First, Jenny was morally positive that young Milnwood would come to no harm--then, if he did, there was consolation in the reflection, that Lord Evandale was the better and more appropriate match of the two--then, there was every chance of a battle, in which the said Lord Evandale might be killed, and there wad be nae mair fash about that job--then, if the whigs gat the better, Milnwood and Cuddie might come to the Castle, and carry off the beloved of their hearts by the strong hand. “For I forgot to tell ye, madam,” continued the damsel, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, “that puir Cuddie’s in the hands of the Philistines as weel as young Milnwood, and he was brought here a prisoner this morning, and I was fain to speak Tam Halliday fair, and fleech him to let me near the puir creature; but Cuddie wasna sae thankfu’ as he needed till hae been neither,” she added, and at the same time changed her tone, and briskly withdrew the handkerchief from her face; “so I will ne’er waste my een wi’ greeting about the matter. There wad be aye enow o’ young men left, if they were to hang the tae half o’ them.” The other inhabitants of the Castle were also in a state of dissatisfaction and anxiety. Lady Margaret thought that Colonel Grahame, in commanding an execution at the door of her house, and refusing to grant a reprieve at her request, had fallen short of the deference due to her rank, and had even encroached on her seignorial rights. “The Colonel,” she said, “ought to have remembered, brother, that the barony of Tillietudlem has the baronial privilege of pit and gallows; and therefore, if the lad was to be executed on my estate, (which I consider as an unhandsome thing, seeing it is in the possession of females, to whom such tragedies cannot be acceptable,) he ought, at common law, to have been delivered up to my bailie, and justified at his sight.” “Martial law, sister,” answered Major Bellenden, “supersedes every other. But I must own I think Colonel Grahame rather deficient in attention to you; and I am not over and above pre-eminently flattered by his granting to young Evandale (I suppose because he is a lord, and has interest with the privy-council) a request which he refused to so old a servant of the king as I am. But so long as the poor young fellow’s life is saved, I can comfort myself with the fag-end of a ditty as old as myself.” And therewithal, he hummed a stanza: ‘And what though winter will pinch severe Through locks of grey and a cloak that’s old? Yet keep up thy heart, bold cavalier, For a cup of sack shall fence the cold.’ “I must be your guest here to-day, sister. I wish to hear the issue of this gathering on Loudon-hill, though I cannot conceive their standing a body of horse appointed like our guests this morning.--Woe’s me, the time has been that I would have liked ill to have sate in biggit wa’s waiting for the news of a skirmish to be fought within ten miles of me! But, as the old song goes,