“But what of that, my good young friend?” said the Marquis.  “Your Castle of Wolf’s Crag is at but five or six miles’ distance, and will afford the same hospitality to your kinsman of A——­that it gave to this same Sir William Ashton.”

“Sir William took the castle by storm,” said Ravenswood, “and, like many a victor, had little reason to congratulate himself on his conquest.”  “Well—­well!” said Lord A——­, whose dignity was something relaxed by the wine he had drunk, “I see I must bribe you to harbour me.  Come, pledge me in a bumper health to the last young lady that slept at Wolf’s Crag, and liked her quarters.  My bones are not so tender as hers, and I am resolved to occupy her apartment to-night, that I may judge how hard the couch is that love can soften.”

“Your lordship may choose what penance you please,” said Ravenswood; “but I assure you, I should expect my old servant to hang himself, or throw himself from the battlements, should your lordship visit him so unexpectedly.  I do assure you, we are totally and literally unprovided.”

But his declaration only brought from his noble patron an assurance of his own total indifference as to every species of accommodation, and his determination to see the Tower of Wolf’s Crag.  His ancestor, he said, had been feasted there, when he went forward with the then Lord Ravenswood to the fatal battle of Flodden, in which they both fell.  Thus hard pressed, the Master offered to ride forward to get matters put in such preparation as time and circumstances admitted; but the Marquis protested his kinsman must afford him his company, and would only consent that an avant-courier should carry to the desinted seneschal, Caleb Balderstone, the unexpected news of this invasion.

The Master of Ravenswood soon after accompanied the Marquis in his carriage, as the latter had proposed; and when they became better acquainted in the progress of the journey, his noble relation explained the very liberal views which he entertained for his relation’s preferment, in case of the success of his own political schemes.  They related to a secret and highly important commission beyond sea, which could only be entrusted to a person of rank, talent, and perfect confidence, and which, as it required great trust and reliance on the envoy employed, could but not prove both honourable and advantageous to him.  We need not enter into the nature and purpose of this commission, farther than to acquaint our readers that the charge was in prospect highly acceptable to the Master of Ravenswood, who hailed with pleasure the hope of emerging from his present state of indigence and inaction into independence and honourable exertion.

While he listened thus eagerly to the details with which the Marquis now thought it necessary to entrust him, the messenger who had been despatched to the Tower of Wolf’s Crag returned with Caleb Balderstone’s humble duty, and an assurance that “a’ should be in seemly order, sic as the hurry of time permitted, to receive their lordships as it behoved.”