"Assuredly, your honor, in kindness I did but hint of it."
"And thereupon he stayed. Balcomie—indeed! and what manner of man is he?"
"By the corslet which he wears under his coat, and the jaunty cock of his beaver, I would say he had been a soldier."
"Good again—give him my most humble commendations, and ask him to share thy boasted posset of wine with me."
"What name did you say, sir?"
"Thou inquisitive varlet, I said no name," replied the gentleman, with a smile, "In these times men do not lightly give their names to each other, when the land is swarming with Jacobite plotters and government spies, disguised Jesuits, and Presbyterian tyrants. I may be the Devil or the Pope for all thou knowest."
"Might ye no be the Pretender?" said Spiggot, with a sour smile.
"Nay, I have a better travelling name than that; but say to this gentleman that the Major of Marshal Orkney's Dragoons requests the pleasure of sharing a stoup of wine with him."
"Sir, it mattereth little whether ye give your name or no," replied the host bitterly; "for we are a' nameless now. Twelve months ago we were true Scottish men, but now—"
"Our king is an exile—our crown is buried for ever, and our brave soldiers are banished to far and foreign wars, while the grass is growing green in the streets of our capital—ay, green as it is at this hour in your burgh of Crail; but hence to the stranger; yet say not," added the traveller, bitterly and proudly, "that in his warmth the Scottish cavalier has betrayed himself."