"Nay," cried the landlord, "Gude forbid that I should be a briber," still holding the glass towards the soldier, who sat in a thoughtful posture, plainly swithering.
"That fellow Ecclesfield," said he, as it were to himself, "the game's up with him in this world."
"And in the next too, Jack Windsor, if he does na repent," replied the landlord; and the dragoon put forth his hand, and, taking the glass, drank off the brandy.
"It's a damned hard service this here in Scotland," said Windsor, holding the empty glass in his hand.
"'Deed is't, Jack," said the landlord, "and it canna be a pleasant thing to a warm-hearted lad like you, Jack Windsor, to be ravaging poor country folk, only because they hae gotten a bee in their bonnets about prelacy."
"Damn prelacy, says I," exclaimed the dragoon.
"Whisht, whisht, Jack," said the landlord; "but when a man's sae scomfisht as ye maun be the night after your skirring, a word o' vexation canna be a great faut. Gudewife, fill Jack's glass again. Ye'll be a' the better o't, Jack;" and he took the glass from the dragoon's hand and held it to his wife, who again filled it to the flowing eye.
"I should think," said the dragoon, "that Ecclesfield cannot be far off. He ought not to have run away till we had tested the strangers."
"Ah! Jack Windsor," replied the landlord, holding out the glass to him, "that's easy for you, an honest lad wi' a clear conscience, to say, but think o' what Ecclesfield was art and part in. Ye may thank your stars, Jack, that ye hae ne'er been guilty o' the foul things that he's wyted wi'. Are your father and mother living, Jack Windsor?"
"I hope so," said the dragoon; "but the old man was a little so so when I last heard of 'em."