"By all the devils! I can sing as well as my Lord the President, though he hath three crown bowls of punch under his doublet." "Douglas, Douglas, your sword--your sword!" cried Walter, grasping the massive grating, and swinging on the bars like a madman, essaying in vain to wrench them from their solid wrests; but ere the words had left his lips, Lord Clermistonlee was staggered by a blow from the clenched hand of the cavalier, and Lilian was free. "Fly, Annie," he exclaimed to his love; "away with Lilian Napier to the coach at the close head. The devil, girl--art thou doited,--off and leave me to deal with this tavern brawler. Fore George! I will truss his points in first rate fashion." The girls retired in terror, and Douglas unsheathed his rapier. "Beware thee, villain," exclaimed the other, drawing his long bilbo with prompt bravery, and wrapping his mantle round the left arm. "I am a Lord of the Privy Council--to draw on me is treason." "Were you King James himself, I would run you through the heart, for applying such an epithet to a gentleman of the House of Douglas." "You will have it then--come on, plated varlet, and look well to guard and parry, for I am a first-rate swordsman." Finland's cuirass rang with a rapier thrust from his assailant, who fell furiously to work, lunging like a madman, and exclaiming every time the fire sparked from their clanging blades, "Bravo, bilbo! Excellent--come on again, Mr. Malapert, and I will teach thee to measure swords with Randal of Clermistonlee. Gads-o, fellow, thou art no novice in the science of fencing--crush me, what a thrust! well parried-- "With a hey lillelu, and a how----' Damnation seize thee, man! how came that about!" The sword of Finland, by one lucky parry had broken the Lord's rapier off by the hilt, and ripped up the skin of his sword-hand with such force that he staggered against the wall. "I hope your Lordship is not hurt!" exclaimed his antagonist, supporting him by the arm. "Zounds, no! a little only," replied Clermistonlee, whom the shock had perfectly sobered. Full of rage, he tossed his embossed sword-hilt over the house-tops, exclaiming, "Accursed blade, may the hands that forged thee grill on the fires of eternity!" It whistled through the air, and fell down the chimney of the dowager Lady Drumsturdy, where it stuck midway, and so terrified that ancient dame that, notwithstanding her hatred to "massemongers," she laid her poker and shovel _crosswise_; but the mysterious noise in her capacious "lum" formed a serious case for the investigation of ghost-seers and gossips next day. "Harkee, Laird of Finland," said Clermistonlee haughtily, "we must enact this affair over again in daylight; meantime let us part, or the Town-Guard will be upon us with their partisans, and I have no wish that you should suffer for ripping up an inch or two of skin in fair fight--you will hear from me anon."