The Reverend Elijah Howler was a happy man in one sense; the cause of his beloved kirk was triumphant, though Cromwell’s Puritans, who had succeeded the Cavaliers of Montrose as antagonists, bade fair to become sore troublers of Israel; and loud were the lamentations when, by sound of trumpet, the English sectaries warned the General Assembly to begone from Edinburgh, and to assemble no more. Yet the Reverend Elijah was unhappy in another sense. Annora heard his pious love-making with averted ear, and he might as well have poured forth his texts, his dreary talk, and intoned homilies, to the waves that beat at the rocky basement of the tower—at once Annora’s prison and her home. Meanwhile, she grew pale, and thin, and sickly. Her younger brother, Philip, pitied her in his heart, and, after making inquiries, learned that Willie Calderwood was now in France, where he had been wounded in a duel by the Abbé Gondy, but had become his friend, and now adhered to him when he had become famous as the Cardinal de Retz; and, as such, served and defended him in the wars of the Fronde, with a hundred other cavaliers of Montrose. "Oh, waly, waly, my mother dear!" she exclaimed, using the bitterest old Scottish exclamation of grief, as she threw herself on the bosom of the unflinching Lady Grizel. "Pity me—pity me, for none love me here, and Willie is far far awa’ in France owre the sea." "A’ the better, bairn—a’ the better." "But I may never see him mair!" "A’ the better still, bairn." "Oh, mother dear," urged the weeping girl, "dinna say sae; ye’ll rive my puir heart in twain amang ye. And this Fronde, and these Frondeurs, what is _it_, what are _they_?" "What would it be but some Papist devilry, or a Calderwood wadna be in the middle o’t?" was the angry response. Poor Annora knew not what to think, for there were no newspapers in those days, and rumours of events in distant lands came vaguely by chance travellers, and at long intervals. Lothian and Fife were almost farther apart in those days than Scotland and France are now, in the matters of news and travel. She felt like Juliet in the feud between the families— "Tis but thy _name_ that is my enemy;— Though art thyself though, not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is not hand or foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. ——Doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself. Even as water dropping on a granite rock will wear that rock away in course of time, so, by the systematic tyranny of her parents, and by their reiterated assurances, and even forged proofs, that Willie Calderwood had fallen, sword in hand, at the battle of the Barricades, was Annora worn and wearied into a state of acquiescence, in which she accepted Mr. Elijah Howler as her husband.