"Oh, by all the devils, certainly; send me a dozen of copies. Faith! I must be quite pious henceforth. And now, bravo! see the Kirk Session about my little affairs, while I ride down the Lawnmarket to old Gideon Grasper, the Clerk to the Signet, for there will be a mountain of papers to sign and seal, and so forth; but the banns, the banns, next Sunday, remember;" and chaunting, "With a hey lillelu and a how lo lan," his lordship danced away out, tripping down the long stair by three steps at a time, and mounting, galloped into the upper part of the city. CHAPTER XVI. THE BATTLE OF STEINKIRKE. As torrents roll increased by numerous rills, With rage impetuous down their echoing hills; Rush to the vales and pour'd along the plain, Roar through a thousand channels to the main; The distant shepherd trembling hears the sound: So mix both hosts, and so their cries rebound. ILIAD, BOOK IV. It was the night before the famous battle of Steinkirke, when the confederates under William III. encountered the gallant and brilliant army of the great François Henri Duc de Luxembourg. In happy ignorance of what was being acted at home by those whose memory lay so near their hearts, Walter Fenton and Douglas of Finland were carousing with their brothers in war and misfortune around a blazing fire, composed of rafters borrowed for the purpose from the roof of a neighbouring Flemish house. Intent on crushing the alarming confederation of the Protestant powers against him, Louis XIV. had taken the field in person at the head of 120,000 men. This sensual, selfish, and weak-minded monarch was accompanied by all the effeminate pomp and tinsel splendour of an eastern emperor; his women and paramours, numerous enough for a seraglio; his dancers, players, musicians; his kitchen, opera, household, and all the ministers of his luxury, his pleasures, and his tyranny, in themselves a host, crowded and encumbered the great camp of his splendid army, which, however, soon captured Namur, a strong city on the Meuse, though strengthened by all the skill of the great Coehorn, and defended by the valour of the Prince de Brabazon and 9,000 chosen soldiers. King William, whose duty it was to have raised the siege of this important fortress, lay with 100,000 men within gunshot of Louis, but, embued with all the stolid and phlegmatic stupidity of a Hollander, permitted the place to be captured, by which his military reputation was as much injured as that of Louis was increased. The victor of Namur immediately returned to Versailles, surrounded by triumph and adulation, worshipped undeservedly as a hero, and extolled as a conqueror, while William, whose inertness had at last given way to necessary activity, excited by shame and exasperation, having reviewed on the plain of Genappe a fresh quota of ten battalions of Scottish infantry, pushed forward against Mareschal Luxembourg, intent on retrieving his honour.