When he
embraced his wife at parting, he told her that as Douglas was only a
few miles distant, he should be at home again before the moon rose.
She passed the tedious hours of his absence with tranquillity, till the
appointed signal of his return appeared from behind the summits of the
opposite mountains. So bright were its beams, that Marion did not need
any other light to show her the stealing sands of her hour-glass, as
they numbered the prolonged hours of her husband's stay. She dismissed
her servants to their rest; all, excepting Halbert, the gray-haired
harper of Wallace; and he, like herself, was too unaccustomed to the
absence of his master to find sleep visit his eyes while Ellerslie was
bereft of its joy and its guard.
As the night advanced, Lady Wallace sat in the window of her
bed-chamber, which looked toward the west. She watched the winding
pathway that led from Lanark down the opposite heights, eager to catch
a glimpse of the waving plumes of her husband when he should emerge
from behind the hill, and pass under the thicket which overhung the
road. How often, as a cloud obscured for an instant the moon's light,
and threw a transitory shade across the path, did her heart bound with
the thought that her watching was at an end! It was he whom she had
seen start from the abrupt rock! They were the folds of his tartan
that darkened the white cliff! But the moon again rolled through her
train of clouds and threw her light around.
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