usand pounds, if you win them to lose them a' again?"

"What signifies it?" replied Mowbray. "Why, it signifies as much to a
man of spirit, as having won a battle signifies to a general--no matter
that he is beaten afterwards in his turn, he knows there is luck for him
as well as others, and so he has spirit to try it again. Here is the
young Earl of Etherington will be amongst us in a day or two--they say
he is up to every thing--if I had but five hundred to begin with, I
should be soon up to him."

"Mr. Mowbray," said Meiklewham, "I am sorry for ye. I have been your
house's man-of-business--I may say, in some measure, your house's
servant--and now I am to see an end of it all, and just by the lad that
I thought maist likely to set it up again better than ever; for, to do
ye justice, you have aye had an ee to your ain interest, sae far as your
lights gaed. It brings tears into my auld een."

"Never weep for the matter, Mick," answered Mowbray; "some of it will
stick, my old boy, in your pockets, if not in mine--your service will
not be altogether gratuitous, my old friend--the labourer is worthy of
his hire."

"Weel I wot is he," said the writer; "but double fees would hardly carry
folk through some wark. But if ye will have siller, ye maun have
siller--but, I warrant, it goes just where the rest gaed."

"No, by twenty devils!" exclaimed Mowbray, "to fail this time is
impossible--Jack Wolverine was too strong for Etherington at any thing
he could name; and I can beat Wolverine from the Land's-End to Johnnie
Groat's--but there must be something to go upon--the blunt must be had,
Mick."

"Very likely--nae doubt--that is always provided it _can_ be had,"
answered the legal adviser.

"That's your business, my old cock," said Mowbray. "This youngster will
be here perhaps to-morrow, with money in both pockets--he takes up his
rents as he comes down, Mick--think of that, my old friend."

"Weel for them that have rents to take up," said Meiklewham; "ours are
lying rather ower low to be lifted at present.--But are you sure this
Earl is a man to mell with?--are you sure ye can win of him, and that if
you do, he can pay his losings, Mr. Mowbray?--because I have kend mony
are come for wool, and gang hame shorn; and though ye are a clever young
gentleman, and I am bound to suppose ye ken as much about life as most
folk, and all that; yet some gate or other ye have aye come off at the
losing hand, as ye have ower much reaso