Chapter 16 - Page 2

endeavoring to decipher her meaning. All that was obvious to
his perception in the present journey, promised pleasure and novelty.
He rejoiced that he was travelling towards Edinburgh, in order to
assume the character of a man, and lay aside that of a boy. He was
delighted to think that he would have an opportunity of rejoining
Catherine Seyton, whose bright eyes and lively manners had made so
favourable an impression on his imagination; and, as an experienced,
yet high-spirited youth, entering for the first time upon active life,
his heart bounded at the thought, that he was about to see all those
scenes of courtly splendour and warlike adventures, of which the
followers of Sir Halbert used to boast on their occasional visits to
Avenel, to the wonderment and envy of those who, like Roland, knew
courts and camps only by hearsay, and were condemned to the solitary
sports and almost monastic seclusion of Avenel, surrounded by its
lonely lake, and embossed among its pathless mountains. "They shall
mention my name," he said to himself, "if the risk of my life can
purchase me opportunities of distinction, and Catherine Seyton's saucy
eye shall rest with more respect on the distinguished soldier, than
that with which she laughed to scorn the raw and inexperienced
page."--There was wanting but one accessary to complete the sense of
rapturous excitation, and he possessed it by being once more mounted
on the back of a fiery and active horse, instead of plodding along on
foot, as had been the case during the preceding days.

Impelled by the liveliness of his own spirits, which so many
circumstances tended naturally to exalt, Roland Graeme's voice and his
laughter were soon distinguished amid the trampling of the horses of
the retinue, and more than once attracted the attention of the leader,
who remarked with satisfaction, that the youth replied with
good-humoured raillery to such of the train as jested with him on his
dismissal and return to the service of the House of Avenel.

"I thought the holly-branch in your bonnet had been blighted, Master
Roland?" said one of the men-at-arms.

"Only pinched with half an hour's frost; you see it flourishes as
green as ever."

"It is too grave a plant to flourish on so hot a soil as that
headpiece of thine, Master Roland Graeme," retorted the other, who was
an old equerry of Sir Halbert Glendinning.

"If it will not flourish alone," said Roland, "I will mix it with the
laurel and the myrtle--and I will carry them so near the sky, that it
shall make amends for their stinted growth."

Thus speaking, he dashed his spurs into his horse's sides, and,
checking him at the same time,