The sun had set.
The last rays died away on the cathedral spire, and Arthur's round volcanic cone; the last wayfarer had been ferried across the loch, and had disappeared over the opposite hill; successively the seven barriers of the city were closed for the night, and then the evening bell from the old wooden spire of the Tron rang on the rising wind. Though this evening had been a beautiful one, and all the gayer denizens of the city had flocked to the Lawnmarket and Castle Hill (then the only and usual promenades), the tall feather and laced mantle of Lord Clermistonlee had not been seen there.
From the windows of his chamber-of-dais he had long been surveying the view before described, but in one feature of it alone he seemed most interested. It was, where to the westward above the open fields named Halkerstoun's Crofts, he saw the smokeless chimnies of his empty, dismantled, and deserted mansion of Drumsheugh, which for many a year had been abandoned to a venerable colony of rooks and owls. The broad acres of fertile land that spread around it were now no longer his. Successively haugh, holm, farm, and onsteading, mill, and field had passed away to the possession of others, and of the noble estate acquired by his ancestors, and which he had gained as a dower with his fair cousin Alison, nothing remained but the silent and dreary mansion, which was fated soon (by his pressing necessities) to pass into other hands. To Clermistonlee this was the leading feature of the landscape, and long and fixedly he surveyed its square stacks of dark old chimnies that rose above the bare and leafless woods.
The expression of his face was fierce and unsettled; his cheek was deeply flushed; but that might be attributed to the briskness with which he and his gossip Mersington had pushed the tankard between them since dinner. They were both deep drinkers, and in the old Edinburgh fashion it was no uncommon thing, for his Lordship (when he gave a dinner party) to lock the room door, and in presence of his guests send the key flying through the barred window into the Norloch, thereby intimating that there could be no egress until the last of a long array of flasks, which Juden mustered on the buffet, was drained to the bottom; after which the door was unhinged, and all the guests were carried home by their servants in chairs or shoulder high.
One hand was thrust under the ample skirt of his shag dressing-gown; the other drummed on the window panes; but a stern expression gathered on his broad and lofty brow, and sparkled in his deep-set hazel eyes.
Mersington sat near the cheerful fire. His weazel-like visage was radiant at times with a malicious smile, which briefly gave way for one of sincere pleasure, each time he applied to his thin and ever thirsty lips the tankard of burnt sack, which his affectionate hand never quitted for a moment. His mighty senatorial wig—the badge of his wisdom and power—hung on the chair-knob behind him, and his bald pate shone like a varnished ball in the evening twilight. His pale grey eyes wore their usual expression, by which it was impossible to detect whether he was drunk or sober; but they often wandered to a panel opposite, where the following was chalked in a bold irregular hand.
His honor the Laird of Holsterlee bets the Right Honourable Lord Clermistonlee £10,000 of gude Scots monie payable at Whitsuntide—his mear Meg against Fleur de Lysy or Royal Charles. To be run at Easter on the sandis of Leith, God willing.
CLERMISTONLEE.
HOLSTERLEE, Scots Guards.
"Forsooth! you are a proper man to start from the board, and turn your back on a guest thus," said Mersington. "Whistle a bar o' that oure again.
"There was a clocker, it dabbit at a man,
And he dee'd wi' fear,
And he dee'd wi' fear——"