This colloquy was, however, speedily put an end to, by the appearance of a covered cart, in which three ministers were returning from the synod to their respective parishes in Ayrshire; for at that time neither post-chaise nor stage-coach was numbered among the luxuries of Glasgow. One of them happened to be the identical Mr. Kilfuddy of Braehill, who had lectured so learnedly about the Temple of Diana on the preceding Sunday in the Tron Church; and he, being acquainted with Claud, said, as he looked out and bade the driver to stop,-- ‘Dear me, Mr. Walkinshaw, but ye hae gotten an unco cowp. I hope nae banes are broken?’ ‘No,’ replied Claud a little pawkily, ‘no; thanks be and praise--the banes, I believe, are a’ to the fore; but it’s no to be expressed what I hae suffer’t in the flesh.’ Some further conversation then ensued, and the result was most satisfactory, for Claud was invited to take a seat in the cart with the ministers, and induced to send his horse back to Rob Wallace by Johnny Drizen the carrier. Thus, without any material augmentation of his calamity, was he conveyed to the gate which led to Plealands. The Laird, who had all the morning been anxiously looking out for him, on seeing the cart approaching, left the house, and was standing ready at the yett to give him welcome. CHAPTER VI Plealands House stood on the bleak brow of a hill. It was not of great antiquity, having been raised by the father of Malachi; but it occupied the site of an ancient fortalice, the materials of which were employed in its construction; and as no great skill of the sculptor had been exerted to change the original form of the lintels and their ornaments, it had an air of antiquity much greater than properly belonged to its years. About as much as the habitation had been altered from its primitive character, the master too had been modernized. But, in whatever degree he may have been supposed to have declined from the heroic bearing of his ancestors, he still inherited, in unabated vigour, the animosity of their spirit; and if the coercive influence of national improvement prevented him from being distinguished in the feud and foray, the books of sederunt, both of the Glasgow Circuit and of the Court of Session, bore ample testimony to his constancy before them in asserting supposed rights, and in vindicating supposed wrongs.