"Ha! did _ma chere_ leddy combattre Otterstone?" ejaculated the Frenchman, laughing. "Very good! ha! ha! ha! I did not know that, ven I sold him one quantity of vin yesterday; but I assure you, _mon cher_ Innerkepple, he is not at all your enemy, and his son did praise _ma chere_ leddy as the most magnificent vench in all the contrée." ("Excellently sustained," muttered Katherine to herself. "How I do love the roll of that dark eye, and the curl of that lip covered with the black moustache! Can so much beauty conceal a deadly purpose? But the 'magnificent vench' shall earn yet a better title to the soubriquet out of thy discomfiture, fair, deceitful, sweet devil.") "I only wish I had Otterstone whar you are, man," said Innerkepple, "wi' the liquor as sweet an' my bile nae bitterer. I would conquer him in better style than did my dochter, though, I confess, she man[oe]uvred him beautifully." ("Perdition to the faes o' Innerkepple! and, chief o' them, the fause Otterstone, the leddy-licked loon!") "Helas! The master and the men have the very different creeds," said the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders; "but my vin is making the _bon_ companions choleric. Ha! ha!" ("It is--it is!" muttered Katherine, as she strained her eyes to catch the signal of a white handkerchief, that floated on the top of one of the trees in the fir-wood.) She now abruptly left the hall, and proceeded to the place in the court occupied by those who were wassailing on the coloured water she had brewed for them with her fair hands. They were busily occupied by the manifestations of their mirth, which was not altogether simulated. A cessation of the noise evinced the effect of her presence among those who deified her. "Up with the merry strain, my jolly revellers!" said she, smiling, and immediately "Bertram the Archer," in loud notes, rung in the ballium:-- "And Bertram held aloft the horn, Filled wi' the bluid-red wyne, And three times has he loudly sworn His luve he winna tyne. "My Anne sits on yon eastern tower, An' greets baith day and night, An' sorrows for her luver lost, An' right turned into might. "'Then hie ye all, my merry men, To yonder lordly ha'! An if they winna ope the gate, We'll scale the burly wa'. "'Hurra!' then shouted Bertram's men, And loudly they hae sworn, That they will right their gallant knigh Before the opening morn."[2] [2] Pinkerton gives only one verse of "Bertram the Archer," but Innerkepple's men did not require to be antiquaries.