“Ay, your name—all men have a name. Knaves [laying an emphasis on the word] many.”
“True, gudeman, true. My name, then, is Stuart—James Stuart. I hope it pleases you?”
“The name is the best in the land,” said the old man, touching his bonnet. “As to the wearer—hem!—‘a Stuarts are no sib to the king’, ye ken. What countryman are you?”
“I was born at Stirling,” said the stranger.
“Ay, ay, it may be, it may be,” replied Walter Colville; “but, to bring the matter to a point, what lands and living hae ye, friend?”
“Sometimes less, sometimes more,” replied the stranger, “as I happen to be in the giving or the taking humour. At the lowest ebb, however, I think they are at least worth all that ever called a Colville master.”
“Faith, and that’s a bauld word, neebour,” cried Colville, bitterly—“and one that, I’m jalousing, you’ll find it difficult to make gude.”
“At your own time it shall be proved, gudeman; but it is not for myself I come to woo the bonny lass of Balmeny. I am, thanks to a wise old man who sits in Windsor, wived already.”
“And who, in Beelzebub’s name, may you be blackfit for?” demanded Colville, rising in wrath.
“Give your daughter to the youth I shall name, and I will, on her wedding-day, fill you up one lippie with the red gold, and five running o’er with silver.”