"Then behold this great woodcock; see how broad, how dark and beautiful
are its pinions!"
"Truly, good Konrad, thou teazest me," replied Anna, stroking them with
her white hands, but thinking the while how much its plumage resembled
Bothwell's black locks.
"And where thinkest thou I winged him, Anna, with a single bolt from my
arblast?"
"I know not," she replied vacantly.
"Thou wilt never guess," continued Konrad, resuming something of his
tender and playful manner, despite the palsy in his heart. "In the Wood
Demon's _oak_."
"Then this bird may cost thee dear, for the demon will avenge it some
day!"
"Already he is avenged!" said Konrad, with sudden bitterness.
Anna smiled, for she knew his meaning well.
"Oh, Anna!" said the young man, laying his hand earnestly on hers; "how
changed thou art! what have I done to offend thee?"
"Nothing!"
"Then, by some accursed magic this ring hath bewitched thee!"
"Ring!" she reiterated, changing colour.
Konrad dashed his crossbow on the earth.
"And is it so?" he exclaimed; "O Anna! Anna! like Zernebok, the spirit
of darkness and of evil, this Scottish Earl hath crossed my path. I saw
him salute thy cheek again and again, yet thou didst not reprove him.
Even wert thou to love me again as of old, the charm would be broken;
and O, my God! there is nothing left me but to wish we had never met!"
Anna leaned upon the parapet, and averted her face a little. The
accents of Konrad's voice--that voice she had once loved so well--sank
deep in her heart; but Bothwell's kiss, still glowed upon her cheek, and
her heart was steeled against remorse.
"Anna," continued her lover, in a tone of sadness, "so completely was my
life identified with thine, that we seemed to have but one being--one
existence: the love of thee was a part of myself. I have often thought
if thou wert to die, I could never live without thee; but I have lost
thee now by a separation more bitter than death. Thou knowest, Anna
Rosenkrantz, how long, how well I loved thee, ere thou went to
Frederick's court; and in truth I had many a bitter doubt if, at thy
return, I would find thee the same artless and confiding girl that left
me."
"And when I did return?" asked Anna, with a smile.
"Thou hadst forgotten to love me," replied Konrad clasping his hands.
"'Tis the way of the world," laughed Anna.
"The cruel and selfish world only."
"Be it so."
"Then thou lovest me no more?"
Anna played for a moment with the fringe of her stomacher, and then
replied "_No!_"
The young man turned away with an unsteady step, and pressed his hand
upon his forehead, as if he would crush some overpowering emotion. Anna
lifted her little harp, and was about to retire. Konrad took her hand,
but she abruptly withdrew it; a pang shot through his heart, and
something of remorse ran through her own at the unkindness of the
action.
He caught her skirt, and besought her to listen to him for the last
time.
"Anna, dearest Anna!" he said in a breathless voice; "oh, never was
there a love more pure or more devoted than mine! Long, long ago, I
endeavoured to crush this passion as it grew in my breast, for I knew
the gulf that lay between us--thou, the daughter of Svend of Bergenhuis,
the wealthy and ennobled merchant, famous alike for his treasures and
his conquests over the Burghers of Lubeck and the Dukes of Holstein--I,
the representative of a race that have decayed and fallen with the pride
of old Norway, even as their old dwelling on yonder hill," and he
pointed to the ruined tower on the distant Saltzberg; "even as it has
fallen almost to its foundations. As these convictions came home to my
heart, I strove to crush the expanding flower--to shun thee--to avoid
thy presence, as thou mayest remember; but still thine image came ever
before me with all its witchery, and a thousand chances threw us ever
together. Ah! why wert thou so affable, so winning, when, knowing the
secret that preyed on my heart, thou mightest so much more kindly have
repulsed me? why encourage me to hope--to love--when thou wert to treat
me thus?"
"Enough of this," faltered Anna; "permit me to pass--I can hear no
more."
"How cruel--how cold--how calculating! It is very wicked to trifle thus
with the best affections of a poor human heart. O Anna! in all the time
I have loved you so truly and so well, it was long ere I had even the
courage to kiss your hand."
"Because thou wert ever so timid," said Anna, with a half smile.
"Timid only because my love was a deep and a sincere one. But what were
my sensations," and he grasped his dagger as he spoke; "what agony I
endured, on seeing this accursed stranger kiss your cheek?"
Anna's colour deepened, and again she endeavoured to retire.
"Oh, tarry one moment, Anna!" continued the poor lover in a touching
voice, and kneeling down while his eyes filled alternately with the
languor of love and the fire of anger. "In memory of those pleasant
hours that are gone for ever, permit me once again to kiss this
hand--and never more will I address you. Refuse me not, Anna!"
"Thou tirest me!" she replied, stretching out her hand, but averting her
face; for the beautiful coquette had "a smile on her lip and a tear in
her eye"--a smile, for she could not repress her triumph in exciting so
much love--and a tear, for she could not stifle her pity.
Konrad kissed her hand with the utmost tenderness. It lingered a moment
in his, but was suddenly withdrawn. The light left his eyes; a curtain
seemed to have fallen between him and the world--and he was alone.
On the terrace which had been the scene of this sad interview, he
lingered long, with his heart crushed beneath a load of conflicting
emotions. The love he had so long borne Anna now began to struggle with
emotions of wounded self-esteem and anger at her cold desertion.
Jealousy prompted him to seek some deadly vengeance, and from time to
time he cast furtive glances at his steel arblast, with its sheaf of
winged bolts, that lay among the spoil he had brought from the forest.
Had the Earl of Bothwell appeared within bowshot while these evil
thoughts floated through the brain of Konrad, our history had ended,
perhaps, with the present chapter; but, luckily, he was at that moment
engaged at the old game of Troy with Sir Erick in the hall.
"I could not slay him!" thought the young man, generously, as other
emotions rose within him; "no, not even if he smote me with his clenched
hand. She seems to love him so much, that his death would be alike a
source of misery to her and deep remorse to me. Dear Anna! thy
happiness will still be as much my aim as if I had wedded thee; but I
pray God thou mayest not be deceived, and endure--what I am now
enduring!"
These generous thoughts soothed not his agony; and bitter was the sense
of loneliness, of misery, and desolation, that closed over his heart in
unison with the shadows of evening that were then setting over the wide
landscape below.
"And she coldly saw me weep!" he exclaimed.
He felt that he must leave Bergen and the presence of Anna--but for
whence? Whether for the desolate settlements of the half-barbarian
Lapps, or the wars of the Lubeckers and Holsteiners, he could not
decide. His love of the chase inclined him to the first; his weariness
of life, to the last.
Such were his thoughts; but at two-and-twenty one seldom tires of
existence, whatever its disappointments and bitterness may have been.
The sun had set on the distant sea, and the long line of saffron light
it shed across the dark blue water died away; the gloomy shadows of the
rocks and keep of Bergen faded from the bosom of the harbour, and red
lights began to twinkle one by one, in the little windows of the wooden
fisher-huts, that nestled on the shelving rocks far down below, among a
wilderness of nets, and boats, and anchors.
From the terrace of the castle, miles beyond miles of rocky mountains
were seen stretching afar off in blue perspective towards the
surf-beaten Isles of Lofoden; and, tipped by the last red light of the
sun that had set, their splintered and rifted peaks shot up in fantastic
cones from those endless forests, so deep, and dark, and solemn--so
voiceless, and so still. Konrad's melancholy meditations were
uninterrupted by a sound; no living thing seemed near, save a red-eyed
hawk that sat on a fragment of rock.
He could hear his own heart beating.
Though his mind was a prey to bitterness the most intense, he watched
the sunset, and the changing features of the landscape, with all the
attention that trifles often receive, even in moments of the deepest
anguish.
Gradually the shadows crept upward from the low places to the mountain
tops. Each long promontory that jutted into the far perspective of the
narrow fiord, was a steep mountain that towered from its glassy bosom in
waveworn precipices; between these lay the smaller inlets, long and
narrow valleys full of deep and dark blue water, that reflected the
solemn pines by day, and the diamond stars by night. Some were dark and
sunless, but others glittered still in purple, gold, and green, where
the eider-duck floated in the last light of the west; and all was still
as death along the margin of that beautiful bay, save the roar of a
distant cataract, where a river poured over the chasmed rock, and sought
the ocean in a column of foam.
Night drew on; the bleating of the home-driven kids, the flap of the
owlet's wing, and faint howl of a wandering wolf, broke the stillness of
the balmy northern eve; while the wiry foliage of the vast pine-forests,
that flourished almost to the castle gates, vibrated in the rising wind,
and seemed to fill the dewy air with the hum of a thousand fairy harps.
Konrad, who, with his face buried in his hands, had long reclined
against the rampart of the terrace, was startled to find close beside
him a tall dark man, whose proportions, when looming in the twilight,
seemed almost herculean, intently examining the great wood-cock, in the
bosom of which a cross-bow bolt was firmly barbed.
Filled with that inborn superstition which is still common to all
Scandinavia, his first thought was of the terrible _Wood Demon_, in
whose venerated oak he had so heedlessly and daringly shot the bird.
Animated by terror, such as he had never known before, a prickly
sensation spread over his whole frame, and even Anna was partially
forgotten in the sudden horror that thrilled through him, as, with an
invocation to God, he sprang upon the battlement of the terrace.
The dark stranger uttered a shout, and sprang forward. Konrad's terror
was completed.
He toppled over, made one palsied and fruitless effort to clutch the
grass that grew in the clefts of the ancient wall, and failing, launched
out into the air; down, down, he went, disappearing headlong into that
dark abyss, at the bottom of which rolled the ocean.
"Cock and pie!" muttered Black Hob, with astonishment; (for it was no
other than he,) as he peered over the rampart, "was it a madman or a
bogle that vanished over the wall like the blink of a sunbeam?"
He stretched over, cast down one hasty glance, and instinctively drew
back; for far down at the base of the beetling crags, he saw the ocean
boiling, white and frothy, through the obscurity below.
A wild and unearthly cry ascended to his ear.
"By the blessed mass, a water-kelpie!" muttered Ormiston, as he hurried
away in great disorder.
Konrad escaped a death on the rocks, but, falling into the ocean, arose
to the surface at some distance from the shore. Breathless and faint by
his descent from such a height, he could scarcely (though an excellent
swimmer) make one stroke to save his life. A strong current running
seaward round the promontory, drove a piece of drift-wood--a pine
log--past him. He clutched it with all the despair of the drowning,
and, twining himself among its branches, was thus swiftly, by the
currents of the fiord, borne out into the wide waste of the Skager Rack.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*THE COCK-OF-THE-WOODS.*
In woman thou'rt deceived; but that we
Had mothers, I could say how women are,
In their own natures, models of mere change;
Of change from what is nought, to what is worse.
_The Lady's Trial._
In Norway there existed (and exists even unto this day) a certain
malicious spirit, who is ever on the alert to poke a finger in every
body's affairs, and to put every thing wrong that ought to be right. He
hides whatever is missing, and brings about every mischance that happens
to man, woman, or child--to horse and to dog--to the huntsman in the
woods--to the fisher on the fiord. The blame of every ill is laid on
the shoulders of this unfortunate and omnipresent sprite--NIPPEN; who,
though secretly blamed, cursed, and feared, must outwardly be spoken of
with reverence and respect, or his unremitting vengeance and malevolence
are certain and sure.
Always after nightfall, to obtain his good-will, a can of spiced ale is
deposited in a certain nook of every household for the especial behoof
of the thirsty imp; who, if he cannot find time to empty all the cans so
liberally bestowed, generally permits some of the wandering Lapps, the
houseless dogs or questing foxes, that are ever wandering after
nightfall, to have that pleasure; so that next morning Nippen's ale-can
is usually found empty in its place.
In the castle of Bergen it was the morning occupation of Anna to spice a
cup of ale until it was exquisitely flavoured, and then, in accordance
with the still existing superstition, Christina Slingbunder placed it in
a solitary nook of the terrace, for the prowling spirit of mischief, who
nightly found it there; but Sueno Throndson frequently and somewhat
suspiciously averred, that Nippen came in the shape of a Danish
crossbowman to drink it.
On the evening mentioned in the preceding chapter, Ormiston, chancing to
pass that way, observed the bright flagon standing in its sequestered
niche, and drew it forth. He surveyed it with great interest in various
ways--and then tasted it. The flavour was delicious, and he drained it
to the bottom.
The spiced liquor mounting at once to the brain of Hob, threw a sudden
cloud over all his faculties, which were never very bright at any time;
and thus next morning he had no remembrance of his adventure with Konrad
on the terrace, on the preceding evening. At the same hour, however, he
failed not to examine the same place; and finding there another mug of
that divinely flavoured beverage, without hesitation transferred the
contents to his stomach, much to the disappointment of a certain Danish
soldier, who, finding himself anticipated a second and third time, began
with some terror to imagine that Nippen was at last beginning to look
after his property in person.
The fumes mounted to the Knight of Ormiston's brain; and carolling the
merry old ditty of "The Frog that came to the Mill Door," he danced
round the terrace, kicking before him the cock-of-the-woods, that was
still lying where Konrad had left it. As he was about to descend,
Bothwell, gaily attired, with his eyes and countenance radiant with
pleasure, sprang up the stair, taking three steps at a time.
"Good-morrow, noble Bothwell!" said Ormiston, balancing himself on each
leg alternately.
"What the devil art thou following now, eh?" asked the Earl.
"My nose, for lack of something better!"
"Thou seemest very drunk! Surely the ale at dinner to-day was not over
strong for thee. But, harkee, I have triumphed!"
"Indeed! but the fact is, I am too drunk at the present moment to see
exactly how!"
"Guzzler! thou understandest me very well!"
"A notable triumph for one who, if rumour sayeth true, broke many a
sconce and many a spear at the Tournelles for the love of a French
princess!"
Bothwell coloured deeply; a dark frown gathered on his broad brow, and
his dark, expressive eyes filled with light; but the expression and the
momentary emotion passed away together.
"I value thy gibes not a rush. To me all the world is now concentrated
in this rude Norwegian castle!"
"What a difference between a man who is in love like thee, and one who
is not, like me!"
"My stout Hob, thou knowest more of foraying by Cheviot side, and
harrying the beeves of Westmoreland, than of making love!"
"Heaven be praised, for I have known this same love turn many a bearded
man into a puling boy."
"It can exalt the heart of a coward into that of a hero. It can expand
the bosom of the austere hermit into that of a jovial toper"----
"And endow Bothwell, the hellicate rake, with all the virtues of Bothan,
the saint and confessor."
"I wish all the imps in hell had thee!" said the Earl, turning away.
"I thank thee for thy good wishes," replied his friend, reeling a
little; "and so thou hast really and irrevocably given thy heart to this
grey-eyed Norwegian."
"Grey-eyed, thou blind mole! Her eyes are of the brightest and purest
blue."
"I say _grey_, by all the furies! and I protest, that I love neither
grey-eyes nor the name of Anna."
"Wherefore, most sapient Hob?"
"Because I never knew an Anne that was not cold-hearted, or a grey-eyed
woman that was not cunning as a red tod."
"Marry! a proper squire to judge of beauty," said the Earl laughing;
but, nevertheless, feeling very much provoked. "But thou wilt know how
to shape thy discourse, when I say that I am about to ask her hand of
Erick Rosenkrantz."
"By St. Christopher the giant, thou art mad!" said Ormiston, with a
gravity that shewed the assertion had sobered him; "be wary, be prudent.
Should the Lord Huntly"----
"My malediction on Huntly! He shall never see my face again; so it
matters not. He may bestow his pale sister, the Lady Jane, on some
ruffling minion of the bastard Moray, the crafty Morton, the craftier
Maitland, or of the thundering Knox, who now have all the sway in that
court, where the outlawed Bothwell shall never more be seen." And with
one hand twisting his mustaches, and the other playing with the pommel
of his dagger, the Earl strode away, and left his friend and vassal to
his own confused reflections.
Bothwell, who had ever been the creature of impulse, without delay
sought old Sir Erick of Welsoeoe, whom he found seated in a nook of the
ramparts, basking in the long lingering sunshine, and sheltered from the
evening wind by the angle of the turret. His long sword rested against
one arm of his chair, a pewter mug of dricka was placed on the other,
and before him stood Sueno, cap in hand, receiving certain orders with
all due reverence.
"What the devil is this Van Dribbel tells me?" he was saying as Bothwell
approached. "All the beer soured by the thunder-storm! I marvel that it
hath not soured my temper too, for there never was a man so crossed, I
tell thee, Sueno. It was my wish that Konrad should have undertaken the
capture of this necromancer, and seen him hanged in one of his own
devilish cords; and now Konrad is nowhere to be found. How dares he
leave the precincts of Bergen without my permission?"
"His Danish archers have searched every where," said Sueno, "even to the
base of the Silverbergen, sounding their horns through the forest, along
the shores of the fiord, and the margin of the bay; and I would venture
my better hand to a boar's claw, that the Captain Konrad is not within
the province of Aggerhuis."
"Sayest thou so!" exclaimed the Knight Rosenkrantz, who, between the
attention required by his offices of castellan and governor,--the
machinations of a water-sprite who dwelt in the harbour of Bergen, where
he daily wrought all manner of evil to the fishermen,--Nippen, who made
himself so busy in the affairs of all honest people on the land,--the
gnomes of the Silverbergen, who stole his poultry,--and the cantrips of
a certain mischievous demon inhabiting the adjacent wood, and had thrice
turned three fair flocks of Sir Erick's sheep into field mice, in which
shape he had seen them vanishing into mole-tracks in the turf, where a
moment before they had been browsing,--the old governor, we say, who,
with all these things to divert his attention, never found time hang
heavy on his hands, made a gesture of anger and impatience, and he swore
a Norse oath, which the Magister Absalom Beyer has written so hurriedly
that our powers of translation fail us; but he added--
"My mind misgiveth me that something is wrong. Away, Sueno, take a band
of archers, and once more beat the woods with shout and bugle, and if
Konrad appears not by sunrise to-morrow, by the holy Hansdag I will--not
know what to think."
The threat evaporated; for honest Rosenkrantz loved the youth as if he
had been his own son.
Though Bothwell had a grace, effrontery, or assurance (which you will)
that usually carried him well through almost every thing he undertook,
and which won every one to his purpose, he could not have chosen a more
unfortunate crisis for the startling proposal, which he made with
admirable deliberation and nonchalance to the portly Rosenkrantz; who no
sooner heard the conclusion, than he said with a hauteur, to which
Bothwell, at all times proud and fiery, was totally unaccustomed, and
which he did not think this plain unvarnished Nordlander could assume--
"Excuse me, I pray thee, my Lord Earl of Bothwell. Though I venerate
your rank and mission, as ambassador from the Queen of the Scots (here
the Earl's cheek glowed crimson), I cannot give my niece to you, even
were I willing to bestow her. She is the first and only love of my
young friend, Konrad of Saltzberg, as gallant a heart as Norway owns; he
to whose daring you and your friends owed preservation on the night of
the storm. From childhood they have known and loved each other, yea,
since they were no higher than _that_," holding his hand about six
inches from the ground; "growing up, as it were, like two little birds
in the same nest, twining into each other like two tendrils from the
same tree; and a foul stain it would be on me to part them now, even
though King Frederick came in person to sue for the hand of Anna."
"Hear me, Lord Erick," began Bothwell, alike astonished and offended at
the rejection of a suit, which he secretly thought was somewhat
degrading to himself.
"I know all thou wouldst urge," said Erick, shaking his hand; "but this
may not, cannot be; for thou art a man too gay and gallant to mate with
one of our timid Norwegian maidens."
The inexplicable smile that spread over the Earl's face, shewed there
was more in his mind than the honest Norseman could read. He was about
to speak, when Sueno approached bearing in his hand a dead bird, and
having great alarm powerfully depicted in his usually unmeaning face.
"Oh, Sir Erick--Sir Erick--what think you? last night Konrad of
Saltzburg shot this cock in the Wood Demon's oak!"
"Now, heaven forefend!" exclaimed the Castellan, sinking back in grief
and alarm. "Then, Sueno, thou needst search no more. God save thee, poor
Konrad!"
"How--how, wherefore?" asked Bothwell; "what has happened?"
"We shall never behold him more. He hath assuredly been spirited away,"
replied Rosenkrantz in great tribulation; for in the existence of all
those elementary beings incident to Norse superstition, he believed
devoutly as in the gospel; "he hath been spirited away, and enclosed
Heaven alone knoweth where--perhaps in a rock or tree close beside us
here--perhaps in an iceberg at the pole"----
"Amen!" thought Bothwell, who would have laughed had he dared; "I would
that the Captain of Bergen were keeping him company!"
"O Sueno! thou rememberest how it fared with thy brother Rolf, when he
stole acorns from that very tree?"
"Yes--yes--as he crossed the Fiord in the moonlight, a great hand arose
from the water, and drew down his boat to the bottom--and so he
perished. Poor Rolf!"
"And with the father of Hans Knuber, who left his axe resting against it
one evening, in the summer of 1540?"
"An invisible hand hurled it after him, and broke both his legs."
"And Gustaf Slingbunder, who pursued a fox into its branches, was
bewitched by the demon in such wise, that he ran in a circle round the
tree for six days and nights, till his bones dropped asunder."
"Saint Olaus be with us!"
Erick Rosenkrantz and Sueno continued to gaze at each other in great
consternation, while Bothwell looked at them alternately with
astonishment, till the blast of a horn at the gate arrested their
attention, and a Danish archer approached, to inform his excellency the
Governor of Aggerhuis, that a royal messenger from Copenhagen required
an audience.
"So this unmannerly boor hath rejected my suit!" muttered the haughty
Earl, as he turned away; "mine--by St. Paul! I can scarcely believe my
senses. If my _roue_ friends d'Elboeuff or Coldinghame heard of it,
they would cast a die to decide which was the greater fool--Bothwell or
Rosenkrantz. Rejected! Be it so; but to have this damsel on my own
terms shall now be my future care."
*CHAPTER IX.*
*LORD HUNTLY'S LETTER.*
All self-command is now gone by,
E'er since the luckless hour when she
Became a mirror to my eye,
Whereon I gazed complacently.
Thou, fatal mirror! where I spy
Love's image.
_Bernard de Pentadour._
Anna, who might have formed some excuse for Konrad, (whom she supposed
to have voluntarily expatriated himself, as he threatened,) maintained a
silence on the subject of their last interview, and, wholly occupied
with her new and glittering lover, troubled herself no more about the
old one.
She was teaching the Earl the polsk, the national dance of the Norse,
and to which they are enthusiastically attached. Christina and three
other attendants played on the ghittern, harp, and tabor, taking at
times a part in the figures of the dance.
While the Earl, with his cloak and rapier flung aside, and having one
arm round the waist of Anna, was performing with her a succession of
those rapid whirls which make this dance so closely to resemble the
modern waltz, Black Hob of Ormiston entered the hall, and beckoned him
with impatience in his gestures.
"How now!" said the Earl, pausing; "is the devil in the bush again?
Thou hast a face of vast importance, Hob. By Jove! it seems to swell
out even that voluminous ruff of thine!"
"Peradventure there be reason. Behold! here are letters from
Copenhagen."
"Hah! say you so?"----
"Sent by that king's messenger who came hither but an hour ago!"
"Pardon me, Lady Anna," said the Earl with sudden confusion; "I must
speak with my friend, but will rejoin you in a few minutes. Whose seals
are these, Hob?" he asked, as they descended to the terrace, hurriedly
by the way, examining the square packets, which were tied with ribbons,
and sealed with wax at the crossing. "By the Holy Paul! 'tis from
Frederick of Denmark this!"
"And this from the Earl of Huntly; see! it bears the boar-heads of
Gordon and the lions of Badenoch!"
"O, death and fury! it will be but one tissue of reproaches and
upbraidings from the Lady Jane. Throw it into the sea!"
"What! wilt thou not read it before?"
"I could scarcely do so _after_. Read it thyself!" replied Bothwell;
"for Huntly and I have nothing now in common!"
Each tore open a letter, and began slowly and laboriously to decipher
the cramped and contracted hand-writing so common to the sixteenth
century. The effect of these communications was very different on the
readers. A bright smile spread over the broad visage of the Knight of
Ormiston; while a frown, black as a thunder-cloud, gathered on the dark
brow of Bothwell.
"Fury!" he exclaimed, crushing up the letter. "God's fury, and his
malison to boot! be on this white-livered dog--this foul traitor"----
"Who--who?"
"Frederick"----
"How--the King of Denmark and Norway! These are hard names for his
majesty to receive within his own fortress of Bergen. What tidings?"
"He declines all further correspondence with me concerning the Shetland
Isles, and threatens, that if by the vigil of Saint Denis--now but three
days hence--we are found within the Danish seas, to send me captive to
Queen Mary, with a full account of my mock embassy. 'Tis some
machination of my foeman, Murray."
"Devil burn him!" said Hob. "Well, is it not better, after all, to be
Lord of Bothwell and Hailes, at home in puir auld Scotland, than Prince
of Orkney and Lord of Hialtland, branded as a traitor till the very name
of Hepburn becomes (like that of Menteath of old) a byword and a scoff
in every Scottish mouth--banned alike in the baron's hall and at the
peasant's hearth--while thou wouldst writhe hourly to free thy head from
under the sure claws of the Danish lion."
"Right, Hob! Throw his letter into the sea, and, if thou art clerk
enough, let us hear what our noble friend, the Lord Huntly, sayeth."