my father.'
'It was a difficult task, my lord,' replied Heriot; 'your father was voiced generally as the wisest and one of the bravest men of Scotland.'
'He commanded me,' continued Nigel, 'to avoid all gambling; and I took upon me to modify this injunction into regulating my play according to my skill, means, and the course of my luck.'
'Ay, self opinion, acting on a desire of acquisition, my lord—you hoped to touch pitch and not to be defiled, 'answered Heriot. 'Well, my lord, you need not say, for I have heard with much regret, how far this conduct diminished your reputation. Your next error I may without scruple remind you of—My lord, my lord, in whatever degree Lord Dalgarno may have failed towards you, the son of his father should have been sacred from your violence.'
'You speak in cold blood, Master Heriot, and I was smarting under a thousand wrongs inflicted on me under the mask of friendship.'
'That is, he gave your lordship bad advice, and you,' said Heriot—
'Was fool enough to follow his counsel,' answered Nigel—'But we will pass this, Master Heriot, if you please. Old men and young men, men of the sword and men of peaceful occupation, always have thought, always will think, differently on such subjects.'
'I grant,' answered Heriot, 'the distinction between the old goldsmith and the young nobleman—still you should have had patience for Lord Huntinglen's sake, and prudence for your own. Supposing your quarrel just —'
'I pray you to pass on to some other charge,' said Lord Glenvarloch.
'I am not your accuser, my lord; but I trust in heaven, that your own heart has already accused you bitterly on the inhospitable wrong which your late landlord has sustained at your hand.'
'Had I been guilty of what you allude to,' said Lord Glenvarloch,— 'had a moment of temptation hurried me away, I had long ere now most bitterly repented it. But whoever may have wronged the unhappy woman, it was not I—I never heard of her folly until within this hour.'
'Come, my lord,' said Heriot, with some severity, 'this sounds too much like affectation. I know there is among our modern youth a new creed respecting adultery as well as homicide—I would rather hear you speak of a revision of the Decalogue, with mitigated penalties in favour of the privileged orders—I would rather hear you do this than deny a fact in which you have been known to glory.'
'Glory!—I never did, never would have taken honour to myself from such a cause,' said Lord Glenvarloch. 'I could not prevent other idle tongues, and idle brains, from making false inferences.'
'You would have known well enough how to stop their mouths, my lord,' replied Heriot, 'had they spoke of you what was unpleasing to your ears, and what the truth did not warrant.—Come, my lord, remember your promise to confess; and, indeed, to confess is, in this case, in some slight sort to redress. I will grant you are young—the woman handsome—and, as I myself have observed, light-headed enough. Let me know where she is. Her foolish husband has still some compassion for her—will save her from infamy—perhaps, in time, receive her back; for we are a good-natured generation we traders. Do not, my lord, emulate those who work mischief merely for the pleasure of doing so— it is the very devil's worst quality.'
'Your grave remonstrances will drive me mad,' said Nigel. 'There is a show of sense and reason in what you say; and yet, it is positively insisting on my telling the retreat of a fugitive of whom I know nothing earthly.'
'It is well, my lord,' answered Heriot, coldly. 'You have a right, such as it is, to keep your own secrets; but, since my discourse on these points seems so totally unavailing, we had better proceed to business. Yet your father's image rises before me, and seems to plead that I should go on.'
'Be it as you will, sir,' said Glenvarloch; 'he who doubts my word shall have no additional security for it.'
'Well, my lord.—In the Sanctuary at Whitefriars—a place of refuge so unsuitable to a young man of quality and character—I am told a murder was committed.'
'And you believe that I did the deed, I suppose?'
'God forbid, my lord!' said Heriot. 'The coroner's inquest hath sat, and it appeared that your lordship, under your assumed name of Grahame, behaved with the utmost bravery.'
'No compliment, I pray you,' said Nigel; 'I am only too happy to find, that I did not murder, or am not believed to have murdered, the old man.'
'True, my lord, said Heriot; 'but even in this affair there lacks explanation. Your lordship embarked this morning in a wherry with a female, and, it is said, an immense sum of money, in specie and other valuables—but the woman has not since been heard of.'
'I parted with her at Paul's Wharf,' said Nigel, 'where she went ashore with her charge. I gave her a letter to that very man, John Christie.'
'Ay, that is the waterman's story; but John Christie denies that he remembers anything of the matter.'
'I am sorry to hear this,' said the young nobleman; 'I hope in Heaven she has not been trepanned, for the treasure she had with her.'
'I hope not, my lord,' replied Heriot; 'but men's minds are much disturbed about it. Our national character suffers on all hands. Men remember the fatal case of Lord Sanquhar, hanged for the murder of a fencing-master; and exclaim, they will not have their wives whored, and their property stolen, by the nobility of Scotland.'
'And all this is laid to my door!' said Nigel; 'my exculpation is easy.'
'I trust so, my lord,' said Heriot;—'nay, in this particular, I do not doubt it.—But why did you leave Whitefriars under such circumstances?'
'Master Reginald Lowestoffe sent a boat for me, with intimation to provide for my safety.'
'I am sorry to say,' replied Heriot, 'that he denies all knowledge of your lordship's motions, after having dispatched a messenger to you with some baggage.'
'The watermen told me they were employed by him.'
'Watermen!' said Heriot; 'one of these proves to be an idle apprentice, an old acquaintance of mine—the other has escaped; but the fellow who is in custody persists in saying he was employed by your lordship, and you only.'
'He lies!' said Lord Glenvarloch, hastily;—'He told me Master Lowestoffe had sent him.—I hope that kind- hearted gentleman is at liberty?'
'He is,' answered Heriot; 'and has escaped with a rebuke from the benchers, for interfering in such a matter as your lordship's. The Court desire to keep well with the young Templars in these times of commotion, or he had not come off so well.'
'That is the only word of comfort I have heard from you,' replied Nigel. 'But this poor woman,—she and her trunk were committed to the charge of two porters.'
'So said the pretended waterman; but none of the fellows who ply at the wharf will acknowledge the employment.—I see the idea makes you uneasy, my lord; but every effort is made to discover the poor woman's place of retreat—if, indeed, she yet lives.—And now, my lord, my errand is spoken, so far as it relates exclusively to your lordship; what remains, is matter of business of a more formal kind.'
'Let us proceed to it without delay,' said Lord Glenvarloch. 'I would hear of the affairs of any one rather than of my own.'
'You cannot have forgotten, my lord,' said Heriot, 'the transaction which took place some weeks since at Lord Huntinglen's—by which a large sum of money was advanced for the redemption of your lordship's estate?'
'I remember it perfectly,' said Nigel; 'and your present austerity cannot make me forget your kindness on the occasion.'
Heriot bowed gravely, and went on.—'That money was advanced under the expectation and hope that it might be replaced by the contents of a grant to your lordship, under the royal sign-manual, in payment of certain monies due by the crown to your father.—I trust your lordship understood the transaction at the time—I trust you now understand my resumption of its import, and hold it to be correct?'
'Undeniably correct,' answered Lord Glenvarloch. 'If the sums contained in the warrant cannot be recovered, my lands become the property of those who paid off the original holders of the mortgage, and now stand in their right.'
'Even so, my lord,' said Heriot. 'And your lordship's unhappy circumstances having, it would seem, alarmed
