"A cauld morning rather, please your lordship," replied Juden somewhat testily, as he ushered them into the chamber-of-dais, and stirred the fire as well as the chain which secured the poker to the jamb permitted him. "Be seated, Mersington. This way, my Lord; take care of the table--devil! the man's blind," said Clermistonlee, as he somewhat unceremoniously pushed the half-intoxicated senator into one of the high-backed chairs of red maroquin. Mersington was twenty years his senior, and never was there a pair of more ill-assorted gossips or friends. The one, a polished and fashionable cavalier roué; the other, a cranky and meagre compound of vulgarity, shrewdness, and ignorance, who was never sober, but had obtained a seat on the bench in consequence of his inflexible devotion to the Government, to please whom he would have sent the twelve apostles to "testify" at the Bow-foot, had it been required of him. Clermistonlee unbuckled his belt, and flung his empty scabbard to the one end of the room, his plumed beaver to the other, and drew his chair hastily forward to the table. "Where is your braw bilbo, my Lord?" asked Juden. "What the devil is it to thee?--'Tis broken. I will wear the steel-hilted backsword to-morrow." "The auld blade ye wore at the Brigg?" "D--n Bothwell Brigg! How is Meg?" "Muckle the same, puir beastie." "I hope, knave, thou gavest her the warm mash, and bathed her nostrils and fetlocks." "Without fail. We maun tak' gude care o' her--the last o' a braw stud of sixty, my faith! But when a mear hath baith the wheezlock and the yeuk----" "How! has she both?" "Had ye, a month syne, tar-barrelled that auld carlin, Elshender, owre the muir at St. Rocque, Meg would hae been sound, wind and limb, frae that moment." "'Sblood! Juden, dost think the cantrips of this old hag have really bedevilled my favourite nag?" "I'm no just free to say, my Lord; but it is unco queer that Meg (puir beastie!) should fa' ill o' sae mony things just after Lucky Elshender flyted wi' ye for riding through her kail for a near cut to the Grange, the day ye dined wi' auld Fountainhall." "By all the devils, Juden, if I thought this bearded hag had any hand in the mare's illness, I would have her under the hands of the pricker to-morrow," replied Clermistonlee, who was deeply imbued with the Scottish prejudice against old women. "We had before us to-day two hags, whom we consigned to the flames; one for confessing witchcraft, and the other for obstinately refusing to confess it." Juden rubbed his hands.