Dark Morton, girt with many a spear,
Murder's foul minion!
Scott.
Attended by a train of forty armed horsemen, this potent noble had arrived.
His men, as they dismounted, placed their long and unwieldy lances against the wall of the inn yard, and set about stabling their steeds with ready activity. Followed by Archibald Douglas, laird of Whittinghame, and Hume of Spott—two gentlemen of his retinue—this factious, proud, and ferocious lord, whose name is so infamous from the dark and bloody share which he took in all the deep intrigues and civil broils of that unhappy period, entered the hall of the hostelry; and certainly, from the smile that spread over his handsome features, curving his fine mouth, and lighting up his brilliant hazel eye—and from the dignity of his aspect, and the magnificence of his yellow damask doublet, embroidered with gold, his purple velvet trunks, which were slashed with white and edged with point d'Espagne, where they joined his hose of Naples silk—the politeness with which he removed his black beaver, with its long white feather, and on entering saluted the hostess with a kiss, and the host with a thump between the shoulders—no one, we say, who saw his general aspect and bearing, would have recognized the same savage and avaricious noble, who, as it was commonly said, "never spared man in his vengeance, nor woman in his lust"—who murdered Captain Cullen for possession of his beautiful wife—who poisoned the Regent Mar to secure the regency—who hung sixty men, as a pastime before breakfast, at Leith Loan—and who was yet foredoomed, to die on the scaffold for the greatest of all human crimes.
Adam Ainslie bowed and bowed again, and Lucky Ainslie curtseyed, in concert, a dozen of times, so well as their corpulent figures would permit.
"How dost thou, stout Adam?" said the Earl, merrily, as he took his seat at the highest part of the chamber board. "Save us! but this meat smelleth savourily, and my evening ride hath given me a wolfs appetite. By the rood I mine host—(pest upon these old oaths of papistry, but how they stick to one's fancy!)—thou wearest noble hosen," continued the Earl, jocosely, as, with his walking-cane, he poked Adam's preposterously bombasted trunk-breeches. "Dost thou know that the Lord Bothwell and other gallants aver, that thy gudewife keepeth all her bed and table napery stuffed into them?"
"Your lordship is pleased to be merry," simpered Dame Ainslie, placing stools for the Earl's jackmen, who came crowding in with all their iron paraphernalia clanking, and dimmed with summer dust; and a terrible clatter they made with their long spurs, gigantic boots and gambadoes, long swords and jeddard staves, as they took all the best places at the hearth and table, hustling into the background the countryman and his two companions.
Awakened by the uproar of their entrance, Anna clung fearfully to Konrad's arm; and he remarked that their new acquaintance kept as much as possible in the background, and wore his grey plaid high up on his weatherbeaten visage.
"Hast thou no city news, Master Adam?" said the Earl. "Thou knowest that one might as well bide at the bottom of a draw-well as in that lonely tower of Dalkeith. How stand the markets? and how like our burghers their new provost, the stout knight of Craigmillar?"
"By my troth, Lord Earl, there is a southland yeoman ben there who ought to ken mair of market stock than I. The queen's byding at Lithgow makes the toun dull and eerie; for the second spiering, I may say auld Sir Simon is liket right well, for he sheweth small mercy to mass-priest and papist; gif they be found within the Fortes, they dree a douking in the Nor' Loch for the first offence, and a clean drowning in Bonnington Linn for the second. His riders had a lang chase nae farther gane than yesterday, frae Wardie peel to the Braid's burn, after a mass-priest, Sir James Tarbet, who had been found lamenting over his broken idols in the chapel of St. James by the sea; but I grieve that they failed to catch him."
"Beware thee, Adam!" said the knight of Whittinghame, "or thou mayest get a broken head for broaching such free opinions in an hostellary. The head of antichrist is still floating above the current of public opinion."