Iola dropped the eyelids over the lustrous orbs below; and a blush spread over her cheek like the crimson light of the setting sun. Chartley instantly withdrew his arm; and repeating--"Fear not," he opened the door and went out of the hall.
A few words were then heard, spoken without; and a moment after he re-entered, followed by Sam the Piper, with his beloved instrument still tight under his arm. The good man's steps were not quite steady, and certainly it was not natural feebleness that caused their vacillation. Yet his eye was clear and bright; and his merry voice seemed not in the least thickened by any liquor he might have imbibed.
"Gad ye good night, lords and ladies, gad ye good night," he said, as he entered, making a low obeisance, and producing at the same time a lamentable squeak from his chanter. "Gad ye good night, tawny Moor. I did not think to see your beautiful black face again for many a day. Gad ye good night, fairest of ladies. To see you and his dark lordship here, one would think one's self upon the confines of the upper and the nether world, with angels on the one side and devils on the other."
"Meaning me for one, knave," said Chartley, giving him a good-humoured shake.
"Ah, mercy, mercy, noble sir," cried the piper in a pitiful tone. "Shake me not; for my legs are not made of iron to-night, and my stomach is as full as my bag when well blown up."
"But your stomach has something stronger than air in it, if I mistake not," said Chartley, laughing, "Come tell me, sirrah, how it happens that you, who would take no strong drink yesterday, are well nigh drunk tonight."
"There's no contradiction in that," replied the man, "though I take no liquor, liquor may overtake me; and if a man is overtaken in liquor, the fault's in the liquor, not in him."
"Still, if the fault's in the liquor, and the liquor in him, the fault is in him," answered Chartley; "for learned doctors say that the thing which contains another contains all that it contains."
"But, then," replied the piper, who, like many of his class, was exceedingly fond of chopping logic; "if the fault's in the liquor, and the liquor in him, he cannot be in fault, for the thing that contains cannot be in the thing contained. But marry, my good lord, the truth is, I made a promise to good sister Alice at the convent, not to get drunk at Tamworth fair, and gloriously I redeemed my word, and gloriously I got drunk afterwards."
While this dialogue had been proceeding, Iola stood by, marvelling greatly at all she heard; for it was a scene altogether new to her, and one of which, in her simplicity and ignorance of the world's ways, she could have formed no conception. In her ramblings hither and thither, which her good aunt had permitted pretty liberally, she might indeed have seen, now and then, a drunken man, for alas, drunkenness is a virtue of no particular age; but she had never met with the merry reckless wine-bibber--one of the peculiar character of the good piper--who has an excuse for his sins always ready, by which he does not impose upon himself.