Again Lord Durie went
through his fruitless search, and then, feeling hungry, and having
suffered no visible ill effects from his first incautious draught of
small-beer, he ate and drank heartily. From the way in which the patch
of sunlight crept up the wall, it was easy to tell that the time was
evening. Could it indeed be that no more than twenty-four hours back he
had ridden, secure and free from this horrible care, along the shining
sands by the crisp salt wavelets of the Forth?
What was that voice that he now heard, thin and hollow, on the evening
air? "Far yaud! far yaud!" and then, with eldritch scream, "_Bauty_," it
cried. Such sounds, coming from he knew not where, fell disturbingly on
the unaccustomed ears of a seventeenth-century Judge of Session, and
Lord Durie's sleep that night was broken by grim dreams.
Day followed day, week pressed on the heels of week, and still never a
human face smiled on the unhappy judge. Each morning he found on his
little table a supply of food and drink, all good of their kind and
plenty--boiled beef or mutton, oaten cakes, pease bannocks, and always
the jack of small-beer--but never did he see human hand place them
there, never did human form cheer him by its presence.
The solitary confinement and the utter want of occupation told on a
nervous, somewhat highly strung temperament; and in the judge's mind
superstition began to hold unquestioned sway.
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