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“‘Bethink how ye sware, by the salt and the bread,
By the lightning, the wind, and the rain,
That if ever of Christie’s Will I had need,
He would pay me my service again.'”

And Lord Traquair did not plead in vain. It was a little thing to do, Will thought, for one who had saved him from the gallows tree.

“‘O mony a time, my lord,’ he said,
‘I’ve stown the horse frae the sleeping loon;
But for you I’ll steal a beast as braid,
For I’ll steal Lord Durie frae Edinboro toon.'”

A light northerly breeze piped shrill through the long bent grass beyond Leith Links, sweeping thin and nippingly across shining sands left bare by a receding tide; down by the rippling water-line, as the sun of a late spring day neared his setting, clamouring gulls bickered noisily over the possession of some fishy dainty. Out from near-lying patches of whin, and from the low, wind-blown sand-hills, rabbits stole warily, nibbling the short herbage now and then, but ever with an air of suspicion and manifest unease, for behind a big clump of whin, during half the day there had lain hid a thick-set, powerfully built man.

“De’il tak’ the body!” he grumbled, sitting up and stretching himself as he glanced along the beach; “he’s lang o’ comin’.”

As he gazed, the sight of a distant horseman riding westward brought him sharply to his feet, and snatching up a long cloak that lay by his side, he walked leisurely through the yielding sand till he reached the firm beach within tide mark, along which the horseman was now quietly cantering.

“Ye’ll be Lord Durie, I’m thinkin’,” he cried, raising his hand to stay the rider, a middle-aged, legal-faced man, who sat his sober steed none too confidently, with thighs but lightly wed to the saddle.

“Yes, I’m Lord Durie. What can I do for you?”

“Weel, my lord, I’ve come far to see ye. They say there’s no’ a lawyer leevin’ or deid that kens mair nor you on a’ thing. It’s jist a bit plea that I’ve gotten,” said the man, laying a hand on the horse’s neck and sidling along close to his rider’s knee.

“For onny advice on kittle points o’ law, ye maun go to counsel, my friend. I’m a judge, no’ an advocate. Gude e’en to ye.”

“Ay, but, my lord,” said the man, laying a detaining left hand on the near rein, “it’s this way it is; ye see–” and at that, with a sudden powerful upward push of the unskilled rider’s leg, Lord Durie was hurled from the saddle and lay sprawling on his back on the wet sand, as the horse sprang forward with a startled bound.

“Goad’s sake! what’s this o’t?” cried the poor judge, already tangled in the folds of the long cloak, and struggling to rise. “Wad ye murder are o’ his Majesty’s judges!”

“Lie still, my lord, lie still! There’s no skaith will come to ye ‘gin ye but lie still. De’il’s i’ the body; wull the auld lurdane no hand sae!”

Of small avail were the judge’s struggles; as well might an infant struggle in the folds of a python. Ere even an elderly man’s scant breath was quite spent, he lay among the whins, bound hand and foot, trussed like a fowl, and with the upper part of his body and his head wrapped in the stifling folds of the great cloak.

That was the last of the outer world that Lord Durie knew or saw for many a long day. His horse, with muddied saddle, and broken reins trailing on the ground (muddied and broken, no doubt, by the horse rolling), was found next day grazing on the links. But of the judge, no trace. He might–as some, with the superstition of the day, were disposed to believe[1]–have been spirited away by a warlock; or, perhaps, even like Thomas the Rhymer, he had vanished into Fairyland. Tidings of him there were none. The flowing waters of the Forth had effectually wiped out his horse’s tracks along the shore, and during the night a rising wind had effaced the footsteps of his captor in the dry loose sand between tide-mark and links. Thus every trace of him was lost. His body, maybe, might have drifted out to sea; perhaps it lay now by the rocks of some lonely shore, or on the sands, with mouth a-wash and dead hands playing idly with the lapping water. Wife and family mourned as for one dead. And after the first nine days’ wonder, even in Parliament House and Law Courts, for lack of food speculation as to his fate languished and died. A successor filled his office.