With a mind overcharged by sad and bitter thoughts, Walter galloped madly on, retracing the way he had come with Lilian; his mind seemed a very whirlpool, and the events of the last twenty-four hours a dream. A steep old bridge, which the roadway crossed near the ancient manor of Sauchtoun was ringing beneath his horse's heels, when a distant shout made him rein up. "Hollo!" cried Finland, as he came after him breathlessly on the panting mare; "what the devil--art gone mad, Walter? Oh this tormenting love--ha! ha!" "I envy this happy flow of spirits, Finland!" "Then you envy me the possession of all that fate hath left me in this bad world. This devilish commotion hath confiscated my free barony of Finland, and torn my arms at the cross; still I am more gay than thee who hath nothing to lose." "And after parting with one you love," continued Walter, almost piqued by his friend's lightness of heart; "parting perhaps for ever----" "Tush, man--I am used to such partings. I have had many a love that was true while it lasted; but none like the passion I bear my dear Annie. My first flame was a blue-eyed damoisella of the Low Countries (her mother was a fleuriste in Ghent). I thought I loved her very much; but somehow at Bruges, Mons, and Bergen-op-Zoom, 'twas ever the same; I always left some one with a heavy heart; and cursed the générale, when in the cold foggy mornings it rang through the dark muddy streets, waking the storks on the high roofs above, and the drowsy boors in their beds below. I know that the wheels of fate and fortune are ever turning; some points may, and others must come round, to their first starting place, so I always live in hope. I was very sad in Ghent when our drums beat along the street of St. Michael, and I bade adieu to my fair one, coming away I remember by the window instead of the door." "How--why?" "I don't know, man," laughed Douglas; "but so we often left our billets in French Flanders. But I assure thee, lad, that under all this gaiety my heart is as heavy as thine; for I vow to thee, that the recollection of Annie with her beseeching blue eyes, her dark clustering hair and pallid cheek, the touching cadence of her voice, and the words she said to me are imprinted on my heart as if the hand of Heaven had written them there. By the bye I have composed a famous song about her." "A song!" "Music and all. I wrote it on the night we were about to sack the old house of Bruntisfield in search of yonder spindle-shanked apostle. Ah, if in my absence Craigdarroch should dare--but ho! yonder are some of our friends halted under a tree upon that grassy knowe." "There is something odd being acted there. Does not yonder white feather wave in the steel bonnet of Dundee?" "He is permitting some false Whig to sing his last psalm under _the_ convenient branch where he is doomed to feed the corbies. Dundee is very kind in that way sometimes."