RAIMOND. Seize on this moment! the streets are empty,-- Give me your hand. SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS. Clermistonlee was well aware that the forcible abduction of a young lady of family (or quality, according to the phraseology of the time), would create no small degree of indignation against him; but confiding in his rank, and in the influence of the powerful faction to which he belonged; aware that never could he otherwise obtain possession of Lilian's person, and ultimately her property, goaded by dread of poverty rather than avarice, inflamed by his own wild fancies and irregular passions rather than by love, and spurred on by the taunts and advices of the half cunning and wholly malicious Mersington, he sat longing with the utmost eagerness for the time of action, the tuck of the ten o'clock drum, after the beating of which, all within the city walls usually became so silent and still. He knew also that the family of Napier had experienced a severe shock by their recent forfeiture, and a squadron of Dalyel's dragoons being quartered on their estate for three weeks past, and being yet under hiding (as the term was), the abduction of Lilian could be more easily executed; and if once within the barred doors and grated windows of his desolate mansion on the rocks at Drumsheugh, or the massive chambers of his still more lonely tower on Clermiston Lee, Lilian might bid farewell equally to mercy and to hope. Aware of the lonely situation of Elsie's cottage on the verge of the great Burghmuir, fully two Scottish miles from the city cross, and knowing that the locality was always deserted after dusk, in consequence of the unsettled nature of the times, and a horde of footpads who infested the remnants of its forest and the deep quarries and moss-haggs through which the roadway wound, and which, independent of a gibbet, a ruined church and graveyard, deterred all and sundry, after the city gates were closed, from travelling that way after dusk--considering all those things, the noble roué had no doubt of being able to fire the little cottage, and, in the confusion, to bear away Lilian across his saddle-bow. And to cast suspicion in another quarter, he had desired Juden to have a bonnet or two, a grey maud and a bible, to leave on the road close by, that the odium of the outrage might fall on the houseless Cameronians who lurked among the hills to the southward. Tipsy as he was, when the time approached for Clermistonlee setting forth, Lord Mersington had still sense remaining to say, "Tak' tent, Randal, my man--hee, hee!--bide ye a wee, ere worse come o't. You may bring king, council and parliament about your lugs for this, and the Foulis o' Ravelstone, Congaltoun o' that ilk, and Merchiston himsel will swarm like a hornet's nest, and 'Horse and spear!' will be the cry through half the country side--he, he!'