“At least, if I have done any such fellow an injury,” said the Lord Nigel, “let me know how I can repair it.”
“Never fash your beard about that, my lord,—with reverence always,” said Richie,—“he shall be suitably cared after. Think on him but as ane wha was running post to the devil, and got a shouldering from your lordship to help him on his journey. But I will stop him, if reason can; and so your lordship needs asks nae mair about it, for there is no use in your knowing it, but much the contrair.”
“Hark you, sirrah,” said his master, “I have borne with you thus far, for certain reasons; but abuse my good-nature no farther—and since you must needs go, why, go a God's name, and here is to pay your journey.” So saying, he put gold into his hand, which Richie told over piece by piece, with the utmost accuracy.
“Is it all right—or are they wanting in weight—or what the devil keeps you, when your hurry was so great five minutes since?” said the young lord, now thoroughly nettled at the presumptuous precision with which Richie dealt forth his canons of morality.
“The tale of coin is complete,” said Richie, with the most imperturbable gravity; “and, for the weight, though they are sae scrupulous in this town, as make mouths at a piece that is a wee bit light, or that has been cracked within the ring, my sooth, they will jump at them in Edinburgh like a cock at a grosart. Gold pieces are not so plenty there, the mair the pity!”
“The more is your folly, then,” said Nigel, whose anger was only momentary, “that leave the land where there is enough of them.”
“My lord,” said Richie, “to be round with you, the grace of God is better than gold pieces. When Goblin, as you call yonder Monsieur Lutin,—and you might as well call him Gibbet, since that is what he is like to end in,—shall recommend a page to you, ye will hear little such doctrine as ye have heard from me.—And if they were my last words,” he said, raising his voice, “I would say you are misled, and are forsaking the paths which your honourable father trode in; and, what is more, you are going—still under correction—to the devil with a dishclout, for ye are laughed at by them that lead you into these disordered bypaths.”
“Laughed at!” said Nigel, who, like others of his age, was more sensible to ridicule than to reason—“Who dares laugh at me?”
“My lord, as sure as I live by bread—nay, more, as I am a true man—and, I think, your lordship never found Richie's tongue bearing aught but the truth—unless that your lordship's credit, my country's profit, or, it may be, some sma' occasion of my ain, made it unnecessary to promulgate the haill veritie,—I say then, as I am a true man, when I saw that puir creature come through the ha', at that ordinary, whilk is accurst (Heaven forgive me for swearing!) of God and man, with his teeth set, and his hands clenched, and his bonnet drawn over his brows like a desperate man, Goblin said to me, 'There goes a dunghill chicken, that your master has plucked clean enough; it will be long ere his lordship ruffle a feather with a cock of the game.' And so, my lord, to speak it out, the lackeys, and the gallants, and more especially your sworn brother, Lord Dalgarno, call you the sparrow-hawk.—I had some thought to have cracked Lutin's pate for the speech, but, after a', the controversy was not worth it.”
“Do they use such terms of me?” said Lord Nigel. “Death and the devil!”