"But the king did spare some of them, and they say would have spared more if his ministers would have let him; but a good many took French leave. There was half a dozen broke out of Newgate at once, they say; and though some were taken again, there was one Hepburn found out where his wife and children were abiding, by spying his own family tankard, the Keith tankard, as they call it, which they had stuck in the window just for that very purpose: he was a lucky fellow! And Forster, he is safe in France, they say. And pray, young woman, you can't tell me how 'twas the Earl of Nithsdale got away?" Lady Nithsdale started. "Nay, sir! how should I know?" "Why, you have been in London, and I thought folks must have talked enough about it there; for, to my mind, 'twas a strange thing, and that's the truth. Do you think the guards were in the secret?" "Oh, no, no! they knew nothing!" exclaimed the countess, anxious to exculpate them from such a charge. "Why, I thought you knew nothing!" answered the yeoman, with a cunning glance; "but if you do, you need not stand in fear of me; I should never wish to say anything of anybody to their prejudice." "I never heard any suspicion of infidelity thrown out against the guards," answered Lady Nithsdale, in a more composed manner; "but I have left London some time, and other circumstances may have transpired." "Then you don't know that 'twas the earl's mother that brought him the clothes in which he disguised himself?" "No! indeed I did not," answered the countess, with a glance at Amy, which she could not control. "They say that's a positive fact!" proceeded the farmer: "and perhaps, then, you have not heard, what they tell me is equally true, that on the 24th,--yes, it was the 24th, was it not, that the rebels had their heads off?" Lady Nithsdale bowed assent. "On the 24th of last month, the very day the Earl of Derwentwater was beheaded, the water in the moat round Dillstone Castle turned as red as blood! That was very singular, was it not?" "Strange indeed!" ejaculated Amy, with a countenance in which awe and wonder were honestly visible; "on the very day he suffered!"--and the thought of the scaffold, and the blood, of which she had caught, or fancied she caught, a sight, flashed across her mind. She turned so pale, that the countess, now the most self-possessed of the two, hastened to withdraw attention from Amy, lest her emotion should become too apparent. The feminine horror of blood, and the superstitious terror with which she listened to so unnatural a portent, had thrown her more off her guard than circumstances of real peril would have done. Lady Nithsdale inquired whether the Earl of Wintoun's trial had yet come on, and the yeoman, proud of his superior information, told her that it had, and that he had received sentence of death; but he added, "he seemed so wild and strange that half the world thought he was not in his right senses."