So his cup he drains and he shakes his reins,
And rides his rake-helly way-O!
She was sweet to woo and most comely, too,
But that was all yesterday-O!
Down, down, derry-do!

The lad started forward with something akin to a shiver.

"Have done," he cried, in a voice of loathing, "or, if croak you must,
choose a ditty less foul!"

"Eh?" The ruffler shook back the matted hair from his lean, harsh
face, and a pair of eyes that of a sudden seemed ablaze glared at his
companion; then the lids drooped until those eyes became two narrow
slits--catlike and cunning--and again he laughed.

"Gad's life, Master Stewart, you have a temerity that should save
you from grey hairs! What is't to you what ditty my fancy seizes on?
'Swounds, man, for three weary months have I curbed my moods, and worn
my throat dry in praising the Lord; for three months have I been a
living monument of Covenanting zeal and godliness; and now that at last
I have shaken the dust of your beggarly Scotland from my heels, you--the
veriest milksop that ever ran tottering from its mother's lap would
chide me because, yon bottle being done, I sing to keep me from waxing
sad in the contemplation of its emptiness!"

There was scorn unutterable on the lad's face as he turned aside.

"When I joined Middleton's horse and accepted service under you, I held
you to be at least a gentleman," was his daring rejoinder.

For an instant that dangerous light gleamed again from his companion's
eye. Then, as before, the lids drooped, and, as before, he laughed.

"Gentleman!" he mocked. "On my soul, that's good! And what may you know
of gentlemen, Sir Scot? Think you a gentleman is a Jack Presbyter, or a
droning member of your kirk committee, strutting it like a crow in
the gutter? Gadswounds, boy, when I was your age, and George Villiers
lived--"

"Oh, have done!" broke in the youth impetuously. "Suffer me to leave
you, Sir Crispin, to your bottle, your croaking, and your memories."

"Aye, go your ways, sir; you'd be sorry company for a dead man--the
sorriest ever my evil star led me into. The door is yonder, and should
you chance to break your saintly neck on the stairs, it is like to be
well for both of us."

And with that Sir Crispin Galliard lay back in his chair once more, and
took up the thread of his interrupted song

But, heigh-o! she cried, at the Christmas-tide,
That dead she would rather be-