CHAPTER XII.

When the day is gane, an' night is come, An' a' folk bound to sleep, I think on him that's far awa, The lee-lang night, an' weep, my dear, The lee-lang night, an' weep.

_Jacobite Song._

It is singular how the first vague rumour of a great event travels faster than can almost be accounted for by human means, and how much time sometimes elapses before the real and authentic account is received! Two nights and a day of dread and uncertainty did Lady Nithsdale endure before any farther details reached Terreagles.

The honest Amy's face soon betrayed that fresh intelligence had arrived, and that intelligence unfavourable. Almost before her lady could question her she said,

"My lord is well, madam! my lord is safe!"

"Oh, dearest Amy, thanks!" and her eyes flashed with joy. "But why this sad countenance then? Look cheerful, girl, for your face belies your words. You are not deceiving me?"

"No, no indeed, madam. He is unhurt: not a wound, nor a scratch, as I believe."

"Then why can you not smile? Oh, Amy! at this moment I feel how weak a sentiment is loyalty to one's king, when put in the balance with love for one's husband! Still no smile! Why, we have changed characters, Amy, and you are going to school me into my due allegiance."

"Oh, my sweet lady! I joy to see a smile upon your lips; and I dare not finish my tale, for I shall banish it more quickly than I have called it up."

"You said he was unhurt; not a scratch, you said?"

"I did, my lady! but oh! can you not guess what other misfortune may have befallen him, and all of us?--oh, my lady!"

"I am dull of comprehension; but I cannot picture any great evil now my lord is safe!"

"He is safe, now, madam, unhurt, unwounded; but----"

"But what, Amy? Speak; you distract me!"

"But, madam--dear madam--he and all the other lords--are--prisoners, madam,--prisoners to King George!"

"Prisoners!" and she seemed to awake as from a trance. "Prisoners to King George! then rebels! traitors! Fool that I have been! and my thought never glanced towards this! Oh! to whom can I apply for advice or for assistance? Alas, alas! what can a poor weak helpless woman do? If I had wings to fly to my lord, then he would tell me how I might assist him;--then at least I should be near to soothe and to support him! But here, alone, and helpless," she added, wringing her hands, "what can I hope? what can I effect?--But you know more, Amy; you can tell me more?"

"No more, madam, than that the Scots were the last to come to terms and to surrender."

"And they surrendered! yielded themselves up to the Whigs! Oh, my dear, dear lord, what must thy noble spirit have endured ere it was bowed to this! How must thy counsels have been scorned, thy hopes blasted, thy heart crushed! I know thy lofty nature well, and truly my woman's soul almost refuses itself to picture what thine must have undergone!"

Amy stood for some momenta bewildered, and unable to offer consolations which she felt must be unavailing. Then, resuming her self-possession, she urged: "Think, madam, how much worse it might have been! you forget that my lord is safe in person."

"But, Amy, what he must have suffered in mind! And what are bodily sufferings to the tortures such a mind is capable of enduring!"

"There is one thing, my lady, for which we cannot be too grateful. He is now safe from the dangers of battle: think how you felt when we were talking of young Clanronald, so fresh, so blooming on the bloody sod!"

"True, true!" and she looked up for a moment. "But--" and she lowered her voice--"there are other and more inevitable perils than those which are met with in battle. If, indeed, the usurper keep the throne,--if the new dynasty prevail--then loyalty is treason, and treason, treason, Amy!--Even King James spared not his own nephew; can we expect more mercy in the soul of a stranger than in one of our own royal blood?--Oh Heaven, be pitiful!"

"Nay, madam, but the Duke of Monmouth was the usurper himself. This case is quite different! And then there are so many of them. Mr. Forster, and the Earl of Derwentwater and his brother, and the Lords Wintoun, Carnwarth, Kenmure, Nairne, and many, many more of noble and gentle blood. King George, if indeed he is to be our king, must show mercy. He could not have the heart----" Amy dared not finish the sentence: she could not have uttered, her lady could not have listened to, the termination their imaginations but too well supplied.

Lady Nithsdale bowed her head in silence, and Amy feared to break in upon the sad solemnity of her thoughts. After a pause, the countess slowly rose: "I will to my closet, Amy, and there tell my beads, till I have regained composure enough to think. But fail not to let me know should farther intelligence reach the castle."

Amy opened the door for her lady, and as she passed, she kissed her hand in token of obedience to her injunctions. Lady Nithsdale pressed her's, and slowly, steadily withdrew. Amy watched the closing door; and then giving a full vent to her own repressed feelings, she wept and sobbed in freedom.

Every hour now brought fresh reports, each more distressing than the last. One told how fourteen hundred men were inclosed in one of the churches, where they suffered both hardships and indignities from the soldiery; how they were stripped, not only of every article of value which they might have about them, but almost of necessary clothing.

These were principally Scotch, who, having been the last to surrender, were treated with the greatest rigour; and Lady Nithsdale shrunk with almost equal horror from the idea of her noble husband being exposed to the insults of the low-born and the mean, as from the more tremendous vengeance of the law.

Another report reached Scotland, that the rebels were to be tried by martial law, and shot upon the spot. But the alarm which such a notion was calculated to excite, was in some measure allayed, by learning that this summary punishment was only to be inflicted upon those who had actually held commissions under the government, against which they had borne arms. Lady Nithsdale was farther re-assured, when the name of Lord Charles Murray was the first mentioned as likely to suffer, for she knew well that her husband's could never have been omitted had he been in danger of such a fate.

But still she heard not from himself, and these varying and often contradictory rumours almost wore away her soul in feverish anxiety.

The town of Dumfries was in the hands of the Royalists, and it was a matter of difficulty for the prisoners to transmit any communication to their friends, which was not subject to the revision of those who were in power. There was time for each hope, in which she had formerly indulged, to be successively crushed. That which she had fondly imagined to be a victory at Sherriff Muir proved in its consequences to be no better than a defeat. Dutch reinforcements joined the royal army; while scarcely a day elapsed in which some of the Lowland chieftains did not desert the standard of the Earl of Mar.

Still no succours arrived from France. It became known that the regent Duke of Orleans had proscribed the Chevalier, and still the Chevalier's arrival was delayed.

Lady Nithsdale roamed about the vast and deserted halls; the un-read book dropped from her hands; the once loved spinet remained unopened; the needle, which she used to ply so rapidly and so dexterously, was still resorted to for occupation; but the flowers no longer grew under her fairy fingers, and the falling tears would often tarnish the colours of the silks before the leaf had yet assumed its form. She started at every noise: the changing cheek, the fluttering heart, the trembling finger, the faltering voice, all spoke the heart ill at ease. The long, long days wore wearily away; it seemed to her that each dismal winter evening closed in more slowly than the last.

Her children were far away; she could not visit their couches, listen to their tranquil breathing, and beguile the hours in watching their unconscious slumbers. Her existence would have been less irksome had there been any duty for her to perform, any exertion to be made; but in this forced inactivity of body, while the mind was distracted with doubts and fears, she endured, not so much the pangs of hope deferred, as those of protracted disappointment.

Watching the blazing logs on the hearth, and listening to the incessant whistling of the December blast, only varied by the rattling of a dry and withered stray leaf against the casement, she had sat through the early and lengthened twilight of a Scottish winter's evening. Glad of the excuse of fading light to indulge in the idleness of vague, dreamy, but most sad meditation, she had allowed the night to steal upon her unawares, till all without was darkness that might be felt, and the stone mullions of the oriel windows alone shone white in the fitful blaze of the wood fire.

She was startled from her reverie by the sound of men's voices, and the tread of a strange and heavy foot. The attendants entering, explained that a peasant was without, who insisted upon seeing the countess.

"It is the countess herself that my business is with," said the stout and rosy boor, who forced his way past the serving-men; "I was to come to the speech of the lady herself; and if you can certify to me that yonder she is, why I am ready enough to give up my packet; but I shan't let it go to any of you. How do I know what sort of jackanapeses you may be?" and the peasant grinned good-humouredly, with a twinkling eye, which led to the conclusion that he had not journeyed so rapidly, but that he had taken time to refresh himself by the way. He held a packet in his hand: "If it is true that you are that rebel lord's lawful wife, why, here's the letter I was to deliver safe into her own fair hands--that was, when she gave me the reward I have earned by a journey of some hundred and fifty miles."

"Oh, give it me! in mercy give it me!" exclaimed Lady Nithsdale; and starting from her seat, she would have snatched it at once.

"Softly, fair lady," cried the peasant, withholding it; "where is the reward the gentleman promised me?"

"Oh! you shall have anything you will, only give it--for pity, give it me! Amy!" she cried to Amy Evans, who, never far from her lady's side, had by this time made her appearance; "fetch my casket: nay, here, take the key, and bring hither my purse; it is in the embossed casket, and give the fellow what he will. And now, my friend, the letter--the letter."

"I think the lady's one that loves him; but nobody has yet assured me that she is his lordship's wife," continued the undaunted boor, with a knowing glance round the room: "all wives are not in such a taking about their husbands," he added, wishing, with a sort of low craft, which he deemed prudence, to delay delivering the letter till he had made sure of the money.

"Oh, trifle not with me! Give it me, as you hope to meet with mercy yourself!"

"Well, here it is, then; the poor soul shall have the letter any how." She snatched it quickly from his hand, and throwing herself upon her knees before the fire, she hastened to devour its contents. Her eyes, blinded by tears, could not decipher the lines as fast as her wishes prompted.

"Bring lights!" she exclaimed; "why are there no lights?"

The servants hastened to fetch the tapers; and the peasant remained near the door, watching the lady with an expression half compassionate, half comic.

"Sure enough, the poor soul loves that darkbrowed fellow," he muttered; "she tucks back her hair, as if she could tear off the curl that falls between the fire light and the paper; and she thinks no more of me! But I shall not depart without the pay I have been promised, I can tell her."

Amy re-entered with the purse at the same moment that the serving-men returned with lights; and Amy, showering into the hands of the messenger several gold pieces, led the way into the hall, that her lady might be left to peruse her packet in privacy.

The peasant clinked the money in his hard palm; then looking cunningly at Amy, "Your lady said I should have what I would."

"Well, and have I not rewarded you handsomely?"

"Why, pretty fairly, pretty fairly; but I should not mind another gold piece or so. You must bear in mind that my journey has been somewhat perilous, all through the royal armies and the loyal inhabitants, with a letter in my pouch from a rebel lord to a rebel lady."

"Nay, you are unreasonable, you should not be covetous: but here are a couple more, for my dear mistress will not think anything can be too much for one who brings her news from her husband."

"Thanks, fair mistress! I am one who always keep the eleventh commandment, even if I keep no other."

"The eleventh, fellow! Why, Protestant and Catholic agree there are no more than ten!"

"Ah, but I know the eleventh, and I know it best of all, and so do most people; and if they all kept the ten others as strictly as they do that one, why the world would be a better world than it is, that's all!"

"You speak in riddles, friend; explain yourself."

"'Get all you can, and keep all you get.' Did you never hear that before, mistress? if you have not heard it, you have practised it, I warrant me. But where's your buttery-hatch? I am spent with hunger, and 'specially with thirst."

While Dickon, the Lancashire ploughman, was restoring the strength, which did not seem to be much impaired, the countess was absorbed in the long-wished for epistle.

The letter was sad, almost hopeless; but it was from himself, and she gazed with delight on every line traced by that loved hand. The first impulse was that of joy; it was not till upon consideration and reflection, that she found in it matter for deep sorrow and despondency. It ran thus.