mother's death, and the
evidence of his father's guilt, was stamped on the innocent face of the
babe, whose brow was distinctly marked by the miniature resemblance of a
horseshoe. Redgauntlet himself pointed it out to Douglas, saying, with a
ghastly smile, "It should have been bloody."

'Moved, as he was, to compassion for his brother-in-arms, and steeled
against all softer feelings by the habits of civil war, Douglas
shuddered at this sight, and displayed a desire to leave the house which
was doomed to be the scene of such horrors. As his parting advice, he
exhorted Alberick Redgauntlet to make a pilgrimage to Saint Ninian's of
Whiteherne, then esteemed a shrine of great sanctity; and departed with
a precipitation which might have aggravated, had that been possible,
the forlorn state of his unhappy friend. But that seems to have been
incapable of admitting any addition. Sir Alberick caused the bodies
of his slaughtered son and the mother to be laid side by side in the
ancient chapel of his house, after he had used the skill of a celebrated
surgeon of that time to embalm them; and it was said that for many weeks
he spent; some hours nightly in the vault where they reposed.

'At length he undertook the proposed pilgrimage to Whiteherne, where
he confessed himself for the first time since his misfortune, and was
shrived by an aged monk, who afterwards died in the odour of sanctity.
It is said that it was then foretold to the Redgauntlet, that on account
of his unshaken patriotism his family should continue to be powerful
amid the changes of future times; but that, in detestation of his
unrelenting cruelty to his own issue, Heaven had decreed that the valour
of his race should always be fruitless, and that the cause which they
espoused should never prosper.

'Submitting to such penance as was there imposed, Sir Alberick went,
it is thought, on a pilgrimage either to Rome, or to the Holy Sepulchre
itself. He was universally considered as dead; and it was not till
thirteen years afterwards, that in the great battle of Durham, fought
between David Bruce and Queen Philippa of England, a knight, bearing
a horseshoe for his crest, appeared in the van of the Scottish army,
distinguishing himself by his reckless and desperate valour; who being
at length overpowered and slain, was finally discovered to be the brave
and unhappy Sir Alberick Redgauntlet.'

'And has the fatal sign,' said I, when Herries had ended his narrative,
'd