"Then God bless her!" said Joram; "her father's Hall of Mildenham can show the marks of Cromwell's bullets. And your master, gaffer Englishman—his name?"
"Marmaduke Langstone," answered the servant, hesitatingly.
"Who commands a corps of Red Dragoons on the borders of Bedfordshire?"
"The same."
"Then hell's malison on him for a false, canting, prick-eared, round-headed, double-dyed traitor!" exclaimed the chaplain, furiously, as he attacked a cold sirloin, with the same energy as if it had been the proprietor. "He is now tracking us from place to place; but if he comes within reach of our cannon—Gadso! let him look to it."
A sumptuous breakfast of cold roasted beef, venison pies, broiled salmon, white manchets, cheese, butter, eggs, milk, possets of sack, tankards of spiced ale, coffee, &c. had been spread on the table of the dining-hall, by the timid English servants, whose dread and aversion of their unwelcome guests often made the latter laugh outright.
"I am glad," said Walter, as he breakfasted, "we have taken quarters in the house of so false a traitor. I should like much to have a horse; and, for the service of King James, I will mulct him of the best in his stable."
Wemyss and other soldiers, who occupied the lower end of the long oak table, were feasting, with all the voracity of famished kites, on the rich viands; but while hewing down the great sirloin in vast slices, Hab Elshender declared that he "would rather have a cogue of brose at his mother's ingle-neuk, than the best that bluff England could produce."
"And well I agree with thee, friend Hab," said the veteran Wemyss. "My heart misgives me, we will be sorely forfoughten, ere we see the blue reek curling from our ain lumheeds. But here is to Dunbarton—God bless his noble heart, and the good old cause."
"Good Wemyss, and you, my brave lads," said Dr. Joram, from the head of the table, "I crave to drink with you."