“Nay, father,” said Albert, “and I must add, that though this lad is uncouth and wayward, and, as you will see, something wilful, yet the King has not a more zealous friend in England; and, when occasion offered, he fought stoutly, too, in his defence—I marvel he comes not.”
“He hath taken the bath” said Joceline, “and nothing less would serve than that he should have it immediately—the supper, he said, might be got ready in the meantime; and he commands all about him as if he were in his father’s old castle, where he might have called long enough, I warrant, without any one to hear him.”
“Indeed?” said Sir Henry, “this must be a forward chick of the game, to crow so early.—What is his name?”
“His name?—it escapes me every hour, it is so hard a one,” said Albert—“Kerneguy is his name—Louis Kerneguy; his father was Lord Killstewers, of Kincardineshire.”
“Kerneguy, and Killstewers, and Kin—what d’ye call it?—Truly,” said the knight, “these northern men’s names and titles smack of their origin—they sound like a north-west wind, rumbling and roaring among heather and rocks.”
“It is but the asperities of the Celtic and Saxon dialects,” said Dr. Rochecliffe, “which, according to Verstegan, still linger in those northern parts of the island.—But peace—here comes supper, and Master Louis Kerneguy.”
Supper entered accordingly, borne in by Joceline and Phœbe, and after it, leaning on a huge knotty stick, and having his nose in the air like a questing hound—for his attention was apparently more fixed on the good provisions that went before him, than any thing else—came Master Kerneguy, and seated himself, without much ceremony, at the lower end of the table.
He was a tall, rawboned lad, with a shock head of hair, fiery red, like many of his country, while the harshness of his national features was increased by the contrast of his complexion, turned almost black by the exposure to all sorts of weather, which, in that skulking and rambling mode of life, the fugitive royalists had been obliged to encounter. His address was by no means prepossessing, being a mixture of awkwardness and forwardness, and showing in a remarkable degree, how a want of easy address may be consistent with an admirable stock of assurance. His face intimated having received some recent scratches, and the care of Dr. Rochecliffe had decorated it with a number of patches, which even enhanced its natural plainness. Yet the eyes were brilliant and expressive, and, amid his ugliness—for it amounted to that degree of irregularity—the face was not deficient in some lines which expressed both sagacity and resolution.
The dress of Albert himself was far beneath his quality, as the son of Sir Henry Lee, and commander of a regiment in the royal service; but that of his page was still more dilapidated. A disastrous green jerkin, which had been changed to a hundred hues by sun and rain, so that the original could scarce be discovered, huge clouterly shoes, leathern breeches—such as were worn by hedgers—coarse grey worsted stockings, were the attire of the honourable youth, whose limping gait, while it added to the ungainliness of his manner, showed, at the same time, the extent of his sufferings. His appearance bordered so much upon what is vulgarly called the queer, that even with Alice it would have excited some sense of ridicule, had not compassion been predominant.
The grace was said, and the young squire of Ditchley, as well as Dr. Rochecliffe, made an excellent figure at a meal, the like of which, in quality and abundance, did not seem to have lately fallen to their share. But their feats were child’s-play to those of the Scottish youth. Far from betraying any symptoms of the bread and butter with which he had attempted to close the orifice of his stomach, his appetite appeared to have been sharpened by a nine-days’ fast; and the knight was disposed to think that the very genius of famine himself, come forth from his native regions of the north, was in the act of honouring him with a visit, while, as if afraid of losing a moment’s exertion, Master Kerneguy never looked either to right or left, or spoke a single word to any at table.