“Yes--no--yes--that is, I must meet Claverhouse there on some express business; so boot and saddle, Pike, as fast as you can.--O, Lord! what times are these!--the poor lad--my old cronie’s son!--and the silly wench sticks it into her postscriptum, as she calls it, at the tail of all this trumpery about old gowns and new romances!” In a few minutes the good old officer was fully equipped; and having mounted upon his arm-gaunt charger as soberly as Mark Antony himself could have done, he paced forth his way to the Tower of Tillietudlem. On the road he formed the prudent resolution to say nothing to the old lady (whose dislike to presbyterians of all kinds he knew to be inveterate) of the quality and rank of the prisoner detained within her walls, but to try his own influence with Claverhouse to obtain Morton’s liberation. “Being so loyal as he is, he must do something for so old a cavalier as I am,” said the veteran to himself; “and if he is so good a soldier as the world speaks of, why, he will be glad to serve an old soldier’s son. I never knew a real soldier that was not a frank-hearted, honest fellow; and I think the execution of the laws (though it’s a pity they find it necessary to make them so severe) may be a thousand times better intrusted with them than with peddling lawyers and thick-skulled country gentlemen.” Such were the ruminations of Major Miles Bellenden, which were terminated by John Gudyill (not more than half-drunk) taking hold of his bridle, and assisting him to dismount in the roughpaved court of Tillietudlem. “Why, John,” said the veteran, “what devil of a discipline is this you have been keeping? You have been reading Geneva print this morning already.” “I have been reading the Litany,” said John, shaking his head with a look of drunken gravity, and having only caught one word of the Major’s address to him; “life is short, sir; we are flowers of the field, sir--hiccup--and lilies of the valley.” “Flowers and lilies? Why, man, such carles as thou and I can hardly be called better than old hemlocks, decayed nettles, or withered rag-weed; but I suppose you think that we are still worth watering.” “I am an old soldier, sir, I thank Heaven--hiccup”-- “An old skinker, you mean, John. But come, never mind, show me the way to your mistress, old lad.” John Gudyill led the way to the stone hall, where Lady Margaret was fidgeting about, superintending, arranging, and re-forming the preparations made for the reception of the celebrated Claverhouse, whom one party honoured and extolled as a hero, and another execrated as a bloodthirsty oppressor. “Did I not tell you,” said Lady Margaret to her principal female attendant--“did I not tell you, Mysie, that it was my especial pleasure on this occasion to have every thing in the precise order wherein it was upon that famous morning when his most sacred majesty partook of his disjune at Tillietudlem?”