Bride of Lammermoor
by Walter Scott
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by Sir Walter Scott

INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR

THE Author, on a former occasion, declined giving the real source
from which he drew the tragic subject of this history, because,
though occurring at a distant period, it might possibly be
unpleasing to the feelings of the descendants of the parties.
But as he finds an account of the circumstances given in the
Notes to Law's Memorials, by his ingenious friend, Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., and also indicated in his reprint of
the Rev. Mr. Symson's poems appended to the Large Description of
Galloway, as the original of the Bride of Lammermoor, the
Author feels himself now at liberty to tell the tale as he had it
from  connexions of his own, who lived very near the period, and
were closely related to the family of the bride.

It is well known that the family of Dalrymple, which has
produced, within the space of two centuries, as many men of
talent, civil and military, and of literary, political, and
professional eminence, as any house in Scotland, first rose into
distinction in the person of James Dalrymple, one of the most
eminent lawyers that  ever lived, though the labours of his
powerful mind were unhappily exercised on a subject so limited as
Scottish jurisprudence, on which he has composed an admirable
work.

He married Margaret, daughter to Ross of Balneel, with whom he
obtained a considerable estate. She was an able, politic, and
high-minded woman, so successful in what she undertook, that the
vulgar, no way partial to her husband or her family, imputed her
success to necromancy. According to the popular belief, this
Dame Margaret purchased the temporal prosperity of her family
from the Master whom she served under a singular condition, which
is thus narrated by the historian of her grandson, the great Earl
of Stair: "She lived to a great age, and at her death desired
that she might not be put under ground, but that her coffin
should stand upright on one end of it, promising that while she
remained in that situation the Dalrymples should continue to
flourish. What was the old lady's motive for the request, or
whether she really made such a promise, I shall not take upon me
to determine; but it's certain her coffin stands upright in the
isle of the church of Kirklistown, the burial-place belonging to
the family."  The talents of this accomplished race were
suifficient to have accounted for the dignities which many
members of the family attained, without any supernatural
assistance. But their extraordinary prosperity was attended by
some equally singular family misfortunes, of which that which
befell their eldest daughter was at once unaccountable and
melancholy.

Miss Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair and Dame
Margaret Ross, had engaged herself without the knowledge of her
parents to the Lord Rutherford, who was not acceptable to them
either on account of his political principles or his want of
fortune. The young couple broke a piece of gold together, and
pledged their troth in the most solemn manner; and it is said the
young lady imprecated dreadful evils on herself should she break
her plighted faith. Shortly after, a suitor who was favoured by
Lord Stair, and still more so by his lady, paid his addresses to
Miss Dalrymple. The young lady refused the proposal, and being
pressed on the subject, confessed her secret engagement. Lady
Stair, a woman accustomed to universal submission, for even her
husband did not dare to contradict her, treated this objection as
a trifle, and insisted upon her daughter yielding her consent to
marry the new suitor, David Dunbar, son and heir to David Dunbar
of Baldoon, in Wigtonshire. The first lover, a man of very high
spirit, then interfered by letter, and insisted on the right he
had acquired by his troth plighted with the young lady. Lady
Stair sent him for answer, that her daughter, sensible of her
undutiful behaviour in entering into a contract unsanctioned by
her parents, had retracted her unlawful vow, and now refused to
fulfil her engagement with him.

The lover, in return, declined positively to receive such an
answer from any one but his mistress in person; and as she had to
deal with a man who was both of a most determined character and
of too high condition to be trifled with, Lady Stair was obliged
to consent to an interview between Lord Rutherford and her
daughter. But she took care to be present in person, and argued
the point with the disappointed and incensed lover with
pertinacity equal to his own. She particularly insisted on the
Levitical law, which declares that a woman shall be free of a vow
which her parents dissent from. This is the passage of Scripture
she founded on:

"If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his
soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do
according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.

"If a woman also vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a
bond, being in her father's house in her youth;
"And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath
bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her: then
all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath
bound her soul shall stand.

"But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not
any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her
soul, shall stand: and the Lord shall forgive her, because her
father disallowed her."--Numbers xxx. 2-5.

While the mother insisted on these topics, the lover in vain
conjured the daughter to declare her own opinion and feelings.
She remained totally overwhelmed, as it seemed--mute, pale, and
motionless as a statue. Only at her mother's command, sternly
uttered, she summoned strength enough to restore to her plighted
suitor the piece of broken gold which was the emblem of her
troth. On this he burst forth into a tremendous passion, took
leave of the mother with maledictions, and as he left the
apartment, turned back to say to his weak, if not fickle,
mistresss: "For you, madam, you will be a world's wonder"; a
phrase by which some remarkable degree of calamity is usually
implied. He went abroad, and returned not again. If the last
Lord Rutherford was the unfortunate party, he must have been the
third who bore that title, and who died in 1685.

The marriage betwixt Janet Dalrymple  and David Dunbar of
Baldoon now went forward, the bride showing no repugnance, but
being absolutely passive in everything her mother commanded or
advised. On the day of the marriage, which, as was then usual,
was celebrated by  a great assemblage of friends and relations,
she was the same--sad, silent, and resigned, as it seemed, to her
destiny. A lady, very nearly connected with the family, told the
Author that she had conversed on the subject with one of the
brothers of the bride, a mere lad at the time, who had ridden
before his sister to church. He said her hand, which lay on his
as she held her arm around his waist, was as cold and damp as
marble. But, full of his new dress and the part he acted in the
procession, the circumstance, which he long afterwards remembered
with bitter sorrow and compunction, made no impression on him at
the time.

The bridal feast was followed by dancing. The bride and
bridegroom retired as usual, when of a sudden the most wild and
piercing cries were heard from the nuptial chamber. It was then
the custom, to prevent any coarse pleasantry which old times
perhaps admitted, that the key of the nuptial chamber should be
entrusted to the bridesman. He was called  upon, but refused at
first to give it up, till the shrieks became so hideous that he
was compelled to hasten with others to learn the cause. On
opening the door, they found the bridegroom lying across the
threshold, dreadfully wounded, and streaming with blood. The
bride was then sought for. She was found in the corner of the
large chimney, having no covering save her shift, and that
dabbled in gore. There she sat grinning at them, mopping and
mowing, as I heard the expression used; in a word, absolutely
insane. The only words she spoke were, "Tak up your bonny
bridegroom."  She survived this horrible scene little more than a
fortnight, having been married on the 24th of August, and dying
on the 12th of September 1669.

The unfortunate Baldoon recovered from his wounds, but sternly
prohibited all inquiries respecting the manner in which he had
received them. "If a lady," he said, "asked him any question
upon the subject, he would neither answer her nor speak to her
again while he lived; if a gentleman, he would consider it as a
mortal affront, and demand satisfaction as having received
such."  He did not very long survive the dreadful catastrophe,
having met with a fatal injury by a fall from his horse, as he
rode between Leith and Holyrood House, of which he died the next
day, 28th March 1682. Thus a few years removed all the principal
actors in this frightful tragedy.

Various reports went abroad on this mysterious affair, many of
them very inaccurate, though they could hardly be said to be
exaggerated. It was difficult at that time to become acquainted
with the history of a Scottish family above the lower rank; and
strange things sometimes took place there, into which even the
law did not scrupulously inquire.

The credulous Mr. Law says, generally, that the Lord
President Stair had a daughter, who, "being married, the night
she was bride in, was taken from her bridegroom and harled
through the house (by spirits, we are given to understand) and
afterward died. Another daughter," he says, "was supposed to be
possessed with an evil spirit."

My friend, Mr. Sharpe, gives another edition of the tale.
According to his information, ti was the bridegroom who wounded
the bride. The marriage, according to this account, had been
against her mother's inclination, who had given her consent in
these ominous words: "Weel, you may marry him, but sair shall
you repent it."

I find still another account darkly insinuated in some highly
scurrilous and abusive verses, of which I have an original copy.
They are docketed as being written "Upon the late Viscount Stair
and his family, by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The
marginals by William Dunlop, writer in Edinburgh, a son of the
Laird of Househill, and nephew to the said Sir William
Hamilton."  There was a bitter and personal quarrel and rivalry
betwixt the author of this libel, a name which it richly
deserves, and Lord President Stair; and the lampoon, which is
written with much more malice than art, bears the following
motto:

Stair's neck, mind, wife, songs, grandson, and the rest,
Are wry, false, witch, pests, parricide, possessed.

This malignant satirist, who calls up all the misfortunes of the
family, does not forget the fatal bridal of Baldoon. He seems,
though his verses are as obscure as unpoetical, to
intimate that the violence done to the bridegroom was by the
intervention of the foul fiend, to whom the young lady had
resigned herself, in case she should break her contract with her
first lover. His hypothesis is inconsistent with the account
given in the note upon Law's Memorials, but easily
reconcilable to the family tradition.

In all Stair's offspriung we no difference know,
They do the females as the males bestow;
So he of one of his daughters' marriages gave the ward,
Like a true vassal, to Glenluce's Laird;
He knew what she did to her master plight,
If she her faith to Rutherfurd should slight,
Which, like his own, for greed he broke outright.
Nick did Baldoon's posterior right deride,
And, as first substitute, did seize the bride;
Whate'er he to his mistress did or said,
He threw the bridegroom from the nuptial bed,
Into the chimney did so his rival maul,
His bruised bones ne'er were cured but by the fall.

One of the marginal notes ascribed to William Dunlop
applies to the above lines. "She had betrothed herself to Lord
Rutherfoord under horrid imprecations, and afterwards married
Baldoon, his nevoy, and her mother was the cause of her breach of
faith."

The same tragedy is alluded to in the following couplet and
note:

What train of curses that base brood pursues,
When the young nephew weds old uncle's spouse.

The note on the word "uncle" explains it as meaning
"Rutherfoord, who should have married the Lady Baldoon, was
Baldoon's uncle."  The poetry of this satire on Lord Stair and
his family was, as already noticed, written by Sir William
Hamilton of Whitelaw, a rival of Lord Stair for the situation of
President of the Court of Session; a person much inferior to that
great lawyer in talents, and equally ill-treated by the calumny
or just satire of his contemporaries as an unjust and partial
judge. Some of the notes are by that curious and laborious
antiquary, Robert Milne, who, as a virulent Jacobite, willingly
lent a hand to blacken the family of Stair.

Another poet of the period, with a very different purpose, has
left an elegy, in which he darkly hints at and bemoans the fate
of the ill-starred young person, whose very uncommon
calamity Whitelaw, Dunlop, and Milne thought a fitting subject
for buffoonery and ribaldry. This bard of milder mood was Andrew
Symson, before the Revolution minister of Kirkinner, in
Galloway, and after his expulsion as an Episcopalian following
the humble occupation of a printer in Edinburgh. He furnished
the family of Baldoon, with which he appears to have been
intimate, with an elegy on the tragic event in their family.  In
this piece he treats the mournful occasion of the bride's death
with mysterious solemnity.

The verses bear this title, "On the unexpected death of the
virtuous Lady Mrs. Janet Dalrymple, Lady Baldoon, younger," and
afford us the precise dates of the catastrophe, which could not
otherwise have been easily ascertained. "Nupta August 12.
Domum Ducta August 24. Obiit September 12. Sepult. September
30, 1669."  The form of the elegy is a dialogue betwixt a
passenger and a domestic servant. The first, recollecting that
he had passed that way lately, and seen all around enlivened by
the appearances of mirth and festivity, is desirous to know what
had changed so gay a scene into mourning. We preserve the reply
of the servant as a specimen of Mr. Symson's verses, which are
not of the first quality:

Sir, 'tis truth you've told.
We did enjoy great mirth; but now, ah me!
Our joyful song's turn'd to an elegie.
A virtuous lady, not long since a bride,
Was to a hopeful plant by marriage tied,
And brought home hither. We did all rejoice,
Even for her sake. But presently our voice
Was turn'd to mourning for that little time
That she'd enjoy: she waned in her prime,
For Atropus, with her impartial knife,
Soon cut her thread, and therewithal her life;
And for the time we may it well remember,
It being in unfortunate September;
.                  .                      .
Where we must leave her till the resurrection.
'Tis then the Saints enjoy their full perfection.

Mr. Symson also poured forth his elegiac strains upon the fate
of the widowed bridegroom, on which subject, after a long and
querulous effusion, the poet arrives at the sound conclusion,
that if Baldoon had walked on foot, which it seems was his
general custom, he would have escaped perishing by a fall from
horseback. As the work in which it occurs is so scarce as almost
to be unique, and as it gives us the most full account of one of
the actors in this tragic tale which we have rehearsed, we will,
at the risk of being tedious, insert some short specimens of Mr.
Symson's composition. It is entitled:

"A Funeral Elegie, occasioned by the sad and much lamented death
of that worthily respected, and very much accomplished
gentleman, David Dunbar, younger, of Baldoon, only son and
apparent heir to the right worshipful Sir David Dunbar of
Baldoon, Knight Baronet. He departed this life on March 28,
1682, having received a bruise by a fall, as he was riding the
day preceding betwixt Leith and Holyrood House; and was
honourably interred in the Abbey Church of Holyrood House, on
April 4, 1682."

Men might, and very justly too, conclude
Me guilty of the worst ingratitude,
Should I be silent, or should I forbear
At this sad accident to shed a tear;
A tear! said I? ah! that's a petit thing,
A very lean, slight, slender offering,
Too mean, I'm sure, for me, wherewith t'attend
The unexpected funeral of my friend:
A glass of briny tears charged up to th' brim.
Would be too few for me to shed for him.

The poet proceeds to state his intimacy with the deceased, and
the constancy of the young man's attendance on public
worship, which was regular, and had such effect upon two or three
other that were influenced by his example:

So that my Muse 'gainst Priscian avers,
He, only he, WERE my parishioners;
Yea, and my only hearers.

He then describes the deceased in person and manners, from which
it appears that more accomplishments were expected in the
composition of a fine gentleman in ancient than modern times:

His body, though not very large or tall,
Was sprightly, active, yea and strong withal.
His constitution was, if right I've guess'd,
Blood mixt with choler, said to be the best.
In's gesture, converse, speech, discourse, attire,
He practis'd that which wise men still admire,
Commend, and recommend. What's that? you'll say.
'Tis this: he ever choos'd the middle way
'Twixt both th' extremes. Amost in ev'ry thing
He did the like, 'tis worth our noticing:
Sparing, yet not a niggard; liberal,
And yet not lavish or a prodigal,
As knowing when to spend and when to spare;
And that's a lesson which not many are
Acquainted with. He bashful was, yet daring
When he saw cause, and yet therein not sparing;
Familiar, yet not common, for he knew
To condescend, and keep his distance too.
He us'd, and that most commonly, to go
On foot; I wish that he had still done so.
Th' affairs of court were unto him well known;
And yet meanwhile he slighted not his own.
He knew full well how to behave at court,
And yet but seldom did thereto resort;
But lov'd the country life, choos'd to inure
Himself to past'rage and agriculture;
Proving, improving, ditching, trenching, draining,
Viewing, reviewing, and by those means gaining;
Planting, transplanting, levelling, erecting
Walls, chambers, houses, terraces; projecting
Now this, now that device, this draught, that measure,
That might advance his profit with his pleasure.
Quick in his bargains, honest in commerce,
Just in his dealings, being much adverse
From quirks of law, still ready to refer
His cause t' an honest country arbiter.
He was acquainted with cosmography,
Arithmetic, and modern history;
With architecture and such arts as these,
Which I may call specifick sciences
Fit for a gentleman; and surely he
That knows them not, at least in some degree,
May brook the title, but he wants the thing,
Is but a shadow scarce worth noticing.
He learned the French, be't spoken to his praise,
In very little more than fourty days."

Then comes the full burst of woe, in which, instead of saying
much himself, the poet informs us what the ancients would have
said on such an occasion:

A heathen poet, at the news, no doubt,
Would have exclaimed, and furiously cry'd out
Against the fates, the destinies and starrs,
What! this the effect of planetarie warrs!
We might have seen him rage and rave, yea worse,
'Tis very like we might have heard him curse
The year, the month, the day, the hour, the place,
The company, the wager, and the race;
Decry all recreations, with the names
Of Isthmian, Pythian, and Olympick games;
Exclaim against them all both old and new,
Both the Nemaean and the Lethaean too:
Adjudge all persons, under highest pain,
Always to walk on foot, and then again
Order all horses to be hough'd, that we
Might never more the like adventure see.

Supposing our readers have had enough of Mr. Symson's woe, and
finding nothing more in his poem worthy of transcription, we
return to the tragic story.

It is needless to point out to the intelligent reader that the
witchcraft of the mother consisted only in the ascendency of a
powerful mind over a weak and melancholy one, adn that the
harshness with which she exercised her superiority in a case of
delicacy had driven her daughter first to despair, then to
frenzy. Accordingly, the Author has endeavoured to explain the
tragic tale on this principle. Whatever resemblance Lady Ashton
may be supposed to possess to the celebrated Dame Margaret Ross,
the reader must not suppose that there was any idea of tracing
the portrait of the first Lord Viscount Stair in the tricky and
mean-spirited Sir William Ashton. Lord Stair, whatever might be
his moral qualities, was certainly one of the first statesmen and
lawyers of his age.

The imaginary castle of Wolf's Crag has been identified by some
lover of locality with that of Fast Castle. The Author is not
competent to judge of the resemblance betwixt the real and
imaginary scenes, having never seen Fast Castle except from the
sea. But fortalices of this description are found occupying,
like ospreys' nests, projecting rocks, or promontories, in many
parts of the eastern coast of Scotland, and the position of Fast
Castle seems certainly to resemble that of Wolf's Crag as much as
any other, while its vicinity to the mountain ridge of Lammermoor
renders the assimilation a probable one.

We have only to add, that the death of the unfortunate
bridegroom by a fall from horseback has been in the novel
transferred to the no less unfortunate lover.

CHAPTER I

By Cauk and keel to win your bread,
Wi' whigmaleeries for them wha need,
Whilk is a gentle trade indeed
To carry the gaberlunzie on.

Old Song.

FEW have been in my secret while I was compiling these
narratives, nor is it probable that they will ever become public
during the life of their author. Even were that event to happen,
I am not ambitious of the honoured distinction, digito
monstrari.  I confess that, were it safe to cherish such dreams
at all, I should more enjoy the thought of remaining behind the
curtain unseen, like the ingenious manager of Punch and his wife
Joan, and enjoying the astonishment and conjectures of my
audience. Then might I, perchance, hear the productions of the
obscure Peter Pattieson praised by the judicious and admired by
the feeling, engrossing the young and attracting even the old;
while the critic traced their fame up to some name of literary
celebrity, and the question when, and by whom, these tales were
written filled up the pause of conversation in a hundred circles
and coteries. This I may never enjoy during my lifetime; but
farther than this, I am certain, my vanity should never induce me
to aspire.

I am too stubborn in habits, and too little polished in manners,
to envy or aspire to the honours assigned to my literary
contemporaries. I could not think a whit more highly of myself
were I found worthy to "come in place as a lion" for a winter in
the great metropolis. I could not rise, turn round, and show all
my honours, from the shaggy mane to the tufted tail, "roar you
an't were any nightingale," and so lie down again like a well-
behaved  beast of show, and all at the cheap and easy rate of a
cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter as thin as a wafer.
And I could ill stomach the fulsome flattery with which the lady
of the evening indulges her show-monsters on such occasions, as
she crams her parrots with sugar-plums, in order to make them
talk before company. I cannot be tempted to "come aloft" for
these marks of distinction, and, like imprisoned Samson, I would
rather remain--if such must be the alternative--all my life in
the mill-house, grinding for my very bread, than be brought forth
to make sport for the Philistine lords and ladies. This proceeds
from no dislike, real or affected, to the aristocracy of these
realms. But they have their place, and I have mine; and, like
the iron and earthen vessels in the old fable, we can scarce come
into collision without my being the sufferer in every sense. It
may be otherwise with the sheets which I am now writing. These
may be opened and laid aside at pleasure; by amusing themselves
with the perusal, the great will excite no false hopes; by
neglecting or condemning them, they will inflict no pain; and how
seldom can they converse with those whose minds have toiled for
their delight without doing either the one or the other.

In the better and wiser tone of feeling with Ovid only expresses
in one line to retract in that which follows, I can address these
quires--

Parve, nec invideo, sine me, liber, ibis in urbem.

Nor do I join the regret of the illustrious exile, that he
himself could not in person accompany the volume, which he sent
forth to the mart of literature, pleasure, and luxury. Were
there not a hundred similar instances on record, the rate of my
poor friend and school-fellow, Dick Tinto, would  be sufficient
to warn me against seeking happiness in the celebrity which
attaches itself to a successful cultivator of the fine arts.

Dick Tinto, when he wrote himself artist, was wont to derive his
origin from the ancient family of Tinto, of that ilk, in
Lanarkshire, and occasionally hinted that he had somewhat
derogated from his gentle blood in using the pencil for his
principal  means of support. But if Dick's pedigree  was
correct, some of his ancestors must have suffered a more heavy
declension, since the good man his father executed the necessary,
and, I trust, the honest, but certainly not very distinguished,
employment of tailor in ordinary to the village of Langdirdum in
the west.. Under his humble roof was Richard born, and to his
father's humble trade was Richard, greatly contrary to his
inclination, early indentured. Old Mr. Tinto had, however, no
reason to congratulate himself upon having compelled the youthful
genius of his son to forsake its natural bent. He fared like the
school-boy who attempts to stop with his finger the spout of a
water cistern, while the stream, exasperated at this compression,
escapes by a thousand uncalculated spurts, and wets him all over
for his pains. Even so fared the senior Tinto, when his hopeful
apprentice not only exhausted all the chalk in making sketches
upon the shopboard, but even executed several caricatures of his
father's best customers, who began loudly to murmur, that it was
too hard to have their persons deformed by the vestments of the
father, and to be at the same time turned into ridicule by the
pencil of the son. This led to discredit and loss of practice,
until the old tailor, yielding to destiny and to the entreaties
of  his son, permitted him to attempt his fortune in a line for
which he was better qualified.

There was about this time, in the village of Langdirdum, a
peripatetic brother of the brush, who exercised his vocation sub
Jove frigido, the object of admiration of all the boys of the
village, but especially to Dick Tinto. The age had not yet
adopted, amongst other unworthy retrenchments, that illiberal
measure of economy which, supplying by written characters the
lack of symbolical representation, closes one open and easily
accessible avenue of instruction and emolument against the
students of the fine arts. It was not yet permitted to write
upon the plastered doorway of an alehouse,. or the suspended sign
of an inn, "The Old Magpie," or "The Saracen's Head,"
substituting that cold description for the lively effigies of the
plumed chatterer, or the turban'd frown of the terrific soldan.
That early and more simple age considered alike the necessities
of all ranks, anddepicted the symbols of good cheer so as to be
obvious to all capacities; well judging that a man who could not
read a syllable might nevertheless love a pot of good ale as well
as his better-educated neighbours, or even as the parson himself.
Acting upon this liberal principle, publicans as yet hung forth
the painted emblems of their calling, and sign-painters, if they
seldom feasted, did not at least absolutely starve.

To a worthy of this decayed profession, as we have already
intimated, Dick Tinto became an assistant; and thus, as is not
unusual among heaven-born geniuses in this department of the
fine arts, began to paint before he had any notion of drawing.

His talent for observing nature soon induced him to rectify the
errors, adn soar above the instructions, of his teacher. He
particularly shone in painting horses, that being a favourite
sign in the Scottish villages; and, in tracing his progress, it
is beautiful to observe how by degrees he learned to shorten the
backs and prolong the legs of these noble animals, until they
came to look less like crocodiles, and more like nags.
Detraction, which always pursues merit with strides proportioned
to its advancement, has indeed alleged that Dick once upon a time
painted a horse with five legs, instead of four. I might have
rested his defence upon the license allowed to that branch of his
profession, which, as it permits all sorts of singular and
irregular combinations, may be allowed to extend itself so far as
to bestow a limb supernumerary on a favourite subject. But the
cause of a deceased friend is sacred; and I disdain to bottom it
so superficially. I have visited the sign in question, which yet
swings exalted in the village of Langdirdum; and I am ready to
depone upon the oath that what has been idly mistaken or
misrepresented as being the fifth leg of the horse, is, in fact,
the tail of that quadruped, and, considered with reference to the
posture in which he is delineated, forms a circumstance
introduced and managed with great and successful, though daring,
art. The nag being represented in a rampant or rearing posture,
the tail, which is prolonged till it touches the ground, appears
to form a point d'appui, and gives the firmness of a tripod to
the figure, without which it would be difficult to conceive,
placed as the feet are, how the courser could maintain his ground
without tumbling backwards. This bold conception has fortunately
fallen into the custody of one by whom it is duly valued; for,
when Dick, in his more advanced state of proficiency, became
dubious of the propriety of so daring a deviation to execute a
picture of the publican himself in exchange for this juvenile
production, the courteous offer was declined by his judicious
employer, who had observed, it seems, that when his ale failed to
do its duty in conciliating his guests, one glance at his sign
was sure to put them in good humour.

It would be foreign to my present purpose to trace the steps by
which Dick Tinto improved his touch, and corrected, by the rules
of art, the luxuriance of a fervid imagination. The scales fell
from his eyes on viewing the sketches of a contemporary, the
Scottish Teniers, as Wilkie has been deservedly styled. He threw
down the brush. took up the crayons, and, amid hunger and toil,
and suspense and uncertainty, pursued the path of his profession
under better auspices than those of his original master. Still
the first rude emanations of his genius, like the nursery rhymes
of Pope, could these be recovered, will be dear to the companions
of Dick Tinto's youth. There is a tankard and gridiron painted
over the door of an obscure change-house in the Back Wynd of
Gandercleugh----But I feel I must tear myself from the subject,
or dwell on it too long.

Amid his wants and struggles, Dick Tinto had recourse, like his
brethren, to levying that tax upon the vanity of mankind which he
could not extract from their taste and liberality--on a word, he
painted portraits. It was in this more advanced state of
proficiency, when Dick had soared above his original line of
business, and highly disdained any allusion to it, that, after
having been estranged for several years, we again met in the
village of Gandercleugh, I holding my present situation, and Dick
painting copies of the human face divine at a guinea per head.
This was a small premium, yet, in the first burst of business, it
more than sufficed for all Dick's moderate wants; so that he
occupied an apartment at the Wallace Inn, cracked his jest with
impunity even upon mine host himself, and lived in respect and
observance with the chambermaid, hostler, and waiter.

Those halcyon days were too serene to last long. When his
honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, with his wife and three
daughters, the minister, the gauger, mine esteemed patron Mr.
Jedediah Cleishbotham, and some round dozen of the feuars and
farmers, had been consigned to immortality by Tinto's brush,
custom began to slacken, and it was impossible to wring more
than crowns and half-crowns from the hard hands of the peasants
whose ambition led them to Dick's painting-room.

Still, though the horizon was overclouded, no storm for some
time ensued. Mine host had Christian faith with a lodger who had
been a good paymaster as long as he had the means. And from a
portrait of our landlord himself, grouped with his wife and
daughters, in the style of Rubens, which suddenly appeared in the
best parlour, it was evident that Dick had found some mode of
bartering art for the necessaries of life.

Nothing, however, is more precarious than resources of this
nature. It was observed that Dick became in his turn the
whetstone of mine host's wit, without venturing either at defence
or retaliation; that his easel was transferred to a garret0room,
in which there was scarce space for it to stand upright; and that
he no longer ventured to join the weekly club, of which he had
been once the life and soul. In short, Dick Tinto's friends
feared that he had acted like the animal called the sloth, which,
heaving eaten up the last green leaf upon the tree where it has
established itself, ends by tumbling down from the top, and dying
of inanition. I ventured to hint this to Dick, recommended his
transferring the exercise of his inestimable talent to some other
sphere, and forsaking the common which he might be said to have
eaten bare.

"There is an obstacle to my change of residence," said my
friend, grasping my hand with a look of solemnity.

"A bill due to my landlord, I am afraid?" replied I, with
heartfelt sympathy; "if any part of my slender means can assist
in this emergence----"

"No, by the soul of Sir Joshua!" answered the generous youth, "I
will never involve a friend in the consequences of my own
misfortune. There is a mode by which I can regain my
liberty; and to creep even through a common sewer is better than
to remain in prison."

I did not perfectly understand what my friend meant. The muse
of painting appeared to have failed him, and what other goddess
he could invoke in his distress was a mystery to me. We parted,
however, without further explanation, and I did not see him until
three days after, when he summoned me to partake of the "foy"
with which his landlord proposed to regale him ere his departure
for Edinburgh.

I found Dick in high spirits, whistling while he buckled the
small knapsack which contained his colours, brushes, pallets, and
clean shirt. That he parted on the best terms with mine host was
obvious from the cold beef set forth in the low parlour, flanked
by two mugs of admirable brown stout; and I own my curiosity was
excited concerning the means through which the face of my
friend's affairs had been so suddenly improved. I did not
suspect Dick of dealing with the devil, and by what earthly means
he had extricated himself thus happily I was at a total loss to
conjecture.

He perceived my curiosity, and took me by the hand. "My
friend," he said, "fain would I conceal, even from you, the
degradation to which it has been necessary to submit, in order to
accomplish an honourable retreat from Gandercleaugh. But what
avails attempting to conceal that which must needs betray itself
even by its superior excellence? All the village--all the
parish--all the world--will soon discover to what poverty has
reduced Richard Tinto.:

A sudden thought here struck me. I had observed that our
landlord wore, on that memorable morning, a pair of bran new
velveteens instead of his ancient thicksets.

"What," said I, drawing my right hand, with the forefinger and
thumb pressed together, nimbly from my right haunch to my left
shoulder, "you have condescended to resume the
paternal arts to which you were first bred--long stitches,  ha,
Dick?"

He repelled this unlucky conjecture with a frown and a pshaw,
indicative of indignant contempt, and leading me into another
room, showed me, resting against the wall, the majestic head of
Sir William Wallace, grim as when severed from the trunk by the
orders of the Edward.

The painting was executed on boards of a substantial
thickness, and the top decorated with irons, for suspending the
honoured effigy upon a signpost.

"There," he said, "my friend, stands the honour of Scotland, and
my shame; yet not so--rather the shame of those who, instead of
encouraging art in its proper sphere, reduce it to these
unbecoming and unworthy extremities."

I endeavoured to smooth the ruffled feelings of my misused and
indignant friend. I reminded him that he ought not, like the
stag in the fable, to despise the quality which had extricated
him from difficulties, in which his talents, as a portrait or
landscape painter, had been found unavailing. Above all, I
praised the execution, as well as conception, of his painting,
and reminded him that, far from feeling dishonoured by so superb
a specimen of his talents being exposed to the general view of
the public, he ought rather to congratulate himself upon the
augmentation of his celebrity to which its public exhibition must
necessarily give rise.

"You are right, my friend--you are right," replied poor Dick,
his eye kindling with enthusiasm; "why should I shun the name of
an--an--(he hesitated for a phrase)--an out-of-doors artist?
Hogarth has introduced himself in that character in one of his
best engravings; Domenichino, or somebody else, in ancient
times, Morland in our own, have exercised their talents in this
manner. And wherefore limit to the rich and higher classes alone
the delight which the exhibition of works of art is calculated to
inspire into all classes? Statues are placed in the open air,
why should Painting be more niggardly in displaying her
masterpieces than her sister Sculpture? And yet, my friend, we
must part suddenly; the carpenter is coming in an hour to put up
the--the emblem; and truly, with all my philosophy, and your
consolatory encouragement to boot, I would rather wish to leave
Gandercleugh before that operation commences."

We partook of our genial host's parting banquet, and I escorted
Dick on his walk to Edinburgh. We parted about a mile from the
village, just as we heard the distant cheer of the boys which
accompanied the mounting of the new symbol of the Wallace Head.
Dick Tinto mended his pace to get out of hearing, so little had
either early practice or recent philosophy reconciled him to the
character of a sign-painter.

In Edinburgh, Dick's talents were discovered and
appreciated, and he received dinners and hints from several
distinguished judges of the fine arts. But these gentlemen
dispensed their criticism more willingly than their cash, and
Dick thought he needed cash more than criticism. He therefore
sought London, the universal mart of talent, and where, as is
usual in general marts of most descriptions, much more of each
commodity is exposed to sale than can ever find purchasers.

Dick, who, in serious earnest, was supposed to have
considerable natural talents for his profession, and whose vain
and sanguine disposition never permitted him to doubt for a
moment of ultimate success, threw himself headlong into the crowd
which jostled and struggled for notice and preferment. He
elbowed others, and was elbowed himself; and finally, by dint of
intrepidity, fought his way into some notice, painted for the
prize at the Institution, had pictures at the exhibition at
Somerset House, and damned the hanging committee. But poor Dick
was doomed to lose the field he fought so gallantly. In the fine
arts, there is scarce an alternative betwixt distinguished
success and absolute failure; and as Dick's zeal and industry
were unable to ensure the first, he fell into the distresses
which, in his condition, were the natural consequences of the
latter alternative. He was for a time patronised by one or two
of those judicious persons who make a virtue of being singular,
and of pitching their own opinions against those of the world in
matters of taste and criticism. But they soon tired of poor
Tinto, and laid him down as a load, upon the principle on which a
spoilt child throws away its plaything. Misery, I fear, took him
up, and accompanied him to a premature grave, to which he was
carried from an obscure lodging in Swallow Street, where he had
been dunned by his landlady within doors, and watched by bailiffs
without, until death came to his relief. A corner of the
Morning Post noticed his death, generously adding, that his
manner displayed considerable genius, though his style was rather
sketchy; and referred to an advertisement, which announced that
Mr. Varnish, a well-known printseller, had still on hand a very
few drawings and painings by Richard Tinto, Esquire, which those
of the nobility and gentry who might wish to complete their
collections of modern art were invited to visit without delay.
So ended Dick Tinto! a lamentable proof of the great truth, that
in the fine arts mediocrity is not permitted, and that he who
cannot ascend to the very top of the ladder will do well not to
put his foot upon it at all.

The memory of Tinto is dear to me, from the recollection of the
many conversations which we have had together, most of them
turning upon my present task. He was delighted with my
progress, and talked of an ornamented and illustrated edition,
with heads, vignettes, and culs de lampe, all to be designed by
his own patriotic and friendly pencil. He prevailed upon an old
sergeant of invalids to sit to him in the character of Bothwell,
the lifeguard's-man of Charles the Second, and the bellman of
Gandercleugh in that of David Deans. But while he thus proposed
to unite his own powers with mine for the illustration of these
narratives, he mixed many a dose of salutary criticism with the
panegyrics which my composition was at times so fortunate as to
call forth.

"Your characters," he said, "my dear Pattieson, make too much
use of the gob box; they patter too much (an elegant
phraseology which Dick had learned while painting the scenes of
an itinerant company of players); there is nothing in whole pages
but mere chat and dialogue."

"The ancient philosopher," said I in reply, "was wont to say,
'Speak, that I may know thee'; and how is it possible for an
author to introduce his personae dramatis to his readers in a
more interesting and effectual manner than by the dialogue in
which each is represented as supporting his own appropriate
character?"

"It is a false conclusion," said Tinto; "I hate it, Peter, as I
hate an unfilled can. I grant you, indeed, that speech is a
faculty of some value in the intercourse of human affairs, and I
will not even insist on the doctrine of that Pythagorean toper,
who was of opinion that over a bottle speaking spoiled
conversation. But I will not allow that a professor of the fine
arts has occasion to embody the idea of his scene in language, in
order to impress upon the reader its reality and its effect. On
the contrary, I will be judged by most of your readers, Peter,
should these tales ever become public, whether you have not given
us a page of talk for every single idea which two words might
have communicated, while the posture, and manner, and incident,
accurately drawn, and brougth out by appropriate colouring, would
have preserved all that was worthy of preservation, and saved
these everlasting 'said he's' and 'said she's,' with which it has
been your pleasure to encumber your pages."

I replied, "That he confounded the operations of the pencil and
the pen; that the serene and silent art, as painting has been
called by one of our first living poets, necessarily appealed to
the eye, because it had not the organs for addressing the ear;
whereas poetry, or that species of composition which approached
to it, lay under the necessity of doing absolutely the reverse,
and addressed itself to the ear, for the purpose of exciting that
interest which it could not attain through the medium of the
eye."

Dick was not a whit staggered by my argument, which he contended
was founded on misrepresentation. "Description," he said, "was
to the author of a romance exactly what drawing and tinting were
to a painter: words were his colours, and, if properly employed,
they could not fail to place the scene which he wished to conjure
up as effectually before the mind's eye as the tablet or canvas
presents it to the bodily organ. The same rules," he contended,
"applied to both, and an exuberance of dialogue, in the former
case, was a verbose and laborious mode of composition which went
to confound the proper art of fictitious narrative with that of
the drama, a widely different species of composition, of which
dialogue was the very essence, because all, excepting the
language to be made use of, was presented to the eye by the
dresses, and persons, and actions of the performers upon the
stage. But as nothing," said Dick, "can be more dull than a long
narrative written upon the plan of a drama, so where you have
approached most near to that species of composition, by
indulging in prolonged scenes of mere
conversation, the course of your story has become chill and
constrained, and you have lost the power of arresting the
attention and exciting the imagination, in which upon other
occasions you may be considered as having succeeded tolerably
well."

I made my bow in requital of the compliment, which was probably
thrown in by way of placebo, and expressed myself willing at
least to make one trial of a more straightforward style of
composition, in which my actors should do more, and say less,
than in my former attempts of this kind. Dick gave me a
patronising and approving nod, and observed that, finding me so
docile, he would communicate, for the benefit of my muse, a
subject which he had studied with a view to his own art.

"The story," he said, "was, by tradition, affirmed to be truth,
although, as upwards of a hundred years had passed away since the
events took place, some doubts upon the accuracy of all the
particulars might be reasonably entertained."

When Dick Tinto had thus spoken, he rummaged his portfolio for
the sketch from which he proposed one day to execute a picture of
fourteen feet by eight. The sketch, which was
cleverly executed, to use the appropriate phrase, represented an
ancient hall, fitted up and furnished in what we now call the
taste of Queen Elizabeth's age. The light, admitted from the
upper part of a high casement, fell upon a female figure of
exquisite beauty, who, in an attitude of speechless terror,
appeared to watch the issue of a debate betwixt two other
persons. The one was a young man, in the Vandyke dress common to
the time of Charles I., who, with an air of indignant priude,
testified by the manner in which he raised his head and extended
his arm, seemed to be urging a claim of right, rather than of
favour, to a lady whose age, and some resemblance in their
features, pointed her out as the mother of the younger female,
and who appeared to listen with a mixture of displeasure and
impatience.

Tinto produced his sketch with an air of mysterious triumph, and
gazed on it as a fond parent looks upon a hopeful child, while he
anticipates the future figure he is to make in the world, and the
height to which he will raise the honour of his family. He held
it at arm's length from me--he helt it closer--he placed it upon
the top of a chest of drawers--closed the lower shutters of the
casement,  to adjust a downward and favourable light--fell back
to the due distance, dragging me after him--shaded his face with
his hand, as if to exclude all but the favourite object--and
ended by spoiling a child's copy-book, which he rolled up so as
to serve for the darkened tube of an amateur. I fancy my
expressions of enthusiasm had not been in proportion to his own,
for he presently exclaimed with vehemence: "Mr. Pattieson, I
used to think you had an eye in your head."

I vindicated my claim to the usual allowance of visual organs.

"Yet, on my honour," said Dick, "I would swear you had been born
blind, since you have failed at the first glance to discover the
subject and meaning of that sketch. I do not mean to praise my
own performance, I leave these arts to others; I am sensible of
my deficiencies, conscious that my drawing and colouring may be
improved by the time I intend to dedicate to the art. But the
conception--the expression--the positions--these tell the story
to every one who looks at the sketch; and if I can finish the
picture without diminution of the original conception, the name
of Tinto shall no more be smothered by the mists of envy and
intrigue."

I replied: "That I admired the sketch exceedingly; but that to
understand its full merit, I felt it absolutely necessary to be
informed of the subject."

"That is the very thing I complain of," answered Tinto; "you
have accustomed yourself so much to these creeping twilight
details of yours, that you are become incapable of receiving that
instant and vivid flash of conviction which darts on the mind
from seeing the happy and expressive combinations of a single
scene, and which gathers from the position, attitude, and
countenance of the moment, not only the history of the past lives
of the personages represented, and the nature of the business on
which they are immediately engaged, but lifts even the veil of
futurity, and affords a shrewd guess at their future fortunes."

"In that case," replied I, "Paining excels the ape of the
renowned Gines de Passamonte, which only meddled with the past
and the present; nay, she excels that very Nature who affords
her subject; for I protest to you, Dick, that were I permitted to
peep into that Elizabeth-chamber, and see the persons you have
sketched conversing in flesh and blood, I should not be a jot
nearer guessing the nature of their business than I am at this
moment while looking at your sketch. Only generally, from the
languishing look of the young lady, and the care you have taken
to present a very handsome leg on the part of the gentleman, I
presume there is some reference to a love affair between them."

"Do you really presume to form such a bold conjecture?" said
Tinto. "And the indignant earnestness with which you see the man
urge his suit, the unresisting and passive despair of the
younger female, the stern air of inflexible determination in the
elder woman, whose looks express at once consciousness that she
is acting wrong and a firm determination to persist in the course
she has adopted----"

"If her looks express all this, my dear Tinto," replied I,
interrupting him, "your pencil rivals the dramatic art of Mr.
Puff in The Critic, who crammed a whole complicated sentence
into the expressive shake of Lord Burleigh's head."

"My good friend, Peter," replied Tinto, "I observe you are
perfectly incorrigible; however, I have compassion on your
dulness, and am unwilling you should be deprived of the pleasure
of understanding my picture, and of gaining, at the same time, a
subject for your own pen. You must know then, last summer, while
I was taking sketches on the coast of East Lothian and
Berwickshire, I was seduced into the mountains of Lammermoor by
the account I received of some remains of antiquity in that
district. Those with which I was most struck were the ruins of
an ancient castle in which that Elizabeth-chamber, as you call
it, once existed. I resided for two or three days at a farmhouse
in the neighbourhood, where the aged goodwife was well acquainted
with the history of the castle, and the events which had taken
place in it. One of these was of a nature so interesting and
singular, that my attention was divided between my wish to draw
the old ruins in landscape, and to represent, in a history-
piece, the singular events which have taken place in it. Here
are my notes of the tale," said poor Dick, handing a parcel of
loose scraps, partly scratched over with his pencil, partly with
his pen, where outlines of caricatures, sketches of turrets,
mills, old gables, and dovecots, disputed the ground with his
written memoranda.

I proceeded, however, to decipher the substance of the
manuscript as well as I could, and move it into the following
Tale, in which, following in part, though not entirely, my friend
Tinto"s advice, I endeavoured to render my narrative rather
descriptive than dramatic. My favourite propensity, however, has
at times overcome me, and my persons, like many others in this
talking world, speak now what then a great deal more than they
act.

CHAPTER II.

Well, lord, we have not got that which we have;
'Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,
Being opposites of such repairing nature.

Henry VI. Part II.

IN the gorge of a pass or mountain glen, ascending from the
fertile plains of East Lothian, there stood in former times an
extensive castle, of which only the ruins are now visible. Its
ancient proprietors were a race of powerful and warlike carons,
who bore the same name with the castle itself, which was
Ravenswood. Their line extended to a remote period of antiquity,
and they had intermarried with the Douglasses, Humes, Swintons,
Hays, and other families of power and distinction in the same
country. Their history was frequently involved in that of
Scotland itself, in whose annals their feats are recorded. The
Castle of Ravenswood, occupying, and in some measure commanding,
a pass betweixt Berwickshire, or the Merse, as the southeastern
province of Scotland is termed, and the Lothians, was of
importance both in times of foreign war and domestic discord. It
was frequently beseiged with ardour, and defended with obstinacy,
and, of course, its owners played a conspicuous part in story.
But their house had its revolutions, like all sublunary things:
it became greatly declined from its splendour about the middle of
the 17th century; and towards the period of the Revolution, the
last proprietor of Ravenswood Castle saw himself compelled to
part with the ancient family seat, and to remove himself to a
lonely and sea-beaten tower, which, situated on the bleak shores
between St. Abb's Head and the village of Eyemouth, looked out on
the lonely and boisterous German Ocean. A black domain of wild
pasture-land surrounded their new residence,  and formed the
remains of their property.

Lord Ravenswood, the heir of this ruined family, was far from
bending his mind to his new condition of life. In the civil war
of 1689 he had espoused the sinking side, and although he had
escaped without the forfeiture of life or land, his blood had
been attainted, and his title abolished. He was now called Lord
Ravenswood only in courtesy.

This forfeited nobleman inherited the pride and turbulence,
though not the forture, of his house, and, as he imputed the
final declension of his family to a particular individual, he
honoured that person with his full portion of hatred. This was
the very man who had now become, by purchase, proprietor of
Ravenswood, and the domains of which the heir of the house now
stood dispossessed. He was descended of a family much less
ancient than that of Lord Ravenswood, and which had only risen to
wealth and political importance during the great civil wars. He
himself had been bred to the bar, and had held high offices in
the state, maintaining through life the character of a skilful
fisher in the troubled waters of a state divided by factions, and
governed by delegated authority; and of one who contrived to
amass considerable sums of money in a country where there was but
little to be gathered, and who equally knew the value of wealth
and the various means of
augmenting it and using it as an engine of increasing his power
and influence.

Thus qualified and gifted, he was a dangerous antagonist to the
fierce and imprudent Ravenswood. Whether he had given him good
cause for the enmity with which the Baron regarded him, was a
point on which men spoke differently. Some said the quarrel
arose merely from the vicdictive spirit and envy of Lrod
Ravenswood, who could not patiently behold another, though by
just and fair purchase, become the proprietor of the estate and
castle of his forefathers. But the greater part of the public,
prone to slander the wealthy in their absence as to flatter them
in their presence, held a less charitable opinion. They said
that the Lord Keeper (for to this height Sir William Ashton had
ascended) had, previous to the final purchase of the estate of
Ravenswood, been concerned in extensive pecuniary transactions
with the former proprietor; and, rather intimating what was
probable than affirming anything positively, they asked which
party was likely to have the advantage in stating and enforcing
the claims arising out of these complicated affairs, and more
than hinted the advantages which the cool lawyer and able
politician must necessarily possess over the hot, fiery, and
imprudent character whom he had involved in legel toils and
pecuniary snares.

The character of the times aggravated these suspicions. "In
those days there was no king in Israel."  Since the departure of
James VI. to assume the richer and more powerful crown of
England, there had existed in Scotland contending parties, formed
among the aristocracy, by whom, as their intrigues at the court
of St. James's chanced to prevail, the delegated powers of
sovereignty were alternately swayed. The evils attending upon
this system of government resembled those which afflict the
tenants of an Irish estate, the property of an absentee. There
was no supreme power, claiming and possessing a general interest
with the community at large, to whom the oppressed might appeal
from subordinate tyranny, either for justic or for mercy. Let a
monarch be as indolent, as selfish, as much disposed to arbitrary
power as he will, still, in a free country, his own interests are
so clearly connected weith those of the public at large, and the
eveil consequences to his own authority are so obvious and
imminent when a different course is pursued, that common policy,
as well as ocmmon feeling, point to the equal distribution of
justice, and to the establishment of the throne in righteousness.
Thus, even sovereigns remarkable for usurpation and tyranny have
been found rigorous in the administration of justice among their
subjects, in cases where their own power and passions were not
compromised.

It is very different when the powers of sovereignty are
delegated to the head of an aristocratic faction, rivalled and
pressed closely in the race of ambition by an adverse leader.
His brief and precarious enjoyment of power must be employed in
rewarding his partizans, in extending his incluence, in
oppressing and crushing his adversaries. Even Abou Hassan, the
most disinterested of all viceroys, forgot not, during his
caliphate of one day, to send a douceur of one thousand pieces
of gold to his own household; and the Scottish vicegerents,
raised to power by the strength of their faction, failed not to
embrace the same means of rewarding them.

The administration of justice, in particular, was infected by
the most gross partiality. A case of importance scarcely
occurred in which there was not some ground for bias or
partiality on the part of the judges, who were so little able to
withstand the temptation that the adage, "Show me the man, and I
will show you the law," became as prevalent as it was scandalous.
One corruption led the way to others still mroe gross and
profligate. The judge who lent his sacred authority in one case
to support a friend, and in another to crush an enemy, and who
decisions were founded on family connexions or political
relations, could not be supposed inaccessible to direct personal
motives; and the purse of the wealthy was too often believed to
be thrown into the scale to weigh down the cause of the poor
litigant. The subordinate officers of the law affected little
scruple concerning bribery. Pieces of plate and bags of money
were sent in presents to the king's counsel, to influence their
conduct, and poured forth, says a contemporary writer, like
billets of wood upon their floors, without even the decency of
concealment.

In such times, it was not over uncharitable to suppose that the
statesman, practised in courts of law, and a powerful member of a
triumphant cabal, might find and use means of advantage over his
less skilful and less favoured adversary; and if it had been
supposed that Sir William Ashton's conscience had been too
delicate to profit by these advantages, it was believed that his
ambition and desire of extending his wealth and consequence found
as strong a stimulus in the exhortations of his lady as the
daring aim of Macbeth in the days of yore.

Lady Ashton was of a family more distinguished than that of her
lord, an advantage which she did not fail to use to the
uttermost, in maintaining and extending her husband's influence
over others, and, unless she was greatly belied, her own over
him. She had been beautiful, and was stately and majestic in her
appearance. Endowed by nature with strong powers and violent
passions, experience had taught her to employ the one, and to
conceal, if not to moderate, the other. She was a severe adn
strict observer of the external forms, at least, fo devotion; her
hospitality was splendid, even to ostentation; her address and
manners, agreeable to the pattern most valued in Scotland at the
period, were grave, dignified, and severely regulated by the
rules of etiquette. Her character had always been beyond the
breath of slander. And yet, with all these qualities to excite
respect, Lady Ashton was seldom mentioned in the terms of love or
affection. Interest--the interest of her family, if not her own-
-seemed too obviously the motive of her actions; and where this
is the case, teh sharp-judging and malignant public are not
easily imposed upon by outward show. It was seen and
ascertained that, in her most graceful courtesies and
compliments, Lady Ashton no more lost sight of her object than
the falcon in his airy wheel turns his quick eyes from his
destined quarry; and hence, somethign of doubt and suspicion
qualified the feelings with which her equals received her
attentions. With her inferiors these feelings were mingled with
fear; an impression useful to her purposes, so far as it enforced
ready compliance with her requests and implicit obedience to her
commands, but detrimental, because it cannot exist with affection
or regard.

Even her husband, it is said, upon whose fortunes her talents
and address had produced such emphatic influence,
regarded her with respectful awe rather than confiding
attachment; and report said, there were times when he considered
his grandeur as dearly purchased at the expense of domestic
thraldom. Of this, however, much might be suspected, but little
could be accurately known: Lady Ashton regarded the honour of her
husband as her own, and was well aware how much that would suffer
in the public eye should he appear a vassal to his wife. In all
her arguments his opinion was quoted as infallible; his taste was
appealed to, and his sentiments received, with the air of
deference which a dutiful wife might seem to owe to a husband of
Sir William Ashton's rank adn character. But there was something
under all this which rung false and hollow; and to those who
watched this couple with close, and perhaps malicious, scrutiny
it seemed evident that, in the haughtiness of a firmer character,
higher birth, and more decided views of aggrandisement, the lady
looked with some contempt on her husband, and that he regarded
her with jealous fear, rather than with love or admiration.

Still, however, the leading and favourite interests of Sir
William Ashton and his lady were the same, and they failed not to
work in concert, although without cordiality, and to testify, in
all exterior circumstances, that respect for each other which
they were aware was necessary to secure that of the public.

Their union was crowned with several children, of whom three
survived. One, the eldest son, was absent on his travels; the
second, a girl of seventeen, adn the third, a boy about three
years younger, resided with their parents in
Edinburgh during the sessions of the Scottish Parliament and
Privy Council, at other times in the old Gothic castle of
Ravenswood, to which the Lord Keeper had made large additions in
the style of the 17th century.

Allan Lord Ravenswood, the late proprietor of that ancient
mansion adn the large estate annexed to it, continued for some
time to wage ineffectual war with his successor concerning
various points to which their former transactions had given rise,
and which were successively determined in favour of the wealthy
and powerful competitor, until death closed the litigation, by
summoning Ravenswood to a higher bar. The thread of life, which
had been long wasting, gave way during a fit of violent and
impotent fury with which he was assailed on receiving the news of
the loss of a cause, founded, perhaps, rather in equity than in
law, the last which he had maintained against his powerful
antagonist. His son witnessed his dying agonies, and heard the
curses which he breathed against his adversary, as if they had
conveyed to him a legacy of vengeance. Other circumstances
happened to exasperate a passion which was, and had long been, a
prevalent vice in the Scottish disposition.

It was a November morning, and the cliffs which overlooked the
ocean were hung with thick and heavy mist, when the portals of
the ancient and half-ruinous tower, in which Lord Ravenswood had
spent the last and troubled years of his life, opened, that his
mortal remains might pass forward to an abode yet more dreary
and lonely. The pomp of attendance, to which the deceased had,
in his latter years, been a stranger, was revived as he was about
to be consigned to the realms of forgetfulness.

Banner after banner, with the various devices and coats of this
ancient family and its connexions, followed each other in
mournful procession from under the low-browed archway of the
courtyard. The principal gentry of the country attended in the
deepest mourning, and tempered the pace of their long train of
horses to the solemn march befitting the occasion. Trumpets, with
banners of crape attached to them, sent forth their long and
melancholy notes to regulate the movements of the procession. An
immense train of inferior mourners and menials closed the rear,
which had not yet issued from the castle gate when the van had
reached the chapel where the body was to be deposited.

Contrary to the custom, and even to the law, of  the time, the
body was met by a priest of the Scottish Episcopal communion,
arrayed in his surplice, and prepared to read over the coffin of
the deceased the funeral service of the church. Such had been
the desire of Lord Ravenswood in his last illness, and it was
readily complied with by the Tory gentlemen, or Cavaliers, as
they affected to style themselves, in which faction most of his
kinsmen were enrolled. The Presbyterian Church judicatory of the
bounds, considering the ceremony as a bravading insult upon their
authority, had applied to the Lord Keeper, as the nearest privy
councillor, for a warrant to prevent its being carried into
effect; so that, when the clergyman had opened his prayer-book,
an officer of the law, supported by some armed men, commanded him
to be silent. An insult which fired the whol assembly with
indignation was particularly and instantly resented by the only
son of the deceased, Edgar, popularly called the Master of
Ravenswood, a youth of about twenty years of age. He clapped his
hand on his sword, and bidding the official person to desist at
his peril from farther interruption, commanded the clergyman to
proceed. The man attempted to enforce his commission; but as an
hundred swords at once glittered in the air, he contented himself
with protesting against the violence which had been offered to
him in the execution of his duty, and stood aloof, a sullen adn
moody spectator of the ceremonial, muttering as one who should
say: "You'll rue the day that clogs me with this answer."

The scene was worthy of an artist's pencil. Under the very arch
of the house of death, the clergyman, affrighted at the scene,
and trembling for his own safety, hastily and unwillingly
rehearsed the solemn service of the church, and spoke "dust to
dust and ashes to ashes," over ruined pride and decayed
prosperity. Around stood the relations of the deceased, their
countenances more in anger than in sorrow, and the drawn swords
which they brandished forming a violent contrast with their deep
mourning habits. In the countenance of the young man alone,
resentment seemed for the moment overpowered by the deep agony
with which he beheld his nearest, and almost his only, friend
consigned to the tomb of his ancestry. A relative
observed him turn deadly pale, when, all rites being now duly
observed, it became the duty of the chief mourner to lower down
into the charnel vault, where mouldering coffins showed their
tattered velvet and decayed plating, the head of the corpse which
was to be their partner in corruption. He stept to the youth and
offered his assistance, which, by a mute motion, Edgar Ravenswood
rejected. Firmly, and without a tear, he performed that last
duty. The stone was laid on the sepulchre, the door of the aisle
was locked, and the youth took possession of its massive key.

As the crowd left the chapel, he paused on the steps which led
to its Gothic chancel. "Gentlemen and friends," he said, "you
have this day done no common duty to the body of your deceaesd
kinsman. The rites of due observance, which, in other
countries, are allowed as the due of the meanest Christian, would
this day have been denied to the body of your relative--not
certainly sprung of the meanest house in Scotland--had it not
been assured to him by your courage. Others bury their dead in
sorrow and tears, in silence and in reverence; our funeral rites
are marred by the intrusion of bailiffs and ruffians, and our
grief--the grief due to our departed friend--is chased from our
cheeks by the glow of just indignation. But it is well that I
know from what quiver this arrow has come forth. It was only he
that dug the drave who could have the mean cruelty to disturb the
obsequies; and Heaven do as much to me and more, if I requite not
to this man and his house the ruin and disgrace he has brought on
me and mine!"

A numerous part of the assembly applauded this speech, as the
spirited expression of just resentment; but the more cool and
judicious regretted that it had been uttered. The fortunes of
the heir of Ravenswood were too low to brave the farther
hostility which they imagined these open expressions of
resentment must necessarily provoke. Their apprehensions,
however, proved groundless, at least in the immediate
consequences of this affair.

The mourners returned to the tower, there, according to a custom
but recently abolished in Scotland, to carouse deep healths to
the memory of the deceased, to make the house of sorrow ring with
sounds of joviality and debauch, and to
diminish, by the expense of a large and profuse entertainment,
the limited revenues of ther heir of him whose funeral they thus
strangely honoured. It was the custom, however, and on the
present occasion it was fully observed. The tables swam in wine,
the populace feasted in the courtyard, the yeomen in the kitchen
and buttery; and two years' rent of Ravenswood's remaining
property hardly defrayed the charge of the funeral revel. The
wine did its office on all but the Master of Ravenswood, a title
which he still retained, though forfeiture had attached to that
of his father. He, while passing around the cup which he himself
did not taste, soon listened to a thousand exclamations against
the Lord Keeper, and passionate protestations of attachment to
himself, and to the honour of his house. He listened with dark
and sullen brow to ebullitions which he considered justly as
equally evanescent with the crimson bubbles on the brink of the
goblet, or at least with the vapours which its contents excited
in the brains of the revellers around him.

When the last flask was emptied, they took their leave with deep
protestations--to be forgotten on the morrow, if, indeed, those
who made them should not think it necessary for their safety to
make a more solemn retractation.

Accepting theri adieus with an air of contempt which he could
scarce conceal, Ravenswood at length beheld his ruinous
habitation cleared of their confluence of riotous guests, and
returned to the deserted hall, which now appeared doubly lonely
from the cessation of that clamour to which it had so lately
echoed. But its space was peopled by phantoms which the
imagination of the young heir conjured up before him--the
tarnished honour and degraded fortunes of his house, the
destruction of his own hopes, and the triumph of that family by
whom they had been ruined. To a mind naturally of a gloomy cast
here was ample room for meditation, and the musings of young
Ravenswood were deep and unwitnessed.

The peasant who shows the ruins of the tower, which still crown
the beetling cliff and behold the war of the waves, though no
mroe tenanted saved by the sea-mew and cormorant, even yet
affirms that on this fatal night the Master of Ravenswood, by the
bitter exclamations of his despair, evoked some evil fiend, under
whose malignant influence the future tissue of incidents was
woven.  Alas! what fiend can suggest more desperate counsels
than those adopted under the guidance of our own violent and
unresisted passions?

CHAPTER III.

Over Gods forebode, then said the King,
That thou shouldst shoot at me.

William Bell, Clim 'o the Cleugh, etc.

On the morning after the funeral, the legal officer whose
authority had been found insufficient to effect an interruption
of the funeral solemnities of the late Lord Ravenswood, hastened
to state before the Keeper the resistance which he had met with
in the execution of his office.

The statesman was seated in a spacious library, once a
banqueting-room in the old Castle of Ravenswood, as was evident
from the armorial insignia still displayed on the carved roof,
which was vaulted with Spanish chestnut, and on the stained glass
of the casement, through which gleamed a dim yet rich light on
the long rows of shelves, bending under the weight of legal
commentators and monkish historians, whose ponderous volumes
formed the chief and most valued contents of a Scottish historian
[library] of the period. On the massive oaken table and
reading-desk lay a confused mass of letters, petitions, and
parchments; to toil amongst which was the pleasure at once and
the plague of Sir William Ashton's life. His appearance was
grave and even noble, well becoming one who held an high office
in the state; and it was not save after long and intimate
conversation with him upon topics of pressing and personal
interest, that a stranger could have discovered
something vacillating and uncertain in his resolutions; an
infirmity of purpose, arising from a cautious and timid
disposition, which, as he was conscious of its internal influence
on his mind, he was, from pride as well as policy, most anxious
to conceal from others.
He listened with great apparent composure to an exaggerated
account of the tumult which had taken place at the funeral, of
the contempt thrown on his own authority and that of the church
and state; nor did he seem moved even by the faithful report of
the insulting and threatening language which had been uttered by
young Ravenswood and others, and obviously directed against
himself. He heard, also, what the man had been able to collect,
in a very distorted and aggravated shape, of the toasts which had
been drunk, and the menaces uttered, at the susequent
entertainment. In fine, he made careful notes of all these
particulars, and of the names of the persons by whom, in case of
need, an accusation, founded upon these violent proceedings,
could be witnessed and made good, and dismissed his informer,
secure that he was now master of the remaining fortune, and even
of the personal liberty, of young Ravenswood.

When the door had closed upon the officer of the law, the Lord
Keeper remained for a moment in deep meditation; then, starting
from his seat, paced the apartment as one about to take a sudden
and energetic resolution. "Young Ravenswood," he muttered, "is
now mine--he is my own; he has placed himself in my hand, and he
shall bend or break. I have not forgot the
determined and dogged obstinacy with which his father fought
every point to the last, resisted every effort at compromise,
embroiled me in lawsuits, and attempted to assail my character
when he could not otherwise impugn my rights. This boy he has
left behind him--this Edgar--this hot-headed, hare-brained fool,
has wrecked his vessel before she has cleared the harbor. I must
see that he gains no advantage of some turning tide which may
again float him off. These memoranda, properly stated to the
privy council, cannot but be construed into an aggravated riot,
in which the dignity both of the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities stands committed. A heavy fine might be imposed; an
order for committing him to Edinburgh or Blackness Castle seems
not improper; even a charge of treason might be laid on many of
these words and expressions, though God forbid I should prosecute
the matter to that extent. No, I will not; I will not touch his
life, even if it should be in my power; and yet, if he lives till
a change of times, what follows? Restitution--perhaps revenge.
I know Athole promised his interest to old Ravenswood, and here
is his son already bandying and making a faction by his own
contemptible influence. What a ready tool he would be for the
use of those who are watching the downfall of our
administration!"

While these thoughts were agitating the mind of the wily
statesman, and while he was persuading himself that his own
interest and safety, as well as those of his friends and party,
depended on using the present advantage to the uttermost against
young Ranveswood, the Lord Keeper sate down to his desk, and
proceeded to draw up, for the information of the privy council,
an account of the disorderly proceedings which, in contempt of
his warrant, had taken place at the funeral of Lord Ravenswood.
The names of most of the parties concerned, as well as the fact
itself, would, he was well aware, sound odiously in the ears of
his colleagues in administration, and most likely instigate them
to make an example of young Ravenswood, at least, in terrorem.

It was a point of delicacy, however, to select such
expressions as might infer the young man's culpability, without
seeming directly to urge it, which, on the part of Sir William
Ashton, his father's ancient antagonist, could not but appear
odious and invidious. While he was in the act of composition,
labouring to find words which might indicate Edgar Ravenswood to
be the cause of the uproar, without specifically making such a
charge, Sir William, in a pause of his task, chanced, in looking
upward, to see the crest of the family for whose heir he was
whetting the arrows and disposing the toils of the law carved
upon one of the corbeilles from which the vaulted roof of the
apartment sprung. It was a black bull's head, with the legend,
"I bide my time"; and the occasion upon which it was adopted
mingled itself singularly and impressively with the subject of
his present reflections.

It was said by a constant tradition that a Malisius de
Ravenswood had, in the 13th century, been deprived of his castle
and lands by a powerful usurper, who had for a while enjoyed his
spoils in quiet. At length, on the eve of a costly banquet,
Ravenswood, who had watched his opportunity, introduced himself
into the castle with a small band of faithful retainers. The
serving of the expected feast was impatiently looked for by the
guests, and clamorously demended by the temporary master of the
castle. Ravenswood, who had assumed the disguise of a sewer upon
the occasion, answered, in a stern voice, "I bide my time"; and
at the same moment a bull's head, the ancient symbol of death,
was placed upon the table. The explosion of the conspiracy took
place upon the signal, and the usurper and his followers were put
to death. Perhaps there was something in this still known and
often repeated story which came immediately home to the breast
and conscience of the Lord Keeper; for, putting from him the
paper on which he had begun his report, and carefully locking the
memoranda which he had prepared into a cabinet which stood
beside him, he proceeded to walk abroad, as if for the purpose of
collecting his ideas, and reflecting farther on the consequences
of the step which he was about to take, ere yet they became
inevitable.

In passing through a large Gothic ante-room, Sir William Ashton
heard the sound of his daughter's lute. Music, when the
performers are concealed, affects us with a pleasure mingled
with surprise, and reminds us of the natural concert of birds
among the leafy bowers. The statesman, though little accustomed
to give way to emotions of this natural and simple class, was
still a man and a father. he stopped, therefore, and listened,
while the silver tones of Lucy Ashton's voice mingled with the
accompaniment in an ancient air, to which soem one had adapted
the following words:

"Look not thou on beauty's charming,
Sit thou still when kings are arming,
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens,
Speak not when the people listens,
Stop thine ear against the singer,
From the red gold keep they finger,
Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,
Easy live and quiet die."

The sounds ceased, and the Keeper entered his daughter's
apartment.

The words she had chosen seemed particularly adapted to her
character; for Lucy Ashton's exquisitely beautiful, yet somewhat
girlish features were formed to express peace of mind, serenity,
and indifference to the tinsel of wordly pleasure. Her locks,
which were of shadowy gold, divided on a brow of exquisite
whiteness, like a gleam of broken and pallid sunshine upon a hill
of snow. The expression of the countenance was in the last
degree gentle, soft, timid, and feminine, and seemed rather to
shrink from the most casual look of a stranger than to court his
admiration. Something there was of a Madonna cast, perhaps the
result of delicate health, and of residence in a family where the
dispositions of the inmates were fiercer, more active, and
energetic than her own.

Yet her passiveness of disposition was by no means owing to an
indifferent or unfeeling mind. Left to the impulse of her own
taste and feelings, Lucy Ashton was peculiarly accessible to
those of a romantic cast. her secret delight was in the old
legendary tales of ardent devotion and unalterable affection,
chequered as they so often are with strange adventures and
supernatural horrors. This was her favoured fairy realm, and
here she erected her aerial palaces. But it was only in secret
that she laboured at this delusive though delightful
architecture. In her retired chamber, or in the woodland bower
which she had chosen for her own, and called after her name, she
was in fancy distributing the prizes at the tournament, or
raining down influence from her eyes on the valiant combatants:
or she was wandering in the wilderness with Una, under escort of
the generous lion; or she was identifying herself with the simple
yet noble-minded Miranda in the isle of wonder and enchantment.

But in her exterior relations to things of this world, Lucy
willingly received the ruling impulse from those around her. The
alternative was, in general, too indifferent to her to render
resistance desirable, and she willingly found a motive for
decision in the opinion of her friends which perhaps she might
have sought for in vain in her own choice. Every reader must
have observed in some family of his acquaintance some individual
of a temper soft and yielding, who, mixed with stronger and more
ardent minds, is borne along by the will of others, with as
little power of opposition as the flower which is flung into a
running stream. It usually happens that such a compliant and
easy disposition, which resigns itself without murmur to the
guidance of others, becomes the darling of those to whose
inclinations its own seem to be offered, in ungrudging and ready
sacrifice.
This was eminently the case with Lucy Ashton. Her politic,
wary, and wordly father felt for her an affection the strength of
which sometimes surprised him into an unusual emotion. Her
elder brother, who trode the path of ambition with a haughtier
step than his father, had also more of human affection. A
soldier, and in a dissolute age, he preferred his sister Lucy
even to pleasure and to military preferment and distinction. Her
younger brother, at an age when trifles chiefly occupied his
mind, made her the confidante of all his pleasures and anxieties,
his success in field-sports, and his quarrels with his tutor and
instructors. To these details, however trivial, Lucy lent
patient and not indifferent attention. They moved and interested
Henry, and that was enough to secure her ear.

Her mother alone did not feel that distinguished and
predominating affection with which the rest of the family
cherished Lucy. She regarded what she termed her daughter's want
of spirit as a decided mark that the more plebeian blood of her
father predominated in Lucy's veins, and used to call her in
derision her Lammermoor Shepherdess. To dislike so gentle and
inoffensive a being was impossible; but Lady Ashton preferred her
eldest son, on whom had descended a large portion of her own
ambitious and undaunted disposition, to a daughter whose softness
of temper seemed allied to feebleness of mind. Her eldest son
was the more partially beloved by his mother because, contrary to
the usual custom of Scottish families of distinction, he had been
named after the head of the house.

"My Sholto," she said, "will support the untarnished honour of
his maternal house, and elevate and support that of his father.
Poor Lucy is unfit for courts or crowded halls. Some country
laird must be her husband, rich enough to supply her with every
comfort, without an effort on her own part, so that she may have
nothing to shed a tear for but the tender apprehension lest he
may break his neck in a foxchase. It was not so, however, that
our house was raised, nor is it so that it can be fortified and
augmented. The Lord Keeper's dignity is yet new; it must be
borne as if we were used to its weight, worthy of it, and prompt
to assert and maintain it. Before ancient authorities men bend
from customary and hereditary deference; in our presence they
will stand erect, unless they are compelled to prostrate
themselves. A daughter fit for the sheepfold or the cloister is
ill qualified to exact respect where it is yielded with
reluctance; and since Heaven refused us a third boy, Lucy should
have held a character fit to supply his place. The hour will be
a happy one which disposes her hand in marriage to some one whose
energy is greater than her own, or whose ambition is of as low an
order."

So meditated a mother to whom the qualities of her
children's hearts, as well as the prospect of their domestic
happiness, seemed light in comparison to their rank and temporal
greatness. But, like many a parent of hot and impatient
character, she was mistaken in estimating the feelings of her
daughter, who, under a semblance of extreme indifference,
nourished the germ of those passions which sometimes spring up in
one night, like the gourd of the pro  phet, and astonish the
observer by their unexpected ardour and intensity. In fact,
Lucy's sentiments seemed chill because nothing had occurred to
interest or awaken them. Her life had hitherto flowed on in a
uniform and gentle tenor, and happy for her had not its present
smoothness of current resembled that of the stream as it glides
downwards to the waterfall!

"So, Lucy," said her father, entering as her song was ended,
"does your musical philosopher teach you to contmn the world
before you know it? That is surely something premature. Or did
you but speak according to the fashion of fair maidens, who are
always to hold the pleasures of life in contempt till they are
pressed upon them by the address of some gentle knight?"

Lucy blushed, disclaimed any inference respecting her own choice
being drawn from her selection of a song, and readily laid aside
her instrument at her father's request that she would attend him
in his walk.

A large and well-wooded park, or rather chase, stretched along
the hill behind the castle, which, occupying, as we have
noticed, a pass ascending from the plain, seemed built in its
very gorge to defend the forest ground which arose behind it in
shaggy majesty. Into this romantic region the father and
daughter proceeded, arm in arm, by a noble avenue overarched by
embowering elms, beneath which groups of the fallow-deer were
seen to stray in distant perspective. As they paced slowly on,
admiring the different points of view, for which Sir William
Ashton, notwithstanding the nature of his usual avocations, had
considerable taste and feeling, they were overtaken by the
forester, or park-keeper, who, intent on silvan sport, was
proceeding with his cross-bow over his arm, and a hound led in
leash by his boy, into the interior of the wood.

"Going to shoot us a piece of venison, Norman?" said his master,
as he returned the woodsman's salutation.

"Saul, your honour, and that I am. Will it please you to see
the sport?"

"Oh no," said his lordship, after looking at his daughter, whose
colour fled at the idea of seeing the deer shot, although, had
her father expressed his wish that they should accompany Norman,
it was probable she would not even have hinted her reluctance.

The forester shrugged his shoulders. "It was a
disheartening thing," he said, "when none of the gentles came
down to see the sport. He hoped Captain Sholto would be soon
hame, or he might shut up his shop entirely; for Mr. Harry was
kept sae close wi' his Latin nonsense that, though his will was
very gude to be in the wood from morning till night, there would
be a hopeful lad lost, and no making a man of him. It was not
so, he had heard, in Lord Ravenswood's time: when a buck was to
be killed, man and mother's son ran to see; and when the deer
fell, the knife was always presented to the knight, and he never
gave less than a dollar for the compliment. And there was Edgar
Ravenswood--Master of Ravenswood that is now--when he goes up to
the wood--there hasna been a better hunter since Tristrem's time-
-when Sir Edgar hauds out, down goes the deer, faith. But we hae
lost a' sense of woodcraft on this side of the hill."

There was much in this harangue highly displeasing to the Lord
Keeper's feelings; he could not help observing that his menial
despised him almost avowedly for not possessing that taste for
sport which in those times was deemed the natural and
indispensable attribute of a real gentleman. But the master of
the game is, in all country houses, a man of great importance,
and entitled to use considerable freedom of speech. Sir William,
therefore, only smiled and replied, "He had something else to
think upon to-day than killing deer"; meantime, taking out his
purse, he gave the ranger a dollar for his encouragement. The
fellow received it as the waiter of a fashionable hotel receives
double his proper fee from the hands of a country gentleman--that
is, with a smile, in which pleasure at the gift is mingled with
contempt for the ignorance of the donor. "Your honour is the bad
paymaster," he said, "who pays before it is done. What would you
do were I to miss the buck after you have paid me my wood-fee?"

"I suppose," said the Keeper, smiling, "you would hardly guess
what I mean were I to tell you of a condictio indebiti?"

"Not I, on my saul. I guess it is some law phrase; but sue a
beggar, and--your honour knows what follows. Well, but I will
be just with you, and if bow and brach fail not, you shall have a
piece of game two fingers fat on the brisket."

As he was about to go off, his master again called him, and
asked, as if by accident, whether the Master of Ravenswood was
actually so brave a man and so good a shooter as the world spoke
him.

"Brave!--brave enough, I warrant you," answered Norman. "I was
in the wood at Tyninghame when there was a sort of gallants
hunting with my lord; on my saul, there was a buck turned to bay
made us all stand back--a stout old Trojan of the first head,
ten-tyned branches, and a brow as broad as e'er a bullock's.
Egad, he dashed at the old lord, and there would have been
inlake among the perrage, if the Master had not whipt roundly in,
and hamstrung him with his cutlass. He was but sixteen then,
bless his heart!"

"And is he as ready with the gun as with the couteau?" said Sir
William.

"He'll strike this silver dollar out from between my finger and
thumb at fourscore yards, and I'll hold it out for a gold merk;
what more would ye have of eye, hand, lead, and gunpowder?"
"Oh, no more to be wished, certainly," said the Lord Keeper;
"but we keep you from your sport, Norman. Good morrow, good
Norman."

And, humming his rustic roundelay, the yeoman went on his road,
the sound of his rough voice gradually dying away as the
distance betwixt them increased:

"The monk must arise when the matins ring,
The abbot may sleep to their chime;
But the yeoman must start when the bugles sing
'Tis time, my hearts, 'tis time.

There's bucks and raes on Bilhope braes,
There's a herd on Shortwood Shaw;
But a lily-white doe in the garden goes,
She's fairly worth them a'."

"Has this fellow," said the Lord Keeper, when the yeoman's song
had died on the wind, "ever served the Ravenswood people, that he
seems so much interested in them? I suppose you know, Lucy, for
you make it a point of conscience to record the special history
of every boor about the castle."

"I am not quite so faithful a chronicler, my dear father; but I
believe that Norman once served here while a boy, and before he
ewnt to Ledington, whence you hired him. But if you want to know
anything of the former family, Old Alice is the best authority."

"And what should I have to do with them, pray, Lucy," said her
father, "or with their history or accomplishments?"

"Nay, I do not know, sir; only that you were asking
questions of Norman about young Ravenswood."

"Pshaw, child!" replied her father, yet immediately added: "And
who is Old Alice? I think you know all the old women in the
country."

"To be sure I do, or how could I help the old creatures when
they are in hard times? And as to Old Alice, she is the very
empress of old women and queen of gossips, so far as legendary
lore is concerned. She is blind, poor old soul, but when she
speaks to you, you would think she has some way of looking into
your very heart. I am sure I often cover my face, or turn it
away, for it seems as if she saw one change colour, though she
has been blind these twenty years. She is worth visiting, were
it but to say you have seen a blind and paralytic old woman have
so much acuteness of perception and dignity of manners. I assure
you, she might be a countess from her language and behaviour.
Come, you must go to see Alice; we are not a quarter of a mile
from her cottage."

"All this, my dear," said the Lord Keeper, "is no answer to my
question, who this woman is, and what is her connexion with the
former proprietor's family?"

"Oh, it was somethign of a nouriceship, I believe; and she
remained here, because her two grandsons were engaged in your
service. But it was against her will, I fancy; for the poor old
creature is always regretting the change of times and of
property."

"I am much obliged to her," answered the Lord Keeper. "She and
her folk eat my bread and drink my cup, and are lamenting all
the while that they are not still under a family which never
could do good, either to themselves or any one else!"

"Indeed," replied Lucy, "I am certain you do Old Alice
injustice. She has nothing mercenary about her, and would not
accept a penny in charity, if it were to save her from being
starved. She is only talkative, like all old folk when you put
them upon stories of their youth; and she speaks abotu the
Ravenswood people, because she lived under them so many years.
But I am sure she is grateful to you, sir, for your protection,
adn taht she would rather speak to you than to any other person
in the whole world beside. Do, sir, come and see Old Alice."

And with the freedom of an indulged daughter she dragged the
Lord Keeper in the direction she desired.

CHAPTER IV.

Through tops of the high trees she did descry
A little smoke, whose vapour, thin and light,
Reeking aloft, uprolled to the sky,
Which cheerful sign did send unto her sight,
That in the same did wonne some living wight.

SPENSER.

LUCY acted as her father's guide, for he was too much engrossed
with his political labours, or with society, to be perfectly
acquainted with his own extensive domains, and,
moreover, was generally an inhabitant of the city of Edinburgh;
and she, on the other hand, had, with her mother, resided the
whole summer in Ravenswood, and, partly from taste, partly from
want of any other amusement, had, by her frequent rambles,
learned to know each lane, alley, dingle, or bushy dell,

And every bosky bourne from side to side.

We have said that the Lord Keeper was not indifferent to the
beauties of nature; and we add, in justice to him, that he felt
them doubly when pointed out by the beautiful, simple, and
interesting girl who, hanging on his arm with filial kindness,
now called him to admire the size of some ancient oak, and now
the unexpected turn where the path, developing its maze from glen
or dingle, suddenly reached an eminence commanding an extensive
view of the plains beneath them, and then gradually glided away
from the prospect to lose itself among rocks and thickets, and
guide to scenes of deeper seclusion.

It was when pausing on one of those points of extensive and
commanding view that Lucy told her father they were close by the
cottage of her blind protegee; and on turning from the little
hill, a path which led around it, worn by the daily steps of the
infirm inmate, brought them in sight of the hut, which, embosomed
in a deep and obscure dell, seemed to have been so situated
purposely to bear a correspondence with the darkened state of its
inhabitant.

The cottage was situated immediately under a tall rock, which in
some measure beetled over it, as if threatening to drop some
detached fragment from its brow on the frail tenement beneath.
The hut itself was constructed of turf and stones, and rudely
roofed over with thatch, much of which was in a
dilapidated condition. The thin blue smoke rose from it in a
light column, and curled upward along the white face of the
incumbent rock, giving the scene a tint of exquisite softness.
In a small and rude garden, surrounded by straggling elder-
bushes, which formed a sort of imperfect hedge, sat near to the
beehives, by the produce of which she lived, that "woman old"
whom Lucy had brought her father hither to visit.

Whatever there had been which was disastrous in her fortune,
whatever there was miserable in her dwelling, it was easy to
judge by the first glance that neither years, poverty,
misfortune, nor infirmity had broken the spirit of this
remarkable woman.

She occupied a turf seat, placed under a weeping birch of
unusual magnitude and age, as Judah is represented sitting under
her palm-tree, with an air at once of majesty and of dejection.
Her figure was tall, commanding, and but little bent by the
infirmities of old age. Her dress, though that of a peasant, was
uncommonly clean, forming in that particular a strong contrast to
most of her rank, and was disposed with an attention to neatness,
and even to taste, equally unusual. But it was her expression of
countenance which chiefly struck the spectator, and induced most
persons to address her with a degree of deference and civility
very inconsistent with the miserable state of her dwelling, and
which, nevertheless, she received with that easy composure which
showed she feelt it to be her due. She had once been beautiful,
but her beauty had been of a bold and masculine cast, such as
does not survive the bloom of youth; yet her features continued
to express strong sense, deep reflection, and a character of
sober pride, which, as we have already said of her dress,
appeared to argue a conscious superiority to those of her own
rank. It scarce seemed possible that a face, deprived of the
advantage of sight, could have expressed character so
strongly; but her eyes, which were almost totally closed, did
not, by the display of their sightless orbs, mar the countenance
to which they could add nothing. She seemed in a ruminating
posture, soothed, perhaps, by the murmurs of the busy tribe
around her to abstraction, though not to slumber.

Lucy undid the latch of the little garden gate, and
solicited the old woman's attention. "My father, Alice, is come
to see you."

"He is welcome, Miss Ashton, and so are you," said the old
woman, turning and inclining her head towards her visitors.

"This is a fine morning for your beehives, mother," said the
Lord Keeper, who, struck with the outward appearance of Alice,
was somewhat curious to know if her conversation would
correspond with it.

"I believe so, my lord," she replied; "I feel the air breathe
milder than of late."

"You do not," resumed the statesman, "take charge of these bees
yourself, mother? How do you manage them?"

"By delegates, as kings do their subjects," resumed Alice;  "and
I am fortunate in a prime minister. Here, Babie."

She whistled on a small silver call which ung around her neck,
and which at that time was sometimes used to summon
domestics, and Babie, a girl of fifteen, made her appearance from
the hut, not altogether so cleanly arrayed as she would probably
have been had Alice had the use of her yees, but with a greater
air of neatness than was upon the whole to have been expected.

"Babie," said her mistress, "offer some bread and honey to the
Lord Keeper and Miss Ashton; they will excuse your
awkwardness if you use cleanliness and despatch."

Babie performed her mistress's command with the grace which was
naturally to have been expected, moving to and fro with a
lobster-like gesture, her feet and legs tending one way, while
her head, turned in a different direction, was fixed in wonder
upon the laird, who was more frequently heard of than seen by his
tenants and dependants. The bread and honey, however, deposited
on a plantain leaf, was offered and accepted in all due courtesy.
The Lord Keeper, still retaining the place which he had occupied
on the decayed trunk of a fallen tree, looked as if he wished to
prolong the interview, but was at a loss how to introduce a
suitable subject.

"You have been long a resident on this property?" he said, after
a pause.

"It is now nearly sixty years since I first knew
Ravenswood," answered the old dame, whose conversation, though
perfectly civil and respectful, seemed cautiously limited to the
unavoidable and necessary task of replying to Sir William.

"You are not, I should judge by your accent, of this country
originally?" said the Lord Keeper, in continuation.

"No; I am by birth an Englishwoman."
"Yet you seem attached to this country as if it were your own."

"It is here," replied the blind woman, "that I have drank the
cup of joy and of sorrow which Heaven destined for me. I was
here the wife of an upright and affectionate husband for more
than twenty years; I was here the mother of six promising
children; it was here that God deprived me of all these
blessings; it was here they died, and yonder, by yon ruined
chapel, they lie all buried. I had no ocuntry but theirs while
they lived; I have none but theirs now they are no more."

"But your house," said the Lord Keeper, looking at it, "is
miserably ruinous?"

"Do, my dear father," said Lucy, eagerly, yet bashfully,
catching at the hint, "give orders to make it better; that is, if
you think it proper."

"It will last my time, my dear Miss Lucy," said the blind woman;
"I would not have my lord give himself the least trouble about
it."

"But," said Lucy, "you once had a much better house, and were
rich, and now in your old age to live in this hovel!"

"It is as good as I deserve, Miss Lucy; if my heart has not
broke with what I have suffered, and seen others suffer, it must
have been strong enough, adn the rest of this old frame has no
right to call itself weaker."

"You have probably witnessed many changes," said the Lord
Keeper; "but your experience must have taught you to expect
them."

"It has taught me to endure them, my lord," was the reply.

"Yet you knew that they must needs arrive in the course of
years?" said the statesman.

"Ay; as I knew that the stump, on or beside which you sit, once
a tall and lofty tree, must needs one day fall by decay, or by
the axe; yet I hoped my eyes might not witness the downfall of
the tree which overshadowed my dwelling."

"Do not suppose," said the Lord Keeper, "that you will lose any
interest with me for looking back with regret to the days when
another family possessed my estates. You had reason, doubtless,
to love them, and I respect your gratitude. I will order some
repairs in your cottage, and I hope we shall live to be friends
when we know each other better."
"Those of my age," returned the dame, "make no new friends. I
thank you for your bounty, it is well intended undoubtedly; but
I have all I want, and I cannot accept more at your lordship's
hand."

"Well, then," continued the Lord Keeper, "at least allow me to
say, that I look upon you as a woman of sense and education
beyond your appearance, and that I hope you will continue to
reside on this property of mine rent-free for your life."

"I hope I shall," said the old dame, composedly; "I believe that
was made an article in the sale of Ravenswood to your lordship,
though such a trifling circumstance may have escaped your
recollection."

"I remember--I recollect," said his lordship, somewhat confused.
"I perceive you are too much attached to your old friends to
accept any benefit from their successor."

"Far from it, my lord; I am grateful for the benefits which I
decline, and I wish I could pay you for offering them, better
than what I am now about to say."  The Lord Keeper looked at her
in some surprise, but said not a word. "My lord," she continued,
in an impressive and solemn tone, "take care what you do; you are
on the brink of a precipice."

"Indeed?" said the Lord Keeper, his mind reverting to the
political circumstances of the country. "Has anything come to
your knowledge--any plot or conspiracy?"

"No, my lord; those who traffic in such commodities do not call
to their councils the old, blind, and infirm. My warning is of
another kind. You have driven matters hard with the house of
Ravenswood. Believe a true tale: they are a fierce house, and
there is danger in dealing with men when they become desperate."

"Tush," answered the Keeper; "what has been between us has been
the work of the law, not my doing; and to the law they must
look, if they would impugn my proceedings."

"Ay, but they may think otherwise, and take the law into their
own hand, when they fail of other means of redress."

"What mean you?" said the Lord Keeper. "Young Ravenswood would
not have recourse to personal violence?"

"God forbid I should say so! I know nothing of the youth but
what is honourable and open. Honourable and open, said I? I
should have added, free, generous, noble. But he is still a
Ravenswood, and may bide his time. Remember the fate of Sir
George Lockhart."

The Lord Keeper started as she called to his recollection a
tragedy so deep and so recent. The old woman proceeded:
"Chiesley, who did the deed, was a relative of Lord Ravenswood.
In the hall of Ravenswood, in my presence and in that of others,
he avowed publicly his determination to do the cruelty which he
afterwards committed. I could not keep silence, though to speak
it ill became my station. 'You are devising a dreadful crime,' I
said, 'for which you must reckon before the judgment seat.'
Never shall I forget his look, as he replied, 'I must reckon then
for many things, and will reckon for this also.'  Therefore I may
well say, beware of pressing a desperate man with the hand of
authority. There is blood of Chiesley in the veins of
Ravenswood, and one drop of it were enough to fire him in the
circumstances in which he is placed. I say, beware of him."

The old dame had, either intentionally or by accident, harped
aright the fear of the Lord Keeper. The desperate and dark
resource of private assassination, so familiar to a Scottish
baron in former times, had even in the present age been too
frequently resorted to under the pressure of unusual temptation,
or where the mind of the actor was prepared for such a crime.
Sir William Ashton was aware of this; as also that young
Ravenswood had received injuries sufficient to prompt him to that
sort of revenge, which becomes a frequent though fearful
consequence of the partial administration of justice. He
endeavoured to disguise from Alice the nature of the
apprehensions which he entertained; but so ineffectually, that a
person even of less penetration than nature had endowed her with
must necessarily have been aware that the subject lay near his
bosom. His voice was changed in its accent as he replied to her,
"That the Master of Ravenswood was a man of honour; and, were it
otherwise, that the fate of Chiesley of Dalry was a sufficient
warning to any one who should dare to assume the office of
avenger of his own imaginary wrongs."  And having hastily uttered
these expressions, he rose and left the place without waiting
for a reply.

CHAPTER V.

Is she a Capulet?
O dear account! my life is my foe's debt.

SHAKESPEARE

THE Lord Keeper walked for nearly a quarter of a mile in
profound silence. His daughter, naturally timid, and bred up in
those ideas of filial awe and implicit obedience which were
inculcated upon the youth of that period, did not venture to
interrupt his meditations.

"Why do you look so pale, Lucy?" said her father, turning
suddenly round and breaking silence.

According to the ideas of the time, which did not permit a young
woman to offer her sentiments on any subject of importance
unless required to do so, Lucy was bound to appear ignorant of
the meaning of all that had passed betwixt Alice and her father,
and imputed the emotion he had observed to the fear of the wild
cattle which grazed in that part of the extensive chase through
which they were now walking.

Of these animals, the descendants of the savage herds which
anciently roamed free in the Caledonian forests,. it was formerly
a point of state to preserve a few in the parks of the Scottish
nobility. Specimens continued within the memory of man to be
kept at least at three houses of distinction--Hamilton, namely,
Drumlanrig, and Cumbernauld. They had degenerated from the
ancient race in size and strength, if we are to judge from the
accounts of old chronicles, and from the formidable remains
frequently discovered in bogs and morasses when drained and laid
open. The bull had lost the shaggy honours of his mane, and the
race was small and light made, in colour a dingy white, or rather
a pale yellow, with black horns and hoofs. They retained,
however, in some measure, the ferocity of their ancestry, could
not be domesticated on account of their antipathy to the human
race, and were often dangerous if approached unguardedly, or
wantonly disturbed. It was this last reason which has occasioned
their being extirpated at the places we have mentioned, where
probably they would otherwise have been retained as appropriate
inhabitants of a Scottish woodland, and fit tenants for a
baronial forest. A few, if I mistake not, are still preserved at
Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland, the seat of the Earl of
Tankerville.

It was to her finding herself in the vicinity of a group of
three or four of these animals, that Lucy thought proper to
impute those signs of fear which had arisen in her countenance
for a different reason. For she had been familiarised with the
appearance of the wil cattle during her walks in the chase; and
it was not then, as it may be now, a necessary part of a young
lady's demeanour to indulge in causeless tremors of the nerves.
On the present occasion, however, she speedily found cause for
real terror.

Lucy had scarcely replied to her father in the words we have
mentioned, and he was just about to rebuke her supposed timidity,
when a bull, stimulated either by the scarlet colour of Miss
Ashton's mantle, or by one of those fits of capricious ferocity
to which their dispositions are liable, detached himself suddenly
from the group which was feeding at the upper extremity of a
grassy glade, that seemed to lose itself among the crossing and
entangled boughs. The animal approached the intruders on his
pasture ground, at first slowly, pawing the ground with his hoof,
bellowing from time to time, and tearing up the sand with his
horns, as if to lash himself up to rage and violence.

The Lord Keeper, who observed the animal's demeanour, was aware
that he was about to become mischievous, and, drawing his
daughter's arm under his own, began to walk fast along the
avenue, in hopes to get out of his sight and his reach. This was
the most injudicious course he could have adopted, for,
encouraged by the appearance of flight, the bull began to pursue
them at full speed. Assailed by a danger so imminent, firmer
courage than that of the Lord Keeper might have given way. But
paternal tenderness, "love strong as death," sustained him. He
continued to support and drag onward his daughter, until her
fears altogether depriving her of the power of flight, she sunk
down by his side; and when he could no longer assist her to
escape, he turned round and placed himself betwixt her and the
raging animal, which, advancing in full career, its brutal fury
enhanced by the rapidity of the pursuit, was now within a few
yards of them. The Lord Keeper had no weapons; his age and
gravity dispensed even with the usual appendage of a walking
sword--could such appendage have availed him anything.

It seemed inevitable that the father or daughter, or both,
should have fallen victims to the impending danger, when a shot
from the neighbouring thicket arrested the progress of the
animal. He was so truly struck between the junction of the spine
with the skull, that the wound, which in any other part of his
body might scarce have impeded his career, proved instantly
fatal. Stumbling forward with a hideous bellow, the progressive
force of his previous motion, rather than any operation of his
limbs, carried him up to within three yards of the astonished
Lord Keeper, where he rolled on the ground, his limbs darkened
with the black death-sweat, and quivering with the last
convulsions of muscular motion.

Lucy lay senseless on the ground, insensible of the
wonderful deliverance which she had experience. Her father was
almost equally stupified, so rapid and unexpected had been the
transition from the horrid death which seemed inevitable to
perfect security. He gazed on the animal, terrible even in
death, with a species of mute and confused astonishment, which
did not permit him distinctly to understand what had taken place;
and so inaccurate was his consciousness of what had passed, that
he might have supposed the bull had been arrested in its career
by a thunderbolt, had he not observed among the branches of the
thicket the figure of a man, with a short gun or musquetoon in
his hand.

This instantly recalled him to a sense of their situation: a
glance at his daughter reminded him of the necessity of procuring
her assistance. He called to the man, whom he concluded to be
one of his foresters, to give immediate attention to Miss Ashton,
while he himself hastened to call assistance. The huntsman
approached them accordingly, and the Lord Keeper saw he was a
stranger, but was too much agitated to make any farther remarks.
In a few hurried words he directed the shooter, as stronger and
more active than himself, to carry the young lady to a
neighbouring fountain, while he went back to Alice's hut to
procure more aid.

The man to whose timely itnerference they had been so much
indebted did not seem inclined to leave his good work half
finished. He raised Lucy from the ground in his arms, and
convenying her through the glades of the forest by paths with
which he seemed well acquainted, stopped not until he laid her in
safety by the side of a plentiful and pellucid fountain, which
had been once covered in, screened and decorated with
architectural ornaments of a Gothic character. But now the vault
which had covered it being broken down and riven, and the Gothic
font ruined and demolished, the stream burst forth from the
recess of  the earth in open day, and winded its way among the
broken sculpture and moss-grown stones which lay in confusion
around its source.

Tradition, always busy, at least in Scotland, to grace with a
legendary tale a spot in itself interesting, had ascribed a
cause of peculiar veneration to this fountain. A beautiful young
lady met one of the Lords of Ravenswood while hunting near this
spot, and, like a second Egeria, had captivated the affections of
the feudal Numa. They met frequently afterwards, and always at
sunset, the charms of the nymph's mind completing the conquest
which her beauty had begun, and the mystery of the intrigue
adding zest to both. She always appeared and disappeared close
by the fountain, with which, therefore, her lover judged she had
some inexplicable connexion. She placed certain restrictions on
their intercourse, which also savoured of mystery. They met only
once a week--Friday was the appointed day--and she explained to
the Lord of Ravenswood that they were under the necessity of
separating so soon as the bell of a chapel, belonging to a
hermitage in the adjoining wood, now long ruinous, should toll
the hour of vespers. In the course of his confession, the Baron
of Ravenswood entrusted the hermit with the secret of this
singular amour, and Father Zachary drew the necessary and
obvious consequence that his patron was enveloped in the toils of
Satan, and in danger of destruction, both to body and soul. He
urged these perils to the Baron with all the force of monkish
rhetoric, and described, in the most frightful colours, the real
character and person of the apparently lovely Naiad, whom he
hesitated not to denounce as a limb of the kingdom of darkness.
The lover listened with obstinate incredulity; and it was not
until worn out by the obstinacy of the anchoret that he consented
to put the state and condition of his mistress to a certain
trial, and for that purpose acquiesced in Zachary's proposal that
on their next interview the vespers bell should be rung half an
hour later than usual. The hermit maintained and bucklered his
opinion, by quotations from Malleus Malificarum, Sprengerus,
Remigius, and other learned demonologists, that the Evil One,
thus seduced to remain behind the appointed hour, would assume
her true shape, and, having appeared to herterrified lover as a
fiend of hell, would vanish from him in a flash of sulphurous
lightning. Raymond of Ravenswood acquiesced in the experiment,
not incurious concerning the issue, though confident it would
disappoint the expectations of the hermit.

At the appointed hour the lovers met, and their interview was
protracted beyond that at which they usually parted, by the
delay of the priest to ring his usual curfew. No change took
place upon the nymph's outward form; but as soon as the
lengthening shadows made her aware that the usual hour of the
vespers chime was passed, she tore herself from her lover's arms
with a shriek of despair, bid him adieu for ever, and, plunging
into the fountain, disappeared from his eyes. The bubbles
occasioned by her descent were crimsoned with blood as they
arose, leading the distracted Baron to infer that his ill-judged
curiosity had occasioned the death of this interesting and
mysterious being. The remorse which he felt, as well as the
recollection of her charms, proved the penance of his future
life, which he lost in the battle of Flodden not many months
after. But, in memory of his Naiad, he had previously ornamented
the fountain in which she appeared to reside, and secured its
waters from profanation or pollution by the small vaulted
building of which the fragments still remained scattered around
it. From this period the house of Ravenswood was supposed to
have dated its decay.

Such was the generally-received legend, which some, who would
seem wiser than the vulgar, explained as obscurely
intimating the fate of a beautiful maid of plebeian rank, the
mistress of this Raymond, whom he slew in a fit of jealousy, and
whose blood was mingled with the waters of the locked foundtain,
as it was commonly called. Others imagined thatthe tale had a
more remote origin in the ancient heathen mythology. All,
however, agreed that the spot was fatal to the Ravenswood family;
and that to drink of the waters of the well, or even approach its
brink, was as ominous to a descendant of that house as for a
Grahame to wear green, a Bruce to kill a spider, or a St. Clair
to cross the Ord on a Monday.

It was on this ominous spot that Lucy Ashton first drew breath
after her long and almost deadly swoon. Beautiful and pale as
the fabulous Naiad in the last agony of separation from her
lover, she was seated so as to rest with her back against a part
of the ruined wall, while her mantle, dripping with the water
which her protector had used profusely to recall her senses,
clung to her slender and beautifully proportioned form.

The firts moment of recollection brought to her mind the danger
which had overpowered her senses; the next called to remembrance
that of her father. She looked around; he was nowhere to be
seen. "My father, my father!" was all that she could ejaculate.

"Sir William is safe," answered the voice of a stranger--
"perfectly safe, adn will be with you instantly."

"Are you sure of that?" exclaimed Lucy. "The bull was close by
us. Do not stop me: I must go to seek my father!"

And she rose with that purpose; but her strength was so much
exhausted that, far from possessing the power to execute her
purpose, she must have fallen against the stone on which she had
leant, probably not without sustaining serious injury.

The stranger was so near to her that, without actually suffering
her to fall, he could not avoid catching her in his arms, which,
however, he did with a momentary reluctance, very unusual when
youth interposes to prevent beauty from danger. It seemed as if
her weight, slight as it was, proved too heavy for her young and
athletic assistant, for, without feeling the temptation of
detaining her in his arms even for a single
instant, he again placed her on the stone from which she had
risen, and retreating a few steps, repeated hastily "Sir William
Ashton is perfectly safe and will be here instantly. Do not make
yourself anxious on his account: Fate has singularly preserved
him. You, madam, are exhausted, and must not think of rising
until you have some assistance more suitable than mine."

Lucy, whose senses were by this time more effectually collected,
was naturally led to look at the stranger with
attention. There was nothing in his appearance which should have
rendered him unwilling to offer his arm to a young lady who
required support, or which could have induced her to refuse his
assistance; and she could not help thinking, even in that moment,
that he seemed cold and reluctant to offer it. A shooting-dress
of dark cloth intimated the rank of the wearer, though concealed
in part by a large and loose cloak of a dark brown colour. A
montero cap and a black feather drooped over the wearer's brow,
and partly concealed his features, which, so far as seen, were
dark, regular, adn full of majestic, though somewhat sullen,
expression. Some secret sorrow, or the brooding spirit of some
moody passion, had quenched the light and ingenuous vivacity of
youth in a countenance singularly fitted to display both, and it
was not easy to gaze on the stranger without a secret impression
either of pity or awe, or at least of doubt and curiosity allied
to both.

The impression which we have necessarily been long in
describing, Lucy felt in the glance of a moment, and had no
sooner encountered the keen black eyes of the stranger than her
own were bent on the ground with a mixture of bashful
embarrassment and fear. Yet there was a necessity to speak, or
at last she thought so, and in a fluttered accent she began to
mention her wonderful escape, in which she was sure that the
stranger must, under Heaven, have been her father's protector
and her own.

He seemed to shrink from her expressions of gratitude, while he
replied abruptly, "I leave you, madam," the deep melody of his
voice rendered powerful, but not harsh, by something like a
severity of tone--"I leave you to the protection of those to whom
it is possible you may have this day been a guardian angel."

Lucy was surprised at the ambiguity of his language, and, with a
feeling of artless and unaffected gratitude, began to deprecate
the idea of having intended to give her deliverer any offence, as
if such a thing had been possible. "I have been unfortunate,"
she said, "in endeavouring to express my thanks--I am sure it
must be so, though I cannot recollect what I said; but would you
but stay till my father--till the Lord Keeper comes; would you
only permit him to pay you his thanks, and to inquire your name?"

"My name is unnecessary," answered the stranger; "your father--I
would rather say Sir William Ashton--will learn it soon enough,
for all the pleasure it is likely to afford him."

"You mistake him," said Lucy, earnestly; "he will be
grateful for my sake and for his own. You do not know my father,
or you are deceiving me with a story of his safety, when he has
already fallen a victim to the fury of that animal."

When she had caught this idea, she started from the ground and
endeavoured to press towards the avenue in which the accident
had taken place, while the stranger, though he seemed to
hesitate between the desire to assist and the wish to leave her,
was obliged, in common humanity, to oppose her both by entreaty
and action.

"On the word of a gentleman, madam, I tell you the truth; your
father is in perfect safety; you will expose yourself to injury
if you venture back where the herd of wild cattle grazed. If you
will go"--for, haing once adoped the idea that her father was
still in danger, she pressed forward in spite of him--"if you
WILL go, accept my arm, though I am not perhaps the person who
can with most propriety offer you support."

But, without heeding this intimation, Lucy took him at his word.
"Oh, if you be a man," she said--"if you be a gentleman, assist
me to find my father! You shall not leave me--you must go with
me; he is dying perhaps while we are talking here!"

Then, without listening to excuse or apology, and holding fast
by the stranger's arm, though unconscious of anything save the
support which it gave,  and without which she could not have
moved, mixed with a vague feeling of preventing his escape from
her, she was urging, and almost dragging, him forward when Sir
William Ashton came up, followed by the female attendant of blind
Alice, and by two woodcutters, whom he had summoned from their
occupation to his assistance. His joy at seeing his daughter
safe overcame the surprise with which he would at another time
have beheld her hanging as familiarly on the arm of a stranger as
she might have done upon his own.

"Lucy, my dear Lucy, are you safe?--are you well?" were the only
words that broke from him as he embraced her in ecstasy.

"I am well, sir, thank God! and still more that I see you so;
but this gentleman," she said, quitting his arm and shrinking
from him, "what must he think of me?" and her eloquent blood,
flushing over neck and brow, spoke how much she was ashamed of
the freedom with which she had craved, and even compelled, his
assistance.

"This gentleman," said Sir William Ashton, "will, I trust, not
regret the trouble we have given him, when I assure him of the
gratitude of the Lord Keeper for the greatest service which one
man ever rendered to another--for the life of my child--for my
own life, which he has saved by his bravery and presence of
mind. He will, I am sure, permit us to request----"
"Request nothing of ME, my lord," said the stranger, in a stern
and peremptory tone; "I am the Master of Ravenswood."

There was a dead pause of surprise, not unmixed with less
pleasant feleings. The Master wrapt himself in his cloak, made a
haughty inclination toward Lucy, muttering a few words of
courtesy, as indistinctly heard as they seemed to be relunctantly
uttered, and, turning from them, was immediately lost in the
thicket.

"The Master of Ravenswood!" said the Lord Keeper, when he had
recovered his momentary astonishment. "Hasten after him--stop
him--beg him to speak to me for a single moment."

The two foresters accordingly set off in pursuit of the
stranger. They speedily reappeared, and, in an embarrassed and
awkward manner, said the gentleman would not return.

The Lord Keeper took one of the fellows aside, and
questioned him more closely what the Master of Ravenswood had
said.

"He just said he wadna come back," said the man, with the
caution of a prudent Scotchman, who cared not to be the bearer of
an unpleasant errand.

"He said something more, sir," said the Lord Keeper, "and I
insist on knowing what it was."

"Why, then, my lord," said the man, looking down, "he said----
But it wad be nae pleasure to your lordship to hear it, for I
dare say the Master meant nae ill."

"That's none of your concern, sir; I desire to hear the very
words."

"Weel, then," replied the man, "he said, 'Tell Sir William
Ashton that the next time he and I forgather, he will nto be half
sae blythe of our meeting as of our parting.'"

"Very well, sir," said the Lord Keeper, "I believe he alludes to
a wager we have on our hawks; it is a matter of no consequence."

He turned to his daughter, who was by this time so much
recovered as to be able to walk home. But the effect, which the
various recollections connected with a scene so terrific made
upon a mind which was susceptible in an extreme degree,  was more
permanent than the injury which her nerves had sustained.
Visions of terror, both in sleep and in waking reveries, recalled
to her the form of the furious animal, and the dreadful bellow
with which he accompanied his career; and it was always the image
of the Master of Ravenswood, with his native nobleness of
countenance and form, that seemed to interpose betwixt her and
assured death. It is, perhaps, at all times dangerous for a
young person to suffer recollection to dwell repeatedly, and with
too much complacency, on the same individual; but in Lucy's
situation it was almost unavoidable. She had never happened to
see a young man of mien and features so romantic and so striking
as young Ravenswood; but had she seen an hundred his equals or
his superiors in those particulars, no one else would have been
linked to her heart by the strong
associations of remembered danger and escape, of gratitude,
wonder, and curiosity. I say curiosity, for it is likely that
the singularly restrained and unaccommodating manners of the
Master of Ravenswood, so much at variance with the natural
expression of his features and grace of his deportment, as they
excited wonder by the contrast, had their effect in riveting her
attention to the recollections. She knew little of Ravenswood,
or the disputes which had existed betwixt her father and his, and
perhaps could in her gentleness of mind hardly have comprehended
the angry and bitter passions which they had engendered. But she
knew that he was come of noble stem; was poor, though descended
from the noble and the wealthy; and she felt that she could
sympathise with the feelings of a proud mind, which urged him to
recoil from the proffered gratitude of the new proprietors of his
father's house and domains. Would he have equally shunned their
acknowledgments and avoided their intimacy, had her father's
request been urged more mildly, less abruptly, and softened with
the grace which women so well know how to throw into their
manner, when they mean to mediate betwixt the headlong passions
of the ruder sex? This was a perilous question to ask her own
mind--perilous both in the idea and its consequences.

Lucy Ashton, in short, was involved in those mazes of the
imagination which are most dangerous to the young and the
sensitive. Time, it is true, absence, change of scene and new
faces, might probably have destroyed the illusion in her
instance, as it has done in many others; but her residence
remained solitary, and her mind without those means of
dissipating her pleasing visions. This solitude was chiefly
owing to the absence of Lady Ashton, who was at this time in
Edinburgh, watching the progress of some state-intrigue; the Lord
Keeper only received society out of policy or ostentation, and
was by nature rather reserved and unsociable; and thus no
cavalier appeared to rival or to obscure the ideal picture of
chivalrous excellence which Lucy had pictured to herself in the
Master of Ravenswood.

While Lucy indulged in these dreams, she made frequent visits to
old blind Alice, hoping it would be easy to lead her to talk on
the subject which at present she had so imprudently admitted to
occupy so large a portion of her thoughts. But Alice did not in
this particular gratify her wishes and expectations. She spoke
readily, and with pathetic feeling, concerning the family in
general, but seemed to observe an especial and cautious silence
on the subject of the present representative. The little she
said of him was not altogether so favourable as Lucy had
anticipated. She hinted that he was of a stern and unforgiving
character, more ready to resent than to pardon injuries; and Lucy
combined, with great alarm, the hints which she now dropped of
these dangerous qualities with Alice's advice to her father, so
emphatically given, "to beware of Ravenswood."

Btu that very Ravenswood, of whom such unjust suspicions had
been entertained, had, almost immediately after they had been
uttered, confuted them by saving at once her father's life and
her own. Had he nourished such black revenge as Alice's dark
hints seemed to indicate, no deed of active guilt was necessary
to the full gratification of that evil passion. He needed but to
have withheld for an instant his indispensable and effective
assistance, and the object of his resentment must have perished,
without any direct aggression on his part, by a death equally
fearful and certain. She conceived, therefore, that some secret
prejudice, or the suspicions incident to age and misfortune, had
led Alice to form conclusions injurious to the character, and
irreconcilable both with the generous conduct and noble features,
of the Master of Ravenswood. And in this belief Lucy reposed her
hope, and went on weaving her enchanted web of fairy tissue, as
beautiful and transient as the film of the gossamer when it is
pearled with the morning dew and glimmering to the sun.

Her father, in the mean while, as well as the Master of
Ravenswood, were making reflections, as frequent though more
solid than those of Lucy, upon the singular event which had
taken place. The Lord Keeper's first task, when he returned
home, was to ascertain by medical advice that his daughter had
sustained no injury from the dangerous and alarming situation in
which she had been placed. Satisfied on this topic, he proceeded
to revise the memoranda which he had taken down from the mouth of
the person employed to interrupt the funeral service of the late
Lord Ravenswood.  Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to
practise the ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little
trouble to soften the features of the tumult which he had been
at first so anxiuous to exaggerate. He preached to his
colleagues of the privy council the necessity of using
conciliatory measures with young men, whose blood and temper were
hot, and their experience of life limited. He did not hesitate
to attribute some censure to the conduct of the officer, as
having been unnecessarily irritating.

These were the contents of his public despatches. The letters
which he wrote to those private friends into whose management the
matter was likely to fall were of a yet more favourable tenor.
He represented that lenity in this case would be equally politic
and popular, whereas, considering the high respect with which the
rites of interment are regarded in
Scotland, any severity exercised against the Master of Ravenswood
for protecting those of his father from interruption, would be on
all sides most unfavourably construed. And, finally, assuming
the language of a generous and high-spirited man, he made it his
particular request that this affair should be passed over without
severe notice. He alluded with delicacy to the predicament in
which he himself stood with young Ravenswood, as having succeeded
in the long train of litigation by which the fortunes of that
noble house had been so much reduced, and confessed it would be
most peculiarly acceptable to his own feelings, could he find in
some sort to counterbalance the disadvantages which he had
occasioned the family, though only in the prosecution of his just
and lawful rights. He therefore made it his particular and
personal request that the matter should have no farther
consequences, an insinuated a desire that he himself should have
the merit of having put a stop to it by his favourable report and
intercession. It was particularly remarkable that, contrary to
his uniform practice, he made no special communication to Lady
Ashton  upon the subject of the tumult; and although he mentioned
the alarm which Lucy had received from one of the wild cattle,
yet he gave no detailed account of an incident so interesting and
terrible.

There was much surprise among Sir William Ashton's political
friends and colleagues on receiving letters of a tenor so
unexpected. On comparing notes together, one smiled, one put up
his eyebrows, a third nodded acquiescence in the general wonder,
and a fourth asked if they were sure these were ALL the letters
the Lord Keeper had written on the subject. "It runs strangely
in my mind, my lords, that none of these advices contain the root
of the matter."

But no secret letters of a contrary nature had been
received, although the question seemed to imply the possibility
of their existence.

"Well," said an old grey-headed statesman, who had
contrived, by shifting and trimming, to maintain his post at the
steerage through all the changes of course which the vessel had
held for thirty years, "I thought Sir William would hae verified
the auld Scottish saying, 'As soon comes the lamb's skin to
market as the auld tup's'"

"We must please him after his own fashion,"  said another,
"though it be an unlooked0for one."

"A wilful man maun hae his way," answered the old
counsellor.

"The Keeper will rue this before year and day are out," said a
third; "the Master of Ravenswood is the lad to wind him a pirn."

"Why, what would you do, my lords, with the poor young fellow?"
said a noble Marquis present. "The Lord Keeper has got all his
estates; he has not a cross to bless himself with."

On which the ancient Lord Turntippet replied

"If he hasna gear to fine,
He ha shins to pine.

And that was our way before the Revolution: Lucitur cum persona,
qui luere non potest cum crumena. Hegh, my lords, that's gude
law Latin."

"I can see no motive," replied the Marquis, "that any noble lord
can have for urging this matter farther; let the Lord Keeper
have the power to deal in it as he pleases."

"Agree, agree--remit to the Lord Keeper, with any other person
for fashion's sake--Lord Hirplehooly, who is bed-ridden--one to
be a quorum. Make your entry in the minutes, Mr. Clerk. And
now, my lords, there is that young scattergood the Laird of
Bucklaw's fine to be disposed upon. I suppose it goes to my Lord
Treasurer?"

"Shame be in my meal-poke, then," exclaimed the Lord
Turntippet, "and your hand aye in the nook of it! I had set that
down for a bye-bit between meals for mysell."

"To use one of your favourite saws, my lord," replied the
Marquis, "you are like the miller's dog, that licks his lips
before the bag is untied: the man is not fined yet."

"But that costs but twa skarts of a pen," said Lord
Turntippet; "and surely there is nae noble lord that will presume
to say that I, wha hae complied wi' a' compliances, taen all
manner of tests, adjured all that was to be abjured, and sworn a'
that was to be sworn, for these thirty years bye-past, sticking
fast by my duty to the state through good report and bad report,
shouldna hae something now and then to synd my mouth wi' after
sic drouthy wark? Eh?"

"It would be very unreasonable indeed, my lord," replied the
Marquis, "had we either thought that your lordship's drought was
quenchable, or observed anything stick in your throat that
required washing down."

And so we close the scene on the privy council of that period.

CHAPTER VI.

For this are all these warriors come,
To hear an idle tale;
And o'er our death-accustom'd arms
Shall silly tears prevail?

HENRY MACKENZIE.

ON the evening of the day when the Lord Keeper and his daughter
were saved from such imminent peril, two strangers were seated in
the most private apartment of a small obscure inn, or rather
alehouse, called the Tod's Den [Hole], about three or four [five
or six] miles from the Castle of Ravenswood and as far from the
ruinous tower of  Wolf's Crag, betwixt which two places it was
situated.

One of these strangers was about forty years of age, tall, and
thin in the flanks, with an aquiline nose, dark penetrating
eyes, and a shrewd but sinister cast of countenance. The other
was about fifteen years younger, short, stout, ruddy-faced, and
red-haired, with an open, resolute, and cheerful eye, to which
careless and fearless freedom and inward daring gave fire and
expression, notwithstanding its light grey colour. A stoup of
wine (for in those days it was erved out from the cask in pewter
flagons) was placed on the table, and each had his quaigh or
bicker before him. But there was little appearance of
conviviality. With folded arms, and looks of anxious
expectation, they eyed each other in silence, each wrapt in his
own thoughts, and holding no communication with his neighbour.
At length the younger broke silence by exclaiming: "What the
foul fiend can detain the Master so long? He must have
miscarried in his enterprise. Why did you dissuade me from going
with him?"

"One man is enough to right his own wrong," said the taller and
older personage; "we venture our lives for him in coming thus
far on such an errand."

"Yopu are but a craven after all, Craigengelt," answered the
younger, "and that's what many folk have thought you before now."
"But what none has dared to tell me," said Craigengelt,
laying his hand on the hilt of his sword; "and, but that I hold a
hasty man no better than a fool, I would----" he paused for his
companion's answer.

"WOULD you?" said the other, coolly; "and why do you not then?"

Craigengelt drew his cutlass an inch or two, and then returned
it with violence into the scabbard--"Because there is a deeper
stake to be played for than the lives of twenty
harebrained gowks like you."

"You are right there," said his companion, "for it if were not
that these forfeitures, and that last fine that the old
driveller Turntippet is gaping for, and which, I dare say, is
laid on by this time, have fairly driven me out of house and
home, I were a coxcomb and a cuckoo to boot to trust your fair
promises of getting me a commission in the Irish brigade. What
have I to do with the Irish brigade? I am a plain Scotchman, as
my father was before me; and my grand-aunt, Lady Girnington,
cannot live for ever."

"Ay, Bucklaw," observed Craigengelt, "but she may live for many
a long day; and for your father, he had land and living, kept
himself close from wadsetters and money-lenders, paid each man
his due, and lived on his own."

"And whose fault it it that I have not done so too?" said
Bucklaw--"whose but the devil's and yours, and such-like as you,
that have led me to the far end of a fair estate? And now I
shall be obliged, I suppose, to shelter and shift about like
yourself: live one week upon a line of secret intelligence from
Saint Germains; another upon a report of a rising in the
Highlands; get my breakfast and morning draught of sack from old
Jacobite ladies, and give them locks of my old wig for the
Chevalier's hair; second my friend in his quarrel till he comes
to the field, and then flinch from him lest so important a
political agent should perish from the way. All this I must do
for bread, besides calling myself a captain!"

"You think you are making a fine speech now," said
Craigengelt, "and showing much wit at my expense. Is starving or
hanging better than the life I am obliged to lead, because the
present fortunes of the king cannot sufficiently support his
envoys?"
"Starving is honester, Craigengelt, and hanging is like to be
the end on't. But what you mean to make of this poor fellow
Ravenswood, I know not. He has no money left, any more than I;
his lands are all pawned and pledged, and the interest eats up
the rents, and is not satisfied, and what do you hope to make by
meddling in his affairs?"

"Content yourself, Bucklaw; I know my business," replied
Craigengelt. "Besides that his name, and his father's services
in 1689, will make such an acquisition sound well both at
Versailles and Saint Germains, you will also please be informed
that the Master of Ravenswood is a very different kind of a young
fellow from you. He has parts and address, as well as courage
and talents, and will present himself abroad like a young man of
head as well as heart, who knows something more than the speed of
a horse or the flight of a hawk. I have lost credit of late, by
bringing over no one that had sense to know more than how to
unharbour a stag, or take and reclaim an eyas. The Master has
education, sense, and penetration."

"And yet is not wise enough to escape the tricks of a kidnapper,
Craigengelt?" replied the younger man. "But don't be angry; you
know you will nto fight, and so it is as well to leave your hilt
in peace andquiet, and tell me in sober guise how you drew the
Master into your confidence?"

"By flattering his love of vengeance, Bucklaw," answered
Craigengelt. "He has always distrusted me; but I watched my
time, and struck while his temper was red-hot with the sense of
insult and of wrong. He goes now to expostulate, as he says, and
perhaps thinks, with Sir William Ashton. I say, that if they
meet, and the lawyer puts him to his defence, the Master will
kill him; for he had that sparkle in his eye which never deceives
you when you would read a man's purpose. At any rate, he will
give him such a bullying as will be construed into an assault on
a privy councillor; so there will be a total breach betwixt him
and government. Scotland will be too hot for him; France will
gain him; and we will all set sail together in the French brig
'L'Espoir,' which is hovering for us off Eyemouth."

"Content am I," said Bucklaw; "Scotland has little left that I
care about; and if carrying the Master with us will get us a
better reception in France, why, so be it, a God's name. I doubt
our own merits will procure us slender preferment; and I trust he
will send a ball through the Keeper's head before he joins us.
One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a
year, just to keep the others on their good behaviour."

"That is very true," replied Craigengelt; "and it reminds me
that I must go and see that our horses have been fed and are in
readiness; for, should such deed be done, it will be no time for
grass to grow beneath their heels."  He proceeded as far as the
door, then turned back with a look of earnestness, and said to
Bucklaw: "Whatever should come of this business, I am sure you
will do me the justice to remember that I said nothing to the
Master which could imply my accession to any act of violence
which he may take it into his head to commit."

"No, no, not a single word like accession," replied Bucklaw;
"you know too well the risk belonging to these two terrible
words, 'art and part.'"  Then, as if to himself, he recited the
following lines:

"The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs,
And pointed full upon the stroke of murder.

"What is that you are talking to yourself?" said
Craigengelt, turning back with some anxiety.

"Nothing, only two lines I have heard upon the stage," replied
his companion.

"Bucklaw," said Craigengelt, "I sometimes think you should have
been a stage-player yourself; all is fancy and frolic with you."

"I have often thought so myself," said Bucklaw. "I believe it
would be safer than acting with you in the Fatal Conspiracy.
But away, play your own part, and look after the horses like a
groom as you are. A play-actor--a stage-player!" he repeated to
himself; "that would have deserved a stab, but that Craigengelt's
a coward. And yet I should like the profession well enough.
Stay, let me see; ay, I would come out in Alexander:

Thus from the grave I  rise to save my love,
Draw all your swords, and quick as lightning move.
When I rush on, sure none will dare to stay:
'Tis love commands, and glory leads the way."

As with a voice of thunder, and his hand upon his sword, Bucklaw
repeated the ranting couplets of poor Lee, Craigengelt re-entered
with a face of alarm.

"We are undone, Bucklaw! The Master's led horse has cast
himself over his halter in the stable, and is dead lame. His
hackney will be set up with the day's work, and now he has no
fresh horse; he will never get off."

"Egad, there will be no moving with the speed of lightning this
bout," said Bucklaw, drily. "But stay, you can give him yours."

"What! and be taken myself? I thank you for the proposal," said
Craigengelt.

"Why," replied Bucklaw, "if the Lord Keeper should have met with
a mischance, which for my part I cannot suppose, for the Master
is not the lad to shoot an old and unarmed man--but IF there
should have been a fray at the Castle, you are neither art not
part in it, you know, so have nothing to fear."

"True, true," answered the other, with embarrassment; "but
consider my commission from Saint Germains."

"Which many men think is a commission of your own making, noble
Captain. Well, if you will not give him your horse, why, d----n
it, he must have mine."

"Yours?" said Craigengelt.

"Ay, mine," repeated Bucklaw; "it shall never be said that I
agreed to back a gentleman in a little affair of honour, and
neither helped him on with it nor off from it."

"You will give him your horse? and have you considered the
loss?"

"Loss! why, Grey Gilbert cost me twenty Jacobuses, that's true;
but then his hackney is worth something, and his Black Moor is
worth twice as much were he sound, and I know how to handle him.
Take a fat sucking mastiff whelp,  flay and bowel him, stuff the
body full of black and grey snails, roast a reasonable time, and
baste with oil of spikenard, saffron, cinnamon, and honey, anoint
with the dripping, working it in----"

"Yes, Bucklaw; but in the mean while, before the sprain is
cured, nay, before the whelp is roasted, you will be caught and
hung. Depend on it, the chase will be hard after Ravenswood. I
wish we had made our place of rendezvous nearer to the coast."

"On my faith, then," said Bucklaw, "I had best go off just now,
and leave my horse for him. Stay--stay, he comes: I hear a
horse's feet."

"Are you sure there is only one?" said Craigengelt. "I fear
there is a chase;  I think I hear three or four galloping
together. I am sure I hear more horses than one."

"Pooh, pooh, it is the wench of the house clattering to the well
in her pattens. By my faith, Captain, you should give up both
your captainship and your secret service, for you are as easily
scared as a wild goose. But here comes the Master alone, and
looking as gloomy as a night in November."

The Master of Ravenswood entered the room accordingly, his cloak
muffled around him, his arms folded, his looks stern, and at the
same time dejected. He flung his cloak from him as he entered,
threw himself upon a chair, and appeared sunk in a profound
reverie.

"What has happened? What have you done?" was hastily demanded
by Craigengelt and Bucklaw in the same moment.

"Nothing!" was the short and sullen answer.

"Nothing! and left us, determined to call the old villain to
account for all the injuries that you, we, and the country have
received at his hand? Have you seen him?"
"I have," replied the Master of Ravenswood.

"Seen him--and come away without settling scores which have been
so long due?" said Bucklaw; "I would not have expected that at
the hand of the Master of Ravenswood."

"No matter what you expected," replied Ravenswood; "it is not to
you, sir, that I shall be disposed to render any reason for my
conduct."

"Patience, Bucklaw," said Craigengelt, interrupting his
companion, who seemed about to make an angry reply. "The Master
has been interrupted in his purpose by some accident; but he
must excuse the anxious curiosity of friends who are devoted to
his cause like you and me."

"Friends, Captain Craigengelt!" retorted Ravenswood,
haughtily; "I am ignorant what familiarity passed betwixt us to
entitle you to use that expression. I think our friendship
amounts to this, that we agreed to leave Scotland together so
soon as I should have visited the alienated mansion of my
fathers, and had an interview with its present possessor--I will
not call him proprietor."

"Very true, Master," answered Bucklaw; "and as we thought you
had in mind to do something to put your neck in jeopardy,
Craigie and I very courteously agreed to tarry for you, although
ours might run some risk in consequence. As to Craigie, indeed,
it does not very much signify: he had gallows written on his brow
in the hour of his birth; but I should not like to discredit my
parentage by coming to such an end in another man's cause."

"Gentlemen," said the Master of Ravenswood, "I am sorry if I
have occasioned you any inconvenience, but I must claim the right
of judging what is best for my own affairs, without rendering
explanations to any one. I have altered my mind, and do not
design to leave the country this season."

"Not to leave the country, Master!" exclaimed Craigengelt. "Not
to go over, after all the trouble and expense I have
incurred--after all the risk of discovery, and the expense of
freight and demurrage!"

"Sir," replied the Master of Ravenswood, "when I designed to
leave this country in this haste, I made use of your obliging
offer to procure me means of conveyance; but I do not recollect
that I pledged myself to go off, if I found occasion to alter my
mind. For your trouble on my account, I am sorry, and I thank
you; your expense," he added, putting his hand into his pocket,
"admits a more solid compensation: freight and demurrage are
matters with which I am unacquainted, Captain Craigengelt, but
take my purse and pay yourself according to your own conscience."
And accordingly he tendered a purse with some gold in it to the
soi-disant captain.

But here Bucklaw interposed in his turn. "Your fingers,
Craigie, seem to itch for that same piece of green network," said
he; "but I make my vow to God, that if they offer to close upon
it, I will chop them off with my whinger. Since the Master has
changed his mind, I suppose we need stay here no longer; but in
the first place I beg leave to tell him----"

"Tell him anything you will," said Craigengelt, "if you will
first allow me to state the inconveniences to which he will
expose himself by quitting our society, to remind him of the
obstacles to his remaining here, and of the difficulties
attending his proper introduction at Versailles and Saint
Germains without the countenance of those who have established
useful connexions."

"Besides forfeiting the friendship," said Bucklaw, "of at least
one man of spirit and honour."

"Gentlemen," said Ravenswood, "permit me once more to assure you
that you have been pleased to attach to our temporary
connexion more importance than I ever meant that it should have.
When I repair to foreign courts, I shall not need the
introduction of an intriguing adventurer, nor is it necessary for
me to set value on the friendship of a hot-headed bully."  With
these words, and without waiting for an answer, he left the
apartment, remounted his horse, and was heard to ride off.

"Mortbleu!" said Captain Craigengelt, "my recruit is lost!"

"Ay, Captain," said Bucklaw, "the salmon is off  with hook and
all. But I will after him, for I have had more of his insolence
than I can well digest."

Craigengelt offered to accompany him; but Bucklaw replied: "No,
no, Captain, keep you the check of the chimney-nook till I come
back; it's good sleeping in a haill skin.

Little kens the auld wife that sits by the fire,
How cauld the wind blaws in hurle-burle swire."

And singing as he went, he left the apartment.

CHAPTER VII.

Now, Billy Berwick, keep good heart,
And of they talking let me be;
But if thou art a man, as I am sure thou art,
Come over the dike and fight with me.

Old Ballad.

THE Master of Ravenswood had mounted the ambling hackney which
he before rode, on finding the accident which had happened to his
led horse, and, for the animal's ease, was proceeding at a slow
pace from the Tod's Den towards his old tower of Wolf's Crag,
when he heard the galloping of a horse behind him, and, looking
back, perceived that he was pursued by young Bucklaw, who had
been delayed a few minutes in the pursuit by the irresistable
temptation of giving the hostler at the Tod's Den some recipe for
treating the lame horse. This brief delay he had made up by hard
galloping, and now overtook ths Master where the road traversed a
waste moor. "Halt, sir," cried Bucklaw; "I am no political
agent--no Captain Craigengelt, whose life is too important to be
hazarded in defence of his honour. I am Frank Hayston of
Bucklaw, and no man injures me by word, deed, sign, or look, but
he must render me an account of it."

"This is all very well, Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw," replied the
Master of Ravenswood, in a tone the most calm and indifferent;
"but I have no quarrel with you, and desire to have none. Our
roads homeward, as well as our roads through life, lie in
different directions; there is no occasion for us crossing each
other."

"Is there not?" said Bucklaw, impetuously. "By Heaven! but I
say that there is, though: you called us intriguing
adventurers."

"Be correct in your recollection, Mr. Hayston; it was to your
companion only I applied that epithet, and you know him to be no
better."

"And what then? He was my companion for the time, and no man
shall insult my companion, right or wrong, while he is in my
company."

"Then, Mr. Hayston," replied Ravenswood, with the same
composure, "you should choose your society better, or you are
like to have much work in your capacity of their champion. Go
home, sir; sleep, and have more reason in your wrath to-morrow."

"Not so, Master, you have mistaken your man; high airs and wise
saws shall not carry it off thus. Besides, you termed me bully,
and you shall retract the word before we part."

"Faith, scarcely," said Ravenswood, "unless you show me better
reason for thinking myself mistaken than you are now producing."

"Then, Master," said Bucklaw, "though I should be sorry to offer
it to a man of your quality, if you will not justify your
incivility, or retract it, or name a place of meeting, you must
here undergo the hard word and the hard blow."

"Neither will be necessary," said Ravenswood; "I am
satisfied with what I have done to avoid an affair with you.  If
you are serious, this place will serve as well as another."

"Dismount then, and draw," said Bucklaw, setting him an example.
"I always thought and said you were a pretty man; I should be
sorry to report you otherwise."

"You shall have no reason, sir," said Ravenswood, alighting, and
putting himself into a posture of defence.

Their swords crossed, and the combat commenced with great spirit
on the part of Bucklaw, who was well accustomed to affairs of the
kind, and distinguished by address and dexterity at his weapon.
In the present case, however, he did not use his skill to
advantage; for, having lost temper at the cool and
contemptuous manner in which the Master of Ravenswood had long
refused, and at length granted, him satisfaction, and urged by
his impatience, he adopted the part of an assailant with
inconsiderate eagerness. The Master, with equal skill, and much
greater composure, remained chiefly on the defensive, and even
declined to avail himself of one or two advantages afforded him
by the eagerness of his adversary. At length, in a desperate
lunge, which he followed with an attempt to close, Bucklaw's foot
slipped, and he fell on the short grassy turf on which they were
fighting. "Take your life, sir," said the Master of Ravenswood,
"and mend it if you can."

"It would be but a cobbled piece of work, I fear," said Bucklaw,
rising slowly and gathering up his sword, much less disconcerted
with the issue of the combat than could have been expected from
the impetuosity of his temper. "I thank you for my life,
Master," he pursued. "There is my hand; I bear no ill-will to
you, either for my bad luck or your better swordsmanship."

The Master looked steadily at him for an instant, then extended
his hand to him. "Bucklaw," he said, "you are a
generous fellow, and I have done you wrong. I heartily ask your
pardon for the expression which offended you; it was hastily and
incautiously uttered, and I am convinced it is totally
misapplied."

"Are you indeed, Master?" said Bucklaw, his face resuming at
once its natural expression of light-hearted carelessness and
audacity; "that is more than I expected of you; for, Master, men
say you are not ready to retract your opinion and your language."

"Not when I have well considered them," said the Master.

"Then you are a little wiser than I am, for I always give my
friend satisfaction first, and explanation afterwards. If one of
us falls, all accounts are settled; if not, men are never so
ready for peace as after war. But what does that bawling brat of
a boy want?" said Bucklaw. "I wish to Heaven he had come a few
minutes sooner! and yet it must have been ended some time, and
perhaps this way is as well as any other."

As he spoke, the boy he mentioned came up, cudgelling an ass, on
which he was mounted, to the top of its speed, and sending, like
one of Ossian's heroes, his voice before him: "Gentlemen--
gentlemen, save yourselves! for the gudewife bade us tell ye
there were folk in her house had taen Captain
Craigengelt, and were seeking for Bucklaw, and that ye behoved to
ride for it."
"By my faith, and that's very true, my man" said Bucklaw; "and
there's a silver sixpence for your news, and I would give any man
twice as much would tell me which way I should ride."

"That will I, Bucklaw," said Ravenswood; "ride home to Wolf's
Crag with me. There are places in the old tower where you might
lie hid, were a thousand men to seek you."

"But that will bring you into trouble yourself, Master; and
unless you be in the Jacobite scrape already, it is quite
needless for me to drag you in."

"Not a whit; I have nothing to fear."

"Then I will ride with you blythely, for, to say the truth, I do
not know the rendezvous that Craigie was to guide us to this
night; and I am sure that, if he is taken, he will tell all the
truth of me, and twenty lies of you, in order to save himself
from the withie."

They mounted and rode off in company accordingly, striking off
the ordinary road, and holding their way by wild moorish
unfrequented paths, with which the gentlemen were well
acquainted from the exercise of the chase, but through which
others would have had much difficulty in tracing their course.
They rode for some time in silence, making such haste as the
condition of Ravenswood's horse permitted, until night having
gradually closed around them, they discontinued their speed, both
from the difficulty of discovering their path, and from the hope
that they were beyond the reach of pursuit or observation.

"And now that we have drawn bridle a bit," said Bucklaw, "I
would fain ask you a question, Master."

"Ask and welcome," said Ravenswood, "but forgive not
answering it, unless I think proper."

"Well, it is simply this," answered his late antagonist "What,
in the name of old Sathan, could make you, who stand so highly on
your reputation, think for a moment of drawing up with such a
rogue as Craigengelt, and such a scapegrace as folk call
Bucklaw?"

"Simply, because I was desperate, and sought desperate
associates."

"And what made you break off from us at the nearest?" again
demanded Bucklaw.

"Because I had changed my mind," said the Master, "and renounced
my enterprise, at least for the present. And now that I have
answered your questions fairly and frankly, tell me what makes
you associate with Craigengelt, so much beneath you both in
birth and in spirit?"

"In plain terms," answered Bucklaw, "because I am a fool, who
have gambled away my land in thse times. My grand-aunt, Lady
Girnington, has taen a new tack of life, I think, and I could
only hope to get something by a change of government. Craigie
was a sort of gambling acquaintance; he saw my condition, and, as
the devil is always at one's elbow, told me fifty lies about his
credentials from Versailles, and his interest at Saint Germains,
promised me a captain's commission at Paris, and I have been ass
enough to put my thumb under his belt. I dare say, by this time,
he has told a dozen pretty stories of me to the government. And
this is what I have got by wine, women, and dice, cocks, dogs,
and horses."

"Yes, Bucklaw," said the Master, "you have indeed nourished in
your bosom the snakes that are now stinging you."

"That's home as well as true, Master," replied his
companion; "but, by your leave, you have nursed in your bosom one
great goodly snake that has swallowed all the rest, and is as
sure to devour you as my half-dozen are to make a meal on all
that's left of Bucklaw, which is but what lies between bonnet and
boot-heel."

"I must not," answered the Master of Ravenswood, "challenge the
freedom of speech in which I have set example. What, to speak
without a metaphor, do you call this monstrous passion which you
charge me with fostering?"

"Revenge, my good sir--revenge; which, if it be as gentle
manlike a sin as wine and wassail, with their et coeteras, is
equally unchristian, and not so bloodless. It is better breaking
a park-pale to watch a doe or damsel than to shoot an old man."

"I deny the purpose," said the Master of Ravenswood. "On my
soul, I had no such intention; I meant but to confront the
oppressor ere I left my native land, and upbraid him with his
tyranny and its consequences. I would have stated my wrongs so
that they would have shaken his soul within him."

"Yes," answered Bucklaw, "and he would have collared you, and
cried 'help,' and then you would have shaken the soul OUT of him,
I suppose. Your very look and manner would have frightened the
old man to death."

"Consider the provocation," answered Ravenswood--"consider the
ruin and death procured and caused by his hard-hearted cruelty--
an ancient house destroyed, an affectionate father murdered!
Why, in our old Scottish days, he that sat quiet under such
wrongs would have been held neither fit to back a friend nor face
a foe."

"Well, Master, I am glad to see that the devil deals as
cunningly with other folk as he deals with me; for whenever I am
about to commit any folly, he persuades me it is the most
necessary, gallant, gentlemanlike thing on earth, and I am up to
saddlegirths in the bog before I see that the ground is soft.
And you, Master, might have turned out a murd----a homicide, just
out of pure respect for your father's memory."

"There is more sense in your language, Bucklaw," replied the
Master, "than might have been expected from your conduct. It is
too true, our vices steal upon us in forms outwardly as fair as
those of the demons whom the superstitious represent  as
intriguing with the human race, and are not discovered in their
native hideousness until we have clasped them in our arms."

"But we may throw them from us, though," said Bucklaw, "and that
is what I shall think of doing one of these days--that is, when
old Lady Girnington dies."

"Did you ever hear the expression of the English divine?" said
Ravenswood--"'Hell is paved with good intentions,'--as much as to
say, they are more often formed than executed."

"Well," replied Bucklaw, "but I will begin this blessed night,
and have determined not to drink above one quart of wine, unless
your claret be of extraordinary quality."

"You will find little to tempt you at Wolf's Crag," said the
Master. "I know not that I can promise you more than the shelter
of my roof; all, and more than all, our stock of wine and
provisions was exhausted at the late occasion."

"Long may it be ere provision is needed for the like
purpose," answered Bucklaw; "but you should not drink up the last
flask at a dirge; there is ill luck in that."

"There is ill luck, I think, in whatever belongs to me," said
Ravenswood. "But yonder is Wolf's Crag, and whatever it still
contains is at your service."

The roar of the sea had long announced their approach to the
cliffs, on the summit of which, like the nest of some sea-eagle,
the founder of the fortalice had perched his eyrie. The pale
moon, which had hitherto been contending with flitting clouds,
now shone out, and gave them a view of the solitary and naked
tower, situated on a projecting cliff that beetled on the German
Ocean. On three sides the rock was precipitous; on the fourth,
which was that towards the land, it had been originally fenced by
an artificial ditch and drawbridge, but the latter was broken
down and ruinous, and the former had been in part filled up, so
as to allow pasage for a horseman into the narrow courtyard,
encircled on two sides with low offices and stables, partly
ruinous, and closed on the landward front by a low embattled
wall, while the remaining side of the quadrangle was occupied by
the tower itself, which, tall and narrow, and built of a greyish
stone, stood glimmering in the moonlight, like the sheeted
spectre of some huge giant. A wilder or more disconsolate
dwelling it was perhaps difficult to conceive. The sombrous and
heavy sound of the billows, successively dashing against the
rocky beach at a profound distance beneath, was to the ear what
the landscape was to the eye--a symbol of unvaried and monotonous
melancholy, not unmingled with horror.

Although the night was not far advanced, there was no sign of
living inhabitant about this forlorn abode, excepting that one,
and only one, of the narrow and stanchelled windows which
appeared at irregular heights and distances in the walls of the
building showed a small glimmer of light.

"There," said Ravenswood, "sits the only male domestic that
remains to the house of Ravenswood; and it is well that he does
remain there, since otherwise we had little hope to find either
light or fire. But follow me cautiously; the road is narrow, and
admits only one horse in front."

In effect, the path led along a kind of isthmus, at the
peninsular extremity of which the tower was situated, with that
exclusive attention to strength and security, in preference to
every circumstances of convenience, which dictated to the
Scottish barons the choice of their situations, as well as their
style of building.

By adopting the cautious mode of approach recommended by the
proprietor of this wild hold, they entered the courtyard in
safety. But it was long ere the efforts of Ravenswood, though
loudly exerted by knocking at the low-browed entrance, and
repeated shouts to Caleb to open the gate and admit them,
received any answer.

"The old man must be departed," he began to say, "or fallen into
some fit; for the noise I have made would have waked the seven
sleepers."

At length a timid and hesitating voice replied: "Master--Master
of Ravenswood, is it you?"

"Yes, it is I, Caleb; open the door quickly."

"But it is you in very blood and body? For I would sooner face
fifty deevils as my master's ghaist, or even his wraith;
wherefore, aroint ye, if ye were ten times my master, unless ye
come in bodily shape, lith and limb."
"It is I, you old fool," answered Ravenswood, "in bodily shape
and alive, save that I am half dead with cold."

The light at the upper window disappeared, and glancing from
loophole to loophole in slow succession, gave intimation that the
bearer was in the act of descending, with great deliberation, a
winding staircase occupying one of the turrets which graced the
angles of the old tower. The tardiness of his descent extracted
some exclamations of impatience from Ravenswood, and several
oaths from his less patient and more mecurial companion. Caleb
again paused ere he unbolted the door, and once more asked if
they were men of mould that demanded entrance at this time of
night.

"Were I near you, you old fool," said Bucklaw, "I would give you
sufficient proofs of MY bodily condition."

"Open the gate, Caleb," said his master, in a more soothing
tone, partly from his regard to the ancient and faithful
seneschal, partly perhaps because he thought that angry words
would be thrown away, so long as Caleb had a stout iron-clenched
oaken door betwixt his person and the speakers.

At length Caleb, with a trembling hand, undid the bars, opened
the heavy door, and stood before them, exhibiting his thin grey
hairs, bald forehead, and sharp high features, illuminated by a
quivering lamp which he held in one hand, while he shaded and
protected its flame with the other. The timorous, courteous
glance which he threw around him, the effect of the partial light
upon his white hair and illumined features, might have made a
good painting; but our travellers were too impatient for security
against the rising storm to permit them to indulge themselves in
studying the picturesque. "Is it you, my dear master?--is it you
yourself, indeed?" exclaimed the old domestic. "I am wae ye suld
hae stude waiting at your ain gate; but wha wad hae thought o'
seeing ye sae sune, and a strange gentleman with a----  (Here he
exclaimed apart, as it were, and to some inmate of the tower, in
a voice not meant to be heard by those in the court)  Mysie--
Mysie, woman! stir for dear life, and get the fire mended; take
the auld three-legged stool, or ony thing that's readiest that
will make a lowe. I doubt we are but puirly provided, no
expecting ye this some months, when doubtless ye was hae been
received conform till your rank, as gude right is; but natheless-
---"

"Natheless, Caleb," said the Master, "we must have our horses
put up, and ourselves too, the best way we can. I hope you are
not sorry to see me sooner than you expected?"

"Sorry, my lord! I am sure ye sall aye be my lord wi' honest
folk, as your noble ancestors hae been these three hundred years,
and never asked a Whig's leave. Sorry to see the Lord of
Ravenswood at ane o' his ain castles! (Then again apart to his
unseen associate behind the screen) Mysie, kill the brood-hen
without thinking twice on it; let them care that come ahint. No
to say it's our best dwelling," he added, turning to Bucklaw;
"but just a strength for the Lord of Ravenswood to flee until--
that is, no to FLEE, but to retreat until in troublous times,
like the present, when it was ill convenient for him to live
farther in the country in ony of his better and mair principal
manors; but, for its antiquity, maist folk think that the outside
of Wolf's Crag is worthy of a large perusal."

"And you are determined we shall have time to make it," said
Ravenswood, somewhat amused with the shifts the old man used to
detain them without doors until his confederate Mysie had made
her preparations within.

"Oh, never mind the outside of the house, my good friend," said
Bucklaw; "let's see the inside, and let our horses see the
stable, that's all."
"Oh yes, sir--ay, sir--unquestionably, sir--my lord and ony of
his honourable companions----"

"But our horses, my friend--our horses; they will be dead-
founded by standing here in the cold after riding hard, and mine
is too good to be spoiled; therefore, once more, our horses!"
exclaimed Bucklaw.

"True--ay--your horses--yes--I will call the grooms"; and
sturdily did Caleb roar till the old tower rang again: "John--
William--Saunders! The lads are gane out, or sleeping," he
observed, after pausing for an answer, which he knew that he had
no human chance of receiving. "A' gaes wrang when the Master's
out-bye; but I'll take care o' your cattle mysell."

"I think you had better," said Ravenswood, "otherwise I see
little chance of their being attended to at all."

"Whisht, my lord--whisht, for God's sake," said Caleb, in an
imploring tone, and apart to his master; "if ye dinna regard your
ain credit, think on mine; we'll hae hard eneugh wark to make a
decent night o't, wi' a' the lees I can tell."

"Well, well, never mind," said his master; "go to the stable.
There is hay and corn, I trust?"

"Ou ay, plenty of hay and corn"; this was uttered boldly and
aloud, and, in a lower tone, "there was some half fous o' aits,
and soem taits o' meadow-hay, left after the burial."

"Very well," said Ravenswood, taking the lamp from his
domestic's unwilling hand, "I will show the stranger upstairs
myself."

"I canna think o' that, my lord; if ye wad but have five
minutes, or ten minutes, or, at maist, a quarter of an hour's
patience, and look at the fine moonlight prospect of the Bass and
North Berwick Law till I sort the horses, I would marshal ye up,
as reason is ye suld be marshalled, your lordship and your
honourable visitor. And I hae lockit up the siller candlesticks,
and the lamp is not fit----"

"It will do very well in the mean time," said Ravenswood, "and
you will have no difficulty for want of light in the stable,
for, if I recollect, half the roof is off."

"Very true, my lord," replied the trusty adherent, and with
ready wit instantly added, "and the lazy sclater loons have never
come to put it on a' this while, your lordship."

"If I were disposed to jest at the calamities of my house," said
Ravenswood, as he led the way upstairs, "poor old Caleb would
furnish me with ample means. His passion consists in
representing things about our miserable menage, not as they are,
but as, in his opinion, they ought to be; and, to say the truth,
I have been often diverted with the poor wretch's expedients to
supply what he though was essetial for the credit of the family,
and his still more generous apologies for the want of those
articles for which his ingenuity could discover no substitute.
But though the tower is none of the largest, I shall have some
trouble without him to find the apartment in which there is a
fire."

As he spoke thus, he opened the door of the hall. "Here, at
least," he said, "there is neither hearth nor harbour."

It was indeed a scene of desolation. A large vaulted room, the
beams fo which, combined like those of Westminster Hall, were
rudely carved at the extremities, remained nearly in the
situation in which it had been left after the entertainment at at
Allan Lord Ravenswood's funeral. Overturned pitchers, and black-
jacks, and pewter stoups, and flagons still cumbered the large
oaken table; glasses, those more perishable implements of
conviviality, many of which had been voluntarily sacrificed by
the guests in their enthusiastic pledges to favourite toasts,
strewed the stone floor with their fragments. As for the
articles of plate, lent for the purpose by friends and kinsfolk,
those had been carefully withdrawn so soon as the ostentatious
display of festivity, equally unnecessary and strangely timed,
had been made and ended. Nothing, in short, remained that
indicated wealth; all the signs were those of recent
wastefulness and present desolation. The black cloth hangings,
which, on the late mournful occasion, replaced the tattered moth-
eaten tapestries, had been partly pulled down, and, dangling
from the wall in irregular festoons, disclosed the rough
stonework of the building, unsmoothed either by plaster or the
chisel. The seats thrown down, or left in disorder, intimated
the careless confusion which had concluded the mournful revel.
"This room," said Ravenswood, holding up the lamp--"this room,
Mr. Hayston, was riotous when it should have been sad; it is a
just retribution that it should now be sad when it ought to be
cheerful."

They left this disconsolate apartment, and went upstairs, where,
after opening one or two doors in vain, Ravenswood led the way
into a little matted ante-room, in which, to their great joy,
they found a tolerably good fire, which Mysie, by some such
expedient as Caleb had suggested, had suppied with a reasonable
quantity of fuel. Glad at the heart to see more of comfort than
the castle had yet seemed to offer, Bucklaw rubbed his hands
heartily over the fire, and now listened with more complacency to
the apologies which the Master of Ravenswood offered. "Comfort,"
he said, "I cannot provide for you, for I have it not for myself;
it is long since these walls have known it, if, indeed, they were
ever acquainted with it. Shelter and safety, I think, I can
promise you."

"Excellent matters, Master," replied Bucklaw, "and, with a
mouthful of food and wine, positively all I can require tonight."

"I fear," said the Master, "your supper will be a poor one; I
hear the matter in discussion betwixt Caleb and Mysie. Poor
Balderstone is something deaf, amongst his other
accomplishments, so that much of what he means should be spoken
aside is overheard by the whole audience, and especially by those
from whom he is most anxious to conceal his private manoeuvres.
Hark!"

They listened, and heard the old domestic's voice in
conversation with Mysie to the following effect:

"Just mak the best o't--make the besto't, woman; it's easy to
put a fair face on ony thing."

"But the auld brood-hen? She'll be as teugh as bow-strings and
bend-leather!"

"Say ye made a mistake--say ye made a mistake, Mysie," replied
the faithful seneschal, in a soothing and undertoned voice; "tak
it a' on yoursell; never let the credit o' the house suffer."

"But the brood-hen," remonstrated Mysie--"ou, she's sitting some
gate aneath the dais in the hall, and I am feared to gae in in
the dark for the dogle; and if I didna see the bogle, I could as
ill see the hen, for it's pit-mirk, and there's no another light
in the house, save that very blessed lamp whilk the Master has in
his ain hand. And if I had the hen, she's to pu', and to draw,
and to dress; how can I do that, and them sitting by the only
fire we have?"

"Weel, weel, Mysie," said the butler, "bide ye there a wee, and
I'll try to get the lamp wiled away frae them."

Accordingly, Caleb Balderstone entered the apartment, little
aware that so much of his by-play had been audible there. "Well,
Caleb, my old friend, is there any chance of supper?" said the
Master of Ravenswood.

"CHANCE of supper, your lordship?" said Caleb, with an
emphasis of strong scorn at the implied doubt. "How should there
be ony question of that, and us in your lordship's house?
Chance of supper, indeed! But ye'll no be for butcher-meat?
There's walth o' fat poultry, ready either for spit or brander.
The fat capon, Mysie!" he added, calling out as boldly as if such
a thing had been in existence.

"Quite unnecessary," said Bucklaw, who deemed himself bound in
courtesy to relieve some part of the anxious butler's
perplexity, "if you have anything cold, or a morsel of bread."

"The best of bannocks!" exclaimed Caleb, much relieve; "and, for
cauld meat, a' that we hae is cauld eneugh,--how-beit, maist of
the cauld meat and pastry was gien to the poor folk after the
ceremony of interment, as gude reason was; nevertheless----"

"Come, Caleb," said the Master of Ravenswood, "I must cut this
matter short. This is the young Laird of Bucklaw; he is under
hiding, and therefore, you know----"

"He'll be nae nicer than your lordship's honour, I'se warrant,"
answered Caleb, cheerfully, with a nod of intelligence; "I am
sorry that the gentleman is under distress, but I am blythe that
he canna say muckle agane our housekeeping, for I believe his ain
pinches may matach ours; no that we are pinched, thank God," he
added, retracting the admission which he had made in his first
burst of joy, "but nae doubt we are waur aff than we hae been, or
suld be. And for eating--what signifies telling a lee? there's
just the hinder end of the mutton-ham that has been but three
times on the table, and the nearer the bane the sweeter, as your
honours weel ken; and--there's the heel of the ewe-milk kebbuck,
wi' a bit of nice butter, and--and--that's a' that's to trust
to."  And with great alacrity he produced his slender stock of
provisions, and placed them with much formality  upon a small
round table betwixt the two gentlemen, who were not deterred
either by the homely quality or limited quantity of the repast
from doing it full justice. Caleb in the mean while waited on
them with grave officiousness, as if anxious to make up, by his
own respectful assiduity, for the want of all other attendance.

But, alas! how little on such occasions can form, however
anxiously and scrupulously observed, supply the lack of
substantial fare! Bucklaw, who had eagerly eaten a considerable
portion of the thrice-sacked mutton-ham, now began to demand ale.

"I wadna just presume to recommend our ale," said Caleb; "the
maut was ill made, and there was awfu' thunner last week; but
siccan water as the Tower well has ye'll seldome see,
Bucklaw, and that I'se engage for."

"But if your ale is bad, you can let us have some wine," said
Bucklaw, making a grimace at the mention of the pure element
which Caleb so earnestly recommended.

"Wine!" answered Caleb, undauntedly, "eneugh of wine! It was
but twa days syne--wae's me for the cause--there was as much
wine drunk in this house as would have floated a pinnace.
There never was lack of wine at Wolf's Crag."

"Do fetch us some then," said the master, "instead of talking
about it."  And Caleb boldly departed.

Every expended butt in the old cellar did he set a-tilt, and
shake with the desperate expectation of collecting enough of the
grounds of claret to fill the large pewter measure which he
carred in his hand. Alas! each had been too devoutly drained;
and, with all the squeezing and manoeuvring which his craft as a
butler suggested, he could only collect about half a quart that
seemed presentable. Still, however, Caleb was too good a general
to renounce the field without a strategem to cover his retreat.
He undauntedly threw down an empty flagon, as if he had stumbled
at the entrance of the apartment, called upon Mysie to wipe up
the wine that had never been spilt, and placing the other vessel
on the table, hoped there was still enough left for their
honours. There was indeed; for even Bucklaw, a sworn friend to
the grape, found no encouragement to renew his first attack upon
the vintage of Wolf's Crag, but contented himself, however
reluctantly, with a draught of fair water. Arrangements were now
made for his repose; and as the secret chamber was assigned for
this purpose, it furnished Caleb with a first-rate and most
plausible apology for all deficiencies of furniture, bedding,
etc.

"For wha," said he, "would have thought of the secret chaumer
being needed? It has not been used since the time of the Gowrie
Conspiracy, and I durst never let a woman ken of the entrance to
it, or your honour will allow that it wad not hae been a secret
chaumer lang."

CHAPTER VIII.

The hearth in hall was black and dead,
No board was dight in bower within,
Nor merry bowl nor welcome bed;
"Here's sorry cheer," quoth the Heir of Linne.

Old Ballad

THE feelings of the prodigal Heir of Linne, as expressed in that
excellent old song, when, after dissipating his whole fortune, he
found himself the deserted inhabitant of "the lonely lodge,"
might perhaps have some resemblance to those of the Master of
Ravenswood in his deserted mansion of Wolf's Crag. The Master,
however, had this advantage over the spendthrift in the legend,
that, if he was in similar distress, he could not impute it to
his own imprudence. His misery had been bequeathed to him by his
father, and, joined to his high blood, and to a title which the
courteous might give or the churlish withhold at their pleasure,
it was the whole inheritance he had derived from his ancestry.
Perhaps this melancholy yet consolatory reflection crossed the
mind of the unfortunate young nobleman with a breathing of
comfort. Favourable to calm reflection, as well as to the
Muses, the morning, while it dispelled the shades of night, had a
composing and sedative effect upon the stormy passions by which
the Master of Ravenswood had been agitated on the preceding day.
He now felt himself able to analyse the different feelings by
which he was agitated, and much resolved to combat and to subdue
them. The morning, which had arisen calm and bright, gave a
pleasant effect even to the waste moorland view which was seen
from the castle on looking to the landward; and the glorious
ocean, crisped with a thousand rippling waves of silver,
extended on the other side, in awful yet complacent majesty, to
the verge of the horizon. With such scenes of calm sublimity the
human heart sympathises even in its most disturbed moods, and
deeds of honour and virtue are inspired by their majestic
influence.
To seek out Bucklaw in the retreat which he had afforded him,
was the first occupation of the Master, after he had
performed, with a scrutiny unusually severe, the important task
of self-examination. "How now, Bucklaw?" was his morning's
salutation--"how like you the couch in which the exiled Earl of
Angus once slept in security, when he was pursued by the full
energy of a king's resentment?"

"Umph!" returned the sleeper awakened; "I have little to
complain of where so great a man was quartered before me, only
the mattress was of the hardest, the vault somewhat damp, the
rats rather more mutinous than I would have expected from the
state of Caleb's larder; and if there had been shutters to that
grated window, or a curtain to the bed, I should think it, upon
the whole, an improvement in your accommodations."

"It is, to be sure, forlorn enough," said the Master, looking
around the small vault; "but if you will rise and leave it, Caleb
will endeavour to find you a better breakfast than your supper of
last night."

"Pray, let it be no better," said Bucklaw, getting up, and
endeavouring to dress himself as well as the obscurity of the
place would permit--"let it, I say, be no better, if you mean me
to preserve in my proposed reformation. The very recollection of
Caleb's beverage has done more to suppress my longing to open the
day with a morning draught than twenty sermons would have done.
And you, master, have you been able to give battle valiantly to
your bosom-snake? You see I am in the way of smothering my
vipers one by one."

"I have commenced the battle, at least, Bucklaw, adn I have had
a fair vision of an angel who descended to my assistance,"
replied the Master.

"Woe's me!" said his guest, "no vision can I expect, unless my
aunt, Lady Grinington, should betake herself to the tomb; and
then it would be the substance of her heritage rather than the
appearance of her phantom that I should consider as the support
of my good resolutions. But this same breakfast, Master--does
the deer that is to make the pasty run yet on foot, as the
ballad has it?"

"I will inquire into that matter," said his entertainer; and,
leaving the apartment, he went in search of Caleb, whom, after
some difficulty, he found in an obscure sort of dungeon, which
had been in former times the buttery of the castle. Here the old
man was employed busily in the doubtful task of
burnishing a pewter flagon until it should take the hue and
semblance of silver-plate. "I think it may do--I think it might
pass, if they winna bring it ower muckle in the light o' the
window!" were the ejaculations which he muttered from time to
time, as if to encourage himself in his undertaking, when he was
interrupted by the voice of his master.

"Take this," said the Master of Ravenswood, "and get what is
necessary for the family."  And with these words he gave to the
old butler the purse which had on the preceding evening so
narrowly escaped the fangs of Craigengelt.

The old man shook his silvery and thin locks, and looked with an
expression of the most heartfelt anguish at his master as he
weighed in his hand the slender treasure, and said in a
sorrowful voice, "And is this a' that's left?"

"All that is left at present," said the Master, affecting more
cheerfulness than perhaps he really felt, "is just the green
purse and the wee pickle gowd, as the old song says; but we shall
do better one day, Caleb."

"Before that day domes," said Caleb, "I doubt there will be an
end of an auld sang, and an auld serving-man to boot. But it
disna become me to speak that gate to your honour, adn you
looking sae pale. Tak back the purse, and keep it to be making a
show before company; for if your honour would just take a
bidding, adn be whiles taking it out afore folk and putting it up
again, there's naebody would refuse us trust, for a' that's come
and gane yet."

"But, Caleb," said the Master, "I still intend to leave this
country very soon, and desire to do so with the reputation of an
honest man, leaving no debty behind me, at last of my own
contracting."

"And gude right ye suld gang away as a true man, and so ye
shall; for auld Caleb can tak the wyte of whatever is taen on for
the house, and then it will be a' just ae man's burden; and I
will live just as weel in the tolbooth as out of it, and the
credit of the family will be a' safe and sound."

The Master endeavoured, in vain, to make Caleb comprehend that
the butler's incurring the responsibility of debts in his own
person would rather add to than remove the objections which he
had to their being contracted. He spoke to a premier too busy
in devising ways and means to puzzle himself with refuting the
arguments offered against their justice or expediency.

"There's Eppie Sma'trash will trust us for ale," said Caleb to
himself--"she has lived a' her life under the family--and maybe
wi' a soup brandy; I canna say for wine--she is but a lone
woman, and gets her claret by a runlet at a time; but I'll work a
wee drap out o' her by fair means or foul. For doos, there's the
doocot; there will be poultry amang the tenants, though Luckie
Chirnside says she has paid the kain twice ower. We'll mak
shift, an it like your honour--we'll mak shift; keep your heart
abune, for the house sall haud its credit as lang as auld Caleb
is to the fore."

The entertainment which the old man's exertions of various kinds
enabled him to present to the young gentlemen for three or four
days was certainly of no splendid description, but it may
readily be believed it was set before no critical guests; and
even the distresses, excuses, evasions, and shifts of Caleb
afforded amusement to the young men, and added a sort fo interest
to the scrambling and irregular style of their table. They had
indeed occasion to seize on every circumstance that might serve
to diversify or enliven time, which otherwise passed away so
heavily.

Bucklaw, shut out from his usual field-sports and joyous
carouses by the necessity of remaining concealed within the walls
of the castle, became a joyless and uninteresting companion.
When the Master of Ravenswood would no longer fence or play at
shovel-board; when he himself had polished to the extremity the
coat of hsi palfrey with brush, curry comb, and hair-cloth; when
he had seen him eat his provender, and gently lie down in his
stall, he could hardly help envying the animal's apparent
acquiescence in a life so monotonous. "The stupid brute," he
said, "thinks neither of the race-ground or the hunting-field, or
his green paddock at Bucklaw, but enjoys himself as comfortably
when haltered to the rack in this ruinous vault, as if he had
been foaled in it; "and, I who have the freedom of a prisoner at
large, to range through the dungeons of this wretched old tower,
can hardly, betwixt whistling and sleeping, contrive to pass away
the hour till dinner-time."

And with this disconsolate reflection, he wended his way to the
bartizan or battlements of the tower, to watch what objects
might appear on the distant moor, or to pelt, with pebbles and
pieces of lime, the sea-mews and cormorants which established
themselves incautiously within  the reach of an idle young man.

Ravenswood, with a mind incalculably deeper and more
powerful than that of his companion, had his own anxious subjects
of reflection, which wrought for him the same unhappiness that
sheer enui and want of occupation inflicted on his companion.
The first sight of Lucy Ashton had been less impressive than her
image proved to be upon reflection. As the depth and violence of
that revengeful passion by which he had been actuated in seeking
an interview with the father began to abate by degrees, he looked
back on his conduct towards the daughter as harsh and unworthy
towards a female of rank and beauty. Her looks of grateful
acknowledgment, her words of affectionate courtesy, had been
repelled with something which approached to disdain; and if the
Master of Ravenswood had sustained wrongs at the hand of Sir
William Ashton, his conscience told him they had been
unhandsomely resented towards his daughter. When his thoughts
took this turn of self-reproach, the recollection of Lucy
Ashton's beautiful features, rendered yet more interesting by the
circumstances in which their meeting had taken place, made an
impression upon his mind at once soothing and painful. The
sweetness of her voice, the delicacy of her expressions, the
vivid glow of her filial affection, embittered his regret at
having repulsed her gratitude with rudeness, while, at the same
time, they placed before his imagination a picture of the most
seducing sweetness.

Even young Ravenswood's strength of moral feeling and rectitude
of purpose at once increased the danger of cherishing these
recollections, and the propensity to entertain them. Firmly
resolved as he was to subdue, if possible, the
predominating vice in his character, he admitted with
willingness--nay, he summoned up in his imagination--the ideas by
which it could be most powerfully counteracted; and, while he did
so, a sense of his own harsh conduct towards the daughter of his
enemy naturally induced him, as if by way of recompense, to
invest her with more of grace and beauty than perhaps she could
actually claim.

Had any one at this period told the Master of Ravenswood that he
had so lately vowed vengeance against the whole lineage of him
whom he considered, not unjustly, as author of his
father's ruin and death, he might at first have repelled the
charge as a foul calumny; yet, upon serious self-examination, he
would have been compelled to admit that it had, at one period,
some foundation in truth, though, according to the present tone
of his sentiments, it was difficult to believe that this had
really been the case.

There already existed in his bosom two contradictory
passions--a desire to revenge the death of his father, strangely
qualified by admiration of his enemy's daughter. Against the
former feeling he had struggled, until it seemed to him upon the
wane; against the latter he used no means of resistance, for he
did not suspect its existence. That this was actually the case
was chiefly evinced by his resuming his resolution to leave
Scotland. Yet, though such was his purpose, he remained day
after day at Wolf's Crag, without taking measures for carrying it
into execution. It is true, that he had written to one or two
kinsmen who resided in a distant quarter of Scotland, and
particularly to the Marquis of A----, intimating his purpose; and
when pressed upon the subject by Bucklaw, he was wont to allege
the necessity of waiting for their reply, especially that of the
Marquis, before taking so decisive a measure.

The Marquis was rich and powerful; and although he was suspected
to entertain sentiments unfavourable to the government
established at the Revolution, he had nevertheless address enough
to head a party in the Scottish privy council, connected with the
High Church faction in England, and powerful enough to menace
those to whom the Lord Keeper adhered with a probable subversion
of their power. The consulting with a personage of such
importance was a plausible excise, which Ravenswood used to
Bucklaw, and probably to himself, for continuing his residence at
Wolf's Crag; and it was rendered yet more so by a general report
which began to be current of a probable change of ministers and
measures in the Scottish administration. The rumours, strongly
asserted by some, and as resolutely denied by others, as their
wishes or interest dictated, found their way even to the ruinous
Tower of Wolf's Crag, chiefly through the medium of Caleb, the
butler, who, among his other excellences, was an ardent
politician, and seldom made an excursion from the old fortress to
the neighbouring village of Wolf's Hope without bringing back
what tidings were current in the vicinity.

But if Bucklaw could not offer any satisfactory objections to
the delay of the Master in leaving Scotland, he did not the less
suffer with impatience the state of inaction to which it
confined him; and it was only the ascendency which his new
companion had acquired over him that induced him to submit to a
course of life so alien to his habits and inclinations.

"You were wont to be thought a stirring active young fellow,
Master," was his frequent remonstrance; "yet here you seem
determined to live on and on like a rat in a hole, with this
trifling difference, that the wiser vermin chooses a hermitage
where he can find food at least; but as for us, Caleb's excuses
become longer as his diet turns more spare, and I fear we shall
realise the stories they tell of the slother: we have almost eat
up the last green leaf on the plant, and have nothing left for it
but to drop from the tree and break our necks."

"Do not fear it," said Ravenswood; "there is a fate watches for
us, and we too have a stake in the revolution that is now
impending, and which already has alarmed many a bosom."

"What fate--what revolution?" inquired his compation. "We have
had one revolution too much already, I think."

Ravenswood interrupted him by putting into his hands a letter.

"Oh," answered Bucklaw, "my dream's out. I thought I heard
Caleb this morning pressing some unfortunate fellow to a drink of
cold water, and assuring him it was better for his stomach in
the morning than ale or brandy."

"It was my Lord of A----'s courier," said Ravenswood, "who was
doomed to experience his ostentatious hospitality, which I
believe ended in sour beer and herrings. Read, and you will see
the news he has brought us."
"I will as fast as I can," said Bucklaw; "but I am no great
clerk, nor does his lordship seem to be the first of scribes."

The reader will peruse in, a few seconds, by the aid our friend
Ballantyne's types, what took Bucklaw a good half hour in
perusal, though assisted by the Master of Ravenswood. The tenor
was as follows:

"RIGHT HONOURABLE OUR COUSIN:
"Our hearty commendations premised, these come to assure you of
the interest which we take in your welfare, and in your purpose
towards its augmentation.  If we have been less active in
showing forth our effective good-will towards you than, as a
loving kinsman and blood-relative, we would willingly have
desired, we request that you will impute it to lack fo
opportunity to show our good-liking, not to any coldness of our
will. Touching your resolution to travel in foreign parts, as at
this time we hold the same little advisable, in respect that your
ill-willers may, according to the custom of such persons, impute
motives for your journey, whereof, although we know and believe
you to be as clear as ourselves, yet natheless their words may
find credence in places where the belief in them may much
prejudice you, and which we should see with more unwillingness
and displeasure than with means of remedy

"Having thus, as becometh our kindred, given you our poor mind
on the subject of your journeying forth of Scotland, we would
willingly add reasons of weight, which might materially
advantage you and your father's house, thereby to determine you
to abide at Wolf's Crag, until this harvest season shall be
passed over. But what sayeth the proverb, verbum sapienti--a
word is more to him that hath wisdom than a sermon to a fool.
And albeit we have written this poor scroll with our own hand,
and are well assured of the fidelity of our messenger, as him
that is many ways bounden to us, yet so it is, that sliddery ways
crave wary walking, and that we may not peril upon paper matters
which we would gladly impart to you by word of mouth. Wherefore,
it was our purpose to have prayed you heartily to come to this
our barren Highland country to kill a stag, and to treat of the
matters which we are now more painfully inditing to you anent.
But commodity does not serve at present for such our meeting,
which, therefore, shall be deferred until sic time as we may in
all mirth rehearse those things whereof we now keep silence.
Meantime, we pray you to think that we are, and will still be,
your good kinsman and well-wisher, waiting but for times of
whilk we do, as it were, entertain a twilight prospect, and
appear and hope to be also your effectual well-doer. And in
which hope we heartily write ourself,

"Right Honourable,
"Your loving cousin,
"A----.
"Given from our poor house of B----," etc.

Superscribed--"For the right honourable, and our honoured
kinsman, the Master of Ravenswood--These, with haste, haste, post
haste--ride and run until these be delivered."

"What think you of this epistle, Bucklaw?" said the Master, when
his companion had hammered out all the sense, and almost all the
words of which it consisted.

"Truly, that the Marquis's meaning is as great a riddle as his
manuscript. He is really in much need of Wit's Interpreter, or
the *Complete Letter-Writer*, and were I you, I would send him a
copy by the bearer. He writes you very kindly to remain wasting
your time and your money in this vile, stupid, oppressed country,
without so much as offering you the countenance and shelter of
his house. In my opinion, he has some scheme in view in which he
supposes you can be useful, and he wishes to keep you at hand, to
make use of you when it ripens, reserving the power of turning
you adrift, should his plot fail in the concoction."

"His plot! Then you suppose it is a treasonable business,"
answered Ravenswood.

"What else can it be?"  replied Bucklaw; "the Marquis has been
long suspected to have an eye to Saint Germains."

"He should not engage me rashly in such an adventure," said
Ravenswood; "when I recollect the times of the first and second
Charles, and of the last James, truly I see little reason that,
as a man or a patriot, I should draw my sword for their
descendants."

"Humph!" replied Bucklaw; "so you have set yourself down to
mourn over the crop-eared dogs whom honest Claver'se treated as
they deserved?"

"They first gave the dogs an ill name, and then hanged them,"
replied Ravenswood. "I hope to see the day when justice shall be
open to Whig and Tory, and when these nicknames shall only be
used among coffee-house politicians, as 'slut' and 'jade' are
among apple-women, as cant terms of idle spite and rancour."

"That will nto be in our days, Master: the iron has entered too
deeply into our sides and our souls."

"It will be, however, one day," replied the Master; "men will
not always start at these nicknames as at a trumpet-sound. As
social life is better protected, its comforts will become too
dear to be hazarded without some better reasons than speculative
politics."

"It is fine talking," answered Bucklaw; "but my heart is with
the old song--

To see good corn upon the rigs,
And a gallow built to hang the Whigs,
And the right restored where the right should be.
Oh, that is the thing that would wanton me."

"You may sing as loudly as you will, cantabit vacuus----,"
answered the Master; "but I believe the Marquis is too wise, at
least too wary, to join you in such a burden. I suspect he
alludes to a revolution in the Scottish privy council, rather
than in the British kingdoms."

"Oh, confusion to your state tricks!" exclaimed Bucklaw--"your
cold calculating manoeuvres, which old gentlemen in wrought
nightcaps and furred gowns execute like so many games at chess,
and displace a treasurer or lord commissioner as they would take
a rook or a pawn. Tennis for my sport, and battle for my
earnest! And you, Master, so dep and considerate as you would
seem, you have that within you makes the blood boil faster than
suits your present hmour of moralising on political truths. You
are one of those wise men who see everything with great composure
till their blood is up, and then--woe to any one who should put
them in mind of their own prudential maxims!"
"Perhaps," said Ravenswood, "you read me more rightly than I can
myself. But to think justly will certainly go some length in
helping me to act so. But hark! I hear Caleb tolling the
dinner-bell."

"Which he always does with the more sonorous grace in proportion
to the meagreness of the cheer which he has provided," said
Bucklaw; "as if that infernal clang and jangle, which will one
day bring the belfry down the cliff, could convert a starved hen
into a fat capon, and a blade-bone of mutton into a haunch of
venison."

"I wish we may be so well off as your worst conjectures surmise,
Bucklaw, from the extreme solemnity and ceremony with which Caleb
seems to place on the table that solitary covered dish."

"Uncover, Caleb! uncover, for Heaven's sake!" said Bucklaw; "let
us have what you can give us without preface. Why, it stands
well enough, man," he continued, addressing impatiently the
ancient butler, who, without reply, kept shifting the dish,
until he had at length placed it with mathematical precision in
the very midst of the table.

"What have we got here, Caleb?" inquired the Master in his turn.

"Ahem! sir, ye suld have known before; but his honour the Laird
of Bucklaw is so impatient," answered Caleb, still holding the
dish with one hand and the cover with the other, with
evident reluctance to disclose the contents.

"But what is it, a God's name--not a pair of clean spurs, I
hope, in the Border fashion of old times?"

"Ahem! ahem!" reiterated Caleb, "your honour is pleased to be
facetious; natheless, I might presume to say it was a
convenient fashion, and used, as I have heard, in an honourable
and thriving family. But touching your present dinner, I judged
that this being St. Magdalen's [Margaret's] Eve, who was a worthy
queen of Scotland in her day, your honours might judge it
decorous, if not altogether to fast, yet only to sustain nature
with some slight refection, as ane saulted herring or the like."
And, uncovering the dish, he displayed four of the savoury fishes
which he mentioned, adding, in a subdued tone, "that they were no
just common herring neither, being every ane melters, and sauted
with uncommon care by the housekeeper (poor Mysie) for his
honour's especial use."

"Out upon all apologies!" said the Master, "let us eat the
herrings, since there is nothing better to be had; but I begin to
think with you, Bucklaw, that we are consuming the last green
leaf, and that, in spite of the Marquis's political machinations,
we must positively shift camp for want of forage, without waiting
the issue of them."

CHAPTER IX.

Ay, and when huntsmen wind the merry horn,
And from its covert starts the fearful prey,
Who, warm'd with youth's blood in his swelling veins,
Would, like a lifeless clod, outstretched lie,
Shut out from all the fair creation offers?

Ethwald, Act I. Scene 1.

LIGHT meals procure light slumbers; and therefore it is not
surprising that, considering the fare which Caleb's conscience,
or his necessity, assuming, as will sometimes happen, that
disguise, had assigned to the guests of Wolf's Crag, their
slumbers should have been short.

In the morning Bucklaw rushed into his host's apartment with a
loud halloo, which might have awaked the dead.

"Up! up! in the name of Heaven! The hunters are out, the only
piece of sport I have seen this month; and you lie here, Master,
on a bed that has little to recommend it, except that it may be
something softer than the stone floor of your ancestor's vault."

"I wish," said Ravenswood, raising his head peevishly, "you had
forborne so early a jest, Mr. Hayston; it is really no pleasure
to lose the very short repose which I had just begun to enjoy,
after a night spent in thoughts upon fortune far harder than my
couch, Bucklaw."

"Pschaw, pshaw!" replied his guest; "get up--get up; the hounds
are abroad.  I have saddled the horses myself, for old Caleb was
calling for grooms and lackeys, and would never have proceeded
without two hours' apology for the absence of men that were a
hundred miles off. Get up, Master; I say the hounds are out--get
up, I say; the hunt is up."  And off ran Bucklaw.

"And I say," said the Master, rising slowly, "that nothing can
concern me less. Whose hounds come so near to us?"

"The Honourable Lord Brittlebrains's," answered Caleb, who had
followed the impatient Laird of Bucklaw into his master's
bedroom, "and truly I ken nae title they have to be yowling and
howling within the freedoms and immunities of your lordship's
right of free forestry."

"Nor I, Caleb," replied Ravenswood, "excepting that they have
bought both the lands and the right of forestry, and may think
themselves entitled to exercise the rights they have paid their
money for."

"It may be sae, my lord," replied Caleb; "but it's no
gentleman's deed of them to come here and exercise such-like
right, and your lordship living at your ain castle of Wolf's
Crag. Lord Brittlebrains would weel to remember what his folk
have been."

"And what we now are," said the Master, with suppressed
bitterness of feeling. "But reach me my cloak, Caleb, and I will
indulge Bucklaw with a sight of this chase. It is selfish to
sacrifice my guest's pleasure to my own."

"Sacrifice!" echoed Caleb, in a tone which seemed to imply the
total absurdity of his master making the least concession in
deference to any one--"sacrifice, indeed!--but I crave your
honour's pardon, and whilk doublet is it your pleasure to wear?"

"Any one you will, Caleb; my wardrobe, I suppose, is not very
extensive."

"Not extensive!" echoed his assistant; "when there is the grey
and silver that your lordship bestowed on Hew Hildebrand, your
outrider; and the French velvet that went with my lord your
father--be gracious to him!--my lord your father's auld wardrobe
to the puir friends of the family; and the drap-de-Berry----"

"Which I gave to you, Caleb, and which, I suppose, is the only
dress we have any chance to come at, except that I wore
yesterday; pray, hand me that, and say no more about it."

"If your honour has a fancy," replied Caleb, "and doubtless it's
a sad-coloured suit, and you are in mourning; nevertheless, I
have never tried on the drap-de-Berry--ill wad it become me--
and your honour having no change of claiths at this present--and
it's weel brushed, and as there are leddies down yonder----"

"Ladies!" said Ravenswood; "and what ladies, pray?"

"What do I ken, your lordship? Looking down at them from the
Warden's Tower, I could but see them glent by wi' their bridles
ringing and their feathers fluttering, like the court of
Elfland."

"Well, well, Caleb," replied the Master, "help me on with my
cloak, and hand me my sword-belt. What clatter is that in the
courtyard?"

"Just Bucklaw bringing out the horses," said Caleb, after a
glance through the window, "as if there werena men eneugh in the
castle, or as if I couldna serve the turn of ony o' them that are
out o' the gate."

"Alas! Caleb, we should want little if your ability were equal
to your will," replied the Master.

"And I hope your lordship disna want that muckle," said Caleb;
"for , considering a' things, I trust we support the credit of
the family as weel as things will permit of,--only Bucklaw is aye
sae frank and sae forward. And there he has brought out your
lordship's palfrey, without the saddle being decored wi' the
broidered sumpter-cloth! and I could have brushed it in a
minute."

"It is all very well," said his master, escaping from him and
descending the narrow and steep winding staircase which led to
the courtyard.

"It MAY be a' very weel," said Caleb, somewhat peevishly; "but
if your lordship wad tarry a bit, I will tell you what will
NOT be very weel."

"And what is that?" said Ravenswood, impatiently, but stopping
at the same time.

"Why, just that ye suld speer ony gentleman hame to dinner; for
I canna mak anither fast on a feast day, as when I cam ower
Bucklaw wi' Queen Margaret; and, to speak truth, if your
lordship wad but please to cast yoursell in the way of dining wi'
Lord Bittlebrains, I'se warrand I wad cast about brawly for the
morn; or if, stead o' that, ye wad but dine wi' them at the
change-house, ye might mak your shift for the awing: ye might say
ye had forgot your purse, or that the carline awed ye rent, and
that ye wad allow it in the settlement."

"Or any other lie that cam uppermost, I suppose?" said his
master. "Good-bye, Caleb; I commend your care for the honour of
the family."  And, throwing himself on his horse, he followed
Bucklaw, who, at the manifest risk of his neck, had begun to
gallop down the steep path which led from the Tower as soon as he
saw Ravenswood have his foot in the stirrup.

Caleb Balderstone looked anxiously after them, and shook his
thin grey locks: "And I trust they will come to no evil; but they
have reached the plain, and folk cannot say but that the horse
are hearty and in spirits."
Animated by the natural impetuosity and fire of his temper,
young Bucklaw rushed on with the careless speed of a whirlwind.
Ravenswood was scarce more moderate in his pace, for his was a
mind unwillingly roused from contemplative inactivity, but which,
when once put into motion, acquired a spirit of forcible and
violent progression.  Neither was his eagerness proportioned in
all cases to the motive of impulse, but might be compared to the
sped of a stone, which rushes with like fury down the hill
whether it was first put in motion by the arm of a giant or the
hand of a boy. He felt, therefore, in no ordinary degree, the
headlong impulse of the chase, a pastime so natural to youth of
all ranks, that it seems rather to be an inherent passion in our
animal nature, which levels all differences of rank and
education, than an acquired habit of rapid exercise.

The repeated bursts of the French horn, which was then always
used for the encouragement and direction of the hounds; the deep,
though distant baying of the pack; the half-heard cries of the
huntsmen; the half-seen forms which were discovered, now
emerging from glens which crossed the moor, now sweeping over its
surface, now picking their way where it was impeded by morasses;
and, above all, the feeling of his own rapid motion, animated the
Master of Ravenswood, at last for the moment, above the
recollections  of a more painful nature by which he was
surrounded. The first thing which recalled him to those
unpleasing circumstances was feeling that his horse,
notwithstanding all the advantages which he received from his
rider's knowledge of the country, was unable to keep up with the
chase. As he drew his bridle up with the bittle feeling that his
poverty excluded him from the favourite recreation of his
forefathers, and indeed their sole employmet when not engaged in
military pursuits, he was accosted by a well-mounted stranger,
who, unobserved, had kept near him during the earlier part of his
career.

"Your horse is blown," said the man, with a complaisance seldom
used in a hunting-field. "Might I crave your honour to make use
of mine?"

"Sir," said Ravenswood, more surprised than pleased at such a
proposal. "I really do not know how I have merited such a
favour at a stranger's hands."

"Never ask a question about it, Master," said Bucklaw, who, with
great unwillingness, had hitherto reined in his own gallant
steed, not to outride his host and entertainer. "Take the goods
the gods provide you, as the great John Dryden says; or stay--
here, my friend, lend me that horse; I see you have been puzzled
to rein him up this half-hour.  I'll take the devil out of him
for you. Now, Master, do you ride mine, which will carry you
like an eagle."

And throwing the rein of his own horse to the Master of
Ravenswood, he sprung upon that which the stranger resigned to
him, and continued his career at full speed.
"Was ever so thoughtless a being!" said the Master; "and you, my
friend, how could you trust him with your horse?"

"The horse," said the man, "belongs to a person who will make
your honour, or any of your honourable friends, most welcome to
him, flesh and fell."

"And the owner's name is----?" asked Ravenswood.

"Your honour must excuse me, you will learn that from himself.
If you please to take your friend's horse, and leave me your
galloway, I will meet you after the fall of the stag, for I hear
they are blowing him at bay."

"I believe, my friend, it will be the best way to recover your
good horse for you," answered Ravenswood; and mounting  the nag
of his friend Bucklaw, he made all the haste in his power to the
spot where the blast of the horn announced that the stag's
career was nearly terminated.

These jovial sounds were intermixed with the huntsmen's shouts
of "Hyke a Talbot! Hyke a Teviot! now, boys, now!" and similar
cheering halloos of the olden hunting-field, to which the
impatient yelling of the hounds, now close of the object of their
pursuit, gave a lively and unremitting chorus. The straggling
riders began now to rally towards the scene of action,
collecting from different points as to a common centre.

Bucklaw kept the start which he had gotten, and arrived first at
the spot, where the stag, incapable of sustaining a more
prolonged flight, had turned upon the hounds, and, in the
hunter's phrase, was at bay. With his stately head bent down,
his sides white with foam, his eyes strained betwixt rage and
terror, the hunted animal had now in his turn become an object of
intimidation to his pursuers. The hunters came up one by one,
and watched an opportunity to assail him with some advantage,
which, in such circumstances, can only be done with caution. The
dogs stood aloof and bayed loudly, intimating at once eagerness
and fear, and each of the sportsmen seemed to expect that his
comrade would take upon him the perilous task of assaulting and
disabling the animal. The ground, which was a hollow in the
common or moor, afforded little advantage for approaching the
stag unobserved; and general was the shout of triumph when
Bucklaw, with the dexterity proper to an accomplished cavalier of
the day, sprang from his horse, and dashing suddenly and swiftly
at the stag, brought him to the ground by a cut on the hind leg
with his short hunting-sword. The pack, rushing in upon their
disabled enemy, soon ended his painful struggles, and solemnised
his fall with their clamour; the hunters, with their horns and
voices, whooping and blowing a mort, or death-note, which
resounded far over the billows of the adjacent ocean.

The huntsman then withdrew the hounds from the throttled stag,
and on his knee presented his knife to a fair female form, on a
white palfrey, whose terror, or perhaps her compassion, had till
then kept her at some distance. She wore a black silk riding-
mask, which was then a common fashion, as well for
preserving the complexion from the sun and rain, as from an idea
of decorum, which did not permit a lady to appear barefaced while
engaged in a boisterous sport, and attended by a promiscuous
company. The richness of her dress, however, as well as the
mettle and form of her palfrey, together with the silvan
compliment paid to her by the huntsman, pointed her out to
Bucklaw as the principal person in the field. It was not without
a feeling of pity, approaching even to contempt, that this
enthusiastic hunter observed her refuse the huntsman's knife,
presented to her for the purpose of making the first incision in
the stag's breast, and thereby discovering the venison. He felt
more than half inclined to pay his compliments to her; but it had
been Bucklaw's misfortune, that his habits of life had not
rendered him familiarly acquainted with the higher and better
classes of female society, so that, with all his natural
audacity, he felt sheepish and bashful when it became necessary
to address a lady of distinction.

Taking unto himself heart of grace (to use his own phrase), he
did at length summon up resolution enough to give the fair
huntress good time of the day, and trust that her sport had
answered her expectation. Her answer was very courteously and
modestly expressed, and testified some gratitude to the gallant
cavalier, whose exploit had terminated the chase so adroitly,
when the hounds and huntsmen seemed somewhat at a stand.

"Uds daggers and scabbard, madam," said Bucklaw, whom this
observation brought at once upon his own ground, "there is no
difficulty or merit in that matter at all, so that a fellow is
not too much afraid of having a pair of antlers in his guts. I
have hunted at force five hundred times, madam; and I never yet
saw the stag at bay, by land or water, but I durst have gone
roundly in on him. It is all use and wont, madam; and I'll tell
you, madam, for all that, it must be done with good heed and
caution; and you will do well, madam, to have your hunting-sword
right sharp and double-edged, that you may strike either fore-
handed or back-handed, as you see reason, for a hurt with a
buck's horn is a perilous ad somewhat venomous matter."

"I am afraid, sir," said the young lady, and her smile was
scarce concealed by her vizard, "I shall have little use for such
careful preparation."

"But the gentleman says very right for all that, my lady," said
an old huntsman, who had listened to Bucklaw's harangue with no
small edification; "and I have heard my father say, who was a
forester at the Cabrach, that a wild boar's gaunch is more easily
healed than a hurt from the deer's horn, for so says the old
woodman's rhyme--

If thou be hurt with horn of hart, it brings thee to they bier;

But tusk of boar shall leeches heal, thereof have lesser fear."

"An I might advise," continued Bucklaw, who was now in his
element, and desirous of assuming the whole management, "as the
hounds are surbated and weary, the head of the stag should be
cabaged in order to reward them; and if I may presume to speak,
the huntsman, who is to break up the stag, ought to drink to your
good ladyship's health a good lusty bicker of ale, or a tass of
brandy; for if he breaks him up without drinking, the venison
will not keep well."

This very agreeable prescription received, as will be readily
believed, all acceptation from the huntsman, who, in requital,
offered to bucklaw the compliment of his knife, which the young
lady had declined.

This polite proffer was seconded by his mistress. "I believe,
sir," she said, withdrawing herself from the circle, "that my
father, for whose amusement Lord Bittlebrain's hounds have been
out to-day, will readily surrender all care of these matters to a
gentleman of your experience."

Then, bending gracefully from her horse, she wished him good
morning, and, attended by one or two domestics, who seemed
immediately attached to her service, retired from the scene of
action, to which Bucklaw, too much delighted with an opportunity
of displaying his woodcraft to care about man or woman either,
paid little attention; but was soon stript to his doublet, with
tucked-up sleeves, and naked arms up to the elbows in blood and
grease, slashing, cutting, hacking, and hewing, with the
precision of Sir Tristrem himself, and wrangling and disputing
with all around him concerning nombles, briskets, flankards, and
raven-bones, then usual terms of the art of hunting, or of
butchery, whichever the reader chooses to call it, which are now
probably antiquated.

When Ravenswood, who followed a short pace behind his friend,
saw that the stag had fallen, his temporary ardour for the chase
gave way to that feeling of reluctance which he endured at
encountering in his fallen fortunes the gaze whether of equals
or inferiors. He reined up his horse on the top of a gentle
eminence, from which he observed the busy and gay scene beneath
him, and heard the whoops of the huntsmen, gaily mingled with the
cry of the dogs, and the neighing and trampling of the horses.
But these jovial sounds fell sadly on the ear of the ruined
nobleman. The chase, with all its train of excitations, has ever
since feudal times been accounted the almost exclusive privilege
of the aristocracy, and was anciently their chief employment in
times of peace. The sense that he was excluded by his situation
from emjoying the silvan sport, which his rank assigned to him as
a special prerogative, and the feeling that new men were now
exercising it over the downs which had been jealously reserved by
his ancestors for their own amusement, while he, the heir of the
domain, was fain to hold himself at a distance from their party,
awakened reflections calculated to depress deeply a mind like
Ravenswood's, which was naturally contemplative and melancholy.
His pride, however, soon shook off this feeling of dejection, and
it gave way to impatience upon finding that his volatile friend
Bucklaw seemed in no hurry to return with his borrowed steed,
which Ravenswood, before leaving the field, wished to see
restored to the obliging owner. As he was about to move towards
the group of assembled huntsmen, he was joined by a horseman,
who, like himself, had kept aloof during the fall of the deer.

This personage seemed stricken in years. He wore a scarlet
cloak, buttoning high upon his face, and his hat was unlooped and
slouched, probably by way of defence against the weather. His
horse, a strong and steady palfrey, was calculated for a rider
who proposed to witness the sport of the day rather than to share
it. An attendant waited at some distance, and the whole
equipment was that of an elderly gentleman of rank and fashion.
He accosted Ravenswood very politely, but not without some
embarrassment.

"You seem a gallant young gentleman, sir," he said, "and yet
appear as indifferent to this brave sport as if you had my load
of years on your shoulders."

"I have followed the sport with more spirit on other occasions,"
replied the Master; "at present, late events in my family must be
my apology; and besides," he added, "I was but indifferently
mounted at the beginning of the sport."

"I think," said the stranger, "one of my attendants had the
sense to accommodate your friend with a horse."

"I was much indebted to his politeness and yours," replied
Ravenswood. "My friend is Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw, whom I dare
say you will be sure to find in the thick of the keeest
sportsmen. He will return your servant's horse, and take my pony
in exchange; and will add," he concluded, turning his horse's
head from the stranger, "his best acknowledgments to mine for the
accommodation."

The Master of Ravenswood, having thus expressed himself, began
to move homeward, with the manner of one who has taken leave of
his company. But the stranger was not so to be shaken off. He
turned his horse at the same time, and rode in the same
direction, so near to the Master that, without outriding him,
which the formal civility of the time, and the respect due to the
stranger's age and recent civility, would have rendered improper,
he could not easily escape from his company.

The stranger did not long remain silent. "This, then," he said,
"is the ancient Castle of Wolf's Crag, often mentioned in the
Scottish recods," looking to the old tower, then darkening under
the influence of a stormy cloud, that formed its
background; for at the distance of a short mile, the chase,
having been circuitous, had brought the hunters nearly back to
the point which they had attained when Ravenswood and Bucklaw had
set forward to join them.

Ravenswood answered this observation with a cold and distant
assent.
"It was, as I have heard," continued the stranger, unabashed by
his coldness, "one of the most early possessions of the
honourable family of Ravenswood."

"Their earliest possession," answered the Master, "and probably
their latest."

"I--I--I should hope not, sir," answered the stranger, clearing
his voice with more than one cough, and making an effort to
voercome a certain degree of hesitation; "Scotland knows what
she owes to this ancient family, and remembers their frequent and
honourable achievements. I have little doubt that, were it
properly represented to her Majesty that so ancient and noble a
family were subjected to dilapidation--I mean to decay--means
might be found, ad re-aedificandum antiquam domum----"

"I will save you the trouble, sir, of discussing this point
farther," interrupted the Master, haughtily. "I am the heir of
that unfortunate house--I am the Master of Ravenswood. And you,
sir, who seem to be a gentleman of fashion and education, must be
sensible that the next mortification after being unhappy is the
being loaded with undesired commiseration."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said the elder horseman; "I did not
know--I am sensible I ought not to have mentioned--nothing could
be farther from my thoughts than to suppose----"

"There are no apologies necessary, sir," answered
Ravenswood, "for here, I suppose, our roads separate, and I
assure you that we part in perfect equanimity on my side."

As speaking these words, he directed his horse's head towards a
narrow causeway, the ancient approach to Wolf's Crag, of which it
might be truly said, in the words of the Bard of Hope, that

Frequented by few was the grass-cover'd road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode,
To his hills that encircle the sea.

But, ere he could disengage himself from his companion, the young
lady we have already mentioned came up to join the stranger,
followed by her servants.

"Daughter," said the stranger to the unmasked damesl, "this is
the Master of Ravenswood."

It would have been natural that the gentleman should have
replied to this introduction; but there was something in the
graceful form and retiring modesty of the female to whom he was
thus presented, which not only pevented him from inquiring to
whom, and by whom, the annunciation had been made, but which even
for the time struck him absolutely mute. At this moment the
cloud which had long lowered above the height on which Wolf's
Crag is situated, and which now, as it advanced, spread itself in
darker and denser folds both over land and sea, hiding the
distant objects and obscuring those which were nearer, turning
the sea to a leaden complexion and the heath to a darker brown,
began now, by one or two distant peals, to announce the thunders
with which it was fraught; while two flashes of lightning,
following each other very closely, showed in the distance the
grey turrets of Wolf's Crag, and, more nearly, the rollowing
billows of the ocean, crested suddenly with red and dazzling
light.

The horse of the fair huntress showed symptoms of impatience and
restiveness, and it became impossible for Ravenswood, as a man or
a gentleman, to leave her abruptly to the case of an aged father
or her menial attendants. He was, or believed himself, obliged
in courtesy to take hold of her bridle, and assist her in
managing the unruly animal. While he was thus engaged, the old
gentleman observed that the storm seemed to increase; that they
were far from Lord Bittlebrains's, whose guests they were for the
present; and that he would be obliged to the Master of Ravenswood
to point him the way to the nearest place of refuge from the
storm. At the same time he cast a wistful and embarrassed look
towards the Tower of Wolf's Crag, which seemed to render it
almost impossible for the owner to avoid offering an old man and
a lady, in such an emergency, the temporary use of his house.
Indeed, the condition of the young huntress made this courtesy
indispensable; for, in the course of the services which he
rendered, he could not but perceive that she trembled much, and
was extremely agitated, from her apprehensions, doubtless, of the
coming storm.

I know not if the Master of Ravenswood shared her terrors, but
he was not entirely free from something like a similar disorder
of nerves, as he observed, "The Tower of Wolf's Crag has nothing
to offer beyond the shelter of its roof, but if that can be
acceptable at such a moment----" he paused, as if the rest of
the invitation stuck in his throat. But the old gentleman, his
self-constituted companion, did not allow him to recede from the
invitation, which he had rather suffered to be implied than
directly expressed.

"The storm," said the stranger, "must be an apology for waiving
ceremony; his daughter's health was weak, she had
suffered much from a recent alarm; he trusted their intrusion on
the Master of Ravenswood's hospitality would not be altogether
unpardonable in the circumstances of the case: his child's safety
must be dearer to him than ceremony."

There was no room to retreat. The Master of Ravenswood led the
way, continuing to keep hold of the lady's bridle to prevent her
horse from starting at some unexpected explosion of thunder. He
was not so bewildered in his own hurried reflections but that he
remarked, that the deadly paleness which had occupied her neck
and temples, and such of her features as the riding-mask left
exposed, gave place to a deep and rosy suffusion; and he felt
with embarrassment that a flush was by tacit sympathy excited in
his own cheeks. The stranger, with watchfulness which he
disguised under apprehensions of the safety of his daughter,
continued to observe the expression of the Master's countenance
as they ascended the hill to Wolf's Crag. When they stood in
front of that ancient fortress, Ravenswood's emotions were of a
very complicated description; and as he led the way into the rude
courtyard, and hallooed to Caleb to give attendance, there was a
tone of sternness, almost of fierceness, which seemed somewhat
alien from the courtesies of one who is receiving honoured
guests.

Caleb came; and not the paleness of the fair stranger at the
first approach of the thunder, nor the paleness of any other
person, in any other circumstances whatever, equalled that which
overcame the thin cheeks of the disconsolate seneschal when he
beheld this accession of guests to the castle, and reflected that
the dinner hour was fast approaching. "Is he daft?" he muttered
to himself;--"is he clean daft a'thegither, to bring lords and
leddies, and a host of folk behint them, and twal o'clock
chappit?"  Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for
having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the
hunt, observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship
coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play
the truant."

"Silence, Balderstone!" said Ravenswood, sternly; "your folly is
unseasonable. Sir and madam," he said, turning to his guests,
"this old man, and a yet older and more imbecile female
domestic, form my whole retinue. Our means of refreshing you are
more scanty than even so miserable a retinue, and a dwelling so
dilapidated, might seem to promise you; but, such as they may
chance to be, you may command them."

The elder stranger, struck with the ruined and even savage
appearance of the Tower, rendered still more disconsolate by the
lowering and gloomy ksy, and perhaps not altogether unmoved by
the grave and determined voice in which their host addressed
them, looked round him anxiously, as if he half repented the
readiness with which he had accepted the offered hospitality.
But there was now no opportunity of receding from the situation
in which he had placed himself.

As for Caleb, he was so utterly stunned by his master's public
and unqualified acknowledgment of the nakedness of the land, that
for two minutes he could only mutter within his hebdomadal beard,
which had not felt the razor for six days, "He's daft--clean
daft--red wud, and awa' wit! But deil hae Caleb Balderstone,"
said he, collecting his powers of invention and resource, "if the
family shall lose credit, if he were as mad as the seven wise
masters!"  He then boldly advanced, and in spite of his master's
frowns and impatience, gravely asked, "If he should not serve up
some slight refection for the young leddy, and a glass of tokay,
or old sack--or----"

"Truce to this ill-timed foolery," said the Master, sternly;
"put the horses into the stable, and interrupt us no more with
your absurdities."

"Your honour's pleasure is to be obeyed aboon a' things," said
Caleb; "nevertheless, as for the sack and tokay which it is not
your noble guests' pleasure to accept----"

But here the voice of Bucklaw, heard even above the
clattering of hoofs and braying of horns with which it mingled,
announced that he was scaling the pathway to the Tower at the
head of the greater part of the gallant hunting train.

"The deil be in me," said Caleb, taking heart in spite of this
new invasion of Philistines, "if they shall beat me yet! The
hellicat ne'er-do-weel! to bring such a crew here, that will
expect to find brandy as plenty as ditch-water, and he kenning
sae absolutely the case in whilk we stand for the present! But I
trow, could I get rid of thae gaping gowks of flunkies that hae
won into the courtyard at the back of their betters, as mony a
man gets preferment, I could make a' right yet."

The measures which he took to execute this dauntless
resolution, the reader shall learn in the next chapter.

CHAPTER X.

With throat unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard him call;
Gramercy they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they had been drinking all!

COLERIDGE'S Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

HAYSTON of Bucklaw was one of the thoughtless class who never
hesitate between their friend and their jest. When it was
announced that the principal persons of the chase had taken
their route towards Wolf's Crag, the huntsmen, as a point of
civility, offered to transfer the venison to that mansion; a
proffer which was readily accepted by Bucklaw, who thought much
of the astonishment which their arrival in full body would
occasion poor old Caleb Balderstone, and very little of the
dilemma to which he was about to expose his friend the Master, so
ill circumstanced to receive such a party. But in old Caleb he
had to do with a crafty and alert antagonist, prompt at
supplying, upon all emergencies, evasions and excuses suitable,
as he thought, to the dignity of the family.

"Praise be blest!" said Caleb to himself, "ae leaf of the muckle
gate has been swung to wi' yestreen's wind, and I think I can
manage to shut the ither."

But he was desirous, like a prudent governor, at the same time
to get rid, if possible, of the internal enemy, in which light he
considered almost every one who eat and drank, ere he took
measures to exclude those whom their jocund noise now pronounced
to be near at hand. He waited, therefore, with impatience until
his master had shown his two principal guests into the Tower, and
then commenced his operations.

"I think," he said to the stranger menials, "that, as they are
bringing the stag's head to the castle in all honour, we, who
are indwellers, should receive them at the gate."

The unwary grooms had no sooner hurried out, in compliance with
this insidous hint, than, one folding-door of the ancient gate
being already closed by the wind, as has been already intimated,
hoenst Caleb lost no time in shutting the other with a clang,
which resounded from donjon-vault to battlement. Having thus
secured the pass, he forthwith indulged the excluded
huntsmen in brief parley, from a small projecting window, or
shot-hole, through which, in former days, the warders were wont
to reconnoitre those who presented themselves before the gates.
He gave them to udnerstand, in a short and pity speech, that the
gate of the castle was never on any account opened during meal-
times; that his honour, the Master of Ravenswood, and some guests
of quality, had just sat down to dinner; that there was excellent
brandy at the hostler-wife's at Wolf's Hope down below; and he
held out some obscure hint that the reckoning would be
discharged by the Master; but this was uttered in a very dubious
and oracular strain, for, like Louis XIV., Caleb Balderstone
hesitated to carry finesse so far as direct falsehood, and was
content to deceive, if possible, without directly lying.

This annunciation was received with surprise by some, with
laughter by others, and with dismay by the expelled lackeys, who
endeavoured to demonstrate that their right of readmission, for
the purpose of waiting upon their master and mistress, was at
least indisputable. But Caleb was not in a humour to understand
or admit any distinctions. He stuck to his original proposition
with that dogged but convenient pertinacity which is armed
against all conviction, and deaf to all reasoning. Bucklaw now
came from the rear of the party, and demanded admittance in a
very angry tone. But the resolution of Caleb was immovable.

"If the king on the throne were at the gate," he declared, "his
ten fingers should never open it contrair to the established use
and wont of the family of Ravenswood, and his duty as their
head-servant."

Bucklaw was now extremely incensed, and with more oaths and
curses than we care to repeat, declared himself most unworthily
treated, and demanded peremptorily to speak with the Master of
Ravenswood himself.

But to this also Caleb turned a deaf ear. "He's as soon a-
bleeze as a tap of tow, the lad Bucklaw," he said; "but the deil
of ony master's face he shall see till he has sleepit and waken'd
on't. He'll ken himsell better the morn's morning. It sets the
like o' him, to be bringing a crew of drunken hunters here, when
he kens there is but little preparation to sloken his ain
drought."  And he disappeared from the window, leaving them all
to digest their exclusion as they best might.

But another person, of whose presence Caleb, in the
animation of the debate, was not aware, had listened in silence
to its progress. This was the principal domestic of the
stranger--a man of trust and consequence--the same who, in the
hunting-field, had accommodated Bucklaw with the use of his
horse. He was in the stable when Caleb had contrived the
expulsion of his fellow-servants, and thus avoided sharing the
same fate, from which his personal importance would certainly not
have otherwise saved him.

This personage perceived the manoeuvre of Caleb, easily
appreciated the motive of his conduct, and knowing his master's
intentions towards the family of Ravenswood, had no difficulty as
to the line of conduct he ought to adopt. He took the place of
Caleb (unperceived by the latter) at the post of audience which
he had just left, and announced to the assembled domestics, "That
it was his master's pleasure that Lord Bittlebrain's retinue and
his own should go down to the adjacent change-house and call for
what refreshments they might have occasion for, and he should
take care to discharge the lawing."

The jolly troop of huntsmen retired from the inhospitable gate
of Wolf's Crag, execrating, as they descended the steep pathway,
the niggard and unworthy disposition of the proprietor, and
damning, with more than silvan license, both the castle and its
inhabitants. Bucklaw, with many qualities which would have made
him a man of worth and judgment in more favourable
circumstances, had been so utterly neglected in point of
education, that he was apt to think and feel according to the
ideas of the companions of his pleasures. The praises which had
recently been heaped upon himself he contrasted with the general
abuse now levelled against Ravenswood; he recalled to his mind
the dull and monotonous days he had spent in the Tower of Wolf's
Crag, compared with the joviality of his usual life; he felt with
great indignation his exclusion from the castle, which he
considered as a gross affront, and every mingled feeling led him
to break off the union which he had formed with the Master of
Ravenswood.

On arriving at the change-house of the village of Wolf's Hope,
he unexpectedly met with an acquaintance just alighting from his
horse. This was no other than the very respectable Captain
Craigengelt, who immediately came up to him, and, without
appearing to retain any recollection of the indifferent terms on
which they had parted, shook him by the hand in the warmest
manner possible. A warm grasp of the hand was what Bucklaw could
never help returning with cordiality, and no sooner had
Craigengelt felt the pressure of his fingers than he knew the
terms on which he stood with him.

"Long life to you, Bucklaw!" he exclaimed; "there's life for
honest folk in this bad world yet!"

The Jacobites at this period, with what propriety I know not,
used, it must be noticed, the term of HONEST MEN as peculiarly
descriptive of their own party.

"Ay, and for others besides, it seems," answered Bucklaw;
"otherways, how came you to venture hither, noble Captain?"

"Who--I? I am as free as the wind at Martinmas, that pays
neither land-rent nor annual; all is explained--all settled with
the honest old drivellers yonder of Auld Reekie. Pooh! pooh!
they dared not keep me a week of days in durance. A certain
person has better friends among them than you wot of, and can
serve a friend when it is least likely."

"Pshaw!" answered Hayston, who perfectly knew and thoroughly
despised the character of this man, "none of your cogging
gibberish; tell me truly, are you at liberty and in safety?"

"Free and safe as a Whig bailie on the causeway of his own
borough, or a canting Presbyterian minister in his own pulpit;
and I came to tell you that you need not remain in hiding any
longer."

"Then I suppose you call yourself my friend, Captain
Craigengelt?" said Bucklaw.

"Friend!" replied Craigengelt, "my cock of the pit! why, I am
thy very Achates, man, as I have heard scholars say--hand and
glove--bark and tree--thine to life and death!"

"I'll try that in a moment," answered Bucklaw. "Thou art never
without money, however thou comest by it. Lend me two pieces to
wash the dust out of these honest fellows' throats in the first
place, and then----"

"Two pieces! Twenty are at thy service, my lad, and twenty to
back them."

"Ay, say you so?" said Bucklaw, pausing, for his natural
penetration led him to susprect some extraordinary motive lay
couched under an excess of generosity. "Craigengelt, you are
either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know
how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and
I scarce know how to believe that either."

"L'un n'empeche pas l'autre," said Craigengelt. "Touch and
try; the gold is good as ever was weighed."

He put a quantity of gold pieces into Bucklaw's hand, which he
thrust into his pocket without either counting or looking at
them, only observing, "That he was so circumstanced that he must
enlist, though the devil offered the press-money"; and then
turning to the huntsmen, he called out, "Come along, my lads; all
is at my cost."

"Long life to Bucklaw!" shouted the men of the chase.

"And confusion to him that takes his share of the sport, and
leaves the hunters as dry as a drumhead," added another, by way
of corollary.

"The house of Ravenswood was ance a gude and an honourable house
in this land," said an old man; "but it's lost its credit this
day, and the Master has shown himself no better than a greedy
cullion."

And with this conclusion, which was unanimously agreed to by all
who heard it, they rushed tumultuously into the house of
entertainment, where they revelled till a late hour. The jovial
temper of Bucklaw seldom permitted him to be nice in the choice
of his associates; and on the present occasion, when his joyous
debauch received additional zest from the intervention of an
unusual space of sobriety, and almost abstinence, he was as happy
in leading the revels as if his comrades had been sons of
princes. Craigengelt had his own purposes in fooling him up to
the top of his bent; and having some low humour, much impudence,
and the power of singing a good song, understanding besides
thoroughly the disposition of his regained associate, he headily
succeeded in involving him bumper-deep in the festivity of the
meeting.

A very different scene was in the mean time passing in the Tower
of Wolf's Crag. When the Master of Ravenswood left the
courtyard, too much busied with his own perplexed reflections to
pay attention to the manoeuvre of Caleb, he ushered his guests
into the great hall of the castle.

The indefatigable Balderstone, who, from choice or habit, worked
on from morning to night, had by degrees cleared this desolate
apartment of the confused relics of the funeral banquet, and
restored it to some order. But not all his skill and labour, in
disposing to advantage the little furniture which remained,
could remove the dark and disconsolate appearance of those
ancient and disfurnished walls. The narrow windows, flanked by
deep indentures into the walls, seemed formed rather to exclude
than to admit the cheerful light; and the heavy and gloomy
appearance of the thunder-sky added still farther to the
obscurity.

As Ravenswood, with the grace of a gallant of that period, but
not without a certain stiffness and embarrassment of manner,
handed the young lady to the upper end of the apartment, her
father remained standing more near to the door, as if about to
disengage himself from his hat and cloak. At this moment the
clang of the portal was heard, a sound at which the stranger
started, stepped hastily to the window, and looked with an air of
alarm at Ravenswood, when he saw that the gate of the court was
shut, and his domestics excluded.

"You have nothing to fear, sir," said Ravenswood, gravely; "this
roof retains the means of giving protection, though not welcome.
Methinks," he added, "it is time that I should know who they are
that have thus highly honoured my ruined dwelling!"
The young lady remained silent and motionless, and the father,
to whom the question was more directly addressed, seemed in the
situation of a performer who has ventured to take upon himself a
part which he finds himself unable to present, and who comes to a
pause when it is most to be expected that he should speak. While
he endeavoured to cover his embarrassent with the exterior
ceremonials of a well-bred demeanour, it was obvious that, in
making his bow, one foot shuffled forward, as if to advance, the
other backward, as if with the purpose of escape; and as he undid
the cape of his coat, and raised his beaver from his face, his
fingers fumbled as if the one had been linked with rusted iron,
or the other had weighed equal with a stone of lead. The
darkness of the sky seemed to increase, as if to supply the want
of those mufflings which he laid aside with such evident
reluctance. The impatience of Ravenswood increased also in
proportion to the delay of the stranger, and he appeared to
struggle under
agitation, though probably from a very different cause. He
laboured to restrain his desire to speak, while the stranger, to
all appearance, was at a loss for words to express what he felt
necessary to say.

At length Ravenswood's impatience broke the bounds he had
imposed upon it. "I perceive," he said, "that Sir William Ashton
is unwilling to announced himself in the Castle of Wolf's Crag."

"I had hoped it was unnecessary," said the Lord Keeper, relieved
from his silence, as a spectre by the voice of the exorcist, "and
I am obliged to you, Master of Ravenswood, for breaking the ice
at once, where circumstances--unhappy
circumstances, let me call them--rendered self-introduction
peculiarly awkward."

"And I am not then," said the Master of Ravenswood, gravely, "to
consider the honour of this visit as purely accidental?"

"Let us distinguish a little," said the Keeper, assuming an
appearance of ease which perhaps his heart was a stranger to;
"this is an honour which I have eagerly desired for some time,
but which I might never have obtained, save for the accident of
the storm. My daughter and I are alike grateful for this
opportunity of thanking the brave man to whom she owes her life
and I mine."

The hatred which divided the great families in the feudal times
had lost little of its bitterness, though it no longer expressed
itself in deeds of open violence. Not the feelings which
Ravenswood had begun to entertain towards Lucy Ashton, not the
hospitality due to his guests, were able entirely to subdue,
though they warmly combated, the deep passions which arose within
him at beholding his father's foe standing in the hall of the
family of which he had in a great measure accelerated the ruin.
His looks glanced from the father to the daughter with an
irresolution of which Sir William Ashton did not think it proper
to await the conclusion. He had now disembarrassed himself of
his riding-dress, and walking up to his daughter, he undid the
fastening of her mask.

"Lucy, my love," he said, raising her and leading her towards
Ravenswood, "lay aside your mask, and let us express our
gratitude to the Master openly and barefaced."

"If he will condescend to accept it," was all that Lucy uttered;
but in a tone so sweetly modulated, and which seemed to imply at
once a feeling and a forgiving of the cold reception to which
they were exposed, that, coming from a creature so innocent
andso beautiful, her words cut Ravenswood to the very heart for
his harshness. He muttered something of surprise, something of
confusion, and, ending with a warm and eager expression of his
happiness at being able to afford her shelter under his roof, he
saluted her, as the ceremonial of the time enjoined upon such
occasions. Their cheeks had touched and were withdrawn from each
other; Ravenswood had not quitted the hand which he had taken in
kindly courtesy; a blush, which attached more consequence by far
than was usual to such ceremony, still mantled on Lucy Ashton's
beautiful cheek, when the apartment was suddenly illuminated by a
flash of lightning, which seemed absolutely to swallow the
darkness of the hall. Every object might have been for an
instant seen distinctly. The slight and half-sinking form of
Lucy Ashton; the well-proportioned and stately figure of
Ravenswood, his dark features, and the fiery yet irresolute
expression of his eyes; the old arms and scutcheons which hung on
the walls of the apartment, were for an instant distinctly
visible to the Keeper by a strong red brilliant glare of light.
Its disappearance was almost instantly followed by a burst of
thunder, for the storm-cloud was very near the castle; and the
peal was so sudden and dreadful, that the old tower rocked to its
foundation, and every inmate concluded it was falling upon them.
The soot, which had not been disturbed for centuries, showered
down the huge tunnelled chimneys; lime and dust flew in clouds
from the wall; and, whether the lightning had actually struck the
castle or whether through the violent concussion of the air,
several heavy stones were hurled from the mouldering battlements
into the roaring sea beneath. It might seem as if the ancient
founder of the castle were bestriding the thunderstorm, and
proclaiming his displeasure at the reconciliation of his
descendant with the enemy of his house.

The consternation was general, and it required the efforts of
both the Lord Keeper and Ravenswood to keep Lucy from
fainting. Thus was the Master a second time engaged in the most
delicate and dangerous of all tasks, that of affording support
and assistance to a beautiful and helpless being, who, as seen
before in a similar situation, had already become a favourite of
his imagination, both when awake and when slumbering. If the
genius of the house really condemned a union betwixt the Master
and his fair guest, the means by which he expressed his
sentiments were as unhappily chosen as if he had been a mere
mortal. The train of little attentions, absolutely necessary to
soothe the young lady's mind, and aid her in composing her
spirits, necessarily threw the Master of Ravenswood into such an
itnercourse with her father as was calculated, for the moment at
least, to break down the barrier of feudal enemity which divided
them. To express himself churlishly, or even coldly, towards
anold man whose daughter (and SUCH a daughter) lay before them,
overpowered with natural terror--and all this under his own roof,
the thing was impossible; and by the time that Lucy, extending a
hand to each, was able to thank them for their kindness, the
Master felt that his sentiments of hostility towards the Lord
Keeper were by no means those most predominant in his bosom.

The weather, her state of health, the absence of her
attendants, all prevented the possibility of Lucy Ashton renewing
her journey to Bittlebrains House, which was full five miles
distant; and the Master of Ravenswood could not but, in common
courtesy, offer the shelter of his roof for the rest of the day
and for the night. But a flush of less soft expression, a look
much more habitual to his features, resumed predominance when he
mentioned how meanly he was provided for the entertainment of his
guests.

"Do not mention deficiencies," said the Lord Keeper, eager to
interrupt him and prevent his resuming an alarming topic; "you
are preparing to set out for the Continent, and your house is
probably for the present unfurnished. All this we understand;
but if you mention inconvenience, you will oblige us to seek
accommodations in the hamlet."

As the Master of Ravenswood was about to reply, the door of the
hall opened, and Caleb Balderstone rushed in.

CHAPTER XI.

Let them have meat enough, woman--half a hen;
There be old rotten pilchards--put them off too;
'Tis but a little new anointing of them,
And a strong onion, that confounds the savour.

Love's Pilgrimage.

THE thunderbolt, which had stunned all who were within hearing
of it, had only served to awaken the bold and inventive genius of
the flower of majors-domo. Almost before the clatter had ceased,
and while there was yet scarce an assurance whether the castle
was standing or falling, Caleb exclaimed, "Heaven be praised!
this comes to hand like the boul of a pint-stoup."  He then
barred the kitchen door in the face of the Lord Keeper's
servant, whom he perceived returning from the party at the gate,
and muttering, "How the deil cam he in?--but deil may care.
Mysie, what are ye sitting shaking and greeting in the chimney-
neuk for? Come here--or stay where ye are, and skirl as loud as
ye can; it's a' ye're gude for. I say, ye auld deevil, skirl--
skirl--louder--louder, woman; gar the gentles hear ye in the ha'.
I have heard ye as far off as the Bass for a less matter. And
stay--down wi' that crockery----"

And with a sweeping blow, he threw down from a shelf some
articles of pewter and earthenware. He exalted his voice amid
the clatter, shouting and roaring in a manner which changed
Mysie's hysterical terrors of the thunder into fears that her old
fellow-servant was gone distracted. "He has dung down a' the
bits o' pigs, too--the only thing we had left to haud a soup
milk--and he has spilt the hatted hit that was for the Master's
dinner. Mercy save us, the auld man's gaen clean and clear wud
wi' the thunner!"

"Haud your tongue, ye b----!" said Caleb, in the impetuous and
overbearing triumph of successful invention, "a's provided now--
dinner and a'thing; the thunner's done a' in a clap of a hand!"

"Puir man, he's muckle astray," said Mysie, looking at him with
a mixture of pity and alarm; "I wish he may ever come come hame
to himsell again."

"Here, ye auld doited deevil," said Caleb, still exulting in his
extrication from a dilemma which had seemed insurmountable;
"keep the strange man out of the kitchen; swear the thunner came
down the chimney and spoiled the best dinner ye ever dressed--
beef--bacon--kid--lark--leveret--wild-fowl--venison, and what
not. Lay it on thick, and never mind expenses. I'll awa' up to
the la'. Make a' the confusion ye can; but be sure ye keep out
the strange servant."

With these charges to his ally, Caleb posted up to the hall, but
stopping to reconnoitre through an aperture, which time, for the
convenience of many a domestic in succession, had made in the
door, and perceiving the situation of Miss Ashton, he had
prudence enough to make a pause, both to avoid adding to her
alarm and in order to secure attention to his account of the
disastrous effects of the thunder.

But when he perceived that the lady was recovered, and heard the
conversation turn upon the accommodation and refreshment which
the castle afforded, he thought it time to burst into the room in
the manner announced in the last chapter.

"Willawins!--willawins! Such a misfortune to befa' the house of
Ravenswood, and I to live to see it."

"What is the matter, Caleb?" said his master, somewhat alarmed
in his turn; "has any part of the castle fallen?"

"Castle fa'an! na, but the sute's fa'an, and the thunner's come
right down the kitchen-lum, and the things are a' lying here
awa', there awa', like the Laird o' Hotchpotch's lands; and wi'
brave guests of honour and quality to entertain (a low bow here
to Sir William Ashton and his daughter), and
naething left in the house fit to present for dinner, or for
supper either, for aught that I can see!"

"I very believe you, Caleb," said Ravenswood, drily.
Balderstone here turned to his master a half-upbraiding, half-
imploring countenance, and edged towards him as he repeated, "It
was nae great matter of preparation; but just something added to
your honour's ordinary course of fare--petty cover, as they say
at the Louvre--three courses and the fruit."

"Keep your intolerable nonsense to yourself, you old fool!" said
Ravenswood, mortified at his officiousness, yet not knowing how
to contradict him, without the risk of giving rise to scenes yet
more ridiculous.

Caleb saw his advantage, and resolved to improve it. But first,
observing that the Lord Keeper's servant entered the apartment
and spoke apart with his master, he took the same opportunity to
whisper a few words into Ravenswood's ear: "Haud your tongue,
for heaven's sake, sir; if it's my pleasure to hazard my soul in
telling lees for the honour of the family, it's nae business o'
yours; and if ye let me gang on quietly, I'se be moderate in my
banquet; but if ye contradict me, deil but I dress ye a dinner
fit for a duke!"

Ravenswood, in fact, thought it would be best to let his
officious butler run on, who proceeded to enumerate upon his
fingers--"No muckle provision--might hae served four persons of
honour,--first course, capons in white broth--roast kid--bacon
with reverence; second course, roasted leveret--butter crabs--a
veal florentine; third course, blackcock--it's black eneugh now
wi' the sute--plumdamas--a tart--a flam--and some nonsense sweet
things, adn comfits--and that's a'," he said, seeing the
impatience of his master--"that's just a' was o't--forbye the
apples and pears."

Miss Ashton had by degrees gathered her spirits, so far as to
pay some attention to what was going on; and observing the
restrained impatience of Ravenswood, contrasted with the
peculiar determination of manner with which Caleb detailed his
imaginary banquet, the whole struck her as so ridiculous that,
despite every effort to the contrary, she burst into a fit of
incontrollable laughter, in which she was joined by her father,
though with more moderation, and finally by the Master of
Ravenswood himself, though conscious that the jest was at his own
expense. Their mirth--for a scene which we read with little
emotion often appears extremely ludicrous to the spectators--made
the old vault ring again. They ceased--they renewed--they
ceased--they renewed again their shouts of laughter! Caleb, in
the mean time, stood his ground with a grave, angry, and scornful
dignity, which greatly enhanced the ridicule of the scene and
mirth of the spectators.

At length, when the voices, and nearly the strength, of the
laughers were exhausted, he exclaimed, with very little ceremony:
"The deil's in the gentles! they breakfast sae lordly, that the
loss of the best dinner ever cook pat fingers to makes them as
merry as if it were the best jeest in a' George Buchanan. If
there was as little in your honours' wames as there is in Caleb
Balderstone's, less caickling wad serve ye on sic a gravaminous
subject."

Caleb's blunt expression of resentment again awakened the mirth
of the company, which, by the way, he regarded not only as an
agression upon the dignity of the family, but a special contempt
of the eloquence with which he himself had summed up the extent
of their supposed losses. "A description of a dinner," as he
said afterwards to Mysie, "that wad hae made a fu' man
hungry, and them to sit there laughing at it!"

"But," said Miss Ashton, composing her countenance as well as
she could, "are all these delicacies so totally destroyed that
no scrap can be collected?"

"Collected, my leddy! what wad ye collect out of the sute and
the ass? Ye may gang down yoursell, and look into our kitchen--
the cookmaid in the trembling exies--the gude vivers lying a'
about--beef, capons, and white broth--florentine and flams--bacon
wi' reverence--and a' the sweet confections and whim-whams--ye'll
see them a', my leddy--that is," said he, correcting himself,
"ye'll no see ony of them now, for the cook has soopit them up,
as was weel her part; but ye'll see the white broth where it was
spilt. I pat my fingers in it, and it tastes as like sour milk
as ony thing else; if that isna the effect of thunner, I kenna
what is. This gentleman here couldna but hear the clash of our
haill dishes, china and silver thegither?"

The Lord Keeper's domestic, though a statesman's attendant, and
of course trained to command his countenance upon all
occasions, was somewhat discomposed by this appeal, to which he
only answered by a bow.

"I think, Mr. Butler," said the Lord Keeper, who began to be
afraid lest the prolongation of this scene should at length
displease Ravenswood--"I think that, were you to retire with my
servant Lockhard--he has travelled, and is quite accustomed to
accidents and contingencies of every kind, and I hope betwixt
you, you may find out some mode of supply at this emergency."

"His honour kens," said Caleb, who, however hopeless of himself
of accomplishing what was desirable, would, like the high-
spirited elephant, rather have died in the effort than brooked
the aid of a brother in commission--"his honour kens weel I need
nae counsellor, when the honour of the house is
concerned."

"I should be unjust if I denied it, Caleb," said his master;
"but your art lies chiefly in making apologies, upon which we can
no more dine than upon the bill of fare of our thunder-blasted
dinner. Now, possibly Mr. Lockhard's talent may consist in
finding some substitute for that which certainly is not, and has
in all probability never been."

"Your honour is pleased to be facetious," said Caleb, "but I am
sure that, for the warst, for a walk as far as Wolf's Hope, I
could dine forty men--no that the folk there deserve your
honour's custom. They hae been ill advised in the matter of the
duty eggs and butter, I winna deny that."

"Do go consult together," said the Master; "go down to the
village, and do the best you can. We must not let our guests
remain without refreshment, to save the honour of a ruined
family. And here, Caleb, take my purse; I believe that will
prove your best ally."

"Purse! purse, indeed!" quoth Caleb, indignantly flinging out of
the room; "what suld I do wi' your honour's purse, on your ain
grund? I trust we are no to pay for our ain?"

The servants left the hall; and the door was no sooner shut than
the Lord Keeper began to apologise for the rudeness of his
mirth; and Lucy to hope she had given no pain or offence to the
kind-hearted faithful old man.

"Caleb and I must both learn, madam, to undergo with good
humour, or at least with patience, the ridicule which everywhere
attaches itself to poverty."

"You do yourself injustice, Master of Ravenswood, on my word of
honour," answered his elder guest. "I believe I know more of
your affairs than you do yourself, and I hope to show you that I
am interested in them; and that--in short, that your prospects
are better than you apprehend. In the mean time, I can conceive
nothing so respectable as the spirit which rises above
misfortune, and prefers honourable privations to debt or
dependence."

Whether from fear of offending the delicacy or awakening the
pride of the Master, the Lord Keeper made these allusions with an
appearance of fearful and hesitating reserve, and seemed to be
afraid that he was intruding too far, in venturing to touch,
however lightly, upon such a topic, even when the Master had led
to it. In short, he appeared at once pushed on by his desire of
appearing friendly, and held back by the fear of intrusion. It
was no wonder that the Master of Ravenswood, little acquainted as
he then was with life, should have given this consummate
courtier credit for more sincerity than was probably to be found
in a score of his cast. He answered, however, with reserve, that
he was indebted to all who might think well of him; and,
apologising to his guests, he left the hall, in order to make
such arrangements for their entertainment as circumstances
admitted.

Upon consulting with old Mysie, the accommodations for the night
were easily completed, as indeed they admitted of little choice.
The Master surrendered his apartment for the use of Miss Ashton,
and Mysie, once a person of consequence, dressed in a black satin
gown which had belonged of yore to the Master's grandmother, and
had figured in the court-balls of Henrietta Maria, went to attend
her as lady's-maid. He next inquired after Bucklaw, and
understanding he was at the change-house with the huntsmen and
some companions, he desired Caleb to call there, and acquaint him
how he was circumstanced at Wolf's Crag; to intimate to him that
it would be most convenient if he could find a bed in the hamlet,
as the elder guest must
necessarily be quartered in the secret chamber, the only spare
bedroom which could be made fit to receive him. The Master saw
no hardship in passing the night by the hall fire, wrapt in his
campaign-cloak; and to Scottish domestics of the day, even of the
highest rank, nay, to young men of family or fashion, on any
pinch, clean straw, or a dry hayloft, was always held good night-
quarters.

For the rest, Lockhard had his master's orders to bring some
venison from the inn, and Caleb was to trust to his wits for the
honour of his family. The Master, indeed, a second time held
out his purse; but, as it was in sight of the strange servant,
the butler thought himself obliged to decline what his fingers
itched to clutch. "Couldna he hae slippit it gently into my
hand?" said Caleb; "but his honour will never learn how to bear
himsell in siccan cases."

Mysie, in the mean time, according to a uniform custom in remote
places in Scotland, offered the strangers the produce of her
little dairy, "while better meat was getting ready."  And
according to another custom, not yet wholly in desuetude, as the
storm was now drifting off to leeward, the Master carried the
Keeper to the top of his highest tower to admire a wide and waste
extent of view, and to "weary for his dinner."

CHAPTER XII.

"Now dame," quoth he, "Je vous dis sans doute,
Had I nought of a capon but the liver,
And of your white bread nought but a shiver,
And after that a roasted pigge's head
(But I ne wold for me no beast were dead),
Then had I with you homely sufferaunce."

CHAUCER, Sumner's Tale.

IT was not without some secret misgivings that Caleb set out
upon his exploratory expedition. In fact, it was attended with a
treble difficulty. He dared not tell his mast the offence which
he had that morning given to Bucklaw, just for the honour of the
family; he dared not acknowledge he had been too hasty in
refusing the purse; and, thirdly, he was somewhat apprehensive of
unpleasant consequences upon his meeting Hayston under the
impression of an affront, and probably by this time under the
influence also of no small quantity of brandy.

Caleb, to do him justice, was as bold as any lion where the
honour of the family of Ravenswood was concerned; but his was
that considerate valour which does not delight in unnecessary
risks. This, however, was a secondary consideration; the main
point was to veil the indigence of the housekeeping at the
castle, and to make good his vaunt of the cheer which his
resources could procure, without Lockhard's assistance, and
without supplies from his master. This was as prime a point of
honour with him as with the generous elephant with whom we have
already compared him, who, being overtasked, broke his skull
through the desperate exertions which he made to discharge his
duty, when he perceived they were bringing up another to his
assistance.

The village which they now approached had frequently
afforded the distressed butler resources upon similar
emergencies; but his relations with it had been of late much
altered.

It was a little hamlet which straggled along the side of a creek
formed by the discharge of a small brook into the sea, and was
hidden from the castle, to which it had been in former times an
appendage, by the entervention of the shoulder of a hill forming
a projecting headland. It was called Wolf's Hope
(i.e. Wolf's Haven), and the few inhabitants gained a
precarious subsistence by manning two or three fishing-boats in
the herring season, and smuggling gin and brandy during the
winter months. They paid a kind of hereditary respect to the
Lords of Ravenswood; but, in the difficulties of the family, most
of the inhabitants of Wolf's Hope had contrived to get feu-rights
to their little possessions, their huts, kail-yards, and rights
of commonty, so that they were emancipated from the chains of
feudal dependence, and free from the various exactions with
which, under every possible pretext, or without any pretext at
all, the Scottish landlords of the period, themselves in great
poverty, were wont to harass their still poorer tenants at will.
They might be, on the whole, termed independent, a circumstance
peculiarly galling to Caleb, who had been wont to exercise over
them the same sweeping authority in levying contributions which
was exercised in former times in England, when "the royal
purveyors, sallying forth from under the Gothic portcullis to
purchase provisions with power and prerogative, instead of money,
brought home the plunder of an hundred markets, and all that
could be seized from a flying and hiding country, and deposited
their spoil in an hundred caverns."

Caleb loved the memory and resented the downfall of that
authority, which mimicked, on a petty scale, the grand
contributions exacted by the feudal sovereigns. And as he fondly
flattered himself that the awful rule and right supremacy, which
assigned to the Barons of Ravenswood the first and most effective
interest in all productions of nature within five miles of their
castle, only slumbered, and was not departed for ever, he used
every now and then to give the recollection of the inhabitants a
little jog by some petty exaction. These were at first submitted
to, with more or less readiness, by the inhabitants of the
hamlet; for they had been so long used to consider the wants of
the Baron and his family as having a title to be preferred to
their own, that their actual independence did not convey to them
an immediate sense of freedom. They resembled a man that has
been long fettered, who, even at liberty, feels in imagination
the grasp of the handcuffs still binding his wrists. But the
exercise of freedom is quickly followed with the natural
consciousness of its immunities, as the enlarged prisoner, by the
free use of his limbs, soon dispels the cramped feeling they had
acquired when bound.

The inhabitants of Wolf's Hope began to grumble, to resist, and
at length positively to refuse compliance with the exactions of
Caleb Balderstone. It was in vain he reminded them, that when
the eleventh Lord Ravenswood, called the Skipper, from his
delight in naval matters, had encouraged the trade of their port
by building the pier (a bulwark of stones rudely piled together),
which protected the fishing-boats from the weather, it had been
mattter of understanding that he was to have the first stone of
butter after the calving of every cow within the barony, and the
first egg, thence called the Monday's egg, laid by every hen on
every Monday in the year.

The feuars heard and scratched their heads, coughed,
sneezed, and being pressed for answer, rejoined with one voice,
"They could not say"--the universal refuge of a Scottish peasant
when pressed to admit a claim which his conscience owns, or
perhaps his feelings, and his interest inclines him to deny.

Caleb, however, furnished the notables of Wolf's Hope with a
note of the requisition of butter and eggs, which he claimed as
arrears of the aforesaid subsidy, or kindly aid, payable as
above mentioned; and having intimated that he would not be averse
to compound the same for goods or money, if it was inconvenient
to them to pay in kind, left them, as he hoped, to debate the
mode of assessing themselves for that purpose. On the contrary,
they met with a determined purpose of resisting the exaction, and
were only undecided as to the mode of grounding their
opposition, when the cooper, a very important person on a
fishing-station, and one of the conscript fathers of the village,
observed, "That their hens had caickled mony a day for the Lords
of Ravenswood, and it was time they suld caickle for those that
gave them roosts and barley."  An unanimous grin intimated the
assent of the assembly. "And," continued the orator, "if it's
your wull, I'll just tak a step as far as Dunse for Davie
Dingwall, the writer, that's come frae the North to settle amang
us, and he'll pit this job to rights, I'se warrant him."

A day was accordingly fixed for holding a grand palaver at
Wolf's Hope on the subject of Caleb's requisitions, and he was
invited to attend at the hamlet for that purpose.

He went with open hands and empty stomach, trusting to fill the
one on his master's account and the other on his own score, at
the expense of the feuars of Wolf's Hope. But, death to his
hopes! as he entered the eastern end of the straggling village,
the awful form of Davie Dingwall, a sly, dry, hard-fisted, shrewd
country attorney, who had already acted against the family of
Ravenswood, and was a principal agent of Sir William Ashton,
trotted in at the western extremity, bestriding a leathern
portmanteau stuffed with the feu-charters of the hamlet, and
hoping he had not kept Mr. Balderstone waiting, "as he was
instructed and fully empowered to pay or receive, compound or
compensat, and, in fine, to age as accords respecting all mutual
and unsettled claims whatsoever, belonging or competent to the
Honourable Edgar Ravenswood, commonly called the Master of
Ravenswood----"

"The RIGHT Honourable Edgar LORD RAVENSWOOD," said Caleb,
with great emphasis; for, though conscious he had little chance
of advantage in the conflict to ensue, he was resolved not to
sacrifice one jot of honour.

"Lord Ravenswood, then," said the man of business--"we shall not
quarrel with you about titles of courtesy--commonly called Lord
Ravenswood, or Master of Ravenswood, heritable proprietor of the
lands and barony of Wolf's Crag, on othe ne part, and to John
Whitefish and others, feuars in the town of Wolf's Hope, within
the barony aforesaid, on the other part."

Caleb was conscious, from sad experience, that he would wage a
very different strife with this mercenary champion than with the
individual feuars themselves, upon whose old recollections,
predilections, and habits of thinking he might have wrought by an
hundred indirect arguments, to which their deputy-representative
was totally insensible. The issue of the debate proved the
reality of his apprehensions. It was in vain he strained his
eloquence and ingenuity, and collected into one mass all
arguments arising from antique custom and hereditary respect,
from the good deeds done by the Lords of Ravenswood to the
community of Wolf's Hope in former days, and from what might be
expected from them in future. The writer stuck to the
contents of his feu-charters; he could not see it: 'twas not in
the bond. And when Caleb, determined to try what a little spirit
would do, deprecated the consequences of Lord Ravenswood's
withdrawing his protection from the burgh, and even hinted in his
using active measures of resentment, the man of law sneered in
his face.

"His clients," he said, "had determined to do the best they
could for their own town, and he thought Lord Ravenwood, since he
was a lord, might have enough to do to look after his own
castle. As to any threats of stouthrief oppression, by rule of
thumb, or via facti, as the law termed it, he would have Mr.
Balderstone recollect, that new times were not as old times; that
they lived on the south of the Forth, and far from the Highlands;
that his clients thought they were able to protect themselves;
but should they find themselves mistaken, they would apply to the
government for the protection of a corporal and four red-coats,
who," said Mr. Dingwall, with a grin, "would be perfectly able to
secure them against Lord Ravenswood, and all that he or his
followers could do by the strong hand."

If  Caleb could have concentrated all the lightnings of
aristocracy in his eye, to have struck dead this contemner of
allegiance and privilege, he would have launched them at his
head, without respect to the consequences. As it was, he was
compelled to turn his course backward to the castle; and there he
remained for full half a day invisible and inaccessible even to
Mysie, sequestered in his own peculiar dungeon, where he sat
burnishing a single pewter plate and whistling "Maggie Lauder"
six hours without intermission.

The issue of this unfortunate requisition had shut against Caleb
all resources which could be derived from Wolf's Hope and its
purlieus, the El Dorado, or Peru, from which, in all former
cases of exigence, he had been able to extract some assistance.
He had, indeed, in a manner vowed that the deil should have him,
if ever he put the print of his foot within its causeway again.
He had hitherto kept his word; and, strange to tell, this
secession had, as he intended, in some degree, the effect of a
punishment upon the refractory feuars. Mr. Balderstone had been
a person in their eyes connected with a superior order of beings,
whose presence used to grace their little festivities, whose
advice they found useful on many ocassions, and whose
communications gave a sort of credit to their village. The
place, they ackowledged, "didna look as it used to do, and
should do, since Mr. Caleb keepit the castle sae closely; but
doubtless, touching the eggs and butter, it was a most
unreasonable demand, as Mr. Dingwall had justly made manifest."

Thus stood matters betwixt the parties, when the old butler,
though it was gall and wormwood to him, found himself obliged
either to ackowledge before a strange man of quality, and, what
was much worse, before that stranger's servant, the total
inability of Wolf's Crag to produce a dinner, or he must trust to
the compassion of the feuars of Wofl's Hope. It was a dreadful
degradation; but necessity was equally imperious and lawless.
With these feelings he entered the street of the village.

Willing to shake himself from his companion as soon as possible,
he directed Mr. Lockhard to Luckie Sma-trash's change-house,
where a din, proceeding from the revels of Bucklaw, Craigengelt,
and their party, sounded half-way down the street, while the red
glare from the window overpowered the grey twilight which was now
settling down, and glimmered against a parcel of old tubs, kegs,
and barrels, piled up in the cooper's yard, on the other side of
the way.

"If you, Mr. Lockhard," said the old butler to his
companion, "will be pleased to step to the change-house where
that light comes from, and where, as I judge, they are now
singing 'Cauld Kail in Aberdeen,' ye may do your master's errand
about the venison, and I will do mine about Bucklaw's bed, as I
return frae getting the rest of the vivers. It's no that the
venison is actually needfu'," he added, detaining his colleague
by the button, "to make up the dinner; but as a compliment to the
hunters, ye ken; and, Mr. Lockhard, if they offer ye a drink o'
yill, or a cup o' wine, or a glass o' brandy, ye'll be a wise man
to take it, in case the thunner should hae soured ours at the
castle, whilk is ower muckle to be dreaded."

He then permitted Lockhard to depart; and with foot heavy as
lead, and yet far lighter than his heart, stepped on through the
unequal street of the straggling village, meditating on whom he
ought to make his first attack. It was necessary he should find
some one with whom old acknowledged greatness should weigh more
than recent independence, and to whom his application might
appear an act of high dignity, relenting at once and soothing.
But he could not recollect an inhabitant of a mind so
constructed. "Our kail is like to be cauld eneugh too," he
reflected, as the chorus of "Cauld Kail in Aberdeen" again
reached his ears. The minister--he had got his presentation from
the late lord, but they had quarrelled about teinds; the
brewster's wife--she had trusted long, and the bill was aye
scored up, and unless the dignity of the family should actually
require it, it would be a sin to distress a widow woman. None
was so able--but, on the other hand, none was likely to be less
willing--to stand his friend upon the present occasion, than
Gibbie Girder, the man of tubs and barrels already mentioned, who
had headed the insurrection in the matter of the egg and butter
subsidy. "But a' comes o' taking folk on the right side, I
trow," quoted Caleb to himself; "and I had ance the ill hap to
say he was but a Johnny New-come in our town, and the carle bore
the family an ill-will ever since. But he married a bonny young
quean, Jean Lightbody, auld Lightbody's daughter, him that was in
the steading of Loup-the-Dyke; and auld Lightbody was married
himsell to Marion, that was about my lady in the family forty
years syne. I hae had mony a day's daffing wi' Jean's mither,
and they say she bides on wi' them. The carle has Jacobuses and
Georgiuses baith, an ane could get at them; and sure I am, it's
doing him an honour him or his never deserved at our hand, the
ungracious sumph; and if he loses by us a'thegither, he is e'en
cheap o't: he can spare it brawly."
Shaking off irresolution, therefore, and turning at once upon
his heel, Caleb walked hastily back to the cooper's house,
lifted the latch withotu ceremony, and, in a moment, found
himself behind the "hallan," or partition, from which position he
could, himself unseen, reconnoitre the interior of the "but," or
kitchen apartment, of the mansion.

Reverse of the sad menage at the Castle of Wolf's Crag, a
bickering fire roared up the cooper's chimney.  His wife, on the
one side, in her pearlings and pudding-sleeves, put the last
finishing touch to her holiday's apparel, while she contemplated
a very handsome and good-humoured face in a broken mirror, raised
upon the "bink" (the shelves on which the plates are disposed)
for her special accommodation. Her mother, old Luckie Loup-the-
Dyke, "a canty carline" as was within twenty miles of her,
according to the unanimous report of the "cummers," or gossips,
sat by the fire in the full glory of a grogram gown, lammer
beads, and a clean cockernony, whiffing a snug pipe of tobacco,
and superintending the affairs of the kitchen; for--sight more
interesting to the anxious heart and craving entrails of the
desponding seneschal than either buxom dame or canty cummer--
there bubbled on the aforesaid bickering fire a huge pot, or
rather cauldron, steaming with beef and brewis; while before it
revolved two spits, turned each by one of the cooper's
apprentices, seated in the opposite corners of the chimney, the
one loaded with a quarter of mutton, while the other was graced
with a fat goose and a brace of wild ducks. The sight and scent
of such a land of plenty almost wholly overcame the drooping
spirits of Caleb. He turned, for a moment's space to reconnoitre
the "ben," or parlour end of the house, and there saw a sight
scarce less affecting to his feelings--a large round table,
covered for ten or twelve persons, decored (according to his own
favourite terms) with napery as white as snow, grand flagons of
pewter, intermixed with one or two silver cups, containing, as
was probable,
something worthy the brilliancy of their outward appearance,
clean trenchers, cutty spoons, knives and forks, sharp,
burnished, and prompt for action, which lay all displayed as for
an especial festival.

"The devil's in the peddling tub-coopering carl!" muttered
Caleb, in all the envy of astonishment; "it's a shame to see the
like o' them gusting their gabs at sic a rate. But if some o'
that gude cheer does not find its way to Wolf's Crag this night,
my name is not Caleb Balderstone."

So resolving, he entered the apartment, and, in all
courteous greeting, saluted both the mother and the daughter.
Wolf's Crag was the court of the barony, Caleb prime minister at
Wolf's Crag; and it has ever been remarked that, though the
masculine subject who pays the taxes sometimes growls at the
courtiers by whom they are imposed, the said courtiers continue,
nevertheless, welcome to the fair sex, to whom they furnish the
newest small-talk and the earliest fashions. Both the dames
were, therefore, at once about old Caleb's neck, setting up their
throats together by way of welcome.

"Ay, sirs, Mr. Balderstone, and is this you? A sight of you is
gude for sair een. Sit down--sit down; the gudeman will be
blythe to see you--ye nar saw him sae cadgy in your life; but we
are to christen our bit wean the night, as ye will hae heard, and
doubtless ye will stay and see the ordinance. We hae killed a
wether, and ane o' our lads has been out wi' his gun at the moss;
ye used to like wild-fowl."

"Na, na, gudewife," said Caleb; "I just keekit in to wish ye
joy, and I wad be glad to hae spoken wi' the gudeman, but----"
moving, as if to go away.

"The ne'er a fit ye's gang," said the elder dame, laughing and
holding him fast, with a freedom which belonged to their old
acquaintance; "wha kens what ill it may bring to the bairn, if
ye owerlook it in that gate?"

"But I'm in a preceese hurry, gudewife," said the butler,
suffering himself to be dragged to a seat without much
resistance; "and as to eating," for he observed the mistress of
the dwelling bustling about to place a trencher for him-- "as for
eating--lack-a-day, we are just killed up yonder wi' eating frae
morning to night! It's shamefu' epicurism; but that's what we
hae gotten frae the English pock-puddings."
"Hout, never mind the English pock-puddings," said Luckie
Lightbody; "try our puddings, Mr. Balderstone; there is black
pudding and white-hass; try whilk ye like best."

"Baith gude--baith excellent--canna be better; but the very
smell is eneugh for me that hae dined sae lately (the faithful
wretch had fasted since daybreak). But I wadna affront your
housewifeskep, gudewife; and, with your permission, I'se e'en pit
them in my napkin, and eat them to my supper at e'en, for I am
wearied of Mysie's pastry and nonsense; ye ken landward dainties
aye pleased me best, Marion, and landward lasses too (looking at
the cooper's wife). Ne'er a bit but she looks far better than
when she married Gilbert, and then she was the bonniest lass in
our parochine and the neist till't. But gawsie cow, goodly
calf."

The women smiled at the compliment each to herself, and they
smiled again to each other as Caleb wrapt up the puddings in a
towel which he had brought with him, as a dragoon carries his
foraging bag to receive what my fall in his way.

"And what news at the castle?" quo' the gudewife.

"News! The bravest news ye ever heard--the Lord Keeper's up
yonder wi' his fair daughter, just ready to fling her at my
lord's head, if he winna tak her out o' his arms; and I'se
warrant he'll stitch our auld lands of Ravenswood to her
petticoat tail."

"Eh! sirs--ay!--and will hae her? and is she weel-favoured? and
what's the colour o' her hair? and does she wear a habit or a
railly?" were the questions which the females showered upon the
butler.

"Hout tout! it wad tak a man a day to answer a' your
questions, and I hae hardly a minute. Where's the gudeman?"

"Awa' to fetch the minister," said Mrs. Girder, "precious Mr.
Peter Bide-the-Bent, frae the Mosshead; the honest man has the
rheumatism wi' lying in the hills in the
persecution."

"Ay! Whig and a mountain-man, nae less!" said Caleb, with a
peevishness he could not suppress. "I hae seen the day, Luckie,
when worthy Mr. Cuffcushion and the service-book would hae served
your turn (to the elder dame), or ony honest woman in like
circumstances."

"And that's true too," said Mrs. Lightbody, "but what can a body
do? Jean maun baith sing her psalms and busk her cockernony the
gate the gudeman likes, and nae ither gate; for he's maister and
mair at hame, I can tell ye, Mr. Balderstone."

"Ay, ay, and does he guide the gear too?" said Caleb, to whose
projects masculine rule boded little good.
"Ilka penny on't; but he'll dress her as dink as a daisy, as ye
see; sae she has little reason to complain: where there's ane
better aff there's ten waur."

"Aweel, gudewife," said Caleb, crestfallen, but not beaten off,
"that wasna the way ye guided your gudeman; bt ilka land has its
ain lauch. I maun be ganging. I just wanted to round in the
gudeman's lug, that I heard them say up-bye yonder that Peter
Puncheon, that was cooper to the Queen's stores at the Timmer
Burse at Leith, is dead; sae I though that maybe a word frae my
lord to the Lord Keeper might hae served Gilbert; but since he's
frae hame----"

"O, but ye maun stay his hame-coming," said the dame. "I aye
telled the gudeman ye meant weel to him; but he taks the tout at
every bit lippening word."

"Aweel, I'll stay the last minute I can."

"And so," said the handsome young spouse of Mr. Girder, "ye
think this Miss Ashton is weel-favoured? Troth, and sae should
she, to set up for our young lord, with a face and a hand, and a
seat on his horse, that might become a king's son. D'ye ken that
he aye glowers up at my window, Mr. Balderstone, when he chaunces
to ride thro' the town? Sae I hae a right to ken what like he
is, as weel as ony body."

"I ken that brawly," said Caleb, "for I hae heard his lordship
say the cooper's wife had the blackest ee in the barony; and I
said, 'Weel may that be, my lord, for it was her mither's afore
her, as I ken to my cost.'  Eh, Marion? Ha, ha, ha! Ah! these
were merry days!"

"Hout awa', auld carle," said the old dame, "to speak sic
daffing to young folk. But, Jean--fie, woman, dinna ye hear the
bairn greet? I'se warrant it's that dreary weid has come ower't
again."

Up got mother and grandmother, and scoured away, jostling each
other as they ran, into some remote corner of the tenement,
where the young hero of the evening was deposited. When Caleb
saw the coast fairly clear, he took an invigorating pinch of
snuff, to sharpen and confirm his resolution.

"Cauld be my cast," thought he, "if either Bide-the-Bent or
Girder taste that broach of wild-fowl this evening"; and then
addressing the eldest turnspit, a boy of about eleven years old,
and putting a penny into his hand, he said, "Here is twal
pennies, my man; carry that ower to Mrs. Sma'trash, and bid her
fill my mill wi' snishing, and I'll turn the broche for ye in the
mean time; and she will gie ye a ginge-bread snap for your
pains."

No sooner was the elder boy departed on this mission than Caleb,
looking the remaining turnspit gravely and steadily in the face,
removed from the fire the spit bearing the wild-fowl of which he
had undertaken the charge, clapped his hat on his head, and
fairly marched off with it. he stopped at the door of the
change-house only to say, in a few brief words, that Mr. Hayston
of Bucklaw was not to expect a bed that evening in the castle.

If this message was too briefly delivered by Caleb, it became
absolute rudeness when convenyed through the medium of a suburb
landlady; and Bucklaw was, as a more calm and temperate man might
have been, highly incensed. Captain Craigengelt proposed, with
the unanimous applause of all present, that they should course
the old fox (meaning Caleb) ere he got to cover, and toss him in
a blanket. But Lockhard intimated to his
master's servants and those of Lord Bittlebrains, in a tone of
authority, that the slightest impertinence to the Master of
Ravenswood's domestic would give Sir William Ashton the highest
offence. And having so said, in a manner sufficient to prevent
any aggression on their part, he left the public-house, taking
along with him two servants loaded with such provisions as he had
been able to procure, and overtook Caleb just when he had cleared
the village.

CHAPTER XIII.

Should I take aught of you? 'Tis true I begged now;
And what is worse than that, I stole a kindness;
And, what is worst of all, I lost my way in't.

Wit Without Money.

THE face of the little boy, sole witness of Caleb's
infringement upon the laws at once of property and hospitality,
would have made a good picture. He sat motionless, as if he had
witnessed some of the spectral appearances which he had heard
told of in a winter's evening; and as he forgot his own duty, and
allowed his spit to stand still, he added to the misfortunes of
the evening by suffering the mutton to burn as black as a coal.
He was first recalled from his trance of astonishment by a hearty
cuff administered by Dame Lightbody, who, in whatever other
respects she might conform to her name, was a woman strong of
person, and expert in the use of her hands, as some say her
deceased husband had known to his cost.

"What garr'd ye let the roast burn, ye ill-clerkit gude-for-
nought?"

"I dinna ken," said the boy.

"And where's that ill-deedy gett, Giles?"

"I dinna ken," blubbered the astonished declarant.

"And where's Mr. Balderstone?--and abune a', and in the name of
council and kirk-session, that I suld say sae, where's the
broche wi' the wild-fowl?"
As Mrs. Girder here entered, and joined her mother's
exclamations, screaming into one ear while the old lady deafened
the other, they succeeded in so utterly confounding the unhappy
urchin, that he could not for some time tell his story at all,
and it was only when the elder boy returned that the truth began
to dawn on their minds.

"Weel, sirs!" said Mrs. Lightbody, "wha wad hae thought o' Caleb
Balderstone playing an auld acquaintance sic a pliskie!"

"Oh, weary on him!" said the spouse of Mr. Girder; "and what am
I to say to the gudeman? He'll brain me, if there wasna anither
woman in a' Wolf''s Hope."

"Hout tout, silly quean," said the mother; "na, na, it's come to
muckle, but it's no come to that neither; for an he brain you he
maun brain me, and I have garr'd his betters stand back. Hands
aff is fair play; we maunna heed a bit flyting."

The tramp of horses now announced the arrival of the cooper,
with the minister. They had no sooner dismounted than they made
for the kitchen fire, for the evening was cool after the
thunderstorm, and the woods wet and dirty. The young gudewife,
strong in the charms of her Sunday gown and biggonets, threw
herself in the way of receiving the first attack, while her
mother, like the veteran division of the Roman legion, remained
in the rear, ready to support her in case of necessity. Both
hoped to protract the discovery of what had happened--the mother,
by interposing her bustling person betwixt Mr. Girder and the
fire, and the daughter, by the extreme cordiality with which she
received the minister and her husband, and the anxious fears
which she expressed lest they should have "gotten cauld."
"Cauld!" quoted the husband, surlily, for he was not of that
class of lords and amsters whose wives are viceroys over them,
"we'll be cauld eneugh, I think, if ye dinna let us in to the
fire."

And so saying, he burst his way through both lines of defence;
and, as he had a careful eye over his property of every kind, he
perceived at one glance the absence of the spit with its savoury
burden. "What the deil, woman----"

"Fie for shame!" exclaimed both the women; "and before Mr. Bide-
the-Bent!"

"I stand reproved," said the cooper; "but----"

"The taking in our mouths the name of the great enemy of our
souls," said Mr. Bide-the-Bent----

"I stand reproved," said the cooper.

"--Is an exposing ourselves to his temptations," continued the
reverend monitor, "and in inviting, or, in some sort, a
compelling, of him to lay aside his other trafficking with
unhappy persons, and wait upon those in whose speech his name is
frequent."

"Weel, weel, Mr. Bide-the-Bent, can a man do mair than stand
reproved?" said the cooper; "but jest let me ask the women what
for they hae dished the wild-fowl before we came."

"They arena dished, Gilbert," said his wife; "but--but an
accident----"

"What accident?" said Girder, with flashing eyes. "Nae ill come
ower them, I trust? Uh?"

His wife, who stood much in awe of him, durst not reply, but her
mother bustled up to her support, with arms disposed as if they
were about to be a-kimbo at the next reply.--"I gied them to an
acquaintance of mine, Gibbie Girder; and what about it now?"

Her excess of assurance struck Girder mute for an instant. "And
YE gied the wild-fowl, the best end of our christening dinner,
to a friend of yours, ye auld rudas! And what might HIS name
be, I pray ye?"

"Just worthy Mr. Caleb Balderstone--frae Wolf's Crag," answered
Marion, prompt and prepared for battle.

Girder's wrath foamed over all restraint. If there was a
circumstance which could have added to the resentment he felt, it
was that this extravagant donation had been made in favour of
our friend Caleb, towards whom, for reasons to which the reader
is no stranger, he nourished a decided resentment. He raised his
riding-wand against the elder matron, but she stood firm,
collected in herself, and undauntedly brandished the iron ladle
with which she had just been "flambing" (Anglice, basting) the
roast of mutton. Her weapon was certainly the better, and her
arm not the weakest of the two; so that Gilbert thought it safest
to turn short off upon his wife, who had by this time hatched a
sort of hysterical whine, which greatly moved the minister, who
was in fact as simple and kind-hearted a creature as ever
breathed. "And you, ye thowless jade, to sit still and see my
substance disponed upon to an idle, drunken, reprobate, worm-
eaten serving-man, just because he kittles the lugs o' a silly
auld wife wi' useless clavers, and every twa words a lee? I'll
gar you as gude----"

Here the minister interposed, both by voice and action, while
Dame Lightbody threw herself in front of her daughter, and
flourished her ladle.

"Am I no to chastise my ain wife?" exclaimed the cooper very
indignantly.

"Ye may chastise your ain wife if ye like," answered Dame
Lightbody; "but ye shall never lay finger on my daughter, and
that ye may found upon."
"For shame, Mr. Girder!" said the clergyman; "this is what I
little expected to have seen of you, that you suld give rein to
your sinful passions against your nearestt and your dearest, and
this night too, when ye are called to the most solemn duty of a
Christian parent; and a' for what? For a redundancy of creature-
comforts, as worthless as they are unneedful."

"Worthless!" exclaimed the cooper. "A better guse never walkit
on stubble; two finer, dentier wild ducks never wat a feather."

"Be it sae, neighbour," rejoined the minister; "but see what
superfluities are yet revolving before your fire. I have seen
the day when ten of the bannocks which stand upon that board
would have been an acceptable dainty to as many men, that were
starving on hills and bogs, and in caves of the earth, for the
Gospel's sake."

"And that's what vexes me maist of a'," said the cooper, anxious
to get some one to sympathise with his not altogether causeless
anger; "an the quean had gien it to ony suffering sant, or to ony
body ava but that reaving, lying, oppressing Tory villain, that
rade in the wicked troop of militia when it was commanded out
against the sants at Bothwell Brig by the auld tyrant Allan
Ravenswood, that is gane to his place, I wad the less hae minded
it. But to gie the principal parts o' the feast to the like o'
him----!"

"Aweel, Gilbert," said the minister, "and dinna ye see a high
judgment in this? The seed of the righteous are not seen
begging their bread: think of the son of a powerful oppressor
being brought to the pass of supporting his household from your
fulness."

"And, besides," said the wife, "it wasna for Lord Ravenswood
neither, an he wad hear but a body speak: it was to help to
entertain the Lord Keeper, as they ca' him, that's up yonder at
Wolf's Crag."

"Sir William Ashton at Wolf's Crag!" ejaculated the
astonished man of hoops and staves.

"And hand and glove wi' Lord Ravenswood," added Dame
Lightbody.

"Doited idiot! that auld, clavering sneckdrawer wad gar ye trow
the moon is made of green cheese. The Lord Keeper and
Ravenswood! they are cat and dog, hare and hound."

"I tell ye they are man and wife, and gree better than some
others that are sae," retorted the mother-in-law; "forbye, Peter
Puncheon, that's cooper the Queen's stores, is dead, and the
place is to fill, and----"

"Od guide us, wull ye haud your skirling tongues!" said Girder,--
for we are to remark, that this explanation was given like a
catch for two voices, the younger dame, much encouraged by the
turn of the debate, taking up and repeating in a higher tone the
words as fast as they were uttered by her mother.

"The gudewife says naething but what's true, maister," said
Girder's foreman, who had come in during the fray. "I saw the
Lord Keeper's servants drinking and driving ower at Luckie
Sma'trash's, ower-bye yonder."

"And is their maister up at Wolf's Crag?" said Girder.

"Ay, troth is he," replied his man of confidence.

"And friends wi' Ravenswood?"

"It's like sae," answered the foreman, "since he is putting up
wi' him."

"And Peter Puncheon's dead?"

"Ay, ay, Puncheon has leaked out at last, the auld carle," said
the foreman; "mony a dribble o' brandy has gaen through him in
his day. But as for the broche and the wild-fowl, the
saddle's no aff your mare yet, maister, and I could follow and
bring it back, for Mr. Balderstone's no far aff the town yet."

"Do sae, Will; and come here, I'll tell ye what to do when ye
owertake him."

He relieved the females of his presence, and gave Will his
private instructions.

"A bonny-like thing," said the mother-in-law, as the cooper re-
entered the apartment, "to send the innocent lad after an armed
man, when ye ken Mr. Balderstone aye wears a rapier, and whiles a
dirk into the bargain."

"I trust," said the minister, "ye have reflected weel on what ye
have done, lest you should minister cause of strife, of which it
is my duty to say, he who affordeth matter, albeit he himself
striketh not, is in no manner guiltless."

"Never fash your beard, Mr. Bide-the-Bent," replied Girder; "ane
canna get their breath out here between wives and ministers. I
ken best how to turn my ain cake. Jean, serve up the dinner,
and nae mair about it."

Nor did he again allude to the deficiency in the course of the
evening.

Meantime, the foreman, mounted on his master's steed, and
charged with his special orders, pricked swiftly forth in pursuit
of the marauder Caleb. That personage, it may be imagined, did
not linger by the way. He intermitted even his dearly-beloved
chatter, for the purpose of making more haste, only assuring Mr.
Lockhard that he had made the purveyor's wife give the wild-fowl
a few turns before the fire, in case that Mysie, who had been so
much alarmed by the thunder, should not have her kitchen-grate in
full splendour. Meanwhile, alleging the necessity of being at
Wolf's Crag as soon as possible, he pushed on so fast that his
companions could scarce keep up with him. He began already to
think he was safe from pursuit, having gained the summit of the
swelling eminence which divides Wolf's Crag from the village,
when he heard the distant tread of a horse, and a voice which
shouted at intervals, "Mr. Caleb--Mr. Balderstone--Mr. Caleb
Balderstone--hollo--bide a wee!"

Caleb, it may be well believed, was in no hurry to
acknowledge the summons. First, he would not heart it, and faced
his companions down, that it was the echo of the wind; then he
said it was not worth stopping for; and, at length, halting
reluctantly, as the figure of the horseman appeared through the
shades of the evening, he bent up his whole soul to the task of
defending his prey, threw himself into an attitude of dignity,
advanced the spit, which is his grasp might with its burden seem
both spear and shield, and firmly resolved to die rather than
surrender it.

What was his astonishment, when the cooper's foreman, riding up
and addressing him with respect, told him: "His master was very
sorry he was absent when he came to his dwelling, and grieved
that he could not tarry the christening dinner; and that he had
taen the freedom to send a sma' runlet of sack, and ane anker of
brandy, as he understood there were guests at the castle, and
that they were short of preparation."

I have heard somewhere a story of an elderly gentleman who was
pursued by a bear that had gotten loose from its muzzle, until
completely exhausted. In a fit of desperation, he faced round
upon Bruin and lifted his cane; at the sight of which the
instinct of discipline prevailed, and the animal, instead of
tearing him to pieces, rose up upon his hind-legs and instantly
began to shuffle a saraband. Not less than the joyful surprise
of the senior, who had supposed himself in the extremity of peril
from which he was thus unexpectedly relieved, was that of our
excellent friend Caleb, when he found the pursuer intended to add
to his prize, instead of bereaving him of it. He recovered his
latitude, however, instantly, so soon as the foreman, stooping
from his nag, where he sate perched betwixt the two barrels,
whispered in his ear: "If ony thing about Peter Puncheon's place
could be airted their way, John [Gibbie] Girder wad mak it better
to the Master of Ravenswood than a pair of new gloves; and that
he wad be blythe to speak wi' Maister Balderstone on that head,
and he wad find him as pliant as a hoop-willow in a' that he
could wish of him."

Caleb heard all this without rendering any answer, except that
of all great men from Louis XIV. downwards, namely, "We will see
about it"; and then added aloud, for the edification of Mr.
Lockhard: "Your master has acted with becoming civility and
attention in forwarding the liquors, and I will not fail to
represent it properly to my Lord Ravenswood. And, my lad," he
said, "you may ride on to the castle, and if none of the servants
are returned, whilk is to be dreaded, as they make day and night
of it when they are out of sight, ye may put them into the
porter's lodge, whilk is on the right hand of the great entry;
the porter has got leave to go to see his friends, sae ye will
met no ane to steer ye."

The foreman, having received his orders, rode on; and having
deposited the casks in the deserted and ruinous porter's lodge,
he returned unquestioned by any one. Having thus executed his
master's commission, and doffed his bonnet to Caleb and his
company as he repassed them in his way to the village, he
returned to have his share of the christening festivity.

CHAPTER XIV.

As, to the Autumn breeze's bugle sound,
Various and vague the dry leaves dance their round;
Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne,
The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn;                  
So vague, so devious, at the breath of heaven,
From their fix'd aim are mortal counsels driv'n.

Anonymous.

WE left Caleb Balderstone in the extremity of triumph at the
success of his various achievements for the honour of the house
of Ravenswood. When he had mustered and marshalled his dishes of
divers kinds, a more royal provision had not been seen in Wolf's
Crag since the funeral feast of its deceased lord. Great was the
glory of the serving-man, as he "decored" the old oaken table
with a clean cloth, and arranged upon it carbonaded venison and
roasted wild-fowl, with a glance, every now and then, as if to
upbraid the incredulity of his master and his guests; and with
many a story, more or less true, was Lockhard that evening
regaled concerning the ancient grandeur of Wolf's Crag, and the
sway of its barons over the country in their
neighbourhood.

"A vassal scarce held a calf or a lamb his ain, till he had
first asked if the Lord of Ravenswood was pleased to accept it;
and they were obliged to ask the lord's consent before they
married in these days, and mony a merry tale they tell about that
right as weel as others. And although," said Caleb, "these times
are not like the gude auld times, when authority had its right,
yet true it is, Mr. Lockhard, and you yoursell may partly have
remarked, that we of the house of Ravenswood do our endeavour  in
keeping up, by all just and lawful exertion of our baronial
authority, that due and fitting connexion betwixt superior and
vassal, whilk is in some danger of falling into desuetude, owing
to the general license and misrule of these present unhappy
times."

"Umph!" said Mr. Lockhard; "and if I may inquire, Mr.
Balderstone, pray do you find your people at the village yonder
amenable? for I must needs say, that at Ravenswood Castle, now
pertaining to my master the Lord Keeper, ye have not left behind
ye the most compliant set of tenantry."

"Ah! but Mr. Lockhard," replied Caleb, "ye must consider there
has been a change of hands, and the auld lord might expect twa
turns frae them, when the new-comer canna get ane. A dour and
fractious set they were, thae tenants of Ravenswood, and ill to
live wi' when they dinna ken their master; and if your master
put them mad ance, the whole country will not put them down."

"Troth," said Mr. Lockhard, "an such be the case, I think the
wisest thing for us a ' wad be to hammer up a match between your
young lord and our winsome young leddy up-bye there; and Sir
William might just stitch your auld barony to her gown-sleeve,
and he wad sune cuitle another out o' somebody else, sic a lang
head as he has."

Caleb shook his head. "I wish," he said--"I wish that may
answer, Mr. Lockhard. There are auld prophecies about this house
I wad like ill to see fulfilled wi' my auld een, that has seen
evil eneugh already."

"Pshaw! never mind freits," said his brother butler; "if the
young folk liked ane anither, they wad make a winsome couple.
But, to say truth, there is a leddy sits in our hall-neuk, maun
have her hand in that as weel as in every other job. But there's
no harm in drinking to their healths, and I will fill Mrs. Mysie
a cup of Mr. Girder's canary."

While they thus enjoyed themselves in the kitchen, the company
in the hall were not less pleasantly engaged. So soon as
Ravenswood had determined upon giving the Lord Keeper such
hospitality as he had to offer, he deemed it incumbent on him to
assume the open and courteous brow of a well-pleased host. It
has been often remarked, that when a man commences by acting a
character, he frequently ends by adopting it in good earnest. In
the course of an hour or two, Ravenswood, to his own surprise,
found himself in the situation of one who frankly does his best
to entertain welcome and honoured guests. How much of this
change in his disposition was to be ascribed to the beauty and
simplicity of Miss Ashton, to the readiness with which she
accommodated herself to the inconveniences of her situation; how
much to the smooth and plausible conversation of the Lord Keeper,
remarkably gifted with those words which win the ear, must be
left to the reader's ingenuity to conjecture. But Ravenswood was
insensible to neither.

The Lord Keeper was a veteran statesman, well acquainted with
courts and cabinets, and intimate with all the various turns of
public affairs during the last eventful years of the 17th
century. He could talk, from his own knowledge, of men and
events, in a way which failed not to win attention, and had the
peculiar art, while he never said a word which committed himself,
at the same time to persuade the hearer that he was speaking
without the least shadow of scrupulous caution or reserve.
Ravenswood, in spite of his prejudices and real grounds of
resentment, felt himself at once amused and instructed in
listening to him, while the statesman, whose inward feelings had
at first so much impeded his efforts to make himself known, had
now regained all the ease and fluency of a silver-tongued lawyer
of the very highest order.

His daughter did not speak much, but she smiled; and what she
did say argued a submissive gentleness, and a desire to give
pleasure, which, to a proud man like Ravenswood, was more
fascinating than the most brilliant wit. Above all, he could not
be observe that, whether from gratitude or from some other
motive, he himself, in his deserted and unprovided hall, was as
much the object of respectful attention to his guests as he would
have been when surrounded by all the appliances and means of
hospitality proper to his high birth. All deficiencies passed
unobserved, or, if they did not escape notice, it was to praise
the substitutes which Caleb had contrived to supply the want of
the usual accommodations. Where a smile was unavoidable, it was
a very good-humoured one, and often coupled with some well-turned
compliment, to show how much the guests esteemed the merits of
their noble host, how little they thought of the inconveniences
with which they were surrounded. I am not sure whether the pride
of being found to outbalance, in virtue of his own personal
merit, all the disadvantages of fortune, did not make as
favourable an impression upon the haughty heart of the Master of
Ravenswood as the conversation of the father and the beauty of
Lucy Ashton.

The hour of repose arrived. The Keeper and his daughter retired
to their apartments, which were "decored" more properly than
could have been anticipated. In making the necessary
arrangements, Mysie had indeed enjoyed the assistance of a gossip
who had arrived from the village upon an exploratory expedition,
but had been arrested by Caleb, and impressed into the domestic
drudgery of the evening; so that, instead of returning home to
describe the dress and person of the grand young lady, she found
herself compelled to be active in the domestic economy of Wolf's
Crag.

According to the custom of the time, the Master of
Ravenswood attended the Lord Keeper to his apartment, followed by
Caleb, who placed on the table, with all the ceremonials due to
torches of wax, two rudely-framed tallow-candles, such as in
those days were only used by the peasantry, hooped in paltry
clasps of wire, which served for candlesticks. He then
disappeared, and presently entered with two earthen flagons (the
china, he said, had been little used since my lady's time), one
filled with canary wine, the other with brandy. The canary sack,
unheeding all probabilities of detection, he declared had been
twenty years in the cellars of Wolf's Crag, "though it was not
for him to speak before their honours; the brandy--it was weel-
kenn'd liquor, as mild as mead and as strong as Sampson; it had
been in the house ever since the memorable revel, in which auld
Micklestob had been slain at the head of the stair by Jamie of
Jenklebrae, on account of the honour of the worshipful Lady
Muirend, wha was in some sort an ally of the family; natheless---
-"

"But to cut that matter short, Mr. Caleb," said the Keeper,
"perhaps you will favour me with a ewer of water."

"God forbid your lordship should drink water in this
family," replied Caleb, "to the disgrace of so honourable an
house!"

"Nevertheless, if his lordship have a fancy," said the Master,
smiling, "I think you might indulge him; for, if I mistake not,
there has been water drank here at no distant date, and with good
relish too."

"To be sure, if his lordship has a fancy," said Caleb; and re-
entering with a jug of pure element--"He will scarce find such
water onywhere as is drawn frae the well at Wolf's Crag;
nevertheless----"

"Nevertheless, we must leave the Lord Keeper to his repose in
this poor chamber of ours," said the Master of Ravenswood,
interrupting his talkative domestic, who immediately turning to
the doorway, with a profound reverence, prepared to usher his
master from the secret chamber.

But the Lord Keeper prevented his host's departure.--"I have but
one word to say to the Master of Ravenswood, Mr. Caleb, and I
fancy he will excuse your waiting."

With a second reverence, lower than the former, Caleb withdrew;
and his master stood motionless, expecting, with considerable
embarrassment, what was to close the events of a day fraught with
unexpected incidents.

"Master of Ravenswood," said Sir William Ashton, with some
embarrassment, "I hope you understand the Christian law too well
to suffer the sun to set upon your anger."

The Master blushed and replied, "He had no occasion that evening
to exercise the duty enjoined upon him by his Christian faith."

"I should have thought otherwise," said his guest,
"considering the various subjects of dispute and litigation which
have unhappily occurred more frequently than was desirable or
necessary betwixt the late honourable lord, your father, and
myself."

"I could wish, my lord," said Ravenswood, agitated by suppressed
emotion, "that reference to these circumstances should be made
anywhere rather than under my father's roof."

"I should have felt the delicacy of this appeal at another
time," said Sir William Ashton, "but now I must proceed with what
I mean to say. I have suffered too much in my own mind, from the
false delicacy which prevented my soliciting with earnestness,
what indeed I frequently requested, a personal communing with
your father: much distress of mind to him and to me might have
been prevented."

"It is true," said Ravenswood, after a moment's reflection, "I
have heard my father say your lordship had proposed a personal
interview."

"Proposed, my dear Master? I did indeed propose it; but I ought
to have begged, entreated, beseeched it. I ought to have torn
away the veil, which interested persons had stretched betwixt us,
and shown myself as I was, willing to sacrifice a considerable
part even of my legal rights, in order to conciliate feelings so
natural as his must be allowed to have been. Let me say for
myself, my young friend, for so I will call you, that had your
father and I spent the same time together which my good fortune
has allowed me to-day to pass in your company, it is possible the
land might yet have enjoyed one of the most
respectable of its ancient nobility, and I should have been
spared the pain of parting in enmity from a person whose general
character I so much admired and honoured."

He put his handkerchief to his eyes. Ravenswood also was moved,
but awaited in silence the progress of this extraordinary
communication.

"It is necessary," continued the Lord Keeper, "and proper that
you should understand, that there have been many points betwixt
us, in which, although I judged it proper that there should be an
exact ascertainment of my legal rights by the decree of a court
of justice, yet it was never my intention to press them beyond
the verge of equity."

"My lord," said the Master of Ravenswood, "it is unnecessary to
pursue this topic farther. What the law will give you, or has
given you, you enjoy--or you shall enjoy; neither my father nor
I myself would have received anything on the footing of favour."

"Favour! No, you misunderstand me," resumed the Keeper; "or
rather you are no lawyer. A right may be good in law, and
ascertained to be so, which yet a man of honour may not in every
case care to avail himself of."

"I am sorry for it, my lord," said the Master.

"Nay, nay," retorted his guest, "you speak like a young
counsellor; your spirit goes before your wit. There are many
things still open for decision betwixt us. Can you blame me, an
old man desirous of peace, and in the castle of a young nobleman
who has saved my daughter's life and my own, that I am desirous,
anxiously desirous, that these should be settled on the most
liberal principles?"
The old man kept fast hold of the Master's passive hand as he
spoke, and made it impossible for him, be his predetermination
what it would, to return any other than an acquiescent reply; and
wishing his guest good-night, he postponed farther conference
until the next morning.

Ravenswood hurried into the hall, where he was to spend the
night, and for a time traversed its pavement with a
disordered and rapid pace. His mortal foe was under his roof,
yet his sentiments towards him were neither those of a feudal
enemy nor of a true Christian. He felt as if he could neither
forgive him in the one character, nor follow forth his vengeance
in the other, but that he was making a base and dishonourable
composition betwixt his resentment against the father and his
affection for his daughter. He cursed himself, as he hurried to
and fro in the pale moonlight, and more ruddy gleams of the
expiring wood-fire. He threw open and shut the latticed windows
with violence, as if alike impatient of the admission and
exclusion of free air. At length, however, the torrent of
passion foamed off its madness, and he flung himself into the
chair which he proposed as his place of repose for the night.

"If, in reality," such were the calmer thoughts that
followed the first tempest of his pasion--"if, in reality, this
man desires no more than the law allows him--if he is willing to
adjust even his acknowledged rights upon an equitable footing,
what could be my father's cause of complaint?--what is mine?
Those from who we won our ancient possessions fell under the
sword of my ancestors, and left lands and livings to the
conquerors; we sink under the force of the law, now too powerful
for the Scottish cavalry. Let us parley with the victors of the
day, as if we had been besieged in our fortress, and without hope
of relief. This man may be other than I have thought him; and
his daughter--but I have resolved not to think of her."

He wrapt his cloak around him, fell asleep, and dreamed of Lucy
Ashton till daylight gleamed through the lattices.

CHAPTER XV.

We worldly men, when we see friends and kinsmen
Past hope sunk in their fortunes, lend no hand
To lift them up, but rather set our feet
Upon their heads to press them to the bottom,
As I must yield with you I practised it;
But now I see you in a way to rise,
I can and will assist you.

New Way to Pay Old Debts.

THE Lord Keeper carried with him, to a couch harder than he was
accustomed to stretch himself upon, the same ambitious thoughts
and political perplexities which drive sleep from the softest
down that ever spread a bed of state. He had sailed long enough
amid the contending tides and currents of the time to be
sensible of their peril, and of the necessity of trimming his
vessel to the prevailing wind, if he would have her escape
shipwreck in the storm. The nature of his talents, and the
timorousness of disposition connected with them, had made him
assume the pliability of the versatile old Earl of Northampton,
who explained the art by which he kept his ground during all the
changes of state, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of
Elizabeth, by the frank avowal, that he was born of the willow,
not of the oak. It had accordingly been Sir William Ashton's
policy, on all occasions, to watch the changes in the political
horizon, and, ere yet the conflict was decided, to negotiate some
interest for himself with the party most likely to prove
victorious. His time-serving disposition was well-known, and
excited the contempt of the more daring leaders of both factions
in the state. But his talents were of a useful and practical
kind, and his legal knowledge held in high estimation; and they
so far counterbalanced other deficiencies that those in power
were glad to use and to reward, though without absolutely
trusting or greating respecting, him.

The Marquis of A---- had used his utmost influence to effect a
change in the Scottish cabinet, and his schemes had been of late
so well laid and so ably supported, that there appeared a very
great chance of his proving ultimately
successful. He did not, however, feel so strong or so confident
as to neglect any means of drawing recruits to his standard. The
acquisition of the Lord Keeper was deemed of some importance, and
a friend, perfectly acquainted with his circumstances and
character, became responsible for his political conversion.

When this gentleman arrived at Ravenswood Castle upon a visit,
the real purpose of which was disguised under general courtesy,
he found the prevailing fear which at present beset the Lord
Keeper was that of danger to his own person from the Master of
Ravenswood. The language which the blind sibyl, Old Alice, had
used; the sudden appearance of the Master, armed, and within his
precincts, immediately after he had been warned against danger
from him; the cold and haughty return received in exchange for
the acknowledgments with which he loaded him for his timely
protection, had all made a strong impression on his imagination.

So soon as the Marquis's political agent found how the wind
sate, he began to insinuate fears and doubts of another kind,
scarce less calculated to affect the Lord Keeper. He inquired
with seeming interest, whether the proceedings in Sir William's
complicated litigation with the Ravenswood family were out of
court, and settled without the possibility of appeal. The Lord
Keeper answered in the affirmative; but his interrogator was too
well informed to be imposed upon. He pointed out to him, by
unanswerable arguments, that some of the most important points
which had been decided in his favour against the house of
Ravenswood were liable, under the Treaty of Union, to be reviewed
by the British House of Peers, a court of equity of which the
Lord Keeper felt an instinctive dread. This course came instead
of an appeal  to the old Scottish Parliament, or, as it was
technically termed, "a protestation for remeid in law."

The Lord Keeper, after he had for some time disputed the
legality of such a proceeding, was compelled, at length, to
comfort himself with the improbability of the young Master of
Ravenswood's finding friends in parliament capable of stirring
in so weighty an affair.

"Do not comfort yourself with that false hope," said his wily
friend; "it is possible that, in the next session of
Parliament, young Ravenswood may find more friends and favour
even than your lordship."

"That would be a sight worth seeing," said the Keeper,
scornfully.

"And yet," said his friend, "such things have been seen ere now,
and in our own time. There are many at the head of affairs even
now that a few years ago were under hiding for their lives; and
many a man now dines on plate of silver that was fain to eat his
crowdy without a bicker; and many a high head has been brought
full low among us in as short a space. Scott of Scotsarvet's
Staggering State of Scots Statesmen, of which curious memoir you
showed me a manuscript, has been outstaggered in our time."

The Lord Keeper answered with a deep sigh, "That these mutations
were no new sights in Scotland, and had been witnessed long
before the time of the satirical author he had quoted. It was
many a long year," he said, "since Fordun had quoted as an
ancient proverb, 'Neque dives, neque fortis, sed nec sapiens
Scotus, praedominante invidia, diu durabit in terra.'"

"And be assured, my esteemed friend," was the answer, "that even
your long services to the state, or deep legal knowledge, will
not save you, or render your estate stable, if the Marquis of A--
-- comes in with a party in the British Parliament. You know
that the deceased Lord Ravenswood was his near ally, his lady
being fifth in descent from the Knight of Tillibardine; and I am
well assured that he will take young Ravenswood by the hand, and
be his very good lord and kinsman. Why should he not? The
Master is an active and stirring young fellow, able to help
himself with tongue and hands; and it is such as he that finds
friends among their kindred, and not those unarmed and unable
Mephibosheths that are sure to be a burden to every one that
takes them up. And so, if these Ravenswood cases be called over
the coals in the House of Peers, you will find that the Marquis
will have a crow to pluck with you."

"That would be an evil requital," said the Lord Keeper, "for my
long services to the state, and the ancient respect in which I
have held his lordship's honourable family and person."

"Ay, but," rejoined the agent of the Marquis, "it is in vain to
look back on past service and auld respect, my lord; it will be
present service and immediate proofs of regard which, in these
sliddery times, will be expected by a man like the Marquis."

The Lord Keeper now saw the full drift of his friend's argument,
but he was too cautious to return any positive answer.

"He knew not," he said, "the service which the Lord Marquis
could expect from one of his limited abilities, that had not
always stood at his command, still saving and reserving his duty
to his king and country."

Having thus said nothing, while he seemed to say everything, for
the exception was calculated to cover whatever he might
afterwards think proper to bring under it, Sir William Ashton
changed the conversation, nor did he again permit the same topic
to be introduced. His guest departed, without having brought the
wily old statesman the length of committing himself, or of
pledging himself to any future line of conduct, but with the
certainty that he had alarmed his fears in a most sensible point,
and laid a foundation for future and farther treaty.

When he rendered an account of his negotiation to the Marquis,
they both agreed that the Keeper ought not to be
permitted to relapse into security, and that he should be plied
with new subjects of alarm, especially during the absence of his
lady. They were well aware that her proud, vindictive, and
predominating spirit would be likely to supply him with the
courage in which he was deficient; that she was immovably
attached to the party now in power, with whom she maintained a
close correspondence and alliance; and that she hated, without
fearing, the Ravenswood family (whose more ancient dignity threw
discredit on the newly acquired grandeur of her husband) to such
a degree that she would have perilled the interest of her own
house to have the prospect of altogether crushing that of her
enemy.

But Lady Ashton was now absent. The business which had long
detained her in Edinburgh had afterwards induced her to travel to
London, not without the hope that she might contribute her share
to disconcert the intrigues of the Marquis at court; for she
stood high in favour with the celebrated Sarah Duchesss of
Marlborough, to whom, in point of character, she bore
considerable resemblance. It was necessary to press her husband
hard before her return; and, as a preparatory step, the Marquis
wrote to the Master of Ravenswood the letter which we rehearsed
in a former chapter. It was cautiously worded, so as to leave it
in the power of the writer hereafter to take as deep or as slight
an interest in the fortunes of his kinsmen as the progress of his
own schemes might require. But however unwilling, as a
statesman, the Marquis might be to commit himself, or assume the
character of a patron, while he had nothing to give away, it must
be said to his honour that he felt a strong inclination
effectually to befriend the Master of Ravenswood, as well as to
use his name as a means of alarming the terrors of the Lord
Keeper.

As the messenger who carried this letter was to pass near the
house of the Lord Keeper, he had it in direction that, in the
village adjoining to the park-gate of the castle, his horse
should lose a shoe, and that, while it was replaced by the smith
of the place, he should express the utmost regret for the
necessary loss of time, and in the vehemence of his impatience
give it to be understood that he was bearing a message from the
Marquis of A---- to the Master of Ravenswood upon a matter of
life and death.

This news, with exaggerations, was speedily carried from various
quarters to the ears of the Lord Keeper, and each
reporter dwelt upon the extreme impatience of the courier, and
the surprising short time in which he had executed his journey.
The anxious statesman heard in silence; but in private Lockhard
received orders to watch the courier on his return, to waylay him
in the village, to ply him with liquor, if possible, and to use
all means, fair or foul, to learn the contents of the letter of
which he was the bearer. But as this plot had been foreseen, the
messenger returned by a different and distant road, and thus
escaped the snare that was laid for him.

After he had been in vain expected for some time, Mr. Dingwall
had orders to made especial inquiry among his clients of Wolf's
Hope, whether such a domestic belonging to the Marquis of A----
had actually arrived at the neighbouring castle. This was
easily ascertained; for Caleb had been in the village one morning
by five o'clock, to borrow "twa chappins of ale and a kipper" for
the messenger's refreshment, and the poor fellow had been ill for
twenty-four hours at Luckie Sma'trash's, in consequence of dining
upon "saut saumon and sour drink."  So that the existence of a
correspondence betwixt the Marquis and his distressed kinsman,
which Sir William Ashton had sometimes treated as a bugbear, was
proved beyond the possibility of further doubt.

The alarm of the Lord Keeper became very serious; since the
Claim of Right, the power of appealing from the decisions of the
civil court to the Estates of Parliament, which had formerly
been held incompetent, had in many instances been claimed, and in
some allowed, and he had no small reason to apprehend the issue,
if the English House of Lords should be disposed to act upon an
appeal from the Master of Ravenswood "for remeid in law."  It
would resolve into an equitable claim, and be decided, perhaps,
upon the broad principles of justice, which were not quite so
favourable to the Lord Keeper as those of strict law. Besides,
judging, though most inaccurately, from courts which he had
himself known in the unhappy times preceding the Scottish Union,
the Keeper might have too much right to think that, in the House
to which his lawsuits were to be transferred, the old maxim might
prevail which was too well recognised in Scotland in former
times: "Show me the man, and I'll show you the law."  The high
and unbiassed character of English judicial proceedings was then
little known in Scotland, and the extension of them to that
country was one of the most valuable advantages which it gained
by the Union. But this was a blessing which the Lord Keeper, who
had lived under another system, could not have the means of
foreseeing. In the loss of his political
consequence, he anticipated the loss of his lawsuit. Meanwhile,
every report which reached him served to render the success of
the Marquis's intrigues the more probable, and the Lord Keeper
began to think it indispensable that he should look round for
some kind of protection against the coming storm. The timidity
of his temper induced him to adopt measures of compromise and
conciliation. The affair of the wild bull, properly managed,
might, he thought, be made to facilitate a personal communication
and reconciliation betwixt the Master and himself. He would then
learn, if possible, what his own ideas were of the extent of his
rights, and the means of enforcing them; and perhaps matters
might be brought to a compromise, where one party was wealthy and
the other so very poor. A reconciliation with Ravenswood was
likely to give him an opportunity to play his own game with the
Marquis of A----. "And besides," said he to himself, "it will be
an act of generosity to raise up the heir of this distressed
family; and if he is to be warmly and effectually befriended by
the new government, who knows but my virtue may prove its own
reward?"

Thus thought Sir William Ashton, covering with no unusual self-
delusion his interested views with a hue of virtue; and having
attained this point, his fancy strayed still farther. He began
to bethink himself, "That if Ravenswood was to have a
distinguished place of power and trust, and if such a union would
sopite the heavier part of his unadjusted claims, there might be
worse matches for his daughter Lucy: the Master might be reponed
against the attainder. Lord Ravenswood was an ancient title, and
the alliance would, in some measure, legitimate his own
possession of the greater part of the Master's spoils, and make
the surrender of the rest a subject of less bitter regret."

With these mingled and multifarious plans occupying his head,
the Lord Keeper availed himself of my Lord Bittlebrains's
repeated invitation to his residence, and thus came within a very
few miles of Wolf's Crag. Here he found the lord of the mansion
absent, but was couteously received by the lady, who expected her
husband's immediate return. She expressed her particular delight
at seeing Miss Ashton, and appointed the hounds to be taken out
for the Lord Keeper's special amusement. He readily entered into
the proposal, as giving him an
opportunity to reconnoitre Wolf's Crag, and perhaps to make some
acquaintance with the owner, if he should be tempted from his
desolate mansion by the chase. Lockhard had his orders to
endeavour on his part to make some acquaintance with the inmates
of the castle, and we have seen how he played his part.

The accidental storm did more to further the Lord Keeper's plan
of forming a personal acquaintance with young Ravenswood than his
most sanguine expectations could have anticipated. His fear of
the young nobleman's personal resentment had greatly decreased
since he considered him as formidable from his legal claims and
the means he might have of enforcing them. But although he
thought, not unreasonably, that only desperate circumstances
drove men on desperate measures, it was not without a secret
terror, which shook his heart within him, that he first felt
himself inclosed within the desolate Tower of Wolf's Crag; a
place so well fitted, from solitude and strength, to be a scene
of violence and vengeance. The stern reception at first given to
them by the Master of Ravenswood, and the difficulty he felt in
explaining to that injured nobleman what guests were under the
shelter of his roof, did not soothe these alarms; so that when
Sir William Ashton heard the door of the courtyard shut behind
him with violence, the words of Alice rung in his ears, "That he
had drawn on matters too hardly with so fierce a race as those of
Ravenswood, and that they would bide their time to be avenged."

The subsequent frankness of the Master's hospitality, as their
acquaintance increased, abated the apprehensions these
recollections were calculated to excite; and it did not escape
Sir William Ashton, that it was to Lucy's grace and beauty he
owed the change in their host's behavior.

All these thoughts thronged upon him when he took possession of
the secret chamber. The iron lamp, the unfurnished apartment,
more resembling a prison than a place of ordinary repose, the
hoarse and ceaseless sound of the waves rushing against the base
of the rock on which the castle was founded, saddened and
perplexed his mind. To his own successful
machinations, the ruin of the family had been in a great measure
owing, but his disposition was crafty, and not cruel; so that
actually to witness the desolation and distress he had himself
occasioned was as painful to him as it would be to the humane
mistress of a family to superintend in person the execution of
the lambs and poultry which are killed by her own directions. At
the same time, when he thought of the alternative of restoring to
Ravenswood a large proportion of his spoils, or of adopting, as
an ally and member of his own family, the heir of this
impoverished house, he felt as the spider may be supposed to do
when his whole web, the intricacies of whyich had been planned
with so much art, is destroyed by the chance sweep of a broom.
And then, if he should commit himself too far in this matter, it
gave rise to a perilous question, which many a good husband, when
under temptation to act as a free agent, has asked himself
without being able to return a satisfactory answer: "What will
my wife--what will Lady Ashton say?"  On the whole, he came at
length to the resolution in which minds of a weaker cast so often
take refuge. He resolved to watch events, to take advantage of
circumstances as they occurred, and regulate his conduct
accordingly. In this spirit of temporising policy, he at length
composed his mind to rest.

CHAPTER XVI.

A slight note I have about me for you, for the delivery of which
you must excuse me. It is an offer that friendship calls upon me
to do, and no way offensive to you, since I desire nothing but
right upon both sides.

King and no King.

WHEN Ravenswood and his guest met in the morning, the gloom of
the Master's spirit had in part returned. He, also, had passed a
night rather of reflection that of slumber; and the feelings
which he could not but entertain towards Lucy Ashton had to
support a severe conflict against those which he had so long
nourished against her father. To clasp in friendship the hand of
the enemy of his house, to entertain him under his roof, to
exchange with him the courtesies and the kindness of domestic
familiarity, was a degradation which his proud spirit could not
be bent to without a struggle.

But the ice being once broken, the Lord Keeper was resolved it
should not have time against to freeze. It had been part of his
plan to stun and confuse Ravenswood's ideas, by a
complicated and technical statement of the matters which had been
in debate betwixt their families, justly thinking that it would
be difficult for a youth of his age to follow the expositions of
a practical lawyer, concerning actions of compt and reckoning,
and of multiplepoindings, and adjudications and wadsets, proper
and improper, and poindings of the ground, and declarations of
the expiry of the legal. "Thus," thought Sir William, "I shall
have all the grace of appearing perfectly communicative, while my
party will derive very little advantage from anything I may tell
him."  He therefore took Ravenswood aside into the deep recess of
a window in the hall, and resuming the discourse of the proceding
evening, expressed a hope that his young friend would assume some
patience, in order to hear him enter in a minute and explanatory
detail of those unfortunate circumstances in which his late
honourable father had stood at variance with the Lord Keeper.
The Master of Ravenswood  coloured highly, but was silent; and
the Lord Keeper, though not greatly approving the sudden
heightening of his auditor's complexion, commenced the history
of a bond for twenty thousand merks, advanced by his father to
the father of Allan Lord Ravenswood, and was proceeding to detail
the executorial proceedings by which this large sum had been
rendered a debitum fundi, when he was interrupted by the Master.

"It is not in this place," he said, "that I can hear Sir William
Ashton's explanation of the matters in question between us. It
is not here, where my father died of a broken heart, that I can
with decency or temper investigate the cause of his distress. I
might remember that I was a son, and forget the duties of a host.
A time, however, there must come, when these things shall be
discussed, in a place and in a presence where both of us will
have equal freedom to speak and to hear."

"Any time," the Lord Keeper said, "any place, was alike to those
who sought nothing but justice. Yet it would seem he was, in
fairness, entitled to some premonition respecting the grounds
upon which the Master proposed to impugn the whole train of legal
proceedings, which had been so well and ripely advised in the
only courts competent."

"Sir William Ashton," answered the Master, with warmth, "the
lands which you now occupy were granted to my remote ancestor for
services done with his sword against the English invaders. How
they have glided from us by a train of proceedings that seem to
be neither sale, nor mortgage, nor adjudication for debt, but a
nondescript and entangled mixture of all these rights; how annual
rent has been accumulated upon principal, and no nook or coign of
legal advantage left unoccupied, until our interest in our
hereditary property seems to have melted away like an icicle in
thaw--all this you understand better than I do. I am willing,
however, to suppose, from the frankness of your conduct towards
me, that I may in a great measure have mistaken your personal
character, and that things may have appeared right and fitting to
you, a skilful and practised lawyer, which to my ignorant
understanding seem very little short of injustice and gross
oppression."

"And you, my dear Master," answered Sir William--"you, permit me
to say, have been equally misrepresented to me. I was taught to
believe you a fierce, imperious, hot-headed youth, ready, at the
slightest provocation, to throw your sword into the scales of
justice, and to appeal to those rude and forcible measures from
which civil polity has long protected the people of Scotland.
Then, since we were mutually mistaken in each other, why should
not the young nobleman be willing to listen to the old lawyer,
while, at least, he explains the points of difference betwixt
them?"

"No, my lord," answered Ravenswood; "it is in the House of
British Peers, whose honour must be equal to their rank--it is in
the court of last resort that we must parley together. The
belted lords of Britain, her ancient peers, must decide, if it is
their will that a house, not the least noble of their members,
shall be stripped of their possessions, the reward of the
patriotism of generations, as the pawn of a wretched mechanic
becomes forfeit to the usurer the instant the hour of redemption
has passed away. If they yield to the grasping severity of the
creditor, and to the gnawing usury that eats into our lands as
moths into a raiment, it will be of more evil consequence to them
and their posterity than to Edgar Ravenswood. I shall still have
my sword and my cloak, and can follow the profession of arms
wherever a trumpet shall sound."

As he pronounced these words, in a firm yet melancholy tone, he
raised his eyes, and suddenly encountered those of Lucy Ashton,
who had stolen unawares on their interview, and observed her
looks fastened on them with an expression of enthusiastic
interest and admiration, which had wrapt her for the moment
beyond the fear of discovery. The noble form and fine features
of Ravenswood, fired with the pride of birth and sense of
internal dignity, the mellow and expressive tones of his voice,
the desolate state of his fortunes, and the indifference with
which he seemed to endure and to dare the worst that might
befall, rendered him a dangerous object of contemplation for a
maiden already too much disposed to dwell upon recollections
connected with him. When their eyes encountered each other, both
blushed deeply, conscious of some strong internal emotion, an
shunned again to meet each other's looks. Sir William Ashton
had, of course, closely watched the expression of their
countenances. "I need fear," said he internally, "neither
Parliament nor protestation; I have an effectual mode of
reconciling myself with this hot-tempered young fellow, in case
he shall become formidable. The present object is, at all
events, to avoid committing ourselves.  The hook is fixed; we
will nto strain the line too soon: it is as well to reserve the
privilege of slipping it loose, if we do not find the fish worth
landing."