"Aye-aye, awa ye neer-do-well--ye deil's buckie--I'll stay and keep the terrier company. The sack is glorious--the English port auld as the mirk Monanday a' sixteen hunder and fifty-twa--a-clear case o' sorcery, your Lordship--o' dark dealing wi' the great enemy o' mankind--hee-hee!--and woman kind baith." His head sank forward on his wine-bespattered cravat, and the senior senator of the College of Justice fell fast asleep. CHAPTER XVII. CLERMISTONLEE MAKES A SAD MISTAKE. But if this young lady will marry you, and relieve us, O my conscience! I'll turn friend to the sex, and rail no more at matrimony.--THE LYING VALET. Issuing from a private gate in the northern flank of the city wall, at the foot of the court attached to his mansion, the Lord and his staunch follower mounted in a narrow lane, overhung on one side by gloomy trees, and on the other by the ancient hospital of the Holy Trinity. The great oriel, or triple window of its church was then faintly lighted by the beams of the rising moon, the silver disk of which seemed to rest on the sable ridge of Arthur's Seat. They passed through the Calton, then a straggling burgh, consisting of antique houses of Flemish aspect, but occupied by a very inferior class of citizens, and entered the long and solitary path called Leith Loan, which was formed by an ancient trench of the Great Civil Wars; hollowly rang their horses' hoofs between the black rocks of the Calton on one hand, and the steep bank of St. Ninian on the other, where the ivied and shattered walls of a convent presented in the bright moonlight a striking variety of light and shade. To avoid every chance of recognition or surprise, Clermistonlee thus made a complete circuit of the city, leaving it on the side opposite to the scene of his operations. The night soon became as cloudy and dark as he could have wished it, for, as the fitful moon became involved in opaque masses of vapour, every object was rendered obscure and indistinct. On one side of the way lay the lake, like a sheet of ink, and beyond it rose up the stupendous cliffs and ramparts of the castle, and the gigantic outline of the city towering like a mighty bank of cloud, through which the lights of distant casements glimmered like far and fitful stars. On the other side spread open fields and solitary farms; the castles of the Touris of Inverleith, the Kincaids of Warriston, and two or three small and lonely hamlets.