Here Lord Menteith again interposed, and the concord of the company being with no small difficulty restored, was cemented by some deep carouses. Lord Menteith, however, contrived to break up the party earlier than was the usage of the Castle, under pretence of fatigue and indisposition. This was somewhat to the disappointment of the valiant Captain, who, among other habits acquired in the Low countries, had acquired both a disposition to drink, and a capacity to bear, an exorbitant quantity of strong liquors.
Their landlord ushered them in person to a sort of sleeping gallery, in which there was a four-post bed, with tartan curtains, and a number of cribs, or long hampers, placed along the wall, three of which, well stuffed with blooming heather, were prepared for the reception of guests.
'I need not tell your lordship,' said M'Aulay to Lord Menteith, a little apart, 'our Highland mode of quartering. Only that, not liking you should sleep in the room alone with this German land-louper, I have caused your servants' beds to be made here in the gallery. By G—d, my lord, these are times when men go to bed with a throat hale and sound as ever swallowed brandy, and before next morning it may be gaping like an oyster-shell.'
Lord Menteith thanked him sincerely, saying, 'It was just the arrangement he would have requested; for, although he had not the least apprehension of violence from Captain Dalgetty, yet Anderson was a better kind of person, a sort of gentleman, whom he always liked to have near his person.'
'I have not seen this Anderson,' said M'Aulay; 'did you hire him in England?'
'I did so,' said Lord Menteith; 'you will see the man to-morrow; in the meantime I wish you good- night.'
His host left the apartment after the evening salutation, and was about to pay the same compliment to Captain Dalgetty, but observing him deeply engaged in the discussion of a huge pitcher filled with brandy posset, he thought it a pity to disturb him in so laudable an employment, and took his leave without farther ceremony.
Lord Menteith's two attendants entered the apartment almost immediately after his departure. The good Captain, who was now somewhat encumbered with his good cheer, began to find the undoing of the clasps of his armour a task somewhat difficult, and addressed Anderson in these words, interrupted by a slight hiccup, —'Anderson, my good friend, you may read in Scripture, that he that putteth off his armour should not boast himself like he that putteth it on—I believe that is not the right word of command; but the plain truth of it is, I am like to sleep in my corslet, like many an honest fellow that never waked again, unless you unloose this buckle.'
'Undo his armour, Sibbald,' said Anderson to the other servant.
'By St. Andrew!' exclaimed the Captain, turning round in great astonishment, 'here's a common fellow—a stipendiary with four pounds a-year and a livery cloak, thinks himself too good to serve Ritt-master Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, who has studied humanity at the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen, and served half the princes of Europe!'
'Captain Dalgetty,' said Lord Menteith, whose lot it was to stand peacemaker throughout the evening, 'please to understand that Anderson waits upon no one but myself; but I will help Sibbald to undo your corslet with much pleasure.'
'Too much trouble for you, my lord,' said Dalgetty; 'and yet it would do you no harm to practise how a handsome harness is put on and put off. I can step in and out of mine like a glove; only to-night, although not EBRIUS, I am, in the classic phrase, VINO CIBOQUE GRAVATUS.'
By this time he was unshelled, and stood before the fire musing with a face of drunken wisdom on the events of the evening. What seemed chiefly to interest him, was the character of Allan M'Aulay. 'To come over the Englishmen so cleverly with his Highland torch-bearers—eight bare-breeched Rories for six silver candlesticks!—it was a master-piece—a TOUR DE PASSE—it was perfect legerdemain—and to be a madman after all!—I doubt greatly, my lord' (shaking his head), 'that I must allow him, notwithstanding his relationship to your lordship, the privileges of a rational person, and either batoon him sufficiently to expiate the violence offered to my person, or else bring it to a matter of mortal arbitrement, as becometh an insulted cavalier.'
'If you care to hear a long story,' said Lord Menteith, 'at this time of night, I can tell you how the circumstances of Allan's birth account so well for his singular character, as to put such satisfaction entirely out of the question.'
'A long story, my lord,' said Captain Dalgetty, 'is, next to a good evening draught and a warm nightcap, the best shoeinghorn for drawing on a sound sleep. And since your lordship is pleased to take the trouble to tell it, I shall rest your patient and obliged auditor.'
'Anderson,' said Lord Menteith, 'and you, Sibbald, are dying to hear, I suppose, of this strange man too! and I believe I must indulge your curiosity, that you may know how to behave to him in time of need. You had better step to the fire then.'
Having thus assembled an audience about him, Lord Menteith sat down upon the edge of the four-post bed, while Captain Dalgetty, wiping the relics of the posset from his beard and mustachoes, and repeating the first verse of the Lutheran psalm, ALLE GUTER GEISTER LOBEN DEN HERRN, etc. rolled himself into one of the places of repose, and thrusting his shock pate from between the blankets, listened to Lord Menteith's relation in a most luxurious state, between sleeping and waking.
'The father,' said Lord Menteith, 'of the two brothers, Angus and Allan M'Aulay, was a gentleman of consideration and family, being the chief of a Highland clan, of good account, though not numerous; his lady, the mother of these young men, was a gentlewoman of good family, if I may be permitted to say so of one nearly connected with my own. Her brother, an honourable and spirited young man, obtained from James the Sixth a grant of forestry, and other privileges, over a royal chase adjacent to this castle; and, in exercising and defending these rights, he was so unfortunate as to involve himself in a quarrel with some of our Highland freebooters or caterans, of whom I think, Captain Dalgetty, you must have heard.'
'And that I have,' said the Captain, exerting himself to answer the appeal. 'Before I left the Mareschal- College of Aberdeen, Dugald Garr was playing the devil in the Garioch, and the Farquharsons on Dee-side, and the Clan Chattan on the Gordons' lands, and the Grants and Camerons in Moray-land. And since that, I have seen the Cravats and Pandours in Pannonia and Transylvania, and the Cossacks from the Polish frontier, and robbers, banditti, and barbarians of all countries besides, so that I have a distinct idea of your broken Highlandmen.'
'The clan,' said Lord Menteith, 'with whom the maternal uncle of the M'Aulays had been placed in feud, was a small sept of banditti, called, from their houseless state, and their incessantly wandering among the mountains and glens, the Children of the Mist. They are a fierce and hardy people, with all the irritability, and wild and vengeful passions, proper to men who have never known the restraint of civilized society. A party of them lay in wait for the unfortunate Warden of the Forest, surprised him while hunting alone and unattended, and slew him with every circumstance of inventive cruelty. They cut off his head, and resolved, in a bravado, to exhibit it at the castle of his brother-in-law. The laird was absent, and the lady reluctantly received as guests, men against whom, perhaps, she was afraid to shut her gates. Refreshments were placed before the Children of the Mist, who took an opportunity to take the head of their victim from the plaid in which it was wrapt, placed it on the table, put a piece of bread between the lifeless jaws, bidding them do their office now, since many a good meal they had eaten at that table. The lady, who had been absent for some household purpose, entered at this moment, and, upon beholding her brother's head, fled like an arrow out of the house into the woods, uttering shriek upon shriek. The ruffians, satisfied with this savage triumph, withdrew. The terrified menials, after overcoming the alarm to which they had been subjected, sought their unfortunate mistress in every direction, but she was nowhere to be found. The miserable husband returned next day, and, with the assistance of his people, undertook a more anxious and distant search, but to equally little purpose. It was believed universally, that, in the ecstasy of her terror, she must either have thrown herself over one of the numerous precipices which overhang the river, or into a deep lake about a mile from the castle. Her loss was the more lamented, as she was six months advanced in her pregnancy; Angus M'Aulay, her eldest son, having been born about eighteen months before.—But I tire you, Captain Dalgetty, and you seem inclined to sleep.'
'By no means,' answered the soldier; 'I am no whit somnolent; I always hear best with my eyes shut. It is a fashion I learned when I stood sentinel.'
'And I daresay,' said Lord Menteith, aside to Anderson, 'the weight of the halberd of the sergeant of the rounds often made him open them.'
Being apparently, however, in the humour of story-telling, the young nobleman went on, addressing himself chiefly to his servants, without minding the slumbering veteran.
