And to see how gay he is! But these light lads
are as sure to be uppermost as the froth to be on the top of the
quart-pot--Your man of solid parts remains ever a falconer." So
saying, he went to aid his comrades, who had now come up in greater
numbers, to carry his master into the Castle of Crookstone.
Chapter the Thirty-Eighth.
My native land, good night!
BYRON.
Many a bitter tear was shed, during the hasty flight of Queen Mary,
over fallen hopes, future prospects, and slaughtered friends. The
deaths of the brave Douglas, and of the fiery but gallant young
Seyton, seemed to affect the Queen as much as the fall from the
throne, on which she had so nearly been again seated. Catherine Seyton
devoured in secret her own grief, anxious to support the broken
spirits of her mistress; and the Abbot, bending his troubled thoughts
upon futurity, endeavoured in vain to form some plan which had a
shadow of hope. The spirit of young Roland--for he also mingled in the
hasty debates held by the companions of the Queen's flight--continued
unchecked and unbroken.
"Your Majesty," he said, "has lost a battle--Your ancestor, Bruce,
lost seven successively, ere he sat triumphant on the Scottish throne,
and proclaimed with the voice of a victor, in the field of
Bannockburn, the independence of his country. Are not these heaths,
which we may traverse at will, better than the locked, guarded, and
lake-moated Castle of Lochleven?--We are free--in that one word
there is comfort for all our losses.
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