‘Who, I?’ replied the Counsellor. ‘I will not give up one hair of his head, though I should follow them to the court of last resort in his behalf; but what signified mooting points and showing one’s hand to that old ass? Much better he should report to his prompter, Glossin, that we are indifferent or lukewarm in the matter. Besides, I wished to have a peep at the enemies’ game.’
‘Indeed!’ said the soldier. ‘Then I see there are stratagems in law as well as war. Well, and how do you like their line of battle?’
‘Ingenious,’ said Mr. Pleydell, ‘but I think desperate; they are finessing too much, a common fault on such occasions.’
During this discourse the carriage rolled rapidly towards Woodbourne without anything occurring worthy of the reader’s notice, excepting their meeting with young Hazlewood, to whom the Colonel told the extraordinary history of Bertram’s reappearance, which he heard with high delight, and then rode on before to pay Miss Bertram his compliments on an event so happy and so unexpected.
We return to the party at Woodbourne. After the departure of Mannering, the conversation related chiefly to the fortunes of the Ellangowan family, their domains, and their former power. ‘It was, then, under the towers of my fathers,’ said Bertram, ‘that I landed some days since, in circumstances much resembling those of a vagabond! Its mouldering turrets and darksome arches even then awakened thoughts of the deepest interest, and recollections which I was unable to decipher. I will now visit them again with other feelings, and, I trust, other and better hopes.’
‘Do not go there now,’ said his sister. ‘The house of our ancestors is at present the habitation of a wretch as insidious as dangerous, whose arts and villainy accomplished the ruin and broke the heart of our unhappy father.’
‘You increase my anxiety,’ replied her brother, ‘to confront this miscreant, even in the den he has constructed for himself; I think I have seen him.’
‘But you must consider,’ said Julia, ‘that you are now left under Lucy’s guard and mine, and are responsible to us for all your motions, consider, I have not been a lawyer’s mistress twelve hours for nothing, and I assure you it would be madness to attempt to go to Ellangowan just now. The utmost to which I can consent is, that we shall walk in a body to the head of the Woodbourne avenue, and from that perhaps we may indulge you with our company as far as a rising ground in the common, whence your eyes may be blessed with a distant prospect of those gloomy towers which struck so strongly your sympathetic imagination.’
The party was speedily agreed upon; and the ladies, having taken their cloaks, followed the route proposed, under the escort of Captain Bertram. It was a pleasant winter morning, and the cool breeze served only to freshen, not to chill, the fair walkers. A secret though unacknowledged bond of kindness combined the two ladies, and Bertram, now hearing the interesting accounts of his own family, now communicating his adventures in Europe and in India, repaid the pleasure which he received. Lucy felt proud of her brother, as well from the bold and manly turn of his sentiments as from the dangers he had encountered, and the spirit with which he had surmounted them. And Julia, while she pondered on her father’s words, could not help entertaining hopes that the independent spirit which had seemed to her father presumption in the humble and plebeian Brown would have the grace of courage, noble bearing, and high blood in the far-descended heir of Ellangowan.
They reached at length the little eminence or knoll upon the highest part of the common, called Gibbie’s Knowe--a spot repeatedly mentioned in this history as being on the skirts of the Ellangowan estate. It commanded a fair variety of hill and dale, bordered with natural woods, whose naked boughs at this season relieved the general colour of the landscape with a dark purple hue; while in other places the prospect was more formally intersected by lines of plantation, where the Scotch firs displayed their variety of dusky green. At the distance of two or three miles lay the bay of Ellangowan, its waves rippling under the influence of the western breeze. The towers of the ruined castle, seen high over every object in the neighbourhood, received a brighter colouring from the wintry sun.