"Walter!" I said, putting my hand on his arm. But he never minded me in the least, nor yet appeared surprised to find me there. Only a black and bitter horror sat brooding on his soul. He continued to gaze, fascinated, at the dark thing in his hand. "GOD--GOD--GOD!" he sobbed, the horror taking him short in the throat. "Will, do you see THIS?" Such abject terror never have I heard before nor since in the utterance of any living man. "Do you see This?" he said. "See what fell at my feet as I came through the arch of the Bow upon mine errand! The wind brought it down." Above the moon pushed her way upwards, fighting hard, breasting the cloud wrack like a labouring ship. Her beams fell on the dark Thing in Wat Gordon's hand. "GREAT GOD!" he shouted again, his eyes starting from their sockets, "IT IS MINE OWN FATHER'S HEAD!" And above us the fitful, flying winds nichered and laughed like mocking fiends. It was true. I that write, saw it plain. I held it in this very hand. It was the head of Sir John of Lochinvar, against whom, in the last fray, his own son had donned the war-gear. Grizzled, black, the snow cleaving ghastly about the empty eye-holes, the thin beard still straggling snow-clogged upon the chin--it was his own father's head that had fallen at Walter Gordon's feet, and which he now held in his hand. Then I remembered, with a shudder of apprehension, his own words so lately spoken--"Heaven and hell shall not cause me to break my tryst to-night." Walter Gordon stood rooted there, dazed and dumb-foundered, with the Thing in his hand. His fine lace ruffles touched it as the wind blew them. I plucked at him. "Come," I said, "haste you! Let us bury it in the Holyrood ere the moon goes down." Thus he who boasted himself free of heaven and hell, had his tryst broken by the Thing that fell from the ghastly gate on which the traitors' heads are set in a row. And that Thing was the head of the father that begat him. CHAPTER XV. THE BICKER IN THE SNOW. Then, seeing Walter Gordon both agitated and uncertain which way to turn, I took out of his shaking hands the poor mishandled head, wrapping it in my plaid, and so led the way down the Canongate towards the kirkyard of the Chapel of Holyroodhouse, where it seemed to me most safe to bury the Thing that had fallen in such marvellous fashion at our feet that night. The place I knew well enough. I had often meditated there upon the poor estate of our house. It was half ruinous, and I looked to meet with no man within the precincts on such a night. But short, deceiving, and ostrich-blind are all our hopes, for by going that way I brought us into the greatest danger we could possibly have been in.