"Marry! sir, a score—you are welcome."
"You are perhaps ignorant of the law by which, if any Englishman comes into the kingdom of Scotland, to kirk or market, or to any other place, without a safe assurance, the warden, or any man, may make him a lawful prisoner."
"Nay, fair sir, we are not ignorant of that law, and have here a special assurance from the Scottish earl who is lord-warden of the eastern marches."
"'Tis well,—then for this night at least, we are comrades," replied Florence, giving his hand to the strangers, who were no other than Master Edward Shelly, and his companion, Master William Patten, of London; who, having mistaken the way, and being wary of exciting suspicion by inquiries, had for some hours been completely astray in the Torwood. Hackerston, who had suffered severe pecuniary losses in the war of '44, when the Duke of Somerset (then Lord Hertford) set Edinburgh on fire in eight different quarters, grumbled under his beard at this accession to their party.
"Fawside," said he, "I am a man true and faithful to God and the queen. Praised be Heaven, I have never consorted with traitors, or made tryst or truce with Englishmen——"
"Yes; but to leave strangers adrift in this wild wood, where broken men and savage bulls, yea, and wolves too, have their lair, is what an honest fellow like you would never consent to; so, lead on."
In a few minutes more, the travellers found themselves close to a small square tower, surrounded by a fosse and wall—an edifice the ruins of which still remain, and present in their aspect nothing remarkable, or different from the usual towers of Scottish landholders of limited means.
"Hallo—gate, gate, ho!" shouted Hackerston, two or three times, before a man appeared on the summit of the keep, and after counting the number of men, by the starlight, disappeared. His inspection had evidently been unsatisfactory, for he presented himself again, but lower down, on the barbican wall, and immediately above the gate, where he thrust a cresset over the parapet, at the end of a long pole, and surveyed the visitors a second time. The species of light called a cresset, was formed of a loosely-twisted rope, dipped in pitch and resin, and coiled up in a little iron basket, which swung like a trivet between the prongs of a fork. It flared on the old walls of the tower, on the keen, peering eyes and waving grey beard of the old warder, as he shaded his grim face with his weather-beaten hand, and assured himself that those who came so late, and halloed so loud, were not Livingstones bent on stouthrief and hamesücken, but real and veritable travellers, lacking food and shelter for man and horse. Apparently this second and closer scrutiny, which the desperate nature of the times required and rendered common, satisfied his scruples; the flashing cresset was withdrawn, the gate was unclosed, and Florence, with his five companions, soon found himself in the hall or chamber of dais, in the little fortalice still known as the haunted castle of the Torwood.