"The arm of the gibbet."
"Weel," rejoined the judge, drily, "and what news brought the messenger?"
"Nought but letters from the exiled lords and gentlemen; some of them, I tell thee, Mersington, are deeply touching, and would harrow up even that impenetrable heart of thine. They tell of blighted loves and blasted hopes, of sorrow and of suffering, humiliation and despair; but of a loyalty and unblemished honour that shed a glory around the cause for which they suffer—a glory that makes us intensely despicable by comparison. There are passages in some of those letters from the brave cavaliers of Dundee that have made many of the Council almost weep with compassion. By the Heaven that is above us, I feel that I would be a thousand times more happy as one of those illustrious exiles, than struggling here to maintain, by gambling, exactions, and roguery, a hollow rank, a gilded title, and a career of extravagance on which I have run too far to return!"
"The only sensible clause in your process," said Mersington, testily. "But you'll hae yoursel laid by the heels yet, and then you may whistle on your thumb for the braw mains and revenues of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes, for whilk you've graned and girned these twa years and mair."
"Right! 'twas but the feeling of a moment for the misfortunes of our former friends, whose hearts, to their honour (unlike ours) were better than their heads."
"Puir chields—puir chields—I doubt the Act of eighty-nine presses unco hard on some of them."
"Among other letters, is one from that wild spark, Douglas of Finland, once a lieutenant in the regiment of Dunbarton, addressed to his false leman, Mistress Annie Laurie. Poor credulous fool, to trust in a woman's faith! He knows not that she hath become Lady Craigdarroch, and so hath forgot him in the arms of his friend. I like love-letters, having written some bushels of them in my time; but his—by the devil's beard!—it equals anything in the Banished Virgin, or Cassandra. I have taken the liberty to confiscate it to my own use; and here it is."
"Hold! a thought strikes me; the hand is easy of imitation, and for what may ye no add a postscriptum, whilk may be of service in your love affair, by wedding young Fenton——"
"The devil confound him!"
"To some airy damoiselle; or knocking him on the head during his French campaign?"