Among all this mirth and festivity there were two persons whose sobriety and staidness of demeanour were very remarkable. One was a young man about six-and-twenty, who had, apparently, just entered the city, for his boots and leathern gambadoes were covered with dust. He wore a plain gaberdine, or frock, of white Galloway frieze, with horn buttons; but beneath it appeared a doublet of escaupil to protect him from sword thrusts, an unusual garment for one of his class, for his grey maud, or plaid, blue bonnet, backsword, and hunting-knife announced him a yeomen or agriculturist. He carried a great knotty walking-staff, recently cut from some wayside thicket; but to a close observer it would have seemed perfectly evident that the profusion of his beard and moustache was worn rather for disguise than adornment. He was reading a paper affixed to the cross of St. John of Jerusalem which stood in the centre of the Canongate, immediately opposite the arch which now gives admittance to St. John's-street, the ground of which was then closely built upon. It was a proclamation, issued by the nobles who governed in the king's absence, offering a thousand merks of Scottish money for "ye heid of Archibald Seton, umquhile Earle of Ashkirk," accused of leaguing with that false traitor, Archibald Douglas, sometime Earl of Angus, who had recently been on the borders, at the head of some English moss-troopers, infesting the bounds of the knight, Sir Mark Kerr, of Cessford. With a brow that loured, and fierce eye that kindled, the young man read, from beginning to end, this proclamation (which was obnoxious to so many), and his hand gradually tightened on the handle of his poniard as he proceeded. Suddenly remembering that he might be observed, a smile of scorn, such a lordly smile as never clown could have given, spread over his dark features; he gave a glance of peculiar import at a group of ladies who occupied a balcony immediately opposite St. John's Cross, and, drawing his bonnet well over his brows, looked round for some obscure nook from whence to see, in security, the progress of the royal pageant. "How little can they imagine that I am so near them," said the Earl of Ashkirk (for the stranger was no other than he), as he dived among the crowd and disappeared.