“I’ll flee the falcon,”—(so the small cannon was called,)—“I’ll flee the falcon whene’er your honour gies command; my certie, she’ll ruffle their feathers for them!”
The Major looked at Lord Evandale.
“Stay a moment,” said the young nobleman, “they send us a flag of truce.”
In fact, one of the horsemen at that moment dismounted, and, displaying a white cloth on a pike, moved forward towards the Tower, while the Major and Lord Evandale, descending from the battlement of the main fortress, advanced to meet him as far as the barricade, judging it unwise to admit him within the precincts which they designed to defend. At the same time that the ambassador set forth, the group of horsemen, as if they had anticipated the preparations of John Gudyill for their annoyance, withdrew from the advanced station which they had occupied, and fell back to the main body.
The envoy of the Covenanters, to judge by his mien and manner, seemed fully imbued with that spiritual pride which distinguished his sect. His features were drawn up to a contemptuous primness, and his half-shut eyes seemed to scorn to look upon the terrestial objects around, while, at every solemn stride, his toes were pointed outwards with an air that appeared to despise the ground on which they trode. Lord Evandale could not suppress a smile at this singular figure.
“Did you ever,” said he to Major Bellenden, “see such an absurd automaton? One would swear it moves upon springs—Can it speak, think you?”
“O, ay,” said the Major; “that seems to be one of my old acquaintance, a genuine puritan of the right pharisaical leaven.—Stay—he coughs and hems; he is about to summon the Castle with the but-end of a sermon, instead of a parley on the trumpet.”
The veteran, who in his day had had many an opportunity to become acquainted with the manners of these religionists, was not far mistaken in his conjecture; only that, instead of a prose exordium, the Laird of Langcale—for it was no less a personage—uplifted, with a Stentorian voice, a verse of the twenty-fourth Psalm:
“Ye gates lift up your heads! ye doors, Doors that do last for aye, Be lifted up”—
“I told you so,” said the Major to Evandale, and then presented himself at the entrance of the barricade, demanding to know for what purpose or intent he made that doleful noise, like a hog in a high wind, beneath the gates of the Castle.