dled.

So he went off upon his errand, leaving me alone; and I hardly looked to
see him again, for I made sure that the guard would arrest him or ever
he had gone a hundred yards. It was little that I could do in that
sorrowful place. But I unwrapped the poor head I had brought with me,
and put it with reverence in the farthest corner of the dismal den. Then
I retired to an angle to wait, wrapping my plaid about me for warmth;
for the night had fallen colder, as it ever does after the ceasing of a
storm.

I had time and to spare then for thinking upon my folly, and how I had
damaged the cause that I had so nearly gained by my unlucky interference
in Walter's vanities. It came to me that now of a certainty both
Earlstoun and Lochinvar must pass wholly away from the Gordons, and we
become attainted and landless like the red Gregors. And indeed Kenmuir's
case was not much better.

So I wore the weary night away, black dismal thoughts eating like canker
worms at my heart. How I repented and prayed, no man knows. For that is
the young man's repentance--after he has eaten the sour fruit, to pray
that he may not have the stomach-ache.

Yet being Galloway-born, I had also in me the fear of the unseen, which
folks call superstition. And it irked me more than all other fears to
have to bide all the night (and I knew not how much longer) in that
horrible vault.

It seems little enough to some, only to abide all night in a place where
there is nothing but quiet bones of dead men. But, I warrant you, it is
the burgher folk, who have never lain anywhere but bien and cosy in
their own beds at home that are the boldest in saying this.

So the night sped slowly in that horrid tomb. I watched the white
moonbeams spray over the floor and fade out, as the clouds swept clear
or covered the moon's face. I listened to every sough of the wind, with
a fear lest the clanking halberts of the watch should be in it. The
sound of a man walking far away made me hear in fantasy the grounding of
their axe-shafts as they surrounded my place of concealment. It is bad
enough to have one's conscience against one, but when conscience is
reinforced by a well-grounded fear of the hangman's rope, then the case
grows uncouth indeed.

Yet in spite of all I think I slept a little. For once I waked and saw
the moon, red and near the setting, shining through a great round hole
in the end of the vault, and that so brightly that I seemed to see motes
dancing