Chapter 3 - Page 2

place of refuge, were
presently obliged to disperse for their own safety, or to seek for
necessary subsistence; and the shepherd and his wife, whose poor
cottage she shared, were soon after deprived of the means of affording
their late mistress even that coarse sustenance which they had gladly
shared with her. Some of the English forayers had discovered and
driven off the few sheep which had escaped the first researches of
their avarice. Two cows shared the fate of the remnant of their stock;
they had afforded the family almost their sole support, and now famine
appeared to stare them in the face.

"We are broken and beggared now, out and out," said old Martin the
shepherd--and he wrung his hands in the bitterness of agony, "the
thieves, the harrying thieves I not a cloot left of the haill hirsel!"

"And to see poor Grizzle and Crumbie," said his wife, "turning back
their necks to the byre, and routing while the stony-hearted villains
were brogging them on wi' their lances!"

"There were but four of them," said Martin, "and I have seen the day
forty wad not have ventured this length. But our strength and manhood
is gane with our puir maister."

"For the sake of the holy rood, whisht, man," said the goodwife, "our
leddy is half gane already, as ye may see by that fleightering of the
ee-lid--a word mair and she's dead outright."

"I could almost wish," said Martin, "we were a' gane, for what to do
passes my puir wit. I care little for mysell, or you, Tibb,--we can
make a fend--work or want--we can do baith, but she can do neither."

They canvassed their situation thus openly before the lady, convinced
by the paleness of her look, her quivering lip, and dead-set eye, that
she neither heard nor understood what they were saying.

"There is a way," said the shepherd, "but I kenna if she could bring
her heart to it,--there's Simon Glendinning's widow of the glen
yonder, has had assurance from the Southern loons, and nae soldier to
steer them for one cause or other. Now, if the leddy could bow her
mind to take quarters with Elspeth Glendinning till better days cast
up, nae doubt it wad be doing an honour to the like of her, but----"

"An honour," answered Tibb, "ay, by my word, sic an honour as wad be
pride to her kin mony a lang year after her banes were in the mould.
Oh! gudeman, to hear ye even the Lady of Avenel to seeking quarters
wi' a Kirk-vassal's widow!"

"Loath should I be to wish her to it," said Martin; "but what may we
do?--to stay here is mere starvation; and where to go, I'm sure I ken
nae mair than ony tup I ever