equipage of the duke, which the projecting lance threatened to perforate from window to window, at the risk of transfixing as many in its passage as the celebrated thrust of Orlando, which, according to the Italian epic poet, broached as many Moors as a Frenchman spits frogs.

"On beholding the bent of this misdirected career, a panic shout of mingled terror and wrath was set up by the whole equipage, insides and outsides, at once, which had the blessed effect of averting the threatened misfortune. The capricious horse of Goose Gibbie was terrified by the noise, and stumbling as he turned short round, kicked and plunged violently so soon as he recovered. The jack-boots, the original cause of the disaster, maintaining the reputation they had acquired when worn by better cavaliers, answered every plunge by a fresh prick of the spurs, and, by their ponderous weight, kept their place in the stirrups. Not so Goose Gibbie, who was fairly spurned out of those wide and ponderous greaves, and precipitated over the horse's head, to the infinite amusement of all the spectators. His lance and helmet had forsaken him in his fall, and for the completion of his disgrace, Lady Margaret Bellenden, not perfectly aware that it was one of her warriors who was furnishing so much entertainment, came up in time to see her diminutive man-at-arms stripped of his lion's hide, of the buff coat, that is, in which he was muffled."—Vol. ü. pp. 61-64.

Upon this ludicrous incident turns the fate, as we shall presently see, of the principal personages of the drama. These are Edith Bellenden, the granddaughter and heiress of Lady Margaret, and a youth of the Presbyterian persuasion, named Morton, son of a gallant officer who had served the Scotch Parliament, in the former civil wars, but by his death had become the dependent of a sordid and avaricious uncle, the Laird of Milnwood. This young gentleman gains the prize at the shooting match, and proceeds to entertain his friends and competitors at a neighbouring public-house. The harmony of the meeting is disturbed by a fray which

arises between a sergeant of the King's life guards, a man of high descent, but of brutal and insolent manners, nicknamed Bothwell, from being derived from the last Scottish earls of that name, and a stranger, of a dark and sullen aspect, great strength of body and severity of manners, who proves afterwards to be one of the outlawed Presbyterians, named John Balfour, of Burley, at this time în circumstances of peculiar danger, being in the act of flight, in consequence of his share in the assassination of James Sharpe, Archbishop of St Andrews. Bothwell is foiled, and thrown upon the floor of the tavern by the strong-limbed Covenanter.

"His comrade, Halliday, immediately drew his sword :'You have killed my sergeant,' he exclaimed, to the victorious wrestler, and by all that's sacred you shall answer it!'

"Stand back!' cried' Morton and his companions, it was all fair play; your comrade sought a fall, and he has got it.' "That is true enough,' said Bothwell, as he slowly rose; put up your bilbo, Tom. I did not think there was a crop-ear of them all could have laid the best cap and feather in the King's life guards on the floor of a rascally change-house.-Hark ye, friend, give me your hand.' The stranger held out his hand. 'I promise you,' said Bothwell, squeezing his hand very hard, 'that the time shall come when we will meet again, and try this game over in a more earnest manner.'

"And I'll promise you,' said the stranger, returning the grasp with equal firmness, that, when we next meet, I will lay your head as low as it lay even now, when you shall lack the power to lift it up again.'

"Well, beloved,' answered Bothwell, if thou be'st a Whig, thou art a stout and a brave one, and so good even to theeHad'st best take thy nag before the cornet makes his round; for, I promise thee, he has stayed less suspicious-looking persons.'

"The stranger seemed to think that the hint was not to be neglected; he flung down his reckoning, and going into the VOL. XIX.

C

stable, saddled and brought out a powerful black horse, now recruited by rest and forage, and turning to Morton, observed, I ride towards Milnwood, which I hear is your home; will you give me the advantage and protection of your company

?

66 6 Certainly,' said Morton, although there was something of gloomy and relentless severity in the man's manner from which his mind recoiled. His companions, after a courteous good-night, broke up and went off in different directions, some keeping them company for about a mile, until they dropped off one by one, and the travellers were left alone.' "Vol. ii. pp. 83-85.

We may here briefly notice that Francis Stewart, the grandson and representative of the last Earl of Bothwell, who was himself a grandson of James V. of Scotland, was so much reduced in circumstances, as actually to ride a private in the life guards at this period, as we learn from the Memoirs of Creighton, who was his comrade. Nothing else is known of him, and the character assigned to him in the novel is purely imaginary.

Balfour and Morton having left the village together, the former in the course of their journey discovers himself to Morton as an ancient comrade of his father, and on hearing the kettle-drums and trumpets of a body of horse approaching, prevails upon him to give him refuge in his uncle's house of Milnwood. And here, like Don Quixote, when he censured the anachronisms of Mr Peter's Puppetshow, we beg to inform our novelist that cavalry never march to the sound of music by night, any more than the Moors of Jansuena used bells.

It must be remarked that by the cruel and arbitrary laws of the time, Morton, in affording to the comrade of his father a protection which he could not in humanity refuse him, incurred the heavy

penalty attached to receiving or sheltering intercommuned persons. There was, by the severity of government, a ban put upon the refractory Calvinists, equal to the aquæ et ignis interdictio of the civil law, and whoever transgressed it by relieving the unhappy fugitive, involved himself in his crime and punishment. Another circumstance added to the hazard which Morton thus incurred. The ploughman of Lady Margaret Bellenden, Cuddie Headrigg by name, had been, with his mother, expelled from the castle of Tillietudlem, on account of his refusing to bear arms at the weapon-showing, and thereby occasioning the substitution of GooseGibbie, to the disgrace, as we have already seen, of Lady Margaret's troop. The old woman is described as a zealous extra-Presbyterian; the son as an old-fashioned Scotch boor, sly and shrewd in his own concerns, dull and indifferent to all other matters; reverencing his mother, and loving his mistress, a pert serving damsel in the castle, better than was uniformly expressed by his language. The submission of this honest countryman, upon a martial summons, to petticoat influence, was not peculiar to his rank of life. We learn from Foun

tainhall, that when thirty-five heritors of the kingdom of Fife were summoned to appear before the council for neglecting to join the King's host, in 1680, with their horses and arms, some of their apologies were similar to those which Cuddie might have preferred for himself. Balcanquhal of that ilk alleged that his horses were robbed, but shunned to take the declaration for fear of disquiet

from his wife.". "And Young of Kirkton stated his lady's dangerous sickness, and bitter curses if he should leave her; and the appearance of abortion on his offering to go from her." Now as there was a private understanding between Morton and the fair Edith Bellenden, the former is induced, at the request of the young lady, to use his interest with his uncle and his uncle's favourite housekeeper to receive the two exiles as menials into the house of Milnwood. The family there are seated at dinner when they are disturbed by one of those tyrannical domiciliary visits which the soldiers were authorized and encouraged to commit. The scene may very well be extracted as a specimen of the author's colouring and outline.

"While the servants admitted the troopers, whose oaths and threats already indicated resentment at the delay they had been put to, Cuddie took the opportunity to whisper to his mother, 'Now ye daft auld carline, mak yoursell deaf-ye hae made us a’ deaf ere now-and let me speak for ye. I wad like ill to get my neck raxed, for an auld wife's clashes, though ye be our mither.' 'O, hinny, ay: I'se be silent or thou sall come to ill,' was the corresponding whisper of Mause; but bethink ye, my dear, them that deny the Word, the Word will deny.'—

666

"Her admonition was cut short by the entrance of the lifeguard's-men, a party of four troopers commanded by Bothwell.

"In they tramped, making a tremendous clatter upon the stone floor with the iron-shod heels of their large jack-boots, and the clash and clang of their long, heavy, basket-hilted broadswords. Milnwood and his housekeeper trembled, from well-grounded apprehension of the system of exaction and plunder carried on during these domiciliary visits. Henry Morton was discomposed with more special cause, for he remembered that he stood answerable to the laws for having harboured Burley. The widow Mause Headrigg, between fear for her son's life, and an overstrained and enthusiastic zeal, which reproached her for consenting even tacitly to belie her religious sentiments, was in a strange quandary.