The old man left the place accordingly, and Arthur, seizing the opportunity, retired to one corner with Edith, where the nature of their conversation could be only guessed from the animated looks and gestures of the affectionate pair.
The stranger in the meantime strode up and down the place, regardless of the affrighted servants, singing to himself—
“O whaur will I get a bonny boy,
That will win hose and shoon;
That will rin to Lord Barnard’s yett,
And bid his ladye come?”
“What say you, my little man?” he continued, addressing a boy of twelve or thirteen years, who sat before the fire, sharing, with a shaggy collie, the contents of an ample cog, altogether unheeding the agitation which reigned around him; “will you run to Wemyss Castle with a message to Sir David?”
“I’ the noo!” said the boy, looking up with an air expressive of the sense of the unparalleled oppression proposed in interrupting him during the sacred ceremony of supper.
The stranger laughed, and drawing from his bosom the purse we have so often spoken of, he displayed a Jacobus, and offered it to the boy. “Na, I’ll no gang for the yellow bawbee,” said the urchin; “but if ye’ll gie me the braw whittle, I’ll rin.” The stranger immediately put into his hand the dagger he coveted, and drawing him aside, conveyed to him in whispers the message he was to deliver.
Walter Colville now re-entered, and informed them that he had reconnoitred the Egyptians, who, including women and children, seemed to amount to above a hundred.