Again the rapiers clashed together; but at that juncture Baillie Jaffroy, a portly magistrate, the curve of whose round paunch was finely delineated by his braided coat of purple broadcloth, and its front row of vast horn buttons, displaying his gold chain (the badge of civic power), rushed with a party of the Lord High Constable's guard from the lobby of the Parliament House, and bearing back the crowd with levelled partisans, separated the combatants. Neither of them were arrested. Clermistonlee, followed by Juden (who had acquired a black eye and broken head), retired suddenly into the lower council chamber, where the baillie, in dread of such a formidable personage, could not follow, and therefore turned the whole torrent of his magisterial wrath and indignation upon Walter Fenton, as being, he well knew, less able to withstand them. But Douglas of Finland, Gavin of Gavin, Holsterlee, and other military gallants, with drawn swords, carried him off triumphantly to Hugh Blair's famous establishment at the pillars, from whence, on the dispersion of the crowd, he rejoined Lilian: and so ended the last single combat witnessed in the high-street of Edinburgh. CHAPTER X. THE WHITE HORSE CELLAR. To eat cran, pertick, swan, and pliver, And everie fisch that swyms in river; To drink with us the newe fresch wyne, That grew vpon the River Ryne; Fresch fragrant Clarets of France, Of Angiers, and of Orliance, With comforts of grit daintie. DUMBAR TO JAMES V. It was now the autumn of 1688. The evil genius of James VII., and the influence of his advisers, were fast hastening him and his House to destruction. His measures for the re-establishment of the Catholic faith, in all its pristine power and ancient grandeur, exasperated the whole nation, and the Episcopalians in the south, and the sourer Presbyterians in the north, joined in one united voice against him. Many powerful nobles of both kingdoms were in exile. With these, and with the intermeddling Prince of Orange, a close correspondence was maintained by the friends of the intended Revolution. Even the Scottish and English forces, on whose valour and fidelity the unhappy King too much relied, were foes to his religion; and certain obnoxious measures, in his military administration, tended to alienate from his cause all but the most romantic and devoted of his subjects.