ss that night in prayer and vigil beside his armor,
unarmed, saved by that panoply of proof which is the Christian's
portion--faith, lowliness, and prayer.

No word passed between these pledged brothers in arms. Their watch was
in opposite ends of the church, and save the dim, solemn light of the
altar, darkness and immeasurable space appeared to stretch between them.
Faintly and fitfully the moon had shone through one of the long, narrow
windows of the aisles, shedding its cold spectral light for a brief
space, then passing into darkness. Heavy masses of clouds sailed slowly
in the heavens, dimly discernible through the unpainted panes; the
oppression of the atmosphere increasing as the night approached her
zenith, and ever and anon a low, long peal of distant thunder, each
succeeding one becoming longer and louder than the last, and heralded by
the blue flash of vivid lightning, announced the fury of the coming
tempest.

The imaginations even as the feelings of the young men were already
strongly excited, although their thoughts, perchance, were less akin
than might have been expected. The form of his mother passed not from
the mental vision of the young heir of Buchan: the tone of her voice,
the unwonted tear which had fallen on his cheek when he had knelt before
her that evening, ere he had departed to his post, craving her blessing
on his vigil, her prayers for him--that tone, that tear, lingered on his
memory, hallowing every dream of glory, every warrior hope that entered
in his soul. Internally he vowed he would raise the banner of his race,
and prove the loyalty, the patriotism, the glowing love of liberty which
her counsels, her example had planted in his breast; and if the
recollection of his mother's precarious situation as a proscribed
traitor to Edward, and of his father's desertion of his country and her
patriot king in his adherence to a tyrant--if these reflections came to
damp the bright glowing views of others, they did but call the indignant
blood to his cheek, and add greater firmness to his impatient step, for
yet more powerfully did they awake his indignation against Edward. Till
now he had looked upon him exclusively in the light of Scotland's
foe--one against whom he with all true Scottish men must raise their
swords, or live forever 'neath the brand of slaves and cowards; but now
a personal cause of anger added fuel to the fire already burning in his
breast. His mother was proscribed--a price