"Peace and good will. Oh, madam--madam," exclaimed the meek old abbot, stretching his withered and tremulous hands towards her, "in the name of Heaven and of mercy end these horrors--an aged man, a priest of God implores it of you! James and his soldiers have sworn to take the keys of Thrave at the point of the sword; but our young king is a knight, alike gentle and generous, and from your hands I am assured he will take those keys in peace, if peacefully bestowed." "From _my_ hands," she reiterated, in an unearthly voice; "alas----" "What _can_ she mean?" thought Gray, as a dreadful idea flashed upon his mind; "is this sad, this wild and stern bearing the result of remorse? can she have attempted----" He thrust aside the thought, and listened attentively. "From my right hand--never!" added Margaret, with bitter emphasis. "From the hands of whom, then?" "My youngest bower-maiden; she deserves the honour, for her father, Sir Alan, has made a valiant and vigorous defence." "The king would prefer them from the hands of the Lady Murielle," said Gray, with more anxiety than caution. "Speak not to me of Murielle!" exclaimed the countess, with a shriek, as her head drooped; and she fainted in the arms of Lauder. "What has happened--speak for mercy, sirs! what horror do you conceal from us?" exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray and the abbot together. "Look here," said the old knight, in whose keen grey eyes there mingled a curious expression of commiseration and ferocity. He drew aside the countess's dule-weed, and then the Captain of the Guard and the abbot perceived that her white neck was stained with blood, her shoulder covered with hideous ligatures, and that her right hand and arm were gone--_gone_ from the elbow! "Who--what has done this?" asked Gray, as his sun-burned cheek grew pale. "See you, sirs, what the first shot from yonder hellish engine hath achieved?" replied Lauder, reproachfully. "The first," reiterated Gray. "And I would give the last blood in my heart to have the seven makers of it hanging in a bunch from yonder gallows knob!" Local history records that this terrible mutilation occurred when the countess was seated at table in the hall, through one of the windows of which the great bullet passed; and some years before the battle of Waterloo, when Thrave, like several other Scottish castles, was undergoing repair, as a barrack for French prisoners, a favourite gold ring which the countess wore upon the forefinger of her right hand, inscribed _Margaret de Douglas_, was found among the ruins, with one of Meg's granite balls beside it; and the old peasantry in Galloway yet aver, that in this terrible mutilation "the vengeance of Heaven was evidently manifested, in destroying the hand which had been given in wedlock unto _two near kinsmen_."[5]