It was over. Signing of registers was not in those days, but there was some delay, for the darkness was more dense than ever, the rush of furious hail was heard without, a great blue flash of intense light filled every corner of the church, the thunder pealed so sharply and vehemently overhead that the small company looked at one another and at the church, to ascertain that no stroke had fallen. Then the Lord of Whitburn, first recovering himself, cried, “Come, sir knight, kiss your bride. Ha! where is he? Sir Leonard—here. Who hath seen him? Not vanished in yon flash! Eh?” No, but the men without, cowering under the wall, deposed that Sir Leonard Copeland had rushed out, shouted to them that he had fulfilled the conditions and was a free man, taken his horse, and galloped away through the storm. CHAPTER XIV THE LONELY BRIDE Grace for the callant If he marries our muckle-mouth Meg. BROWNING. “THE recreant! Shall we follow him?” was the cry of Lord Whitburn’s younger squire, Harry Featherstone, with his hand on his horse’s neck, in spite of the torrents of rain and the fresh flash that set the horses quivering. “No! no!” roared the Baron. “I tell you no! He has fulfilled his promise; I fulfil mine. He has his freedom. Let him go! For the rest, we will find the way to make him good husband to you, my wench,” and as Harry murmured something, “There’s work enow in hand without spending our horses’ breath and our own in chasing after a runaway groom. A brief space we will wait till the storm be over.” Grisell shrank back to pray at a little side altar, telling her beads, and repeating the Latin formula, but in her heart all the time giving thanks that she was going back to Bernard and her mother, whose needs had been pressing strongly on her, yet that she might do right by this newly-espoused husband, whose downcast, dejected look had filled her, not with indignation at the slight to her—she was far past that—but with yearning compassion for one thus severed from his true love. When the storm had subsided enough for these hardy northlanders to ride home, and Grisell was again perched behind old Cuthbert Ridley, he asked, “Well, my Dame of Copeland, dost peak and pine for thy runaway bridegroom?” “Nay, I had far rather be going home to my little Bernard than be away with yonder stranger I ken not whither.” “Thou art in the right, my wench. If the lad can break the marriage by pleading precontract, you may lay your reckoning on it that so he will.” When they came home to the attempt at a marriage-feast which Lady Whitburn had improvised, they found that this was much her opinion. “He will get the knot untied,” she said. “So thick as the King and his crew are with the Pope, it will cost him nothing, but we may, for very shame, force a dowry out of his young knighthood to get the wench into Whitby withal!”