The Bride of Lammermoor Page 6

  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 profoundsilence. His daughter, naturally timid, and bred up in those ideas offilial awe and implicit obedience which were inculcated upon the youthof that period, did not venture to interrupt his meditations.

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

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

  Of these animals, the descendants of the savage herds which ancientlyroamed free in the Caledonian forests, it was formerly a point ofstate to preserve a few in the parks of the Scottish nobility. Specimenscontinued within the memory of man to be kept at least at three housesof distinction--Hamilton, namely, Drumlanrig, and Cumbernauld. They haddegenerated from the ancient race in size and strength, if we are tojudge from the accounts of old chronicles, and from the formidableremains frequently discovered in bogs and morasses when drained and laidopen. The bull had lost the shaggy honours of his mane, and the race wassmall 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 accountof their antipathy to the human race, and were often dangerous ifapproached unguardedly, or wantonly disturbed. It was this last reasonwhich has occasioned their being extirpated at the places we havementioned, where probably they would otherwise have been retained asappropriate inhabitants of a Scottish woodland, and fit tenants fora baronial forest. A few, if I mistake not, are still preservedat Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland, the seat of the Earl ofTankerville.

  It was to her finding herself in the vicinity of a group of three orfour of these animals, that Lucy thought proper to impute those signs offear which had arisen in her countenance for a different reason. For shehad been familiarised with the appearance of the wil cattle during herwalks in the chase; and it was not then, as it may be now, a necessarypart of a young lady's demeanour to indulge in causeless tremors of thenerves. On the present occasion, however, she speedily found cause forreal 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 byone of those fits of capricious ferocity to which their dispositions areliable, detached himself suddenly from the group which was feeding atthe upper extremity of a grassy glade, that seemed to lose itself amongthe crossing and entangled boughs. The animal approached the intruderson 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, asif to lash himself up to rage and violence.

  The Lord Keeper, who observed the animal's demeanour, was aware that hewas about to become mischievous, and, drawing his daughter's arm underhis own, began to walk fast along the avenue, in hopes to get out of hissight and his reach. This was the most injudicious course he could haveadopted, for, encouraged by the appearance of flight, the bull beganto pursue them at full speed. Assailed by a danger so imminent, firmercourage than that of the Lord Keeper might have given way. But paternaltenderness, "love strong as death," sustained him. He continued tosupport and drag onward his daughter, until her fears altogetherdepriving her of the power of flight, she sunk down by his side; andwhen he could no longer assist her to escape, he turned round and placedhimself betwixt her and the raging animal, which, advancing in fullcareer, its brutal fury enhanced by the rapidity of the pursuit, was nowwithin a few yards of them. The Lord Keeper had no weapons; his ageand gravity dispensed even with the usual appendage of a walkingsword--could such appendage have availed him anything.

  It seemed inevitable that the father or daughter, or both, shouldhave fallen victims to the impending danger, when a shot from theneighbouring thicket arrested the progress of the animal. He was sotruly struck between the junction of the spine with the skull, that thewound, which in any other part of his body might scarce have impeded hiscareer, proved instantly fatal. Stumbling forward with a hideous bellow,the progressive force of his previous motion, rather than any operationof his limbs, carried him up to within three yards of the astonishedLord Keeper, where he rolled on the ground, his limbs darkened with theblack death-sweat, and quivering with the last convulsions of muscularmotion.

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

  This instantly recalled him to a sense of their situation: a glance athis daughter reminded him of the necessity of procuring her assistance.He called to the man, whom he concluded to be one of his foresters, togive immediate attention to Miss Ashton, while he himself hastened tocall assistance. The huntsman approached them accordingly, and the LordKeeper saw he was a stranger, but was too much agitated to make anyfarther remarks. In a few hurried words he directed the shooter, asstronger and more active than himself, to carry the young lady to aneighbouring fountain, while he went back to Alice's hut to procure moreaid.

  The man to whose timely interference they had been so much indebted didnot seem inclined to leave his good work half finished. He raised Lucyfrom the ground in his arms, and conveying her through the glades ofthe forest by paths with which he seemed well acquainted, stopped notuntil he laid her in safety by the side of a plentiful and pellucidfountain, which had been once covered in, screened and decorated witharchitectural ornaments of a Gothic character. But now the vault whichhad covered it being broken down and riven, and the Gothic font ruinedand demolished, the stream burst forth from the recess of the earth inopen day, and winded its way among the broken sculpture and moss-grownstones which lay in confusion around its source.

  Tradition, always busy, at least in Scotland, to grace with a legendarytale a spot in itself interesting, had ascribed a cause of peculiarveneration to this fountain. A beautiful young lady met one of the Lordsof Ravenswood while hunting near this spot, and, like a second Egeria,had captivated the affections of the feudal Numa. They met frequentlyafterwards, and always at sunset, the charms of the nymph's mindcompleting the conquest which her beauty had begun, and the mystery ofthe intrigue adding zest to both. She always appeared and disappearedclose by the fountain, with which, therefore, her lover judged she hadsome inexplicable connexion. She placed certain restrictions on theirintercourse, which also savoured of mystery. They met only once aweek--Friday was the appointed day--and she explained to the Lord ofRavenswood that they were under the necessity of separating so soon asthe 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 hisconfession, the Baron of Ravenswood entrusted the hermit with thesecret of this singular amour, and Father Zachary drew the necessary andobvious consequence that his patron was enveloped in the toils of Satan,and in danger of destruction, both to body and soul. He urged theseperils to the Baron with all the force of monkish rhetoric, anddescribed, in the most frightful colours, the real character and personof the apparently lovely Naiad, whom he hesitated not to denounce asa limb
of the kingdom of darkness. The lover listened with obstinateincredulity; and it was not until worn out by the obstinacy of theanchoret that he consented to put the state and condition of hismistress to a certain trial, and for that purpose acquiesced inZachary's proposal that on their next interview the vespers bellshould be rung half an hour later than usual. The hermit maintainedand bucklered his opinion, by quotations from Malleus Malificarum,Sprengerus, Remigius, and other learned demonologists, that the EvilOne, thus seduced to remain behind the appointed hour, would assume hertrue shape, and, having appeared to her terrified lover as a fiend ofhell, would vanish from him in a flash of sulphurous lightning. Raymondof Ravenswood acquiesced in the experiment, not incurious concerningthe issue, though confident it would disappoint the expectations of thehermit.

  At the appointed hour the lovers met, and their interview was protractedbeyond that at which they usually parted, by the delay of the priestto ring his usual curfew. No change took place upon the nymph's outwardform; but as soon as the lengthening shadows made her aware that theusual hour of the vespers chime was passed, she tore herself from herlover's arms with a shriek of despair, bid him adieu for ever, and,plunging into the fountain, disappeared from his eyes. The bubblesoccasioned by her descent were crimsoned with blood as they arose,leading the distracted Baron to infer that his ill-judged curiosityhad occasioned the death of this interesting and mysterious being. Theremorse which he felt, as well as the recollection of her charms, provedthe penance of his future life, which he lost in the battle of Floddennot many months after. But, in memory of his Naiad, he had previouslyornamented the fountain in which she appeared to reside, and secured itswaters from profanation or pollution by the small vaulted building ofwhich the fragments still remained scattered around it. From this periodthe house of Ravenswood was supposed to have dated its decay.

  Such was the generally-received legend, which some, who would seemwiser than the vulgar, explained as obscurely intimating the fate of abeautiful maid of plebeian rank, the mistress of this Raymond, whom heslew in a fit of jealousy, and whose blood was mingled with the watersof the locked fountain, as it was commonly called. Others imaginedthat the 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 weargreen, a Bruce to kill a spider, or a St. Clair to cross the Ord on aMonday.

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

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

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

  "Are you sure of that?" exclaimed Lucy. "The bull was close by us. Donot stop me: I must go to seek my father!"

  And she rose with that purpose; but her strength was so much exhaustedthat, far from possessing the power to execute her purpose, she musthave fallen against the stone on which she had leant, probably notwithout sustaining serious injury.

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

  Lucy, whose senses were by this time more effectually collected, wasnaturally led to look at the stranger with attention. There was nothingin his appearance which should have rendered him unwilling to offer hisarm to a young lady who required support, or which could have inducedher to refuse his assistance; and she could not help thinking, evenin that moment, that he seemed cold and reluctant to offer it. Ashooting-dress of dark cloth intimated the rank of the wearer, thoughconcealed 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, hadquenched the light and ingenuous vivacity of youth in a countenancesingularly fitted to display both, and it was not easy to gaze on thestranger without a secret impression either of pity or awe, or at leastof doubt and curiosity allied to both.

  The impression which we have necessarily been long in describing, Lucyfelt in the glance of a moment, and had no sooner encountered the keenblack eyes of the stranger than her own were bent on the ground with amixture of bashful embarrassment and fear. Yet there was a necessity tospeak, or at last she thought so, and in a fluttered accent she beganto mention her wonderful escape, in which she was sure that the strangermust, under Heaven, have been her father's protector and her own.

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

  Lucy was surprised at the ambiguity of his language, and, with a feelingof artless and unaffected gratitude, began to deprecate the idea ofhaving intended to give her deliverer any offence, as if such a thinghad been possible. "I have been unfortunate," she said, "in endeavouringto express my thanks--I am sure it must be so, though I cannot recollectwhat I said; but would you but stay till my father--till the Lord Keepercomes; would you only permit him to pay you his thanks, and to inquireyour name?"

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

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

  When she had caught this idea, she started from the ground andendeavoured to press towards the avenue in which the accident had takenplace, while the stranger, though he seemed to hesitate between thedesire to assist and the wish to leave her, was obliged, in commonhumanity, to oppose her both by entreaty and action.

  "On the word of a gentleman, madam, I tell you the truth; your fatheris in perfect safety; you will expose yourself to injury if you ventureback where the herd of wild cattle grazed. If you will go"--for, havingonce adopted the idea that her father was still in danger, she pressedforward in spite of him--"if you WILL go, accept my arm, though I am notperhaps 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 myfather! You shall not leave me--you must go with me; he is dying perhapswhile we are talking here!"

  Then, without listening to excuse or apology, and holding fast by thestranger's arm, though unconscious of anything save the support whichit gave, and without which she could not have moved, mixed with a vaguefeeling of preventing his esc
ape from her, she was urging, and almostdragging, him forward when Sir William Ashton came up, followed by thefemale attendant of blind Alice, and by two woodcutters, whom he hadsummoned from their occupation to his assistance. His joy at seeing hisdaughter safe overcame the surprise with which he would at another timehave beheld her hanging as familiarly on the arm of a stranger as shemight have done upon his own.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Why, then, my lord," said the man, looking down, "he said--But it wadbe nae pleasure to your lordship to hear it, for I dare say the Mastermeant 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 thatthe next time he and I forgather, he will nto be half sae blythe of ourmeeting as of our parting.'"

  "Very well, sir," said the Lord Keeper, "I believe he alludes to a wagerwe 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 tobe able to walk home. But the effect, which the various recollectionsconnected with a scene so terrific made upon a mind which wassusceptible in an extreme degree, was more permanent than the injurywhich her nerves had sustained. Visions of terror, both in sleep and inwaking reveries, recalled to her the form of the furious animal, and thedreadful bellow with which he accompanied his career; and it was alwaysthe image of the Master of Ravenswood, with his native nobleness ofcountenance and form, that seemed to interpose betwixt her and assureddeath. It is, perhaps, at all times dangerous for a young person tosuffer recollection to dwell repeatedly, and with too much complacency,on the same individual; but in Lucy's situation it was almostunavoidable. She had never happened to see a young man of mien andfeatures so romantic and so striking as young Ravenswood; but had sheseen an hundred his equals or his superiors in those particulars, no oneelse would have been linked to her heart by the strong associations ofremembered danger and escape, of gratitude, wonder, and curiosity. Isay curiosity, for it is likely that the singularly restrained andunaccommodating manners of the Master of Ravenswood, so much at variancewith the natural expression of his features and grace of his deportment,as they excited wonder by the contrast, had their effect in riveting herattention to the recollections. She knew little of Ravenswood, or thedisputes which had existed betwixt her father and his, and perhaps couldin her gentleness of mind hardly have comprehended the angry and bitterpassions which they had engendered. But she knew that he was come ofnoble stem; was poor, though descended from the noble and the wealthy;and she felt that she could sympathise with the feelings of a proudmind, which urged him to recoil from the proffered gratitude of the newproprietors of his father's house and domains. Would he have equallyshunned their acknowledgments and avoided their intimacy, had herfather's request been urged more mildly, less abruptly, and softenedwith the grace which women so well know how to throw into their manner,when they mean to mediate betwixt the headlong passions of the rudersex? This was a perilous question to ask her own mind--perilous both inthe idea and its consequences.

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

  While Lucy indulged in these dreams, she made frequent visits to oldblind Alice, hoping it would be easy to lead her to talk on the subjectwhich at present she had so imprudently admitted to occupy so large aportion of her thoughts. But Alice did not in this particular gratifyher wishes and expectations. She spoke readily, and with patheticfeeling, concerning the family in general, but seemed to observean especial and cautious silence on the subject of the presentrepresentative. The little she said of him was not altogether sofavourable as Lucy had anticipated. She hinted that he was of a sternand unforgiving character, more ready to resent than to pardon injuries;and Lucy combined, with great alarm, the hints which she now droppedof these dangerous qualities with Alice's advice to her father, soemphatically given, "to beware of Ravenswood."

  But that very Ravenswood, of whom such unjust suspicions had beenentertained, had, almost immediately after they had been uttered,confuted them by saving at once her father's life and her own. Had henourished such black revenge as Alice's dark hints seemed to indicate,no deed of active guilt was necessary to the full gratification ofthat evil passion. He needed but to have withheld for an instant hisindispensable and effective assistance, and the object of his resentmentmust have perished, without any direct aggression on his part, by adeath equally fearful and certain. She conceived, therefore, that somesecret prejudice, or the suspicions incident to age and misfortune,had led Alice to form conclusions injurious to the character, andirreconcilable both with the generous conduct and noble features, of theMaster of Ravenswood. And in this belief Lucy reposed her hope, and wenton weaving her enchanted web of fairy tissue, as beautiful and transientas the film of the gossamer when it is pearled with the morning dew andglimmering to the sun.

  Her father, in the mean while, as well as the Master of Ravenswood, weremaking reflections, as frequent though more solid than those of Lucy,upon the singular event which had taken place. The Lord Keeper's firsttask, when he returned home, was to ascertain by medical advice thathis daughter had sustained no injury from the dangerous and alarmingsituation in which she had been placed. Satisfied on this topic, heproceeded to revise the memoranda which he had taken down from the mouthof the person employed to interrupt the funeral service of the lateLord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to practise theambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to softenthe features of the
tumult which he had been at first so anxious toexaggerate. He preached to his colleagues of the privy council thenecessity of using conciliatory measures with young men, whose bloodand temper were hot, and their experience of life limited. He did nothesitate to attribute some censure to the conduct of the officer, ashaving been unnecessarily irritating.

  These were the contents of his public despatches. The letters whichhe wrote to those private friends into whose management the matter waslikely to fall were of a yet more favourable tenor. He representedthat lenity in this case would be equally politic and popular, whereas,considering the high respect with which the rites of interment areregarded in Scotland, any severity exercised against the Master ofRavenswood for protecting those of his father from interruption, wouldbe on all sides most unfavourably construed. And, finally, assuming thelanguage of a generous and high-spirited man, he made it his particularrequest that this affair should be passed over without severe notice. Healluded with delicacy to the predicament in which he himself stood withyoung Ravenswood, as having succeeded in the long train of litigationby which the fortunes of that noble house had been so much reduced, andconfessed it would be most peculiarly acceptable to his own feelings,could he find in some sort to counterbalance the disadvantages which hehad occasioned the family, though only in the prosecution of his justand lawful rights. He therefore made it his particular and personalrequest that the matter should have no farther consequences, aninsinuated a desire that he himself should have the merit of havingput a stop to it by his favourable report and intercession. It wasparticularly remarkable that, contrary to his uniform practice, he madeno special communication to Lady Ashton upon the subject of the tumult;and although he mentioned the alarm which Lucy had received from oneof the wild cattle, yet he gave no detailed account of an incident sointeresting and terrible.

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

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

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

  "We must please him after his own fashion," said another, "though it bean unlooked-for 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 anoble Marquis present. "The Lord Keeper has got all his estates; he hasnot 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, quiluere non potest cum crumena. Hegh, my lords, that's gude law Latin."

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

  "Agree, agree--remit to the Lord Keeper, with any other person forfashion'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 isthat 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, "andyour hand aye in the nook of it! I had set that down for a bye-bitbetween meals for mysell."

  "To use one of your favourite saws, my lord," replied the Marquis, "youare 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; "andsurely there is nae noble lord that will presume to say that I, wha haecomplied wi' a' compliances, taen all manner of tests, adjured all thatwas to be abjured, and sworn a' that was to be sworn, for these thirtyyears bye-past, sticking fast by my duty to the state through goodreport and bad report, shouldna hae something now and then to synd mymouth 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, orobserved anything stick in your throat that required washing down."

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