"'Tis false, sirrah," growled the laird of Sauchie, who overheard the remark, which was made a little too audibly; "he is a brave fellow, who has won his spurs as he wins his daily bread by knight's service and the sword. Were he a cutter of stones, like the umquhile Cochrane, a fiddler, like William Rogers, or a useless scribbler, like thee, I would care little to see him gang the gate those loons were sent at Lauder."
"Alas, noble sir," urged the Benedictine, submissively, "Cochrane was a most unfortunate man——"
"He was a villain," said the Earl of Angus; "a dyvour who had turned heretic in his heart, and carried a Bible at his belt by a silver chain—a Bible printed in black letters by a German sorcerer, even such as the king would employ to print thy written book. Enough, sir!"
After this, the priest had nothing more to urge.
"Father Zuill," said the king to the chaplain of the Yellow Frigate, "I am glad to see thee, and have received thy learned treatise on the burning glasses of the ancients, which I hope to peruse with pleasure; though I doubt mickle if you will ever supersede our cannon-balls. I have desired his grace of Montrose to present you with a copy of Virgil, by Caxton the Englishman."
Confronting the lofty and arrogant eyes of the nobility, Falconer, who was armed like themselves, but less richly, retired towards the curtained doorway, where his arquebussiers were stationed, with the Montrose Herald and Garioch Pursuivant.
"This protégé of Wood," said Sir Patrick Gray, "is a coxcomb, whose profound admiration of his own person—"
"Is only surpassed by his profound loyalty and respect for his native monarch," said Lady Euphemia Drummond, bluntly interrupting him, as she and her sisters drew near their father. Sybilla, who blushed with anger at Gray, gave her tall, pale eldest sister, a glance full of gratitude; but the governor of Broughty, whom the words native monarch had stung deeply, bit his white lips with sudden anger, and relapsed into silence.
"How the devil doth it come to pass," said the imperious Lord Drummond, "that this churl, Falconer, who hath neither lands nor rents coming in, wears a scarlet mantle like a landed baron?"
"'Tis the growing insolence of the class he springs from," replied Sir James Shaw, haughtily, drawing his own rich mantle over his breast.