"Then give me thy hand, John Dargavel, and here is mine," replied Roland.
Each kissed his right hand, and presented it to the other.
"This is the generous frankness of a gallant soldier," said Leslie, as Birrel slunk away; "but, I doubt me, 'tis sorely misplaced, for that fellow hath the eye of a very ruffian. St. Mary! I could not have believed my haughty Vipont would have condescended thus—even though a friar had sworn it."
"The faggots of hell encompass thee!" muttered Birrel (uttering the favourite curse of those days), as he overheard Leslie; "but I may, ere the morning, serve my lord and myself by avenging all this! Praise God, I have still my poniard, with ten lives in its pommel!"
He drew near the great fire, and mingled with the soldiers, who were busy spitting strings of pullets, broiling eggs, basting a lordly roast, toasting cheese, and mulling wine, amid such jesting and revelling as none but soldiers can indulge in after danger dared and slaughter past. There were several among them who no doubt would have recognised him as the witch-pricker of Edinburgh, had they been less occupied with the pleasant task of satisfying their appetite, or had they more closely examined his face, the vile expression of which was considerably increased by the manner in which he had smeared it with dust and mud for concealment; but Lintstock, who had some undefinable suspicions concerning him, kept a strict watch over all his movements, and never once lost sight of him, even for a moment, during the whole night.
The feasting was over, the demi-john had been drained, fresh guards had been posted, and the soldiers lay down to sleep, for Roland had announced they were to march by sunrise, and desired Lintstock to prepare a spiced posset of wine for his friend Leslie and himself, against the time when the morning trumpet should sound.
Two box beds opened off the hall, and each officer, without removing his armour, occupied one of them; while their soldiers slept on the floor, lying close together, with their swords and arquebuses beside them; and as the pavement was somewhat cold (even though the month was June), the staves of the demi-john, a few sturdy oak chairs, and several other articles of furniture, had been heaped in the chimney, where they were all blazing in a sheet of flame, like a yule-nicht fire.
Rolled up in his grey maud, Nichol Birrel reclined in a corner of the ingle, with his bonnet drawn over his eyes; but instead of being asleep, as he pretended, he was intently watching the groups that slept around him. In a more remote corner lay Lintstock, partly under the hall table, with his axe and sword under his head as a pillow, and his keen bright eye fixed on the shaggy-headed brodder, who had not the least idea that he was either watched or suspected.
And thus the two men lay, for nearly two hours. The brodder watching the sleeping soldiers, and Lintstock watching him. The one-eyed veteran had conceived an invincible mistrust and repugnance of their new acquaintance, and lay awake like a lynx.
The fire began to sink and smoulder; and the objects in the hall, its great and sturdily-legged table, the sleeping groups in their conical corslets and red doublets, the yawning fire-place and the rough arch of the mantelpiece, the ponderous beams of the ceiling and the deep embrasures of the windows, assumed various shapes to the half-closed eye of Lintstock. The shadows became black, while a fainter red began to flicker on the walls as the embers died, and everything became grotesquely indistinct.