But this supplicator maun be his son--Randal has been long gone
where king and lord must go, Geordie, as weel as the like of you--and
what does his son want with us?"
"The settlement," answered the citizen, "of a large debt due by your
Majesty's treasury, for money advanced to your Majesty in great State
emergency, about the time of the Raid of Ruthven."
"I mind the thing weel," said King James--"Od's death, man, I was just
out of the clutches of the Master of Glamis and his complices, and
there was never siller mair welcome to a born prince,--the mair the
shame and pity that crowned king should need sic a petty sum. But what
need he dun us for it, man, like a baxter at the breaking? We aught
him the siller, and will pay him wi' our convenience, or make it
otherwise up to him, whilk is enow between prince and subject--We are
not _in meditatione fugae,_ man, to be arrested thus peremptorily."
"Alas! an it please your Majesty," said the goldsmith, shaking his
head, "it is the poor young nobleman's extreme necessity, and not his
will, that makes him importunate; for he must have money, and that
briefly, to discharge a debt due to Peregrine Peterson, Conservator of
the Privileges at Campvere, or his haill hereditary barony and estate
of Glenvarloch will be evicted in virtue of an unredeemed wadset."
"How say ye, man--how say ye?" exclaimed the king, impatiently; "the
carle of a Conservator, the son of a Low-Dutch skipper, evict the auld
estate and lordship of the house of Olifaunt?--God's bread, man, that
maun not be--we maun suspend the diligence by writ of favour, or
otherwise.
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