But if this young lady will marry you, and relieve us, O my conscience! I'll turn friend to the sex, and rail no more at matrimony.—THE LYING VALET.
Issuing from a private gate in the northern flank of the city wall, at the foot of the court attached to his mansion, the Lord and his staunch follower mounted in a narrow lane, overhung on one side by gloomy trees, and on the other by the ancient hospital of the Holy Trinity. The great oriel, or triple window of its church was then faintly lighted by the beams of the rising moon, the silver disk of which seemed to rest on the sable ridge of Arthur's Seat. They passed through the Calton, then a straggling burgh, consisting of antique houses of Flemish aspect, but occupied by a very inferior class of citizens, and entered the long and solitary path called Leith Loan, which was formed by an ancient trench of the Great Civil Wars; hollowly rang their horses' hoofs between the black rocks of the Calton on one hand, and the steep bank of St. Ninian on the other, where the ivied and shattered walls of a convent presented in the bright moonlight a striking variety of light and shade.
To avoid every chance of recognition or surprise, Clermistonlee thus made a complete circuit of the city, leaving it on the side opposite to the scene of his operations. The night soon became as cloudy and dark as he could have wished it, for, as the fitful moon became involved in opaque masses of vapour, every object was rendered obscure and indistinct. On one side of the way lay the lake, like a sheet of ink, and beyond it rose up the stupendous cliffs and ramparts of the castle, and the gigantic outline of the city towering like a mighty bank of cloud, through which the lights of distant casements glimmered like far and fitful stars. On the other side spread open fields and solitary farms; the castles of the Touris of Inverleith, the Kincaids of Warriston, and two or three small and lonely hamlets.
"Clermistonlee," began Juden, closing up to his master as the Long Gate became darker and more lonely, for the cottages of St. Ninian were now far behind; "If the auld witch, Elshender, by kecking through a spule bane should divine our errand, our riding will be to little purpose I reckon. She is an unco uncanny body, Lucky Elsie, and though her gudeman was a trooper, and did richt leal service in King Charles' wars, I would fain see her brought to the tar-barrel, for, wow, but I hate an auld blench-lippit, long-chaffit, sunk-eyed carlin, as I do sour ale or the deil."
The Lord vouchsafed no reply to these sapient remarks, and Juden, feeling somewhat uneasy at his silence, the darkness, and their vicinity to the old Cross-kirk of St. Cuthbert, with its great square central tower and broad burial grounds, studded with mossy tombstones and slabs half sunk in the long reedy grass, spurred nearer and spoke again.
"And then to think o' Meg, puir beastie! to fa' ill o' the wheezlock, the malanders, and deil kens a' what, the very night ye trampled down that auld cummer's kailcastocks, and wi' this match wi' Holsterlee to come off at Easter! Troth, my Lord Mersington has thumbscrewed and tar-barrelled scores o' auld besoms on the half o' sic evidence o' malice, and ungodly ill will. And I would beg o' you to gie Mersington a hint, that she was the gossip of Helen of Peaston, who was burned ten years byegone. Od's fish! I saw the brodder o' the High Court run his steel pricker thrice into Belzeebub's mark on her bare back—a lang black teat whereat she suckled Hornie's imps, and she neither winced nor skirled. And for what I would like mickle to ken——"
"Silence."
"Doth not this auld deevil, Elshender, deserve the tar-barrel as weel as her neighbour cummer."
"I tell thee, silence! Blow the match that must light the link."
"The link—now?"