"'S life! but we spend our time wearily! Will nobody fight with us?" said Roland, with a yawn, as they wound down the valley, by the banks of the Douglas. "St. Mary! I feel a violent inclination to maul some of those towers, that from every rock and hill-top look down so saucily on our line of march." "What?--the houses of thy Douglas friends?" "Assuredly." "And why?" "Just to keep us in practice and because they are held by Hamiltons." "Lucky it is, for us, that they are so. Long before this, had the Douglases possessed the same power in Lanarkshire that they did ten years ago, we had been eaten up." "True, in 1527, a hundred men, with two pieces of cannon, if they had once ventured into the middle ward on such an errand as ours, had never come out of it again." "Yet 'tis very hard that no one will just fire one little shot at us, just to afford an excuse----" "For blowing the house about their ears. A most amiable wish!" "Thy nag looks weary, Leslie." "Ah, 'tis a bay I picked up during our raid against the Annandale thieves last year. My blockhead of a groom lost me a beautiful roan horse at Leith, last Lammastide, where I sent it to be bathed, at sunset, in the sea."* * A superstitious custom, suppressed, by order of St. Cuthbert's kirk session, in 1647. "Where dost think we will dine, for my stomach crieth cupboard already?" "At the Barmkyn of Cairntable. I have heard that the gudeman there keepeth open house and free; besides, he is a kinsman of Redhall, and if we empty his girnels and broach his casks, what matter? Is it not for the king's service? and all Scotland knows," added Roland, with a smile, "how zealous the advocate is for the public weal." "Let us halt here for one moment," said Leslie, reining up his horse beside a little rustic well, which flowed near a cottage wall; "this water looks fresh and pure; 'tis south-running, too, and I am thirsty as a sack of flour." "Lintstock, bring hither the flask of French brandy." From a gun-carriage, Lintstock unslung a large leathern bottle, and brought it to his master, ogling it by the way with all the ardour of which his solitary eye was capable; and thereafter, from his havresack, he produced a beechwood luggie. "Gudewife," said Leslie, to a woman, who was grinding corn in a wooden quern at the cottage door, and who wore one of those pointed Flemish caps which had been introduced into Scotland by Mary of Gueldres, "how name you this well?" "Sanct Bryde's of Dowglass," replied the woman, briefly and sulkily, for she was one of that hostile race. "A consecrated well! I thought so--'tis fortunate you asked," said Roland; and, after first dipping their fingers in the fountain, they crossed themselves, and then mixing the blessed water with the brandy, took each a draught, and gave a third to Lintstock.