CHAPTER LV.

THE ESCAPE.

"Oh shut, O bar the castle-gate! Oh shut the chamber-door! No faithful turtle quits her mate, I'll quit my love no more."--ELLIOT OF MINTO.

In no way satisfied by the result of their expedition, the two nobles and their followers galloped from Loretto, and re-passed the Bridge of Musselburgh just in time to avoid the wrath of the burghers, who had displayed their standard with its _three mussels_ and the proud motto, "Honesto," and were preparing to punish severely the sacrilege of the night; but Borthwick, as his companions retreated across the bridge of the Esk, locked the iron gate on the western side, and tauntingly, in sight of all their pursuers, flung the key "to the Kelpie's keeping" in the swollen river, the deep and rapid torrent of which barred all passage; and thus in safety, the whole band--two excepted, who were afterwards hanged at Musselburgh Cross--"the quick and the dead"--reached the King's Wark at Leith, the headquarters of the insurgent lords.

"Mater purissima!" exclaimed Father Fairlie, as well he might, on leaving his chapel door next morning, and seeing the _débris_ of the operations we have just described; the roofless stable; the rifled stacks; the torn shrubbery; the scorched sward; the black skeleton of the burned oak, and the two men who lay upon the ground in their armour, one dead and the other nearly so.

"Heaven will assuredly punish this sacrilege," said Euphemia to Sybilla, as a smile of triumph struggled with the fear and sorrow impressed upon her pale face by the events of the past night. "Bring forth our horses," she added to the pages, "and let us also begone, for I fear me, holy friar, you will deem your cell but little favoured by the presence of those who have been the innocent, though certainly the primary cause of this atrocious outrage and bloodshed. In our purses, which we have left upon the altar, you will, I hope, find more than enough to repay you for all you have suffered or lost; and be assured we will never forget you."

The friar did not reply.

Poor man--he was astounded by the whole affair; and crossing his hands upon his paunch, rolled his round eyes, and continued to mutter involuntarily, "Benedictus Dominus deus!" and other scraps from the canticle of Zachary, while the pages prepared the horses in haste; and with all speed the ladies departed, expressing the most lively and heartfelt gratitude to the hermit, who retired to begin his daily "office," and once more investigate the contents of the two baskets and six flasks.

"But the barrel, alas!" said he, with a sigh of anger, though its contents had been spent or spilt in furthering the escape of Barton, Falconer, and their faithful follower from the barbarous fate to which this luckless tryst had lured them; "the brandy--the barrel--_miserere nostri_--'tis lost!"

Their disappearance was brought about in the following manner:--

When our three fugitives found that their ammunition was expended--that day was breaking, and yet there came no signs of rescue--that the tree remained environed by armed men on every side--and that the fire which begirt it was mounting up the stem, despair and horror began to seize their hearts, and, creeping close together in the dark among the rising smoke and withering foliage, they were about to adopt the proposal of Robert Barton--that the whole three of them should leap down, sword in hand, on three different sides, and die under the steel of these vindictive enemies, if they could not baffle or surmount them, when, lo! to their astonishment, they heard a fourth voice beside them, and the bald head of the hermit appeared close by, projecting from a hole in the enormous trunk of the tree, which by age was quite hollow, and by decay had become a mere wooden tube.

"Mater purissima," said he; "quick, my bairns, quick! descend this way, while there is yet time."

"Descend--but to where? The smoke hath made me blind as a bat," said Barton; "but how, in the name of Saint or Satan, came you here, most reverend Father?"

"Up the hollow trunk of this old oak, with which a stair below communicates," replied the priest, whose voice was almost lost amid the crackling of the flames; "this has proved a hiding-place to more than one in time of broil and trouble; but descend, and, in the name of Our Lady, quickly? Give me thy hand--thy foot, I mean--place it _here_, so--this is the first step hollowed in the trunk--now thy hand, so--this is the next, and thus we descend; one of my predecessors constructed this stair, that he might say his prayers on the tree-top, in imitation of St. Simon Stock, who lived in a tree in Kent;--down--down--yet, carefully now."

The friar disappeared and Barton and Falconer followed; but the latter, missing a footstep, fell heavily to the bottom, and found himself underground, on the soft, damp mould of the burial vault.

Dumbfoundered by the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his companions, poor Willie Wad paused for a moment in great irresolution.

"Avast, Sir David--belay there," cried he; "hallo, gude Father Fairlie, in the name o' Our Leddy, dinna leave me here in stays! O-ho--I see how it is!" he added. Ignorant of the mode of descent, and not wishing exactly to drop into the dark hole below, he resolved to "go down by the run." After reflecting for a moment, Willie pulled out of the pouch which has been so often already referred to, a few fathoms of what a seaman is seldom without--stout cord, and looping it round a branch, lowered himself into the hole, from the bottom of which he heard Captain Barton anxiously shouting, and describing the mode of descent.

While the fat, pursy friar was clambering slowly and laboriously up to his assistance, he was unexpectedly met by the broad end of the short, squat gunner, who, as the cord slid through his hands, descended upon his shaven crown with all the force of a steam-hammer or a battering ram, and shot him at once to the bottom; nearly ending there his orisons and feasts of every kind, spiritual and temporal.

"O Mater castissima, you have slain me!" he cried, as he rose with difficulty from the floor of the vault; "_Miserere nostri Domine!_"

"Mercy on us!" said the startled gunner; "look ye, shipmate--holy Father, I mean--"

"Heaven send that no more pilgrims such as you come here," said the hermit, peevishly; "and now, for your own sakes at least, begone; I shall be blessed by the sight of your backs."

"May we not see the ladies?"

"Impossible, Sir David; they are above in the chapel, at some distance, for this is but an old burial-vault, where the lairds of Fawsyde lie. Ye have suffered enough for cooing and billing here, instead of confessing and praying; so get ye gone, sirs, in the Holy Virgin's name,--away, by yonder outlet, which will take you to the beach; away, ere worse come upon you."

"Friar, may we not take them with us?" asked Sir David Falconer.

"Four women in an open boat--and in this weather?" exclaimed the priest, polishing his bald crown with his wide sleeve, and giving the penitent gunner a glance of very mingled cast.

"True--true," said Barton; "it is impossible."

"With a fresh breeze perhaps coming on," said the gunner, rubbing the nether end of his galligaskins.

"Heaven knoweth I would be the last man to keep fond hearts asunder; but, once again, I implore--nay, I command you to begone, before your blood desecrates these holy walls for ever!"

After this, farther parley was useless, and through a suite of vaults--only one of which now remains--they were led by the friar for about forty yards, till he reached a little door, which on the outside was half buried by drifted sand. He opened it, and they soon found themselves beyond the precincts, and free.

"Gude be thankit, we are fairly under way," said Willie Wad; "may I drink bilge, if such a hellicate job was ever mine before! Noo, sirs, let us haul off on the larboard tack and reach our boat."

They hurried across the sandy knolls and broomy hollows of the links and reached their boat by wading to her through the full tide. Taking the kedge on board, they stepped the mast, half hoisted the lugsail, and betaking them to their oars, bore away into the river just as the dawn began to streak the eastern sea with light. But still the wind was blowing hard.

"I have but one sorrow," said Barton, as he relaxed the braces of his armour and bent to the oar; "we have left our ladies in their hands--but by Tantony's bell, they have had a hard fight for them!"

"If I thought Sybilla's chances of happiness were greater with the powerful Lord of Hailes, than with the king's poor arquebussier, by my word, Barton, I would yield her to him, though my heart should break in doing so."

"Wherefore and why so benevolent?"

"Because it would best prove the strength and purity of my love for her to yield her up, rather than by prosecuting my humbler suit to the injury of her worldly interest and commoditie--thus throwing my own happiness overboard to secure hers."

"Hailes could neither secure her happiness nor value your sacrifice. You heard his sentiments under that flaming oak?" said Barton.

"Alas! I cannot blame Lord Drummond for his hostility to me. Unlike Hailes, I cannot offer poor Sybilla the rank, the power, the splendid gifts of feudal fortune possessed by the House of the Hepburns."

"Thou canst give her far more--a brave and honest heart, and a name unstained by crime and _treason_. Of that few Scottish noble names are free! Ouf--there was a mouthful of salt water! Willie, mind ye the tiller, my lad."

The chapel wherein the events of this chapter occurred was demolished at the Reformation, and no vestige of it now remains save the name--Loretto,--and a little cell, which measures about twelve feet by ten. Herein were found a number of skulls lately.

From the materials of the edifice, the present Tolbooth of Musselburgh was built in 1590, during the reign of James VI.; and for this signal act of sacrilege, the burgesses of the "Honest Town" were regularly excommunicated annually, by bell, book, and candle, at Rome, until within the last few years, when his holiness perhaps grew tired of it.