Caleb was conscious, from sad experience, that he would wage a very different strife with this mercenary champion than with the individual feuars themselves, upon whose old recollections, predilections, and habits of thinking he might have wrought by an hundred indirect arguments, to which their deputy-representative was totally insensible.  The issue of the debate proved the reality of his apprehensions.  It was in vain he strained his eloquence and ingenuity, and collected into one mass all arguments arising from antique custom and hereditary respect, from the good deeds done by the Lords of Ravenswood to the community of Wolf’s Hope in former days, and from what might be expected from them in future.  The writer stuck to the contents of his feu-charters; he could not see it:  ’twas not in the bond.  And when Caleb, determined to try what a little spirit would do, deprecated the consequences of Lord Ravenswood’s withdrawing his protection from the burgh, and even hinted in his using active measures of resentment, the man of law sneered in his face.

“His clients,” he said, “had determined to do the best they could for their own town, and he thought Lord Ravenswood, since he was a lord, might have enough to do to look after his own castle.  As to any threats of stouthrief oppression, by rule of thumb, or via facti, as the law termed it, he would have Mr. Balderstone recollect, that new times were not as old times; that they lived on the south of the Forth, and far from the Highlands; that his clients thought they were able to protect themselves; but should they find themselves mistaken, they would apply to the government for the protection of a corporal and four red-coats, who,” said Mr. Dingwall, with a grin, “would be perfectly able to secure them against Lord Ravenswood, and all that he or his followers could do by the strong hand.”

If Caleb could have concentrated all the lightnings of aristocracy in his eye, to have struck dead this contemner of allegiance and privilege, he would have launched them at his head, without respect to the consequences.  As it was, he was compelled to turn his course backward to the castle; and there he remained for full half a day invisible and inaccessible even to Mysie, sequestered in his own peculiar dungeon, where he sat burnishing a single pewter plate and whistling “Maggie Lauder” six hours without intermission.

The issue of this unfortunate requisition had shut against Caleb all resources which could be derived from Wolf’s Hope and its purlieus, the El Dorado, or Peru, from which, in all former cases of exigence, he had been able to extract some assistance.  He had, indeed, in a manner vowed that the deil should have him, if ever he put the print of his foot within its causeway again.  He had hitherto kept his word; and, strange to tell, this secession had, as he intended, in some degree, the effect of a punishment upon the refractory feuars.  Mr. Balderstone had been a