‘“Fear ye nae that,” quo’ the laird’s Jock, “A faint heart ne’er won a fair ladie; Work thou within, we’ll work without, And I’ll be sworn we’ll set thee free.”’ Our worthy friend, ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ seemed strangely altered as he rode back into Liddesdale. A moody man was Dick, and a silent; no longer the jovial comrade and ‘devil-may-care’ trooper that the other jackmen had heretofore known him, but a sulky and captious fellow-traveller, an abrupt and peremptory martinet. The borderer was beginning to find that he had a conscience, and to discover how unpleasant are the remonstrances of that monitor when displeased. His heart smote him sorely while he reflected on the part he had been compelled to play with regard to Maxwell, a man whose whole character had inspired him with admiration and respect, in whom also, as a constant frequenter of the Court, he took an affectionate interest that he did not care to analyse. And now he had lured this frank and friendly soldier into a trap from which it was doubtful if he would escape with life. The towers of Leslie were thick and lofty, and well-guarded; the retainers of Rothes noted, like their chief, for an unscrupulous recklessness and defiance of all consequences. What chance for the naked prisoner in such a stronghold? Those damp and gloomy vaults could keep a secret well. It needed no outrage, neither steel nor poison, to silence an inmate for ever. The jailer had but to forget a small black loaf, neglect to fill a shallow cruse of water, and who would ever chronicle the prisoner’s agonies in a torturing, lingering death? ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ turned sick and faint at the thought. He had ample leisure to indulge these painful fancies, for the rapidity with which Maxwell had been conveyed into Fife necessitated a slow return, even on the same powerful horses that carried the men-at-arms of Earl Bothwell. Ere the weary animals pricked their ears to welcome the towers of Hermitage, Dick had come to a resolution which neither discipline nor loyalty would have tempted him to abandon. His comrades, more astonished than irritated at the change in one whom they had been accustomed to consider the very pattern of a moss-trooper, shook their heads, and whispered one another that ‘muckle Dick was _fey_,’ signifying _doomed_,--it being an old Scottish superstition that any sudden and complete change in the disposition of an individual denotes an early death. When Dick sat silent among the wassailers below the salt, and passed the black flagon untasted by, many a roistering associate looked a thought graver for the moment, as he pictured his old comrade stretched upon the heather, with the pale gleam of death upon his face, and a ‘false Southron’s’ lance through his body, a thought graver perhaps, for an instant, till a coarse jest or a fresh draught of ale brought him back to the gross and the material once more.