“And what if you have, sir?” returned she.
“Why, nothing at all, save that I earnestly desire, and long exceedingly to join with you in your devotional exercises,” laying hold of her in the rudest manner.
Katharine screamed so loud that in an instant old Nanny was at their side, with revenge gleaming from her half–shaded eyes, and heaving over her shoulder a large green–kale gully, with which she would doubtless have silenced the renowned Dundee for ever, had not Livingston sprung forward with the utmost celerity, and caught her arm just as the stroke was descending. But Nanny did not spare her voice; she lifted it up with shouts on high, and never suffered one yell to lose hearing of another.
Walter, having just then returned from the hill, and hearing the hideous uproar in the Old Room, rushed into it forthwith to see what was the matter. Katharine was just sinking, when her father entered, within the grasp of the gentle and virtuous Clavers. The backs of both the knights were towards Walter as he came in, and they were so engaged amid bustle and din that neither of them perceived him, until he was close at their backs. He was at least a foot taller than any of them, and nearly as wide round the chest as them both. In one moment his immense fingers grasped both their slender necks, almost meeting behind each of their windpipes. They were rendered powerless at once—they attempted no more struggling with the women, for so completely had Walter’s gripes unnerved them, that they could scarcely lift their arms from their sides; neither could they articulate a word, or utter any other sound than a kind of choaked gasping for breath. Walter wheeled them about to the light, and looked alternately at each of them, without quitting or even slackening his hold.
“Callants, wha ir ye ava?—or what’s the meanin’ o’ a’ this unmencefu’ rampaging?”
Sir Thomas gave his name in a hoarse and broken voice; but Clavers, whose nape Walter’s right hand embraced, and whose rudeness to his daughter had set his mountain–blood a–boiling, could not answer a word. Walter, slackening his hold somewhat, waited for an answer, but none coming—
“Wha ir ye, I say, ye bit useless weazel–blawn like urf that ye’re?”
The haughty and insolent Clavers was stung with rage; but seeing no immediate redress was to be had, he endeavoured to pronounce his dreaded name, but it was in a whisper scarcely audible, and stuck in his throat—“Jo—o—o Graham,” said he.
“Jock Graham do they ca’ ye?—Ye’re but an unmannerly whalp, man. And ye’re baith king’s officers too!—Weel, I’ll tell ye what it is, my denty clever callants; if it warna for the blood that’s i’ your master’s veins, I wad nite your twa bits o’ pows thegither.”
He then threw them from him; the one the one way, and the other the other, and lifting his huge oak staff, he strode out at the door, saying, as he left them,—“Hech! are free men to be guidit this gate—I’ll step down to the green to your commander, an’ tell him what kind o’ chaps he keeps about him to send into fock’s houses.—Dirty unmensefu’ things!”