rvice, and
fight under my orders. They delayed only till Dundee should descend into
the Lowlands; but since he is no more, which of his successors dare take
that decisive step, unless encouraged by the troops declaring themselves!
Meantime, the zeal of the soldiers will die away. I must bring them to a
decision while their hearts are glowing with the victory their old leader
has obtained, and burning to avenge his untimely death."

"And will you, on the faith of such men as you know these soldiers to
be," said Edith, "take a part of such dreadful moment?"

"I will," said Lord Evandale,--"I must; my honour and loyalty are both
pledged for it."

"And all for the sake," continued Miss Bellenden, "of a prince whose
measures, while he was on the throne, no one could condemn more than Lord
Evandale?"

"Most true," replied Lord Evandale; "and as I resented, even during the
plenitude of his power, his innovations on Church and State, like a
freeborn subject, I am determined I will assert his real rights, when he
is in adversity, like a loyal one. Let courtiers and sycophants flatter
power and desert misfortune; I will neither do the one nor the other."

"And if you are determined to act what my feeble judgment must still term
rashly, why give yourself the pain of this untimely meeting?"

"Were it not enough to answer," said Lord Evandale, "that, ere rushing on
battle, I wished to bid adieu to my betrothed bride? Surely it is judging
coldly of my feelings, and showing too plainly the indifference of your
own, to question my motive for a request so natural."

"But why in this place, my lord," said Edith; "and why with such peculiar
circumstances of mystery?"

"Because," he replied, putting a letter into her hand, "I have yet
another request, which I dare hardly proffer, even when prefaced by these
credentials."

In haste and terror, Edith glanced over the letter, which was from her
grandmother.

"My dearest childe," such was its tenor in style and spelling, "I
never more deeply regretted the reumatizm, which disqualified me
from riding on horseback, than at this present writing, when I would
most have wished to be where this paper will soon be, that is at
Fairy Knowe, with my poor dear Willie's only child. But it is the
will of God I should not be with her, which I conclude to be the
case, as much for the pain I now suffer, as because it hath now not
given way either to cammomil