ark Thing in Wat Gordon's hand.

"GREAT GOD!" he shouted again, his eyes starting from their sockets, "IT
IS MINE OWN FATHER'S HEAD!"

And above us the fitful, flying winds nichered and laughed like mocking
fiends.

It was true. I that write, saw it plain. I held it in this very hand. It
was the head of Sir John of Lochinvar, against whom, in the last fray,
his own son had donned the war-gear. Grizzled, black, the snow cleaving
ghastly about the empty eye-holes, the thin beard still straggling
snow-clogged upon the chin--it was his own father's head that had fallen
at Walter Gordon's feet, and which he now held in his hand.

Then I remembered, with a shudder of apprehension, his own words so
lately spoken--"Heaven and hell shall not cause me to break my tryst
to-night."

Walter Gordon stood rooted there, dazed and dumb-foundered, with the
Thing in his hand. His fine lace ruffles touched it as the wind blew
them.

I plucked at him.

"Come," I said, "haste you! Let us bury it in the Holyrood ere the moon
goes down."

Thus he who boasted himself free of heaven and hell, had his tryst
broken by the Thing that fell from the ghastly gate on which the
traitors' heads are set in a row. And that Thing was the head of the
father that begat him.

CHAPTER XV.

THE BICKER IN THE SNOW.

Then, seeing Walter Gordon both agitated and uncertain which way to
turn, I took out of his shaking hands the poor mishandled head, wrapping
it in my plaid, and so led the way down the Canongate towards the
kirkyard of the Chapel of Holyroodhouse, where it seemed to me most safe
to bury the Thing that had fallen in such marvellous fashion at our feet
that night.

The place I knew well enough. I had often meditated there upon the poor
estate of our house. It was half ruinous, and I looked to meet with no
man within the precincts on such a night. But short, deceiving, and
ostrich-blind are all our hopes, for by going that way I brought us into
the greatest danger we could possibly have been in.

For, as we came by the side port of Holyroodhouse, and took the left
wynd which leads to the kirkyard, it seemed that I heard the sound of
footsteps coming after me. It was still a night of snow, but the blast
of flakes was wearing thinner and the wind less gusty. The moon was
wading among great white-edged wreaths as though the snows had been
driven right up to heaven and were clogging the skies.

It was I who led, for my cousin, Wat