Chapter IV (1)

"Then haste my fear Luah,
O haste to the grove!
To pass the sweet season
Of summer in love.
In youth let our bosoms
With ecstasy glow;
For the winter of life
Ne'er a transport can know."

"Sadly true it is, fair Anna," said the amorous Earl, as he leaned against the gothic parapet, and very nonchalantly played with his fingers among her flowing ringlets; "youth is indeed the only season for love and joy--for due susceptibility of the blooming and the beautiful."

"And for futile wishes and dreamy fancies," replied the young lady with a sad smile.

"Dost thou moralize?" laughed the Earl; "why, gentle one, I who am ten years thy senior have never once dreamt of morality yet--moralizing I would say--ha! ha! that will suit when my years number sixty or so, if some unlucky lance or sword-thrust does not, ere that time, spoil me for being a doting old monk; for, as the white-haired Earl Douglas said, when he in old age assumed the cowl, 'One who may no better be, must be a monk.' (By the mass I would make a rare friar!) To me there is something very droll in hearing a pretty woman moralize. And so thou considerest youth the season for dreams and fancies?"

"O yes! for now I am ever full of them."

"'Tis well," replied Bothwell, glancing at the rugged castle, and its still more rugged scenery; "for there are times when the realities of life are not very pleasant. But hath not old age its fancies too, and its dreams?"

"True, my Lord, but dreams of the past."

"Nay, of the present. Faith! I remember me when I was but a boy at Paris, old Anne, Madame la Duchesse d'Estampes, who might have been my grandmother, fell in love with my slender limbs and beardless chin, and wellnigh brought me to death's door with her villanous love philtres. From those days upward, my own mind has been full of its fancies, fair Anna, and I have had my daydreams of power and ambition, of love and grandeur, and wakened but to find them dreams indeed!"

"Those of love, too," murmured Anna.

"Yes--yes," said the Earl, whose face was crossed by a sudden shade, which Anna's anxious eye soon perceived; "why should I conceal that, like other boys, I have had my vision of that land of light and roses--visions that faded away, even as the sunlight is now fading on yonder mountain tops--and the hour came when I wondered how such wild hopes had ever been cherished--how such dreams had ever dawned--and I could look back upon my boyish folly with a smile of mingled sadness and of scorn."

"'Tis a bitter reflection that a time may come when one may marvel that one ever loved, my lord."

"And hoped and feared, and made one's-self alternately the victim of misery or of joy--raised to heaven by one glance, and sunk into despair by another. Yet, dear as a first love is while it lasts--at least so say minstrel and romancer--there are thousands who live to thank Heaven that they were not wedded to that first loved one."

"Dost thou really think so?" colouring with something of pique at the tenor of this conversation, which made her think of Konrad.

"The experience of my friends in a thousand instances hath taught me so," said the politic Earl, who began to feel that the topic was unfortunately chosen; "but," he added adroitly, as sinking his voice he took her hand in his, "dear Anna, never will the day come when I shall thank Heaven that I was not wedded to thee."

Again the quick blush rushed to Anna's neck and temples; she bent over her harp, and said in a low but laughing voice--

"Fie! Lord Bothwell, surely I am not your first love?"

"Thou art, indeed, dear Anna!"

"Go, go! I will never believe it."

"My first, my last, my only one!" said the Earl, encircling her gently with his arms, and pressing her forehead against his cheek; and, though this assertion was not strictly true, in the ardour of the moment he almost believed it so. "Until the moment we parted at Frederick's palace gate--parted as I thought to meet no more--I knew not how deep was my unavowed love for thee. Hear me, Anna, dear Anna! I love thee with my heart of hearts--my whole soul! My name, my coronet, all I possess, are at thy feet; say, dear one, canst thou love me?"

Borne away by the ardour of his passion, he brought out this avowal all at a breath--"for," sayeth the Magister Absalom, "he had repeated it, on similar occasions, twenty times"--and, pressing her to his heart, slipped upon her finger a very valuable ring.

"Canst thou love me, Anna," he continued in a broken voice, "as I love thee--as my bride, my wife? and"----Anna replied an inaudible something, as she hung half-fainting with confusion on his breast.

Bothwell had almost paused as he spoke, half scared by his own impetuosity, and feeling, even in that moment of transport, a pang, as the thoughts of ambition and the world arose before him.

And the ring!

By the false Earl, the fond giver of that little emblem of love was forgotten. On the inside was engraved--

"The gift and the giver,
Are thine for-ever."

It was the pledge of betrothal from Jane Gordon of Huntly, and now it sparkled on the hand of her rival!

"As this circlet is without end, so without end will be my love for thee, Anna," said the impassioned noble, forgetting that with these very words, for that ring he had given another, before the prelate of Dunblane. Anna trembled violently; she felt his heart beating against her own, and a new, rapid, and consuming sensation thrilled like lightning through every vein and fibre. She became giddy, faint; and, like a rose surcharged with dew, reclined her head upon the shoulder of the handsome Earl.

"And thou art mine, Anna--mine, for ever!"

"O, yes--for ever!" she whispered; and passionately and repeatedly Bothwell's dark and well mustached mouth was pressed on her dewy lip.

Footsteps approached!

He started, and hurriedly led her to a seat; placed her harp close by, raised her hands to his lips with an air in which love and tenderness were exquisitely blended with courtesy and respect, and then hurried away.

Overcome, and trembling with the excitement of this brief interview, Anna bent with closed eyes over her harp for a moment; but becoming suddenly aware that some one stood near her, she started, and the pallor of death and guilt overspread her flushed face when her eyes met those of--Konrad.

*CHAPTER VII.*

*KONRAD.*

To lose thee! O, to lose thee! To live on
To see the sun--not thee! Will the sun shine,
Will the birds sing, flowers bloom, when thou art gone?
Desolate--desolate! Thy right hand in mine.
_King Arthur._

Konrad's dark blue eyes were regarding her with a peculiar expression, such as she had never before seen them wear. There was an intense sadness in it, mingled with pity and scorn. It was searching and reproachful, too; and, though Anna felt all that single glance conveyed, she never quailed beneath it; but the blood came and went in her changing cheek as she surveyed her indignant lover.

The appearance and bearing of young Konrad were very prepossessing.

During the whole of that day he had been out hunting, and was now returned laden with the spoil of forest and fiord. A doublet of white cloth, trimmed with black fur, slashed with scarlet sarcenet at the breast and sleeves, and adorned with a profusion of silver knobs, fitted tightly to his handsome figure; his trunk hose were fashioned of the same materials, and he wore rough leather boots, and a smart velvet cap adorned by an eagle feather, under which his long hair descended in fair locks upon his shoulders. He was equipped with a crossbow, hunting-knife, and bugle-horn, and a sheaf of short arrows bristled in his baldrick. An immense cock-of-the-wood and a bag of golden plover were slung over one shoulder, balanced on the other by a pouch of seabirds' eggs, taken from their eyries in those impending cliffs that overhang the bay, where, clinging as a fly clings to a wall, he had scrambled and swung fearlessly above the surf; and, chief spoil of the day, he bore upon his shoulder a black fox, which he had slain by a single bolt from his crossbow.

His natural colour had been increased by exercise; and he looked so handsome and gallant as he sprang up the terrace steps with his unwound arblast in his hand, that Christina Slingbunder sighed as he kissed her dimpled hand a moment before, when enquiring for her mistress; but now the mind of that fickle mistress was too full of Bothwell's image to think much, if at all, on her former lover.

Unwilling to admit to her those bitter suspicions and jealousies that were harrowing up his heart, Konrad addressed her as usual, and with an air of affected gaiety laid the spoil of his bow and spear at her feet. She bowed in silence, and regarded them dreamily.

"See how beautiful is the fur of this fox! Will not its blackness contrast well with your snowy skin, dear Anna?"

"Tush!" said she, a little pettishly; "flatter not thyself, good Konrad, I will make me trimmings of an odious fox-skin; away with it!"

Konrad was piqued by this unusual reply, but he still continued--

"Then behold this great woodcock; see how broad, how dark and beautiful are its pinions!"

"Truly, good Konrad, thou teazest me," replied Anna, stroking them with her white hands, but thinking the while how much its plumage resembled Bothwell's black locks.

"And where thinkest thou I winged him, Anna, with a single bolt from my arblast?"

"I know not," she replied vacantly.

"Thou wilt never guess," continued Konrad, resuming something of his tender and playful manner, despite the palsy in his heart. "In the Wood Demon's _oak_."

"Then this bird may cost thee dear, for the demon will avenge it some day!"

"Already he is avenged!" said Konrad, with sudden bitterness.

Anna smiled, for she knew his meaning well.

"Oh, Anna!" said the young man, laying his hand earnestly on hers; "how changed thou art! what have I done to offend thee?"

"Nothing!"

"Then, by some accursed magic this ring hath bewitched thee!"

"Ring!" she reiterated, changing colour.

Konrad dashed his crossbow on the earth.

"And is it so?" he exclaimed; "O Anna! Anna! like Zernebok, the spirit of darkness and of evil, this Scottish Earl hath crossed my path. I saw him salute thy cheek again and again, yet thou didst not reprove him. Even wert thou to love me again as of old, the charm would be broken; and O, my God! there is nothing left me but to wish we had never met!"

Anna leaned upon the parapet, and averted her face a little. The accents of Konrad's voice--that voice she had once loved so well--sank deep in her heart; but Bothwell's kiss, still glowed upon her cheek, and her heart was steeled against remorse.

"Anna," continued her lover, in a tone of sadness, "so completely was my life identified with thine, that we seemed to have but one being--one existence: the love of thee was a part of myself. I have often thought if thou wert to die, I could never live without thee; but I have lost thee now by a separation more bitter than death. Thou knowest, Anna Rosenkrantz, how long, how well I loved thee, ere thou went to Frederick's court; and in truth I had many a bitter doubt if, at thy return, I would find thee the same artless and confiding girl that left me."

"And when I did return?" asked Anna, with a smile.

"Thou hadst forgotten to love me," replied Konrad clasping his hands.

"'Tis the way of the world," laughed Anna.

"The cruel and selfish world only."

"Be it so."

"Then thou lovest me no more?"

Anna played for a moment with the fringe of her stomacher, and then replied "_No!_"

The young man turned away with an unsteady step, and pressed his hand upon his forehead, as if he would crush some overpowering emotion. Anna lifted her little harp, and was about to retire. Konrad took her hand, but she abruptly withdrew it; a pang shot through his heart, and something of remorse ran through her own at the unkindness of the action.

He caught her skirt, and besought her to listen to him for the last time.

"Anna, dearest Anna!" he said in a breathless voice; "oh, never was there a love more pure or more devoted than mine! Long, long ago, I endeavoured to crush this passion as it grew in my breast, for I knew the gulf that lay between us--thou, the daughter of Svend of Bergenhuis, the wealthy and ennobled merchant, famous alike for his treasures and his conquests over the Burghers of Lubeck and the Dukes of Holstein--I, the representative of a race that have decayed and fallen with the pride of old Norway, even as their old dwelling on yonder hill," and he pointed to the ruined tower on the distant Saltzberg; "even as it has fallen almost to its foundations. As these convictions came home to my heart, I strove to crush the expanding flower--to shun thee--to avoid thy presence, as thou mayest remember; but still thine image came ever before me with all its witchery, and a thousand chances threw us ever together. Ah! why wert thou so affable, so winning, when, knowing the secret that preyed on my heart, thou mightest so much more kindly have repulsed me? why encourage me to hope--to love--when thou wert to treat me thus?"

"Enough of this," faltered Anna; "permit me to pass--I can hear no more."

"How cruel--how cold--how calculating! It is very wicked to trifle thus with the best affections of a poor human heart. O Anna! in all the time I have loved you so truly and so well, it was long ere I had even the courage to kiss your hand."

"Because thou wert ever so timid," said Anna, with a half smile.

"Timid only because my love was a deep and a sincere one. But what were my sensations," and he grasped his dagger as he spoke; "what agony I endured, on seeing this accursed stranger kiss your cheek?"

Anna's colour deepened, and again she endeavoured to retire.

"Oh, tarry one moment, Anna!" continued the poor lover in a touching voice, and kneeling down while his eyes filled alternately with the languor of love and the fire of anger. "In memory of those pleasant hours that are gone for ever, permit me once again to kiss this hand--and never more will I address you. Refuse me not, Anna!"

"Thou tirest me!" she replied, stretching out her hand, but averting her face; for the beautiful coquette had "a smile on her lip and a tear in her eye"--a smile, for she could not repress her triumph in exciting so much love--and a tear, for she could not stifle her pity.

Konrad kissed her hand with the utmost tenderness. It lingered a moment in his, but was suddenly withdrawn. The light left his eyes; a curtain seemed to have fallen between him and the world--and he was alone.

On the terrace which had been the scene of this sad interview, he lingered long, with his heart crushed beneath a load of conflicting emotions. The love he had so long borne Anna now began to struggle with emotions of wounded self-esteem and anger at her cold desertion. Jealousy prompted him to seek some deadly vengeance, and from time to time he cast furtive glances at his steel arblast, with its sheaf of winged bolts, that lay among the spoil he had brought from the forest. Had the Earl of Bothwell appeared within bowshot while these evil thoughts floated through the brain of Konrad, our history had ended, perhaps, with the present chapter; but, luckily, he was at that moment engaged at the old game of Troy with Sir Erick in the hall.

"I could not slay him!" thought the young man, generously, as other emotions rose within him; "no, not even if he smote me with his clenched hand. She seems to love him so much, that his death would be alike a source of misery to her and deep remorse to me. Dear Anna! thy happiness will still be as much my aim as if I had wedded thee; but I pray God thou mayest not be deceived, and endure--what I am now enduring!"

These generous thoughts soothed not his agony; and bitter was the sense of loneliness, of misery, and desolation, that closed over his heart in unison with the shadows of evening that were then setting over the wide landscape below.

"And she coldly saw me weep!" he exclaimed.

He felt that he must leave Bergen and the presence of Anna--but for whence? Whether for the desolate settlements of the half-barbarian Lapps, or the wars of the Lubeckers and Holsteiners, he could not decide. His love of the chase inclined him to the first; his weariness of life, to the last.

Such were his thoughts; but at two-and-twenty one seldom tires of existence, whatever its disappointments and bitterness may have been.

The sun had set on the distant sea, and the long line of saffron light it shed across the dark blue water died away; the gloomy shadows of the rocks and keep of Bergen faded from the bosom of the harbour, and red lights began to twinkle one by one, in the little windows of the wooden fisher-huts, that nestled on the shelving rocks far down below, among a wilderness of nets, and boats, and anchors.

From the terrace of the castle, miles beyond miles of rocky mountains were seen stretching afar off in blue perspective towards the surf-beaten Isles of Lofoden; and, tipped by the last red light of the sun that had set, their splintered and rifted peaks shot up in fantastic cones from those endless forests, so deep, and dark, and solemn--so voiceless, and so still. Konrad's melancholy meditations were uninterrupted by a sound; no living thing seemed near, save a red-eyed hawk that sat on a fragment of rock.

He could hear his own heart beating.

Though his mind was a prey to bitterness the most intense, he watched the sunset, and the changing features of the landscape, with all the attention that trifles often receive, even in moments of the deepest anguish.

Gradually the shadows crept upward from the low places to the mountain tops. Each long promontory that jutted into the far perspective of the narrow fiord, was a steep mountain that towered from its glassy bosom in waveworn precipices; between these lay the smaller inlets, long and narrow valleys full of deep and dark blue water, that reflected the solemn pines by day, and the diamond stars by night. Some were dark and sunless, but others glittered still in purple, gold, and green, where the eider-duck floated in the last light of the west; and all was still as death along the margin of that beautiful bay, save the roar of a distant cataract, where a river poured over the chasmed rock, and sought the ocean in a column of foam.

Night drew on; the bleating of the home-driven kids, the flap of the owlet's wing, and faint howl of a wandering wolf, broke the stillness of the balmy northern eve; while the wiry foliage of the vast pine-forests, that flourished almost to the castle gates, vibrated in the rising wind, and seemed to fill the dewy air with the hum of a thousand fairy harps.

Konrad, who, with his face buried in his hands, had long reclined against the rampart of the terrace, was startled to find close beside him a tall dark man, whose proportions, when looming in the twilight, seemed almost herculean, intently examining the great wood-cock, in the bosom of which a cross-bow bolt was firmly barbed.

Filled with that inborn superstition which is still common to all Scandinavia, his first thought was of the terrible _Wood Demon_, in whose venerated oak he had so heedlessly and daringly shot the bird. Animated by terror, such as he had never known before, a prickly sensation spread over his whole frame, and even Anna was partially forgotten in the sudden horror that thrilled through him, as, with an invocation to God, he sprang upon the battlement of the terrace.

The dark stranger uttered a shout, and sprang forward. Konrad's terror was completed.

He toppled over, made one palsied and fruitless effort to clutch the grass that grew in the clefts of the ancient wall, and failing, launched out into the air; down, down, he went, disappearing headlong into that dark abyss, at the bottom of which rolled the ocean.

"Cock and pie!" muttered Black Hob, with astonishment; (for it was no other than he,) as he peered over the rampart, "was it a madman or a bogle that vanished over the wall like the blink of a sunbeam?"

He stretched over, cast down one hasty glance, and instinctively drew back; for far down at the base of the beetling crags, he saw the ocean boiling, white and frothy, through the obscurity below.

A wild and unearthly cry ascended to his ear.

"By the blessed mass, a water-kelpie!" muttered Ormiston, as he hurried away in great disorder.

Konrad escaped a death on the rocks, but, falling into the ocean, arose to the surface at some distance from the shore. Breathless and faint by his descent from such a height, he could scarcely (though an excellent swimmer) make one stroke to save his life. A strong current running seaward round the promontory, drove a piece of drift-wood--a pine log--past him. He clutched it with all the despair of the drowning, and, twining himself among its branches, was thus swiftly, by the currents of the fiord, borne out into the wide waste of the Skager Rack.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE COCK-OF-THE-WOODS.*

In woman thou'rt deceived; but that we
Had mothers, I could say how women are,
In their own natures, models of mere change;
Of change from what is nought, to what is worse.
_The Lady's Trial._

In Norway there existed (and exists even unto this day) a certain malicious spirit, who is ever on the alert to poke a finger in every body's affairs, and to put every thing wrong that ought to be right. He hides whatever is missing, and brings about every mischance that happens to man, woman, or child--to horse and to dog--to the huntsman in the woods--to the fisher on the fiord. The blame of every ill is laid on the shoulders of this unfortunate and omnipresent sprite--NIPPEN; who, though secretly blamed, cursed, and feared, must outwardly be spoken of with reverence and respect, or his unremitting vengeance and malevolence are certain and sure.

Always after nightfall, to obtain his good-will, a can of spiced ale is deposited in a certain nook of every household for the especial behoof of the thirsty imp; who, if he cannot find time to empty all the cans so liberally bestowed, generally permits some of the wandering Lapps, the houseless dogs or questing foxes, that are ever wandering after nightfall, to have that pleasure; so that next morning Nippen's ale-can is usually found empty in its place.

In the castle of Bergen it was the morning occupation of Anna to spice a cup of ale until it was exquisitely flavoured, and then, in accordance with the still existing superstition, Christina Slingbunder placed it in a solitary nook of the terrace, for the prowling spirit of mischief, who nightly found it there; but Sueno Throndson frequently and somewhat suspiciously averred, that Nippen came in the shape of a Danish crossbowman to drink it.

On the evening mentioned in the preceding chapter, Ormiston, chancing to pass that way, observed the bright flagon standing in its sequestered niche, and drew it forth. He surveyed it with great interest in various ways--and then tasted it. The flavour was delicious, and he drained it to the bottom.

The spiced liquor mounting at once to the brain of Hob, threw a sudden cloud over all his faculties, which were never very bright at any time; and thus next morning he had no remembrance of his adventure with Konrad on the terrace, on the preceding evening. At the same hour, however, he failed not to examine the same place; and finding there another mug of that divinely flavoured beverage, without hesitation transferred the contents to his stomach, much to the disappointment of a certain Danish soldier, who, finding himself anticipated a second and third time, began with some terror to imagine that Nippen was at last beginning to look after his property in person.

The fumes mounted to the Knight of Ormiston's brain; and carolling the merry old ditty of "The Frog that came to the Mill Door," he danced round the terrace, kicking before him the cock-of-the-woods, that was still lying where Konrad had left it. As he was about to descend, Bothwell, gaily attired, with his eyes and countenance radiant with pleasure, sprang up the stair, taking three steps at a time.

"Good-morrow, noble Bothwell!" said Ormiston, balancing himself on each leg alternately.

"What the devil art thou following now, eh?" asked the Earl.

"My nose, for lack of something better!"

"Thou seemest very drunk! Surely the ale at dinner to-day was not over strong for thee. But, harkee, I have triumphed!"

"Indeed! but the fact is, I am too drunk at the present moment to see exactly how!"

"Guzzler! thou understandest me very well!"

"A notable triumph for one who, if rumour sayeth true, broke many a sconce and many a spear at the Tournelles for the love of a French princess!"

Bothwell coloured deeply; a dark frown gathered on his broad brow, and his dark, expressive eyes filled with light; but the expression and the momentary emotion passed away together.

"I value thy gibes not a rush. To me all the world is now concentrated in this rude Norwegian castle!"

"What a difference between a man who is in love like thee, and one who is not, like me!"

"My stout Hob, thou knowest more of foraying by Cheviot side, and harrying the beeves of Westmoreland, than of making love!"

"Heaven be praised, for I have known this same love turn many a bearded man into a puling boy."

"It can exalt the heart of a coward into that of a hero. It can expand the bosom of the austere hermit into that of a jovial toper"----

"And endow Bothwell, the hellicate rake, with all the virtues of Bothan, the saint and confessor."

"I wish all the imps in hell had thee!" said the Earl, turning away.

"I thank thee for thy good wishes," replied his friend, reeling a little; "and so thou hast really and irrevocably given thy heart to this grey-eyed Norwegian."

"Grey-eyed, thou blind mole! Her eyes are of the brightest and purest blue."

"I say _grey_, by all the furies! and I protest, that I love neither grey-eyes nor the name of Anna."

"Wherefore, most sapient Hob?"

"Because I never knew an Anne that was not cold-hearted, or a grey-eyed woman that was not cunning as a red tod."

"Marry! a proper squire to judge of beauty," said the Earl laughing; but, nevertheless, feeling very much provoked. "But thou wilt know how to shape thy discourse, when I say that I am about to ask her hand of Erick Rosenkrantz."

"By St. Christopher the giant, thou art mad!" said Ormiston, with a gravity that shewed the assertion had sobered him; "be wary, be prudent. Should the Lord Huntly"----

"My malediction on Huntly! He shall never see my face again; so it matters not. He may bestow his pale sister, the Lady Jane, on some ruffling minion of the bastard Moray, the crafty Morton, the craftier Maitland, or of the thundering Knox, who now have all the sway in that court, where the outlawed Bothwell shall never more be seen." And with one hand twisting his mustaches, and the other playing with the pommel of his dagger, the Earl strode away, and left his friend and vassal to his own confused reflections.

Bothwell, who had ever been the creature of impulse, without delay sought old Sir Erick of Welsoeoe, whom he found seated in a nook of the ramparts, basking in the long lingering sunshine, and sheltered from the evening wind by the angle of the turret. His long sword rested against one arm of his chair, a pewter mug of dricka was placed on the other, and before him stood Sueno, cap in hand, receiving certain orders with all due reverence.

"What the devil is this Van Dribbel tells me?" he was saying as Bothwell approached. "All the beer soured by the thunder-storm! I marvel that it hath not soured my temper too, for there never was a man so crossed, I tell thee, Sueno. It was my wish that Konrad should have undertaken the capture of this necromancer, and seen him hanged in one of his own devilish cords; and now Konrad is nowhere to be found. How dares he leave the precincts of Bergen without my permission?"

"His Danish archers have searched every where," said Sueno, "even to the base of the Silverbergen, sounding their horns through the forest, along the shores of the fiord, and the margin of the bay; and I would venture my better hand to a boar's claw, that the Captain Konrad is not within the province of Aggerhuis."

"Sayest thou so!" exclaimed the Knight Rosenkrantz, who, between the attention required by his offices of castellan and governor,--the machinations of a water-sprite who dwelt in the harbour of Bergen, where he daily wrought all manner of evil to the fishermen,--Nippen, who made himself so busy in the affairs of all honest people on the land,--the gnomes of the Silverbergen, who stole his poultry,--and the cantrips of a certain mischievous demon inhabiting the adjacent wood, and had thrice turned three fair flocks of Sir Erick's sheep into field mice, in which shape he had seen them vanishing into mole-tracks in the turf, where a moment before they had been browsing,--the old governor, we say, who, with all these things to divert his attention, never found time hang heavy on his hands, made a gesture of anger and impatience, and he swore a Norse oath, which the Magister Absalom Beyer has written so hurriedly that our powers of translation fail us; but he added--

"My mind misgiveth me that something is wrong. Away, Sueno, take a band of archers, and once more beat the woods with shout and bugle, and if Konrad appears not by sunrise to-morrow, by the holy Hansdag I will--not know what to think."

The threat evaporated; for honest Rosenkrantz loved the youth as if he had been his own son.

Though Bothwell had a grace, effrontery, or assurance (which you will) that usually carried him well through almost every thing he undertook, and which won every one to his purpose, he could not have chosen a more unfortunate crisis for the startling proposal, which he made with admirable deliberation and nonchalance to the portly Rosenkrantz; who no sooner heard the conclusion, than he said with a hauteur, to which Bothwell, at all times proud and fiery, was totally unaccustomed, and which he did not think this plain unvarnished Nordlander could assume--

"Excuse me, I pray thee, my Lord Earl of Bothwell. Though I venerate your rank and mission, as ambassador from the Queen of the Scots (here the Earl's cheek glowed crimson), I cannot give my niece to you, even were I willing to bestow her. She is the first and only love of my young friend, Konrad of Saltzberg, as gallant a heart as Norway owns; he to whose daring you and your friends owed preservation on the night of the storm. From childhood they have known and loved each other, yea, since they were no higher than _that_," holding his hand about six inches from the ground; "growing up, as it were, like two little birds in the same nest, twining into each other like two tendrils from the same tree; and a foul stain it would be on me to part them now, even though King Frederick came in person to sue for the hand of Anna."

"Hear me, Lord Erick," began Bothwell, alike astonished and offended at the rejection of a suit, which he secretly thought was somewhat degrading to himself.

"I know all thou wouldst urge," said Erick, shaking his hand; "but this may not, cannot be; for thou art a man too gay and gallant to mate with one of our timid Norwegian maidens."

The inexplicable smile that spread over the Earl's face, shewed there was more in his mind than the honest Norseman could read. He was about to speak, when Sueno approached bearing in his hand a dead bird, and having great alarm powerfully depicted in his usually unmeaning face.

"Oh, Sir Erick--Sir Erick--what think you? last night Konrad of Saltzburg shot this cock in the Wood Demon's oak!"

"Now, heaven forefend!" exclaimed the Castellan, sinking back in grief and alarm. "Then, Sueno, thou needst search no more. God save thee, poor Konrad!"

"How--how, wherefore?" asked Bothwell; "what has happened?"

"We shall never behold him more. He hath assuredly been spirited away," replied Rosenkrantz in great tribulation; for in the existence of all those elementary beings incident to Norse superstition, he believed devoutly as in the gospel; "he hath been spirited away, and enclosed Heaven alone knoweth where--perhaps in a rock or tree close beside us here--perhaps in an iceberg at the pole"----

"Amen!" thought Bothwell, who would have laughed had he dared; "I would that the Captain of Bergen were keeping him company!"

"O Sueno! thou rememberest how it fared with thy brother Rolf, when he stole acorns from that very tree?"

"Yes--yes--as he crossed the Fiord in the moonlight, a great hand arose from the water, and drew down his boat to the bottom--and so he perished. Poor Rolf!"

"And with the father of Hans Knuber, who left his axe resting against it one evening, in the summer of 1540?"

"An invisible hand hurled it after him, and broke both his legs."

"And Gustaf Slingbunder, who pursued a fox into its branches, was bewitched by the demon in such wise, that he ran in a circle round the tree for six days and nights, till his bones dropped asunder."

"Saint Olaus be with us!"

Erick Rosenkrantz and Sueno continued to gaze at each other in great consternation, while Bothwell looked at them alternately with astonishment, till the blast of a horn at the gate arrested their attention, and a Danish archer approached, to inform his excellency the Governor of Aggerhuis, that a royal messenger from Copenhagen required an audience.

"So this unmannerly boor hath rejected my suit!" muttered the haughty Earl, as he turned away; "mine--by St. Paul! I can scarcely believe my senses. If my _roue_ friends d'Elboeuff or Coldinghame heard of it, they would cast a die to decide which was the greater fool--Bothwell or Rosenkrantz. Rejected! Be it so; but to have this damsel on my own terms shall now be my future care."

*CHAPTER IX.*

*LORD HUNTLY'S LETTER.*

All self-command is now gone by,
E'er since the luckless hour when she
Became a mirror to my eye,
Whereon I gazed complacently.
Thou, fatal mirror! where I spy
Love's image.
_Bernard de Pentadour._

Anna, who might have formed some excuse for Konrad, (whom she supposed to have voluntarily expatriated himself, as he threatened,) maintained a silence on the subject of their last interview, and, wholly occupied with her new and glittering lover, troubled herself no more about the old one.

She was teaching the Earl the polsk, the national dance of the Norse, and to which they are enthusiastically attached. Christina and three other attendants played on the ghittern, harp, and tabor, taking at times a part in the figures of the dance.

While the Earl, with his cloak and rapier flung aside, and having one arm round the waist of Anna, was performing with her a succession of those rapid whirls which make this dance so closely to resemble the modern waltz, Black Hob of Ormiston entered the hall, and beckoned him with impatience in his gestures.

"How now!" said the Earl, pausing; "is the devil in the bush again? Thou hast a face of vast importance, Hob. By Jove! it seems to swell out even that voluminous ruff of thine!"

"Peradventure there be reason. Behold! here are letters from Copenhagen."

"Hah! say you so?"----

"Sent by that king's messenger who came hither but an hour ago!"

"Pardon me, Lady Anna," said the Earl with sudden confusion; "I must speak with my friend, but will rejoin you in a few minutes. Whose seals are these, Hob?" he asked, as they descended to the terrace, hurriedly by the way, examining the square packets, which were tied with ribbons, and sealed with wax at the crossing. "By the Holy Paul! 'tis from Frederick of Denmark this!"

"And this from the Earl of Huntly; see! it bears the boar-heads of Gordon and the lions of Badenoch!"

"O, death and fury! it will be but one tissue of reproaches and upbraidings from the Lady Jane. Throw it into the sea!"

"What! wilt thou not read it before?"

"I could scarcely do so _after_. Read it thyself!" replied Bothwell; "for Huntly and I have nothing now in common!"

Each tore open a letter, and began slowly and laboriously to decipher the cramped and contracted hand-writing so common to the sixteenth century. The effect of these communications was very different on the readers. A bright smile spread over the broad visage of the Knight of Ormiston; while a frown, black as a thunder-cloud, gathered on the dark brow of Bothwell.

"Fury!" he exclaimed, crushing up the letter. "God's fury, and his malison to boot! be on this white-livered dog--this foul traitor"----

"Who--who?"

"Frederick"----

"How--the King of Denmark and Norway! These are hard names for his majesty to receive within his own fortress of Bergen. What tidings?"

"He declines all further correspondence with me concerning the Shetland Isles, and threatens, that if by the vigil of Saint Denis--now but three days hence--we are found within the Danish seas, to send me captive to Queen Mary, with a full account of my mock embassy. 'Tis some machination of my foeman, Murray."

"Devil burn him!" said Hob. "Well, is it not better, after all, to be Lord of Bothwell and Hailes, at home in puir auld Scotland, than Prince of Orkney and Lord of Hialtland, branded as a traitor till the very name of Hepburn becomes (like that of Menteath of old) a byword and a scoff in every Scottish mouth--banned alike in the baron's hall and at the peasant's hearth--while thou wouldst writhe hourly to free thy head from under the sure claws of the Danish lion."

"Right, Hob! Throw his letter into the sea, and, if thou art clerk enough, let us hear what our noble friend, the Lord Huntly, sayeth."

Ormiston read as follows:--

"To the Right Honorable my very good Lord and especial friend, James Earl of Bothwell, Lord of Hailes, Liddesdale, and Shetland, High Admiral, Sheriff of Haddington, and Bailie of Lauderdale, _Give this in haste--haste--haste_.

"We write to hasten your return, as the Queen's Majesty hath relaxit your Lordship and the worshipful Laird of Ormiston from the horn, and hath banished the Lords Moray, Morton, and others, your enemies, into England, quhere they are now residing and resett at the frontier town of Berwick, for the slaughter of umquhile David Rizzio, her Grace's Italian secretary. Her Majesty desireth me to recal you to her presence, with solemn assurance that your sentence of forfeiture is reversed, your fiefs and honours restored. My dearest sister, the Lady Jane, and my bedfellow, the Lady Anne, send their devoted love to your Lordship.

"So the blessing of our Lady be with you, and grant you long life and great commoditie!

"Done at our castle of Strathbolgie in the Garioch, on the vigil of St. Cuthbert the Confessor, 1565.

"HUNTLIE."

Ormiston threw up his bonnet, his black eyes flashed and filled with tears, as he exclaimed--

"Now, God's blessing on her Grace! from this hour I am her leal man and true. Now man, Bothwell, I am sick to death of this grim Norwayn castle, and its old ale-drinking, chess-playing, and pudding-pated castellan, who is part woodman, part fisherman--half knight, half bear--and I long to see the yellow corn waving on my ain rigs of Ormiston, with the grey turrets of my auld peel-tower, looking down on bonny Teviotdale. Would I were there now, and three hundred of my tall troopers with lance, and horse, and bonnets of steel, all trotting by my side. Benedicite!"

"Three hundred devils! thy wits have gone woolgathering. I have promised love and troth to Anna; and if I return with her as my bride, Huntly and Aboyne, Black Arthur and Auchindoune, will all come down like roaring lions from the hills of Badenoch and the wilds of Strathbolgie--so that I may as well stay here and face Frederick."

"What! dost thou fear a feud with the gay Gordons?"

"Thou knowest," replied the Earl haughtily, "that I fear nothing, as I shall show thee. I love this girl with my whole heart, Ormiston; yet now, when the first fierce burst of love is past, I see the folly of a man like me being tied like a love-knot to a woman's kirtle."

"Leave her behind thee here."

"I cannot--I cannot! What a moment of imbecility was that, when I betrothed myself to Jane of Huntly!"

"A cursed coil! women on both hands; danger in returning and danger in remaining. Our Lady direct us!"

"Dost think she will interest herself in the affairs of such a couple of rascals as we are?"

"Thou speakest for thyself."

"Nay, I speak for thee in particular."

"Thou gettest angry," said Ormiston; "remember the old saw--'He that is angry is seldom at ease.'"

"Tush! .... True it is," said Bothwell musingly, after a long pause--"I love Anna better than my own life, and, because winning her may cost me some trouble and danger; yet I feel that to wed her is to wreck my ship on a dangerous shore. I am grown indifferent to Lady Jane, because I may have her for the asking--besides, I am sick of dark eyes."

"Especially Parisian!"

The Earl's brow knit, but he continued gently--

"I have promised marriage to both; and to one my plight must be broken. What matters it? 'Tis only to a woman; and did not one whom I loved with all the depth and holiness of a first love, slight that passion as valueless, and laugh me to scorn when she chose another?"

"Remain here, and we shall be sent captives to Scotland, where all the particulars of our pretended embassy to Denmark will be discovered."

"And if I return with this little Norwegian by my side, St Paul! but I must keep my best sword buckled there too."

"Any thing thou likest, but let us leave this desolate land. Let us once more have our feet on Scottish ground, and our hands on our bridles; we shall then make our own terms with Huntly and the Queen. If this dame Anna will go"----

"Go! oh, thou knowest not how the little creature loves me! Ardent and impulsive to excess, she will follow me wherever I list."

"While the fit lasts," rejoined Ormiston drily. "Take her with thee, but leave her with some of thy friends in Orkney till we hear how matters go at Holyrood. There is old Sir Gilbert Balfour of Westeray, will keep her close enough in his strong castle of Noltland, where, when once thou seest the queen again, she may chance to remain for the term of her natural life."

Hob paused, and scratched his rough beard with a knowing expression; for he knew enough of his friend to foresee how matters would be in a month.

"Out upon thee, Hob!" said he; "thou art ever prompting me to some knavery."

"But this letter of Huntly"----

"Thank heaven it came!"

"Thou wert about to throw it into the sea."

"St. Mary! but for its contents we must have sailed on a hopeless quest to France, to Italy, or to heaven knows where; for I am already too well known by evil repute throughout the most of Europe. But away, Ormiston, to the harbour. Seek David Wood, our wight skipper, and that red-breeched knave, Hans Knuber, who assists him. Let them have our _Fleur-de-lys_ ready to sail. I will hie me to Anna, and 'tis not unlikely we may put to sea about dusk."

A smile was exchanged.

"Gramercy!" said the knight, "I hope she will not forget to bring her maid, who views my outward man with a favourable eye, so that we may all sail merrily together. Hey for hame! By cock and pie! I almost fancy myself at my ain tower-yett, with my broad banner displayed, and my stout horsemen behind me. Ho! for one headlong gallop by Ettrickshaws or Teviotside--_Te Deum laudamus_! God's blessing on our own land, that lies beyond sea, for it is like no other!" and whirling his bonnet round his head, more like a great schoolboy than a strong man of six feet eight inches, Ormiston with one bound sprang down the steep steps leading from the terrace to the shore; while the Earl, somewhat slowly and thoughtfully for so ardent a lover, returned to the presence of Anna, who, piqued by his long and unceremonious absence, was pleased to receive him with a pouting lip and a clouded brow, which his caresses soon dispelled.

*CHAPTER X*

*THE HERMIT OF BERGEN.*

When fortune makes the match, she rages,
And forsakes the unequal pair;
But when love two hearts engages,
The kind god is ever there.
Regard not, then, high blood nor riches,
You that would his blessings have;
Let love, untaught, guide all your wishes.
Hymen should be Cupid's slave.
_Sir Charles Sedley._

The Reformation had been accomplished in Denmark and Norway, during the reign of Frederick I., about thirty years before the period of which we write. It had made great progress among the simple and half barbarian Norse, who, though they had laid the ancient hierarchy in the dust, received nothing equal in exchange; and consequently the codes of religion and morality lay lightly on the necks of the people.

A Catholic church was still permitted at Gluckstadt; the title of bishop, the auricular confessional, the crucifix, and other Romish rites and ceremonies, were still retained, though the government was avowedly and essentially Lutheran. Some persons adhered rigidly to the ancient form of worship, others to the new; but many more took a middle and very convenient course, and for a time believed in--nothing.

It was while matters were in this state, particularly in the province of Aggerhuis--that a half-crazed monk, who had belonged to a suppressed monastery in Fuhnen, and whose brain was said to have been turned by the severities to which he had been subjected, by the ecclesiastical superintendent of the reformed church in that diocese, became an anchorite, and undisputed occupant of a cavern on the fiord, near the castle of Bergen. The fame of his austerity, the severity of his penances, and the circumstance of his having made his dwelling in a cavern which for ages had been the reputed habitation of Zernebok, an evil demon, whose name is familiar to the Norse, had been quite enough to procure him a fame beyond the province of Aggerhuis. By night the fishermen shuddered, crossed themselves, and sedulously avoided the long ray of light that streamed from the mouth of his deep cavern upon the glassy waters of the bay; for, notwithstanding his reputation for sanctity and holiness on the one hand, he was dreaded for possessing various supernatural and unpriestly attributes on the other.

But to return from this digression, which was necessary, as the hermit is about to be introduced with due formality to the reader, we may briefly state that the gay Earl, notwithstanding all his eloquence and powers of persuasion, which were very great, failed to prevail on Anna Rosenkrantz to make an unconditional elopement with him; nor would her pride and self-esteem permit her to trust implicitly to one whom she knew to have earned at Copenhagen the dubious reputation of a finished gallant and accomplished courtier.

Much as she loved him, and--notwithstanding her inconstancy to Konrad, she loved him well--Anna could not so utterly sacrifice the name and honour of her family, or be so oblivious of that delicacy which a Norwegian maiden so seldom forgets; and thus, though Bothwell urged with all the oily eloquence that love, ardour, and gallantry lent him, the danger of that delay which would sacrifice him to Rosenkrantz, who in three days, by the king's mandate, would be compelled to make him a prisoner, Anna only wept, and would not--could not--consent to accompany him, unless--

"Unless we are wedded; is it not so, dearest Anna?" said the handsome noble, as she reclined helplessly and in tears on his bosom, within an alcove of the terrace that overlooked the bay.

Anna made no reply.

"Decide, dearest, decide!" urged the Earl, pointing to his ship that was now gallantly riding in the fiord, with her white canvass half unloosed, and glimmering white in the faint twilight of the northern evening. "Decide! for by the express command of the governor, your uncle, I must be far beyond yon blue horizon ere the sun rises; and then thou wilt see me no more!"

Anna sobbed bitterly, and she thought of the triumph the rejected Konrad might feel and display, if the Earl sailed without her. Proud, and perhaps not a little artful, her heart was torn by love, doubt, and anguish; and her answers were very incoherent.

"Oh! what would my uncle Rosenkrantz say, if"----

"I have bade adieu to Rosenkrantz, and he deems me already on board. Since the arrival of King Frederick's mandate, he has been so full of vapour and dignity, that though I cannot but laugh at it, we can hold no further communication; and if, after my late proposal, which he so scornfully rejected, he knew I was here--and with thee"----

"True, true, we would be separated."

"And for ever! I know your scruples, dearest Anna," said the Earl tenderly; for, moved by her tears, and the utter abandonment in which she reclined on his breast, with her face half hidden by the bright masses of her hair, and by her position permitting soft glimpses of a full and beautiful bosom, he felt that he loved her with his whole heart; and that the troth he had plighted to Lady Gordon, the vengeance of the fierce Highland noble her brother, and the wrath or favour of the Scottish court, were all alike to be committed to oblivion. Love bore all before him victoriously for the time; and Bothwell, ever the creature of impulses, yielded to that of the moment.

"Hear me for the last time," he urged. "The good hermit, of whom I have heard you speak so often, and whose abode is in the cavern among yonder rocks, from which we now see a ray of light that trembles on the water, will unite us, and in my own land will I wed thee again, with such magnificence as becomes a bride of the house of Hailes. Consent, dearest Anna! and one blast on my horn will bring a barge to the beach; refuse, and we must part, Anna, never to meet again."

She could make no reply, but drew closer to her winning lover, and exchanged with him one long and passionate kiss, and Bothwell knew that he had triumphed.

"My beloved Anna!" he murmured, as he raised her in his arms, and felt at the moment that ever to love another than this fair being, who trusted to him so implicitly, would be sacrilege, and an impossibility.

"Christina--call Christina Slingbunder! Oh! I cannot go alone," she sobbed.

Bothwell, aware that there was not a moment to lose, beckoned to the waiting-woman, who had been lingering at the corner of the terrace; and who, without knowing what was to ensue, followed him, while he half led and half bore her mistress down the steep and devious pathway that led to the beach.