Even now they tell you how the marks of blood remain in evidence on that accursed keep; how the very stones bear witness to a foul and murderous deed, none the less guilty that victim and perpetrators were equally steeped to the lips in homicide and crime; that it was the accomplishment of Divine vengeance and the fulfilment of a martyr’s prophecy.
When the proud cardinal, leaning over his window to behold the frightful holocaust at his ease, smiled bitterly on George Wishart at the stake, did not his heart sink within him to hear the martyr’s solemn denunciation?
‘David Beatoun, though the flames shall lick up my blood, yet shall thine remain to stain the very wall on which thou leanest, as a witness against thee till the day of judgment!’
When the Laird of Grange and the two Leslies dragged their enemy from his bed and slew him at that very window, must not remorse have whispered in the moment of despair that there is a retribution even here on earth? and when we learn that the fierce murderers did actually hang his body over the wall as a butcher hangs a carcase in the shambles, till the blood soaked and sank into the very stone-work, and that centuries have not washed out its stains, what can we say but that the Divine will doth not always postpone justice to a future world, and that Divine vengeance seldom fails to work out its own precept, ‘whoso sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed.’
The only cheerful apartment in the castle was the guard-room; although the night was dark and stormy, the wind sighing, and the waves beating without, a huge wood-fire blazed and crackled in the ample chimney, reddening the weather-beaten faces of the men-at-arms, and glancing fitfully from their shining head-pieces and bright steel corslets. Small care had these rude hearts for the weather without or the woe within; the spray might dash against their casement, and the weary prisoner moan his wrongs in the neighbouring cell.
‘What would you have? ’tis but the fortune of war,’ quoth the soldier; ‘my luck to-day, yours to-morrow; a bed of heather for this one, a lair of straw for that; a free discharge and a fresh enlistment at last. Put another log on the fire; I wish we had got something more to drink.’