"No."
"So much the better. But get me supper and a swift horse. Sumpter nags will come anon for my leathern mails, which I leave in your care, gudeman. Beware how you let men handle them, though my papers and valuables I carry on my own proper person, where my sword can easier answer any kind friend who inquires after them."
"My house, I have said, is stainless and sakeless."
"And now for supper," said Florence impatiently.
"I can let you have a pie of eels, from Lithgow Loch; a hash of Fife mutton, yea, mutton from Largo, where they say every tooth in a sheep's head is worth a French crown."
"Good!—the supper quick, the horse quicker," said Fawside laughing;—for it was a superstition in those days, and for long after, that the teeth of the flocks which browsed on the conical hill of Largo were turned to solid silver by its herbage.
He then turned once more to the window, to gaze on his mother's distant dwelling,—on those hills from whence the last gleam of sunlight had now died away. He drew from a pocket in the breast of his beautiful doublet two letters, tied with white ribbons saltirewise, and sealed with yellow wax, impressed by three fleur-de-lys. One was addressed—
"A Madame ma soeur, la Seine d'Ecosse."
The other bore—
"For Monseigneur the Earl of Arran, Lord Hamilton, Knight of St. Andrew and St. Michael, Regent of Scotland."