The Scottish Chiefs Part 16

"The wretch from whom you rescued me--to prevent my escape from a captivity worse than death."

While she spoke, he wrenched open the manacles from her wrists and ankles, and threw them over the precipice. As she heard them dash into the torrent, an unutterable grat.i.tude filled her heart; and again giving her hand to him to lead her forward, she said with earnestness, "O sir, if you have a wife or sister--should they ever fall into the like peril with mine; for in these terrific times, who is secure? may Heaven reward your bravery, by sending them such a preserver!"

The stranger sighed deeply: "Sweet lady," returned he, "I have no sister, no wife. But my kindred is nevertheless very numerous, and I thank thee for thy prayer." The hero sighed profoundly again, and led her silently down the windings of the declivity. Having proceeded with caution, they descended into a little wooded dell, and soon approached the half-standing remains of what had once been a shepherd's hut.

"This," said the knight, as they entered, "was the habitation of a good old man, who fed his flock on these mountains; but a band of Southron soldiers forced his only daughter from him, and, plundering his little abode, drove him out upon the waste. He perished the same night, by grief, and the inclemencies of the weather. His son, a brave youth, was left for dead by his sister's ravishers; but I found him in this dreary solitude, and he told me the too general story of his wounds and his despair. Indeed, lady, when I heard your shrieks from the opposite side of the chasm, I thought they might proceed from this poor boy's sister, and I flew to restore them to each other."

Helen shuddered, as he related a tale so near resembling her own; and trembling with weakness, and horror of what might have been her fate had she not been rescued by this gallant stranger, she sunk exhausted upon a turf seat. The chief still held her hand. It was very cold, and he called to his men to seek fuel to make a fire. While his messengers were exploring the crannies of the rocks for dried leaves and sticks, Helen, totally overcome, leaned almost motionless against the wall of the hut. Finding, by her shortened breath, that she was fainting, the knight took her in his arms, and supporting her on his breast, chafed her hands and her forehead. His efforts were in vain; she seemed to have ceased to breathe; hardly a pulse moved her heart.

Alarmed at such signs of death, he spoke to one of his men who remained in the hut.

The man answered his master's inquiry by putting a flash into his hand.

The knight poured some of its contents into her mouth. Her streaming locks wetted his cheek. "Poor lady!" said he, "she will perish in these forlorn regions, where neither warmth nor nourishment can be found."

To his glad welcome, several of his men soon after entered with a quant.i.ty of withered boughs, which they had found in the fissures of the rock at some distance. With these a fire was speedily kindled; and its blaze diffusing comfort through the chamber, he had the satisfaction of hearing a sigh from the breast of his charge. Her head still leaned on his bosom when she opened her eyes. The light shone full on her face.

"Lady," said he, "I bless G.o.d you are revived." Her delicacy shrunk at the situation in which she found herself; and raising herself, though feebly, she thanked him, and requested a little water. It was given to her. She drank some, and would have met the fixed and compa.s.sionate gaze of the knight, had not weakness cast such a film before her eyes that she scarcely saw anything. Being still languid, she leaned her head on the turf seat. Her face was pale as marble, and her long hair, saturated with wet, by its darkness made her look of a more deadly hue.

"Death! how lovely canst thou be!" sighed the knight to himself--he even groaned. Helen started, and looked around her with alarm. "Fear not,"

said he, "I only dreaded your pale looks; but you revive, and will yet bless all that are dear to you. Suffer me, sweet lady, to drain the dangerous wet from these tresses?" He took hold of them as he spoke.

She saw the water running from her hair over his hands, and allowing his kind request, he continued wiping her glossy locks with his scarf, till, exhausted by fatigue, she gradually sunk into a profound sleep.

Dawn had penetrated the ruined walls of the hut before Lady Helen awoke. But when she did, she was refreshed; and opening her eyes--hardly conscious where she was, or whether all that floated in her memory were not the departing vapors of a frightful dream--she turned her head and fixed them upon the figure of the knight, who was seated near her. His n.o.ble air; and the pensive expression of his fine features, struck like a spell upon her gathering recollections; she at once remembered all she had suffered, all that she owed to him. She moved. Her preserver turned his eyes toward her; seeing she was awake, he rose from the side of the dying embers he had sedulously kept alive during her slumber, and expressed his hopes that she felt restored.

She returned him a grateful reply, in the affirmative; and he quitted her, to rouse his men for their journey to the hermit's cell.

When he re-entered, he found Helen braiding up the fine hair which had so lately been scattered by the elements. She would have risen at his approach, but he seated himself on a stone at her feet. "We shall be detained here a few minutes longer," said he; "I have ordered my men to make a litter of crossed branches, to bear you on their shoulders.

Your delicate limbs would not be equal to the toil of descending these heights, to the glen of stones. The venerable man who inhabits there will protect you until he can summon your family, or friends, to receive his charge."

At these words, which Helen thought were meant to reprove her for not having revealed herself, she blushed; but fearful of breathing a name under the interdict of the English governors, and which had already spread devastation over all with whom it had been connected; fearful of involving her preserver's safety, by making him aware of the persecuted creature he had rescued; she paused for a moment, and then, with the color heightening on her cheeks, replied: "For your humanity, brave sir, shown this night to a friendless woman, I must be ever grateful; but not even to the hermit may I reveal my name. It is fraught with danger to every honest Scot who should know that he protects one who bears it; and therefore, least of all, n.o.ble stranger, would I breathe it to you." She averted her face, to conceal the emotions she could not subdue.

The knight looked at her intensely, and profoundly sighed. Half her unbraided locks lay upon her bosom, which now heaved with suppressed feelings; and the fast-falling tears, gliding through her long eyelashes dropped upon his hand; he sighed again, and tore his eyes from her countenance. "I ask not, madam, to know what you think proper to conceal; but danger has no alarms for me, when, by incurring it, I serve those who need a protector."

A sudden thought flashed across her mind; might it not be possible that this tender guardian of her safety, this heroic profferer of service, was the n.o.ble Wallace? But the vain idea fled. He was pent up amidst the beleaguered defiles of Cartland Craigs, sworn to extricate the helpless families of his followers, or to perish with them. This knight was accompanied by none but men; and his kind eyes shone in too serene a l.u.s.ter to be the mirrors of the disturbed soul of the suffering chief of Ellerslie. "Ah! then," murmured she to herself, "are there two men in Scotland who will speak thus?" She looked up in his face. The plumes of his bonnet shaded his features; but she saw they were paler than on his entrance, and a strange expression of distraction agitated their before composed lines. His eyes were bent to the ground as he proceeded:

"I am the servant of my fellow-creatures--command me and my few faithful followers; and if it be in the power of such small means to succor you or yours, I am ready to answer for their obedience. If the villain from whom I had the happiness to release you be yet more deeply implicated in your sorrows, tell me how they can be relieved, and I will attempt it. I shall make no new enemies by the deed, for the Southrons and I are at eternal enmity."

Helen could not withdraw her eyes from his varying countenance, which, from underneath his dark plumes, seemed like a portentous cloud, at intervals to emit the rays of the cheering sun, or the lightning of threatening thunder. "Alas!" replied she, "ill should I repay such n.o.bleness were I to involve it in the calamities of my house. No, generous stranger, I must remain unknown. Leave me with the hermit; and from his cell I will send to some relation to take me thence."

"I urge you no more, gentle lady," replied the knight, rising; "were I at the head of an army, instead of a handful of men, I might then have a better argument for offering my services; but as it is, I feel my weakness, and seek to know no further."

Helen trembled with unaccountable emotion. "Were you at the head of an army, I might then dare to reveal the full weight of my anxieties; but Heaven has already been sufficiently gracious to me by your hands, in redeeming me from my cruelest enemy; and for the rest, I put my trust in the same overruling Providence." At this moment a man entered and told the knight the vehicle was finished, the morning fine, and his men ready to march. He turned toward Helen: "May I conduct you to the rude carriage we have prepared?"

Helen gathered her mantle about her; and the knight, throwing his scarf over her head--it had no other covering--she gave him her hand, and he led her out on the hut to the side of the bier. It was overlaid with the men's plaids. The knight placed her on it; and the carriers raising it on their shoulders, her deliverer led the way, and they took their course down the mountain.

Chapter XVI.

The Glen of Stones.

They proceeded in silence through the curvings of the dell till it opened into a hazardous path along the top of a far-extending cliff, which overhung and clasped in the western side of a deep loch. As they mounted the pending wall of this immense amphitheater, Helen watched the sublime uprise of the king of light issuing from behind the opposite citadel of rocks, and borne aloft on a throne of clouds that swam in floating gold. The herbage on the cliffs glittered with liquid emeralds, as his beams kissed their summits; and the lake beneath sparkled like a sea of molten diamonds. All nature seemed to rejoice at the presence of this magnificent emblem of the Most High. Helen's heart swelled with devotion, and its sacred voice breathed from her lips.

"Such," thought she, "O sun, art thou! The resplendent image of the Giver of all Good. Thy cheering beams, like his all-cheering Spirit, pervade the soul, and drive thence the despondency of cold and darkness. But bright as thou art, how does the similitude fade before G.o.dlike man, the true image of his Maker. How far do his protecting arms extend over the desolate! How mighty is the power of his benevolence to dispense succor, to administer consolation!"

As she thus mused her eyes fell on the n.o.ble mien of the knight, who, with his spear in his hand, and wrapped in his dark mantle of mingled greens, led the way, with a graceful but rapid step, along the shelving declivity. Turning suddenly to the left, he struck into a defile between two prodigious craggy mountains, whose brown cheeks, trickling with ten thousand mountains, whose brown cheeks, trickling with ten thousand rills, seemed to weep over the deep gloom of the valley beneath. Scattered fragments of rock from the cliffs above covered with their huge and almost impa.s.sable ma.s.ses the surface of the ground.

Not an herb was to be seen; all was black, barren, and terrific. On entering this horrid pa.s.s, Helen would have shuddered, had she not placed implicit confidence in her conductor.

As they advanced, the vale gradually narrowed, and at last shut them within an immense chasm, which seemed to have been cleft at its towering summit, to admit a few beams of light to the desert below. A dark river flowed along, amid which the bases of the mountains showed their union by the mingling of many a rugged cliff, projecting upward in a variety of strange and hideous forms. The men who carried Helen, with some difficulty found a safe footing. However, after frequent rests, and unremitted caution, they at last extricated themselves from the most intricate path, and more lightly followed their chief into a less gloomy part of this chaos of nature. The knight stopped, and approaching the bier, told Helen they had arrived at the end of their journey.

"In the heart of that cliff," said he, "is the hermit's cell; a desolate shelter, but a safe one. Old age and poverty hold no temptations to the enemies of Scotland."

As he spoke the venerable man, who had heard voices beneath, appeared on the rock; and while his tall and majestic figure, clad in gray, moved forward, and his silver beard flowed from his saintly countenance upon the air, he seemed the bard of Morven, issuing from his cave of sh.e.l.ls to bid a hero's welcome to the young and warlike Oscar.

"Bless thee, my son," cried he, as he descended; "what good or evil accident hath returned thee so soon to these solitudes?"

The knight briefly related the circ.u.mstances of Helen's rescue, and that he had brought her to share his asylum.

The hermit took her by the hand, and graciously promised her every service in his power. He then preceded the knight, whose firmer arm supported her up the rock, to the outer apartment of the cell.

A sacred awe struck her as she entered this place, dedicated wholly to G.o.d. She bowed, and crossed herself. The hermit, observing her devotion, blessed her, and bade her welcome to the abode of peace.

"Here, daughter," said he, "has one son of persecuted Scotland found a refuge. There is naught alluring in these wilds to attract the spoiler. The green herb is all the food they afford, and the limpid water their best beverage."

"Ah!" returned Helen, with grateful animation, "would to Heaven that all who love the freedom of Scotland were now within this glen! The herb and the stream would be luxuries when tasted in liberty and hope.

My father, his friend-" she stopped, recollecting that she had almost betrayed the secrecy she meant to maintain, and looking down, remained in confused silence. The knight gazed at her, and much wished to penetrate what she concealed, but delicacy forbade him to urge her again. He spoke not; but the hermit, ignorant of her reluctance to reveal her family, resumed:

"I do not wonder, gentle lady, that you speak in terms which tell me even your tender s.e.x feels the tyranny of Edward. Who in Scotland is exempt? The whole country groans beneath his oppressions, and the cruelty of his agents makes its rivulets run with blood. Six months ago I was Abbot of Scone. Because I refused to betray my trust, and resign the archives of the kingdom lodged there, Edward, the rebel--anointed of the Lord! the profaner of the sanctuary! sent his emissaries to sack the convent, to tear the holy pillow of Jacob from its shrine, and to wrest from my grasp the records I refused to deliver. All was done as the usurper commanded. Most of my brethren were slain. Myself and the remainder were turned out upon the waste.

We retired to the Monastery of Cambuskenneth; but there oppression found us. Cressingham, having seized on other religious houses, determined to swell his h.o.a.rds with the plunder of that also. In the dead of night the attack was made. My brethren fled; I knew not whither to go; but, determined to fly far from the tracts of our ravagers, I took my course over the hills, and finding the valley of stones fit for my purpose, for two months have lived alone in this wilderness."

"Unhappy Scotland!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Helen. Her eyes had followed the chief, who, during this narrative, leaned thoughtfully against the entrance of the cave. His eyes were cast upward with an expression that made her heart utter the exclamation which had escaped her.

The knight turned and approached her. "You hear from the lips of my venerable friend," said he, "a direful story; happy then am I, gentle lady, that you and he have found a refuge, though a rough one. I must now tear myself from this tranquillity to seek scenes more befitting a younger son of the country he deplores."

Helen felt unable to answer. But the abbot spoke; "And am I not to see you again?"

"That is as Heaven wills," replied he; "but as it is unlikely on this side the grave, my best pledge of friends.h.i.+p is this lady. To you she may reveal what she had withheld from me; but in either case, she is secure in your goodness."

"Rely on my faith, my son; and may the Almighty's s.h.i.+eld hang on your steps!"

The knight turned to Helen. "Farewell, sweet lady!" said he. She trembled at the words, and, hardly conscious of what she did, held out her hand to him. He took it, and drew it toward his lips, but checking himself, he only pressed it, while in a mournful voice he added, "in your prayer, sometimes remember the most desolate of men!"

A mist seemed to pa.s.s over the eyes of Lady Helen. She felt as if on the point of losing something most precious to her. "My prayers for my own preserver, and for my father's," cried she, in an agitated voice, "shall ever be mingled. And, if ever it be safe to remember me--should Heaven indeed arm the patriot's hand--then my father may be proud to know and to thank the brave deliverer of his child."

The knight paused, and looked with animation upon her. "Then your father is in arms, and against the tyrant! Tell me where, and you see before you a man who is ready to join him, and to lay down his life in the just cause!"

At this vehement declaration, Lady Helen's full heart overflowed, and she burst into tears. He drew toward her, and in a moderated voice continued: "My men, though few, are brave. They are devoted to their country, and are willing for her sake to follow me to victory or to death. As I am a knight, I am sworn to defend the cause of right; and where shall I so justly find it, as on the side of bleeding, wasted Scotland? How shall I so well pursue my career as in the defense of her injured sons? Speak, gentle lady! trust me with your n.o.ble father's name, and he shall not have cause to blame the confidence you repose in a true though wandering Scot!"