"Lintstock found them during our last raid into Westmoreland. Nevertheless, Sir John, thank Heaven that you were not, like me, born with a most portentous wooden spoon in your mouth. I was an unlucky brat, and cried, it seems, like a pagan at my baptism; a bad omen, as the Lady Ashkirk told me. Fill again; but excuse me--my wound, you know." "Ah! that dainty dagger-thrust; but it is healing fast?" "By the total absence of an apothegar--yes. Hah! yonder is a gay dame, followed by an esquire with the argent and gules in his bonnet, crossing the Abbey Close. My faith! 'tis Lady Anne of Arran, whom rumour says thou lovest, Leslie." "How! that muirland-meg, Anne Hamilton? Ah! what a taste I must have!" replied Leslie. "Nay, thou wrongest him, Vipont," said Sir John of Corstorphine; "'tis Marion Logan of Restalrig, who hath thy heart; is it not, lieutenant of mine?" Leslie laughed, and coloured as he replied-- "'Tis Marion whom we see, and not the Lord Arran's daughter." The three gallants hastened to the window, as a lady, holding up her brocaded skirt in that fashion which the witty Knight of the Mount reprehended in his satires, passed into a door of the palace. "Hast thou seen what Lindesay's new poem says of yonder fashion of skirt-bearing?" said Forrester:-- "I trow St. Bernard, nor St. Blaise, Caused never man bear up their claise; Nor Peter, Paul, nor St. Andrew, Bore up their tails like these, I trow; But I laugh most to see a nun Cause bear her tail---- "The rest is vile ribaldry," said Vipont. "And by St. Bernard, and St. Blaise to boot, Sir David deserves to be run through the body for so severely satirizing the ladies of Holyrood. Ha! who cometh next?--the cardinal!" As he spoke, Beaton, with a cavalcade of horsemen, passed through the Abbey Close on an evening ride. "He sits on his horse like a true cavalier," said Vipont, withdrawing a pace, as he observed the cardinal scrutinizing his windows. "But observe the Abbot of Kinloss; he always rides faster than his horse, and hangs on the bridle like a drowning man." "His roan nag is covered with foam, while those of the cardinal and his gentlemen are fresh as when they left their stalls." "The daughter of his eminence and the young Lord Lindesay are riding together," said Vipont; "a love case that, I think." Amid jesting and laughing--for their light hearts and the somewhat reckless manners of the time, when the sword was rarely out of men's hands, imparted an almost boisterous gaiety to the supper--the evening closed in, cloudy and grey; darkness approached, and candles were lighted. The clock struck half-past eight; but there were still four flasks uncorked, when Lintstock entered, with a portentous expression in his remaining eye, and laid before his master a square packet, tied with blue ribands, which, like the edicts of council, were officially sealed with green wax. "The devil! now what doth this portend?" muttered his friends.