"It would be wiser to let him alone. You would have his chief, the Marquis of Douglas, and every one of the name on ye like a nest o' hornets, for they are a proud and thrawart race, that winna thole steering. Ye maun train your hawks at other lures. Od's fish, man! his mad musqueteers would sack and slaughter the haill city." "And Fenton!" continued the Lord, grinding his teeth, "I would travel to Jericho to have him within reach of my rapier--I would, d--n me--to pull his nose off! What a ravelled hesp is my fortune! My wounded hand, too----" "Hee, hee! how can you expect it to heal, when the haill blude in your body is turning into burnt sack and sugared brandy?" "It has kept me from prosecuting this affair. But I am getting desperate, Mersington; between love of the girl, lack of her lands, and fear of poverty, nothing now can save me but a dash." "Spoken like yoursel--like the wild Randal Clermont o' 1670. But what do ye propose?" "To carry off Lilian and make a Highland wedding of it--ha, ha!" "Hee, hee! abduction, reif, and felony, anent whilk see the acts of the seventh parliament of James V. and James VI. Parliament twenty-first, chapter fourth--hee, hee! these would bear hard on your case, my birkie." "Pshaw! am not I, too, a Lord of the Parliament? so, friend Mersington, reserve this musty jargon for the Hall of the Tolbooth. How often hath a Scottish baron with his band ridden to its threshold with jack and spear, and while his trumpets blew defiance at the Cross, laughed the fulminations of the three estates to scorn!" "Ye mean mad Bothwell, with his thousand spears; but Clermistonlee, wi' his man Juden, would cut a sorry figure riding up the gate on the same errand." "But the mere abduction of a girl?" "It canna be sae bad in law, as abducting that dour auld carle, Durie the Lord President, whom a mosstrooping loon, by orders o' Traquair, carried off bodily, across his saddlebow, frae the dreary Figget whins, and warded for sax calendar months in the vault o' a Border peel. For my part, I have hated the name o' womankind since my Lady Mersington had me fined a thousand merks Scots, for that damned conventicle whilk, in my absence, she held on my lands. But Gude be thanked, I had my vengeance, by having her banished the liberties of the city, for hearing that Recusant runion Ichabod Bummel preach, whilk rid me and a' Bess Wynd o' her eternal clack. Faith, Clermistonlee, ye are welcome to abduct _her_, gif ye please, he, he!" "I thank you, gossip, but beg to decline," said Clermistonlee, draining his tankard of sack; "but to show thee, most learned senator, the value and veneration I bear those acts you have just cited, I shall this very night carry off Lilian Napier, whom, my spies inform me to be concealed somewhere to the south of the town. O, by all the devils, I'll easily find the place. My blood's up; I will make my fortune to-night, or mar it for ever."