"Odsfish, man! he, he! what mair would ye hae, Randal? There is the auld dame denounced a rebel, and in default of compearance, put to the horn; her moveable gudes and gear escheat to the King, conform to the acts thereanent, and sae are the heritable, but the Council will soon snap them up. What mair would ye hae?" "The person of little Lilian," said Clermistonlee, with a sinister smile, as he winked over the top of his great silver tankard. "Hee, hee!" chuckled Mersington. "I would give a thousand broad pieces----" "If ye had them!" "Crush me! yes.----to discover where the young damsel is in hiding at this moment. Accustomed to subdue women from very habit, her piquant coldness and hauteur have inflamed, surprised, and offended me, and by all the devils, I will have her, though I should be tumbled down the precipice of hell for it!" he continued, in the cavalier phraseology. "And this fellow, Fenton, this silken slave, who crossed me on the very night I had hoped to have her arrested (he ground his teeth), and that braggart, Douglas of Finland, who was so ready with his rapier to-night, let them look to it; my path shall not be crossed with impunity by man or devil." "Nor is that of any Lord of Council, while a warrant of arrest and ward may be had from Mackenzie for the asking, like the _lettre-de-cachet_ o' our French friends." "True, my Lord--our laws are severe; they are written in blood, like those of Draco, the Athenian. If this fellow, Finland, has the young lady concealed about Edinburgh, and if I thought he had a deeper aim in view, than merely crossing me, I vow to Heaven, I would make him a terrible example to all such rascally intermeddlers with the purposes of their betters." His half-intoxicated companion looked slyly at him over his inverted tankard, and replied, "Get a warrant of search, and send every macer, messenger-at-arms, and toun guardsman after your dearie--he, he! and proclaim at the cross by tuck of drum, that the Right Honourable the Lord Clermistonlee, Baron of Drumsheugh and Knight of the Thistle, will pay one thousand marks of our gude Scottish money to the discoverer, or producer----" "Hush, Mersington, you jest too much on this matter. Withered be my tongue for speaking of this project to thee--but the deed is done, and I might as well have proclaimed it by sound of trumpet at the Tron." "You have been a wild buckie in your day, Randal," said Lord Mersington; "and when I think o' all the braw queans, gentle as weel as simple, that you have loved and abandoned, gude-lackaday! I marvel that the whinger of some fierce brother or father hath not cut short your career o' gallantry. How about your fair one in Merlin's Wynd?" "Pshaw! I tired of her long ago." "And Lady Mary Charteris?"