"From bad to worse," answered the young man. "He went away for a while, and then returned; and since then he has been more daring than ever." The conversation thus proceeded for about half an hour longer, when the clock struck one, and John Ramsay rose, saying, "Well, I will away to bed; but we shall meet to-morrow, before I depart for Edinburgh." "If you go to-morrow I will ride with you," answered his cousin, "for I am bound thither too. We can talk farther by the way." "So be it, then," answered John Ramsay; and with a few more words, to arrange their plans, they parted for the night, the younger man to sleep, after a short space given to agitated thought, the elder to meditate somewhat scornfully, though well pleased, upon the easy tool which passion renders the most impetuous and unruly, when duly and skilfully directed. CHAPTER XXII. I love not to leave Gowrie and Julia so long, and yet they are very happy without me. Doubtless they could do without Mr. Rhind either, as he sits there in the window of the old-fashioned inn, with its deep bay and its small lozenges of glass, and its heavy frame of lead and iron. Julia looks up at Gowrie, and smiles, and his eyes glance cheerfully. There must be some jest between them, light and happy, with none of the world's bitterness--the jest of two lovers' hearts. Would that I knew what it is; but the words are spoken in a whisper, for Mr. Rhind is there with his everlasting little volume bound in vellum, and I may as well leave them at Berwick, too, and go on before, to see what reception was preparing for them in a distant place. I must convey the reader with me to the old royal palace of Falkland, without, however, giving any detailed account of a building, a much better description of which than any I can afford may be found in many an antiquarian record. Suffice it that it was large, roomy, and then in a high state of preservation. It was also surrounded by an extensive deer-park, called "The Wood of Falkland," which was perhaps its highest attraction in the eyes of King James VI., whose only virtue was the love of hunting. The season, as every reader, whether skilled in woodcraft or not, must know, was not one in which St. Hubert permits the horned tenants of the forest to be chased by man, for it was as yet but the month of February. But that season of the year was a dull one for the Scottish monarch; and after being deprived of his favourite pastime, he sometimes found the exercise even of his "Kingcraft," as he termed the art of government, so tedious as to require relief, and the labours of learned dullness, in which at other times he indulged, very wearisome.