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Other documents randomly have
different content
 CHAPTER V.
THE ABBOT'S HOUSE.

Now gleams the moon on Arthur's mighty

crest,
That dweller in the air abrupt and lone;
Hush'd is Edina in her nightly rest,
But hark! there comes a sweet and
solemn tone,
The lingering strains that welled in ages
gone.
The mind of Sir Patrick Gray was oppressed by vague doubts and
apprehensions of—he knew not what. That the earl and countess
were colder to him than when last they met he was painfully
conscious by their absurdly haughty bearing, by the increased
timidity of Murielle, and the undisguised petulance of her kinsman,
perhaps her lover, the young Lord David.
Gray's love for Murielle was now no secret to the earl's powerful
family, but being a poor younger son of the baron of Foulis, it was,
as he bitterly knew, a matter of jest among the Douglases; for his
whole inheritance were his sword and spurs, which he had won at
the battle of Piperden, where the English, under Henry, earl of
Northumberland, were defeated by the Scots under William Douglas,
earl of Angus.
Moreover, Sir Patrick, by education, habit, and thought, was a
staunch and loyal adherent of the young king, James II., as he had
been of his father, who was so barbarously murdered at Perth; and
thus, inspired by love and doubt, hope and fear, presuming upon the
friendship of the abbot of Tongland, with whom he could "count
kindred," through the MacLellans of Bombie, he presented himself at
his mansion in the dusk, and was immediately ushered into the hall,
or chamber of dais, where, as supper was over, a brilliant group, or
rather several groups, were assembled.
The house of the abbot of Tongland (a wealthy monastery on the
banks of the Dee, founded during the reign of David I., by Fergus,
lord of Galloway, on his wedding the daughter of Henry, king of
England,) was a quaint edifice, one portion of which had crow-
stepped gables, and the other a battlement with singularly grotesque
gurgoils, through the gaping mouths of which the rain had been
disgorged upon the passers-by for centuries. An arch and great oak
gate, furnished with a giant risp or tirling-pin of iron, guarded by six
loopholes of warlike aspect, gave access to the house and its
gardens, which sloped south towards the craigs of Salisbury.
The usual quiet and seclusion of the abbot's mansion were changed
on this night for bustle, noise, and light; a crowd of pages, grooms,
lacqueys, and armed men led saddled horses to and fro, or loitered
about the entrance, while flakes of ruddy light fell through the deep
windows of the chamber of dais upon the green shrubbery and the
few flowers which still lingered since the last days of autumn.
This chamber was a veritable hall, such as might have graced a
baron's castle. It had many niches or ambres of carved stone, a vast
gothic fireplace, to the clustered pillars of which the fire-irons were
chained in the old Scottish fashion, to prevent their being too readily
used in brawls, and on the lintel was inscribed, in antique letters, the
legend,—

(Laus et honor Deo.)

On the hearth a fire of coal and oak-roots from the Figgate-muir was
blazing cheerily.
In this chamber, the lordly abbot had feasted four years before the
papal legate, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, bishop of Trieste,
afterwards Pope Pius II., and it was on that occasion that the latter
so wittily remarked, with an irreverent wink to the abbot of Melrose,
"that if there was a great reason for prohibiting the marriage of
priests, there was a much greater for permitting it."
The doors were oak carved with legends and monograms; the floor
also was of oak, roughly dressed with the hatchet and secured with
broad-headed nails, all the bright heads of which were visible, as it
was not carpetted, but only strewn with fresh rushes from the
Hunter's Bog. The walls were comfortably wainscotted up to where
the vaulted roof rose in the form of an arch, and there the stone-
work was covered by distorted figures, representing old legends
connected with the abbey of Tongland.
The sleek and portly abbot was seated near the fire in a lofty chair,
the back of which bore a carved mitre, and he was conversing easily
and pleasantly with all his guests in turn, for he was a benign and
amiable old prelate with a bald head, a rubicund and somewhat
unmeaning visage, and twinkling eyes half hidden by wrinkles and
fat.
Two chairs of state opposite were occupied by the earl and countess
of Douglas. On tabourettes near them were seated Murielle and a
group of ladies. Several gentlemen all richly dressed were loitering
near them, for they were conversing gaily and variously employed—
at chess, or the game of Troy; and on the silks, velvets, jewels, and
cloth of gold and silver, of which their costumes were composed, the
glow of the fire fell brightly, together with the light of twenty great
candles, which flared in sconces of brass hung round the walls on
tenter-hooks.
The stomacher of the countess-duchess was entirely covered with
native pearls, for those found in the Scottish streams were held to
be of great value. Among the costly jewels lost by Henry V., when his
camp was plundered at Agincourt, Rymer mentions una perula
Scotiæ; and only a few years before the date of our story, James I
presented to Æneas Sylvius, the Roman legate, one, which is now in
the papal crown.
Before her sweet face, pretty Murielle was manœuvring her fan,
quite as skilfully as any of her countrywomen might do at the
present day; and through the sticks of it, her merry and soft violet
eyes peeped from time to time at a handsome and soldier-like man,
who wore a crimson velvet pourpoint, with a steel gorget, a gold
belt, and hanging sleeves of yellow silk. He was Sir Patrick Gray, the
captain of the guard. While talking gravely of "the growing heresies
of John Huss and Paul Crawer," he seemed to be entirely occupied
with the countess of Ormond, before whom he knelt on one knee,
and for whom he was winding and unwinding several balls of
brightly coloured silk and golden thread, which she was using while
embroidering a missal cover, for the ladies of those days were never
idle; but in his abstraction, or pre-occupation with Murielle, he made
many a provoking knot, which the little white fingers of the lovely
countess required all their cunning to unravel.
His love for Murielle had brought him hither uninvited; and he felt
(like his kinsman, MacLellan) that he was among the enemies of the
king his master, and of the government; while the coldness with
which the boy-noble and the girl-countess treated him filled his heart
with sorrow and anger.
The scraps of conversation he heard all savoured of hostility to
James and to his ministers, with dark hints of daring and ulterior
political projects, as yet undeveloped and apparently obscure.
He was aware that Earl James of Abercorn, Earl Hugh of Ormond, Sir
Malcolm Fleming, Sir Alan Lauder, and other kinsmen of the
Douglases viewed him with undisguised aversion; and while he
continued to play with the balls of thread, and utter pleasant
commonplaces to the ladies near, those four personages were
standing aloof in a corner, leaning on their swords, which were
somewhere about five feet long, "nursing their wrath to keep it
warm," and wishing they had the captain of the king's guard on a
solitary hill-side, or even in the street without.
"And this Livingstone—I beg pardon, Sir Alexander Livingstone, Laird
of Callender—a mere baron," he heard the earl of Douglas say to the
abbot; "by what warrant or right is such a man as he regent of the
realm?"
"I have heard your noble father ask the same question often, with
the same tone—ay, and with the same sombre gloom in his eye, my
lord," replied the abbot evasively.
"Well—know you by what right?" reiterated the young noble bitterly,
giving vent to the hatred his dead father had carefully and
unceasingly inspired and fostered.
"Is it hereditary?" asked the abbot gently.
"Assuredly not."
"Then how came Livingstone to have the regency?"
"'Twas given by parliament and the nation."
"Hence his right," said the abbot, smiling at obtaining the very reply
he wished; but the petulant young earl rasped the rowels of his gold
spurs furiously on the hearth, for these quiet answers from the
"keeper of his conscience" galled and fretted him.
"Well, the time is come for the nobles, the barons, and others to
reconsider that too-hastily given right," said the countess; "for what
is he, or what is this Lord Chancellor, that earls and chiefs are to veil
their bonnets in their presence?"
The abbot, who dreaded the violence of the young countess more
than the temper of her husband (who was not exactly a lamb), was
prudently silent; but she was determined to force an answer from
him, and said bluntly, "Speak, abbot, you are silent!"
"Pardon me, lady, I was thinking of Plutarch. Know you what he
said?"
"How should I know, Lord Abbot," said Margaret, while her black
eyes sparkled with annoyance; "was he a heretic like Paul Crawer, or
a magician like Michael Scott, with an urchin or prickly hedgehog for
a familiar?"
"Why ask you all this?" "Because the name sounds cabalistic to a
Scottish ear," said Margaret, crossing and fanning herself.
"He was a scholar—and yet an unfortunate pagan, for he knew not
of St. Nicholas, the patron of scholars."
"But what said he?"
"That 'love and hatred corrupt the truth of everything,' and he
thought profoundly, madam, for verily they do. Yet if our holy father
at Rome will but listen to my prayer, ere long hatred and evil shall
exist on earth no more; but all men shall live and die in peace and
goodwill one with another—even unto the end of time."
The young earl smiled disdainfully, and relapsed into gloomy silence,
for he knew that his father confessor referred to a strange project
which he had long cherished, and concerning which he had seriously
pestered the late Roman Legate, Æneas Sylvius—that the Pope
Eugene IV., as head of the Church and "vicegerent of heaven upon
earth," would intercede for the fallen angel, to have him forgiven
and received once more into divine favour, to the sublime end that
all evil in the world would henceforth cease; for the good old
clergyman, in his largeness of heart, like his poetic countryman in
after years, felt that he could even forgive the devil, when he
thought
Auld Nickey Ben,
Maybe ye'll tak a thocht and mend.
But poor Pope Eugene was too much bothered and embroiled by the
untractable council of Basle, to attend at that time to the mighty
crotchets of the abbot of Tongland.
"Patience yet awhile, my son," said the benevolent abbot, crossing
to the young earl and caressing his curly black hair; "when I have
the Master of Evil forgiven, and restored to the place from whence
he fell, the lusts of the flesh will be effectually prevented from
warring against the spirit of grace. Sit nomen Domini benedictum!"
But the earl remained obstinately silent, with his dark eyes fixed on
the fire, as if the gloomy future might be traced amid its glowing
embers.
His kinsman, John of Abercorn, smiled coldly, for by his secret
connivance many said this visit to the court had been planned; while
the grim and turbulent lairds of Biggar and the Bass grasped their
long swords with an air that seemed to say, the peaceful and holy
days of the abbot's hopes were yet a long way off, and that the devil
was likely, as he has ever done, to poke his nose for a long time in
Scottish affairs; but a sad and sombre frown was in their eyes, for
this journey of their chief to Edinburgh had been undertaken in
direct opposition to all their entreaties, advice, and forebodings.
 CHAPTER VI.
MURIELLE.

Sweet love! sweet lines! sweet life!

Here is her hand, the agent of her heart;
Here is her oath for love, her honour's
power:
Oh that our fathers would applaud our loves,
To seal our happiness with their consents.
Two Gentlemen of Verona.
An hour passed without Gray finding an opportunity for addressing
more than the merest commonplaces to Murielle, yet his mind, even
when conversing with others, was so full of her image, that the very
rustle of her dress made his heart beat quicker; and he could see
her form, face, and expression as distinctly as he heard her voice in
fancy for ever, when she was absent; and the ribbon she had taken
from her breast, and given him to wear in his bonnet, was a gift
more prized than a royal crown.
Their eyes were eloquent although their tongues were mute, for
"their natures had so gradually blended into each other that, like two
tints of the rainbow, the lines between them would soon become so
extinct, that a separation would be the destruction of both."
But the Countess Margaret had a secret grudge at our captain of the
guard, and it arose from this circumstance.
Prior to her marriage, and almost from her childhood, she had been
a practised coquette, who had won many a brave and noble heart
with a facility which her rank increased—but won only to cast them
from her when tired of them, as she had done her dolls and toys
when a girl, or her jewels, dresses, flowers, and baubles in riper
years. They had served to beguile a day, a week, a month, those
human playthings, and that was all she cared for.
Sir Patrick Gray had proved rebelliously insensible to her beauty of
form, her gaiety, and brilliance of conversation, for he loved little
Murielle, and hence the more gorgeous Margaret had an additional
cause to treasure a pique at him; and having other views regarding
her sister, she now, in revenge, permitted him to fan his love with
hope, ere it would be crushed for ever, by her marriage to one as yet
unnamed. Hence the malicious smile, which curled her beautiful lip,
as she looked at them from time to time, on the night we are
describing.
Gray and MacLellan confessed to each other that two sisters more
charming could scarcely be met.
Murielle's face was pale, her features were delicate, and her eyes of
that deep hue, alternating between hazel and violet, which seemed
black at night. Her hands and arms were lovely in their form and
delicacy.
Then Margaret was so stately and queen-like, pure and cold as
marble, save when excited (which was not unfrequent), distant and
proudly reserved at one time—full of fire and passion at another. Tall
and beautifully formed, her hair and eyes were of the deepest jet, to
which the purity of her complexion formed a singular contrast; while
a softness was imparted at times to her otherwise haughty
expression by her long and thick eye-lashes, which she could drop
with the most skilful coquetry.
The face and eyes of Murielle, though less striking, had a strange
charm, as they brightened, deepened, and seemed to grow in
beauty, one knew not why or how; but it was the indescribable
charm of expression.
The old abbot, finding his efforts to amuse his fiery and feudal
friends a somewhat arduous task (as they were all inspired by
jealous, ambitious, or angry thoughts), came in despair to Murielle,
who was his favourite, and who loved him as a daughter would have
done.
"Your harp is here; sing us something, my lady daughter," said he;
"a song of our wild Galloway hills—or a Lowland ballad, if you prefer
it; but do so, I pray you, for clouds are gathering in your kinsmen's
faces, and I know that your sweet voice can best dispel them."
Murielle assented with a kind smile, and in a moment, Gray,
anticipating Lord David Douglas, handed the harp to her, and in
doing so, contrived, quick as lightning, to touch and press her hand,
which made her colour slightly, as she bent over the instrument, and
ran her rapid little fingers among the strings.
It was a clairsach, or harp of the old Scottish form, being only thirty
inches or so in height, and furnished with thirty string holes. In front
of the upper arm was the crowned heart (the Douglas cognisance),
formed of precious stones, and surrounded by minute inlaying of
mother-of-pearl.
"I thank you, child, for your readiness," said the abbot, patting her
pretty shoulder, "and in my turn, though I may not sing now at my
years, I shall tell you a legend of the olden time, which was told me
by an aged monk of Tongland, now asleep with his fathers in the
abbey kirkyard."
"A bribe, my lord, to make me hasten with my song," said Murielle,
smiling in the old man's face.
"And to make it as brief as possible," added the impatient Margaret.
"Say not so, countess," said the abbot, "we will not tire readily of
Lady Murielle's voice."
"A churchman turned a gallant in his old age!"
"Your sister is fortunate, lady, in the best gifts of heaven," continued
the abbot, "and must have been born—"
"Under a fortunate star, you would say?"
"Yes, countess, if such things exist."
"Nay," said Murielle, laughing, "I had a kind fairy for a godmother,
like the good princesses of the old romance."
Then in the chaunting cadence adopted by the singers of those
days, she sang the four-and-thirty verses of the old ballad of "Sir
Hugh le Blonde," a knight of the Mearns—but with these we will not
inflict the reader.
It told of how the subtile Rodinghame made love to a fair coquette,
who was queen of Scotland; and how, when she repelled him, in
revenge he put a leper man in her bower chamber. Then came the
proud and jealous king, who, on finding him in such a place, ordered
the queen to be burned at a stake, unless she could find a champion
to do battle with Rodinghame, her traducer, but such was the terror
of his prowess that none appeared; the day of doom came; the
hapless queen was bound to a stake, and the torch was about to be
applied, when Sir Hugh le Blonde, in his armour, sprang forward, and
lifted the gage of Rodinghame.
They fought long and desperately, but Sir Hugh slew the accuser,
after forcing him to confess his treachery. Thus the queen was
restored once more to favour and honour, to the joy of her husband
and all his court.
In gratitude to her preserver,
Then said the queen unto the king,
"Arbuthnot's near the sea;
Oh yield it to the northern knight
Who fought this day for me!"

"Yes," said our king, "and thou, Sir Knight,

Come, quaff this cann of wine;
Arbuthnot's but a baronie,
We'll to it Fordoun join."
Thus the descendants of Sir Hugh became lords of Arbuthnot and
Fordoun; the sword with which he defended the queen was long
preserved by the viscounts of his family, and his helmet was hung in
the church of Garvoch, which, in 1282, he bestowed upon the monks
of Arbroath for the safety of his soul, and in memory of his victory.
"How like you the song?" asked Abercorn of the countess.
"Well," she replied, with a dark smile; "because it acts as bird-lime."
"Bird-lime," said he, with a perplexed smile; "how?"
"For the king's popinjay," replied the countess, waving her fan
towards Sir Patrick Gray; but the ballad was suited to the fashion
and spirit of the age, and as Murielle's voice was soft and low, it
mingled sweetly with the rippling notes of her little harp.
In the olden time, by ballads and stories the nights were usually
passed before bed-time; and thus, after some well-bred compliments
had been uttered on her performance, Murielle relinquished her harp
to Sir Patrick (who achieved one more pressure of a pretty hand),
and turned to claim from her venerable friend the fulfilment of his
promise.
"My story," said the abbot, smoothing his cassock over his ample
paunch, "relates to a time when the Spirit of Evil, he whom I hope to
turn one day to a spirit of goodness and purity (here the earl gave a
sigh of impatience), had more power in the land even than he hath
now. Yet he was conquered and put to flight by our blessed apostle
St. Andrew; and now I shall proceed to show you how the cross on
which the latter was martyred became the symbol of the Scottish
nation, and why it has been borne on our breasts and on our
banners in many a righteous battle."
"'Tis well, Lord Abbot," said Earl James the Gross, bluntly; "I like
your ending better than your beginning, which savoured somewhat
of a sermon, and the night waxes apace."
Then the abbot related the following miraculous story, which we give
more correctly than it will be found in the Bollandists, in the "History
of the Blessed Regulus," which was written at St. Andrew's in 1140,
in the "Golden Legend," or even in the old Gothic "Legenda
Sanctorum, post Longobardicam Historiam," because we had it from
the writings of the abbot himself.
 CHAPTER VII.
THE LEGEND OF ST. ANDREW'S CROSS.

Some seek the Edens of the east,

Some Carrib isles explore;
The forests of the far-off west,
And Afric's savage shore.
Still charms of native speech and spot,
And native springs for aye,
Will band like brothers Scot with Scot
Upon St. Andrew's day!—Scottish Song.
In the year 370, St. Regulus, or Rule, a holy Greek monk, who dwelt
in Petræa, a city of Achaia, and who had preserved in secret the
reliques of St. Andrew the apostle and martyr, was strangely warned
by a vision, which was repeated three nights in succession, to secure
them from the Emperor Constantius, who was coming to deprive him
of his charge, and Regulus was commanded to take them elsewhere.
A deep and melodious voice, that seemed to come from afar, desired
him to go to the shrine wherein the reliques lay, to take therefrom
an arm, three fingers of the right hand, a tooth, and a kneebone;
these he was carefully to preserve, and to convey into a distant land
in the west, "a region situated in the uttermost part of the world."
After the third vision St. Regulus obeyed.
He placed the reliques in a box, and embarked in a small ship, taking
with him Damianus a priest, and Gelasius and Tubaculus, two
deacons, eight hermits, and three devoted virgins.
After great toil and suffering, and after encountering many storms,
they passed Melita, where, as the Scripture tells us, St. Paul had
been of old, thence between the Pillars of Hercules, along the coasts
of Gaul and Celt-iberia; and, after traversing the sea of Almainie,
were cast on a bleak and rocky promontary of Caledonia, near
where now the spires of the fair and stately city of St. Andrew form
a landmark to the mariner.
Then the coast was wild and desolate, and was named by the
painted Picts, who dwelt there, Muick-rhos, or "peninsula of fierce
boars."
Wild woods, pathless and dense, covered it, and a stormy sea beat
drearily on its rocky shore.
But these pilgrims having now reached, as they thought, "the
uttermost part of the world," built their cells, and began to preach
and baptize, uniting their labours with those who had landed
elsewhere on Scottish ground, and so, in the fulness of time, that
peninsula became a bishopric.
In the beginning of the ninth century, Adrian, a holy man, became
first bishop of this see of St. Andrews, where in days, then long
passed away, St. Regulus and his kuldees had founded a cell
dedicated to the Holy Virgin, about a bowshot westward from the
shore, upon a sea-weedy rock named unto this day, Our Lady's
Craig. But no vestige of the edifice remains, and the wild waves of
the German Sea sweep over it with every rising tide.
There, in his own chapel, did St. Regulus serve God devoutly for
two-and-thirty years, and there also died Constantine III., King of
Scotland, after spending the last five years of his life as a kuldee of
Kirkrule, for so the place was also named.
In those, the days of Adrian, Hungus, the Pictish king, granted to
God and St. Andrew that the place where the bones of the latter lay
"should be the mother church of all the churches in his kingdom,"
which comprehended the entire Lowlands of Scotland, and much of
what is now called England. He laid, in proof of his gift, a turf of the
ceded territory upon the high altar, and it was the first instance of
the symbolical transfer of land by enfoffment in Scotland.
Adrian, the bishop, was a man full of goodness and holiness; none
excelled him in devotion to St. Andrew, and when not preaching to
the people, he usually secluded himself on the little Isle of May, at
the mouth of the Forth, and there he always spent the forty days of
Lent, living on herbs, pure water, and fish, which he caught from the
rocks overhanging the sea.
There he said so many prayers daily, that when he had attained his
fortieth year without having committed a single sin, the devil
spitefully resolved to work him some mischief, if such were possible;
but the entire isle whereon he dwelt had become as it were so holy,
that all the powers of hell could not prevail against him.
Ere long the fallen angel had an opportunity, when fires were lighted
on the hills of Fife and Lothian, summoning the people to arms,
when, in the year 870, Athelstan, king of the western Saxons, a
savage warrior, who had cloven the head of his father by a single
stroke of his sword, and had committed many other inhuman
atrocities, but to whom Alfred the Great had ceded the territory of
Northumberland, marched northward with a mighty host of
barbarians, intent on conquest.
Athelstan had placed his dagger on the altar of St. John of Beverley,
as a pledge that if he conquered in the north he would enrich that
church, in testimony of his belief in the saint's patronage; and so,
after laying waste the southern portion of the Pictish territories, he
halted on the banks of the Tyne, near Haddington.
After long vigils in the Ocean cave, where the humble and rude altar
of St. Regulus is still to be seen, the holy Adrian joined the host of
King Hungus, which numbered thirty thousand warriors, a thousand
of whom wore torques of beaten gold. He came to add the influence
of his presence, and by his prayers and ministry to propitiate heaven
that these yellow-haired invaders might be repelled.
By a blow of the same sword with which he slew his father,
Athelstan cleft a rock near the castle of Dunbar, as a symbol that he
would conquer all the northern land; the mark, a yard in width,
remains there to this day, and was oddly enough referred to by
Edward I. before Pope Boniface, as his best claim to the kingdom of
Scotland!
For aid, Hungus applied to Achaius, king of the Scots, who sent his
son Alpine with ten thousand warriors, to assist in repelling the
dangerous invaders who had now possessed themselves of all South
Britain, and founded the petty kingdoms of the Heptarchy; and thus,
on the 29th of November, the eve before St. Andrew's day, the three
armies came in sight of each other, on the banks of a little stream
which flows through a narrow, deep, and stony vale, near the
pastoral hills of Dirlton.
There, on the eastern slope of these hills, Adrian, the bishop, set up
an altar, and said mass solemnly, with supplications for victory, while
the wild bands of King Hungus, and the wilder warriors who came
from the western mountains of the Dalriadic Scots, all clad in
hauberks and byrnes of ringed mail, were hushed in prayer, as they
knelt with bare knees on their bucklers or on the green sward,
bowing all their helmeted heads when Adrian stretched forth his
hand and blessed them in the name of his master who was in
heaven.
So night closed in, and, worn with toil, the bishop retired from the
tumultuary camp to a lonely house which was near, and there
sought repose.
And now the master of evil thought his time was come to attempt
the good man's downfall.
Assuming the form of a beautiful woman, he appeared at the house
of St. Adrian, and sent in a messenger, saying, "there was one
without who desired to make confession."
St. Adrian, who was at supper, sent one of the little boys who served
at his altar to say that "Killach, the Penitencer, would hear her,
having full power from himself to hear all confessions, to loose, or to
bind."
But, although Killach was a man of great sanctity, who afterwards
succeeded Adrian in his see, she said loudly that she would reveal
the secrets of her soul to none but his master.
St. Adrian therefore desired her to be admitted.
On entering she, for so we must style the spirit for the time, fell at
his feet, and on being blessed by him trembled in her guilty soul;
but, on raising her veil, Adrian could not repress an exclamation of
surprise at her marvellous beauty. Her skin had the purity of snow,
her eyes were of the deepest blue, and shaded by long dark lashes,
though her hair was of a wondrously bright golden tint, and glittered
like a halo round her head. Her face and form were faultless, her
stature tall, and her motions full of grace.
"Whence come you, daughter?" asked the saint,
"From the land of the western Saxons," replied the spirit, in an
accent that was very alluring.
"And who are you?"
"I am the daughter of Athelstan," she continued, weeping.
"Of Athelstan the wicked king!"
"Yes," and she bent her lovely face upon her hands.
"He whose host we are to combat on the morrow?" continued the
saint with growing surprise.
"The same."
"How and why came you to me?"
"He proposes to bestow me in marriage upon one of his chiefs, who
is a Pagan; but I have devoted myself to the service of Heaven, and,
escaping from his camp in secret, have cast myself upon you, as a
man of holiness and of God, to succour and to protect me against
the evils and perils of the world."
She wept bitterly, and as she seemed faint and almost famished, the
kind bishop led her to a seat, and pressed her to join him in his
frugal supper, to take food and refreshment, and thereafter repose.
Then the evil spirit, perceiving the advantages so rapidly won, cast
aside her head-gear, and appeared only in the long flowing weed of
a Saxon woman, with loose sleeves, which revealed the singular
whiteness of her arms and bosom; and, as supper proceeded, and
the conversation became animated, she clasped again and again to
her beating heart and her warm lips the wrinkled hand of St. Adrian
with a fondness which, with the growing splendour of her beauty,
bewildered him; Adrian became troubled, he knew not why, his soul
seemed to tremble within him in unison with the heart that beat in
the snowy bosom beneath his fingers, and he prayed inwardly to
God and to St. Andrew, his patron, against this new temptation, but
apparently without avail.
He had a silver cup, the gift of King Hungus, and each time, say the
legendaries, he signed the cross above it, red wine of Cyprus filled it
to the brim, but of this miraculous cup his fair guest declined to
drink, affirming that she "preferred pure water."
Incited by her, the saint filled and emptied his cup more frequently
than was his wont; till, dazzled alike by her beauty, which seemed
strangely to increase in radiance, her wit and helplessness, he felt as
if madness were coming over him, for his inward prayers availed him
nothing, and ere long he seemed to lose the power of remembering
them.
Suddenly a loud knock rang on the door of the house, and Killach,
the Penitencer, came hastily to announce that an aged pilgrim, who
had come from afar, desired to speak with the bishop of St.
Andrew's.
"How far hath he come?" asked the lady, laughing.
"From Bethsaida, a village by the sea of Galilee, where he and his
brother Peter were fishermen."
On hearing the birth-place of the apostles named, the evil spirit
trembled; but the bewildered bishop said, while turning to his
beautiful guest—"Tell the palmer I shall see him at some other time;
after so long a journey he must need rest."
But again the pilgrim knocked and became more importunate; then
Adrian, fired by the wine he had taken, and dazzled by the beauty at
his side, seemed to lose alike his charity and humility amid the
snares of the devil, for he commanded the insolent pilgrim to be cast
forth upon the highway.
"Nay, nay," said the golden-haired damsel, running her white fingers
through his snowy beard, "let us amuse ourselves with him, for
these palmers are quaint fellows."
"Is it your pleasure, fair lady," said Adrian, taking her hand in his,
"that I should permit him to interrupt us?"
"No—but let us jest with him; for I know well that these palm-
bearing pilgrims are sad rogues at times. Ask him some puzzling
questions, and if he answers them, admit him."
"Agreed," said the bishop, draining another goblet, and as her
laughter seemed very infectious, he joined her in a peal of such
merriment, that old Killach, the Penitencer, trembled in his cassock;
"propose a question, sweet lady, for you surpass all in wit as well as
in beauty."
"Inquire of him what is the greatest marvel in the smallest space
made by God."
Killach went forth and propounded this strange question.
"The faces of mankind and the leaves of the trees; for no two of
either are alike in the world," replied the poor pilgrim, who stood
without the door of the chamber, bending wearily on a knotted staff,
and shivering in the night air, though clad in a long blackweed, his
cowl hung over his eyes and his white beard flowed over his breast.
"A fair response," replied the beautiful lady, gaily, caressing more
tenderly the bishop's hand with her velvet-like fingers, while her
bright eyes beamed into his, and the night currents blew her
perfumed hair across his face; "pray ask him next, what is higher
than heaven."
"He who made it," replied the pilgrim, bowing low. Then the evil
spirit trembled, but again asked merrily:
"What is the distance from heaven to the base of the bottomless
pit?"
"Ask that question of thyself, who hast measured the distance to the
full, which I never did—thou accursed spirit!" replied the pilgrim
furiously, beating thrice on the door with his staff, whereupon, with a
shrill shriek, the Devil vanished from the side of the terrified bishop;
but his conqueror remained for a time unmoved, and then quietly
disappeared, seeming to melt away before the eyes of those who
saw him.
Then Adrian fell upon his knees and returned thanks to heaven, and
to his patron, St. Andrew, for escaping this last and most subtle
snare of the evil one.
But now he found that the morning was far advanced; that already
the combined armies of the Northern kings were meeting the hordes
of Athelstan in the shock of battle; and so the sainted bishop came
forth with a more than usually humble and contrite heart, and,
attended by his crossbearer and followers, ascended an eminence in
view of the field, and then he knelt down to pray for victory over the
Saxons.
There in the hollow, through which the Peffer flowed among groves
of oak towards the sea, the roar of battle rang—the tumultuous
shouts and yells of triumph or agony, as Scot and Pict, or the yellow-
haired Saxon, closed in mortal strife; the twanging of bows, the
trampling of horses, the clash of axes, swords, and maces swung on
ringing bucklers; or, as the ghisarma of the Saxon, the long tuagh of
the Celt, clove hauberk of rings, or helmet of steel; and amid the
carnage, wherever death and slaughter were deepest, rode the royal
parricide, the terrible Athelstan; "of earls the lord, of heroes the
bracelet giver," as the harpers who sang his praises styled him; but
he was fated never again to hear their adulous strains, or see his
wooden halls of Jorvik, or York as it is named now.
Despite the valour of King Hungus and his auxiliaries, the Saxons,
among whom were many thousand southern Britons, forced to
military service and slavery, were gradually gaining the victory, and
the Scots and Picts were giving way, when lo!
Across the eastern quarter of the blue firmament there suddenly
came a thunder cloud, the hues of which alternated between deep
black and brilliant purple, though its ragged borders gleamed with
golden tints. Lightning was seen to flash behind it, while hoarse
thunder hurtled athwart the noonday sky, and sank growling into the
estuary of the Forth, beyond the Isle of May.
Then the cloud opened, and amid a blaze of such light as that which
dazzled Saul on his way to Damascus, there shone above the
Scottish host, with an effulgence that made their serried helmets
outshine the rays of the sun, the figure of St. Andrew the Apostle,
on his cross, the two trees tied like the letter X, to which he had
been bound, when scourged to death at Petræa, in Achaia.
Then St. Adrian lifted up his eyes, and knew in him the pilgrim of the
blackweed; the same stranger who on the preceding night had
saved him from the snares of the evil one, and falling on his knees,
he bowed his silver hairs in the dust.
When he looked again, cloud, figure, and cross had passed away;
but inspired by this miraculous omen of victory, the Scots and Picts
rushed with new vigour on the Saxons, who were soon defeated,
and with dreadful slaughter.
Athelstan was unhorsed by King Hungus, who slew him on the north
bank of the Peffer, at a place named unto this day Athelstansford.
The Picts buried him on the field; but his head was borne upon a
spear to an islet of the Forth, where it was fixed for a time, and the
place was long named, from that circumstance, Ardchin-nichun, or
"the head of the highest."[1]
From that day St. Andrew became the patron of the Scots and Picts,
who put his cross upon their banners, and the badges of the former,
the thistle, and of the latter, the rue, were interwoven in the collar of
the Knights of the most Ancient Order of the Thistle, instituted in
honour of this victory; and in memory of the apostles their number
is restricted to the reigning sovereign and twelve companions.
Upon the cathedral of St. Andrew, Hungus bestowed "a case of gold
for preserving the reliques of the saint, many chalices and basons,
the image of Christ in gold, and those of the apostles in silver," and
the bishop Adrian toiled more than ever in the service of God and his
patron, until the year 882, when some Danish rovers attacked his
hermitage on the Isle of May, and barbarously slew him with all his
followers.
His coffin, of stone, is still lying there, and the fishermen of the Forth
aver that at times a wondrous light shines from it. He passed away
in the odour of sanctity, and Killach the Penitencer succeeded him as
second bishop of the see.
Such is the legend of the cross of St. Andrew, and how it became
the cognizance of the Scottish nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Now Inchgarvie. Athelstan's grave was opened in 1832. His
coffin was composed of five large pieces of freestone, and his
bones measured six feet in length. The coffin was thirty inches in
breadth, but only four in depth. The farm of Miracle, corrupted
into markle, indicates where the vision is said to have appeared;
and, with the adjacent lands, it was assigned to the culdees of St.
Andrew's in gratitude for the victory.
 CHAPTER VIII.
I LOVE YOU.

I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire,

But qualify the fire's extreme rage,
Lest it should burn above the bounds of
reason.
Shakespeare.
By the time when the garrulous old abbot had concluded his story
the night was far advanced. The lights in the sconces and the fire
had burned low, while the ladies looked pale and weary, and all who
were not in immediate attendance upon the earl and countess of
Douglas, prepared to seek their habitations in the city.
As these were paying their several adieux, Sir Patrick Gray came
close to Murielle, and tenderly pressed her hand; but she gazed
upon him with a sad and foreboding expression.
"Courage, Murielle, courage!" he whispered; "with strength and
bravery on my side, with equal love and goodness on yours, our
mutual stedfast faith and hope, we may yet overcome everything."
"Even the prejudices of my sister?"
"Ay, even the hatred, for such it is, of your sister,—the sombre pride
and wrath of that fierce boy her husband."
"Oh, that it may be so!" she whispered, breathlessly; "but there are
times when I have strange fears."
"Murielle, tide what may, remember that while life lasts I love you!"
All they could desire to say was comprised in these three very little
words. Little they are, yet how much do they contain! The essence
of all the love speeches, love-letters, and sonnets that have been
written since the invention of letters,—since Cadmus brought his
alphabet from Phœnicia into Greece. When two lovers have said
these words they can only repeat them.
"I love you!" They have nothing more to say. The countess, ever
watchful, had observed this brief conference, and though anger
sparkled in her deep, dark eyes, she veiled it under a bright smile,
and, closing her fan, gave her pretty hand to Gray, who bowed and
kissed it, though the petulant earl coldly turned from him, saying:—
"Sir Patrick, fare you well until to-morrow."
"Until to-morrow," added the earl of Abercorn, with one of the
strange smiles which curled his thin white lips at times, as Gray and
MacLellan retired together, after gaining golden opinions in the ranks
of the enemy,—to wit, the ladies of the hostile faction.
The young Captain of the Guard had the art of pleasing all—the
ladies especially; and at such a time, when family feuds, pride, and
hatred, were rampant passions, the art was one of no small value,
though in Scotland few cared to cultivate it, for chivalry was already
on the decline.
In society such as that in which we introduce him to the reader, he
contrived to be, or appeared to be, friendly with those who were
most averse to each other in politics and ambition; yet he neither
condescended to flatter nor dissemble, but often was prudently
silent, where to differ would have brought swords from their
scabbards; and he assented with grace and pleasure wherever he
could do so with honour.
By this system, acquired amid the dark intrigues of a turbulent court,
rather than in the camp, Sir Patrick Gray was a general favourite,
especially of the young king, who was then, as before-mentioned, in
his eleventh year, and whose preceptor he became, in all military
exercises and the sports of the field. Gray had natural tact, a
knowledge of the then limited world, and the great art of
occasionally conquering himself.
Murielle was the stake he played for, and he never lost sight of her.
The moon had waned, and not a star was visible in the dark
November sky, as he and MacLellan proceeded through the gloomy
city towards the fortress.
"A moonless night, but a fine one," said Gray, wrapping his velvet
cloak about him.
"For shooting bats or owls," added MacLellan, as he stumbled over
the rough and unpaved street. "Ay, and a night to try men's mettle if
there be witches abroad."
"Soho!" said Gray, gaily; "we have left the most perilous witches
behind us, with old Abbot John, of Tongland; but assuredly one is
safer in a gaberlunzie's canvas gaberdine than a velvet pourpoint to-
night, when so many Douglas troopers and Annandale thieves in
Johnstone grey are abroad; and the sky is so dark that the devil,
were he here, could not see his own tail behind him."
Unmolested, however, they reached the castle, where the portcullis
was down and all the gates secured; and where the garrison, which
was almost entirely composed of the lord chancellor's vassals, kept
watch and ward as warily as if a foreign army, and not the
Douglases, had been in the sleeping city below.
As they entered a man passed out: he was muffled in a cloak, with
an iron salade on his head—a species of helmet, which effectually
concealed the face, but had a horizontal slit for the eyes.
Recognizing the voice of Gray, he rubbed his thin hands together,
and smiled maliciously; for this nocturnal rambler was James
Achanna, who had just been depositing the four coffins in the vault
of David's Tower, and who seemed still to see before him, as the
unconscious lover passed gaily into the fortress, a gilt plate
inscribed: "Murielle Douglas, qui obit 23 Novembris, A.D. 1440."
 CHAPTER IX.
THE TWENTY-THIRD OF NOVEMBER.

Now like a maiden-queen she will behold

To her high turrets hourly suitors come;
The East with incense and the West with
gold,
Shall stand like suppliants to receive her
doom.
The silver Forth her own majestic flood
Shall bear her vessels like a sweeping train;
And often wish, as of their mistress proud,
With longing eyes to see her face again.
In sunny beauty, the 23rd of November, 1440, dawned on the green
hills, the old grey city of the Stuarts, and on the distant sea; and, as
the morning advanced, a man, who by his pale and anxious face
seemed to have passed a sleepless night, walked slowly to and fro
on the paved bartizan of King David's Tower.
He was Sir William Crichton of that ilk—the lord chancellor of
Scotland—no sinecure office, under James II.
The first object on which his keen eyes rested, was the slated roof of
the abbot of Tongland's lofty mansion. There pretty Murielle was
doubtless still asleep, and dreaming perhaps of her lover.
As the time drew slowly, but surely on—the time when Crichton's
terrible project, the destruction of the leading members of the house
of Douglas by a formal yet mock trial, after luring them from their
distant stronghold into a royal fortress—his soul, though it felt
neither remorse nor wavering, could not fail to be appalled, on a full
contemplation of what might be the sequel to the banquet of blood,
which he and the regent would that day hold in the great hall of the
king's principal castle. To him it seemed as if the live long night, the
wild shriek of
"The owle eke that dethe and bode bringeth,"
(as old Chaucer has it) had rung about the castle rocks, filling the
minds of those who heard it with unpleasant forebodings—and of
this emotion Crichton was especially sensible.
A civil war might rage around the throne, and by weakening the
nation would lay it open to the aggressive spirit and ambitious
designs of the English, who were ever wakeful to take advantage of
their neighbour's troubles. Crichton's own power, his old baronial
family and numerous kinsmen, might perish in the contest; but still
the king's authority and the dignity of the crown, which the
overweening power of the earl of Douglas, and the evil advice of his
friends, endangered, would be secured, and a final blow might be
struck at the terrible Red Heart for ever.
As the chancellor thought of these things, his hands trembled under
his furred robe, and crystal-like beads of perspiration gathered on
his pale and prematurely-furrowed brow; but the grim preparations
had been made, even to the most minute particulars. Douglas, with
his formidable train, was already in the capital, and all parties had
gone too far in the desperate game to recede now; so Crichton
prayed in his heart that the great end he had in view might sanctify
the awful measures he was about to take; and, seating himself on a
stone bench, he seemed to sink into reverie—almost prayer—while,
turning to the east, where the sun, through alternate bars of saffron
and dun yet shining clouds, was ascending in all his morning glory
from the sea.
From time to time the pale chancellor glanced at a piece of green
sward called the Butts, where the archers and the king's guard were
wont to shoot, and which was inclosed by the cordon of towers and
walls which girt the summit of the castle rock.
On that sward a tall lady, wearing a long robe, with tabard sleeves,
and a horned head-dress, which added to the effect of her great
stature, promenaded to and fro, with her missal and rosary, while
watching a little boy, who was clad in a bright-green velvet
pourpoint, laced with gold, and whose yellow hair glittered in the
morning sunshine, as he alternately tormented and played with a
pretty goshawk, which had silver bells at its head.
Let us, for a time, suppose ourselves there.
That tall lady is Isabelle Ogilvie, of Auchterhouse, wife of Patrick
Lord Glammis, master of the royal household, whose son, Alexander,
has married Crichton's youngest daughter, and her young charge is
James II., king of Scotland, who laughs with boyish glee as he
tosses and plumes his pet hawk, and, all unwitting of the dark
thoughts which agitate the soul of his faithful but scheming
chancellor, trains it to pounce upon and rend a lure—a toy like a
stuffed bird—which, ever and anon, he casts into the air with a
shout of merriment.
The morning draws on apace; bells ring in spire and tower, and the
little city below (for, though a capital, it was a little city then)
awakens into general life and bustle; but the chancellor still sits
there.
Let us look, with him, over the rampart of this great tower, where his
eyes survey a scene so different from what is there to-day; and yet
Arthur's rocky cone, the hills of Fife, the fertile shores, the sandy
bays and green islets of the Forth, are all unchanged as when the
first Celtic settlers so truly named the great ridge that overlooks
them all, Scealla-bruach Craig, or "the rock of the beautiful view,"
now corrupted into Salisbury Craigs.
The month is November.
The last leaves have fallen from the oak woods of Bristo, of Coates,
of Inverleith, and Drumsheugh; but the voice of the antlered stag,
"the wild buck bell," is borne at times on the passing wind that
whirls the red leaves along the grassy hollows.
In the glen below the castle rock lie the royal gardens, where
tournaments are held, and where, in after ages, the railway train
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