The drum rang loudly as it passed the archway that led to the lodging of Clermistonlee, who threw down the window with a crash, exclaiming,
"Malediction on my messenger--I must mount and ride without him. Hah! here comes the loitering rascal in time to save his shoulders from a stout truncheoning."
A horse's hoofs rang in the courtyard; Juden's heavy boots clattered on the pavement as he dismounted and ascended to the chamber-of-dais, puffing, panting, and looking very pale and disconcerted.
"So-so, fellow," said the irritated lord, "it has pleased you to return at last."
"How, fool? What means this unwonted piety? Art drunk, fellow?"
"Fie, Juden!" said Mersington, "a fou-man' and a fasting horse, should hae come faster home hee, hee!"
"You saw this woman, Gilruth, and left my message, I presume:"
"What the devil is all this? There is something wrong with thee, Juden."
"Then to be plain wi' your Lordship, I canna thole the auld Place after nightfa'? I aye think o'--think o'----"
"O' puir Leddy Alison," whined Juden, half in sorrow, and half in spite. "Eh, sirs! but the auld Place o' Drumsheugh is fu' o' her memory, and I seemed to hear her sweet low voice in every sough o' the auld aik trees, and to see her shadow in every glint their branches threw on the moonlighted avenue and auld grey house."
"Fool, fool," said Clermistonlee in a subdued voice, "you speak as if she had been murdered."
"Nor did she fare mickle better," muttered Juden, under breath, however.
"Poor Alison!--so gentle and unreproaching," said the lord in a low musing voice, "Alison--once that name was ever on my lips--her presence was ever with me, and her idea raised a rapture in this hollow heart, to which it has since been a stranger. Yes, my love was a very true one."
"Of course," rejoined the other, recovering himself. "I loved her to distraction once; or thought so, and by all the devils, 'tis quite the same thing. She is dead now, and peace be with her; but peril of thy life, Juden Stenton, trouble me no more with such untimely elegies. And pray, Master Morality, how have you dared to loiter away these two hours past?"
"Ask that elfshotten Mear Meg?" said the butler, testily. "Either the cantrips o' Beatrix Gilruth, or Lucky Elshender (baith o' whom are weel deserving o' the branks and tar barrel, Mersington), hae clean bewitched that puir beast. May I never lay head on a pillow to-night, if I wasna' spell-bound on Halkerston's Crofts, where I continued to ride and spur, wi' the black Calton looming in front and St. Cuthbert's kirk behind! but I never neared the one, or got further from the other; and yet Meg was fleeing like the wind, or as fast as ever she did for city purse or king's plate on the sands o' Leith. The night was dark: a cauld wind swept owre the crofts, and soughed among the kirkyard yews and lang nettles by the drystane dykes; red lights gleamed in the runnels that bummel down the brae side, and redder stars were shooting in the lift. A cauld perspiration burst owre me, every hair bristled under my bannet----"
