her forth to
the best advantage. But the clustering profusion of ringlets, which,
escaping from under her cap, were only confined by a green ribbon from
wantoning over her shoulders; her cast of features, soft and feminine,
yet not without a certain expression of playful archness, which redeemed
their sweetness from the charge of insipidity, sometimes brought against
blondes and blue-eyed beauties,--these attracted more admiration from the
western youth than either the splendour of her equipments or the figure
of her palfrey.

The attendance of these distinguished ladies was rather inferior to their
birth and fashion in those times, as it consisted only of two servants on
horseback. The truth was, that the good old lady had been obliged to make
all her domestic servants turn out to complete the quota which her barony
ought to furnish for the muster, and in which she would not for the
universe have been found deficient. The old steward, who, in steel cap
and jack-boots, led forth her array, had, as he said, sweated blood and
water in his efforts to overcome the scruples and evasions of the
moorland farmers, who ought to have furnished men, horse, and harness, on
these occasions. At last, their dispute came near to an open declaration
of hostilities, the incensed episcopalian bestowing on the recusants the
whole thunders of the commination, and receiving from them, in return,
the denunciations of a Calvinistic excommunication. What was to be done?
To punish the refractory tenants would have been easy enough. The privy
council would readily have imposed fines, and sent a troop of horse to
collect them. But this would have been calling the huntsman and hounds
into the garden to kill the hare.

"For," said Harrison to himself, "the carles have little eneugh gear at
ony rate, and if I call in the red-coats and take away what little they
have, how is my worshipful lady to get her rents paid at Candlemas, which
is but a difficult matter to bring round even in the best of times?"

So he armed the fowler, and falconer, the footman, and the ploughman, at
the home farm, with an old drunken cavaliering butler, who had served
with the late Sir Richard under Montrose, and stunned the family nightly
with his exploits at Kilsythe and Tippermoor, and who was the only man in
the party that had the smallest zeal for the work in hand. In this
manner, and by recruiting one or two latitudinarian poachers and
black-fishers, Mr Harrison compl