“O, hinny, ay; I’se be silent or thou sall come to ill,” was the corresponding whisper of Mause “but bethink ye, my dear, them that deny the Word, the Word will deny”—Her admonition was cut short by the entrance of the Life-Guardsmen, a party of four troopers, commanded by Bothwell.
In they tramped, making a tremendous clatter upon the stone-floor with the iron-shod heels of their large jack-boots, and the clash and clang of their long, heavy, basket-hilted broadswords. Milnwood and his housekeeper trembled, from well-grounded apprehensions of the system of exaction and plunder carried on during these domiciliary visits. Henry Morton was discomposed with more special cause, for he remembered that he stood answerable to the laws for having harboured Burley. The widow Mause Headrigg, between fear for her son’s life and an overstrained and enthusiastic zeal, which reproached her for consenting even tacitly to belie her religious sentiments, was in a strange quandary. The other servants quaked for they knew not well what. Cuddie alone, with the look of supreme indifference and stupidity which a Scottish peasant can at times assume as a mask for considerable shrewdness and craft, continued to swallow large spoonfuls of his broth, to command which he had drawn within his sphere the large vessel that contained it, and helped himself, amid the confusion, to a sevenfold portion.
“What is your pleasure here, gentlemen?” said Milnwood, humbling himself before the satellites of power.
“We come in behalf of the king,” answered Bothwell; “why the devil did you keep us so long standing at the door?”
“We were at dinner,” answered Milnwood, “and the door was locked, as is usual in landward towns [Note: The Scots retain the use of the word town in its comprehensive Saxon meaning, as a place of habitation. A mansion or a farm house, though solitary, is called the town. A landward town is a dwelling situated in the country.] in this country. I am sure, gentlemen, if I had kend ony servants of our gude king had stood at the door—But wad ye please to drink some ale—or some brandy—or a cup of canary sack, or claret wine?” making a pause between each offer as long as a stingy bidder at an auction, who is loath to advance his offer for a favourite lot.
“Claret for me,” said one fellow.
“I like ale better,” said another, “provided it is right juice of John Barleycorn.”
“Better never was malted,” said Milnwood; “I can hardly say sae muckle for the claret. It’s thin and cauld, gentlemen.”
“Brandy will cure that,” said a third fellow; “a glass of brandy to three glasses of wine prevents the curmurring in the stomach.”
“Brandy, ale, sack, and claret?—we’ll try them all,” said Bothwell, “and stick to that which is best. There’s good sense in that, if the damn’dest whig in Scotland had said it.”