“Your words are dark and threatening, old man, but to me they appear as the ravings of a feverish dreamer. You seem to tell me of some danger hanging over us; but our enemy’s forces are disbanded, and in my judgment there is nothing to fear. The town is fortified: Aboyne, with a strong army, possesses it. So away with these fancies; and if you have aught to say that concerns me particularly, say on, for I must return to my sister.”
“Thy sister? Well, Mary Leslie may deserve the name. I am thy friend, wherefore I am so thou shalt quickly know. Ponder well what I have said. Remember that the calm often precedes the storm, and that it is better to take part with the faithful, even in adversity, than to be the friend of covenant-breaking, soul-seducing prelatists. I will see thee to-morrow at the booth of Samuel Fairtext at eventide. Meet me there, and it shall be for thy good. Farewell, mayst thou be partaker of all covenant blessings.”
So saying, he walked off, and in a short time was lost among the crowd, leaving Basil at a loss what to make of his insinuations. When he came up with Mary Leslie, the Skinners, who represented the royalists, had succeeded in driving the Litsters, who represented the Covenanters, into a smoky den or booth, which, in a moment after, took fire, while the whole angelic train joined in a song to the praise of the Viscount of Aboyne.
He remarked, however, that the spectators were now very inattentive to the sports. They were drawn together into small knots, all over the field, in earnest conversation, which, as it became more general, entirely drowned the iron voices of the performing cherubs. The spectators began to leave the field in great numbers. Robin Hood’s body-guard even followed their example, and Little John, by the same inexplicable spirit of discontent, deserted his friend and leader. The whisper (as it was at first) was not long in extending to the spot where Basil and Mary were standing. The cause of the disturbance may be gathered from the following conversation:—
“Now, the like o’ this I never saw,” said Thomas Chalmers, deacon of the fleshers. “That deil’s buckie Montrose is to the road again, an’ comin’ wi’ thousands upon thousands to the town. Fient a hoof mair will I get killed till we be clear o’ him.”
“Weel, weel,” said Jamie Jingle, the bellman, “it’s a gude thing it’s nae waur. Come wha like, they’ll aye need a bellman.”
“Nae waur, ye clappertongue!” said another. “I wad like to ken what waur could come? Willna a’ thing we hae be spulzied by thae rascals,—black be their cast!—an’ wunna there be anither speel at the Covenant, whilk we hae a’ ta’en an’ unta’en about half-a-dozen o’ times already?”
“Ye’re vera right, Saunders,” said the chief of the tanners; “but for a’ that, Aboyne may gie him his kail through the reek; and, if the news be true, there will be a great demand for shoon and belts, whilk sud be a source o’ comfort, ye ken.”
“What hae I to do wi’ your belts an’ your brogues, Benjie Barkhide? What hae I to do wi’ them, I say? A murrain on the Covenanters, say I, and a’ that pertains to them.”
“A curse on the Covenanters an’ prelatemongers baith, conjunctly and severally!” said another citizen. “I wish the deil would snite his nose with the hale clanjamphry, though he sud get me to the bet o’ the bargain, for wishing them sae.”