"
So saying, the earl addressed himself to the serious business of the
table and sent the wine around with a profusion which increased the
hilarity, but rather threatened the temperance, of the company, until
their joviality was interrupted by the annunciation that the scrivener
had engrossed such deeds as required to be presently executed.
George Heriot rose from the table, observing, that wine-cups and legal
documents were unseemly neighbours. The earl asked the scrivener if
they had laid a trencher and set a cup for him in the buttery and
received the respectful answer, that heaven forbid he should be such
an ungracious beast as to eat or drink until his lordship's pleasure
was performed.
"Thou shalt eat before thou goest," said Lord Huntinglen; "and I will
have thee try, moreover, whether a cup of sack cannot bring some
colour into these cheeks of thine. It were a shame to my household,
thou shouldst glide out into the Strand after such a spectre-fashion
as thou now wearest--Look to it, Dalgarno, for the honour of our roof
is concerned."
Lord Dalgarno gave directions that the man should be attended to. Lord
Glenvarloch and the citizen, in the meanwhile, signed and
interchanged, and thus closed a transaction, of which the principal
party concerned understood little, save that it was under the
management of a zealous and faithful friend, who undertook that the
money should be forthcoming, and the estate released from forfeiture,
by payment of the stipulated sum for which it stood pledged, and that
at the term of Lambmas, and at the hour of noon, and beside the tomb
of the Regent Earl of Murray, in the High Kirk of Saint Giles, at
Edinburgh, being the day and place assigned for such redemption.
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