me, man?" said Dick. "My master's
frae hame, and my commission doesna extend to opening the gate to
strangers on night visits."

"But I'm nae stranger, Dick," replied the other. "I served the Cockburns
before ye was born, and hae wandered many a weary step, in the midst o'
this storm, to speak a word to the ear o' my Leddie. The time o' my
visit is a good sign o' the importance o' my counsel. For God's sake,
open, man! or ye may rue this hour to that o' your deein struggle, when
Laird and Leddie may be in the moil there, ahint the auld chapel, and a'
through the laziness o' their warder."

"Raff i' the mire!" cried the warder--saluting him after the custom of
the times, when every man had a distinctive appellation, in the absence
of sirnames. "I took ye, man, for ane o' Tushielaw's scouts."

The creaking of the hinges of the gate was now heard.

"What brings ye frae Peebles, man?" continued the warder, "in sic a
night as this, when a witch wouldna venture on the Skelf Hill, far less
owre North Berwick Law."

"It's no to tell ye that Merlin's elm has fa'en," rejoined Ralph; "but
three oaks on three sides o't are lying on the earth, and that stately
tree may be a gallows still. You say, Henderland's frae hame. I'm glad
o' the news. It's his leddie I want to see: an' she maun be roused frae
her couch to speak to her auld servitor. Time bides nae man; neither
does King James."

Another peal of thunder drowned the conversation of the man: and
Marjory, rousing her little refugees, urged them to return to their
beds, that she might be left to hear the intelligence of this midnight
messenger, whose words already, so far as she had heard them, carried
tokens of evil. His reference to the king struck a chord that prior
solitude had made sensitive; and even the remark as to the tree that had
escaped the bolt, had in it a peculiar power over her shattered nerves.
Her fears operated upon the children, who, even to the youngest, put
strange questions to her.

"Why are you here, mother, in the lightning?" cried Hector.--"And where
is my father?" inquired Helen.--"See that flash again!" said Margaret,
as she buried her head in her mother's bosom.

"Poor, helpless, little ones!" ejaculated she. "How little know ye that
that which fears ye most, is to me the smallest of my terrors! If man's
wrath were quenched, heaven's would be easily averted. This messenger's
intelligence may seal your fates, and be felt in its consequences to