“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 humour 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.