"Heydey! I am right, then," laughed the gay nobleman, "you got a kiss, I warrant. Point d'argent point de Suisses! as we used to say of the Swiss gendarmerie, ha, ha!"
"Thanks, and the consciousness of doing a generous act, were my sole reward."
"Very likely; but I'll leave the Countess to worm the secret out of thee. Ha, ha! 'tis very unlikely that a young spark would peril his life thus, and look only for a Carthusian's reward from a dazzling damoiselle of eighteen. Ho! I had served under Turrene, Luxembourg, and Condé, long ere I was thy age, and know well that a bright eye and ruddy lip—but here is the gate of the Upper Bow, and two fresh heads grinning on its battlement since I saw it last. Whose are they?"
"Holsterlee and some of his comrades dispersed a conventicle among the Braid hills lately."
"Poor rogues! If you do not mean to accompany me; we must part here; and in the course of to-morrow, if you know where the ladies of yonder old castle at Bruntisfield are in concealment, you will doubtless acquaint them with the decree I have obtained in their favour. But their kinsman, Quentin Napier, can neither be pardoned nor relaxed from the horn."
"'Tis well," thought Walter.
The Bow, a steep winding street that descended the southern side of the hill on which the old city stands, was then closed by a strong gate called the Upper Porte, under the shadow of which the coach stopped. On the right a heavy Flemish house projected over the street, on beams of carved wood; on the left, the house of Weir the wizard frowned its terrors across the narrow way. A sentinel opened the creaking barrier, received the nightly toll, and Walter, after bidding adieu to the generous Earl, was about to retire, when the latter called him back.
"Harkee, Fenton; you have far to go, and in these times, when soldiers are openly murdered in the streets, my rapier may be of some service should any quarrelsome ruffler cross your path; take it, for I have pistols."
"A thousand thanks, my lord," replied Walter, receiving from the Earl a long and richly chased rapier sheathed in crimson velvet.
He threw the embroidered belt over his shoulder, and strode away with a feeling of pride and elation, to find himself once more a free and armed man; while the great caravan occupied by the earl, rumbled down the windings of the narrow street with increased speed, waking all the echoes of its hollow stone staircases, and scaring those indwellers who heard them through their dreams; all sounds heard by night in the Bow being fraught with imaginary terrors, and attributed to the wandering spirit of that diabolical wizard, who a short time before had expiated his real and supposed enormities amid a blaze of tar barrels on the castle hill, and whose uninhabited mansion was then viewed with horror, as it is still with curiosity.