CHAPTER XVI.

THE TEN O'CLOCK DRUM.

DU CHATEL. The gates stand open; no man shall molest you. Count Dunois, follow me--you gain no honour in lingering here.

RAIMOND. Seize on this moment! the streets are empty,-- Give me your hand. SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS.

Clermistonlee was well aware that the forcible abduction of a young lady of family (or quality, according to the phraseology of the time), would create no small degree of indignation against him; but confiding in his rank, and in the influence of the powerful faction to which he belonged; aware that never could he otherwise obtain possession of Lilian's person, and ultimately her property, goaded by dread of poverty rather than avarice, inflamed by his own wild fancies and irregular passions rather than by love, and spurred on by the taunts and advices of the half cunning and wholly malicious Mersington, he sat longing with the utmost eagerness for the time of action, the tuck of the ten o'clock drum, after the beating of which, all within the city walls usually became so silent and still. He knew also that the family of Napier had experienced a severe shock by their recent forfeiture, and a squadron of Dalyel's dragoons being quartered on their estate for three weeks past, and being yet under hiding (as the term was), the abduction of Lilian could be more easily executed; and if once within the barred doors and grated windows of his desolate mansion on the rocks at Drumsheugh, or the massive chambers of his still more lonely tower on Clermiston Lee, Lilian might bid farewell equally to mercy and to hope.

Aware of the lonely situation of Elsie's cottage on the verge of the great Burghmuir, fully two Scottish miles from the city cross, and knowing that the locality was always deserted after dusk, in consequence of the unsettled nature of the times, and a horde of footpads who infested the remnants of its forest and the deep quarries and moss-haggs through which the roadway wound, and which, independent of a gibbet, a ruined church and graveyard, deterred all and sundry, after the city gates were closed, from travelling that way after dusk--considering all those things, the noble roué had no doubt of being able to fire the little cottage, and, in the confusion, to bear away Lilian across his saddle-bow. And to cast suspicion in another quarter, he had desired Juden to have a bonnet or two, a grey maud and a bible, to leave on the road close by, that the odium of the outrage might fall on the houseless Cameronians who lurked among the hills to the southward.

Tipsy as he was, when the time approached for Clermistonlee setting forth, Lord Mersington had still sense remaining to say,

"Tak' tent, Randal, my man--hee, hee!--bide ye a wee, ere worse come o't. You may bring king, council and parliament about your lugs for this, and the Foulis o' Ravelstone, Congaltoun o' that ilk, and Merchiston himsel will swarm like a hornet's nest, and 'Horse and spear!' will be the cry through half the country side--he, he!'

"Curses on thy everlasting chuckle!" muttered the other between his teeth, as with fierce impatience he thrust his brass-barrelled pistols into his embroidered girdle. "What the devil are Ravelstone or Congaltoun to me? If the worst comes, 'tis but flying to the west highlands till the affair blows over. I can count kindred with some of the best who bear the name of Campbell."

"Kindred that will truss ye wi' a tow, and hand ye over for twenty merks to the first macer or corporal of horse that the Chancellor sends after you. Remember how Assynt served Montrose thirty-eight years ago?"

"Your suspicions wrong my highland kinsmen, who are honourable men----"

"But true blue whigamores withal--hee, hee! and brawly you'll look coming up the Netherbow in a cart like Montrose, puir fellow! wi' the town halberds bristling round ye, and Pate Pincer wi' his axe maybe, and our noble friend Perth sitting in the Lower Chamber wi' his finger on the acts of James the Vth and VIth, anent wilful fire-raising--hee, hee! and as for the lassie----"

"My Lord, this is intolerable stuff!" said Clermistonlee, shrugging his shoulders; "you cannot be so young a politician as not to perceive that a storm is approaching, which will crush and confound together all the factions that now distract the land, and keep our swords for ever by our sides. All men see it--else whence this muster of troops and din of preparation on both sides of the Border."

"Storm--a storm said ye?"

"Yes, amid which, if we can hold our own bonnets on our heads, we will be clever fellows, Swinton."

"And whence blows the breeze, think ye?"

"'The Lowlands of Holland,' as the song says," replied the cavalier lord, drawing himself up with a scornful smile.

"Wheesht!--hee, hee, hee!" chuckled the other, waving one hand warningly, while burying his rat-like visage in the sack tankard to hide the cunning smile of intelligence that spread over it. "Harkee, Randal, whare'er the de'il be laird, you'll be tenant--hee, hee!'

"I value a crash in politics at the worth of a brass tester, and bid hail to the days of hard blows and buff coats. Ha! ha! I may pick up a marquisate in the scramble," laughed Clermistonlee, flapping his hat over his eyes. "You will not accompany me to-night, being scarcely cavalier enough for this kind of work."

"Hoots, man, a double-gowned senator of the College of Justice, a Lord of Council and Session, aiding and abetting in wilful fire-raising! Doth not the act say, 'Quha cummis and burnis folk in their housis will be guilty o' treason and lese-majestie?' and as for running off wi' the lassie Lilian, that is clearly a kidnapping o' the lieges, whilk, according to Skene and Sir Thomas o' Glendoick----"

"Gossip Mersington, there are overmuch wine and law in thee to-night to leave room for common sense. Ha! there goes the ten o'clock drum, and that loitering villain has not yet returned!"

He threw open a window that faced the south, where the black mansions of the Netherbow towered up from the steep hill at the foot of which his house was situated. The sound of a distant drum, beat in slow, regular, and monotonous measure, was heard on the wind at intervals, as a drummer of the Civic Guard (an old corps of Scottish gensd'armes, which existed from the fatal day at Flodden until 1818,) ascended St. Mary's Wynd, his usual nightly round, after having descended the Bow, and beat along the once lordly and fashionable Cowgate, where kings have feasted royally, and where Scottish nobles and the ambassadors of foreign powers were wont to dwell--but now the hideous abode of misery and crime, and long since abandoned to the dregs of mankind. On strode the drummer, and the gates of the Netherbow revolved back at his approach: as he passed under its double towers, its picturesque spire and high embattled arch, the great street of the city, wide and lofty, but dark and deserted, rang to the same monotonous chamade and all its echoing closes, broad paved wynds and old arcades of wood or stone, its circular stairs and oaken outshots gave back a thousand reverberations as "the ten o'clock drummer" strode on, until reaching the Town Guard House, where he finished his perambulation of the ancient Royalty by a long and loud ruffle, which scared the vultures from the skulls that mouldered on the parapets of the prison, startled the rooks in the gothic diadem of St. Giles, and made all its hollow vaults and high arched aisles, where the dead of ages lie, give back the warlike sound.

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."

"With God's providence, my Lord."

"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:"

"Yes, my Lord, yes," gasped Juden.

"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'----"

"What?" asked Clermistonlee, furiously.

"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."

"While it lasted," said Mersington.

"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----"

"Rascal--art mocking us?"

"Patience, my Lord," groaned poor Juden. "I kent there was a spell on me, and I tried to say some holy word or name; but, as the deil would hae'd, the sounds aye stuck in my throat; and there I sat, sweating and trembling, and spurring a galloping nag that never progressed; and there indubitably I must hae been until cockcrow, if I hadna----"

"What?" exclaimed his master, stamping with impatience.

"Made a grasp at a rowan tree that grew near, and pu'ed a bunch o' the last year's berries, when lo! the charm was broken, and Meg shot awa like the wind--and I cleared the lang gate as if the Paip and the Deil were behind me."

"And dost think, rascal, that I believe one word of this precious Tale of a Tub, foisted up to deceive me, for time spent in the village change-house yonder! Ha, knave! remember the old saw--Good wine makes a bad head and a long story."

"My Lord, as I left the place, auld Gilruth cried, 'A safe ride to ye, Juden,' and her eldritch laugh is yet dingling in my lugs."

"That makes it a clear case o' withcraft," mumbled Mersington, who was now very tipsy. "He-he!--we'll hae the carlin before us in the morning, Juden. Ay, my Lords (macers, silence in court!), this is as clear a case o' witchcraft as ever came before us--and the Act under Queen Mary (puir woman) anent sorcery bears just upon it. Your Lordships will remember," continued the senator, who thought himself on the bench, "the cases o' Isabel Eliot and Marion Campbell, twa notorious witches, who, for renouncing their baptism, and dancing a jig wi' the deil, were burnt at the Cross wi' ten others in the September o' seventy-eight, for whilk see the Record o' Justiciary--hee-hee, a braw bleeze!"

"I will show a blaze on the Burghmuir to-night worth a dozen of it--ha, ha!" laughed Clermistonlee, as he drew on his voluminous boot-tops of stamped maroquin with silver bosses.

"O'd, Clermistonlee, do ye really mean to burn Elshender's cottage?" asked Juden with delight.

"Yea, sink me! from rigging-tree to ground-stone." Juden rubbed his hands.

"If the auld witch is bed-ridden," said he, "it will save the Provost a bundle o' tar-barrels, forbye a pock o' peats."

"And perhaps cure those spells which you think the hag hath cast upon my best nag? And so, Mersington, you will not ride with us to-night?"

"No, by my faith!"

"Then your learned Lordship forgets one notable point of our old Scottish law, by which a guest becomes the bounden ally of his host."

"True; but only if loons come against him wi' harness on--boden in effeir o' weir, as the Acts have it."

"As the chase after Lilian may be a hot one, omit not to spread most industriously that I am gone to the west, to England, to the devil, or any where, to put them off the right scent--ha, ha! while I am luxuriating in the smiles of Venus in the recesses of my snug old house over the hill there. Dost hear me? By Jove, he's very drunk. Fetch me a tass of brandy and burnt sugar, Juden."

It was brought immediately, in one of those long glasses then made at the citadel of Leith. It set Clermistonlee's impatient blood on fire.

"Another for thyself, Juden, and then to horse, and away. Your servant, gossip Mersington: if unfortunate, you will see me in the course of to-morrow; if otherwise, the devil knows when. Marriage and hanging go by destiny--so do all other things--with a hey lilleu and a how lo lan."

"Aye-aye, awa ye neer-do-well--ye deil's buckie--I'll stay and keep the terrier company. The sack is glorious--the English port auld as the mirk Monanday a' sixteen hunder and fifty-twa--a-clear case o' sorcery, your Lordship--o' dark dealing wi' the great enemy o' mankind--hee-hee!--and woman kind baith."

His head sank forward on his wine-bespattered cravat, and the senior senator of the College of Justice fell fast asleep.