“That’s home as well as true, Master,” replied his companion; “but, by your leave, you have nursed in your bosom one great goodly snake that has swallowed all the rest, and is as sure to devour you as my half-dozen are to make a meal on all that’s left of Bucklaw, which is but what lies between bonnet and boot-heel.” “I must not,” answered the Master of Ravenswood, “challenge the freedom of speech in which I have set example. What, to speak without a metaphor, do you call this monstrous passion which you charge me with fostering?” “Revenge, my good sir—revenge; which, if it be as gentle manlike a sin as wine and wassail, with their _et cæteras_, is equally unchristian, and not so bloodless. It is better breaking a park-pale to watch a doe or damsel than to shoot an old man.” “I deny the purpose,” said the Master of Ravenswood. “On my soul, I had no such intention; I meant but to confront the oppressor ere I left my native land, and upbraid him with his tyranny and its consequences. I would have stated my wrongs so that they would have shaken his soul within him.” “Yes,” answered Bucklaw, “and he would have collared you, and cried ‘help,’ and then you would have shaken the soul _out_ of him, I suppose. Your very look and manner would have frightened the old man to death.” “Consider the provocation,” answered Ravenswood—“consider the ruin and death procured and caused by his hard-hearted cruelty—an ancient house destroyed, an affectionate father murdered! Why, in our old Scottish days, he that sat quiet under such wrongs would have been held neither fit to back a friend nor face a foe.” “Well, Master, I am glad to see that the devil deals as cunningly with other folk as he deals with me; for whenever I am about to commit any folly, he persuades me it is the most necessary, gallant, gentlemanlike thing on earth, and I am up to saddlegirths in the bog before I see that the ground is soft. And you, Master, might have turned out a murd——a homicide, just out of pure respect for your father’s memory.” “There is more sense in your language, Bucklaw,” replied the Master, “than might have been expected from your conduct. It is too true, our vices steal upon us in forms outwardly as fair as those of the demons whom the superstitious represent as intriguing with the human race, and are not discovered in their native hideousness until we have clasped them in our arms.” “But we may throw them from us, though,” said Bucklaw, “and that is what I shall think of doing one of these days—that is, when old Lady Girnington dies.” “Did you ever hear the expression of the English divine?” said Ravenswood—“‘Hell is paved with good intentions,’—as much as to say, they are more often formed than executed.” “Well,” replied Bucklaw, “but I will begin this blessed night, and have determined not to drink above one quart of wine, unless your claret be of extraordinary quality.”