For a time the lady was unconscious of her misery; but
when the first stunning effect of grief was so far passed away that
she could form an estimate of her own situation, the widow of Avenel
had cause to envy the lot of her husband in his dark and silent abode.
The domestics who had guided her to her place of refuge, were
presently obliged to disperse for their own safety, or to seek for
necessary subsistence; and the shepherd and his wife, whose poor
cottage she shared, were soon after deprived of the means of affording
their late mistress even that coarse sustenance which they had gladly
shared with her. Some of the English forayers had discovered and
driven off the few sheep which had escaped the first researches of
their avarice. Two cows shared the fate of the remnant of their stock;
they had afforded the family almost their sole support, and now famine
appeared to stare them in the face.
"We are broken and beggared now, out and out," said old Martin the
shepherd--and he wrung his hands in the bitterness of agony, "the
thieves, the harrying thieves I not a cloot left of the haill hirsel!"
"And to see poor Grizzle and Crumbie," said his wife, "turning back
their necks to the byre, and routing while the stony-hearted villains
were brogging them on wi' their lances!"
"There were but four of them," said Martin, "and I have seen the day
forty wad not have ventured this length.
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