f it like your honour, lockman of this Fair City.
I marvel your knighthood knows him not."

"And I marvel thy knaveship knows him not on professional acquaintance,"
replied Ramorny; "but I see thy nose is unslit, thy ears yet uncropped,
and if thy shoulders are scarred or branded, thou art wise for using a
high collared jerkin."

"He, he! your honour is pleasant," said the mediciner. "It is not by
personal circumstances that I have acquired the intimacy of Stephen
Smotherwell, but on account of a certain traffic betwixt us, in which
an't please you, I exchange certain sums of silver for the bodies,
heads, and limbs of those who die by aid of friend Stephen."

"Wretch!" exclaimed the knight with horror, "is it to compose charms and
forward works of witchcraft that you trade for these miserable relics of
mortality?"

"He, he, he! No, an it please your knighthood," answered the mediciner,
much amused with the ignorance of his patron; "but we, who are knights
of the scalpel, are accustomed to practise careful carving of the limbs
of defunct persons, which we call dissection, whereby we discover, by
examination of a dead member, how to deal with one belonging to a living
man, which hath become diseased through injury or otherwise. Ah! if your
honour saw my poor laboratory, I could show you heads and hands, feet
and lungs, which have been long supposed to be rotting in the mould.
The skull of Wallace, stolen from London Bridge; the head of Sir
Simon Fraser [the famous ancestor of the Lovats, slain at Halidon Hill
(executed in London in 1306)], that never feared man; the lovely skull
of the fair Katie Logie [(should be Margaret Logie), the beautiful
mistress of David II]. Oh, had I but had the fortune to have preserved
the chivalrous hand of mine honoured patron!"

Out upon thee, slave! Thinkest thou to disgust me with thy catalogue of
horrors? Tell me at once where thy discourse drives. How can thy traffic
with the hangdog executioner be of avail to serve me, or to help my
servant Bonthron?"

"Nay, I do not recommend it to your knighthood, save in an extremity,"
replied Dwining. "But we will suppose the battle fought and our cock
beaten. Now we must first possess him with the certainty that, if unable
to gain the day, we will at least save him from the hangman, provided he
confess nothing which can prejudice your knighthood's honour."

"Ha! ay, a thought strikes me," said Ramorny. "We can do more than this,
we can pla