The Bride of Lammermoor

hospitality, which I believe ended in sour beer and herrings. Read, and you will see the news he has brought us.' 'I will as fast as I can,' said Bucklaw; 'but I am no great clerk, nor does his lordship seem to be the first of scribes.'

The reader will peruse in, a few seconds, by the aid our friend Ballantyne's types, what took Bucklaw a good half hour in perusal, though assisted by the Master of Ravenswood. The tenor was as follows:

'RIGHT HONOURABLE OUR COUSIN:

'Our hearty commendations premised, these come to assure you of the interest which we take in your welfare, and in your purpose towards its augmentation. If we have been less active in showing forth our effective good-will towards you than, as a loving kinsman and blood-relative, we would willingly have desired, we request that you will impute it to lack of opportunity to show our good-liking, not to any coldness of our will Touching your resolution to travel in foreign parts, as at this time we hold the same little advisable, in respect that your ill-willers may, according to the custom of such persons, impute motives for your journey, whereof, although we know and believe you to be as clear as ourselves, yet natheless their words may find credence in places where the belief in them may much prejudice you, and which we should see with more unwillingness and displeasure than with means of remedy.

'Having thus, as becometh our kindred, given you our poor mind on the subject of your journeying forth of Scotland, we would willingly add reasons of weight, which might materially advantage you and your father's house, thereby to determine you to abide at Wolf's Crag, until this harvest season shall be passed over. But what sayeth the proverb, verbum sapienti—a word is more to him that hath wisdom than a sermon to a fool. And albeit we have written this poor scroll with our own hand, and are well assured of the fidelity of our messenger, as him that is many ways bounden to us, yet so it is, that sliddery ways crave wary walking, and that we may not peril upon paper matters which we would gladly impart to you by word of mouth. Wherefore, it was our purpose to have prayed you heartily to come to this our barren Highland country to kill a stag, and to treat of the matters which we are now more painfully inditing to you anent. But commodity does not serve at present for such our meeting, which, therefore, shall be deferred until sic time as we may in all mirth rehearse those things whereof we now keep silence. Meantime, we pray you to think that we are, and will still be, your good kinsman and well- wisher, waiting but for times of whilk we do, as it were, entertain a twilight prospect, and appear and hope to be also your effectual well-doer. And in which hope we heartily write ourself,

'Right Honourable,

'Your loving cousin,

'A——. '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 nto be in our days, Master: the iron has entered too deeply into our sides and our souls.'

'It will be, however, one day,' replied the Master; 'men will not always start at these nicknames as at a trumpet-sound. As social life is better protected, its comforts will become too dear to be hazarded without some better reasons than speculative politics.'

'It is fine talking,' answered Bucklaw; 'but my heart is with the old

song—

To see good corn upon the rigs,
And a gallow built to hang the Whigs,
And the right restored where the right should be.
Oh, that is the thing that would wanton me.'

'You may sing as loudly as you will, cantabit vacuus——,' answered the Master; 'but I believe the Marquis is too wise, at least too wary, to join you in such a burden. I suspect he alludes to a revolution in the Scottish privy council, rather than in the British kingdoms.'

'Oh, confusion to your state tricks!' exclaimed Bucklaw—'your cold calculating manoeuvres, which old gentlemen in wrought nightcaps and furred gowns execute like so many games at chess, and displace a treasurer or lord commissioner as they would take a rook or a pawn. Tennis for my sport, and battle for my earnest! And you, Master, so dep and considerate as you would seem, you have that within you makes the blood boil faster than suits your present humour of moralising on political truths. You are one of those wise men who see everything with great composure till their blood is up, and then—woe to any one who should put them in mind of their own prudential maxims!' 'Perhaps,' said Ravenswood, 'you read me more rightly than I can myself. But to think justly will certainly go some length in helping me to act so. But hark! I hear Caleb tolling the dinner-bell.'

'Which he always does with the more sonorous grace in proportion to the meagreness of the cheer which he has provided,' said Bucklaw; 'as if that infernal clang and jangle, which will one day bring the belfry down the cliff, could convert a starved hen into a fat capon, and a blade-bone of mutton into a haunch of venison.'

'I wish we may be so well off as your worst conjectures surmise, Bucklaw, from the extreme solemnity and ceremony with which Caleb seems to place on the table that solitary covered dish.'

'Uncover, Caleb! uncover, for Heaven's sake!' said Bucklaw; 'let us have what you can give us without preface. Why, it stands well enough, man,' he continued, addressing impatiently the ancient butler, who, without reply, kept shifting the dish, until he had at length placed it with mathematical precision in the very midst of the table.

'What have we got here, Caleb?' inquired the Master in his turn.

'Ahem! sir, ye suld have known before; but his honour the Laird of Bucklaw is so impatient,' answered Caleb, still holding the dish with one hand and the cover with the other, with evident reluctance to disclose the contents.

'But what is it, a God's name—not a pair of clean spurs, I hope, in the Border fashion of old times?'

'Ahem! ahem!' reiterated Caleb, 'your honour is pleased to be facetious; natheless, I might presume to say it was a convenient fashion, and used, as I have heard, in an honourable and thriving family. But touching your