Walter's memory went back to those days, when, amid the tombs and graves of that old kirk-yard, he had nestled, a little and wailing child, on the bosom of his mother, who, imprisoned there among the "common herd," had soon sunk under the combined effects of exposure, starvation, degradation, and sorrow; and he remembered when coiled up within her mantle and plaid, how he hid his little face in her fair neck, trembling with cold and fear in dreary nights, when the moon streamed its light between the flying clouds upon the vast and desolate church and its thick grave-mounds, with the long reedy grass waving on their solemn and melancholy ridges. A mystery hung over the fortune of Walter Fenton. Of his family he knew nothing further than that his mother's name was Fenton, and his own was Walter, for so she had been wont to call him. Of his father he knew nothing, save that he had never been seen since the cavalry of Claverhouse swept over the Bridge of Bothwell, scattering its defenders in death and defeat. He had heard that his father there held high command, but was supposed to have perished either in the furious _mêlée_ on the bridge, or in the stream beneath it. Concealing her rank in the disguise of a peasant, his mother had been found in the vicinity of the battle-field, was arrested as a suspected person, sent to Edinburgh, and imprisoned with other unfortunates in the old church-yard. Poor Walter used to remember with pleasure that they had always remained aloof from the other prisoners, and were treated by them with marked respect. Their usual shelter was under the great mausoleum of the Barons of Coates, the quaint devices and antique sculpture of which had often raised his childish fear and wonder; he recalled through the struggling and misty perceptions of infancy, how day by day her fair features became paler and more attenuated, her eye more sunken and ghastly, her voice more tremulous and weak, and her strength even less than his own; for (he had heard the soldiers say) she had been a tenderly nurtured and fragile creature, unable to endure the hardships to which she was subjected; and so she perished among the first that died there. One morning the little boy raised his head from the coarse plaid which on the previous night her feeble hands had wrapped around him, and called as usual for her daily kiss; he twisted his dimpled fingers in the masses of her silky hair, and laid his smiling face to hers--it was cold as the marble tomb beside them; he shrank back, and again called upon her, but her still lips gave no reply; he stirred her--she did not move. Then, struck by the peculiar, the terrible aspect of her pale and once beautiful face, the ghastly eyes and relaxed jaw, the child screamed aloud on the mother that heard him no more. He dreaded alike to remain or to fly; for, alas! there was no other in whose arms he could find a refuge.