"This is a prettier sight," muttered she, in soft accents, as she looked upon the faces of the beautiful and innocent supplicants--"this is surely a fairer sight, and better calculated to fill and delight the heart of mortal, than what my Parys is now, I fear, preparing to behold. How different is the expression of the faces of these innocents, upturned to heaven in supplication and thankfulness, from the torch-flared countenances of blood and revenge which these retainers will turn on the heights of Tushielaw, in the presence of their master! Nor is my Parys insensible to this difference; but, wo for the force of education and habit over good hearts! Ask, my little Hector, of your Father in heaven that, if you live to be a Border chief, you may be loyal to your king, and a promoter of peace in the castle, and contentedness and happiness in the cottage."
The little embryo chieftain obeyed the words of his mother; and all looked up in her face anxiously, as they saw the tears stealing down her cheeks. Each asked the cause of her grief, and volunteered an assuagement, as if their little swelling hearts contained the power of the instant amelioration of her sorrow. She looked upon them in silence; and in a little time they were consigned to rest and sleep, and utter oblivion of all the cares of this world.
After these maternal cares, Marjory sat and listened to the proceedings in the ballium of the Castle. Cockburn did not come up, being either occupied in preparations for his expedition against Adam Scott, or unwilling to expose his designs again to the danger of defeat, by the expostulations or entreaties of his anxious wife. Meanwhile, as she listened, every whisper or accidental sound of sword or spear went to her heart, and stirred up, in confused array, the fears of love. One hope remained to her, that the moon would hide her head, and leave the world to the empire of darkness--so unfavourable to the designs of the riever, that the moon's minions would not fight under another power. There were clear indications in the heavens of a coming storm; for the moon still toiled on through the clouds, and the booming of the low, sullen wind in the woods was getting higher and higher. These sounds she hailed with hope; but, the next moment, the clang of a falling spear consigned her to her fears. At a late hour, Cockburn came up to his sleeping-room, and silently retired to pretended rest; while she, with her solicitude increased, retired also to her couch, but with no disposition to become oblivious of the fatal operations of her husband, though her tender nature forbade further efforts in a cause that seemed hopeless. Resigning herself to the powers of fear, and the other disquieting influences of the solemn hour of midnight, she lay quiet, and submitted to the current of inauspicious thoughts that flowed through her mind. A disturbed slumber fell over her, sufficient only to make a slight division between the world of dreams and that of reality, and to allow her waking thoughts to pass in new and changing forms before the eye of the dreaming fancy, which again, in its turn, invested them with attributes suitable to the complexion of her waking sorrows. During this interval, Cockburn rose; and, dressing himself, went quietly out of the chamber--his movements having only tended to give some new impulse to her half-dreamy sensations, ineffectual as they were to recall her to the cares of a night vigil. A loud crash was the first sound that awoke her; and opening her eyes, and becoming collected, she recognised, in the sharp sound, the grating fall of the portcullis. A shrill horn now winded among the woods, though its sound was scarcely distinguishable among the repressed bellowings of the night winds that seemed to have risen considerably since she had been overcome by her slumber. She was satisfied that the whole retinue, with her husband at their head, were off to the beetling Castle of Tushielaw, from whose heights so many a riever had been precipitated into the Ettrick.