Poising a large stone aloft, he hurled it against the door with all the impetus he could lend it; but the barrier yielded not. An exclamation, half smothered in the depths of a box-bed, showed that the inmates were sufficiently alarmed by the thundering shock, and poor Elsie lay quaking under the bed-clothes, in full conviction that the devil and his elvish drummer to boot, were about to force an entrance. Again and again Lord Clermistonlee hurled it against the cottage door; but it remained fast as a rock, for several strong bars of wood inserted in the massive wall, gave it all that security which was then as necessary to the hut as to the palace. Juden raised aloft the flaring link, and its light streamed by fits on the thatched roof and whitewashed walls, on the divot seat in front, with woodbine and wild rose-tree clambering above it; on the high beech trees that spread their arms to the night wind, scaring the rooks from their leafless nests, and the sparrows from the thick warm thatch which the blazing link menaced every instant. "Reif and roist the obstinate yett!" exclaimed Juden, capering as the stone rolled back upon his shins, and Clermistonlee, exasperated by the unlooked-for delay, furiously thrust the link into the heavy thatch. The dense mass smouldered and smoked for an instant, while the dry straw below struggled with the thick stratum of green moss above, till the former prevailed, and a broad lurid flame shot upward, revealing the broad fields and pasture land, the rough dykes and budding hedgerows, the dreary road that wound over the adjacent hills, the far recesses of the beechen grove, bringing forward the knotted branches and gnarled and ivied trunks in strong relief, from the darkness and obscurity of the wooded vista behind. Full on the roofless walls and pointed windows of St. Rocque fell the fitful light, and on the spacious burial ground, where close and thick lay the headstones of those unfortunates who perished in the deadly pestilence of 1645. In a few minutes a mass of blazing thatch fell inwards through the bared and scorched rafters, and a terrific scream ascended from within. Fire now flashed through the little square windows of the cottage, and its whole interior became filled with yellow light; but the door still remained fast, while the shrieks that rang within made Clermistonlee tremble with apprehension. "Fury and confusion!" he exclaimed, "she may be scorched to death by that flaming mass of thatch! Horror! aid me--fool and villain--to burst in the door! quick, or the accursed Baillie of the Portsburgh with his trainband of souters and wabsters will be on us." While he was speaking, the cottage door flew open, and, amid a shower of sparks, which she threw from her attire, a female rushed forth in a slate of distraction.