“Thou art stark mad!” cried the earl.  Then he went on, “Konrad, I have wronged thee deeply.  In my youth I loved one who neglected me as cruelly as thou hast been neglected, and since then a mischievous spirit of vengeance, as it were, has led me to make women my playthings, to be won and thrown aside.  I love thy spirit, Konrad.  If I could be thy friend——­”

“Never!” cried Konrad.  “I come not for friendship, but for justice to Anna!  Hast thou not wedded another after thine espousal of her?”

“Dost thou deem the mock blessing of yon mad hermit a spousal rite?” exclaimed the earl, laughing.

Konrad repressed his passion.

“I go to push my fortune with your turbulent border chiefs; and if, in the strife that will soon convulse this land, thou meetest Konrad of Salzberg, look well to thyself!”

“Go thy way, and God be with thee!” replied the earl.  “Thou art the first who hath bent a dark brow on a lord of Bothwell under his own roof-tree.”

Konrad returned to Anna, and in the ruined priory told her how Bothwell was false to her.  Anna’s grief was dreadful to behold.

“Anna,” said Konrad, after a pause, “Scotland hath a queen whose goodness of heart is revered in every land save her own.”

“True; and at her feet will I pour forth my sorrow and my tears together.”

So the two traversed the thickets around the priory, and reached the broad highway, which was to lead them at length to Edinburgh.

III.—­Mary Queen of Scots

But it was long ere Anna looked upon the face of the queen.  At the Red Lion Inn in Edinburgh her beauty struck the eye of the Earl of Morton, the factious, proud, and ferocious associate of Moray in all the dark intrigues of that craftiest of Scottish statesmen.  Morton promised that Anna should be entrusted to a lady of fair repute, and soon presented to the queen.  Konrad trusted him, little knowing that the repute of Dame Alison Craig, Anna’s new guardian, was anything but fair, and set forth for the Border.

It was to Sir John Elliot of Park that he offered the service of his sword, for it was against this turbulent borderer, who had just raided Northumberland, and threatened the peace of the two kingdoms, that Bothwell was advancing with the army of Queen Mary.  Now garrisoning some solitary peel-tower, now hiding in some unfathomed cavern, now issuing with uplifted lance from the haggs of some deep moss, Konrad engaged with ardour in every desperate foray, and his daring made him the idol of the wild spirits around him.  In every deed of arms one thought was in his mind—­to come within a lance-length of Bothwell.

Long and fierce was the struggle, but it ended as a fight so unequal was bound to end.  John of Park was slain, refusing with his dying breath to surrender, and Konrad was carried, a half-senseless captive to Bothwell’s castle of Hermitage.  Even then the earl spared his life.  He lay in a hideous den, in pitch darkness and dead silence broken only by the splash of drops of fetid water that fell from the slimy arch of the vault.