s, I mean--and so Doguin asked Saunders Steed to take a cup of
wine, as they were acquainted, which he was no doubt willing enough to
do."

"No doubt--no doubt," said the old Lord; "it is a thing I wish were
corrected among you, gentlemen; but all your grooms, and couteliers, and
jackmen as we should call them in Scotland, are but too ready to take
a cup of wine with any one.--It is a thing perilous in war, and must be
amended. But, Andrew Arnot, this is a long tale of yours, and we will
cut it with a drink; as the Highlander says, Skeoch doch nan skial ['Cut
a tale with a drink;' an expression used when a man preaches over
his liquor, as bons vivants say in England. S.]; and that 's good
Gaelic.--Here is to the Countess Isabelle of Croye, and a better husband
to her than Campobasso, who is a base Italian cullion!--And now, Andrew
Arnot, what said the muleteer to this yeoman of thine?"

"Why, he told him in secrecy, if it please your Lordship," continued
Arnot, "that these two ladies whom he had presently before convoyed
up to the Castle in the close litters, were great ladies, who had been
living in secret at his house for some days, and that the King had
visited them more than once very privately, and had done them great
honour; and that they had fled up to the Castle, as he believed, for
fear of the Count de Crevecoeur, the Duke of Burgundy's ambassador,
whose approach was just announced by an advanced courier."

"Ay, Andrew, come you there to me?" said Guthrie. "Then I will be sworn
it was the Countess whose voice I heard singing to the lute, as I came
even now through the inner court--the sound came from the bay windows
of the Dauphin's Tower; and such melody was there as no one ever heard
before in the Castle of Plessis of the Park. By my faith, I thought it
was the music of the Fairy Melusina's making. There I stood--though I
knew your board was covered, and that you were all impatient--there I
stood like--"

[The Fairy Melusina: a water fay who married a mortal on condition that
she should be allowed to spend her Saturdays in deep seclusion. This
promise, after many years, was broken, and Melusina, half serpent, half
woman, was discovered swimming in a bath. For this breach of faith on
the part of her husband, Melusina was compelled to leave her home. She
regularly returned, however, before the death of any of the lords of her
family, and by her wailings foretold that event. Her history is closely
interwoven