Mr. Drouthy the butler, and other old servitors, who had seen something of free quarters under the Duke of Hamilton in England, entered heartily into the spirit of entertaining their noisy visitors, to whom they detailed the fields of Inverkeithing, Dunbar, and Kerbeister, with great vociferation, and ever and anon voted the Reverend Mr. Bummel a most unqualified bore, and declared that "the house of Bruntisfield was weel rid of his grunting and skirling about owls and sparrows in the desert."
CHAPTER IV.
A PAIR OF BLUE EYES.
Thou tortur'st me. I hate all obligations
Which I can ne'er return—and who art thou,
That I should stoop to take them from your hand?
FATAL CURIOSITY.
The post of honour—that in the hall or lobby immediately outside the room occupied by the ladies—had been appropriated by the serjeant to Walter Fenton.
The young man placed his pike across the door of the chamber of dais (as the dining-hall was named in those Scottish houses, which, though to all intents baronial, were not castles) and then paced slowly to and fro.
A lamp, the chain of which was suspended from the mouth of a grotesque face carved on the wall, lighted the lobby or ambulatory, and dimly its flickering rays were reflected by a rusty trophy of ancient weapons opposite. An old head-piece and chain-jacket formed the centre, while crossbows, matchlocks, partisans, and two-handed swords, radiated round them. A deer's skull and antlers, riding gambadoes, heavy whips and spurs, a row of old knobby chairs, and a clumsy oaken clock, which (like many persons in the world) had two faces, one looking to the lobby, the other to the dining-hall, ticked sullenly in a corner, and made up the furniture of the place.
Save the monotonous vibrations of the clock, and an occasional murmur of voices from the chamber of dais, no other sound disturbed the solitary watch of Fenton, unless when a distant shout of hilarity burst from the vaulted kitchen, and reverberated through the winding staircases and stone corridors of the ancient mansion.
Absorbed in meditation, the young man walked slowly to and fro, turning with something of military briskness at each end of the half-darkened passage, by the indifferent light of which we must present a view of him to the reader.
"A young man, gentle-voiced and gentle-eyed,
Who looked and spake like one the world had frowned on."