This conviction, coming, as it did, on the back of a disturbed slumber, in which her dreams had partaken of the dire nature of a nightmare, increased her fears. She could rest no longer, and rising and dressing herself, she sat down at the casement, and listened to ascertain if any of the sounds of the cavalcade could be distinguished. She could satisfy herself of enough to indicate the route they had taken--away over the hills that separate the vales of Ettrick and Yarrow, and by the path that has since got the name of the King's Road, leading directly to the Tower of Tushielaw. But a quick and threatening change in the weather soon attracted her attention. The booming of the wind seemed to cease, and, shortly after, the clouds, through the openings of which the moon had been seen labouring during the previous part of the night, appeared to run rapidly together, so as to conceal the face of the night queen, and to present a homogenous mass of dark vapour over all the heavens. A flash of vivid lightning now flared in her eyes, and left her for a moment in suspense whether she had not been blinded by the bright fluid; then on came the peal of thunder, which reverberating among the mountains like discharges of artillery, filled her with that peculiar awe which the speaking clouds throw over the hearts of mortals. The rain came down in torrents, and had scarcely begun to pour, when the speat-rills of the high lands were heard dashing down like angry spirits to swell the Henderland Burn and the Megget, and raise the fury of these mountain streams. The sound of the thunder had awoke the children, who, leaving in terror their beds, came running to their mother, to seek that protection which could alone allay their fears. Circling round her knees, they hid their heads among the folds of her clothes, or clambered to her bosom, and twined their arms round her neck. It was in vain she asked them to return to bed; they conceived themselves safer on the breast of their mother, though she still sat at the casement, and the lightning glanced in their eyes, than they could be in their beds, muffled up in the bedclothes, and listening to the successive peals of thunder. As she sat in this attitude, with the children cowering into her bosom, like little chickens under the wing of their mother, she observed that the thunder approached nearer and nearer, as the period between the flash and the peal diminished gradually to a second; and a sudden flash among the trees, accompanied with a crackling noise, connected with some destructive operation of the bolt, indicated that mischief had been done in that quarter of the wood. It was where the elm stood, the subject of Merlin's rhyme; and this circumstance sent the current of her thoughts in that direction, where there was so much aliment for her excited fancy. She silently prayed that the tree might be destroyed; and its towering top, above all others of the wood, held out some hope that her strange wish might be realized.