Like the dog following its master, when engaged in training him to the
sport in which he desires he should excel, the Lady Augusta felt
herself occasionally treated with a severity, calculated to impress
upon her the most implicit obedience and attention to the Knight of the
Tomb, in whom she had speedily persuaded herself she saw a principal
man among the retainers of Douglas, if not James of Douglas himself.
Still, however, the ideas which the lady had formed of the redoubted
Douglas, were those of a knight highly accomplished in the duties of
chivalry, devoted in particular to the service of the fair sex, and
altogether unlike the personage with whom she found herself so
strangely united, or rather for the present enthralled to.
Nevertheless, when, as if to abridge farther communication, he turned
short into one of the mazes of the wood, and seemed to adopt a pace,
which, from the nature of the ground, the horse on which the Lady
Augusta was mounted had difficulty to keep up with, she followed him
with the alarm and speed of the young spaniel, which from fear rather
than fondness, endeavours to keep up with the track of its severe
master. The simile, it is true, is not a very polite one, nor entirely
becoming an age, when women were worshipped with a certain degree of
devotion; but such circumstances as the present were also rare, and the
Lady Augusta de Berkely could not but persuade herself that the
terrible champion, whose name had been so long the theme of her
anxiety, and the terror indeed of the whole country, might be able,
some way or other, to accomplish her deliverance. She, therefore,
exerted herself to the utmost, so as to keep pace with the phantom-like
apparition, and followed the knight, as the evening shadow keeps watch
upon the belated rustic.
As the lady obviously suffered under the degree of exertion necessary
to keep her palfrey from stumbling in these steep and broken paths, the
Knight of the Tomb slackened his pace, looked anxiously around him, and
muttered apparently to himself, though probably intended for his
companion's ear, "There is no occasion for so much haste."
He proceeded at a slower rate, until they seemed to be on the brink of
a ravine, being one of many irregularities on the surface of the
ground, effected by the sudden torrents peculiar to that country, and
which, winding among the trees and copse-wood, formed, as it were, a
net of places of concealment, opening into each other, so that there
was perhaps no place in the world so fit for the purpose of ambuscade.
The spot where the borderer Turnbull had made his escape at the hunting
match, was one specimen of this broken country, and perhaps connected
itself with the various thickets and passes through which the knight
and pilgrim occasionally seemed to take their way, though that ravine
was at a considerable distance from their present route.
Meanwhile the knight led the way, as if rather with the purpose of
bewildering the Lady Augusta amidst these interminable woods, than
following any exact or fixed path. Here they ascended, and anon
appeared to descend in the same direction, finding only boundless
wildernesses, and varied combinations of tangled woodland scenery. Such
part of the country as seemed arable, the knight appeared carefully to
avoid; yet he could not direct his course with so much certainty but
that he occasionally crossed the path of inhabitants and cultivators,
who showed a consciousness of so singular a presence, but never as the
lady observed evinced any symptoms of recognition. The inference was
obvious, that the spectre knight was known in the country, and that he
possessed adherents or accomplices there, who were at least so far his
friends, as to avoid giving any alarm, which might be the means of his
discovery. The well-imitated cry of the night-owl, too frequent a guest
in the wilderness that its call should be a subject of surprise, seemed
to be a signal generally understood among them; for it was heard in
different parts of the wood, and the Lady Augusta, experienced in such
journeys by her former travels under the guidance of the minstrel
Bertram, was led to observe, that on hearing such wild notes, her guide
changed the direction of his course, and betook himself to paths which
led through deeper wilds, and more impenetrable thickets. This happened
so often, that a new alarm came upon the unfortunate pilgrim, which
suggested other motives of terror. Was she not the confidant, and
almost the tool of some artful design, laid with a view to an extensive
operation, which was destined to terminate, as the efforts of Douglas
had before done, in the surprise of his hereditary castle, the massacre
of the English garrison--and finally in the dishonour and death of that
Sir John de Walton, upon whose fate she had long believed, or taught
herself to believe, that her own was dependent?
It no sooner flashed across the mind of the Lady Augusta that she was
engaged in some such conspiracy with a Scottish insurgent, than she
shuddered at the consequences of the dark transactions in which she had
now become involved, and which appeared to have a tendency so very
different from what she had at first apprehended.
The hours of the morning of this remarkable day, being that of Palm
Sunday, were thus drawn out in wandering from place to place; while the
Lady de Berkely occasionally interposed by petitions for liberty, which
she endeavoured to express in the most moving and pathetic manner, and
by offers of wealth and treasures, to which no answer whatever was
returned by her strange guide.
At length, as if worn out by his captive's importunity, the knight,
coming close up to the bridle-rein of the Lady Augusta, said in a
solemn tone--
"I am, as you may well believe, none of those knights who roam through
wood and wild, seeking adventures, by which I may obtain grace in the
eyes of a fair lady: Yet will I to a certain degree grant the request
which thou dost solicit so anxiously, and the arbitration of thy fate
shall depend upon the pleasure of him to whose will thou hast expressed
thyself ready to submit thine own. I will, on our arrival at the place
of our destination, which is now at hand, write to Sir John de Walton,
and send my letter, together with thy fair self, by a special
messenger. He will, no doubt, speedily attend our summons, and thou
shalt thyself be satisfied, that even he who has as yet appeared deaf
to entreaty, and insensible to earthly affections, has still some
sympathy for beauty and for virtue. I will put the choice of safety,
and thy future happiness, into thine own hands, and those of the man
whom thou hast chosen; and thou mayst select which thou wilt betwixt
those and misery."
While he thus spoke, one of those ravines or clefts in the earth seemed
to yawn before them, and entering it at the upper end, the spectre
knight, with an attention which he had not yet shown, guided the lady's
courser by the rein down the broken and steep path by which alone the
bottom of the tangled dingle was accessible.
When placed on firm ground after the dangers of a descent, in which her
palfrey seemed to be sustained by the personal strength and address of
the singular being who had hold of the bridle, the lady looked with
some astonishment at a place so well adapted for concealment as that
which she had now reached. It appeared evident that it was used for
this purpose, for more than one stifled answer was given to a very low
bugle-note emitted by the Knight of the Tomb; and when the same note
was repeated, about half a score of armed men, some wearing the dress
of soldiers, others those of shepherds and agriculturists, showed
themselves imperfectly, as if acknowledging the summons.