“Well, and to your public news, Edie—So they are still coming are they?”
“Troth they say sae, sir; and there’s come down strict orders for the forces and volunteers to be alert; and there’s a clever young officer to come here forthwith, to look at our means o’ defence—I saw the Bailies lass cleaning his belts and white breeks—I gae her a hand, for ye maun think she wasna ower clever at it, and sae I gat a’ the news for my pains.”
“And what think you, as an old soldier?”
“Troth I kenna—an they come so mony as they speak o’, they’ll be odds against us. But there’s mony yauld chields amang thae volunteers; and I mauna say muckle about them that’s no weel and no very able, because I am something that gate mysell—But we’se do our best.”
“What! so your martial spirit is rising again, Edie?
Even in our ashes glow their wonted fires!
I would not have thought you, Edie, had so much to fight for?”
“Me no muckle to fight for, sir?—isna there the country to fight for, and the burnsides that I gang daundering beside, and the hearths o’the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o’ weans that come toddling to play wi’ me when I come about a landward town?—Deil!” he continued, grasping his pike-staff with great emphasis, “an I had as gude pith as I hae gude-will, and a gude cause, I should gie some o’ them a day’s kemping.”
“Bravo, bravo, Edie! The country’s in little ultimate danger, when the beggar’s as ready to fight for his dish as the laird for his land.”
Their further conversation reverted to the particulars of the night passed by the mendicant and Lovel in the ruins of St. Ruth; by the details of which the Antiquary was highly amused.