“Never mind—never mind,” interposed Talbot, slily; “we'll pledge it with as good a mind.”
“That's—that's it,” shouted Mark, as the last word clinked upon his
memory. “I have it now,” and his eyes sparkled, and his brows were met,
as he called out—
“A stout heart and mind,
And an easterly wind,
And the devil behind The Saxon.”
Sir Archy laid down his glass untasted, while Talbot, bursting forth into a well-acted laugh, cried out, “You must excuse me from repeating your amiable sentiment, which, for aught I can guess, may be a sarcasm on my own country.”
“I'd like to hear the same toast explained,” said Sir Archy, cautiously, while his looks wandered alternately from Mark to Talbot.
“So you shall, then,” replied Mark, sternly, “and this very moment too.”
“Come, that's fair,” chimed in Talbot, while he fixed his eyes on the youth, with such a steady gaze as seemed actually to have pierced the dull vapour of his clouded intellect, and flashed light upon his addled brain. “Let us hear your explanation.”
Mark, for a second or two, looked like one suddenly awakened from a deep sleep, and trying to collect his wandering faculties, while, as if instinctively seeking the clue to his bewilderment from Talbot, he never turned his eyes from him. As he sat thus, he looked the very ideal of half-drunken stupidity.
“I'm afraid we have no right to ask the explanation,” whispered Talbot into M'Nab's ear. “We ought to be satisfied, if he give us the rhyme, even though he forgot the reason.”
“I'm thinking you're right, sir,” replied M'Nab; “but I suspect we hae na the poet before us, ony mair than the interpreter.”
Mark's faculties, in slow pursuit of Talbot's meaning, had just at this instant overtaken their object, and he burst forth into a boisterous fit of laughter, which, whatever sentiment it might have excited in the others, relieved Talbot, at least, from all his former embarrassment: he saw that Mark had, though late, recognised his warning, and was at once relieved from any uneasiness on the score of his imprudence.