"What would the knowledge have availed, but to have rendered you
unhappy, my love?" replied the Knight; "your thoughts would have
converted the slightest breeze that curled your own lake, into a
tempest raging in the German ocean."

"And have you then really crossed the sea?" said the Lady, to whom the
very idea of an element which she had never seen conveyed notions of
terror and of wonder,--"really left your own native land, and trodden
distant shores, where the Scottish tongue is unheard and unknown?"

"Really, and really," said the Knight, taking her hand in affectionate
playfulness, "I have done this marvellous deed--have rolled on the
ocean for three days and three nights, with the deep green waves
dashing by the side of my pillow, and but a thin plank to divide me
from it."

"Indeed, my Halbert," said the Lady, "that was a tempting of Divine
Providence. I never bade you unbuckle the sword from your side, or lay
the lance from your hand--I never bade you sit still when your honour
called you to rise and ride; but are not blade and spear dangers
enough for one man's life, and why would you trust rough waves and
raging seas?"

"We have in Germany, and in the Low Countries, as they are called,"
answered Glendinning, "men who are united with us in faith, and with
whom it is fitting we should unite in alliance. To some of these I was
despatched on business as important as it was secret. I went in
safety, and I returned in security; there is more danger to a man's
life betwixt this and Holyrood, than are in all the seas that wash the
lowlands of Holland."