"
"Tak' up your bonny bridegroom!" she screamed, with hysterical laughter,
and pointed mockingly at what seemed to be the corpse of young Baldoon.
Sick in body she was, as well as sick in mind, and on September 12th,
1669, a little over a fortnight from the day she was married, the Bride
of Baldoon died.
David Dunbar of Baldoon recovered from his wounds, but during the
thirteen years that remained for him to live, he declined to help the
curious to elucidate the mystery of his attempted murder. In the words
of Sir Walter Scott: "If a lady, he said, asked him any question upon
the subject, he would neither answer her nor speak to her again while he
lived; if a gentleman, he would consider it as a mortal affront, and
demand satisfaction as having received such."
Many, of course, were the explanations given by the general public as to
the real happenings on that tragic wedding-night. The majority inclined
to think that the bride herself, crazed by grief at the loss of her
lover, tried to kill her husband rather than be his wife in anything
save legal formality. Others swore that the assailant was none other
than the discarded lover, and that Lord Rutherfurd, having left Baldoon
for dead, had escaped by the chimney where the unfortunate bride was
crouching.
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