"Dares!"
"I have said so, sir," replied the soldier, shaking his plume.
"Ha! ha! You either mock yourself or me."
"Uds daggers, sirrah! What make you here?"
"That you shall soon learn. You remember giving me, in the streets of Edinburgh, a letter for the laird of Millheugh!"
"I have some faint recollection of doing so," replied Champfleurie, with an impertinent yawn.
"That letter was a deadly snare,—a lure for my destruction; and you knew it to be so."
"You—John Livingstone of Champfleurie!"
"How, laird of Fawside—how?"
"By the tenor of the letter, and by the message with which you accompanied it, you proved yourself to be——"