Walter's voice trembled, for a first love (while it lasts) is always a timid and a true one. His passion was rapidly mastering him. Lilian soon began to tremble too, but had sufficient tact to answer with a tone of raillery,—
"I owe you something for your chairman's fee—ah, rogue Walter, you are pulling my glove off! Come, Sir! tirl the risp, or must I stand here all night."
The risp rang; but first she permitted him to untie and remove a glove from her hand, which he immediately pressed to his lips. His heart glowed within him, his feelings became tumultuous and impetuous—at all risks he would have pressed her to his heart and transferred to her soft cheek that burning kiss—but unluckily the door was opened at that instant by a sleepy old servant (who still carried the pewter flagon which he had drained in the spence an hour before), and Meinie Elshender, who appeared very coyly in a very becoming dishabille, with all her fine hair gathered up, en papillotes.
Pleased with all the passages of the night, Walter retired, and preserved in his gauntlet the little blonde glove which his braced corslet of steel prevented him from consigning to his bosom—the romancer's grand emporium for all tokens of love and friendship, save,—cash.
Happy Walter walked briskly forward between fields and hedges, shaded by trees that were now clothed in the heaviest foliage of summer, and skirted the western rhinns of the lake, where the scared coots squattered among the sedges at his approach. The vast expanse of water lay still as death; its dark unruffled bosom reflecting only the occasional stars and the masses of flying cloud which by turns revealed and obscured them.
The deep bark of a watchdog in some lonely cot made him start at times, as it echoed among the copsewood; so did every distant sound, and every peculiar shadow attracted his scrutiny. He kept his sword-hilt ever at hand. Perilous to all, the times were especially so to the soldiery, whose duties, dictated by the tyranny of the Council, and the mistaken bigotry of James VII., made them obnoxious to all—but more so to the oppressed Covenanters, whose vengeance and hatred had been terribly evinced on several occasions.
It was the patrician regiment of Claverhouse they more particularly reviled and abhorred; and several of his reckless cavaliers had perished by the most villanous assassination. One was actually shot dead in open day in the streets of Edinburgh; and soldiers were often barbarously murdered in their solitary billets in the country. The indiscriminate ferocity with which the guilty districts were invariably scourged for those outrages, served but to make matters worse. It has been remarked by some one, that though there were laws for everything in Scotland, even to the shape of a woman's hood, still it remained the most lawless kingdom in Europe.
Walter knew that his only personal enemy was Lord Clermistonlee, yet every sound kept him on the qui vive, and interrupted the gayer visions of his fancy, and his happy anticipations of the morrow, when he had made an appointment to escort Lilian to the Castlehill and Luckenbooths, then the favourite promenades of the loungers of the time.