her sacrifice had a task no less terrible. Then, amidst the animal
jocularities that were looked on as wit in that day, the bridegroom
followed, and the best man locked the door on the married pair and put
the key in his pocket.

The dance went gaily on, but not for long. High above the sound of the
violins, the laughter that grew more unlicensed as the night wore on,
the sound of voices, the thud of feet, the tap of heels and rustle of
brocades on a polished floor, came terrible shrieks and groans that made
the heart of each wedding guest stand still. There could be no doubt
from which room they came, and the panic-struck company dashed upstairs
like a breakaway mob of cattle. The best man, livid-faced and with a
shaking hand, unlocked the door, and on the threshold stumbled over the
body of the bridegroom, terribly wounded and streaming with blood. At
first they could see no bride, and then, in the corner of the wide
chimney, they found her crouching, with no covering but her shift, and
that dabbled with gore.

"She sat there grinning at them, mopping and mowing," so says Sir Walter
Scott--"in a word, absolutely insane."

"Tak' up your bonny bridegroom!" she screamed, with hysterical laughter,
and pointed mockingly at what seemed to be the corpse of young Baldoon.

Sick in body she was, as well as sick in mind, and on September 12th,
1669, a little over a fortnight from the day she was married, the Bride
of Baldoon died.

David Dunbar of Baldoon recovered from his wounds, but during the
thirteen years that remained for him to live, he declined to help the
curious to elucidate the mystery of his attempted murder. In the words
of Sir Walter Scott: "If a lady, he said, asked him any question upon
the subject, he would neither answer her nor speak to her again while he
lived; if a gentleman, he would consider it as a mortal affront, and
demand satisfaction as having received such."

Many, of course, were the explanations given by the general public as to
the real happenings on that tragic wedding-night. The majority inclined
to think that the bride herself, crazed by grief at the loss of her
lover, tried to kill her husband rather than be his wife in anything
save legal formality. Others swore that the assailant was none other
than the discarded lover, and that Lord Rutherfurd, having left Baldoon
for dead, had escaped by the chimney where the unfortunate bride was
crouching. But in those days there was bound to b