In those days of ecclesiastical tyranny and social espionage, little could escape the parish minister; so the Reverend Elijah Howler promptly apprised Symon of Moultray of his daughter's "foregathering" with the ungodly one at that relic of Popery, the chapel of Mary. They were surprised by the furious father, who exclaimed--
"Sackcloth and ashes! ye graceless limmer, begone to your spindle, and thou, mansworn loon, draw!"
Unsheathing his sword, he rushed upon Calderwood, and would have slain him, notwithstanding the sanctity of the place, but for the interference of his youngest son, Philip, who accompanied him, and parried the threatening sword.
He hurled, however, the deepest and most bitter reproaches upon Calderwood, as "an apostate from the kirk of God; the adherent of a king who had broken the Covenant; a leaguer with the mansworn and God-forsaken James Grahame of Montrose, and his murdering gang of Highland Philistines; the representative of a false brood, among whom no daughter of his should ever mate without a father's curse resting on her bridal-bed," with much more to the same purpose.
The young gentleman strove to deprecate his anger; but, "Away!" the fiery old man resumed; "hence, ye troubler o' Israel, who hast hearkened unto the devil and his prelates; and beware how ye cross the purpose o' Symon o' Seafield, for all the powers o' hell may fail to balk my vengeance!"
Under his shaggy brows his eyes glared at Calderwood as he spoke; and fiercely he drew his blue bonnet over them, as he hurled his broadsword into its scabbard, struck its basket-hilt significantly, and, grasping his terrified daughter by the wrist, dragged her rudely away. A farewell glance, mute and despairing, was all that the parted lovers could exchange. As for the injurious reproaches of the irate old man, Willie Calderwood heeded them not. He only mourned in his heart this civil and religious war, that had engendered hate and rancour in the breasts of those at whose board he had long been a welcome guest, and who certainly, at one time, loved him well.
If Symon of Seafield was rancorous in his animosity, his wife, the Lady Grizel Kirkaldie of Abden, was doubly so. Thus the poor Annora, as she sat by her side, guiding the whirling spindle, or spinning monotonously at her wheel, was compelled, in the intervals of prayer, bible reading, catechizing, and mortification of the body and spirit, to hear the most insulting epithets heaped upon the name of her young and handsome lover, whose figure, as she saw him last at Eglise Marie, with his long, black cavalier plume shading his saddened face, and his scarlet mantle muffling the hilt of the rapier he dared not to draw on _her_ father, seemed ever before her.
