"You are learned, Master Linklater," replied the English publican,
compelling, as it were with difficulty, his mouth to utter three or
four words consecutively.

"A poor smatterer," said Mr. Linklater; "but it would be a shame to
us, who are his most excellent Majesty's countrymen, not in some sort
to have cherished those arts wherewith he is so deeply embued--_Regis
ad exemplar_, Master Kilderkin, _totus componitur orbis_--which is as
much as to say, as the king quotes the cook learns. In brief, Master
Kilderkin, having had the luck to be bred where humanities may be had
at the matter of an English five groats by the quarter, I, like
others, have acquired--ahem-hem!--" Here, the speaker's eye having
fallen upon Lord Glenvarloch, he suddenly stopped in his learned
harangue, with such symptoms of embarrassment as induced Ned Kilderkin
to stretch his taciturnity so far as not only to ask him what he
ailed, but whether he would take any thing.

"Ail nothing," replied the learned rival of the philosophical Syrus;
"Nothing--and yet I do feel a little giddy. I could taste a glass of
your dame's _aqua mirabilis_."

"I will fetch it," said Ned, giving a nod; and his back was no sooner
turned, than the cook walked near the table where Lord Glenvarloch was
seated, and regarding him with a look of significance, where more was
meant than met the ear, said,--"You are a stranger in Greenwich, sir.
I advise you to take the opportunity to step into the Park--the
western wicket was ajar when I came hither; I think it will be locked
presently, so you had better make the best of your way--that is, if
you have any curiosity. The venison are coming into season just now,
sir, and there is a pleasure in looking at a hart of grease. I always
think when they are bounding so blithely past, what a pleasure it
would be, to broach their plump haunches on a spit, and to embattle
their breasts in a noble fortification of puff-paste, with plenty of
black pepper."

He said no more, as Kilderkin re-entered with the cordial, but edged
off from Nigel without waiting any reply, only repeating the same look
of intelligence with which he had accosted him.

Nothing makes men's wits so alert as personal danger. Nigel took the
first opportunity which his host's attention to the yeoman of the
royal kitchen permitted, to discharge his reckoning, and readily
obtained a direction to the wicket in question. He found it upon the
latch, as he had been taught to expect; and perceived that it admitted
him to a narrow footpath, which traversed a close and tangled thicket,
designed for the cover of the does and the young fawns. Here he
conjectured it would be proper to wait; nor had he been stationary
above five minutes, when the cook, scalded as much with heat of motion
as ever he had been by his huge fire-place, arrived almost breathless,
and with his pass-key hastily locked the wicket behind him.

Ere Lord Glenvarloch had time to speculate upon this action, the man
approached with anxiety, and said--"Good lord, my Lord Glenvarloch!--
why will you endanger yourself thus?"

"You know me then, my friend?" said Nigel.

"Not much of that, my lord--but I know your honour's noble house
well.--My name is Laurie Linklater, my lord."

"Linklater!" repeated Nigel. "I should recollect--'

"Under your lordship's favour," he continued, "I was 'prentice, my
lord, to old Mungo Moniplies, the flesher at the wanton West-Port of
Edinburgh, which I wish I saw again before I died. And, your honour's
noble father having taken Richie Moniplies into his house to wait on
your lordship, there was a sort of connexion, your lordship sees."

"Ah!" said Lord Glenvarloch, "I had almost forgot your name, but not
your kind purpose. You tried to put Richie in the way of presenting a
supplication to his Majesty?"

"Most true, my lord," replied the king's cook. "I had like to have
come by mischief in the job; for Richie, who was always wilful, 'wadna
be guided by me,' as the sang says. But nobody amongst these brave
English cooks can kittle up his Majesty's most sacred palate with our
own gusty Scottish dishes. So I e'en betook myself to my craft, and
concocted a mess of friar's chicken for the soup, and a savoury
hachis, that made the whole cabal coup the crans; and, instead of
disgrace, I came by preferment. I am one of the clerks of the kitchen
now, make me thankful--with a finger in the purveyor's office, and may
get my whole hand in by and by."

"I am truly glad," said Nigel, "to hear that you have not suffered on
my account,--still more so at your good fortune."

"You bear a kind heart, my lord," said Linklater, "and do not forget
poor people; and, troth, I see not why they should be forgotten, since
the king's errand may sometimes fall in the cadger's gate. I have
followed your lordship in the street, just to look at such a stately
shoot of the old oak-tree; and my heart jumped into my throat, when I
saw you sitting openly in the eating-house yonder, and knew there was
such danger to your person."

"What! there are warrants against me, then?" said Nigel.

"It is even true, my lord; and there are those who are willing to
blacken you as much as they can.--God forgive them, that would
sacrifice an honourable house for their own base ends!"

"Amen," said Nigel.

"For, say your lordship may have been a little wild, like other young
gentlemen--"

"We have little time to talk of it, my friend," said Nigel. "The point
in question is, how am I to get speech of the king?"

"The king, my lord!" said Linklater in astonishment; "why, will not
that be rushing wilfully into danger?--scalding yourself, as I may
say, with your own ladle?"

"My good friend," answered Nigel, "my experience of the Court, and my
knowledge of the circumstances in which I stand, tell me, that the
manliest and most direct road is, in my case, the surest and the
safest. The king has both a head to apprehend what is just, and a
heart to do what is kind."

"It is e'en true, my lord, and so we, his old servants, know," added
Linklater; "but, woe's me, if you knew how many folks make it their
daily and nightly purpose to set his head against his heart, and his
heart against his head--to make him do hard things because they are
called just, and unjust things because they are represented as kind.
Woe's me! it is with his Sacred Majesty, and the favourites who work
upon him, even according to the homely proverb that men taunt my
calling with,--'God sends good meat, but the devil sends cooks.'"

"It signifies not talking of it, my good friend," said Nigel, "I must
take my risk, my honour peremptorily demands it. They may maim me, or
beggar me, but they shall not say I fled from my accusers. My peers
shall hear my vindication."

"Your peers?" exclaimed the cook--"Alack-a-day, my lord, we are not in
Scotland, where the nobles can bang it out bravely, were it even with
the king himself, now and then. This mess must be cooked in the Star-
Chamber, and that is an oven seven times heated, my lord;--and yet, if
you are determined to see the king, I will not say but you may find
some favour, for he likes well any thing that is appealed directly to
his own wisdom, and sometimes, in the like cases, I have known him
stick by his own opinion, which is always a fair one. Only mind, if
you will forgive me, my lord--mind to spice high with Latin; a curn or
two of Greek would not be amiss; and, if you can bring in any thing
about the judgment of Solomon, in the original Hebrew, and season with
a merry jest or so, the dish will be the more palatable.--Truly, I
think, that, besides my skill in art, I owe much to the stripes of the
Rector of the High School, who imprinted on my mind that cooking scene
in the Heautontimorumenos." "Leaving that aside, my friend," said Lord
Glenvarloch, "can you inform me which way I shall most readily get to
the sight and speech of the king?"

"To the sight of him readily enough," said Linklater; "he is galloping
about these alleys, to see them strike the hart, to get him an
appetite for a nooning--and that reminds me I should be in the
kitchen. To the speech of the king you will not come so easily, unless
you could either meet him alone, which rarely chances, or wait for him
among the crowd that go to see him alight. And now, farewell, my lord,
and God speed!--if I could do more for you, I would offer it."

"You have done enough, perhaps, to endanger yourself," said Lord
Glenvarloch. "I pray you to be gone, and leave me to my fate."

The honest cook lingered, but a nearer burst of the horns apprized him
that there was no time to lose; and, acquainting Nigel that he would
leave the postern-door on the latch to secure his retreat in that
direction, he bade God bless him, and farewell.

In the kindness of this humble countryman, flowing partly from
national partiality, partly from a sense of long-remembered benefits,
which had been scarce thought on by those who had bestowed them, Lord
Glenvarloch thought he saw the last touch of sympathy which he was to
receive in this cold and courtly region, and felt that he must now be
sufficient to himself, or be utterly lost.

He traversed more than one alley, guided by the sounds of the chase,
and met several of the inferior attendants upon the king's sport, who
regarded him only as one of the spectators who were sometimes
permitted to enter the Park by the concurrence of the officers about
the Court. Still there was no appearance of James, or any of his
principal courtiers, and Nigel began to think whether, at the risk of
incurring disgrace similar to that which had attended the rash exploit
of Richie Moniplies, he should not repair to the Palace-gate, in order
to address the king on his return, when Fortune presented him the
opportunity of doing so, in her own way.

He was in one of those long walks by which the Park was traversed,
when he heard, first a distant rustling, then the rapid approach of
hoofs shaking the firm earth on which he stood; then a distant halloo,
warned by which he stood up by the side of the avenue, leaving free
room for the passage of the chase. The stag, reeling, covered with
foam, and blackened with sweat, his nostrils extended as he gasped for
breath, made a shift to come up as far as where Nigel stood, and,
without turning to bay, was there pulled down by two tall greyhounds
of the breed still used by the hardy deer-stalkers of the Scottish
Highlands, but which has been long unknown in England. One dog struck
at the buck's throat, another dashed his sharp nose and fangs, I might
almost say, into the animal's bowels. It would have been natural for
Lord Glenvarloch, himself persecuted as if by hunters, to have thought
upon the occasion like the melancholy Jacques; but habit is a strange
matter, and I fear that his feelings on the occasion were rather those
of the practised huntsman than of the moralist. He had no time,
however, to indulge them, for mark what befell.

A single horseman followed the chase, upon a steed so thoroughly
subjected to the rein, that it obeyed the touch of the bridle as if it
had been a mechanical impulse operating on the nicest piece of
machinery; so that, seated deep in his demipique saddle, and so
trussed up there as to make falling almost impossible, the rider,
without either fear or hesitation, might increase or diminish the
speed at which he rode, which, even on the most animating occasions of
the chase, seldom exceeded three-fourths of a gallop, the horse
keeping his haunches under him, and never stretching forward beyond
the managed pace of the academy. The security with which he chose to
prosecute even this favourite, and, in the ordinary case, somewhat
dangerous amusement, as well as the rest of his equipage, marked King
James. No attendant was within sight; indeed, it was often a nice
strain of flattery to permit the Sovereign to suppose he had outridden
and distanced all the rest of the chase.

"Weel dune, Bash--weel dune, Battie!" he exclaimed as he came up. "By
the honour of a king, ye are a credit to the Braes of Balwhither!--
Haud my horse, man," he called out to Nigel, without stopping to see
to whom he had addressed himself--"Haud my naig, and help me doun out
o' the saddle--deil ding your saul, sirrah, canna ye mak haste before
these lazy smaiks come up?--haud the rein easy--dinna let him swerve--
now, haud the stirrup--that will do, man, and now we are on terra
firma." So saying, without casting an eye on his assistant, gentle
King Jamie, unsheathing the short, sharp hanger, (_couteau de
chasse_,) which was the only thing approaching to a sword that he
could willingly endure the sight of, drew the blade with great
satisfaction across the throat of the buck, and put an end at once to
its struggles and its agonies.

Lord Glenvarloch, who knew well the silvan duty which the occasion
demanded, hung the bridle of the king's palfrey on the branch of a
tree, and, kneeling duteously down, turned the slaughtered deer upon
its back, and kept the _quarree_ in that position, while the king, too
intent upon his sport to observe any thing else, drew his _couteau_
down the breast of the animal, _secundum artem_; and, having made a
cross cut, so as to ascertain the depth of the fat upon the chest,
exclaimed, in a sort of rapture, "Three inches of white fat on the
brisket!--prime--prime--as I am a crowned sinner--and deil ane o' the
lazy loons in but mysell! Seven--aught--aught tines on the antlers. By
G--d, a hart of aught tines, and the first of the season! Bash and
Battie, blessings on the heart's-root of ye! Buss me, my bairns, buss
me. "The dogs accordingly fawned upon him, licked him with bloody
jaws, and soon put him in such a state that it might have seemed
treason had been doing its full work upon his anointed body." Bide
doun, with a mischief to ye--bide doun, with a wanion," cried the
king, almost overturned by the obstreperous caresses of the large
stag-hounds. "But ye are just like ither folks, gie ye an inch and ye
take an ell.--And wha may ye be, friend? "he said, now finding leisure
to take a nearer view of Nigel, and observing what in his first
emotion of silvan delight had escaped him,--" Ye are nane of our
train, man. In the name of God, what the devil are ye?"

"An unfortunate man, sire," replied Nigel.

"I dare say that," answered the king, snappishly, "or I wad have seen
naething of you. My lieges keep a' their happiness to themselves; but
let bowls row wrang wi' them, and I am sure to hear of it."

"And to whom else can we carry our complaints but to your Majesty, who
is Heaven's vicegerent over us!" answered Nigel.

"Right, man, right--very weel spoken," said the king; "but you should
leave Heaven's vicegerent some quiet on earth, too."

"If your Majesty will look on me," (for hitherto the king had been so
busy, first with the dogs, and then with the mystic operation of
_breaking_, in vulgar phrase, cutting up the deer, that he had scarce
given his assistant above a transient glance,) "you will see whom
necessity makes bold to avail himself of an opportunity which may
never again occur."

King James looked; his blood left his cheek, though it continued
stained with that of the animal which lay at his feet, he dropped the
knife from his hand, cast behind him a faltering eye, as if he either
meditated flight or looked out for assistance, and then exclaimed,--
"Glenvarlochides! as sure as I was christened James Stewart. Here is a
bonny spot of work, and me alone, and on foot too!" he added, bustling
to get upon his horse.

"Forgive me that I interrupt you, my liege," said Nigel, placing
himself between the king and his steed; "hear me but a moment!"

"I'll hear ye best on horseback," said the king. "I canna hear a word
on foot, man, not a word; and it is not seemly to stand cheek-for-
chowl confronting us that gate. Bide out of our gate, sir, we charge
you on your allegiance.--The deil's in them a', what can they be
doing?"

"By the crown that you wear, my liege," said Nigel, "and for which my
ancestors have worthily fought, I conjure you to be composed, and to
hear me but a moment!"

That which he asked was entirely out of the monarch's power to grant.
The timidity which he showed was not the plain downright cowardice,
which, like a natural impulse, compels a man to flight, and which can
excite little but pity or contempt, but a much more ludicrous, as well
as more mingled sensation. The poor king was frightened at once and
angry, desirous of securing his safety, and at the same time ashamed
to compromise his dignity; so that without attending to what Lord
Glenvarloch endeavoured to explain, he kept making at his horse, and
repeating, "We are a free king, man,--we are a free king--we will not
be controlled by a subject.--In the name of God, what keeps Steenie?
And, praised be his name, they are coming--Hillo, ho--here, here--
Steenie, Steenie!"

The Duke of Buckingham galloped up, followed by several courtiers and
attendants of the royal chase, and commenced with his usual
familiarity,--"I see Fortune has graced our dear dad, as usual.--But
what's this?"

"What is it? It is treason for what I ken," said the king; "and a'
your wyte, Steenie. Your dear dad and gossip might have been murdered,
for what you care."

"Murdered? Secure the villain!" exclaimed the Duke. "By Heaven, it is
Olifaunt himself!" A dozen of the hunters dismounted at once, letting
their horses run wild through the park. Some seized roughly on Lord
Glenvarloch, who thought it folly to offer resistance, while others
busied themselves with the king. "Are you wounded, my liege--are you
wounded?"

"Not that I ken of," said the king, in the paroxysm of his
apprehension, (which, by the way, might be pardoned in one of so
timorous a temper, and who, in his time, had been exposed to so many
strange attempts)--"Not that I ken of--but search him--search him. I
am sure I saw fire-arms under his cloak. I am sure I smelled powder--I
am dooms sure of that."

Lord Glenvarloch's cloak being stripped off, and his pistols
discovered, a shout of wonder and of execration on the supposed
criminal purpose, arose from the crowd now thickening every moment.
Not that celebrated pistol, which, though resting on a bosom as
gallant and as loyal as Nigel's, spread such cause less alarm among
knights and dames at a late high solemnity--not that very pistol
caused more temporary consternation than was so groundlessly excited
by the arms which were taken from Lord Glenvarloch's person; and not
Mhic-Allastar-More himself could repel with greater scorn and
indignation, the insinuations that they were worn for any sinister
purposes.

"Away with the wretch--the parricide--the bloody-minded villain!" was
echoed on all hands; and the king, who naturally enough set the same
value on his own life, at which it was, or seemed to be, rated by
others, cried out, louder than all the rest, "Ay, ay--away with him. I
have had enough of him and so has the country. But do him no bodily
harm--and, for God's sake, sirs, if ye are sure ye have thoroughly
disarmed him, put up your swords, dirks, and skenes, for you will
certainly do each other a mischief."

There was a speedy sheathing of weapons at the king's command; for
those who had hitherto been brandishing them in loyal bravado, began
thereby to call to mind the extreme dislike which his Majesty
nourished against naked steel, a foible which seemed to be as
constitutional as his timidity, and was usually ascribed to the brutal
murder of Rizzio having been perpetrated in his unfortunate mother's
presence before he yet saw the light.

At this moment, the Prince, who had been hunting in a different part
of the then extensive Park, and had received some hasty and confused
information of what was going forward, came rapidly up, with one or
two noblemen in his train, and amongst others Lord Dalgarno. He sprung
from his horse and asked eagerly if his father were wounded.

"Not that I am sensible of, Baby Charles--but a wee matter exhausted,
with struggling single-handed with the assassin.--Steenie, fill up a
cup of wine--the leathern bottle is hanging at our pommel.--Buss me,
then, Baby Charles," continued the monarch, after he had taken this
cup of comfort; "O man, the Commonwealth and you have had a fair
escape from the heavy and bloody loss of a dear father; for we are
_pater patriae_, as weel as _pater familias_.-_Quis desiderio sit
pudor aut modus tarn cari capitis!_-Woe is me, black cloth would have
been dear in England, and dry een scarce!"

And, at the very idea of the general grief which must have attended
his death, the good-natured monarch cried heartily himself.

"Is this possible?" said Charles, sternly; for his pride was hurt at
his father's demeanour on the one hand, while on the other, he felt
the resentment of a son and a subject, at the supposed attempt on the
king's life. "Let some one speak who has seen what happened--My Lord
of Buckingham!"

"I cannot say my lord," replied the Duke, "that I saw any actual
violence offered to his Majesty, else I should have avenged him on the
spot."

"You would have done wrong, then, in your zeal, George," answered the
Prince; "such offenders were better left to be dealt with by the laws.
But was the villain not struggling with his Majesty?"

"I cannot term it so, my lord," said the Duke, who, with many faults,
would have disdained an untruth; "he seemed to desire to detain his
Majesty, who, on the contrary, appeared to wish to mount his horse;
but they have found pistols on his person, contrary to the
proclamation, and, as it proves to be by Nigel Olifaunt, of whose
ungoverned disposition your Royal Highness has seen some samples, we
seem to be justified in apprehending the worst."

"Nigel Olifaunt!" said the Prince; "can that unhappy man so soon have
engaged in a new trespass? Let me see those pistols."

"Ye are not so unwise as to meddle with such snap-haunces, Baby
Charles?" said James--"Do not give him them, Steenie--I command you on
your allegiance! They may go off of their own accord, whilk often
befalls.--You will do it, then?--Saw ever a man sic wilful bairns as
we are cumbered with!--Havena we guardsmen and soldiers enow, but you
must unload the weapons yoursell--you, the heir of our body and
dignities, and sae mony men around that are paid for venturing life in
our cause?"

But without regarding his father's exclamations, Prince Charles, with
the obstinacy which characterised him in trifles, as well as matters
of consequence, persisted in unloading the pistols with his own hand,
of the double bullets with which each was charged. The hands of all
around were held up in astonishment at the horror of the crime
supposed to have been intended, and the escape which was presumed so
narrow.

Nigel had not yet spoken a word--he now calmly desired to be heard.

"To what purpose?" answered the Prince coldly. "You knew yourself
accused of a heavy offence, and, instead of rendering yourself up to
justice, in terms of the proclamation, you are here found intruding
yourself on his Majesty's presence, and armed with unlawful weapons."

"May it please you, sir," answered Nigel, "I wore these unhappy
weapons for my own defence; and not very many hours since they were
necessary to protect the lives of others."

"Doubtless, my lord," answered the Prince, still calm and unmoved,--
"your late mode of life, and the associates with whom you have lived,
have made you familiar with scenes and weapons of violence. But it is
not to me you are to plead your cause."

"Hear me--hear me, noble Prince!" said Nigel, eagerly. "Hear me! You--
even you yourself--may one day ask to be heard, and in vain."

"How, sir," said the Prince, haughtily--"how am I to construe that, my
lord?"

"If not on earth, sir," replied the prisoner, "yet to Heaven we must
all pray for patient and favourable audience."

"True, my lord," said the Prince, bending his head with haughty
acquiescence; "nor would I now refuse such audience to you, could it
avail you. But you shall suffer no wrong. We will ourselves look into
your case."

"Ay, ay," answered the king, "he hath made _appellatio ad Casarem_--we
will interrogate Glenvarlochides ourselves, time and place fitting;
and, in the meanwhile, have him and his weapons away, for I am weary
of the sight of them."

In consequence of directions hastily given, Nigel was accordingly
removed from the presence, where, however, his words had not
altogether fallen to the ground. "This is a most strange matter,
George," said the Prince to the favourite; "this gentleman hath a good
countenance, a happy presence, and much calm firmness in his look and
speech. I cannot think he would attempt a crime so desperate and
useless."

"I profess neither love nor favour to the young man," answered
Buckingham, whose high-spirited ambition bore always an open
character: "but I cannot but agree with your Highness, that our dear
gossip hath been something hasty in apprehending personal danger from
him."

"By my saul, Steenie, ye are not blate, to say so!" said the king. "Do
I not ken the smell of pouther, think ye? Who else nosed out the Fifth
of November, save our royal selves? Cecil, and Suffolk, and all of
them, were at fault, like sae mony mongrel tikes, when I puzzled it
out: and trow ye that I cannot smell pouther? Why, 'sblood, man,
Joannes Barclaius thought my ingine was in some measure inspiration,
and terms his history of the plot, Series patefacti divinitus
parricidii; and Spondanus, in like manner, saith of us, Divinitus
evasit."

"The land was happy in your Majesty's escape," said the Duke of
Buckingham, "and not less in the quick wit which tracked that
labyrinth of treason by so fine and almost invisible a clew."

"Saul, man, Steenie, ye are right! There are few youths have sic true
judgment as you, respecting the wisdom of their elders; and, as for
this fause, traitorous smaik, I doubt he is a hawk of the same nest.
Saw ye not something papistical about him? Let them look that he bears
not a crucifix, or some sic Roman trinket, about him."

"It would ill become me to attempt the exculpation of this unhappy
man," said Lord Dalgarno, "considering the height of his present
attempt, which has made all true men's blood curdle in their veins.
Yet I cannot avoid intimating, with all due submission to his
Majesty's infallible judgment, in justice to one who showed himself
formerly only my enemy, though he now displays himself in much blacker
colours, that this Olifaunt always appeared to me more as a Puritan
than as a Papist."

"Ah, Dalgarno, art thou there, man?" said the king. "And ye behoved to
keep back, too, and leave us to our own natural strength and the care
of Providence, when we were in grips with the villain!"

"Providence, may it please your most Gracious Majesty, would not fail
to aid, in such a strait, the care of three weeping kingdoms," said
Lord Dalgarno.

"Surely, man--surely," replied the king--"but a sight of your father,
with his long whinyard, would have been a blithe matter a short while
syne; and in future we will aid the ends of Providence in our favour,
by keeping near us two stout beef-eaters of the guard.--And so this
Olifaunt is a Puritan?--not the less like to be a Papist, for all
that--for extremities meet, as the scholiast proveth. There are, as I
have proved in my book, Puritans of papistical principles--it is just
a new tout on an old horn."

Here the king was reminded by the Prince, who dreaded perhaps that he
was going to recite the whole Basilicon Doron, that it would be best
to move towards the Palace, and consider what was to be done for
satisfying the public mind, in whom the morning's adventure was likely
to excite much speculation. As they entered the gate of the Palace, a
female bowed and presented a paper, which the king received, and, with
a sort of groan, thrust it into his side pocket. The Prince expressed
some curiosity to know its contents. "The valet in waiting will tell
you them," said the king, "when I strip off my cassock. D'ye think,
Baby, that I can read all that is thrust into my hands? See to me,
man,--(he pointed to the pockets of his great trunk breeches, which
were stuffed with papers)--"We are like an ass--that we should so
speak--stooping betwixt two burdens. Ay, ay, Asinus fortis accumbens
inter terminos, as the Vulgate hath it--Ay, ay, Vidi terrain quod
esset optima, et supposui humerum ad portandum, et factus sum tributis
serviens--I saw this land of England, and became an overburdened king
thereof."

"You are indeed well loaded, my dear dad and gossip," said the Duke of
Buckingham, receiving the papers which King James emptied out of his
pockets.

"Ay, ay," continued the monarch; "take them to you per aversionem,
bairns--the one pouch stuffed with petitions, t'other with
pasquinadoes; a fine time we have on't. On my conscience, I believe
the tale of Cadmus was hieroglyphical, and that the dragon's teeth
whilk he sowed were the letters he invented. Ye are laughing, Baby
Charles?--Mind what I say.--When I came here first frae our ain
country, where the men are as rude as the weather, by my conscience,
England was a bieldy bit; one would have thought the king had little
to do but to walk by quiet waters, per aquam refectionis. But, I kenna
how or why, the place is sair changed--read that libel upon us and on
our regimen. The dragon's teeth are sown, Baby Charles; I pray God
they bearna their armed harvest in your day, if I suld not live to see
it. God forbid I should, for there will be an awful day's kemping at
the shearing of them."

"I shall know how to stifle the crop in the blade,--ha, George?" said
the Prince, turning to the favourite with a look expressive of some
contempt for his father's apprehensions, and full of confidence in the
superior firmness and decision of his own counsels.

While this discourse was passing, Nigel, in charge of a pursuivant-at-
arms, was pushed and dragged through the small town, all the
inhabitants of which, having been alarmed by the report of an attack
on the king's life, now pressed forward to see the supposed traitor.
Amid the confusion of the moment, he could descry the face of the
victualler, arrested into a stare of stolid wonder, and that of the
barber grinning betwixt horror and eager curiosity. He thought that he
also had a glimpse of his waterman in the green jacket.

He had no time for remarks, being placed in a boat with the pursuivant
and two yeomen of the guard, and rowed up the river as fast as the
arms of six stout watermen could pull against the tide. They passed
the groves of masts which even then astonished the stranger with the
extended commerce of London, and now approached those low and
blackened walls of curtain and bastion, which exhibit here and there a
piece of ordnance, and here and there a solitary sentinel under arms,
but have otherwise so little of the military terrors of a citadel. A
projecting low-browed arch, which had loured over many an innocent,
and many a guilty head, in similar circumstances, now spread its dark
frowns over that of Nigel. The boat was put close up to the broad
steps against which the tide was lapping its lazy wave. The warder on
duty looked from the wicket, and spoke to the pursuivant in whispers.
In a few minutes the Lieutenant of the Tower appeared, received, and
granted an acknowledgment for the body of Nigel, Lord Glenvarloch.




CHAPTER XXVIII


  Ye towers of Julius! London's lasting shame;
  With many a foul and midnight murder fed!
                           _Gray._

Such is the exclamation of Gray. Bandello, long before him, has said
something like it; and the same sentiment must, in some shape or
other, have frequently occurred to those, who, remembering the fate of
other captives in that memorable state-prison, may have had but too
much reason to anticipate their own. The dark and low arch, which
seemed, like the entrance to Dante's Hell, to forbid hope of regress--
the muttered sounds of the warders, and petty formalities observed in
opening and shutting the grated wicket--the cold and constrained
salutation of the Lieutenant of the fortress, who showed his prisoner
that distant and measured respect which authority pays as a tax to
decorum, all struck upon Nigel's heart, impressing on him the cruel
consciousness of captivity.

"I am a prisoner," he said, the words escaping from him almost
unawares; "I am a prisoner, and in the Tower !"

The Lieutenant bowed--"And it is my duty," he said, "to show your
lordship your chamber, where, I am compelled to say, my orders are to
place you under some restraint. I will make it as easy as my duty
permits."

Nigel only bowed in return to this compliment, and followed the
Lieutenant to the ancient buildings on the western side of the parade,
and adjoining to the chapel, used in those days as a state-prison, but
in ours as the mess-room of the officers of the guard upon duty at the
fortress. The double doors were unlocked, the prisoner ascended a few
steps, followed by the Lieutenant, and a warder of the higher class.
They entered a large, but irregular, low-roofed, and dark apartment,
exhibiting a very scanty proportion of furniture. The warder had
orders to light a fire, and attend to Lord Glenvarloch's commands in
all things consistent with his duty; and the Lieutenant, having made
his reverence with the customary compliment, that he trusted his
lordship would not long remain under his guardianship, took his leave.

Nigel would have asked some questions of the warder, who remained to
put the apartment into order, but the man had caught the spirit of his
office. He seemed not to hear some of the prisoner's questions, though
of the most ordinary kind, did not reply to others, and when he did
speak, it was in a short and sullen tone, which, though not positively
disrespectful, was such as at least to encourage no farther
communication.

Nigel left him, therefore, to do his work in silence, and proceeded to
amuse himself with the melancholy task of deciphering the names,
mottoes, verses, and hieroglyphics, with which his predecessors in
captivity had covered the walls of their prison-house. There he saw
the names of many a forgotten sufferer mingled with others which will
continue in remembrance until English history shall perish. There were
the pious effusions of the devout Catholic, poured forth on the eve of
his sealing his profession at Tyburn, mingled with those of the firm
Protestant, about to feed the fires of Smithfield. There the slender
hand of the unfortunate Jane Grey, whose fate was to draw tears from
future generations, might be contrasted with the bolder touch which
impressed deep on the walls the Bear and Ragged Staff, the proud
emblem of the proud Dudleys. It was like the roll of the prophet, a
record of lamentation and mourning, and yet not unmixed with brief
interjections of resignation, and sentences expressive of the firmest
resolution.[Footnote: These memorials of illustrious criminals, or of
innocent persons who had the fate of such, are still preserved, though
at one time, in the course of repairing the rooms, they were in some
danger of being whitewashed. They are preserved at present with
becoming respect, and have most of them been engraved.--_See_ BAYLEY'S
_History and Antiquities of the Tower of London._]

In the sad task of examining the miseries of his predecessors in
captivity, Lord Glenvarloch was interrupted by the sudden opening of
the door of his prison-room. It was the warder, who came to inform
him, that, by order of the Lieutenant of the Tower, his lordship was
to have the society and attendance of a fellow-prisoner in his place
of confinement. Nigel replied hastily, that he wished no attendance,
and would rather be left alone; but the warder gave him to understand,
with a kind of grumbling civility, that the Lieutenant was the best
judge how his prisoners should be accommodated, and that he would have
no trouble with the boy, who was such a slip of a thing as was scarce
worth turning a key upon.--"There, Giles," he said, "bring the child
in."

Another warder put the "lad before him" into the room, and, both
withdrawing, bolt crashed and chain clanged, as they replaced these
ponderous obstacles to freedom. The boy was clad in a grey suit of the
finest cloth, laid down with silver lace, with a buff-coloured cloak
of the same pattern. His cap, which was a Montero of black velvet, was
pulled over his brows, and, with the profusion of his long ringlets,
almost concealed his face. He stood on the very spot where the warder
had quitted his collar, about two steps from the door of the
apartment, his eyes fixed on the ground, and every joint trembling
with confusion and terror. Nigel could well have dispensed with his
society, but it was not in his nature to behold distress, whether of
body or mind, without endeavouring to relieve it.

"Cheer up," he said, "my pretty lad. We are to be companions, it
seems, for a little time--at least I trust your confinement will be
short, since you are too young to have done aught to deserve long
restraint. Come, come--do not be discouraged. Your hand is cold and
trembles? the air is warm too--but it may be the damp of this darksome
room. Place you by the fire.--What! weeping-ripe, my little man? I
pray you, do not be a child. You have no beard yet, to be dishonoured
by your tears, but yet you should not cry like a girl. Think you are
only shut up for playing truant, and you can pass a day without
weeping, surely."

The boy suffered himself to be led and seated by the fire, but, after
retaining for a long time the very posture which he assumed in sitting
down, he suddenly changed it in order to wring his hands with an air
of the bitterest distress, and then, spreading them before his face,
wept so plentifully, that the tears found their way in floods through
his slender fingers.

Nigel was in some degree rendered insensible to his own situation, by
his feelings for the intense agony by which so young and beautiful a
creature seemed to be utterly overwhelmed; and, sitting down close
beside the boy, he applied the most soothing terms which occurred, to
endeavour to alleviate his distress; and, with an action which the
difference of their age rendered natural, drew his hand kindly along
the long hair of the disconsolate child. The lad appeared so shy as
even to shrink from this slight approach to familiarity--yet, when
Lord Glenvarloch, perceiving and allowing for his timidity, sat down
on the farther side of the fire, he appeared to be more at his ease,
and to hearken with some apparent interest to the arguments which from
time to time Nigel used, to induce him to moderate, at least, the
violence of his grief. As the boy listened, his tears, though they
continued to flow freely, seemed to escape from their source more
easily, his sobs were less convulsive, and became gradually changed
into low sighs, which succeeded each other, indicating as much sorrow,
perhaps, but less alarm, than his first transports had shown.

"Tell me who and what you are, my pretty boy," said Nigel.--"Consider
me, child, as a companion, who wishes to be kind to you, would you but
teach him how he can be so."

"Sir--my lord, I mean," answered the boy, very timidly, and in a voice
which could scarce be heard even across the brief distance which
divided them, "you are very good--and I--am very unhappy--"

A second fit of tears interrupted what else he had intended to say,
and it required a renewal of Lord Glenvarloch's good-natured
expostulations and encouragements, to bring him once more to such
composure as rendered the lad capable of expressing himself
intelligibly. At length, however, he was able to say--"I am sensible
of your goodness, my lord--and grateful for it--but I am a poor
unhappy creature, and, what is worse, have myself only to thank for my
misfortunes."

"We are seldom absolutely miserable, my young acquaintance," said
Nigel, "without being ourselves more or less responsible for it--I may
well say so, otherwise I had not been here to-day--but you are very
young, and can have but little to answer for."

"O sir! I wish I could say so--I have been self-willed and obstinate--
and rash and ungovernable--and now--now, how dearly do I pay the price
of it!"

"Pshaw, my boy," replied Nigel; "this must be some childish frolic--
some breaking out of bounds--some truant trick--And yet how should any
of these have brought you to the Tower?--There is something mysterious
about you, young man, which I must inquire into."

"Indeed, indeed, my lord, there is no harm about me," said the boy,
more moved it would seem to confession by the last words, by which he
seemed considerably alarmed, than by all the kind expostulations and
arguments which Nigel had previously used. "I am innocent--that is, I
have done wrong, but nothing to deserve being in this frightful
place."

"Tell me the truth, then," said Nigel, in a tone in which command
mingled with encouragement; "you have nothing to fear from me, and as
little to hope, perhaps--yet, placed as I am, I would know with whom I
speak."

"With an unhappy--boy, sir--and idle and truantly disposed, as your
lordship said," answered the lad, looking up, and showing a
countenance in which paleness and blushes succeeded each other, as
fear and shamefacedness alternately had influence. "I left my father's
house without leave, to see the king hunt in the Park at Greenwich;
there came a cry of treason, and all the gates were shut--I was
frightened, and hid myself in a thicket, and I was found by some of
the rangers and examined--and they said I gave no good account of
myself--and so I was sent hither."

"I am an unhappy, a most unhappy being," said Lord Glenvarloch, rising
and walking through the apartment; "nothing approaches me but shares
my own bad fate! Death and imprisonment dog my steps, and involve all
who are found near me. Yet this boy's story sounds strangely.--You say
you were examined, my young friend--Let me pray you to say whether you
told your name, and your means of gaining admission into the Park--if
so, they surely would not have detained you?"

"O, my lord," said the boy, "I took care not to tell them the name of
the friend that let me in; and as to my father--I would not he knew
where I now am for all the wealth in London!"

"But do you not expect," said Nigel, "that they will dismiss you till
you let them know who and what you are?"

"What good will it do them to keep so useless a creature as myself?"
said the boy; "they must let me go, were it but out of shame."

"Do not trust to that--tell me your name and station--I will
communicate them to the Lieutenant--he is a man of quality and honour,
and will not only be willing to procure your liberation, but also, I
have no doubt, will intercede with your father. I am partly answerable
for such poor aid as I can afford, to get you out of this
embarrassment, since I occasioned the alarm owing to which you were
arrested; so tell me your name, and your father's name."

"My name to you? O never, never!" answered the boy, in a tone of deep
emotion, the cause of which Nigel could not comprehend.

"Are you so much afraid of me, young man," he replied, "because I am
here accused and a prisoner? Consider, a man may be both, and deserve
neither suspicion nor restraint. Why should you distrust me? You seem
friendless, and I am myself so much in the same circumstances, that I
cannot but pity your situation when I reflect on my own. Be wise; I
have spoken kindly to you--I mean as kindly as I speak."

"O, I doubt it not, I doubt it not, my lord," said the boy, "and I
could tell you all--that is, almost all."

"Tell me nothing, my young friend, excepting what may assist me in
being useful to you," said Nigel.

"You are generous, my lord," said the boy; "and I am sure--O sure, I
might safely trust to your honour--But yet--but yet--I am so sore
beset--I have been so rash, so unguarded--I can never tell you of my
folly. Besides, I have already told too much to one whose heart I
thought I had moved--yet I find myself here."

"To whom did you make this disclosure?" said Nigel.

"I dare not tell," replied the youth.

"There is something singular about you, my young friend," said Lord
Glenvarloch, withdrawing with a gentle degree of compulsion the hand
with which the boy had again covered his eyes; "do not pain yourself
with thinking on your situation just at present--your pulse is high,
and your hand feverish--lay yourself on yonder pallet, and try to
compose yourself to sleep. It is the readiest and best remedy for the
fancies with which you are worrying yourself."

"I thank you for your considerate kindness, my lord," said the boy;
"with your leave I will remain for a little space quiet in this chair-
-I am better thus than on the couch. I can think undisturbedly on what
I have done, and have still to do; and if God sends slumber to a
creature so exhausted, it shall be most welcome."

So saying, the boy drew his hand from Lord Nigel's, and, drawing
around him and partly over his face the folds of his ample cloak, he
resigned himself to sleep or meditation, while his companion,
notwithstanding the exhausting scenes of this and the preceding day,
continued his pensive walk up and down the apartment.

Every reader has experienced, that times occur, when far from being
lord of external circumstances, man is unable to rule even the wayward
realm of his own thoughts. It was Nigel's natural wish to consider his
own situation coolly, and fix on the course which it became him as a
man of sense and courage to adopt; and yet, in spite of himself, and
notwithstanding the deep interest of the critical state in which he
was placed, it did so happen that his fellow-prisoner's situation
occupied more of his thoughts than did his own. There was no
accounting for this wandering of the imagination, but also there was
no striving with it. The pleading tones of one of the sweetest voices
he had ever heard, still rung in his ear, though it seemed that sleep
had now fettered the tongue of the speaker. He drew near on tiptoe to
satisfy himself whether it were so. The folds of the cloak hid the
lower part of his face entirely; but the bonnet, which had fallen a
little aside, permitted him to see the forehead streaked with blue
veins, the closed eyes, and the long silken eyelashes.

"Poor child," said Nigel to himself, as he looked on him, nestled up
as it were in the folds of his mantle, "the dew is yet on thy
eyelashes, and thou hast fairly wept thyself asleep. Sorrow is a rough
nurse to one so young and delicate as thou art. Peace be to thy
slumbers, I will not disturb them. My own misfortunes require my
attention, and it is to their contemplation that I must resign
myself."

He attempted to do so, but was crossed at every turn by conjectures
which intruded themselves as before, and which all regarded the
sleeper rather than himself. He was angry and vexed, and expostulated
with himself concerning the overweening interest which he took in the
concerns of one of whom he knew nothing, saving that the boy was
forced into his company, perhaps as a spy, by those to whose custody
he was committed--but the spell could not be broken, and the thoughts
which he struggled to dismiss, continued to haunt him.

Thus passed half an hour, or more; at the conclusion of which, the
harsh sound of the revolving bolts was again heard, and the voice of
the warder announced that a man desired to speak with Lord
Glenvarloch. "A man to speak with me, under my present circumstances!-
-Who can it be?" And John Christie, his landlord of Paul's Wharf,
resolved his doubts, by entering the apartment. "Welcome--most
welcome, mine honest landlord!" said Lord Glenvarloch. "How could I
have dreamt of seeing you in my present close lodgings?" And at the
same time, with the frankness of old kindness, he walked up to
Christie and offered his hand; but John started back as from the look
of a basilisk.

"Keep your courtesies to yourself, my lord," said he, gruffly; "I have
had as many of them already as may serve me for my life."

"Why, Master Christie," said Nigel, "what means this? I trust I have
not offended you?"

"Ask me no questions, my lord," said Christie, bluntly. "I am a man of
peace--I came not hither to wrangle with you at this place and season.
Just suppose that I am well informed of all the obligements from your
honour's nobleness, and then acquaint me, in as few words as may be,
where is the unhappy woman--What have you done with her?"

"What have I done with her!" said Lord Glenvarloch--"Done with whom? I
know not what you are speaking of."

"Oh, yes, my lord," said Christie; "play surprise as well as you will,
you must have some guess that I am speaking of the poor fool that was
my wife, till she became your lordship's light-o'-love."

"Your wife! Has your wife left you? and, if she has, do you come to
ask her of me?"

"Yes, my lord, singular as it may seem," returned Christie, in a tone
of bitter irony, and with a sort of grin widely discording from the
discomposure of his features, the gleam of his eye, and the froth
which stood on his lip, "I do come to make that demand of your
lordship. Doubtless, you are surprised I should take the trouble; but,
I cannot tell, great men and little men think differently. She has
lain in my bosom, and drunk of my cup; and, such as she is, I cannot
forget that--though I will never see her again--she must not starve,
my lord, or do worse, to gain bread, though I reckon your lordship may
think I am robbing the public in trying to change her courses."

"By my faith as a Christian, by my honour as a gentleman," said Lord
Glenvarloch, "if aught amiss has chanced with your wife, I know
nothing of it. I trust in Heaven you are as much mistaken in imputing
guilt to her, as in supposing me her partner in it."

"Fie! fie! my lord," said Christie, "why will you make it so tough?
She is but the wife of a clod-pated old chandler, who was idiot enough
to marry a wench twenty years younger than himself. Your lordship
cannot have more glory by it than you have had already; and, as for
advantage and solace, I take it Dame Nelly is now unnecessary to your
gratification. I should be sorry to interrupt the course of your
pleasure; an old wittol should have more consideration of his
condition. But, your precious lordship being mewed up here among other
choice jewels of the kingdom, Dame Nelly cannot, I take it, be
admitted to share the hours of dalliance which--"Here the incensed
husband stammered, broke off his tone of irony, and proceeded,
striking his staff against the ground--"O that these false limbs of
yours, which I wish had been hamstrung when they first crossed my
honest threshold, were free from the fetters they have well deserved!
I would give you the odds of your youth, and your weapon, and would
bequeath my soul to the foul fiend if I, with this piece of oak, did
not make you such an example to all ungrateful, pick-thank courtiers,
that it should be a proverb to the end of time, how John Christie
swaddled his wife's fine leman!"

"I understand not your insolence," said Nigel, "but I forgive it,
because you labour under some strange delusion. In so far as I can
comprehend your vehement charge, it is entirely undeserved on my part.
You seem to impute to me the seduction of your wife--I trust she is
innocent. For me, at least, she is as innocent as an angel in bliss. I
never thought of her--never touched her hand or cheek, save in
honourable courtesy."

"O, ay--courtesy!--that is the very word. She always praised your
lordship's honourable courtesy. Ye have cozened me between ye, with
your courtesy. My lord--my lord, you came to us no very wealthy man--
you know it. It was for no lucre of gain I took you and your swash-
buckler, your Don Diego yonder, under my poor roof. I never cared if
the little room were let or no; I could live without it. If you could
not have paid for it, you should never have been asked. All the wharf
knows John Christie has the means and spirit to do a kindness. When
you first darkened my honest doorway, I was as happy as a man need to
be, who is no youngster, and has the rheumatism. Nelly was the kindest
and best-humoured wench--we might have a word now and then about a
gown or a ribbon, but a kinder soul on the whole, and a more careful,
considering her years, till you come--and what is she now!--But I will
not be a fool to cry, if I can help it. _What_ she is, is not the
question, but where she is; and that I must learn, sir, of you."

"How can you, when I tell you," replied Nigel, "that I am as ignorant
as yourself, or rather much more so? Till this moment, I never heard
of any disagreement betwixt your dame and you."

"That is a lie," said John Christie, bluntly.

"How, you base villain!" said Lord Glenvarloch--"do you presume on my
situation? If it were not that I hold you mad, and perhaps made so by
some wrong sustained, you should find my being weaponless were no
protection, I would beat your brains out against the wall."

"Ay, ay," answered Christie, "bully as ye list. Ye have been at the
ordinaries, and in Alsatia, and learned the ruffian's rant, I doubt
not. But I repeat, you have spoken an untruth, when you said you knew
not of my wife's falsehood; for, when you were twitted with it among
your gay mates, it was a common jest among you, and your lordship took
all the credit they would give you for your gallantry and gratitude."

There was a mixture of truth in this part of the charge which
disconcerted Lord Glenvarloch exceedingly; for he could not, as a man
of honour, deny that Lord Dalgarno, and others, had occasionally
jested with him on the subject of Dame Nelly, and that, though he had
not played exactly _le fanfaron des vices qu'il n'avoit pas_, he had
not at least been sufficiently anxious to clear himself of the
suspicion of such a crime to men who considered it as a merit. It was
therefore with some hesitation, and in a sort of qualifying tone, that
he admitted that some idle jests had passed upon such a supposition,
although without the least foundation in truth. John Christie would
not listen to his vindication any longer. "By your own account," he
said, "you permitted lies to be told of you injest. How do I know you
are speaking truth, now you are serious? You thought it, I suppose, a
fine thing to wear the reputation of having dishonoured an honest
family,--who will not think that you had real grounds for your base
bravado to rest upon? I will not believe otherwise for one, and
therefore, my lord, mark what I have to say. You are now yourself in
trouble--As you hope to come through it safely, and without loss of
life and property, tell me where this unhappy woman is. Tell me, if
you hope for heaven--tell me, if you fear hell--tell me, as you would
not have the curse of an utterly ruined woman, and a broken-hearted
man, attend you through life, and bear witness against you at the
Great Day, which shall come after death. You are moved, my lord, I see
it. I cannot forget the wrong you have done me. I cannot even promise
to forgive it--but--tell me, and you shall never see me again, or hear
more of my reproaches."

"Unfortunate man," said Lord Glenvarloch, "you have said more, far
more than enough, to move me deeply. Were I at liberty, I would lend
you my best aid to search out him who has wronged you, the rather that
I do suspect my having been your lodger has been in some degree the
remote cause of bringing the spoiler into the sheepfold."

"I am glad your lordship grants me so much," said John Christie,
resuming the tone of embittered irony with which he had opened the,
singular conversation; "I will spare you farther reproach and
remonstrance--your mind is made up, and so is mine.--So, ho, warder!"
The warder entered, and John went on,--"I want to get out, brother.
Look well to your charge--it were better that half the wild beasts in
their dens yonder were turned loose upon Tower Hill, than that this
same smooth-faced, civil-spoken gentleman, were again returned to
honest men's company!"

So saying, he hastily left the apartment; and Nigel had full leisure
to lament the waywardness of his fate, which seemed never to tire of
persecuting him for crimes of which he was innocent, and investing him
with the appearances of guilt which his mind abhorred. He could not,
however, help acknowledging to himself, that all the pain which he
might sustain from the present accusation of John Christie, was so far
deserved, from his having suffered himself, out of vanity, or rather
an unwillingness to encounter ridicule, to be supposed capable of a
base inhospitable crime, merely because fools called it an affair of
gallantry; and it was no balsam to the wound, when he recollected what
Richie had told him of his having been ridiculed behind his back by
the gallants of the ordinary, for affecting the reputation of an
intrigue which he had not in reality spirit enough to have carried on.
His simulation had, in a word, placed him in the unlucky predicament
of being rallied as a braggart amongst the dissipated youths, with
whom the reality of the amour would have given him credit; whilst, on
the other hand, he was branded as an inhospitable seducer by the
injured husband, who was obstinately persuaded of his guilt.