Pace and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap off, and my gudesire, as
seemed to him, fastened his horse to the very ring he had tied him to
that morning, when he gaed to wait on the young Sir John.

"God!" said my gudesire, "if Sir Robert's death be but a dream!"

He knocked at the ha' door just as he was wont, and his auld
acquaintance, Dougal MacCallum,--just after his wont, too,--came to open
the door, and said, "Piper Steenie, are ye there, lad? Sir Robert has
been crying for you."

My gudesire was like a man in a dream--he looked for the stranger, but
he was gane for the time. At last he just tried to say, "Ha! Dougal
Driveower, are ye living? I thought ye had been dead."

"Never fash yoursell wi' me," said Dougal, "but look to yoursell; and
see ye tak naething frae onybody here, neither meat, drink, or siller,
except just the receipt that is your ain."

So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that were weel
kend to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlour; and there was as
much singing of profane sangs, and birling of red wine, and speaking
blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever been in Redgauntlet Castle when it
was at the blithest.

But, Lord take us in keeping! what a set of ghastly revellers they were
that sat round that table!--My gudesire kend mony that had long before
gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most part in the hall
of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and the dissolute
Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head and a
beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cameron's blude on his hand;
and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr Cargill's limbs till the blude
sprang; and Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country
and king. There was the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly
wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god. And there was
Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled
locks, streaming down over his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always
on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet had
made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a melancholy,
haughty countenance; while the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed,
that the room rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time
to time; and their laughter passed into such wild sounds, as made my
gudesire's very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes.

They tha