("Long life to Innerkepple and the fair Katherine!")
"Now you are getting the grand adulation," said the Frenchman. "Ha! they are a jovial troup of good chaps, and deserve one grand potation; but I gave them only one leetle hamper, for fear they should get mouillé."
"Very considerate, Monsieur, very prudent and kind," said the baron; "for twa-thirds o' my men are fechtin fer Jamie, and we hae a kittle neebor in Otterstone, whase son I hear has come hame frae St. Omers. By-the-by, saw ye the callant in France? They say he's sair ashamed o' the defeat o' his father by the generalship o' my dochter Kate."
"Ha! did ma chere leddy combattre Otterstone?" ejaculated the Frenchman, laughing. "Very good! ha! ha! ha! I did not know that, ven I sold him one quantity of vin yesterday; but I assure you, mon cher Innerkepple, he is not at all your enemy, and his son did praise ma chere leddy as the most magnificent vench in all the contrée."
("Excellently sustained," muttered Katherine to herself. "How I do love the roll of that dark eye, and the curl of
that lip covered with the black moustache! Can so much beauty conceal a deadly purpose? But the 'magnificent vench' shall earn yet a better title to the soubriquet out of thy discomfiture, fair, deceitful, sweet devil.")
"I only wish I had Otterstone whar you are, man," said Innerkepple, "wi' the liquor as sweet an' my bile nae bitterer. I would conquer him in better style than did my dochter, though, I confess, she manœuvred him beautifully."
("Perdition to the faes o' Innerkepple! and, chief o' them, the fause Otterstone, the leddy-licked loon!")
"Helas! The master and the men have the very different creeds," said the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders; "but my vin is making the bon companions choleric. Ha! ha!"
("It is—it is!" muttered Katherine, as she strained her eyes to catch the signal of a white handkerchief, that floated on the top of one of the trees in the fir-wood.)