not otherwise impugn my rights.  This boy he has left behind him—­this Edgar—­this hot-headed, hare-brained fool, has wrecked his vessel before she has cleared the harbor.  I must see that he gains no advantage of some turning tide which may again float him off.  These memoranda, properly stated to the privy council, cannot but be construed into an aggravated riot, in which the dignity both of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities stands committed.  A heavy fine might be imposed; an order for committing him to Edinburgh or Blackness Castle seems not improper; even a charge of treason might be laid on many of these words and expressions, though God forbid I should prosecute the matter to that extent.  No, I will not; I will not touch his life, even if it should be in my power; and yet, if he lives till a change of times, what follows?  Restitution—­perhaps revenge.  I know Athole promised his interest to old Ravenswood, and here is his son already bandying and making a faction by his own contemptible influence.  What a ready tool he would be for the use of those who are watching the downfall of our administration!”

While these thoughts were agitating the mind of the wily statesman, and while he was persuading himself that his own interest and safety, as well as those of his friends and party, depended on using the present advantage to the uttermost against young Ravenswood, the Lord Keeper sate down to his desk, and proceeded to draw up, for the information of the privy council, an account of the disorderly proceedings which, in contempt of his warrant, had taken place at the funeral of Lord Ravenswood.  The names of most of the parties concerned, as well as the fact itself, would, he was well aware, sound odiously in the ears of his colleagues in administration, and most likely instigate them to make an example of young Ravenswood, at least, in terrorem.

It was a point of delicacy, however, to select such expressions as might infer the young man’s culpability, without seeming directly to urge it, which, on the part of Sir William Ashton, his father’s ancient antagonist, could not but appear odious and invidious.  While he was in the act of composition, labouring to find words which might indicate Edgar Ravenswood to be the cause of the uproar, without specifically making such a charge, Sir William, in a pause of his task, chanced, in looking upward, to see the crest of the family for whose heir he was whetting the arrows and disposing the toils of the law carved upon one of the corbeilles from which the vaulted roof of the apartment sprung.  It was a black bull’s head, with the legend, “I bide my time”; and the occasion upon which it was adopted mingled itself singularly and impressively with the subject of his present reflections.