“Whaur’s yer warrant?”
“There.”
“Lay ’t doon o’ the table, an’ gang back to the door, till I get a sklent at it,” said Malcolm. “Ye’re an honest man, Wull—but I wadna lippen a snuff-mull ’at had mair nor ae pinch intill ’t wi’ yon cooard cratur ahin’ ye.”
He was afraid of the possible consequences of his grandfather’s indignation.
The gamekeeper did at once as he was requested, evidently both amused with the bearing of the two men and admiring it. Having glanced at the paper, Malcolm put it in his pocket, and whispering a word to his grandfather, walked away with his captors.
As they went to the House, Bykes was full of threats of which he sought to enhance the awfulness by the indefiniteness; but Will told Malcolm as much as he knew of the matter—namely, that the head gamekeeper, having lost some dozen of his sitting pheasants, had enjoined a strict watch; and that Bykes, having caught sight of Malcolm in the very act of getting over the wall, had gone and given information against him.
No one about the premises except Bykes would have been capable of harbouring suspicion of Malcolm; and the head gamekeeper had not the slightest; but, knowing that his lordship found little enough to amuse him, and anticipating some laughter from the confronting of two such opposite characters, he had gone to the marquis with Byke’s report,—and this was the result. His lordship was not a magistrate, and the so-called warrant was merely a somewhat sternly worded expression of his desire that Malcolm should appear and answer to the charge.
The accused was led into a vaulted chamber opening from the hall —a genuine portion, to judge from its deep low-arched recesses, the emergence of truncated portions of two or three groins, and the thickness of its walls, of the old monastery. Close by the door ascended a right-angled modern staircase.
Lord Lossie entered, and took his seat in a great chair in one of the recesses.
“So, you young jackanapes!” he said, half angry, and half amused, “you decline to come, when I send for you, without a magistrate’s warrant, forsooth! It looks bad to begin with, I must say!”