Chapter the Thirty-Sixth.
He mounted himself on a coal-black steed,
And her on a freckled gray,
With a bugelet horn hung down from his side,
And roundly they rode away.
OLD BALLAD.
The influence of the free air, the rushing of the horses over high and
low, the ringing of the bridles, the excitation at once arising from a
sense of freedom and of rapid motion, gradually dispelled the confused
and dejected sort of stupefaction by which Queen Mary was at first
overwhelmed. She could not at last conceal the change of her feelings
to the person who rode at her rein, and who she doubted not was the
Father Ambrosius; for Seyton, with all the heady impetuosity of a
youth, proud, and justly so, of his first successful adventure,
assumed all the bustle and importance of commander of the little
party, which escorted, in the language of the time, the Fortune of
Scotland. He now led the van, now checked his bounding steed till the
rear had come up, exhorted the leaders to keep a steady, though rapid
pace, and commanded those who were hindmost of the party to use their
spurs, and allow no interval to take place in their line of march; and
anon he was beside the Queen, or her ladies, inquiring how they
brooked the hasty journey, and whether they had any commands for him.
But while Seyton thus busied himself in the general cause with some
advantage to the regular order of the march, and a good deal of
personal ostentation, the horseman who rode beside the Queen gave her
his full and undivided attention, as if he had been waiting upon some
superior being.
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