"Storm—a storm said ye?"
"Yes, amid which, if we can hold our own bonnets on our heads, we will be clever fellows, Swinton."
"And whence blows the breeze, think ye?"
"'The Lowlands of Holland,' as the song says," replied the cavalier lord, drawing himself up with a scornful smile.
"Wheesht!—hee, hee, hee!" chuckled the other, waving one hand warningly, while burying his rat-like visage in the sack tankard to hide the cunning smile of intelligence that spread over it. "Harkee, Randal, whare'er the de'il be laird, you'll be tenant—hee, hee!'
"I value a crash in politics at the worth of a brass tester, and bid hail to the days of hard blows and buff coats. Ha! ha! I may pick up a marquisate in the scramble," laughed Clermistonlee, flapping his hat over his eyes. "You will not accompany me to-night, being scarcely cavalier enough for this kind of work."
"Hoots, man, a double-gowned senator of the College of Justice, a Lord of Council and Session, aiding and abetting in wilful fire-raising! Doth not the act say, 'Quha cummis and burnis folk in their housis will be guilty o' treason and lese-majestie?' and as for running off wi' the lassie Lilian, that is clearly a kidnapping o' the lieges, whilk, according to Skene and Sir Thomas o' Glendoick——"
"Gossip Mersington, there are overmuch wine and law in thee to-night to leave room for common sense. Ha! there goes the ten o'clock drum, and that loitering villain has not yet returned!"
He threw open a window that faced the south, where the black mansions of the Netherbow towered up from the steep hill at the foot of which his house was situated. The sound of a distant drum, beat in slow, regular, and monotonous measure, was heard on the wind at intervals, as a drummer of the Civic Guard (an old corps of Scottish gensd'armes, which existed from the fatal day at Flodden until 1818,) ascended St. Mary's Wynd, his usual nightly round, after having descended the Bow, and beat along the once lordly and fashionable Cowgate, where kings have feasted royally, and where Scottish nobles and the ambassadors of foreign powers were wont to dwell—but now the hideous abode of misery and crime, and long since abandoned to the dregs of mankind. On strode the drummer, and the gates of the Netherbow revolved back at his approach: as he passed under its double towers, its picturesque spire and high embattled arch, the great street of the city, wide and lofty, but dark and deserted, rang to the same monotonous chamade and all its echoing closes, broad paved wynds and old arcades of wood or stone, its circular stairs and oaken outshots gave back a thousand reverberations as "the ten o'clock drummer" strode on, until reaching the Town Guard House, where he finished his perambulation of the ancient Royalty by a long and loud ruffle, which scared the vultures from the skulls that mouldered on the parapets of the prison, startled the rooks in the gothic diadem of St. Giles, and made all its hollow vaults and high arched aisles, where the dead of ages lie, give back the warlike sound.
The drum rang loudly as it passed the archway that led to the lodging of Clermistonlee, who threw down the window with a crash, exclaiming,