upon to-day than killing deer”; meantime, taking out his purse, he gave the ranger a dollar for his encouragement.  The fellow received it as the waiter of a fashionable hotel receives double his proper fee from the hands of a country gentleman—­that is, with a smile, in which pleasure at the gift is mingled with contempt for the ignorance of the donor.  “Your honour is the bad paymaster,” he said, “who pays before it is done.  What would you do were I to miss the buck after you have paid me my wood-fee?”

“I suppose,” said the Keeper, smiling, “you would hardly guess what I mean were I to tell you of a condictio indebiti?”

“Not I, on my saul.  I guess it is some law phrase; but sue a beggar, and—­your honour knows what follows.  Well, but I will be just with you, and if bow and brach fail not, you shall have a piece of game two fingers fat on the brisket.”

As he was about to go off, his master again called him, and asked, as if by accident, whether the Master of Ravenswood was actually so brave a man and so good a shooter as the world spoke him.

“Brave!—­brave enough, I warrant you,” answered Norman.  “I was in the wood at Tyninghame when there was a sort of gallants hunting with my lord; on my saul, there was a buck turned to bay made us all stand back—­a stout old Trojan of the first head, ten-tyned branches, and a brow as broad as e’er a bullock’s.  Egad, he dashed at the old lord, and there would have been inlake among the perrage, if the Master had not whipt roundly in, and hamstrung him with his cutlass.  He was but sixteen then, bless his heart!”

“And is he as ready with the gun as with the couteau?” said Sir William.

“He’ll strike this silver dollar out from between my finger and thumb at fourscore yards, and I’ll hold it out for a gold merk; what more would ye have of eye, hand, lead, and gunpowder?” “Oh, no more to be wished, certainly,” said the Lord Keeper; “but we keep you from your sport, Norman.  Good morrow, good Norman.”

And, humming his rustic roundelay, the yeoman went on his road, the sound of his rough voice gradually dying away as the distance betwixt them increased: 

     “The monk must arise when the matins ring,
     The abbot may sleep to their chime;
     But the yeoman must start when the bugles sing
     ’Tis time, my hearts, ’tis time.

     There’s bucks and raes on Bilhope braes,
     There’s a herd on Shortwood Shaw;
     But a lily-white doe in the garden goes,
     She’s fairly worth them a’.”

“Has this fellow,” said the Lord Keeper, when the yeoman’s song had died on the wind, “ever served the Ravenswood people, that he seems so much interested in them?  I suppose you know, Lucy, for you make it a point of conscience to record the special history of every boor about the castle.”

“I am not quite so faithful a chronicler, my dear father; but I believe that Norman once served here while a boy, and before he ewnt to Ledington, whence you hired him.  But if you want to know anything of the former family, Old Alice is the best authority.”