"
The style of conversation led so far from the point which had
interested the young nobleman's curiosity, that there was no returning
to it that night. He therefore exchanged thanks and greetings with
George Heriot, and took his leave, promising to be equipped and in
readiness to embark with him on the second successive morning at ten
o'clock.
The generation of linkboys, celebrated by Count Anthony Hamilton, as
peculiar to London, had already, in the reign of James I., begun their
functions, and the service of one of them with his smoky torch, had
been secured to light the young Scottish lord and his follower to
their lodgings, which, though better acquainted than formerly with the
city, they might in the dark have run some danger of missing. This
gave the ingenious Mr. Moniplies an opportunity of gathering close up
to his master, after he had gone through the form of slipping his left
arm into the handles of his buckler, and loosening his broadsword in
the sheath, that he might be ready for whatever should befall.
"If it were not for the wine and the good cheer which we have had in
yonder old man's house, my lord," said this sapient follower, "and
that I ken him by report to be a just living man in many respects, and
a real Edinburgh gutterblood, I should have been well pleased to have
seen how his feet were shaped, and whether he had not a cloven cloot
under the braw roses and cordovan shoon of his.
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