"Oh! she is a smart lass, that, and she behaved very civil to me, and I'm no ways dissatisfied. Only perhaps a trifle from your ladyship's own fair hand; she is but a waiting-woman after all," added Dickon, not forgetting the eleventh commandment, and making another scrape, which he meant should savour of gallantry. Lady Nithsdale slipped some additional gold into his hand. "And did my lord look well?" she inquired. "Yes, very well, my lady, as far as I know. Just as well as the other lords he was along with; only a trifle paler. He did not look, my lady, as if he had visited his own buttery-hatch quite so lately as I have." "Alas! was he very pale? Tell me, in pity tell me all the truth." "Nay, madam! don't put yourself in such a fluster. He looked pale, just like all the rest of them." Lady Nithsdale turned away for a moment. She could scarcely endure to commune with one who saw in her noble husband but a man, like other men: and yet this peasant had seen him, he had heard his voice; from him alone could she hope to learn any particulars. Dickon, who was not wanting in natural shrewdness, perceived that his answers did not give entire satisfaction; and when Lady Nithsdale again turning towards him inquired whether her lord moved with a firm step, or whether his health did not appear to have suffered from long confinement, he answered, "Oh, bless your heart, my lady, he walked as strong, and looked lusty and hearty; quite different from the other lords! Oh! he's a fine gentleman sure enough, and looked more like a prince than anything else." "He has a noble carriage, in good sooth," rejoined Lady Nithsdale; "and sorrow has not yet subdued his lofty bearing?" "Lord save you, my lady! he was quite of a different sort from the rest of them. They seemed like rabble by the side of him: anybody might have known him among a thousand!" "They might, indeed. And when he spoke did his voice sound full and mellow as ever?" "Why, he spoke somewhat low, for he did not wish everybody to hear; but methought it was a marvellous good voice, quite different from the other rebels." Lady Nithsdale hung upon his words with delight, and forgot that at first she had thought him incapable of estimating her lord's superiority over his fellows. "And can you tell me how my lord was lodged, and how he is attended?" "Why, as I have heard say, very well lodged; not so handsomely as he would be here in such a castle as this, but right well lodged as times go; and they say that the rebels they live like fighting-cocks, and there is revelry of all kinds going on among them. But that's among the young lords," added Dickon, who saw he had not now touched the right string; "not my Lord Derwentwater and my Lord Nithsdale, they are quite of another sort; but some of the young gallants, and young Bottair of Athol--Oh! he's a comely young fellow that!--and they do say that pretty Kate Musgrave----"