Honest old Lintstock, the ex-gunner, instead of settling on the estate which Vipont received in free barony from the king, married the hostel, or rather the hosteller's widow, to whom he had paid his court so long; and though he became one of the wealthiest burgesses of the good town, instead of becoming either a councillor or baillie, he preferred to doze away his time by the tap-room fire, where, with other old iron-headed troopers and trampers, over a can of mum-beer, he told long and interminable stories of the battles of Flodden and Haddonrig; of sakers, of carthouns, and cannons-royale; and of blowing Englishmen, Spaniards, and Highlandmen all to rags and fritters, for he had fought against them all in his time.
The end of Dobbie the Doomster is buried in obscurity, unless we connect him in some way with the same legal functionary who is said to have drowned himself by leaping in a drunken fit from the steep pinnacle of rock which overhangs the Loch of Duddingstone, and is now known as the Hangman's Knowe; but if it will comfort the reader to know the end of Birrel the Brodder, we may add that this amiable individual became unfortunately involved in the murder of Cardinal Beaton in the year 1546, and being taken with other prisoners when St. Andrew's was stormed by the admiral of the galleys, Leon, prior of Capua, he was conveyed to France, where he died, miserably chained to an oar, and scourged almost to a skeleton, in a galley at Brest.
John of the Silvermills, first deacon of the barber-chirurgeons at Edinburgh, never completed his famous elixir, which would have brought his profession to a close, and enabled us to live without an ache or an ailment for ever. This precious compound was just on the point of completion by the addition of that small ingredient it had lacked so long, and for which he had found a substitute in the blood of a certain reptile, mentioned in the black letter "Ereptology" of Francis Redi, when one dark night ten thousand Englishmen landed and gave all to fire and sword in and around Edinburgh. This was Lord Hertford's famous invasion in 1544.
Poor John's laboratory was destroyed, and for months afterwards he was to be seen, like the ghost of himself, rending his beard, and lamenting over the ruins of his premises, strewed with shattered retorts and broken crucibles, and mourning heavily, like another Jeremiah, over the fall of an imaginary Babylon.
NOTES.
I.
JANE SETON.
The unfortunate passage in Scottish history, which afforded a hint for the foregoing romance, will be found in "Pitcairn's Criminal Trials," at considerable length, and also in a little history of the "Life of James V.," reprinted in Miscellanea Scotica from the edition of 1710; but as both these works may be beyond the reader's reach, we may briefly state the facts as being these.
In the year 1537, Jane Douglas, the young and beautiful widow of Lord Glammis, and sister of the Earl of Angus, together with her second husband, the Laird of Skipness, an aged priest, and others, were accused by a person named William Lyon, of endeavouring to compass the king's death by poison and sorcery.
Slighting the addresses of Lyon and many others who aspired to her hand, after the death of Lord Glammis, she had preferred Campbell of Skipness; upon which Lyon, inflamed by rivalry and revenge, made a terrible vow, that his life should be dedicated to her destruction; and hence came the charge, upon which she and her immediate friends were committed to the Castle of Edinburgh.