The Caged Lion | Page 9

the verses he had sung, and applied to
Malcolm to give a specimen of his powers: and thus, with music, ballad,
and lay, the evening passed away, till the parting cup was sent round,
and the Tutor of Glenuskie and Malcolm marshalled their guest to the
apartment where he was to sleep, in a wainscoted box bedstead, and his
two attendant squires, a great iron-gray Scot and a rosy honest-faced
Englishman, on pallets on the floor.
In the morning he went on his journey, but not without an invitation to
rest there again on his way back, whether with or without his ransom.
He promised to come, saying that he should gladly bear to the King the
last advices from one so honoured as the Tutor of Glenuskie; and, on
their sides, Malcolm and Sir David resolved to do their best to have
some gold pieces to contribute, rather than so 'proper a knight' should
fail in raising his ransom; but gold was never plenty, and Patrick
needed all that his uncle could supply, to bear him to those wars in
France, where he looked for renown and fortune.

For these were, as may have been gathered, those evil days when James
I. of Scotland was still a captive to England, and when the House of
Albany exercised its cruel misrule upon Scotland; delaying to ransom
the King, lest they should bring home a master.
Old Robert of Albany had been King Stork, his son Murdoch was King
Log; and the misery was infinitely increased by the violence and
lawlessness of Murdoch's sons. King Robert II. had left Scotland the
fearful legacy of, as Froissart says, 'eleven sons who loved arms.' Of
these, Robert III. was the eldest, the Duke of Albany the second. These
were both dead, and were represented, the one by the captive young
King James, the other by the Regent, Duke Murdoch of Albany, and his
brother John, Earl of Buchan, now about to head a Scottish force,
among whom Patrick Drummond intended to sail, to assist the French.
Others of the eleven, Earls of Athol, Menteith, &c., survived; but the
youngest of the brotherhood, by name Malcolm, who had married the
heiress of Glenuskie, had been killed at Homildon Hill, when he had
solemnly charged his Stewart nephews and brothers to leave his two
orphan children to the sole charge of their mother's cousin, Sir David
Drummond, a good old man, who had been the best supporter and
confidant of poor Robert III. in his unhappy reign, and in embassies to
France had lost much of the rugged barbarism to which Scotland had
retrograded during the wars with England.


CHAPTER II
: THE RESCUE OF COLDINGHAM
It was a lonely tract of road, marked only by the bare space trodden by
feet of man and horse, and yet, in truth, the highway between Berwick
and Edinburgh, which descended from a heathery moorland into a
somewhat spacious valley, with copsewood clothing one side, in the
midst of which rose a high mound or knoll, probably once the site of a
camp, for it still bore lines of circumvallation, although it was entirely
deserted, except by the wandering shepherds of the neighbourhood, or
occasionally by outlaws, who found an admirable ambush in the rear.
The spring had hung the hazels with tassels, bedecked the willows with

golden downy tufts, and opened the primroses and celandines beneath
them, when the solitary dale was disturbed by the hasty clatter of
horses' feet, and hard, heavy breathing as of those who had galloped
headlong beyond their strength. Here, however, the foremost of the
party, an old esquire, who grasped the bridle-rein of youth by his side,
drew up his own horse, and that which he was dragging on with him,
saying--
'We may breathe here a moment; there is shelter in the wood. And you,
Rab, get ye up to the top of Jill's Knowe, and keep a good look-out.'
'Let me go back, you false villain!' sobbed the boy, with the first use of
his recovered breath.
'Do not be so daft, Lord Malcolm,' replied the Squire, retaining his hold
on the boy's bridle; 'what, rin your head into the wolf's mouth again,
when we've barely brought you off haill and sain?'
'Haill and sain? Dastard and forlorn,' cried Malcolm, with passionate
weeping. 'I--I to flee and leave my sister--my uncle! Oh, where are they?
Halbert, let me go; I'll never pardon thee.'
'Hoot, my lord! would I let you gang, when the Tutor spak to me as
plain as I hear you now? "Take off Lord Malcolm," says he; "save him,
and you save the rest. See him safe to the Earl of Mar." Those were his
words, my lord; and if you wilna heed them, I will.'