Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume X Part 2

"I am, your lordship," answered the author.

"You are!--you!" said his lordship, "you the author of _the Defence_?

Impertinent fool! had not you the idea from me? Am not I to pay for it?

The work is mine!" So saying, he rang the bell, and addressing the servant who entered, added, "Give that gentleman a guinea."

George withdrew, in rage and bewilderment, and his poverty, not his will, consented to accept the insulting remuneration. Within two days, he saw at the door of every bookseller a placard with the words--"Just published, A DEFENCE OF THE WAR WITH FRANCE, by the Right Hon. Lord L----." George compared himself to Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage--he had bartered his name, his fame, and the fruits of his genius, for a paltry guinea.

He began to be ashamed of the shabbiness of his garments--the withering meaning of the word clung round him--he felt it as a festering sore eating into his very soul, and he appeared but little upon the streets.

He had been several weeks without a lodging, and though it was now summer, the winds of heaven afford but a comfortless blanket for the shoulders when the midnight dews fall upon the earth. He had slept for several nights in a hayfield in the suburbs, on the Kent side of the river; and his custom was, to lift a few armfuls aside on a low rick, and laying himself down in the midst of it, gradually placing the hay over his feet, and the rest of his body, until the whole was covered.

But the hay season did not last for ever; and one morning, when fast asleep in the middle of the rick, he was roused by a sudden exclamation of mingled horror and astonishment. He looked up, and beside him stood a countryman, with his mouth open, and his eyes gazing wistfully. In his hand he held a hayfork, and on the p.r.o.ngs of the fork was one of the skirts of poor George's coat. He gazed angrily at the countryman, and ruefully at the fragment of his unfortunate coat; and, rising, he drew round the portion of it that remained on his back, to view "the rent the envious _hayfork_ made."

"By goam! chap," said the countryman, when he regained his speech, "I have made thee a spencer; but I might have run the fork through thee, and it would have been no blame of mine."

They were leading the hay from the field, and the genius was deprived of his lodging. It was some nights after this he was wandering in the neighbourhood of Poplar, fainting and exhausted--sleeping, starting, dreaming--as he dragged his benumbed and wearied limbs along; and, as he was crossing one of the bridges over the ca.n.a.l, he saw one of the long fly-boats, which ply with goods to Birmingham and Manchester, lying below it. George climbed over the bridge, and dropped into the boat, and finding a quant.i.ty of painted sailcloth near the head of it, which was used as a covering for the goods, to protect them from the weather, he wrapped himself up in it, and lay down to sleep. How long he lay he know not, for he slept most soundly; and, when he awoke, he felt more refreshed than he had been for many nights. But he started as he heard the sound of voices near him; and, cautiously withdrawing the canvas from over his face, he beheld that the sun was up; and, to increase his perplexity, fields, trees, and hedges were gliding past him. While he slept, the boatmen had put the horses to the barge, and were now on their pa.s.sage to Birmingham, and several miles from London; but, though they had pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed the roll of canvas, they saw not, and they suspected not, that they "carried Caesar and his fortunes." George speedily comprehended his situation; and extricating his limbs from the folds of the canvas as quietly as ho could, he sprang to his feet, stepped to the side of the boat, and, with a desperate bound, reached the bank of the ca.n.a.l.

"Holloa!" shouted the astonished boatmen--"holloa! what have you been after?"

George made no answer, but ran with his utmost speed down the side of the ca.n.a.l.

"Holloa! stop thief!--stop thief!" bellowed the boatmen; and, springing to the ground, they gave chase to the genius. The boys, also, who rode the horses that dragged the boat unlinked them, and joined in the pursuit. It was a n.o.ble chase! But when George found himself pursued, he left the side of the ca.n.a.l, and took to the fields, clearing hedge, ditch, fence, and stone wall, with an agility that would have done credit to a first-rate hunter. The horses were at fault in following his example, and the boys gave up the chase; and when the boatmen had pursued him for the s.p.a.ce of half-a-mile, finding they were losing ground at every step they returned, panting and breathless, to their boat. George, however, slackened his pace but little until he arrived at the Edgeware Road, and there he resumed his wonted slow and melancholy saunter, and sorrowfully returned towards London. He now, poor fellow, sometimes shut his eyes, to avoid the sight of his own shadow, which he seemed to regard as a caricature of his forlorn person; and, in truth, he now appeared miserably forlorn--I had almost said ludicrously so. His coat has been already mentioned, with its wounded elbows, and imagine it now with the skirts which had been torn away with the hayfork, when the author of an epic was nearly forked upon a cart, as he reposed in a bundle of hay--imagine now the coat with that skirt awkwardly pinned to it--fancy also that the b.u.t.ton-holes had become useless, and that all the b.u.t.tons, save two, had taken leave of his waistcoat--his trousers, also, were as smooth at the knees as though they had been glazed and hot-pressed, and they were so bare, so very bare, that the knees could almost be seen through them without spectacles. Imagine, also, that this suit had once been black, and that it had changed colours with the weather, the damp hay, the painted canvas, and the cold earth on which he slept; and add to this a hat, the brim of which was broken, and the crown fallen in--with shoes, the soles of which had departed, and the heels involuntarily gone down, as if ready to perform the service of slippers. Imagine these things, and you have a personification of George Rogers, as he now wended his weary way towards London.

He had reached the head of Oxford Street, and he was standing irresolute whether to go into the city or turn into the Park, to hide himself from the eyes of man, and to lie down in solitude with his misery, when a lady and a gentleman crossed the street to where he stood. Their eyes fell upon him--the lady started--George beheld her, and he started too--he felt his heart throb, and a blush burn over his cheek. He knew her at the first glance--it was the fair stranger--his mother's first-foot! He turned round--he hurried towards the Park--he was afraid--he was ashamed to look behind him. A thousand times had he wished to meet that lady again, and now he had met her, and he fled from her--the shame of his habiliments entered his soul. Still he heard footsteps behind him, and he quickened his pace. Ho had entered the Park, but yet he heard the sound of the footsteps following.

"Stop, young man!" cried a voice from behind him. But George walked on as though he heard it not. The word "stop!" was repeated; but, instead of doing so, he was endeavouring to hurry onward, when, as we have said, one of the shoes which had become slippers, and which, bad before, were now worse from his flight across the ploughed fields, came off, and he was compelled to stop and stoop, to put it again upon his foot, or to leave his shoe behind him. While he stopped, therefore, to get his shoe again upon his foot, the person who followed him came up--it was the gentleman whom he had seen with the fair unknown. With difficulty he obtained a promise from George that he would call upon him at his house in Pimlico in the afternoon; and when he found our genius too proud to accept of money, he thrust into the pocket of the memorable skirt, which the hayfork had torn from the parent cloth, all the silver which he had upon his person.

When the gentleman had left him, George burst into tears. They were tears of pride, of shame, and of agony.

At length, he took the silver from the pocket of his skirt; he counted it in his hand--it amounted to nearly twenty shillings. Twenty shillings will go farther in London than in any city in the world, with those who know how to spend it--but much depends upon that. By all the by-ways he could find, George winded his way down to Rosemary Lane, where the "_Black and Blue Reviver_" worketh miracles, and where the children of Israel are its high priests. Within an hour, wonderful was the metamorphosis upon the person of George Rogers. At eleven o'clock he was clothed as a beggar--at twelve he was shabby-genteel. The hat in ruins was replaced by one of a newer shape, and that had been brushed and ironed till it was as clear as a looking-gla.s.s. The skirtless coat was thrown aside for an olive-coloured one of metropolitan cut, with a velvet collar, and of which, as the Israelite who sold it said, "de _glosh_ was not off." The b.u.t.tonless vest was laid aside for one of a light colour, and the place of the decayed trousers was supplied by a pair of pure white; yea, his feet were enclosed in sheep-skin shoes, which, he was a.s.sured, had never been upon foot before. Such was the change produced upon the outer man of George Rogers through twenty shillings; and, thus arrayed, with a beating and an anxious heart, he proceeded in the afternoon to the home of the beautiful stranger who had been the eventful first-foot in his father's house. As he crossed the Park by the side of the Serpentine, he could not avoid stopping to contemplate, perhaps I should say admire, the change that had been wrought upon his person, as it was reflected in the water as in a mirror. When he had arrived at Pimlico, and been ushered into the house, there was surprise on the face of the gentleman as he surveyed the change that had come over the person of his guest; but in the countenance of the young lady there was more of delight than of surprise. When he had sat with them for some time, the gentleman requested that he would favour them with his history and his adventures in London. George did so from the days of his childhood, until the day when the fair lady before him became his mother's first-foot; and he recounted also his adventures and his struggles in London, as we have related them; and, as he spoke, the lady wept. As he concluded, he said--"And, until this day, I have ever found an expression, which my uncle made in a letter, verified, that 'the moment the elbows of my coat opened, every door would shut.'"

"Your uncle!" said the gentleman, eagerly; "who is he?--what is his name?"

"He commands a vessel of his own in the merchant service," replied George, "and his name is John Rogers."

"John Rogers!" added the gentleman; "and your father's name?"

"Richard Rogers," answered George.

The young lady gazed upon him anxiously, and words seemed leaping to her tongue, when the gentleman prevented her, saying, "Isabel, love, I wish to speak with this young man in private;" and she withdrew. When they were left alone, the gentleman remained silent for a few minutes, at times gazing in the face of George, and again placing his hand upon his brow. At length he said--"I know your uncle, and I am desirous of serving you--he also will a.s.sist you, if you continue to deserve it. But you must give up book-making as a business; and you must not neglect business for book-making. You understand me. I shall give you a letter to a gentleman in the city, who will take you into his counting-house; and if, at the expiration of three months, I find your conduct has been such as to deserve my approbation, you shall meet me here again."

He then wrote a letter, which, having sealed, he put, with a purse, into the hands of George, who sat speechless with grat.i.tude and astonishment.

On the following day, George delivered the letter to the merchant, and was immediately admitted as a clerk into his counting-house. He was ignorant of the name of his uncle's friend; and when he ventured to inquire at the merchant respecting him, he merely told him, he was one whose good opinion he would not advise him to forfeit. In this state of suspense, George laboured day by day at the desk; and although he was most diligent, active, and anxious to please, yet frequently, when he was running up figures, or making out an invoice, his secret thoughts were of the fair Isabel--the daughter of his uncle's friend, and his mother's first-foot. He regretted that he did not inform her father that he was his uncle's heir--he might then have been admitted to his house, and daily seen her on whom his thoughts dwelt. His situation was agreeable enough--it was paradise to what he had experienced; yet the three months of his probation seemed longer than twelve.

He had been a few weeks employed in the counting-house, when he received a letter from his parents. His father informed him that they had received a letter from his uncle, who was then in London; but, added he, "he has forgotten to gie us his direction, where we may write to him, or where ye may find him." His mother added an important postscript, in which she informed him that "She was sorry she was richt after a', that there wasna luck in a squintin first-foot; for he would mind o' the sailor that brought the letter, that said he was to be his uncle's heir; and now it turned out that his uncle had found an heir o' his ain."

It was the intention of George, when he had read the letter, to go to the house of his benefactor, and inquire for his uncle's address, or the name of the ship; but when he reflected that he might know neither--that he was not to return to his house for three months, nor until he was sent for--and, above all, when he thought that he was no longer his uncle's heir, and that he now could offer up no plea for looking up to the lovely Isabel--he resumed his pen with a stifled sigh, and abandoned the thought of finding out his uncle for the present.

He had been rather more than ten weeks in the office, when the unknown Isabel entered and inquired for the merchant. She smiled upon George as she pa.s.sed him--the smile entered his very soul, and the pen shook in his hand. It was drawing towards evening, and the merchant requested George to accompany the young lady home. Joy and agitation raised a tumult in his breast--he seized his hat--he offered her his arm--but he scarce knew what he did. For half-an-hour he walked by her side without daring or without being able to utter a single word. They entered the Park; the lamps were lighted amidst the trees along the Mall, and the young moon shone over them. It was a lovely and an imposing scene, and with it George found a tongue. He dwelt upon the effect of the scenery--he quoted pa.s.sages from his own epic--and he spoke of the time when his fair companion was his mother's first-foot. She informed him that she was then hastening to the death-bed of her grandfather, whom she believed to be the only relative that she had in life--that she arrived in time to receive his blessing, and that, with his dying breath, he told her her father yet lived--and, for the first time, she heard his name, and had found him. George would have asked what that name was, but when he attempted to do so he hesitated, and the question was left unfinished. They spoke of many things, and often they walked in silence; and it was not until the watchman called, "Past nine o'clock,"

that they seemed to discover that, instead of proceeding towards Pimlico, they had been walking backward and forward upon the Mall. Ho accompanied her to her father's door, and left her with his heart filled with unutterable thoughts.

The three months had not quite expired, when the anxiously-looked-for invitation arrived, and George Rogers was to dine at the house of his uncle's friend, the father of the fair Isabel. I shall not describe his feelings as he hastened along the streets towards Pimlico. He arrived at the house, and his hand shook as he reached it to the rapper. The door was opened by a strange-looking footman. George thought that he had seen him before--it was indeed a face that, if once seen, was not easily forgotten. The footman had not such large whiskers as Bill Somers, but they were of the same colour, and they certainly were the same eyes that had frightened his mother in the head of her first-foot. He was shown into a room where Isabel and her father waited to receive him. "When I last saw you, sir," said the latter, "you informed me you were the nephew of John Rogers. He finds he has no cause to be ashamed of you.

George, my dear fellow, your uncle Jack gives you his hand! Isabel, welcome your cousin!"

"My cousin!" cried George.

"My cousin!" said Isabel.

What need we say more--before the New Year came, they went down to Scotland a wedded pair, to be his mother's first-foot in the farmhouse, which had been rebuilt.

THE ROMANCE OF THE SIEGE OF PERTH.

In the year 1310, King Robert Bruce had overcome many of those extraordinary difficulties that threatened to render all the efforts of mere man unavailable in regaining for Scotland that perfect liberty of which she had so long boasted, and which, though it had never been taken from her absolutely, had been, by the unwarrantable schemes and policy of the first Edward, loosened from her grasp, and lay trampled on by the fierce genius of war. Great and wonderful, however, as had already been the prowess and determination of Bruce, and successful beyond the aspirations of hope as had been his efforts in the glorious cause of his country's freedom, there was great room for question whether Scotland would even at this period have triumphed, had the sceptre of England not fallen so opportunely into the hands of the second Edward. The first and greatest of all Scotland's foes, the first Edward, had died three years before, at Burgh-upon-Sands, leaving, as Froissart informs us, his dying injunction on his son, to boil his body in a caldron, till the bones should part with the flesh, and to carry the grim relics with him into Scotland, with the condition that they should not be buried till Scotland was subdued. The legacy of dry bones, from which the spirit of the great king had departed, was apparently all of his father that the young Edward inherited; for he soon displayed so much vacillation of policy, and so little genius for war, that, if Providence had intended to work to the hands of Bruce for the salvation of his country, she could not have brought about her designs with greater effect than by giving Bruce as an enemy the young King of England. Things were going straight forward to the result of Bannockburn. Bruce had been successful almost everywhere. The clergy at Dundee had declared his right to the throne, and the injustice of the decision that gave Baliol the crown; the n.o.bles, with the exception of Angus, Buchan, and some others, were in his favour; but, above all, the common people, in whom the true sovereignty of every country lies, had begun to see in their new king those qualities that are calculated to move the heart. The hopes of Bruce rose every hour; and, having scattered the forces of the English in every recent encounter, he saw the necessity, and felt the power, of seizing some of the walled towns that Edward had fortified with much care, as if stone and lime could bind the freedom of Scotland. The town of Perth was the one that seemed then of greatest importance, as well from its central situation between the Highlands and Lowlands, as from the state of its battlements, which were a regular fortification, with strong walls defended by high towers, and all surrounded by a broad and deep fosse.

The town had for some time been under siege, and, being one of those that Edward was determined to hold to the last, was promised succour with the first supplies that should enter the Tay. It was commanded by William Oliphant, an Anglicised Scot, who, with a firmness worthy of a better cause, had resolved to be true to the enemy of his country, and to give up the town only with his life. But his efforts were sorely thwarted by the remissness of Edward in sending provisions, and by the effects of a grievous famine, that, as a consequence of the intestine wars by which the country had been so wofully torn, was desolating the land in every quarter. He had already drained the pockets of the most wealthy of the citizens, by forcing them to supply him with money, by which he contrived to get in provisions to enable him to hold out against Bruce. Among the rest, a rich burgher from the Lower Provinces, Peter of Ghent (his latter name has not reached us) was expected to lend him a large sum of money. The Fleming was, in those days, what the Scots afterwards became--remarkable for the possession of the faculty of prudence--the legitimate offspring of the genius of merchandise. By the importation of broadcloths and armour gear, he had contrived to realise a large fortune, and was reported by the good men of Perth as one of the wealthiest merchants in the kingdom. He had only one child, a daughter, commonly known by the name of Anne of Ghent, a young creature of great beauty, and, what may appear to have been somewhat remarkable in her station, of a spirit that was deeply imbued with the love of chivalry.

But we would form a very inadequate estimate of the charms of that extraordinary power which overturned kingdoms and damsels' hearts wherever its influence was felt, if we were to limit its sphere to the sons and daughters of n.o.bility. Its principles, indeed, are found in every bosom that responds to the sentiments of love and heroism; and from the humble and beautiful Anne of Ghent, up to the n.o.ble and heroic Isabella of Buchan, the spirit burned with a fervour that was only in some accounted less strong because no opportunities wore afforded for its display.

It was not in Scotland that this spirit had been first fanned into a flame in the bosom of the fair Fleming, but in France, where the _preux chevalier_ was seen in all his pride and glory. When about sixteen years of age, she had accompanied her father to Flanders, when he resorted thither for the purpose of traffic; and, in order to gratify his daughter, of whom he was justly proud, he had taken her to Paris, to be present at a joust held before Louis IX. The display of arms on that occasion was a trial between Sir Piers Guyard and Sir William Indelgonde, the latter of whom, having defamed the mistress of the former, had been compelled, by order of Louis, to prove his a.s.sertion by the issue of a mortal combat. The battle ended by the death of Indelgonde; but what possessed greater charms to Anne than the details of the _duellum_, was the extraordinary sight she witnessed of twenty untried squires of France, all arrayed in shining coats of armour, with long flowing plumes of various colours on their glittering basnets, taking, according to the custom of these days, their first oaths, "before the peac.o.c.k and the ladies," that they would not see with both eyes until they had accomplished some daring deed of arms. The gay bird of gaudy hues was brought into a large pavilion erected at the end of the arena; and, like that before which King Edward I. swore at Westminster when he denounced poor Scotland, was encircled with a thin covering of golden gauze, and placed on a tripod ornamented with many carved devices of chivalry. The squires, one by one, knelt before the bird, and recited their oaths, and then, turning round to the queens of their destinies, solicited like mendicants, with one knee on the ground, a silk riband to bind up the orb which was about to be deprived of the fair sight of their charms. Nearly opposite to where Anne sat, a very young chevalier of the name of Rolande of Leon knelt for his eye gear; and though twenty ladies of birth, all anxious that their gifts should be accepted, threw to him ribands of silk, it happened that, whether from chance or from some mysterious sympathy between the hand and eyes of the young mendicant, a narrow green stripe, that Anne in her enthusiasm tore hurriedly from her head-gear, fell into his willing grasp. When she saw the fluttering trophy in the hands of so comely a youth, she trembled with modest fear; for she knew that, as the daughter of a burgher, rich as he was, she had but a very questionable t.i.tle to compete for the honours of chivalry; but, when she saw the riband bound round his head, and the helmet placed upon it, she was ready to faint outright, and it was with difficulty that she retained her position on the bench. As soon as the crowd began to move, she hastened away to join her father, who was waiting for her beyond the palisades. Next day she was on her way to Flanders, and shortly afterwards she arrived at the city of Perth.

Two or three years had now pa.s.sed since the fair Fleming acted the almost involuntary part of a high lady, within the pale of the _Theatre de la chevalerie_. Living, with the rich old merchant, within the walls of a city devoted to traffic, she had had few opportunities of witnessing another show of arms. The warriors of Scotland were then holding their jousts in the open fields and thick forests; and, in place of fighting for the smiles of women, were doing battle for the liberties of their ancient and much-abused country. But the rising fame of Bruce, his brother Edward, and Douglas, and Randolph, claimed her feelings of admiration; and she would have given her rosary itself, with her jewelled cross, to have got a glimpse of men of whom all the ladies of Christendom were enamoured. She often pictured to herself, as she sat in her small parlour that fronted the city wall, their forms firmly girt with their shining armour; but a visor was never lifted up to the eye of her fancy without revealing the feature of Rolande, as she saw him kneeling at her feet for the gift he solicited and obtained. The face had been deeply imprinted in her memory, and the encircling gift which she had bestowed, seemed to connect her by some indefinable tie with one whom she might never see again, but of whom she could never cease to think. His elegant and manly form, which displayed all the graces of the accomplished man-at-arms, mixed itself with all her thoughts, and her greatest delight was to pre-figure to herself the appearance, on some occasion, of that same warrior, with his left eye bound by the badge she had given him, and a declaration on his tongue, as he knelt before her, that she had the sole power of restoring him full-orbed to the light, which he might now claim as the reward of his prowess.

Anne was thus one evening indulging in some of these reveries of a love-sick brain, when Peter of Ghent entered the room. He was dressed in his Sunday's suit, with his ample surcoat of the best broadcloth, girt round the waist with a leather belt, his broad slouched hat of felt, and boots of the old Flemish style turned down at the tops, forming altogether a favourable contrast with the roughly-clad people of those early times, when the rough hats, coa.r.s.e jerkins, and untanned shoes, const.i.tuted the apparel of Scotland's sons. Anne looked up, and a slight feeling of surprise pa.s.sed through her mind as she noticed him thus arrayed.

"The town is still in great danger, Anne," said he, as he took a seat by her side, at the fire of blazing f.a.ggots, that threw a bright glare over the beautiful face of his daughter. "The enemies of Edward seem to be on the increase. Dundee has surrendered, the whole of Galloway has been ravaged, and Bruce, become bolder by his success, lies looking on our good town, as the wolves of Atholl look on the sheepfold in the glen."

"If there had been lions in these parts, father," answered Anne, "I might have heard from thee a comparison more suitable to the qualities of that brave soldier."

"These words, Anne," replied Peter, "but ill become a liege woman of King Edward. This poor country cannot thrive without the protecting power of England, where more broadcloths are disposed of in one year than Scotland uses in ten. The limbs of the st.u.r.dy hills and dales men seem to spurn all modes of human comfort; yet verily the love of ease and warmth to the body is the parent of all arts and improvement; and until that begins to be felt, we can have no hope of Scotland."

Anne looked up, and smiled at this professional allusion to the source of her father's wealth.

"But I need not so speak to the pretty Anne," he added, returning her smile; "for I know that thou hast the fashionable womanish affection of these times for steel, as the commodity of man's apparel; and thereto appertaineth the subject of which I came to speak to thee. Our governor, William Oliphant--who, though a Scotchman, is as true an adherent of Edward as ever fought under the banner-borne bones of his father--wanteth a thousand Flemish n.o.bles, to enable him to get provisions for our citizens from a Dutch galley in the Tay; and whom should he apply to for it but Peter of Ghent, who is looked upon as being the richest man of Perth?"

"And wilt thou give it him, father?" said Anne. "Of a surety, thou wilt lose it, if thou dost; for, were Perth as strong as Roxburgh, which, they say, is the strongest hold of these parts, it would not stand against such a warrior as Robert Bruce; and where wilt thou get thy money again, if the town falls into the hands of the Scots?"

"That is a good point of argument for a woman, love," replied Peter. "I fear for the old town myself; for they tell me that Bruce's fame has brought to his blue banner three French knights, with their left eyes bound up by ladies' favours, who deem that their feats of arms in an escalade of Perth may restore to them their sight. Doubtless they will fight like lions or devils; but seest thou not, that, whether I give the money or not, the town may fall, and all I have in the world may be wrenched from me by these naked caterans, to whom a single merk, albeit it were clipped to the dimensions of King David's bodles, would be a fortune?"

Anne was silent. The mention of the monoculous knights of France had driven merks and all other moneys from her mind, and she would have rejoiced to have seen Perth taken upon the instant, provided always that she were taken with it. But Peter understood not her absence of mind, and resumed his argument, on the a.s.sumption that Anne was listening with all due attention to his scheme.

"But Peter of Ghent," he again said, "never gave a silver piece, or a woollen piece either, for nothing; and, if my dutiful Anne will enter into my scheme, she may have for her consort no less a man than William Oliphant himself, the Governor of Perth, and her wedding-dress shall be of the best silks of Nismes, the richest gloves of Gren.o.ble, and sandals from the fair of Bocaire."

This announcement of some cunning purpose of her father filled Anne with alarm. Oliphant, a dissolute man, had been sometimes in the habit of calling at the house, and she had often thought that she herself was the object of his attraction. Her father, by mentioning the French knights that fought under the banner of Bruce, had raised a hope that her chevalier of the green riband was among them, and now he had caused an alarm that might have been read in her countenance.

"William Oliphant, the Governor of Perth," she replied, as she held down her face towards the blazing f.a.ggots, "will not surely stoop to marry the daughter of a Flemish merchant."