"We are friendly inclined to ye," said he, in a tone of voice that might reach the prisoners. "Your enemy was that accursed gaberlunzie, wha maun be the very deevil himsel; for he it was wha blew us up against ye, and made us, a parcel o' quiet men, fecht against the servants o' our lawfu king. The cunning rogue's awa, and left us to bear the dirdum o' his feint or folly; and, a' ungeared as we are for war, we wish, withoot either dewyss or devilry, to ken the condition upon which ye will get yer liberty."
A loud laugh from within was the reply to this speech. What next could this mean? The farmer was confounded, the hinds stared, and every one looked at another. Here were men who five minutes before were fighting like fiends, who had been deceived and confined, struck and ill-used, indulging in a good jolly laugh at the broaching of a question concerning their liberty. The mystery was increased, the affair was more extraordinary, the development more difficult and distant.
"Ay, ay," continued the farmer, "ye may laugh; but, maybe, the laugh may be on the ither side when ye get oot. This may be an assumed guid nature, to blind us. I'm as far ben as ye, though no in the barn. Come, come. It is a serious affair. Will ye pledge the honour o' a knight, that, if I draw the bolts, ye'll let alane for let alane?"
"Surely, surely," was the ready reply, and another laugh accompanied the condition.
"Right merry prisoners, by my saul!" continued the farmer. "Will they laugh at the loss o' their horse, I wonder?" (To his friends.)
"That's a' very weel," he continued, in a higher voice. "I hae witnesses here to the pledge; but I'm sorry to inform ye that that deevil o' a beggar, wha stole yer king's mace, is aff and awa, the Lord kens whaur, wi' the best horse o' a' yer cavalcade. Will ye forgie this to the boot?"
Another burst of laughter responded from the barn, mixed with cries of—
"Ay, ay; never mind the horse. Let him go with the mace. The king of the beggars deserveth a steed."
"Weel, these are the maist pleasant faes I ever saw," said the farmer; "but I hae a' my fears there's a decoy duck i' the pond. Haud firm yer kevels, friends, in case a' this guid nature may, like the blink o' an autumn sun, be followed by the fire-flaughts o' their revenge."
The men stood prepared to fight, if necessary; the bolts were withdrawn, and out came the knights, as merry as larks, making the air resound with their laughter. The farmer and his friends were still more amazed, as, for their very souls, they could see nothing in discomfiture and imprisonment to make any man laugh. But the fact was now certain, that the prisoners were right glad and hearty; and the sincerity of their good humour was to be tested in a manner that seemed as extraordinary as anything that had yet been witnessed on this eventful evening. Not one of them ever mentioned the beggar or the loss of the horse—a circumstance remarkable enough; and, not contented with this scrupulous regard of the treaty, the chief of them, slapping the farmer on the back, proposed that, as they had so unceremoniously broken up the sports of the evening, they should not depart till they saw the dancing again commenced, and till they each and every man of them should dance a reel with the blooming maidens they had seen on their entry. This request, though as remarkable as the former proceedings, was received with loud applause. The parties were again collected; Tam the piper again took his seat; the ale flowed in its former abundance; and in a short time the brave knights were seen tripping it gaily through the mazes of the merry dance. This was another change of the moral peristrephic panorama of that extraordinary evening; and, as the farmer looked at the merry knights with their surtouts of green, and their buff baldricks and clanging swords, busy dancing in that very barn where they had, a few minutes before, been fighting like Turks, he held up his hands in wonder, and would have moralised on the chances and changes of life, if a barn had been a proper place, a Maiden a proper occasion, and the hour of relief from a great evil a proper time for the indulgence of such fancies.