Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/57

Rh ridden noble deeds have been achieved by common hands, while the gentle and the far-descended have sat apart, nor soiled their swords. I neither say I am of a race churlish nor noble, but my sword is as sharp as other men's, and might do thee a friendly deed were it nigh thee in danger.' 'Now, God help us,' said the dame of Wilton Hall, 'what will old England become? Here's young Wat Selby debating lineage and blood with a packman churl. In good truth, if I had but one drop of gentle blood in my veins, I would wrap him up in his own plaid, and beat him to death with his ellwand, which I'll warrant is a full thumb-breadth short of measure.' I stood looking on Walter Selby and on the stranger; the former standing aloof with a look of haughty determination; and the latter, with an aspect of calm and intrepid resolution, enduring the scoff of the hot-headed youth and the scorn of the vulgar matron.

"It might be now about nine o'clock: the air was balmy and mute, the sky blue and unclouded, and the moon, yet unrisen, had sent as much of her light before her as served, with the innumerable stars, to lighten the earth from the summit of the mountains to the deepest vales. I never looked upon a more lovely night, and gladly turned my face from the idle disputants to the green mountain-side, upon which that forerunner gleam which precedes the moon had begun to scatter its light. While I continued gazing, there appeared a sight on Soutra Fellside, strange, ominous, and obscure to many, at that time, but which was soon after explained in desolation and in blood. I saw all at once a body of horsemen coming swiftly down the steep and impassable side of the mountain, where no earthly horse ever rode. They amounted to many hundreds, and trooped onwards in succession, their helmets gleaming and their drawn swords shining amid the starlight. On beholding this vision I uttered a faint scream, and Walter Selby, who was always less or more than other men, shouted till the mountain echoed: 'Saw ever man so gallant a sight? A thousand steeds and riders on the perpendicular side of old Soutra—see, where they gallop along a linn, where I could hardly fly a hawk! Oh! for a horse with so sure and so swift a foot as these, that I might match me with this elfin chivalry! My wanton brown, which can bound across the Derwent like a bird with me on its back, is but a packhorse to one of these.' Alarm was visible in every face around,