"But you have cunningly led me away from my subject, Parys. Is it not true that you are to cut through my silken bands with the restless sword? Are you not again to turn the fearless eye of the eagle on the cliff where Tushielaw hangs like a beetling crag? Is Helen's song to be changed for the raven war-cry; and the blessings of our peaceful household, for the curses of revengeful war?"
"How high mounteth Hector on my grandfather's elm!" responded Cockburn, playfully, evading her question. "The fearless rogue will hang himself, and realize the prophecy of Merlin the wild, regarding our house--
'On Cockburn's elm, on Henderland lee, A Cockburn laird shall hangit be.'"
"God forfend!" ejaculated Marjory. "Hector, undo that cord, and descend. My ears ring with old Lailoken's prophetic rhyme, when I look on that swing. I shall have it removed."
"Ha ha!" cried Cockburn, laughing, and glad to get rid of the original topic. "Don't you know, Maudge, that my grandsire was a dabbler in prophetic visions; and, think ye, he would have been fool enough to plant and water, as he is said to have done, his descendant's wuddy? But I have a good mind to cut down the tree, and make Lailoken's prophecy a physical impossibility."
As Cockburn spoke, he cast his eye wistfully to the sky, as if he felt an anxiety as to the state of the weather, an act which did not escape the observation of his wife, on whom the allusion to Merlin's prophecy, generally current at that time, had produced an effect not remarkable at a period when this species of soothsaying still retained the credit it had acquired by the success of the poet of Ercildoun. At another time, her strong mind would not have acknowledged the power of the rhythmic ravings of a wandering maniac; but she had got some obscure hints of the wrath of the young King James V. against the Border chiefs; and the tender solicitude of a doting wife traced, by a process perhaps unknown to herself, some connection between Merlin's saying and the proof she now had of a concealed intention, on the part of Cockburn, to disregard all her efforts to reclaim him, by imbuing his mind with a perception of the pleasures of domestic happiness, from his old habits of rieving and fighting with his neighbours.