“Long life to you, Bucklaw!” he exclaimed; “there’s life for honest folk in this bad world yet!”

The Jacobites at this period, with what propriety I know not, used, it must be noticed, the term of honest men as peculiarly descriptive of their own party.

“Ay, and for others besides, it seems,” answered Bucklaw; “otherways, how came you to venture hither, noble Captain?”

“Who—­I?  I am as free as the wind at Martinmas, that pays neither land-rent nor annual; all is explained—­all settled with the honest old drivellers yonder of Auld Reekie.  Pooh! pooh! they dared not keep me a week of days in durance.  A certain person has better friends among them than you wot of, and can serve a friend when it is least likely.”

“Pshaw!” answered Hayston, who perfectly knew and thoroughly despised the character of this man, “none of your cogging gibberish; tell me truly, are you at liberty and in safety?”

“Free and safe as a Whig bailie on the causeway of his own borough, or a canting Presbyterian minister in his own pulpit; and I came to tell you that you need not remain in hiding any longer.”

“Then I suppose you call yourself my friend, Captain Craigengelt?” said Bucklaw.

“Friend!” replied Craigengelt, “my cock of the pit! why, I am thy very Achates, man, as I have heard scholars say—­hand and glove—­bark and tree—­thine to life and death!”

“I’ll try that in a moment,” answered Bucklaw.  “Thou art never without money, however thou comest by it.  Lend me two pieces to wash the dust out of these honest fellows’ throats in the first place, and then——­”

“Two pieces!  Twenty are at thy service, my lad, and twenty to back them.”

“Ay, say you so?” said Bucklaw, pausing, for his natural penetration led him to suspect some extraordinary motive lay couched under an excess of generosity.  “Craigengelt, you are either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and I scarce know how to believe that either.”

“L’un n’empeche pas l’autre,” said Craigengelt.  “Touch and try; the gold is good as ever was weighed.”

He put a quantity of gold pieces into Bucklaw’s hand, which he thrust into his pocket without either counting or looking at them, only observing, “That he was so circumstanced that he must enlist, though the devil offered the press-money”; and then turning to the huntsmen, he called out, “Come along, my lads; all is at my cost.”

“Long life to Bucklaw!” shouted the men of the chase.

“And confusion to him that takes his share of the sport, and leaves the hunters as dry as a drumhead,” added another, by way of corollary.

“The house of Ravenswood was ance a gude and an honourable house in this land,” said an old man; “but it’s lost its credit this day, and the Master has shown himself no better than a greedy cullion.”