“Given from our poor house of B——,” etc.
Superscribed—“For the right honourable, and our honoured kinsman, the Master of Ravenswood—These, with haste, haste, post haste—ride and run until these be delivered.”
“What think you of this epistle, Bucklaw?” said the Master, when his companion had hammered out all the sense, and almost all the words of which it consisted.
“Truly, that the Marquis’s meaning is as great a riddle as his manuscript. He is really in much need of Wit’s Interpreter, or the Complete Letter-Writer, and were I you, I would send him a copy by the bearer. He writes you very kindly to remain wasting your time and your money in this vile, stupid, oppressed country, without so much as offering you the countenance and shelter of his house. In my opinion, he has some scheme in view in which he supposes you can be useful, and he wishes to keep you at hand, to make use of you when it ripens, reserving the power of turning you adrift, should his plot fail in the concoction.”
“His plot! Then you suppose it is a treasonable business,” answered Ravenswood.
“What else can it be?” replied Bucklaw; “the Marquis has been long suspected to have an eye to Saint Germains.”
“He should not engage me rashly in such an adventure,” said Ravenswood; “when I recollect the times of the first and second Charles, and of the last James, truly I see little reason that, as a man or a patriot, I should draw my sword for their descendants.”
“Humph!” replied Bucklaw; “so you have set yourself down to mourn over the crop-eared dogs whom honest Claver’se treated as they deserved?”
“They first gave the dogs an ill name, and then hanged them,” replied Ravenswood. “I hope to see the day when justice shall be open to Whig and Tory, and when these nicknames shall only be used among coffee-house politicians, as ‘slut’ and ‘jade’ are among apple-women, as cant terms of idle spite and rancour.”
“That will not be in our days, Master: the iron has entered too deeply into our sides and our souls.”