"
"To Him I commend you, my auld and faithful servant," said James with
emotion, as the earl withdrew from his presence. The king remained
fixed in thought for some time, and then said to Heriot, "Jingling
Geordie, ye ken all the privy doings of our Court, and have dune so
these thirty years, though, like a wise man, ye hear, and see, and say
nothing. Now, there is a thing I fain wad ken, in the way of
philosophical inquiry--Did you ever hear of the umquhile Lady
Huntinglen, the departed Countess of this noble earl, ganging a wee
bit gleed in her walk through the world; I mean in the way of slipping
a foot, casting a leglin-girth, or the like, ye understand me?"
[Footnote: A leglin-girth is the lowest hoop upon a _leglin_, or milk-
pail. Allan Ramsay applies the phrase in the same metaphorical sense.
"Or bairns can read, they first maun spell,
I learn'd this frae my mammy,
And cast a leglin-girth mysell,
Lang ere I married Tammy."
_Christ's Kirk On The Green_.]
"On my word as an honest man," said George Heriot, somewhat surprised
at the question, "I never heard her wronged by the slightest breath of
suspicion. She was a worthy lady, very circumspect in her walk, and
lived in great concord with her husband, save that the good Countess
was something of a puritan, and kept more company with ministers than
was altogether agreeable to Lord Huntinglen, who is, as your Majesty
well knows, a man of the old rough world, that will drink and swear.
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