"What else can it be?" replied Bucklaw; "the Marquis has been long suspected to have an eye to Saint Germains.""He should not engage me rashly in such an adventure," said Ravenswood; "when I recollect the times of the first and second Charles, and of the last James, truly I see little reason that, as a man or a patriot, I should draw my sword for their descendants.""Humph!" replied Bucklaw; "so you have set yourself down to mourn over the crop-eared dogs whom honest Claver'se treated as they deserved?""They first gave the dogs an ill name, and then hanged them,"replied Ravenswood. "I hope to see the day when justice shall be open to Whig and Tory, and when these nicknames shall only be used among coffee-house politicians, as 'slut' and 'jade' are among apple-women, as cant terms of idle spite and rancour.""That will nto be in our days, Master: the iron has entered too deeply into our sides and our souls.""It will be, however, one day," replied the Master; "men will not always start at these nicknames as at a trumpet-sound. As social life is better protected, its comforts will become too dear to be hazarded without some better reasons than speculative politics.""It is fine talking," answered Bucklaw; "but my heart is with the old song--To see good corn upon the rigs, And a gallow built to hang the Whigs, And the right restored where the right should be.
Oh, that is the thing that would wanton me."
"You may sing as loudly as you will, cantabit vacuus----,"answered the Master; "but I believe the Marquis is too wise, at least too wary, to join you in such a burden. I suspect he alludes to a revolution in the Scottish privy council, rather than in the British kingdoms.""Oh, confusion to your state tricks!" exclaimed Bucklaw--"your cold calculating manoeuvres, which old gentlemen in wrought nightcaps and furred gowns execute like so many games at chess, and displace a treasurer or lord commissioner as they would take a rook or a pawn. Tennis for my sport, and battle for my earnest! And you, Master, so dep and considerate as you would seem, you have that within you makes the blood boil faster than suits your present hmour of moralising on political truths. You are one of those wise men who see everything with great composure till their blood is up, and then--woe to any one who should put them in mind of their own prudential maxims!""Perhaps," said Ravenswood, "you read me more rightly than I can myself. But to think justly will certainly go some length in helping me to act so. But hark! I hear Caleb tolling the dinner-bell.""Which he always does with the more sonorous grace in proportion to the meagreness of the cheer which he has provided," said Bucklaw; "as if that infernal clang and jangle, which will one day bring the belfry down the cliff, could convert a starved hen into a fat capon, and a blade-bone of mutton into a haunch of venison.""I wish we may be so well off as your worst conjectures surmise, Bucklaw, from the extreme solemnity and ceremony with which Caleb seems to place on the table that solitary covered dish.""Uncover, Caleb! uncover, for Heaven's sake!" said Bucklaw; "let us have what you can give us without preface. Why, it stands well enough, man," he continued, addressing impatiently the ancient butler, who, without reply, kept shifting the dish, until he had at length placed it with mathematical precision in the very midst of the table.
"What have we got here, Caleb?" inquired the Master in his turn.
"Ahem! sir, ye suld have known before; but his honour the Laird of Bucklaw is so impatient," answered Caleb, still holding the dish with one hand and the cover with the other, with evident reluctance to disclose the contents.
"But what is it, a God's name--not a pair of clean spurs, Ihope, in the Border fashion of old times?"
"Ahem! ahem!" reiterated Caleb, "your honour is pleased to be facetious; natheless, I might presume to say it was a convenient fashion, and used, as I have heard, in an honourable and thriving family. But touching your present dinner, I judged that this being St. Magdalen's [Margaret's] Eve, who was a worthy queen of Scotland in her day, your honours might judge it decorous, if not altogether to fast, yet only to sustain nature with some slight refection, as ane saulted herring or the like."And, uncovering the dish, he displayed four of the savoury fishes which he mentioned, adding, in a subdued tone, "that they were no just common herring neither, being every ane melters, and sauted with uncommon care by the housekeeper (poor Mysie) for his honour's especial use.""Out upon all apologies!" said the Master, "let us eat the herrings, since there is nothing better to be had; but I begin to think with you, Bucklaw, that we are consuming the last green leaf, and that, in spite of the Marquis's political machinations, we must positively shift camp for want of forage, without waiting the issue of them."
