The Antiquary — Complete, Walter Scott [best novels for beginners .TXT] 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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“All this is an exact picture of the man,” refumed Oldbuck.
“Why, then,” continued Lord Glenallan, “although I fear I can be of no use to him in his present condition, yet I owe him a debt of gratitude for being the first person who brought me some tidings of the utmost importance. I would willingly offer him a place of comfortable retirement, when he is extricated from his present situation.”
“I fear, my lord,” said Oldbuck, “he would have difficulty in reconciling his vagrant habits to the acceptance of your bounty, at least I know the experiment has been tried without effect. To beg from the public at large he considers as independence, in comparison to drawing his whole support from the bounty of an individual. He is so far a true philosopher, as to be a contemner of all ordinary rules of hours and times. When he is hungry he eats; when thirsty he drinks; when weary he sleeps; and with such indifference with respect to the means and appliances about which we make a fuss, that I suppose he was never ill dined or ill lodged in his life. Then he is, to a certain extent, the oracle of the district through which he travels—their genealogist, their newsman, their master of the revels, their doctor at a pinch, or their divine;—I promise you he has too many duties, and is too zealous in performing them, to be easily bribed to abandon his calling. But I should be truly sorry if they sent the poor light-hearted old man to lie for weeks in a jail. I am convinced the confinement would break his heart.”
Thus finished the conference. Lord Glenallan, having taken leave of the ladies, renewed his offer to Captain M’Intyre of the freedom of his manors for sporting, which was joyously accepted.
“I can only add,” he said, “that if your spirits are not liable to be damped by dull company, Glenallan House is at all times open to you. On two days of the week, Friday and Saturday, I keep my apartment, which will be rather a relief to you, as you will be left to enjoy the society of my almoner, Mr. Gladsmoor, who is a scholar and a man of the world.”
Hector, his heart exulting at the thoughts of ranging through the preserves of Glenallan House, and over the well-protected moors of Clochnaben—nay, joy of joys! the deer-forest of Strath-Bonnel—made many acknowledgements of the honour and gratitude he felt. Mr. Oldbuck was sensible of the Earl’s attention to his nephew; Miss M’Intyre was pleased because her brother was gratified; and Miss Griselda Oldbuck looked forward with glee to the potting of whole bags of moorfowl and black-game, of which Mr. Blattergowl was a professed admirer. Thus,— which is always the case when a man of rank leaves a private family where he has studied to appear obliging,—all were ready to open in praise of the Earl as soon as he had taken his leave, and was wheeled off in his chariot by the four admired bays. But the panegyric was cut short, for Oldbuck and his nephew deposited themselves in the Fairport hack, which, with one horse trotting, and the other urged to a canter, creaked, jingled, and hobbled towards that celebrated seaport, in a manner that formed a strong contrast to the rapidity and smoothness with which Lord Glenallan’s equipage had seemed to vanish from their eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. Yes! I love justice well—as well as you do— But since the good dame’s blind, she shall excuse me If, time and reason fitting, I prove dumb;— The breath I utter now shall be no means To take away from me my breath in future. Old Play.
By dint of charity from the town’s-people in aid of the load of provisions he had brought with him into durance, Edie Ochiltree had passed a day or two’s confinement without much impatience, regretting his want of freedom the less, as the weather proved broken and rainy.
“The prison,” he said, “wasna sae dooms bad a place as it was ca’d. Ye had aye a good roof ower your head to fend aff the weather, and, if the windows werena glazed, it was the mair airy and pleasant for the summer season. And there were folk enow to crack wi’, and he had bread eneugh to eat, and what need he fash himsell about the rest o’t?”
The courage of our philosophical mendicant began, however, to abate, when the sunbeams shone fair on the rusty bars of his grated dungeon, and a miserable linnet, whose cage some poor debtor had obtained permission to attach to the window, began to greet them with his whistle.
“Ye’re in better spirits than I am,” said Edie, addressing the bird, “for I can neither whistle nor sing for thinking o’ the bonny burnsides and green shaws that I should hae been dandering beside in weather like this. But hae—there’s some crumbs t’ye, an ye are sae merry; and troth ye hae some reason to sing an ye kent it, for your cage comes by nae faut o’ your ain, and I may thank mysell that I am closed up in this weary place.”
Ochiltree’s soliloquy was disturbed by a peace-officer, who came to summon him to attend the magistrate. So he set forth in awful procession between two poor creatures, neither of them so stout as he was himself, to be conducted into the presence of inquisitorial justice. The people, as the aged prisoner was led along by his decrepit guards, exclaimed to each other, “Eh! see sic a grey-haired man as that is, to have committed a highway robbery, wi’ ae fit in the grave!”—And the children congratulated the officers, objects of their alternate dread and sport, Puggie Orrock and Jock Ormston, on having a prisoner as old as themselves.
Thus marshalled forward, Edie was presented (by no means for the first time) before the worshipful Bailie Littlejohn, who, contrary to what his name expressed, was a tall portly magistrate, on whom corporation crusts had not been conferred in vain. He was a zealous loyalist of that zealous time, somewhat rigorous and peremptory in the execution of his duty, and a good deal inflated with the sense of his own power and importance;—otherwise an honest, well-meaning, and useful citizen.
“Bring him in! bring him in!” he exclaimed. “Upon my word these are awful and unnatural times! the very bedesmen and retainers of his Majesty are the first to break his laws. Here has been an old Blue-Gown committing robbery—I suppose the next will reward the royal charity which supplies him with his garb, pension, and begging license, by engaging in high-treason, or sedition at least—But bring him in.”
Edie made his obeisance, and then stood, as usual, firm and erect, with the side of his face turned a little upward, as if to catch every word which the magistrate might address to him. To the first general questions, which respected only his name and calling, the mendicant answered with readiness and accuracy; but when the magistrate, having caused his clerk to take down these particulars, began to inquire whereabout the mendicant was on the night when Dousterswivel met with his misfortune, Edie demurred to the motion. “Can ye tell me now, Bailie, you that understands the law,
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