"But your answer to the king?" said Gray, tightening his waistbelt, and preparing for a sudden start. "That I shall convey in person to Stirling." "And my kinsman----" "Dead or alive?" said Douglas, with a sullen glare in his eye. Alarmed by the expression of the earl's face, Gray said earnestly:-- "Lest you might not obey the king's commands, proud lord, or might scoff at my humble request, I bring you a mother's prayer for her son." "A mother's?" said Douglas, pausing as they descended the staircase together. "The prayer of my father's sister, Marion Gray, for her son's release."----"It comes too late," muttered the earl under his black moustache, as they issued into the sunny court-yard of Thrave. CHAPTER XLIX. THE FATE OF MACLELLAN. Lift not the shroud! a speaking stain Of blood upon its sable seen, Tells how the spirit fled from plain, For there the headsman's axe hath been. BALLAD. "The king's demand shall be granted, but rather for _your_ sake--come hither," said the earl. There was a cruel banter in his manner, a bitter smile on his face, and Gray grew pale, and felt the blood rush back upon his heart with a terrible foreboding as they crossed the court-yard. Then his eye at once detected something like a human form stretched at full length upon the ground, and covered by a sheet. About it there could be no doubt--it was so cold, white, angular, and fearfully rigid. Upon the breast was placed a platter filled with salt--a Scottish superstition as old as the days of Turpin--and close by lay an axe and bloodstained billet, about which the brown sparrows were hopping and twittering in the warm morning sunshine. With a choking sensation in his throat, Gray stepped resolutely forward. "Remove this cloth," said the earl to some of his people who were near; and on their doing so, there was seen the body of a headless man--a body which Gray knew too well to be that of his friend and kinsman, for on the breast of the soiled and faded pourpoint was embroidered a gold scutcheon, with the three black chevrons of MacLellan. "Sir Patrick, you have come a little too late," said the sneering earl; "here lies your father's sister's son; but, unfortunately, he wants the head, and a head is an awkward loss. The body, however, is completely at your service." Grief and indignation almost choked Gray's utterance. He knelt down and kissed the cold right hand, which yet bore the mark of an iron fetter, and then turning to the earl, said, "My lord, you may now dispose of the body as you please; but the head----" "Behold it on the battlement above you!"[4]