“I do not curse the foolish old man,” said Jenkin; “but I would have them carry things a peg lower.—If they were to see on a plain field thirty thousand such pikes as I have seen in the artillery gardens, it would not be their long-haired courtiers would help them, I trow.” [Footnote: Clarendon remarks, that the importance of the military exercise of the citizens was severely felt by the cavaliers during the civil war, notwithstanding the ridicule that had been showered upon it by the dramatic poets of the day. Nothing less than habitual practice could, at the battle of Newbury and elsewhere, have enabled the Londoners to keep their ranks as pikemen, in spite of the repeated charge of the fiery Prince Rupert and his gallant cavaliers.]
“Hout tout, man,” said Richie, “mind where the Stewarts come frae, and never think they would want spears or claymores either; but leaving sic matters, whilk are perilous to speak on, I say once more, what is your concern in all this matter?”
“What is it?” said Jenkin; “why, have I not fixed on Peg-a-Ramsay to be my true love, from the day I came to her old father's shop? and have I not carried her pattens and her chopines for three years, and borne her prayer-book to church, and brushed the cushion for her to kneel down upon, and did she ever say me nay?”
“I see no cause she had,” said Richie, “if the like of such small services were all that ye proffered. Ah, man! there are few—very few, either of fools or of wise men, ken how to guide a woman.”
“Why, did I not serve her at the risk of my freedom, and very nigh at the risk of my neck? Did she not—no, it was not her neither, but that accursed beldam whom she caused to work upon me—persuade me like a fool to turn myself into a waterman to help my lord, and a plague to him, down to Scotland? and instead of going peaceably down to the ship at Gravesend, did not he rant and bully, and show his pistols, and make me land him at Greenwich, where he played some swaggering pranks, that helped both him and me into the Tower?”
“Aha!” said Richie, throwing more than his usual wisdom into his looks, “so you were the green-jacketed waterman that rowed Lord Glenvarloch down the river?”
“The more fool I, that did not souse him in the Thames,” said Jenkin; “and I was the lad who would not confess one word of who and what I was, though they threatened to make me hug the Duke of Exeter's daughter."[Footnote: A particular species of rack, used at the Tower of London, was so called.]
“Wha is she, man?” said Richie; “she must be an ill-fashioned piece, if you're so much afraid of her, and she come of such high kin.”
“I mean the rack—the rack, man,” said Jenkin. “Where were you bred that never heard of the Duke of Exeter's daughter? But all the dukes and duchesses in England could have got nothing out of me—so the truth came out some other way, and I was set free.—Home I ran, thinking myself one of the cleverest and happiest fellows in the ward. And she—she—she wanted to pay me with money for all my true service! and she spoke so sweetly and so coldly at the same time, I wished myself in the deepest dungeon of the Tower—I wish they had racked me to death before I heard this Scottishman was to chouse me out of my sweetheart!”
“But are ye sure ye have lost her?” said Richie; “it sounds strange in my ears that my Lord Glenvarloch should marry the daughter of a dealer,—though there are uncouth marriages made in London, I'll allow that.”