"This day se'ennight," answered Isabel. "Hush! hush! here cometh the Governor, blowing like a Tweedmouth grampus, fresh from the German Sea, in full run after a lady-fish of the queen of rivers." And now Hume heard the hoarse voice of the redoubted Governor, Captain Wallace--that fat overgrown _bellygerent_ son of Mars, so famous, in his day, for vaunting of feats of arms, at Bothwell, (where he never was,) over the Mayor's wine, and in presence of his fair daughter, whom he thus courted after the manner of the noble Moor, with a slight difference as to the truth of his feats scarce worth mentioning. It appeared to Hume, as he listened, that Wallace, and the Mayor, who was with him, had sallied out, after the fourth bottle, in search of Isabel--a suspicion verified by the speech of the warlike Captain. "Did I not tell thee, Mr Mayor," said the Governor, in a voice that reverberated among the walls, and fell distinctly on Hume's ear, "that she would be about the fortifications? Ha!--anything appertaining to war delighteth the fair creature as much as it did that rare author, Will Shakspeare's Desdemona. If I had been as black as the Moor--ay, or as the devil himself--my prowess at Bothwell would have given this person of mine, albeit somewhat enlarged, the properties of beauty in the eyes of noble-spirited women--so much do our bodies borrow from the qualities of our souls." "Where is she?" rejoined the Mayor. "I like not that love of the fortifications. It is the outside of the walls she loves. See, she flies, conscience-smitten. I like not this, my noble Captain--see, there is Patrick Hume beyond the wall, if thou hast courage, drive thy pike through that loop, and, peradventure, ye may blind a Hume for life." "I like to strike a man fair--body to body--as we did on the Bridge of Bothwell," responded the Captain. "Ha! ha! Give me the loop-hole of a good bilbo-thrust, out of which the soul wings its flight in a comfortable manner. Nevertheless, to please my noble friend the mayor, and to get quit of a rival, I may" (lowering his voice to a whisper) "as well kill him in the way thou hast propounded; but I assure thee, upon my honour, I would much rather have the fellow before me, without the intervention of these plaguey walls, that come thus in the way and march of one's valour. There goes!" On looking-up, Hume saw the Captain's bilbo thrusting manfully through the night air, as if it would pierce the night gnomes and spirits that love to hang over old battlements. Taking out his handkerchief, he wrapped it round his hand, and seizing the point of the sword, gave it a jerk, which (and the consequent terror) disengaged it from the hand of the pot-valiant hero of Bothwell. A shout of fear was heard from within.