Lady Bruntisfield, who, seated in her arm-chair, cane in hand, had listened to this wonderful narrative with great gravity, was at no loss to attribute the enterprise to the proper personages, and though the indignation she felt was very great, her alarm and uneasiness were greater. She now saw to what lengths the passion and daring of this rash and profligate suitor might carry him. In consequence of his rank and power, (which the complaints of a hundred old women could never shake,) it was deemed expedient to commit the affair to silence, but to be on their guard, and in future never to go abroad without an armed escort--composed of old Syme the baillie and his sons, or some such stout fellows, with sword and pistol. Meantime, the burning of the cottage (a loss which Elsie deeply mourned, for there she had dwelt a wife and widow for more than forty years,) was attributed by some to the outcast Cameronians who lurked among the whins of Braid, and by others to certain malicious spunkies who then inhabited the morasses to the westward.
At a late hour next morning Walter awoke. It was now the month of April. The sun shone warmly from a bright blue sky streaked with fleecy clouds that gleamed like masses of gilded snow, as his radiance streamed aslant between them. The grass and the budding trees were heavy with dew, and the merry birds were chirruping and hopping from branch to branch, as if their little hearts rejoiced at the approach of summer. The ravenous gled and the ominous rook were soaring on their dark wings into the azure sky, and their light shadows floated over the still bosom of the loch, scaring the lonely heron that waded in its waters, till piercing up, and farther up they grew mere specks in the welkin, as they flew towards the rising sun. The old mansion, with its tall smoky chimneys and projecting turrets, gleamed cheerily in the red sunlight that streamed down the long shady avenue, where myriads of gad-flies wheeled and revolved in the golden beams as they pierced and shot through the thickening foliage--thickening and expanding under the warm showers and warmer sun of April, the balmy month of fresh leaves and opening flowers, of fleecy clouds and bright blue skies.