“You be d--d!” said Bothwell, aside to him; “cannot you see she’s better where she is, so long as there is a respectable, sponsible, money-broking heritor, like Mr Morton of Milnwood, who has the means of atoning her trespasses? Let the old mother fly to raise another brood, she’s too tough to be made any thing of herself--Here,” he cried, “one other round to Milnwood and his roof-tree, and to our next merry meeting with him!--which I think will not be far distant, if he keeps such a fanatical family.” He then ordered the party to take their horses, and pressed the best in Milnwood’s stable into the king’s service to carry the prisoner. Mrs Wilson, with weeping eyes, made up a small parcel of necessaries for Henry’s compelled journey, and as she bustled about, took an opportunity, unseen by the party, to slip into his hand a small sum of money. Bothwell and his troopers, in other respects, kept their promise, and were civil. They did not bind their prisoner, but contented themselves with leading his horse between a file of men. They then mounted, and marched off with much mirth and laughter among themselves, leaving the Milnwood family in great confusion. The old Laird himself, overpowered by the loss of his nephew, and the unavailing outlay of twenty pounds sterling, did nothing the whole evening but rock himself backwards and forwards in his great leathern easy-chair, repeating the same lamentation, of “Ruined on a’ sides, ruined on a’ sides--harried and undone--harried and undone--body and gudes, body and gudes!” Mrs Alison Wilson’s grief was partly indulged and partly relieved by the torrent of invectives with which she accompanied Mause and Cuddie’s expulsion from Milnwood. “Ill luck be in the graning corse o’ thee! the prettiest lad in Clydesdale this day maun be a sufferer, and a’ for you and your daft whiggery!” “Gae wa’,” replied Mause; “I trow ye are yet in the bonds of sin, and in the gall of iniquity, to grudge your bonniest and best in the cause of Him that gave ye a’ ye hae--I promise I hae dune as muckle for Mr Harry as I wad do for my ain; for if Cuddie was found worthy to bear testimony in the Grassmarket”--“And there’s gude hope o’t,” said Alison, “unless you and he change your courses.” “--And if,” continued Mause, disregarding the interruption, “the bloody Doegs and the flattering Ziphites were to seek to ensnare me with a proffer of his remission upon sinful compliances, I wad persevere, natheless, in lifting my testimony against popery, prelacy, antinomianism, erastianism, lapsarianism, sublapsarianism, and the sins and snares of the times--I wad cry as a woman in labour against the black Indulgence, that has been a stumbling-block to professors--I wad uplift my voice as a powerful preacher.”