CHAPTER XV.

LOVE AND BURNT-SACK.

HORATIO. 'Tis well, sir, you are pleasant.
LOTHARIO. By the joys
        Which my fond soul has uncontrolled pursued,
        I would not turn aside from my least pleasure,
        Though all thy force were armed to bar my way.
                                                                                        N. HOWE.

The evening of the night described in the preceding chapter had been a glorious one. The giant shadows of the rock-built city were falling from its central hill far to the eastward, and all its myriad casements were gleaming in the light of the western sky, where amid clouds of crimson, edged with gold, the sun's bright disc seemed to rest on the dark and wooded ridge of the Corstorphine hills, from whence it poured its dazzling flood of farewell radiance on all the undulations of the wide and varied scenery. On the vast and dusky mass of the hoary city which presented all the extremes of strong light, and deep retiring shadow, on the great stone crown of St. Giles, on the cordon of towers that girt the castled rock, and the stagnant lake that washed the city's base two hundred feet below, fell full the blood-red lustre of the setting sun.

The same warm tints glared along the western slopes of those bluff craigs and hills that rise to the westward, green, silent, stern, and pillared with basalt, rent by volcanic throes into chasms and gorges; where, though darkness was gathering, the slanting sunbeams shot through, and gilded objects far beyond. The loch, the city's northern barrier, usually so reedy and so stagnant, now swollen to its utmost marge by recent rains, was dotted by wild ducks and teals, that seemed floating in liquid gold, and like a polished mirror the water reflected its banks with singular distinctness. On one side appeared the inverted city, where gable, tower, and bartizan shot up so spectral, close, and dense, that it seemed like one vast fairy castle; on the other, a lonely and grassy bank dotted with whins, alder trees, weeping willows, and grazing sheep, while the old square tower of St. Cuthbert, rising above a clump of firs at one end of the loch, was balanced by the church of the Holy Trinity and its ancient orchard at the other.

On the northern bank of this artificial sheet of water flocks of crows were wheeling in circles among the furrows, and following the slow-drawn plough; and from the thatched cottages of St. Ninians, that nestled close to the ruins of an ancient convent, the smoke arose in long steady columns, and unbroken by the faintest puff of wind soared into the evening sky, and melted away into the blue atmosphere.

The sun had set.

The last rays died away on the cathedral spire, and Arthur's round volcanic cone; the last wayfarer had been ferried across the loch, and had disappeared over the opposite hill; successively the seven barriers of the city were closed for the night, and then the evening bell from the old wooden spire of the Tron rang on the rising wind. Though this evening had been a beautiful one, and all the gayer denizens of the city had flocked to the Lawnmarket and Castle Hill (then the only and usual promenades), the tall feather and laced mantle of Lord Clermistonlee had not been seen there.

From the windows of his chamber-of-dais he had long been surveying the view before described, but in one feature of it alone he seemed most interested. It was, where to the westward above the open fields named Halkerstoun's Crofts, he saw the smokeless chimnies of his empty, dismantled, and deserted mansion of Drumsheugh, which for many a year had been abandoned to a venerable colony of rooks and owls. The broad acres of fertile land that spread around it were now no longer his. Successively haugh, holm, farm, and onsteading, mill, and field had passed away to the possession of others, and of the noble estate acquired by his ancestors, and which he had gained as a dower with his fair cousin Alison, nothing remained but the silent and dreary mansion, which was fated soon (by his pressing necessities) to pass into other hands. To Clermistonlee this was the leading feature of the landscape, and long and fixedly he surveyed its square stacks of dark old chimnies that rose above the bare and leafless woods.

The expression of his face was fierce and unsettled; his cheek was deeply flushed; but that might be attributed to the briskness with which he and his gossip Mersington had pushed the tankard between them since dinner. They were both deep drinkers, and in the old Edinburgh fashion it was no uncommon thing, for his Lordship (when he gave a dinner party) to lock the room door, and in presence of his guests send the key flying through the barred window into the Norloch, thereby intimating that there could be no egress until the last of a long array of flasks, which Juden mustered on the buffet, was drained to the bottom; after which the door was unhinged, and all the guests were carried home by their servants in chairs or shoulder high.

One hand was thrust under the ample skirt of his shag dressing-gown; the other drummed on the window panes; but a stern expression gathered on his broad and lofty brow, and sparkled in his deep-set hazel eyes.

Mersington sat near the cheerful fire. His weazel-like visage was radiant at times with a malicious smile, which briefly gave way for one of sincere pleasure, each time he applied to his thin and ever thirsty lips the tankard of burnt sack, which his affectionate hand never quitted for a moment. His mighty senatorial wig—the badge of his wisdom and power—hung on the chair-knob behind him, and his bald pate shone like a varnished ball in the evening twilight. His pale grey eyes wore their usual expression, by which it was impossible to detect whether he was drunk or sober; but they often wandered to a panel opposite, where the following was chalked in a bold irregular hand.

His honor the Laird of Holsterlee bets the Right Honourable Lord Clermistonlee £10,000 of gude Scots monie payable at Whitsuntide—his mear Meg against Fleur de Lysy or Royal Charles. To be run at Easter on the sandis of Leith, God willing.

CLERMISTONLEE.
HOLSTERLEE, Scots Guards.

"Forsooth! you are a proper man to start from the board, and turn your back on a guest thus," said Mersington. "Whistle a bar o' that oure again.

"There was a clocker, it dabbit at a man,
            And he dee'd wi' fear,
            And he dee'd wi' fear——"

"he—he, it seems to gie you as mickle comfort as the burnt sack."

"Perdition, man!" exclaimed the other, wheeling so briskly round, that he startled his guest in the act of taking another long deep draught. "How can you jest with my distress? I tell thee, friend Mersington, if the lands of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes, on which I have built my hopes, slip through my fingers thus, I may yet come to the husks and the swine-trough, like the prodigal of old. Behold my manor of Drumsheugh on the brae yonder; for these ten years a puff of smoke hath not curled from its chimneys; the moss is on its hearths, and cobwebs obscure the gilding of its galleries and chambers: the long grass waves in the avenue as it doth in the stable-court, where my good and careful father mustered eighty troopers in jack and plate the night before Dunbar was fought and won by Cromwell. My ancient tower of Clermiston is in the same condition, and both are mortgaged to that prince of scribes and scoundrels, Grasper, the Writer in Mauchin's Close. This match with Holsterlee, too! S'blood! Juden says the mare is elfshotten, and our best jockies opine that I can never win against Holster's racers, which have won the city purse these five years consecutively."

"As for the race—he, he! to be off wi' the Laird, swear your mare hath been bewitched, and burn some auld carlin in proof o't."

"D—nation! I am a ruined and impoverished man!"

"He, he! the auld gossips of Blackfriars' Wynd tell another story."

"What do they say?"

"That Clermistonlee can never come to want, as his friend the de'il has given him a braw purse, with moudieworts' feet on't, and sae lang as he preserves it, he shall never lack siller."

"I wish to God he had! but where got ye this precious information?"

"At the tea-board o' my Leddy Drumsturdy, nae further gane than yesterday."

"Stuff and nonsense!"

"I hope sae, for just sic a purse brought the learned Doctor Fian to stake in 1590. I've read the ditty against him—he, he! but to come to the swine-trough, that would be an unco pity, you have such a braw taste for getting up dinners and suppers, that his grace the gourmand o' Lauderdale was just naething to ye."

"Say rather Juden Stenton, my ground baillie, major domo, squire of the body, and everything."

"Then your burnt sack is just perfection; but alake! you now begin to see the end o' chambering, dicing, drinking, racing, and wantonness. And puir Alison Gifford—faith, you made her tocher flee fast enough!'

"This admonitory tone becomes thee well!" said Clermistonlee, with scornful emphasis; "and truly, thou art like one of Job's comforters."

"He, he!" chuckled the senator, who had a strange fancy for maliciously stinging his companion. "This is the end o' spending puir Alison's money among horse-coupers, vintners, panders, de'ils-buckies, and bona-robas——"

"Hold, Mersington! I beg you will hear me with gravity. My good cousin and gossip, at times I have found your advice of the first value. You know how immensely fond I am of Lilian Napier, and having been pretty fortunate with the sex in my time (crush me! like What-is-his-name, I might say, Veni, vidi, vici,) I made the little minx an offer of marriage, and, would'st believe it? she really had the impudence to reject me."

"A braw buckie like you, Randal? For what?"

"Forsooth, only because I was a matter of some twenty years older than herself."

"Pest upon the gypsy! but then there is that plaguy entail—"

"Pshaw! I could soon have that broken. Lady Grisel hath the life-rent, and after her death (which cannot be far off), and failing the captain, the Lands go entire to Lilian. Now her cousin, this gay spark in the service of their Mightinesses, the States-General, by his leaguing and intriguing with that Dutch intromitter, Orange William and our rascally recusants, hath made the entail null—a dead letter—ha!"

"Faith, Randal, if you get your claws laid on the Bruntisfield barony, the rents thereof will puff your purse out brawly for a time. But alake! it's like a sieve that aye rins out—ever filling, but never full. Bethink ye, man, there is the auld mansion having the right of dungeon, pit and dule-tree, wi' the grange, mains, yards, orchards, stables, doo-cot, bake and brewhouses pertaining thereunto (o'd I've the haill inventory by heart). The four merk land o' auld extent named Nether Durdie bounded by the Burghloch—the fishings o' that water, the rigs, rowme and holm o' Drumdryan, wi' the farm-toun to the eastward thereof holden o' the city for ane crown-bowl o' punch yearly, and ane armed man's service, and whilk payeth 57 bolls o' wheat, twa firlots o' barley, forty and aught o' aitmeal, 64 gude fat capons, and sae forth—my certie! by twa women being relaxit frae the horn you have lost a' that, and deil kens how mickle mair."

"Fool—fool! this croaking maddens me!" exclaimed Clermistonlee, starting a second time from the table, and pacing about the room.

"Come—come, my Lord," said Mersington, putting on his wig; "he—he! ye may huff and hector at Juden as ye please, but these are hard words for a Swinton to swallow."

"I crave your pardon, gossip, but why torture me thus? I must have some signal and terrible revenge on Dunbarton for his interfering with me in this matter. Could we not bring him under suspicion of the Council?"

"A moral and physical impossibility."

"Juden would give him the contents of a carbine if I gave him a hint anent it."

"It would be wiser to let him alone. You would have his chief, the Marquis of Douglas, and every one of the name on ye like a nest o' hornets, for they are a proud and thrawart race, that winna thole steering. Ye maun train your hawks at other lures. Od's fish, man! his mad musqueteers would sack and slaughter the haill city."

"And Fenton!" continued the Lord, grinding his teeth, "I would travel to Jericho to have him within reach of my rapier—I would, d—n me—to pull his nose off! What a ravelled hesp is my fortune! My wounded hand, too——"

"Hee, hee! how can you expect it to heal, when the haill blude in your body is turning into burnt sack and sugared brandy?"

"It has kept me from prosecuting this affair. But I am getting desperate, Mersington; between love of the girl, lack of her lands, and fear of poverty, nothing now can save me but a dash."

"Spoken like yoursel—like the wild Randal Clermont o' 1670. But what do ye propose?"

"To carry off Lilian and make a Highland wedding of it—ha, ha!"

"Hee, hee! abduction, reif, and felony, anent whilk see the acts of the seventh parliament of James V. and James VI. Parliament twenty-first, chapter fourth—hee, hee! these would bear hard on your case, my birkie."

"Pshaw! am not I, too, a Lord of the Parliament? so, friend Mersington, reserve this musty jargon for the Hall of the Tolbooth. How often hath a Scottish baron with his band ridden to its threshold with jack and spear, and while his trumpets blew defiance at the Cross, laughed the fulminations of the three estates to scorn!"

"Ye mean mad Bothwell, with his thousand spears; but Clermistonlee, wi' his man Juden, would cut a sorry figure riding up the gate on the same errand."

"But the mere abduction of a girl?"

"It canna be sae bad in law, as abducting that dour auld carle, Durie the Lord President, whom a mosstrooping loon, by orders o' Traquair, carried off bodily, across his saddlebow, frae the dreary Figget whins, and warded for sax calendar months in the vault o' a Border peel. For my part, I have hated the name o' womankind since my Lady Mersington had me fined a thousand merks Scots, for that damned conventicle whilk, in my absence, she held on my lands. But Gude be thanked, I had my vengeance, by having her banished the liberties of the city, for hearing that Recusant runion Ichabod Bummel preach, whilk rid me and a' Bess Wynd o' her eternal clack. Faith, Clermistonlee, ye are welcome to abduct her, gif ye please, he, he!"

"I thank you, gossip, but beg to decline," said Clermistonlee, draining his tankard of sack; "but to show thee, most learned senator, the value and veneration I bear those acts you have just cited, I shall this very night carry off Lilian Napier, whom, my spies inform me to be concealed somewhere to the south of the town. O, by all the devils, I'll easily find the place. My blood's up; I will make my fortune to-night, or mar it for ever."

His sallow cheek glowed, his dark eye flashed, and taking a very handsome pair of pistols from the mantelpiece, he began to load them with great deliberation having previously summoned his faithful rascal Juden, by furiously ringing a handbell.

"What's in the wind now, my Lord?" he asked, rubbing his eyes, having been abruptly summoned from an afternoon nap.

"You will learn ere long," said his lord with a sternness that made the bluff butler's eyes to dilate with surprise; "but see that you are as prompt to act as to ask questions. You must bear a message from me to the Place."

"Eh? to Drumsheugh—at this time?"

"To Beatrix Gilruth."

"My Lord—I—I—" stammered Juden.

"Saddle a horse, ride round the loch, and tell her that the young lass she wots of will be there to-night, and that she must have some of the old rooms in the north wing, those that overlook the rocks, prepared for her reception."

"Where the gipsy was put, that we harled awa frae the west country?"

"What, the wench whom Holsterlee took off my hands, the same. You stare oddly—dost hear me fellow—art thou sober?"

"As a judge, my Lord."

"Then hear me and obey. Desire this hag, Beatrix, to have all prepared for my fair one's reception—fires lit and tapestry brushed, and, on peril of thine own life, be speedy and secret. Tarry neither there nor by the way, as I will want thee when the town drum beats at ten o'clock."

"She's an uncanny body, Lucky Gilruth, though I mind the time when there was not a bonnier lass in a' the Lowdens," said Juden, scratching his rough chin with undisguised perplexity; "but now, the auld wrinkled hizzie, she deserves the tar barrel as weel as lucky Elshendder."

"What the devil is all this to me?"

"It is a lonesome and eerie road across Halkerstoun's crofts by the lang gate, and on such an errand to such a woman, with the mirk night coming on——"

"Blockhead! thou hast been guzzling in the wine cellar. Begone, or I will beat thee; but first have the mare saddled as well as the horse, and procure a good link, and fail not when the drum beats. I will ride the Duke, 'tis a strong old trooper, and used to carrying double—hah! Away, away, and on peril of thy life, speak of this to no man."

"You will find me as of auld, Clermistonlee, a hawk of the right nest."

"Look well to Meg's girths."

"Ay, my Lord, a fidging mear should be weel girded—now then hoe! for the Place."

Juden drained a wine cup that his master handed him, and in five minutes more, the mare's hoofs rang on the causeway of the steep wynd, and died away as he descended into the deep gorge; under Neil's Craigs, wheeled through the Beggar's Row, and ascended the opposite bank.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE TEN O'CLOCK DRUM.

DU CHATEL. The gates stand open; no man shall molest you.
        Count Dunois, follow me—you gain no honour in lingering
        here.

RAIMOND. Seize on this moment! the streets are empty,—
        Give me your hand.
                                                    SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS.

Clermistonlee was well aware that the forcible abduction of a young lady of family (or quality, according to the phraseology of the time), would create no small degree of indignation against him; but confiding in his rank, and in the influence of the powerful faction to which he belonged; aware that never could he otherwise obtain possession of Lilian's person, and ultimately her property, goaded by dread of poverty rather than avarice, inflamed by his own wild fancies and irregular passions rather than by love, and spurred on by the taunts and advices of the half cunning and wholly malicious Mersington, he sat longing with the utmost eagerness for the time of action, the tuck of the ten o'clock drum, after the beating of which, all within the city walls usually became so silent and still. He knew also that the family of Napier had experienced a severe shock by their recent forfeiture, and a squadron of Dalyel's dragoons being quartered on their estate for three weeks past, and being yet under hiding (as the term was), the abduction of Lilian could be more easily executed; and if once within the barred doors and grated windows of his desolate mansion on the rocks at Drumsheugh, or the massive chambers of his still more lonely tower on Clermiston Lee, Lilian might bid farewell equally to mercy and to hope.

Aware of the lonely situation of Elsie's cottage on the verge of the great Burghmuir, fully two Scottish miles from the city cross, and knowing that the locality was always deserted after dusk, in consequence of the unsettled nature of the times, and a horde of footpads who infested the remnants of its forest and the deep quarries and moss-haggs through which the roadway wound, and which, independent of a gibbet, a ruined church and graveyard, deterred all and sundry, after the city gates were closed, from travelling that way after dusk—considering all those things, the noble roué had no doubt of being able to fire the little cottage, and, in the confusion, to bear away Lilian across his saddle-bow. And to cast suspicion in another quarter, he had desired Juden to have a bonnet or two, a grey maud and a bible, to leave on the road close by, that the odium of the outrage might fall on the houseless Cameronians who lurked among the hills to the southward.

Tipsy as he was, when the time approached for Clermistonlee setting forth, Lord Mersington had still sense remaining to say,

"Tak' tent, Randal, my man—hee, hee!—bide ye a wee, ere worse come o't. You may bring king, council and parliament about your lugs for this, and the Foulis o' Ravelstone, Congaltoun o' that ilk, and Merchiston himsel will swarm like a hornet's nest, and 'Horse and spear!' will be the cry through half the country side—he, he!'

"Curses on thy everlasting chuckle!" muttered the other between his teeth, as with fierce impatience he thrust his brass-barrelled pistols into his embroidered girdle. "What the devil are Ravelstone or Congaltoun to me? If the worst comes, 'tis but flying to the west highlands till the affair blows over. I can count kindred with some of the best who bear the name of Campbell."

"Kindred that will truss ye wi' a tow, and hand ye over for twenty merks to the first macer or corporal of horse that the Chancellor sends after you. Remember how Assynt served Montrose thirty-eight years ago?"

"Your suspicions wrong my highland kinsmen, who are honourable men——"

"But true blue whigamores withal—hee, hee! and brawly you'll look coming up the Netherbow in a cart like Montrose, puir fellow! wi' the town halberds bristling round ye, and Pate Pincer wi' his axe maybe, and our noble friend Perth sitting in the Lower Chamber wi' his finger on the acts of James the Vth and VIth, anent wilful fire-raising—hee, hee! and as for the lassie——"

"My Lord, this is intolerable stuff!" said Clermistonlee, shrugging his shoulders; "you cannot be so young a politician as not to perceive that a storm is approaching, which will crush and confound together all the factions that now distract the land, and keep our swords for ever by our sides. All men see it—else whence this muster of troops and din of preparation on both sides of the Border."

"Storm—a storm said ye?"

"Yes, amid which, if we can hold our own bonnets on our heads, we will be clever fellows, Swinton."

"And whence blows the breeze, think ye?"

"'The Lowlands of Holland,' as the song says," replied the cavalier lord, drawing himself up with a scornful smile.

"Wheesht!—hee, hee, hee!" chuckled the other, waving one hand warningly, while burying his rat-like visage in the sack tankard to hide the cunning smile of intelligence that spread over it. "Harkee, Randal, whare'er the de'il be laird, you'll be tenant—hee, hee!'

"I value a crash in politics at the worth of a brass tester, and bid hail to the days of hard blows and buff coats. Ha! ha! I may pick up a marquisate in the scramble," laughed Clermistonlee, flapping his hat over his eyes. "You will not accompany me to-night, being scarcely cavalier enough for this kind of work."

"Hoots, man, a double-gowned senator of the College of Justice, a Lord of Council and Session, aiding and abetting in wilful fire-raising! Doth not the act say, 'Quha cummis and burnis folk in their housis will be guilty o' treason and lese-majestie?' and as for running off wi' the lassie Lilian, that is clearly a kidnapping o' the lieges, whilk, according to Skene and Sir Thomas o' Glendoick——"

"Gossip Mersington, there are overmuch wine and law in thee to-night to leave room for common sense. Ha! there goes the ten o'clock drum, and that loitering villain has not yet returned!"

He threw open a window that faced the south, where the black mansions of the Netherbow towered up from the steep hill at the foot of which his house was situated. The sound of a distant drum, beat in slow, regular, and monotonous measure, was heard on the wind at intervals, as a drummer of the Civic Guard (an old corps of Scottish gensd'armes, which existed from the fatal day at Flodden until 1818,) ascended St. Mary's Wynd, his usual nightly round, after having descended the Bow, and beat along the once lordly and fashionable Cowgate, where kings have feasted royally, and where Scottish nobles and the ambassadors of foreign powers were wont to dwell—but now the hideous abode of misery and crime, and long since abandoned to the dregs of mankind. On strode the drummer, and the gates of the Netherbow revolved back at his approach: as he passed under its double towers, its picturesque spire and high embattled arch, the great street of the city, wide and lofty, but dark and deserted, rang to the same monotonous chamade and all its echoing closes, broad paved wynds and old arcades of wood or stone, its circular stairs and oaken outshots gave back a thousand reverberations as "the ten o'clock drummer" strode on, until reaching the Town Guard House, where he finished his perambulation of the ancient Royalty by a long and loud ruffle, which scared the vultures from the skulls that mouldered on the parapets of the prison, startled the rooks in the gothic diadem of St. Giles, and made all its hollow vaults and high arched aisles, where the dead of ages lie, give back the warlike sound.

The drum rang loudly as it passed the archway that led to the lodging of Clermistonlee, who threw down the window with a crash, exclaiming,

"Malediction on my messenger—I must mount and ride without him. Hah! here comes the loitering rascal in time to save his shoulders from a stout truncheoning."

A horse's hoofs rang in the courtyard; Juden's heavy boots clattered on the pavement as he dismounted and ascended to the chamber-of-dais, puffing, panting, and looking very pale and disconcerted.

"So-so, fellow," said the irritated lord, "it has pleased you to return at last."

"With God's providence, my Lord."

"How, fool? What means this unwonted piety? Art drunk, fellow?"

"Fie, Juden!" said Mersington, "a fou-man' and a fasting horse, should hae come faster home hee, hee!"

"You saw this woman, Gilruth, and left my message, I presume:"

"Yes, my Lord, yes," gasped Juden.

"What the devil is all this? There is something wrong with thee, Juden."

"Then to be plain wi' your Lordship, I canna thole the auld Place after nightfa'? I aye think o'—think o'——"

"What?" asked Clermistonlee, furiously.

"O' puir Leddy Alison," whined Juden, half in sorrow, and half in spite. "Eh, sirs! but the auld Place o' Drumsheugh is fu' o' her memory, and I seemed to hear her sweet low voice in every sough o' the auld aik trees, and to see her shadow in every glint their branches threw on the moonlighted avenue and auld grey house."

"Fool, fool," said Clermistonlee in a subdued voice, "you speak as if she had been murdered."

"Nor did she fare mickle better," muttered Juden, under breath, however.

"Poor Alison!—so gentle and unreproaching," said the lord in a low musing voice, "Alison—once that name was ever on my lips—her presence was ever with me, and her idea raised a rapture in this hollow heart, to which it has since been a stranger. Yes, my love was a very true one."

"While it lasted," said Mersington.

"Of course," rejoined the other, recovering himself. "I loved her to distraction once; or thought so, and by all the devils, 'tis quite the same thing. She is dead now, and peace be with her; but peril of thy life, Juden Stenton, trouble me no more with such untimely elegies. And pray, Master Morality, how have you dared to loiter away these two hours past?"

"Ask that elfshotten Mear Meg?" said the butler, testily. "Either the cantrips o' Beatrix Gilruth, or Lucky Elshender (baith o' whom are weel deserving o' the branks and tar barrel, Mersington), hae clean bewitched that puir beast. May I never lay head on a pillow to-night, if I wasna' spell-bound on Halkerston's Crofts, where I continued to ride and spur, wi' the black Calton looming in front and St. Cuthbert's kirk behind! but I never neared the one, or got further from the other; and yet Meg was fleeing like the wind, or as fast as ever she did for city purse or king's plate on the sands o' Leith. The night was dark: a cauld wind swept owre the crofts, and soughed among the kirkyard yews and lang nettles by the drystane dykes; red lights gleamed in the runnels that bummel down the brae side, and redder stars were shooting in the lift. A cauld perspiration burst owre me, every hair bristled under my bannet——"

"Rascal—art mocking us?"

"Patience, my Lord," groaned poor Juden. "I kent there was a spell on me, and I tried to say some holy word or name; but, as the deil would hae'd, the sounds aye stuck in my throat; and there I sat, sweating and trembling, and spurring a galloping nag that never progressed; and there indubitably I must hae been until cockcrow, if I hadna——"

"What?" exclaimed his master, stamping with impatience.

"Made a grasp at a rowan tree that grew near, and pu'ed a bunch o' the last year's berries, when lo! the charm was broken, and Meg shot awa like the wind—and I cleared the lang gate as if the Paip and the Deil were behind me."

"And dost think, rascal, that I believe one word of this precious Tale of a Tub, foisted up to deceive me, for time spent in the village change-house yonder! Ha, knave! remember the old saw—Good wine makes a bad head and a long story."

"My Lord, as I left the place, auld Gilruth cried, 'A safe ride to ye, Juden,' and her eldritch laugh is yet dingling in my lugs."

"That makes it a clear case o' withcraft," mumbled Mersington, who was now very tipsy. "He-he!—we'll hae the carlin before us in the morning, Juden. Ay, my Lords (macers, silence in court!), this is as clear a case o' witchcraft as ever came before us—and the Act under Queen Mary (puir woman) anent sorcery bears just upon it. Your Lordships will remember," continued the senator, who thought himself on the bench, "the cases o' Isabel Eliot and Marion Campbell, twa notorious witches, who, for renouncing their baptism, and dancing a jig wi' the deil, were burnt at the Cross wi' ten others in the September o' seventy-eight, for whilk see the Record o' Justiciary—hee-hee, a braw bleeze!"

"I will show a blaze on the Burghmuir to-night worth a dozen of it—ha, ha!" laughed Clermistonlee, as he drew on his voluminous boot-tops of stamped maroquin with silver bosses.

"O'd, Clermistonlee, do ye really mean to burn Elshender's cottage?" asked Juden with delight.

"Yea, sink me! from rigging-tree to ground-stone." Juden rubbed his hands.

"If the auld witch is bed-ridden," said he, "it will save the Provost a bundle o' tar-barrels, forbye a pock o' peats."

"And perhaps cure those spells which you think the hag hath cast upon my best nag? And so, Mersington, you will not ride with us to-night?"

"No, by my faith!"

"Then your learned Lordship forgets one notable point of our old Scottish law, by which a guest becomes the bounden ally of his host."

"True; but only if loons come against him wi' harness on—boden in effeir o' weir, as the Acts have it."

"As the chase after Lilian may be a hot one, omit not to spread most industriously that I am gone to the west, to England, to the devil, or any where, to put them off the right scent—ha, ha! while I am luxuriating in the smiles of Venus in the recesses of my snug old house over the hill there. Dost hear me? By Jove, he's very drunk. Fetch me a tass of brandy and burnt sugar, Juden."

It was brought immediately, in one of those long glasses then made at the citadel of Leith. It set Clermistonlee's impatient blood on fire.

"Another for thyself, Juden, and then to horse, and away. Your servant, gossip Mersington: if unfortunate, you will see me in the course of to-morrow; if otherwise, the devil knows when. Marriage and hanging go by destiny—so do all other things—with a hey lilleu and a how lo lan."

"Aye-aye, awa ye neer-do-well—ye deil's buckie—I'll stay and keep the terrier company. The sack is glorious—the English port auld as the mirk Monanday a' sixteen hunder and fifty-twa—a-clear case o' sorcery, your Lordship—o' dark dealing wi' the great enemy o' mankind—hee-hee!—and woman kind baith."

His head sank forward on his wine-bespattered cravat, and the senior senator of the College of Justice fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER XVII.

CLERMISTONLEE MAKES A SAD MISTAKE.

But if this young lady will marry you, and relieve us, O my conscience! I'll turn friend to the sex, and rail no more at matrimony.—THE LYING VALET.

Issuing from a private gate in the northern flank of the city wall, at the foot of the court attached to his mansion, the Lord and his staunch follower mounted in a narrow lane, overhung on one side by gloomy trees, and on the other by the ancient hospital of the Holy Trinity. The great oriel, or triple window of its church was then faintly lighted by the beams of the rising moon, the silver disk of which seemed to rest on the sable ridge of Arthur's Seat. They passed through the Calton, then a straggling burgh, consisting of antique houses of Flemish aspect, but occupied by a very inferior class of citizens, and entered the long and solitary path called Leith Loan, which was formed by an ancient trench of the Great Civil Wars; hollowly rang their horses' hoofs between the black rocks of the Calton on one hand, and the steep bank of St. Ninian on the other, where the ivied and shattered walls of a convent presented in the bright moonlight a striking variety of light and shade.

To avoid every chance of recognition or surprise, Clermistonlee thus made a complete circuit of the city, leaving it on the side opposite to the scene of his operations. The night soon became as cloudy and dark as he could have wished it, for, as the fitful moon became involved in opaque masses of vapour, every object was rendered obscure and indistinct. On one side of the way lay the lake, like a sheet of ink, and beyond it rose up the stupendous cliffs and ramparts of the castle, and the gigantic outline of the city towering like a mighty bank of cloud, through which the lights of distant casements glimmered like far and fitful stars. On the other side spread open fields and solitary farms; the castles of the Touris of Inverleith, the Kincaids of Warriston, and two or three small and lonely hamlets.

"Clermistonlee," began Juden, closing up to his master as the Long Gate became darker and more lonely, for the cottages of St. Ninian were now far behind; "If the auld witch, Elshender, by kecking through a spule bane should divine our errand, our riding will be to little purpose I reckon. She is an unco uncanny body, Lucky Elsie, and though her gudeman was a trooper, and did richt leal service in King Charles' wars, I would fain see her brought to the tar-barrel, for, wow, but I hate an auld blench-lippit, long-chaffit, sunk-eyed carlin, as I do sour ale or the deil."

The Lord vouchsafed no reply to these sapient remarks, and Juden, feeling somewhat uneasy at his silence, the darkness, and their vicinity to the old Cross-kirk of St. Cuthbert, with its great square central tower and broad burial grounds, studded with mossy tombstones and slabs half sunk in the long reedy grass, spurred nearer and spoke again.

"And then to think o' Meg, puir beastie! to fa' ill o' the wheezlock, the malanders, and deil kens a' what, the very night ye trampled down that auld cummer's kailcastocks, and wi' this match wi' Holsterlee to come off at Easter! Troth, my Lord Mersington has thumbscrewed and tar-barrelled scores o' auld besoms on the half o' sic evidence o' malice, and ungodly ill will. And I would beg o' you to gie Mersington a hint, that she was the gossip of Helen of Peaston, who was burned ten years byegone. Od's fish! I saw the brodder o' the High Court run his steel pricker thrice into Belzeebub's mark on her bare back—a lang black teat whereat she suckled Hornie's imps, and she neither winced nor skirled. And for what I would like mickle to ken——"

"Silence."

"Doth not this auld deevil, Elshender, deserve the tar-barrel as weel as her neighbour cummer."

"I tell thee, silence! Blow the match that must light the link."

"The link—now?"

"Thou hast it I hope, pumpkin-head?"

"Yes—yes, my Lord—but wow I wish this desperate job weel oure."

"Art getting white-livered? Is this our first affair of the kind?"

"What, if the coach with the skeleton Lady cam' rumbling up Leith loan after us! It is about her hour noo. Burn my beard, if I wadna die o' sheer fright."

"Would to Heaven she came then, and rid me of a thorough household pest."

"Ay, ay, but ye would sune find the want o' puir auld Juden. Wha would spice the Canary and Rochelle, mull the sack and sugar the brandy like me? Wha then would doctor your nags, break your hounds, and train your hawks wi' leash and lure, and do everything ye can think o', frae birselling a crail capon to backing a troop-horse, and frae brushing your spurleathers, to being your staunch henchman on sic a hillicate errand as this? Hech, Sir! I am picking up my thanks now for standing by ye wi' buff and bilbo on many a stormy day, fighting now for the kirk and then for the king—a bab o' blue ribbons in my bonnet to-day, a cavalier's white feather the morn, just as it suited you to uphold one banner because the other was like to be beaten down."

"Rascal! let these be the last of those impertinent reflections which you permit yourself to make on my conduct. Recollect that as my bounden vassal, my will is thine, my word thy law—enough—and seek not as usual, old Mr. pertinacity, to have the last word with me."

"I am mum, my Lord." Juden checked his horse and fell to the rear in high dudgeon.

Making a complete circuit of the suburbs, they crossed the Burghmuir, where the turrets of Bruntisfield rose above the dark oaks of the olden time. Clermistonlee took a long survey of the stately old mansion and its domain, and greatly refreshed with the noble aspect thereof, pushed on with increased speed.

When they approached the little cottage it was dark and silent as the ruined chapel beside it, and the beechen grove which overshadowed them both. The smoke of the rested night fire curled up pale and grey among the dark copsewood, from the massive clay-built chimney, but there was no other sign of life within. Concealing their horses behind a thick privet hedge, the conspirators approached the cottage, Clermistonlee unrolling an ample rocquelaure of scarlet cloth to throw over Lilian as a muffler, the moment she rushed forth to escape the conflagration.

"The hut is very still," said the Lord. "Zounds! if she should be gone away."

"Impossible," responded Juden. "Jock, my sister's son, watched the place until mirk night came on. But hear me—one word, my Lord, ere we come to the onset?"

"What the deuce is it now, thou most incorrigible prater?"

"Would it no be better to ding up the door and carry the lady off before I fire the bit placie, lest the flame bring those who might strike in to the rescue?"

"True, Juden, you speak sensibly for once," replied his master, who staggered a little in consequence of his recent potations, and felt no ordinary excitement as the moment approached, when he hoped to clasp Lilian Napier in his arms, and bear her off in triumph. Clermistonlee had long been the wildest gallant of his time, and in such a desperate affair as this he felt quite in his element.

Poising a large stone aloft, he hurled it against the door with all the impetus he could lend it; but the barrier yielded not. An exclamation, half smothered in the depths of a box-bed, showed that the inmates were sufficiently alarmed by the thundering shock, and poor Elsie lay quaking under the bed-clothes, in full conviction that the devil and his elvish drummer to boot, were about to force an entrance. Again and again Lord Clermistonlee hurled it against the cottage door; but it remained fast as a rock, for several strong bars of wood inserted in the massive wall, gave it all that security which was then as necessary to the hut as to the palace. Juden raised aloft the flaring link, and its light streamed by fits on the thatched roof and whitewashed walls, on the divot seat in front, with woodbine and wild rose-tree clambering above it; on the high beech trees that spread their arms to the night wind, scaring the rooks from their leafless nests, and the sparrows from the thick warm thatch which the blazing link menaced every instant.

"Reif and roist the obstinate yett!" exclaimed Juden, capering as the stone rolled back upon his shins, and Clermistonlee, exasperated by the unlooked-for delay, furiously thrust the link into the heavy thatch. The dense mass smouldered and smoked for an instant, while the dry straw below struggled with the thick stratum of green moss above, till the former prevailed, and a broad lurid flame shot upward, revealing the broad fields and pasture land, the rough dykes and budding hedgerows, the dreary road that wound over the adjacent hills, the far recesses of the beechen grove, bringing forward the knotted branches and gnarled and ivied trunks in strong relief, from the darkness and obscurity of the wooded vista behind. Full on the roofless walls and pointed windows of St. Rocque fell the fitful light, and on the spacious burial ground, where close and thick lay the headstones of those unfortunates who perished in the deadly pestilence of 1645. In a few minutes a mass of blazing thatch fell inwards through the bared and scorched rafters, and a terrific scream ascended from within. Fire now flashed through the little square windows of the cottage, and its whole interior became filled with yellow light; but the door still remained fast, while the shrieks that rang within made Clermistonlee tremble with apprehension.

"Fury and confusion!" he exclaimed, "she may be scorched to death by that flaming mass of thatch! Horror! aid me—fool and villain—to burst in the door! quick, or the accursed Baillie of the Portsburgh with his trainband of souters and wabsters will be on us."

While he was speaking, the cottage door flew open, and, amid a shower of sparks, which she threw from her attire, a female rushed forth in a slate of distraction.

"'Tis she, Juden!" cried Clermistonlee, "'tis she! I could know that purple hood among a thousand!" and rushing forward with a tipsy shout of triumph and rapture, he snatched up the the slight figure, over which his staunch bravo threw the ample and stifling rocquelaure in a manner that showed he had practised it on former occasions, as it effectually prevented her cries from being heard. Tall, strong, and muscular, Clermistonlee with perfect ease placed his fair captive on the croupe of his horse, and, springing into the saddle, gave it the spur so suddenly, that it bounded into the air, and he lost a stirrup.

"Courage, Juden!" he exclaimed, while his heart panted with love and exultation; "to horse and spur for the Place of Drumsheugh—but first assist me—confusion! I have lost a stirrup—quick, varlet, the curb-rein. So, now, look to thy petronel, for, by Jove! I hear a horn blowing somewhere."

Trembling with terror, and shaken furiously by the bounding of his restless horse, the muffled captive lay helpless in his bold embrace. One hand and arm were firmly clasped round her light and shrinking figure, the other held the reins of his powerful horse, which dashed along the road, clearing dyke and hedge at a bound, until gaining the summit of the Burghmuir, where the road was rendered dangerous by the ancient quarries, moss-haggs, and heron-shaws that bordered it.

"My dear Lilian, why will you struggle with me when I tell that your efforts are vain; but fear not, gentle one, I will slacken my horse's speed if you wish it." He spoke with the utmost deliberation and coolness; for he was too much used to such affairs to feel at all puzzled in making an apology; besides, he was very tipsy. "You have long rejected me, dear Lilian, and forced me to this act, for which I crave your pardon with the most abject humility—by all the devils I do! I am not one to stand on trifles, as thou knowest: no, sink me! and if it is in the power of man to bend a woman's will to his, thine shall bend to mine."

This address was in no way calculated to quiet the terrors of his prisoner: his lordship was becoming more and more confused and intoxicated, as every bound of his horse forced into his head the fumes of the wine of which he had partaken so freely; and so he continued in the same strain—

"What dost say, little one—my beloved Lilian I mean—you will struggle, you will scream? Permit me to insinuate, my dear Madam, that it will be worse than useless, for nothing can avail you now but pleasing me; a course I would advise you to pursue forthwith. I know some devilish fine women that would be proud to do it—crush me if I do not! My dearest Lilian, (what was I saying?) I will teach thee to love as I would wish to be loved. My heart and coronet are at your feet—will not sincere love beget love? By all the devils, I know it will! You will pardon all this to-morrow, for I know women forgive all that has love for an excuse; then how much more so you, that are ever so gentle and kind, when other dames are so haughty and cold; d—n them! amen. You think me a wicked ruffian, eh? Zounds! I am not at all so, but a very fine fellow in every respect, though an unfortunate victim of love to thee and fear of a few rascally creditors. My pretty Lilian, in fact I love thee so tremendously, that even the pen of Scuderi could never describe it; and I swear by this kiss, dear Lilian, and this—and this—a thousand furies! where am I?"

He became sobered in a moment, for, on removing the mantle to salute the soft cheek of the girl, instead of beholding, as he expected, the head of a seraph peeping forth from a mass of bright ringlets, lo! a ray of the sickly moon streamed on the hooked nose, peaked chin, grey haired, and smoke-begrimed visage of Elsie Elshender.

"Horror!" exclaimed Clermistonlee, whose rhapsody this terrible vision had cut short.

"Avaunt, hag of hell!" and, trembling in every fibre with rage and disgust, he flung the poor woman from his arms, and goading his horse with the sharp rowels, dashed up the dark and rough Kirk Brae at a break-neck pace; while Juden, totally unable to comprehend what had taken place in front, partly drew up as the female rolled by the way-side, near the gate of the Place of Bruntisfield.

"Awa wi' ye! fie and out upon ye, ye sons o' the scarlet woman!" exclaimed Elsie in great wrath and tribulation, for she soon recovered the use of her tongue. "May a' the plagues of Egypt fa' upon your ungodly heads! May the Lord send cursing vexation and rebuke! Out upon ye! fie, and a murrain upon ye!"

Juden was astonished; but no sooner did he hear her shrill voice, and behold by the moonlight her aged and withered visage, with long tangled hair falling grey around it, than he became seized with a superstitious terror, which the raising of her long skinny arm and crooked finger, as if to curse, completed; and he stayed not to hear the expected anathema.

"The first fuff o' a haggis is aye the hottest, but I'll not bide a second. Tak' that, ye accursed witch, until you are tarbarrelled!" he exclaimed, and fired his long horse pistol full in her face. Poor Elsie fell forward motionless, while Juden, without daring once to look behind him, dashed at full gallop after his lord, who had already crossed Halkerston's Crofts, and was nearing the village of St. Ninian.