ent so certain, that they disdain even
to throw a decent disguise over the machinations of their party?"
"Faith, Mr. Ratcliffe," answered Mareschal, "the actions and sentiments
YOUR friends may require to be veiled, but I am better pleased that ours
can go barefaced."
"And is it possible," continued Ratcliffe, "that you, who,
notwithstanding pour thoughtlessness and heat of temper (I beg pardon,
Mr. Mareschal, I am a plain man)--that you, who, notwithstanding
these constitutional defects, possess natural good sense and acquired
information, should be infatuated enough to embroil yourself in such
desperate proceedings? How does your head feel when you are engaged in
these dangerous conferences?"
"Not quite so secure on my shoulders," answered Mareschal, "as if I were
talking of hunting and hawking. I am not of so indifferent a mould as
my cousin Ellieslaw, who speaks treason as if it were a child's nursery
rhymes, and loses and recovers that sweet girl, his daughter, with a
good deal less emotion on both occasions, than would have affected me
had I lost and recovered a greyhound puppy. My temper is not quite so
inflexible, nor my hate against government so inveterate, as to blind me
to the full danger of the attempt."
"Then why involve yourself in it?" said Ratcliffe.
"Why, I love this poor exiled king with all my heart; and my father was
an old Killiecrankie man, and I long to see some amends on the Unionist
courtiers, that have bought and sold old Scotland, whose crown has been
so long independent."
"And for the sake of these shadows," said his monitor, "you are going to
involve your country in war and yourself in trouble?"
"I involve? No!--but, trouble for trouble, I had rather it came
to-morrow than a month hence. COME, I know it will; and, as your country
folks say, better soon than syne--it will never find me younger--and as
for hanging, as Sir John Falstaff says, I can become a gallows as well
as another. You know the end of the old ballad;
"Sae dauntonly
Notka biograficzna
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