"E'en sae, Milnwood," replied Cuddie; " for the puir quean gat leave to come near me wi' speaking the loon fair, (d-n him, that I suld say sae) and sae she bade me God speed, and she wanted to stap siller into my hand;-I'se warraht it was the tae half o' her fee and bountith, for she wared the ither half on pinners and pearlings to gang to see us shoot yon day at the popinjay.” "And did you take it, Cuddie ?" said Morton.

"Troth did I no, Milnwood; I was sic a fule as to fling it back to her my heart was ower grit to be behadden to her, when I had seen that loon slavering and kissing at her. But I was a great fule for my pains; it wad hae dune my mither and me some gude, and she'll ware't a' on duds and nonsense."

There was here a deep and long pause. Cuddie was probably engaged in regretting the rejection of his mistress's bounty, and Henry Morton in considering from what motives, or upon what conditions, Miss Bellenden had succeeded in procuring the interference of Lord Evandale in his favour.

"Was it not possible," suggested his awakening hopes, "that he had construed her influence over Lord Evandale hastily and unjustly? Ought he to censure her severely, if, submitting to dissimulation for his sake, she had permitted the young nobleman to entertain hopes which she had no intention to realize? Or what if she had appealed to the generosity which Lord Evandale was supposed to possess, and had engaged his honour to protect the person of a favoured rival ?"

Still, however, the words which he had overheard recurred ever and anon to his remembrance, with a pang which resembled the sting of an adder.

"Nothing that she could refuse him!-was it possible to make a more unlimited declaration of predilection? The language of affection has not, within the limits of maidenly delicacy, a stronger expression. She is lost to me wholly, and for ever; and nothing remains for me. now, but vengeance for my own wrongs, and for those which are hourly inflicted on my country.'

Apparently, Cuddie, though with less refinement, was following out a similar train of ideas; for he suddenly asked Morton in a low whisper-" Wad there be ony ill in getting out o' thae chields' hands, an ane could compass it ?"

"None in the world," said Morton ;" and if an opportunity occurs of doing so, depend on it I for one will not let it slip."

"I'm blithe to hear ye say sae," answered Cuddie. "I'm but a puir silly fallow, but I canna think there wad be muckle ill in breaking out by strength o' hand, if ye could mak it ony thing feasible. ne'er fear to lay on, if it were

I am the lad that will come to that; but our

auld leddy wad hae ca'd that a resisting o' the King's authority."

"I will resist any authority on earth," said Morton, "that invades tyrannically my chartered rights as a freeman; and I am determined I will not be unjustly dragged to a jail, or perhaps a gibbet, if I can possibly make my escape from these men either by address or force." "Weel, that's just my mind too, aye supposing we hae a feasible opportunity o' breaking loose. But then ye speak o' a charter; now these are things that only belang to the like o' you that are a gentleman, and it might na bear me through, that am but a husbandman.'

"The charter that I speak of," said Morton, "is common to the meanest Scotchman. It is that freedom from stripes and bondage which was claimed, as you may read in scripture, by the Apostle Paul himself, and which every man who is free-born is called upon to defend, for his own sake and that of his countrymen."

"Hegh, sirs!" replied Cuddie, "it wad hae been ang or my Leddy Margaret, or my mither either, wad hae fund out sic a wiselike doctrine in the Bible! The tane was aye graning about giving tribute to Cæsar, and the tither is as daft wi' her whiggery. I hae been clean spoilt, just wi' listening to twa blethering auld wives; but if I could get a gentleman that wad let me tak on to be his servant, I am confident I wad be a clean contrary

creature; and I hope your honour will think on what I am saying, if ye were ance fairly delivered out o' this house of bondage, and just take me to be your ain wallyde-shamble."

"My valet, Cuddie ?" answered Morton, "alas! that would be sorry preferment, even if we were at liberty." "I ken what ye're thinking-that because I am landward-bred, I wad be bringing ye to disgrace afore folk; but ye maun ken I'm gay gleg at the uptak; there was never onything dune wi' hand but I learned gay readily, 'septing reading, writing, and ciphering; but there's no the like o' me at the fit-ba', and I can play wi' the broadsword as weel as Corporal Inglis there. I hae broken his head or now, for as massy as he's riding ahint us.-And then ye'll no be gaun to stay in this country ?"-said he, stopping and interrupting himself.

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Probably not," replied Morton. "Weel, I carena a boddle.

And

Ye see I wad get my mither bestowed wi' her auld graning tittie, auntie Meg, in the Gallowgate o' Glasgow, and then I trust they wad neither burn her for a witch, or let her fail for fau't o' food, or hang her up for an auld whig wife; for the provost, they say, is very regardful o' sic puir bodies. then you and me wad gang and pouss our fortunes, like the folk i' the daft auld tales about Jock the Giant-killer, and Valentine and Orson; and we wad come back to merry Scotland, as the sang says, and I wad tak to the stilts again, and turn sic furs on the bonnie rigs o' Milnwood holms, that it wad be worth a pint but to look at them."

"I fear," said Morton," there is very little chance, my good friend Cuddie, of our getting back to our old occupation."

"Hout, stir-hout, stir," replied Cuddie, "it's aye gude to keep up a hardy heart—as broken a ship's come to land. But what's that I hear? never stir, if my auld mither isna at the preaching again! I ken the sough o' her texts, that sound just like the wind blawing through the spence; and there's Kettledrummle setting to wark,

too-Lord's sake, if the sodgers anes get angry, they'll murder them baith, and us for company!"

Their farther conversation was in fact interrupted by a blatant noise which arose behind them, in which the voice of the preacher emitted, in unison with that of the old woman, tones like the grumbling of a bassoon combined with the screaking of a cracked fiddle. At first, the aged pair of sufferers had been contented to condole with each other in smothered expressions of complaint and indignation; but the sense of their injuries became more pungently aggravated as they communicated with each other, and they became at length unable to suppress their ire.

"Woe, woe, and a threefold woe unto you, ye bloody and violent persecutors!" exclaimed the Reverend Gabriel Kettledrummle-" Woe, and threefold woe unto you, even to the breaking of seals, the blowing of trumpets, and the pouring forth of vials!"

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Ay-ay-a black cast to a' their ill-faur'd faces, and the outside o' the loof to them at the last day!" echoed the shrill counter-tenor of Mause, falling in like the second part of a catch,

"I tell you," continued the divine, "that your rankings and your ridings-your neighings and your prancings -your bloody, barbarous, and inhuman cruelties-your benumbing, deadening, and debauching the conscience of poor creatures by oaths, soul-damning and self-contradictory, have arisen from earth to Heaven like a foul and hideous outcry of perjury for hastening the wrath to come -hugh! hugh! hugh!"

"And I say," cried Mause, in the same tune, and nearly at the same time, " that wi' this auld breath o' mine, and it's sair ta'en down wi' the asthmatics and this rough trot"

"Deil gin they would gallop," said Cuddie, but gar her haud her tongue !"

"wad it

"Wi' this auld and brief breath," continued Mause, "will I testify against the backslidings, defections, de

falcations, and declinings of the land—against the grievances and the causes of wrath!"

"Peace, I pr'ythee-Peace, good woman," said the preacher, who had just recovered from a violent fit of coughing, and found his own anathema borne down by Mause's better wind, " peace, and take not the word out of the mouth of a servant of the altar.-I say, I uplift my voice and tell you, that before the play is played out -ay, before this very sun gaes down, ye sall learn that neither a desperate Judas, like your prelate Sharpe, that's gane to his place; nor a sanctuary-breaking Holofernes, like bloody-minded Claverhouse; nor an ambitious Diotrephes, like the lad Evandale; nor a covetous and warld-following Demas, like him, they ca' Sergeant Bothwell, that makes every wife's plack and her meal-ark his ain; neither your carabines, nor your pistols, nor your broad-swords, nor your horses, nor your saddles, bridles, surcingles, nose-bags, nor martingales, shall resist the arrows that are whetted and the bow that is bent against you!"

"That shall they never, I trow," echoed Mause; "castaways are they ilk ane o' them-besoms of destruction, fit only to be flung into the fire when they have sweepit the filth out o' the Temple-whips of small cords knotted for the chastisement of those wha like their warldly gudes and gear better than the Cross or the Covenant, but when that wark's done, only meet to mak latchets to the deil's brogues."

"Fiend hae me," said Cuddie, addressing himself to Morton, "if I dinna think our mither preaches as weel as the minister-But it's a sair pity o' his hoast, for it aye comes on just when he's at the best o't, and that lang routing he made air this morning is sair again him too— Deil an I care if he wad roar her dumb, and then he wad hae't a' to answer for himsell-It's lucky the road's rough, and the troopers are no taking muckle tent to what they say wi' the rattling o' the horses' feet; but an we were anes on saft grund, we'll hear news o' a' this."

2 VOL. 11.