On quitting the defile, he struck across a stretch of open moorland, over which the rising night-wind fitfully sighed among the furze. Now and then he paused and gazed eagerly behind, seeming to listen, as if dreading pursuit; but pursuers there seemed none, save the cloud-billows that rolled in endless succession over the dim hills and darkened above his head. The waste soon became both rugged and marshy, and a shallow rivulet, fed from the moss-hags, ran in a serpentine and perplexing course, necessitating its being repeatedly waded, but the water never came much above the traveller's ankles, and he wore a pair of strong buskins reaching to the calf of his leg. When he had finally left the sinuosities of the sluggish stream in his rear, he made a dead halt, as if come to the end of his journey, and scowled all around him in the gloom. Throwing back the left side of his cloak, he disclosed a young child, well wrapped up, and fast asleep, whom he was carrying, and whom he immediately laid down on the heath at his feet. The infant awoke, and began to whimper and wail. The man stood bending his moody gaze upon it till his eyeballs glowed with dusky fire.
"This nicht," he said, in a low tone, savouring of fierce exultation, "this nicht will the proud Southron grieve, and the bonnie lady greet in her bower, for the loss o' the young heir that was the hope o' their hearts. The retainers may scour hill and dale, and the pathless wilds echo the bay o' their sleuth-hound. Let them speed far and wide wi' horse and ban-dog. In my hand rests the young heir's fate. By the Black Rood o' Melrose! this is the revenge o' gentle Edie Johnston!"
He stamped on the ground, and could have crushed the infant under his heel; but he started back a pace, as if, indeed, the fiend of revenge had prompted such a thought in his troubled brain, and he revolted at it--but he revolted only for a moment, as the savage suggestion seemed to be followed by another equally remorseless. What did he now meditate? Was he one
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Had so incens'd, that he was reckless what He did, to spite the world?
Nervously his fingers clutched the hilt of his whinger, and he unsheathed it and waved it in the air, and then, stepping forward and stooping over the child, pointed the steel as if to deal a mortal stab. The weapon trembled in his grasp. Again the powers of compunction and shame overcame the murderous impulse. He raised himself erect, with an impatient ejaculation, and his armed hand fell slowly, and as if reluctantly, by his side.
