Our worthy friend, ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ seemed strangely altered as he rode back into Liddesdale. A moody man was Dick, and a silent; no longer the jovial comrade and ‘devil-may-care’ trooper that the other jackmen had heretofore known him, but a sulky and captious fellow-traveller, an abrupt and peremptory martinet. The borderer was beginning to find that he had a conscience, and to discover how unpleasant are the remonstrances of that monitor when displeased. His heart smote him sorely while he reflected on the part he had been compelled to play with regard to Maxwell, a man whose whole character had inspired him with admiration and respect, in whom also, as a constant frequenter of the Court, he took an affectionate interest that he did not care to analyse. And now he had lured this frank and friendly soldier into a trap from which it was doubtful if he would escape with life. The towers of Leslie were thick and lofty, and well-guarded; the retainers of Rothes noted, like their chief, for an unscrupulous recklessness and defiance of all consequences. What chance for the naked prisoner in such a stronghold? Those damp and gloomy vaults could keep a secret well. It needed no outrage, neither steel nor poison, to silence an inmate for ever. The jailer had but to forget a small black loaf, neglect to fill a shallow cruse of water, and who would ever chronicle the prisoner’s agonies in a torturing, lingering death? ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ turned sick and faint at the thought.

He had ample leisure to indulge these painful fancies, for the rapidity with which Maxwell had been conveyed into Fife necessitated a slow return, even on the same powerful horses that carried the men-at-arms of Earl Bothwell. Ere the weary animals pricked their ears to welcome the towers of Hermitage, Dick had come to a resolution which neither discipline nor loyalty would have tempted him to abandon. His comrades, more astonished than irritated at the change in one whom they had been accustomed to consider the very pattern of a moss-trooper, shook their heads, and whispered one another that ‘muckle Dick was fey,’ signifying doomed,—it being an old Scottish superstition that any sudden and complete change in the disposition of an individual denotes an early death. When Dick sat silent among the wassailers below the salt, and passed the black flagon untasted by, many a roistering associate looked a thought graver for the moment, as he pictured his old comrade stretched upon the heather, with the pale gleam of death upon his face, and a ‘false Southron’s’ lance through his body, a thought graver perhaps, for an instant, till a coarse jest or a fresh draught of ale brought him back to the gross and the material once more.

Hermitage Castle was no lightsome residence now. But for the return of military duties and the clang of arms at stated intervals in the court, it might have been a college or a monastery, so rarely was the voice of merriment heard within its walls. No more hawking and hunting now. The drawbridge had not been lowered, nor the portcullis raised, since Moray took his departure with his solemn smile, following wild Rothes and his spearmen at half-a-day’s interval, and leaving the lord of the castle in a mood of such stern and sullen defiance as caused the boldest of his retainers to shrink instinctively from his path. It seemed like another life, that they used to lead long ago,—dashing out in the dewy mornings with hawk on hand and hound at heel, or winding warily away in warlike order at set of sun for a moonlight foray on the Southern side. The rude spearmen consoled themselves with great meals of beef and floods of ale, but the henchman’s platter often remained untouched, his cup unfilled, whilst the lord of the castle himself spent whole days of solitude in his own chamber, walking out at sunset to the northern rampart, where he would pace up and down for hours, far into the night.

His good angel had abandoned Bothwell at last, yet the spirit had left a gleam of his presence, a fragrance from its wings, about him still. Fast in the toils of unscrupulous Moray, the earl could yet look back with a painful longing to the days when he was a loyal subject and a devoted knight to his beautiful Queen. At times he would be tempted to forego ambition, pride, revenge, consistency, everything but his wild unreasoning affection, and, galloping to Holyrood or Stirling, fling himself at Mary’s feet, entreat her to forgive him, and pledge himself, if it would make her happier, that he would never see her face again. Yes, there were moments when the proud, strong man felt he would ask no more welcome relief than to bow his head and pour his heart out like a woman in tears before his Queen; but then he thought of Darnley’s youthful beauty, and Darnley’s mocking smile—of the path that was still open to himself if he would crush all such foolish weaknesses, all such exaggerated notions of chivalry and forbearance. The fiend, who is always at hand with his temptations, if a man gives him the least encouragement, whispered in his ear that nothing is impossible to one who has no scruples, and who will ungrudgingly risk all; that when honour, honesty, faith, and humanity are but rated as flimsy superstitions to bind weak intellects, and crime itself is considered simply as an untoward necessity or a decisive manoeuvre, the will becomes all-in-all, and the master-spirit, that can dare boundlessly and unflinchingly, may aspire to the fulfilment of its boldest wishes and its wildest dreams. Bothwell, too, had been brought up in no precise or scrupulous school. In his adventurous career on the North Sea, many a scene of bloodshed and rapine had come under his notice, and one who had accustomed himself to direct those predatory descents on the Danish coast, which were but authorised acts of piracy after all, was not likely to entertain much compassion for a woman’s shriek or a man’s death-groan. It would have been no shrinking from bloodshed that could have deterred Bothwell from any scheme on which he had once thought well to enter.

Moray, too, had got the Earl completely in his hands. That wary statesman, in whom the suaviter in modo seems to have been admirably combined with the fortiter in re, had the peculiar faculty of acquiring unbounded influence over his associates, a power sometimes observable in the calm impassive nature which never betrays its own feelings. Whatever might be the plot on which he was engaged, how high soever ran the waves through which the base-born Stuart steered his bark, not a shade of trepidation was to be detected on his quiet brow during its voyage, not a gleam of satisfaction when he had landed his cargo safely in port. It may be that men felt, so long as their interests were identical, they could trust Moray not to betray himself or them. It may be that, though sadly warped to evil, his was a superior nature, born to command. Whatever was the cause, no intriguer could be more plausible, no party-leader more successful.

And Bothwell, eager, hot-headed, vain, perhaps even romantic, was a mere child in the hands of such a man as this. What could avail the bluff straightforward courage of the swordsman against the diplomatic finesse of the equally bold but far more subtle statesman? It was the old story of the long sweeping sabre against the delicate rapier skilfully handled. The broad blade whistles through the air with mighty strokes that would serve to cleave a head-piece or to lop a limb, but ere it can descend amain, the thin line of quivering steel has wound its sinuous way under the guard and through the joints of the harness, and is drinking the streams of life-blood from the heart. Earl Bothwell was bound hand and foot to the half-brother of his Queen.

All these intrigues and vexations goaded the warden to the verge of madness. He could scarce bear to be noticed, much less addressed, by his retainers; and it was with a fierce oath and a savage glare that he accosted his henchman when the latter ventured to interrupt his solitary walk, one summer’s evening, on the northern rampart.

The stars were coming out one by one in the soft twilight sky, and the warden paced moodily to and fro, looking ever and anon wistfully towards the north.

‘What lack ye, man, in the fiend’s name?’ exclaimed the earl, angrily. ‘Must every knave that clears a trencher come into my presence unbidden? Silence, varlet, and begone!’

But Dick, too, had a sore heart and a perplexed brain, a combination which renders a man somewhat careless of outward observances. He was not to be daunted, even by the displeasure of his chief, and he answered doggedly in return—

‘I’ll no be silent when it’s for the laird’s honour that I suld speak! Oh! Bothwell, man, me an’ mine has served you an’ yours ever sin’ Scotland was a kingdom, I’m thinkin’. Will ye no hear me speak the day?’

Dick’s voice shook when he alluded to his feudal services. Stern as the giant looked, he was hoarse and trembling with emotion. Something in the warden’s breast responded to the appeal of his retainer, and he answered with assumed impatience—

‘Say your say, man, in the devil’s name, who seems to be commanding officer here; out with your report, if report it be, and have done with it.’

‘I wad wage my life for you, Bothwell, and that ye ken fine,’ replied Dick, with something almost like tears shining in his eyes. ‘I wadna grudge to shed every drop of bluid I hae, just to keep ye frae watting your foot. It’s no danger, an’ it’s no disgrace, an’ it’s no death that wad daunton me frae doing the laird’s bidding. No, no, “Dick-o’-the-Cleugh” and Dick’s forbears ha’ eaten the Hepburn’s bread and drunk frae the Hepburn’s cup ower lang for the like o’ that. But it’s just rackin’ my heart to think o’ yon lad in the donjon-keep at Leslie, and him breaking bread in the Hepburn’s hall, and setting his trust on the Hepburn’s honour. And to think o’ the like o’ me pittin’ his feet in the fetters and his craig in a tow; I wish my hands had rotted off at the elbows first!’

‘What would you have, man?’ said his chief, somewhat less impatiently than the henchman had expected. ‘’Tis a mettled gallant, I grant ye, and a far-off kinsman of my own. What, then? A soldier must take his chance; ’tis but the fortune of war.’

‘An’ whan the leddies speir for their messenger at Holyrood, an’ the bonny Queen hersel cries, “Ou, he’s safe enough, I trusted him to Bothwell;” how will we look if ever we come lilting into the Abbey-yard, and can give no tidings of our guest?’

The warden’s brow softened, although he seemed considerably perplexed.

‘I would he were safe back again, Dick,’ replied he, ‘I care not who knows it; but Rothes has a firm grip, and he would like well to make favour with Moray, even though he should disoblige me. I wish poor Walter may not be in a prison from which there is no breaking, at this present speaking. Aye, Dick! times are changed since my father’s day. Earl Patrick, now, if he had wanted anything from the proudest baron in Scotland, would have gone and taken it with a hundred riders at his back.’

Dick snapped his fingers in great glee. He was reading his chieftain’s thoughts as he would have read the track of a herd of cattle driven but yesterday into Cumberland.

‘It wadna tak’ a hundred men,’ said he, exultingly, ‘to lift the plenishing of Leslie Hoos itsel’, though it were garrisoned with a’ the loons in Fife. I wad but ask for Ralph Armstrong and “Lang Willie,” an’ maybe Little “Jock-o’-the-Hope,” to bring awa’ Maister Maxwell in a whole skin, gin he lay in the heart o’ Carlisle jail!’

‘It might not be a bad ploy for some of our lads,’ answered Bothwell, with rather a fierce smile. ‘Horses get fat and men lazy cooped up here within four gray walls, and I might require man and horse in proper trim before long. Hark ye, Dick! if ye want to go northward for some ten days or so, I shall not ask ye where ye have been at your return. No thanks! leave me, man! If it come to blows, that long body o’ yours can take care of itself.’

For the next hour or two ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ looked like a different person as he busied himself preparing man and horse for a march that he determined should commence at nightfall. When the sun had set, and the earl, after deeper potations than ordinary, had retired from his habitual walk on the rampart, his henchman and three companions rode steadily out of the castle-yard, followed by many inquiring looks from their comrades, who, heartily wearied of their forced inaction, beheld with strong feelings of envy the departure of the little cavalcade. It consisted but of four individuals, nevertheless it would have been difficult among all Lord Bothwell’s retainers to have selected a more efficient-looking quartette. With the exception of ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ himself, Ralph Armstrong was esteemed the most powerful man in Liddesdale; he was a stolid-looking fellow, too, with considerable mother-wit concealed under a composure that nothing could ruffle, and a courage that nothing could daunt. ‘Lang Willie,’ again, was an exceedingly voluble and amusing companion, chiefly distinguished for his extraordinary skill as a swordsman, and the readiness and coarseness of his repartees. Little ‘Jock-o’-the-Hope,’ so called simply because he was the youngest of the party, was an active, limber, powerful fellow, with all the mettle of his twenty summers and the sagacity of twice his age.

With such a following, and a moonless night in his favour, Dick would have been nothing loth to lay a wager that he would cross the Southern Border, and take Lord Scrope by the beard.

They rode all night merrily enough; steadily though, and careful not to distress their horses. As they neared the capital, Dick’s spirits rose visibly, and his comrades could not but remark on his resumption of his old habits of good-fellowship; but at daybreak an incident occurred which cast a gloom over the henchman’s superstitious nature, and plunged him once more into that gloomy taciturnity which was so foreign to his real disposition.

It was in the gray of the dawn. Dick was riding at the head of the party, who followed in single file, for the tract lay through some boggy and broken ground in which two horses could not go abreast. Suddenly a hare that had been cropping the dank herbage thus early, stole into the path in front of them, and leaped slowly along under the very nose of the henchman’s charger. This, although an untoward omen, was too common an occurrence to create alarm. There was an established formula for all such cases made and provided. Though too good a Protestant to cross himself, Dick repeated the customary charm with edifying gravity; but, as though in defiance, the hare still kept on in front of them. At three different angles in the path she hesitated, seeming about to turn off to right or left, and then hopped slowly on in the direction they were travelling. The stout borderers grew pale. It was even proposed that they should retrace their steps and abandon the enterprise; but Dick suggested that as he was the person immediately in front, his must be the entire risk, and the warning must be especially intended for him. The others were well satisfied to take this view of the matter, and presently they were discoursing as blithely as before; but their leader felt a depression of spirits creeping over him, which he strove in vain to overcome, and as the gloom gathered darker and darker about him, he felt in the depths of his rude nature that presentiment of coming death, which, let philosophers say what they will, is no unusual precursor of the final catastrophe.

His past life comes back to him with strange vividness as he rides silently on. His father’s rude gray tower at the head of the glen; the sunny, grassy nook, where he used to play, by the shallow burn, with five sturdy urchins like himself, and one golden-haired brother, whom they missed at last from amongst them, and told each other in awed whispers, looking up at the sky the while, how ‘Willie was gone to heaven.’ Till to-day he had almost forgotten the gleam of his father’s broadsword, and the caresses of a gentle, care-worn woman who used to hush him to sleep with low plaintive songs. He remembers, too, with peculiar distinctness, that first ride on the tall bay gelding, and the mimic lance with which he drove his imaginary foray.

These early memories are clearer to him now than many a real scene of plunder and bloodshed in which he knows he has since taken too much delight, but his devotion to his chief is as intense as ever, albeit dashed with something of a melancholy tenderness that seems unnatural, and derogatory to both.

Another figure, too, comes flitting across the borderer’s mental sight—a figure that is seldom long absent from his dreams either by day or night—a figure that he dares to dwell on now for the first time these long weeks past without shame, because he feels that he is about to vindicate his loyalty to all belonging to her, or to her Queen.

He can almost hear the ringing tones of her voice, can almost catch the flutter of her dress. Surely he is bewitched! Bewitched, or else irrevocably doomed to death. As he gathers a sprig of witch-elm and fastens it in his morion, he says to himself that if he is really to die, he should like to see Mary Seton just once again.