"By the God of my kin, our task of vengeance is beginning!" cried Earl James, rising in his stirrups, and brandishing his sword; "a rope, a rope! A Douglas! a Douglas! Ho, Pompherston, Glendoning, Cairnglas,--let us hang this king's minion at the Market Cross! Gather a band--beset the house, and watch every avenue. Achanna, is there a secret stair?" "Yes." "Then beset it too," exclaimed the earl. "Be that my task," replied Achanna, who with six armed men repaired to an angle of the abbot's garden, where, among a mass of ivy which shrouded the wall, he knew there was concealed a little arched postern, which formed the external avenue of one of those secret escapes with which all houses were furnished in those times of war and tumult. Abercorn remained in his high-peaked, crimson velvet saddle, while posting his followers round the mansion; but Pompherston, Glendoning, and other armed gentlemen, with a tumultuous party of retainers, Lanarkshire pikemen, crossbowmen, and wild, half-naked Galwegians, who brandished axes, swords, and daggers, rushed up the stone stairs, and spread through the wainscoted apartments, in eager search of the object of their vengeance, for they were in such a mood for blood and slaughter, they would have slain the household cat had it, unluckily, fallen in their way. But we must return to our luckless lover, who, suspecting nothing of all this, had long since passed into the house, where no one accosted or introduced him, so great was the confusion which already reigned there. CHAPTER XV. A SECRET STAIR. Bluidie was the braid saddle lap, And bluidie was the crupper; Sae bluidie as my true love's hands, When we sat down to supper. "There's water in the siller dish, Gae wash thy hands so bluidie;" But my love wash'd in the water clear, And never made it ruddie. CROMEK. Sir Patrick Gray reached the wainscoted hall, or chamber of dais, the arched roof of which was covered, as already described, with frescoed legends of the Abbey of Tongland. There yet stood the little Scottish harp of Murielle, and a sense of her sweet presence seemed to linger about it, with the memory of her song--"Sir Hugh le Blond." There stood the seat of her sister, the dark and beautiful Margaret, with the velvet tabourettes of her bower-maidens grouped around it. There was the chair of the young earl, with one of his leather gloves, and beside it his little Bologna spaniel asleep. The gay groups of the other night seemed to rise before the troubled eye of Gray, as he surveyed the chamber. He sighed bitterly, and could recall with painful distinctness the faces of the unfortunate earl and the petulant boy, his brother. He forgave poor little David all his petulance now. How difficult to realize the conviction, that within an hour he had stood by their bloody tomb--poor victims of misguided ambition, of feudal pride, and political misrule! Yet an age seemed to have elapsed since last he had seen their faces.