"Your eminence will not omit to send the requisite troops and cannon towards Douglasdale to-morrow, for Ashkirk may be there," said the lord advocate, rising. "Before vespers, Sir Roland Vipont shall hear from me," replied Beaton, as Redhall sank on one knee, kissed the ruby ring on his finger, and hurried away with a hasty step and a beating heart. CHAPTER XV. THE NOON OF LOVE. "He looked upon her, and her humid gaze Was at his look dropped instant on the ground: But o'er her cheek of beauty rushed a blaze, Her bosom heaved within its silken bound-- And though her voice is trembling as I sigh, Love triumphs in her smile and fond delicious eye." CROLY'S _Angel of the World_. The sun was in the west, and threw the long shadow of the Netherbow so far down the vista of the Canongate that it almost reached to the Girth-cross of the Holyrood. Save when the summer wind made strange sounds among the peaked roofs and enormous chimneys of the narrow closes, the streets were still and quiet. A hoof rang occasionally, just as if to remind one that they were recently paved for the first time; or the distant cries were heard of those who sold curds and milk at the cross, or cockles and whelks at the Tron, as we may learn from William Dunbar's poem in the year 1500. The countess and her family had just adjourned from the dining hull to that tapestried chamber in which we had the honour of first introducing them to the reader. With no foreboding of the mischief that was then brewing against them at that moment in the little turret-room of the cardinal's mansion, the good old Lady Margaret and all around her were very happy. Roland instinctively drew to the side of Jane, who approached her embroidery frame, for ladies were never idle in those industrious days; Earl Archibald seated himself by the side of Sybil, where he could very well have spared the additional company of her companions, Marion and Alison, who seated themselves near, to hear her perform on the virginals; and the countess assumed her accustomed and well-cushioned bench, in the sunny corner of a window, where the shadows of the thick basket grating were thrown upon her face. Drawing her spinning-wheel towards her with one hand, she made a motion with the other to Father St. Bernard to sit near; for the confessor had that day been invited to dinner the moment his oration concluded. "I pray Heaven I may not hear some evil tidings," said the countess, "for the wind is so high." "Nay, fear not, madam, for this is Friday," replied the old priest, "and the festival of Queen Ellen to boot." "And yet I remind me, father, that in the days of King James IV., I heard the wind soughing just so, and in two hours thereafter news came frae the west countrie that my kinsman, Sir John Colquhoun of Luss, who was lord chamberlain and ambassador to England in 1487, was killed at the siege of Dumbarton, by a ball from a culverin."