He sleeps, for a wager."
"Then bring the Queen," said the Abbot, "and I will call Henry
Seyton to assist them to the boat."
On tiptoe, with noiseless step and suppressed breath, trembling at
every rustle of their own apparel, one after another the fair
prisoners glided down the winding stair, under the guidance of Roland
Graeme, and were received at the wicket-gate by Henry Seyton and the
churchman. The former seemed instantly to take upon himself the whole
direction of the enterprise. "My Lord Abbot," he said, "give my
sister your arm--I will conduct the Queen--and that youth will have
the honour to guide Lady Fleming."
This was no time to dispute the arrangement, although it was not that
which Roland Graeme would have chosen. Catherine Seyton, who well knew
the garden path, tripped on before like a sylph, rather leading the
Abbot than receiving assistance--the Queen, her native spirit
prevailing over female fear, and a thousand painful reflections, moved
steadily forward, by the assistance of Henry Seyton--while the Lady
Fleming, encumbered with her fears and her helplessness Roland Graeme,
who followed in the rear, and who bore under the other arm a packet of
necessaries belonging to the Queen. The door of the garden, which
communicated with the shore of the islet, yielded to one of the keys
of which Roland had possessed himself, although not until he had tried
several,--a moment of anxious terror and expectation. The ladies were
then partly led, partly carried, to the side of the lake, where a boat
with six rowers attended them, the men couched along the bottom to
secure them from observation.
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