“Ha! ha! I see, I see,” replied Will. “Ane o’ the limmers has been sapping and undermining Coberston wi’ her hellish scandal. What’s the lurdon’s name, my Lord?”
“Gibson of Durie,” rejoined Traquair.
“Ah! a weel-kenned scandalous runt that,” replied Will. “She’s the auldest o’ the hail fifteen, if I’m no cheated—Leddie President o’ the coterie. She spak sair against me when the King’s advocate claimed for his Majesty my auld turret o’ Gilnockie. I owe that quean an auld score. How lang do you want her lodged in Græme’s Tower?”
“Three months would maybe change her tongue,” replied the Warden; “but the enterprise seems desperate, Will.”
“Desperate! my Lord,” replied the other—“that word’s no kenned on the Borders. Is it the doing o’t, or the dool for the doing o’t, that has the desperation in’t?”
“The consequences to you would be great, Will,” said Traquair. “You are confined here for stealing a cow, and would be hanged for it if I did not save ye. Our laws are equal and humane. For stealing a cow one may be hanged; but there’s no such law against stealing a paper-lord.”
“That shows the guid sense o’ our lawgivers,” replied Will, with a leer on his face. “The legislator has wisely weighed the merits o’ the twa craturs; yet, were it no for your case, my Lord, I could wish the law reversed. I wad be in nae hurry stealing ane o’ thae cummers, at least for my ain use; and, as for Peggy, she would rather see a cow at Gilnockie ony day.”
“Weel, Will,” said his Lordship, “I do not ask thee to steal for me old Leddie Gibson. I dare not. You understand me; but I am to save your life; and I tell thee that, if that big-wigged personage be not, within ten days, safely lodged in Græme’s Tower, my lands of Coberston will find a new proprietor, and your benefactor will be made a lordly beggar.”
“Fear not, my Lord,” replied Will. “I’m nae suner out than she’s in. She’ll no say a word against Coberston for the next three months, I warrant ye. But, by my faith, it’s as teuch a job as boilin’ auld Soulis in the cauldron at the Skelfhill; and I hae nae black spae-book like Thomas to help my spell. Yet, after a’, my Lord, what spell is like the wit o’ man, when he has courage to act up to ’t!”
The Warden acknowledged the truth of Will’s heroic sentiment; and, having satisfied himself that the bold riever would perform his promise, he departed, and in two days afterwards the prisoner was liberated, and on his way to his residence at the Hollows. It was apparent, from Will’s part of the dialogue, that he had some knowledge of the object the Lord Warden had in view in carrying off a Lord of Session from the middle of the capital; yet it is doubtful if he troubled himself with more than the fact of its being the wish of his benefactor that the learned judge should be for a time confined in Græme’s Tower; and, conforming to a private hint of his Lordship before he departed from the jail, he kept up in his wife Margaret’s mind the delusion that it was truly “an auld lurdon” whom he was to steal, as a condition for getting out of prison. On the morning after his arrival at Gilnockie, Will held a consultation with two tried friends, whose assistance he required in this most extraordinary of all the rieving expeditions he had ever yet been engaged in; and the result of their long sederunt was, that, within two hours after, the three were mounted on as many prancing Galloways, and with a fourth led by a bridle, and carrying their provisions, a large cloak, and some other articles. They took the least frequented road to the metropolis of Scotland. Having arrived there, they put up their horses at a small hostelry in the Grassmarket; and, next day, Will, leaving his friends at the inn, repaired to that seat of the law and learning of Scotland, where the “hail fifteen” sat in grim array, munching, with their toothless jaws, the thousand scraps of Latin law-maxims (borrowed from the Roman and feudal systems) which then ruled the principles of judicial proceedings in Scotland.