CHAPTER LIV.

THE WEIRDWOMAN'S TREE.

"I count the man most worthless who would feed His wavering soul with vain delusive hope; To live with glory, or with glory die, Befits the noble."--_Sophocles._

The evening was growing into night.

The conversation at Loretto had been maintained in broken and unconnected sentences, or in low whispers; the hermit had retrimmed his lamp, removed the remains of the supper, and composed himself to finish that part of his "office" which yet remained unsaid; and then he told the maids and pages many a wonderful story of the miraculous cures effected at the shrine: how the blind had recovered their sight, the sick their health; how the lame had left their crutches and wooden legs behind them; and how, when an impious boy had cast a stone at the image of Our Lady, blood dropped from her nostrils, to the horror of the beholders, and how that wild little boy died the mitred Abbot of Dunfermline.

Then the gunner, who had wakened up, told many a story of a somewhat different character: of the achievements of Andrew Wood, and of brave old Andrew Barton; and how, in the old war waged by Scotland against the Dutch and Portuguese, he had swept all the ocean of their ships, from the Fortunate Isles to the swamps of the Zuiderzee; capturing, sinking, or burning their gilded argosies and noble carracques, to avenge the murder of some Scottish mariners on the high seas in time of peace; and how he had barrelled up their heads in brine, and sent some scores of them to Stirling (to the no small horror of the good King James) as the best proof of how he was discharging his duty,--and as the records of the Secret Council still remain to show.

The wind had gone down as the night darkened; the rain had ceased, and now little more was heard than the roar of the billows on the level shore; but the lovers were thoughtful and silent, for the time of separation was approaching, and no definite plan had been resolved on.

Amid this silence the tread of an armed man--if one might judge by the jangling rowels of heavy military spurs--was heard to cross the chapel floor above them; for the hermitage was in one of the numerous vaults below the edifice.

"Gate of Heaven--a visitor!" said the hermit, closing his book, and softly ascending the narrow stair to the chapel. Falconer followed with his sword half drawn, and prepared for any meeting or emergency.

The chapel was empty; there was no one there, and the door was still closed, lest the wind might extinguish the six tapers that were always burning before the little altar.

"This is most strange!" said the fat hermit, with an expression of perplexity on his sleek round face. "No man can have crossed the chapel, and closed the door too, before we could see him."

"Some one may be without," said Falconer.

"Sancta Maria! it may be a warning of approaching evil; keep back, Sir David, a little way, while I look without; for none dare meddle with me."

Setting down his lamp, the hermit softly opened the chapel door, slipped out, and looked round him; the wind had sunk into a low moaning sough; the stars were shining through the gaps in the flying clouds. These gaps revealed patches of blue, occasionally; their ragged edges were tinged by the moon; and a lurid light was visible at the horizon. The night was still wild-looking; but the storm was evidently past.

On the pathway which led to the chapel, he saw a group of mounted horsemen, one of whom was giving directions to the rest and in about half a minute after, they separated and formed themselves in a circle round the edifice, with the unmistakeable design of surrounding and entrapping its unwary inmates.

The friar softly and hastily closed the door, and drew across it the ponderous oak bar by which it was secured.

"How now, Father Hermit?" said Falconer, startled by the pale and excited aspect of his usually rubicund visage; "what is the matter?"

"Matter! Sancta Maria ora pro nobis--the chapel is beset!" he cried, rushing down stairs to alarm still more the startled inmates "we are surrounded, hemmed in on all sides!"

"By whom?" asked Falconer, furiously.

"Men----"

"The devil, friar! I scarcely expected it would be by wild beasts."

"You may find them little better, perhaps. They are a band of armed horsemen, who must be in pursuit of you, and who have heard our voices or seen the light through this small loop of glass."

"Horsemen!" said Euphemia; "they must be the mosstroopers of Lord Home, or of Hailes. Alas! Robert Barton, we--_we_ have lured you to this destruction!"

"Ora pro nobis," mumbled the bewildered hermit, looking upward imploringly; "alack--is this a time for wretched men to wage a strife amongst themselves, when the elements are at war with us all?"

"Away, away, dearest David," said Sybilla, throwing herself into the arms of Falconer; "reach your boat, and trust to the waves rather than to them. They dare not harm _us_--but you and Robert Barton--oh, Mother above, have mercy on us!"

At that moment, the two female attendants unwisely began to utter noisy cries of terror, while the startled pages, though but boys, grasped their poniards; then a knocking, like thunder, shook the chapel door, and a fierce laugh was heard without the little painted window of the cell, at which Sybilla saw a grim and bearded face appear, with its eyes glittering under the peak of an iron morion; for there stood Borthwick, with his brazen visage, and heart as hard as steel.

"Be calm," said Barton--"be silent all," he added, with a voice of authority; "take courage, and remember that this is a sanctuary--a holy place."

"You should have remembered that before making it the scene of amorous assignations and unholy dalliance," said the hermit, with something of anger.

"Pardon us," said Barton; "yet it is not the less a sanctuary."

"But, I fear me, these masterful limmers would violate the blessed sepulchre itself," replied the friar, bitterly, as he hastened to conceal the barrel, the two baskets, and the six flasks, in the niche beyond the crucifix and skull.

"Violate it! dost thou think so?" asked Barton, drawing his sword.

At that instant, again the thundering knocks rang on the chapel door, and shouts were heard.

"A Home! a Home!"

"Dost think they will commit sacrilege?"

"What dare they not do? Hear ye not they are Homes?"

"True--true," said Falconer, biting his nether lip; "hark to the slogan of the Border-men."

"Ay," quoth Master Wad; "but mony a gay galley saileth under fause colours; mony a muffled man, and mony a lord baron when his helmet is closed, if bound on a deed of ill, crieth the slogan of another house than his own, to mislead the people."

"A shrewd suggestion, Willie; but no other men have such an interest in the shortening of our lives as Hepburn of Hailes and----"

"_Kepe tryste!_" cried a voice without.

"That is the cry of Hailes--so both are there!" said Falconer, with fiery joy.

"'Sdeath," said Home; "open, false priest! Is the chapel of Our Blessed Lady a place for these cushat doves to coo and bill in? By Saint Ringan, Father Hermit, the Lord Abbot of Dunfermline and the Archbishop of St. Andrew's shall know of this, and dearly shall it cost thee!"

"Now we know our enemies," said Falconer, as he and Barton exchanged a dark glance of intelligence; "off with these vile disguises, Robert," he added, throwing aside his grey gaberdine and short trews, below which appeared a handsome coat of mail; "If we must die, let us do so like the men we are, not garbed like guisards on the night of Hogmenai."

"Oh, Father Hermit--oh! is there, is there no avenue--no mode of escape for them?" said Euphemia, while pale and trembling she clung with her white hands to the friar's coarse grey cassock.

"None--none; there is a passage through the burial vault, towards the links--"

"And that--and that--"

"Is guarded;--hark how they hammer at it now."

"Saint Mary and Saint John! then the place is surrounded,"

"On every side."

The wretched sisters wrung their hands in an ecstasy of grief; while Wad began to tighten his waistbelt, draw his bonnet over his brow, and spit with terrible deliberation into the palms of his brown hands, as the preliminaries of attempting something desperate.

"We have but one way," said Falconer.

"And that?" asked Barton.

"Is to sally out and die boldly," said he, as he pressed his lip to Sybilla's cold white cheek.

"To climb the wall of the precincts is impossible," said the priest: "it is ten feet high, and its gate is guarded by eight spearmen at least, I could reckon their lance-heads when glittering in the starlight."

"Right, and we are but three men on foot," said Barton.

"If we could but slip out and reach one of these trees," said the gunner, "there we might sit perched up and undiscovered till the burgesses of Musselburgh were roused with their axes and staves."

"St. Mary forgive me for engaging in this matter; but it is most just to defend the innocent, to punish the sacrilegious, and prevent the effusion of Christian blood," said the poor hermit, with a sigh of anger, as he brought up from his cell the cask of brandy, and staved in the head thereof by one blow of his sturdy hand. "Now, friend gunner, lend me a match from that pistolette of thine, and while I souse the leading varlets in burning liquor, do you three take shelter in the weirdwoman's tree, for the gate beyond is guarded. Among its branches you will be safe from molestation, and perhaps from discovery."

"Good--thou counsellest bravely," said Barton; and all the while the incessant din continued at the door without.

The three shipmates stood ready, with their swords and daggers drawn; the hermit dipped the flaming match into the brandy, from which the fire arose in red and bluish lambent light. The ladies shrunk back towards the altar-rail, while Wad flung open the chapel door. Then, as four or five armed men rushed forward to enter,--

"Malediction!" cried the hermit, and dashed the flaming spirit full into their faces; while Barton, Falconer, and Wad charged them sword in hand, and broke through at the same moment. Some of the assailants had the aventayles of their helmets shut, thus the hot spirit passed through the eyelet-holes, and half or wholly blinded them for the time. There was a momentary shock--a clashing of blades, and emission of sparks, as two men were hurled to the earth, and one run through the body by our fugitives, who, being well aware that the outer gate of the precincts was securely guarded, hastened to the weirdwoman's tree, and with no other footing on its rough and gnarled bark than such as desperation and the fierce energy of the moment supplied, they clambered up, all heavily accoutred as they were. Wad was first secure among the branches, and Barton next. Less accustomed to climbing and wholly unused to "going aloft," poor Falconer, but for the assistance lent by their proffered hands, would have failed to attain the same secure elevation, and must infallibly have been sacrificed; but soon they all three clambered up together among the damp leaves, and in the heart of the thick dark foliage attained a perch where even spearmen on horseback would fail to reach them.

"Art thou secure and firmly anchored, friend David?" asked Barton, in a whisper.

"Yes, I am astride a great branch here, like a French juggler on a _cheval-de-bois_," said he, laughing.

"Hush!--here come those runions now, so let us take to our hand-guns, and make service against them. My flask--I have left it in the chapel! Falconer, I trust thine is at thy belt?"

"Nay, I unstrapped it at supper; but perhaps Willie Wad----"

An imprecation from the gunner now increased their alarm.

"God's mercy!" said Barton; "is thine missing too?"

"No, sir; but I have only three charges of powder in it."

"Well, these are three men's lives. Charge home, Willie, and fire surely, for here they come."

In the fitful moonlight, Falconer being the last, had been seen to scramble up the oak; and now, with drawn sword and brandished lance, Home, Hailes, Borthwick, and even honest Blackcastle, whom the infectious spirit of mischief had seized, and who was still smarting from the burning brandy, some of which had been dashed in his face, with all the rest of their party, surrounded the stem of the threat tree, with threats, jibes, and cries of anger and defiance.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Hailes; "so the cock-pigeons, whose cooing we spoiled, are all roosted in this tree."

"Unwind me your hand-guns, some of ye, sirs," said Home; "try a shot ere they take wing."

"Blithely, though I wad rather hae ane gude straik wi' a Jethart staff than sax shots wi' thae _war-cracks_," said a grim mosstrooper, who gave his weapon the local name by which these primitive firearms were then known.

This simple gun, which first made its appearance in Scotland about 1450, in the time of James II., who received it from the Italians, was at first a mere iron tube, with little trunnions at its sides. By these it was secured to a wooden stock. The touch-hole was first on the top; but as the priming was liable to fall off, or be blown away, the vent was transferred to the right side, where a pan held the powder, and over it was a cover which opened on a pivot: such was the first germ of our modern musket.

Two or three horsemen who were furnished with these then formidable weapons, opened their pans, and levelling at the heart of the tree above their heads, applied the matches. There was a triple blaze--a simultaneous report, and three bullets whistled harmlessly through the foliage of the oak, cutting its leaves, and whitening the branches, but far apart from the three fugitives; for the troopers fired unsteadily, and at random.

The night was still dark; the moon glinted uncertainly at times, and the foliage was dense and thick.

"Again, and again," said Home; "fire while there is a charge in your flasks or a ball in your bags; and I will give ten crowns to the first who brings down his bird like a capercailzie."

At that moment there was a flash in the heart of the black foliage; a ball grazed Lord Home's shoulder and killed a mosstrooper beside him. The man's morion and iron jack rang heavily as he fell to the ground, and almost without a cry; for Wad's aim was a sure one.

"Fire at the spot that flash came from," cried Lord Hailes; "and I swear by St. Serf's ram, and St. Anthony's pig, to add twenty crowns to thine, Home, as the guerdon of our best gunner."

"'Tis said that some have gone up this tree and never more come town," said Blackcastle.

"Well, it would matter little if it happens again in the present instance," said Borthwick, on seeing how the superstitious mosstroopers shrunk back at this remark; "but we shall soon bring them down, I warrant. Let the chapel door, however, be well guarded, lest the hermit or his ladies rouse on us the burgesses of Musselburgh, which their tongues will assuredly do, if this unwonted firing doth not."

Again three bullets were fired into the tree, and as the flashes broke from the iron muzzles of the hand-guns, the murderers--for such they were by intention--could see each other's brown visages, wiry beards, and rusty morions, and the green leaves and rough bark of the enchanted oak,--but for an instant only.

These three balls were as harmless as their predecessors; and while the slow process of loading from a flask, putting in wadding, bullets, and priming, was resumed, a shot came from the tree, and with a cry of agony another borderer fell at the side of Lord Home.

"On my soul, thou'st the cry of a screech-owl! Where the devil art thou hurt, fellow?" asked the lord, with considerably less of sympathy than anger in his tone.

"In the left cuit. Oh, my lord, I shall never, never ride again, and wha will gie me meat and fee?"

"Ha, ha!" laughed Wad from his perch; "I have pinked this one on the larboard side."

"He'll have a heel to port for the remainder of his days," said Barton; "fire again, Willie."

"What if yonder white figure by the stream was the weirdwoman, and _not_ the ghost of the warder's wife?" suggested Blackcastle.

"Gomeral!" cried Home, furiously; "I care not if she were the devil, and----"

Wad's last shot, for (as the reader is aware) he had unhappily but _three_, grazed the cheek-plate of the noble's helmet, and so discomposed him that he forgot what he meant to say; but now doubly alarmed by their superstitious fears, and by finding themselves exposed, under an increasing moonlight, to the deadly aim of those they could not see, the two lords and their followers withdrew a little to consult on their future measures.

Meanwhile those who had been left within the chapel heard the uproar without, and the reports of the hand-guns, which filled their hearts with terror; for these weapons were little known in Scotland, and were deemed more deadly in effect than they really were.

"Let us kindle a fire round the tree," said Borthwick, whose wits were sharpened by the prospect of gaining thirty crowns; "this will soon bring them all down among fire and smoke."

"Good!"

"Admirable!" said the lords; "but where is the fuel?"

"Here; this shed, wherein this rogue of a hermit stables his visitors' horses, will provide us; alight, my Annandale thieves--off with your steel gloves, and unroof the stable," said Borthwick, setting the example; "pile sticks and straw, roof and rafters, round the stem, and throw in your lighted matches--quick!"

The little edifice to which he referred adjoined the chapel, and meant to receive the horses of pilgrims and visitors. It was heavily roofed with warm thatch, which was quite dry below the coating of emerald-green moss which covered it. Well used to such work, the strong mosstroopers in two minutes tore down the rafters, broke up the hack, manger, and one or two old corn casks that lay in the stalls, and piled them with all the straw round the stem of the oak tree; and then sprinkling powder over all, threw in their lighted matches.

The flame smouldered a little, and then shot up and licked the thick-seamed bark of the ancient tree.

"Bring more fuel," cried Hailes, "even though we tear down the provost's house for it; quick, my bold mosstroopers, so ready of wit and stout of heart."

Two little stacks, one of heather, from which the poor hermit made up his bed, and another of peats, which supplied him with fuel, and both of which, like everything else he had, were the gift of visitors, were torn down and added to the pile, with all the fallen branches and green saplings that could be collected; and now the wavering fire began to ascend and blaze in a fiery circle, twisting itself into a column around the stem of the strong oak tree.

The forky flames shot high and higher among the foliage, hissing against the wet branches, and scorching off those that were crisped and dry; the old knots and gnarls began to crack and burn; and as the sheet of fire deepened and gathered strength, it became evident that the three lurkers, even if they failed to be suffocated, would soon be compelled by the heat to fall on the spears of those who watched and waited below, while others were constantly employed in seeking the means necessary to maintain and augment the fire!

"It burns well," said Borthwick, with grim complacency, while poking it up with his swordblade.

"These varlets have given us more trouble than their miserable lives can ever atone for," said Hailes, in an undertone.

"Lives! on my soul, they seem to have as many each as a cat," replied Home.

"With the power of making the most of each of them."

"On my faith, were not my pride and obstinacy enlisted in this cause, I would counsel that we should wear the willow in our bonnets, Hailes, and bequeath these Drummond dames to their salt-water lovers, with the devil's benison on their bridal."

"Let us first see each gay lemane with his head under his arm. Halloa, fellows, are not yet coming down? By my soul, ye must be birselled in your iron coats like winter apples or roasted crabs by this time!"

The flames had now reached the middle of the tree, and in their blaze the whole band could see each others' flushed faces and fiery eyes; their rusty accoutrements and glittering weapons; and their two comrades stretched on the ground, one with upturned eye and jaw relaxed, but placid and still, like all who die by gunshot wounds; the other still bleeding and writhing in pain. On one side rose the façade of the ancient chapel with its low-browed Roman doorway and deep-sunk windows, on the other were the sturdy stems and freakish branches of the patriarchal tree which shaded its time-worn walls.

Up and farther upward shot the flames, and in half-an-hour every leaf, save those upon the extremity of the branches, was gone; the whole foliage had been scorched off; the large knotty limbs were blackened and burned, or the smaller entirely consumed; the whole of that magnificent oak was divested of bark, cracked, calcined, and half consumed by fire.

Still the three prisoners had neither cried once for mercy, nor fallen down by being overcome by heat or exhaustion; and _now_, those who thirsted for their blood below, began to look rather blankly in each others' faces, while fear and wonder grew together in their hearts.

The flames around its mighty stem sunk low, and died away as morning brightened in the east; and there stood the giant tree, with its trunk, nearly nine feet in diameter, the bare and blackened ruin of its former self--a smoking and sable skeleton; but there was no trace, not even a vestige of the fugitives!

It was impossible that the fire could have consumed them and their apparel too.

It was equally impossible that they could have descended and escaped through the flames, for their intended destroyers stood around them in a circle.

"By St. Mary, there hath been magic or a miracle at work here!" said Hailes, on being convinced that, beyond a doubt, the _three_ had vanished from their lofty perch.

"'Tis said that some who have ascended this tree did never more come down," said Home.

"May the Blessed Virgin not have borne them away to punish us for violating the sanctity of Loretto," said the superstitious Laird of Blackcastle, in a low voice.

"May not the devil or the weird woman have done the same thing?" asked Borthwick, scoffingly, with a scowl in his eye.

"Peace," said Hailes, with an irrepressible shudder, caused either by fear or the chill morning air; "I have heard of strange things for good or evil happening here," he added, putting a foot in his stirrup to remount; "and _now_ I am not ashamed to say that I repent me sorely of following those rascals into consecrated ground; so let us to horse and begone, lest the burgesses of the honest town betake them to axe and stave to punish this raid of ours before we cross the Esk again; for _they_ will not thole the sin, though our gentler Lady of Loretto may."