He went with open hands and empty stomach, trusting to fill the one on his master’s account and the other on his own score, at the expense of the feuars of Wolf’s Hope. But, death to his hopes! as he entered the eastern end of the straggling village, the awful form of Davie Dingwall, a sly, dry, hard-fisted, shrewd country attorney, who had already acted against the family of Ravenswood, and was a principal agent of Sir William Ashton, trotted in at the western extremity, bestriding a leathern portmanteau stuffed with the feu-charters of the hamlet, and hoping he had not kept Mr. Balderstone waiting, “as he was instructed and fully empowered to pay or receive, compound or compensate, and, in fine, to _agé_ as accords respecting all mutual and unsettled claims whatsoever, belonging or competent to the Honourable Edgar Ravenswood, commonly called the Master of Ravenswood——” “The _Right_ Honourable Edgar _Lord Ravenswood_,” said Caleb, with great emphasis; for, though conscious he had little chance of advantage in the conflict to ensue, he was resolved not to sacrifice one jot of honour. “Lord Ravenswood, then,” said the man of business—“we shall not quarrel with you about titles of courtesy—commonly called Lord Ravenswood, or Master of Ravenswood, heritable proprietor of the lands and barony of Wolf’s Crag, on the one part, and to John Whitefish and others, feuars in the town of Wolf’s Hope, within the barony aforesaid, on the other part.” Caleb was conscious, from sad experience, that he would wage a very different strife with this mercenary champion than with the individual feuars themselves, upon whose old recollections, predilections, and habits of thinking he might have wrought by an hundred indirect arguments, to which their deputy-representative was totally insensible. The issue of the debate proved the reality of his apprehensions. It was in vain he strained his eloquence and ingenuity, and collected into one mass all arguments arising from antique custom and hereditary respect, from the good deeds done by the Lords of Ravenswood to the community of Wolf’s Hope in former days, and from what might be expected from them in future. The writer stuck to the contents of his feu-charters; he could not see it: ’twas not in the bond. And when Caleb, determined to try what a little spirit would do, deprecated the consequences of Lord Ravenswood’s withdrawing his protection from the burgh, and even hinted in his using active measures of resentment, the man of law sneered in his face.