'Heaven bless thee, maiden! I thought the pain was over, but it glows again within me at the name of food.'
'The food is here, but how—ah, how can I pass it to you? the chink is so narrow, the wall is so thick! Yet there is a remedy—I have it. Quick, Louise; cut me a willow bough, the tallest you can find.'
The glee maiden obeyed, and, by means of a cleft in the top of the wand, Catharine transmitted several morsels of the soft cakes, soaked in broth, which served at once for food and for drink.
The unfortunate young man ate little, and with difficulty, but prayed for a thousand blessings on the head of his comforter. 'I had destined thee to be the slave of my vices,' he said, 'and yet thou triest to become the preserver of my life! But away, and save thyself.'
'I will return with food as I shall see opportunity,' said Catharine, just as the glee maiden plucked her sleeve and desired her to be silent and stand close.
Both crouched among the ruins, and they heard the voices of Ramorny and the mediciner in close conversation.
'He is stronger than I thought,' said the former, in a low, croaking tone. 'How long held out Dalwolsy, when the knight of Liddesdale prisoned him in his castle of Hermitage?'
'For a fortnight,' answered Dwining; 'but he was a strong man, and had some assistance by grain which fell from a granary above his prison house.'
'Were it not better end the matter more speedily? The Black Douglas comes this way. He is not in Albany's secret. He will demand to see the Prince, and all must be over ere he comes.'
They passed on in their dark and fatal conversation.
'Now gain we the tower,' said Catharine to her companion, when she saw they had left the garden. 'I had a plan of escape for myself; I will turn it into one of rescue for the Prince. The dey woman enters the castle about vesper time, and usually leaves her cloak in the passage as she goes into the pantlers' office with the milk. Take thou the cloak, muffle thyself close, and pass the warder boldly; he is usually drunken at that hour, and thou wilt go as the dey woman unchallenged through gate and along bridge, if thou bear thyself with confidence. Then away to meet the Black Douglas; he is our nearest and only aid.'
'But,' said Louise, 'is he not that terrible lord who threatened me with shame and punishment?'
'Believe it,' said Catharine, 'such as thou or I never dwelt an hour in the Douglas's memory, either for good or evil. Tell him that his son in law, the Prince of Scotland dies—treacherously famished—in Falkland Castle, and thou wilt merit not pardon only, but reward.'
'I care not for reward,' said Louise; 'the deed will reward itself. But methinks to stay is more dangerous than to go. Let me stay, then, and nourish the unhappy Prince, and do you depart to bring help. If they kill me before you return, I leave you my poor lute, and pray you to be kind to my poor Charlot.'
'No, Louise,' replied Catharine, 'you are a more privileged and experienced wanderer than I—do you go; and if you find me dead on your return, as may well chance, give my poor father this ring and a lock of my hair, and say, Catharine died in endeavouring to save the blood of Bruce. And give this other lock to Henry; say, Catharine thought of him to the last, and that, if he has judged her too scrupulous touching the blood of others, he will then know it was not because she valued her own.'
They sobbed in each other's arms, and the intervening hours till evening were spent in endeavouring to devise some better mode of supplying the captive with nourishment, and in the construction of a tube, composed of hollow reeds, slipping into each other, by which liquids might be conveyed to him. The bell of the village church of Falkland tolled to vespers. The dey, or farm woman, entered with her pitchers to deliver the milk for the family, and to hear and tell the news stirring. She had scarcely entered the kitchen when the female minstrel, again throwing herself in Catharine's arms, and assuring her of her unalterable fidelity, crept in silence downstairs, the little dog under her arm. A moment after, she was seen by the breathless Catharine, wrapt in the dey woman's cloak, and walking composedly across the drawbridge.
'So,' said the warder, 'you return early tonight, May Bridget? Small mirth towards in the hall—ha, wench! Sick times are sad times!'
'I have forgotten my tallies,' said the ready witted French woman, 'and will return in the skimming of a bowie.'
She went onward, avoiding the village of Falkland, and took a footpath which led through the park. Catharine breathed freely, and blessed God when she saw her lost in the distance. It was another anxious hour for Catharine which occurred before the escape of the fugitive was discovered. This happened so soon as the dey girl, having taken an hour to perform a task which ten minutes might have accomplished, was about to return, and discovered that some one had taken away her grey frieze cloak. A strict search was set on foot; at length the women of the house remembered the glee maiden, and ventured to suggest her as one not unlikely to exchange an old cloak for a new one. The warder, strictly questioned, averred he saw the dey woman depart immediately after vespers; and on this being contradicted by the party herself, he could suggest, as the only alternative, that it must needs have been the devil.
As, however, the glee woman could not be found, the real circumstances of the case were easily guessed at; and the steward went to inform Sir John Ramorny and Dwining, who were now scarcely ever separate, of the escape of one of their female captives. Everything awakens the suspicions of the guilty. They looked on each other with faces of dismay, and then went together to the humble apartment of Catharine, that they might take her as much as possible by surprise while they inquired into the facts attending Louise's disappearance.
'Where is your companion, young woman?' said Ramorny, in a tone of austere gravity.
'I have no companion here,' answered Catharine.
'Trifle not,' replied the knight; 'I mean the glee maiden, who lately dwelt in this chamber with you.'
'She is gone, they tell me,' said Catharine—'gone about an hour since.'
'And whither?' said Dwining.
'How,' answered Catharine, 'should I know which way a professed wanderer may choose to travel? She was tired no doubt of a solitary life, so different from the scenes of feasting and dancing which her trade leads her to frequent. She is gone, and the only wonder is that she should have stayed so long.'
'This, then,' said Ramorny, 'is all you have to tell us?'
'All that I have to tell you, Sir John,' answered Catharine, firmly; 'and if the Prince himself inquire, I can tell him no more.'
'There is little danger of his again doing you the honour to speak to you in person,' said Ramorny, 'even if Scotland should escape being rendered miserable by the sad event of his decease.'
'Is the Duke of Rothsay so very ill?' asked Catharine.
'No help, save in Heaven,' answered Ramorny, looking upward.
'Then may there yet be help there,' said Catharine, 'if human aid prove unavailing!'
'Amen!' said Ramorny, with the most determined gravity; while Dwining adopted a face fit to echo the feeling, though it seemed to cost him a painful struggle to suppress his sneering yet soft laugh of triumph, which was peculiarly excited by anything having a religious tendency.
'And it is men—earthly men, and not incarnate devils, who thus appeal to Heaven, while they are devouring by inches the life blood of their hapless master!' muttered Catharine, as her two baffled inquisitors left the apartment. 'Why sleeps the thunder? But it will roll ere long, and oh! may it be to preserve as well as to punish!'
The hour of dinner alone afforded a space when, all in the castle being occupied with that meal, Catharine thought she had the best opportunity of venturing to the breach in the wall, with the least chance of being observed. In waiting for the hour, she observed some stir in the castle, which had been silent as the grave ever since the seclusion of the Duke of Rothsay. The portcullis was lowered and raised, and the creaking of the machinery was intermingled with the tramp of horse, as men at arms went out and returned with steeds hard ridden and covered with foam. She observed, too, that such domestics as she casually saw from her window were in arms. All this made her heart throb high, for it augured the approach of rescue; and besides, the bustle left the little garden more lonely than ever. At length the hour of noon arrived; she had taken care to provide, under pretence of her own wishes, which the pantler seemed disposed to indulge, such articles of food as could be the most easily conveyed to the unhappy captive. She whispered to intimate her presence; there was no answer; she spoke louder, still there was silence.
'He sleeps,' she muttered these words half aloud, and with a shuddering which was succeeded by a start
