then,' quoth Procopius, ''tis plainly an invention of the devil,' whereat Ænies Sylvius Piccolomini——"

"He who was in Scotland?"

"Yes; burst into a fit of laughter, which however did not prevent him from committing several poor devils to the flames in the course of the evening, where they spluttered and burned bravely for the amusement of all good Catholics."

"We have had some such work at home, where John Resby and Paul Crawar have perished at the stake, for preaching doctrines which some term false and others simply new."

"How do you term them?" asked the second traveller.

"Sir," replied Gray, "I am a soldier, and, being neither priest nor clerk may not know the difference."

"So you are of Scotland?" said the first stranger, suddenly relinquishing his French for the old dialect then spoken by the upper classes of the northern kingdom; "we bid you welcome, as countrymen. Pray join us—and harkee, tapster, let us have lights and more wine—we too, sir, are of Scotland."

More Burgundy was promptly brought, and on four torch-like candles of yellow wax being lighted in four great brass sconces, Gray was enabled to observe the aspect and bearing of his fellow travellers, or rather sojourners at the hostelry.

Both had their hair cut closely round above their ears, in the unbecoming fashion of twenty years before. They were moustached, but had their beards and whiskers shaved off in what was then the Scottish mode; they wore armour, with skirts composed of horizontal steel bands, called taces, with circular epaulets, to protect the armpits from sword thrusts, with spikes on the oriellets of their helmets.

The tallest and most handsome forcibly recalled to Gray's memory the late King James I.; he seemed to have something of that unhappy monarch's voice too, but his air and manner, though soldierly and stately, were reckless and blasÉ, and at times even abrupt and rough, yet not altogether unpleasing.

The other had pale grey cunning eyes, which were either bloodshot by dissipation, or reddened by the fire of innate cruelty, and they twinkled so far apart from his nose that it appeared almost impossible for him to see an object with both at once, for each seemed to be looking at the ear which adjoined it, and his hair and beard were a fiery red. But what were the emotions of Gray, and how firmly did he grasp his dagger, while a gust of fury filled his heart—a fury which he had great difficulty in repressing—when, in this person we have just described, he recognized that venal wretch, James Achanna!

By the light of the sconces the latter and his companion had a full view of Gray, but they seemed not to recognize him, for, as already stated, the ghisarma of Earl James had laid both cheeks open, thus a hideous wound traversed his whole face like a livid bar sinister. It was slowly passing away, however, for the old duchess of Gueldres had given him a rare balsam, which she said would effectually efface the scars; but as yet they, and a new curl which Gray had fancifully given his moustache, had so effectually altered his appearance, as to conceal his identity from this ruffianly swashbuckler of the earl of Douglas.

"So you are of Scotland, sir?" resumed the other traveller.

"I am come from thence but lately," replied Gray; "and may I ask your names?"

"Certainly," replied our old acquaintance, with perfect confidence; "I am James Achanna, a gentleman of the Lord Douglas, a name at which men prick their ears in Nithsdale, whatever they may do in foggy Flanders."

"And I," said the other, "am the Lord Rosse."

"Rosse!" reiterated Gray; "pardon me, sir, but, under favour, we have no such lord in Scotland."

"Not when I am out of it," said he, laughing.

"I know not the title," added Gray, coldly.

"Indeed! one seems to be soon forgotten then. Shall I state to you more fully that I am Robert Stewart, duke of Albany and earl of Rosse."

"The son of Duke Murdoch!" exclaimed Gray, starting from his seat with mingled surprise and respect.

"Yes; son of that Duke Murdoch, who, with his second son, and Duncan, earl of Lennox, was foully butchered at the Lady's Rock, before the castle gates of Stirling. Vengeance has a long and bitter memory! and by that extrajudicial murder, for such I will maintain it to be in the face of Europe, I have been since boyhood an exile, a wanderer, and now, when little more than thirty years of age, my hair is greyer than my poor old father's was, when his venerable head rolled in the sand beneath the doomster's axe."

Gray bowed low, for respect to the royal blood was strongly graven then in the hearts of the Scots, in none more than his, and Albany, though exiled and outlawed, in consequence of the malpractices of his father (who had been regent during the detention of James I. in England), was the cousin of King James II.

"And you, sir?" asked Albany, loftily.

"I am your grace's most humble servant," replied Gray pausing, as he dreaded to tell his name before Achanna, lest it might reveal to the Douglases his royal mission, and blight his hope of meeting Murielle.

"But your name, sir," said the duke, with growing displeasure; "your name?"

"Yes," added Achanna, imitating him, "we must have your name."

"I am the laird of Luaig," replied Gray, with ready wit, taking the name of a little obscure loch, which lies in a narrow glen near his father's castle of Foulis.