f the
meanest Christian, would this day have been denied to the body of your
relative--not certainly sprung of the meanest house in Scotland--had
it not been assured to him by your courage. Others bury their dead in
sorrow and tears, in silence and in reverence; our funeral rites are
marred by the intrusion of bailiffs and ruffians, and our grief--the
grief due to our departed friend--is chased from our cheeks by the glow
of just indignation. But it is well that I know from what quiver this
arrow has come forth. It was only he that dug the drave who could have
the mean cruelty to disturb the obsequies; and Heaven do as much to
me and more, if I requite not to this man and his house the ruin and
disgrace he has brought on me and mine!"

A numerous part of the assembly applauded this speech, as the spirited
expression of just resentment; but the more cool and judicious regretted
that it had been uttered. The fortunes of the heir of Ravenswood were
too low to brave the farther hostility which they imagined these open
expressions of resentment must necessarily provoke. Their apprehensions,
however, proved groundless, at least in the immediate consequences of
this affair.

The mourners returned to the tower, there, according to a custom but
recently abolished in Scotland, to carouse deep healths to the memory of
the deceased, to make the house of sorrow ring with sounds of joviality
and debauch, and to diminish, by the expense of a large and profuse
entertainment, the limited revenues of the heir of him whose funeral
they thus strangely honoured. It was the custom, however, and on the
present occasion it was fully observed. The tables swam in wine,
the populace feasted in the courtyard, the yeomen in the kitchen and
buttery; and two years' rent of Ravenswood's remaining property hardly
defrayed the charge of the funeral revel. The wine did its office on all
but the Master of Ravenswood, a title which he still retained, though
forfeiture had attached to that of his father. He, while passing around
the cup which he himself did not taste, soon listened to a thousand
exclamations against the Lord Keeper, and passionate protestations of
attachment to himself, and to the honour of his house. He listened
with dark and sullen brow to ebullitions which he considered justly as
equally evanescent with the crimson bubbles on the brink of the goblet,
or at least with the vapours which its contents excited in the brains of
the revellers