-"For the right honourable, and our honoured kinsman, the
Master of Ravenswood--These, with haste, haste, post haste--ride and run
until these be delivered."

"What think you of this epistle, Bucklaw?" said the Master, when his
companion had hammered out all the sense, and almost all the words of
which it consisted.

"Truly, that the Marquis's meaning is as great a riddle as his
manuscript. He is really in much need of _Wit's Interpreter_, or the
_Complete Letter-Writer_, and were I you, I would send him a copy by the
bearer. He writes you very kindly to remain wasting your time and
your money in this vile, stupid, oppressed country, without so much as
offering you the countenance and shelter of his house. In my opinion, he
has some scheme in view in which he supposes you can be useful, and he
wishes to keep you at hand, to make use of you when it ripens,
reserving the power of turning you adrift, should his plot fail in the
concoction."

"His plot! Then you suppose it is a treasonable business," answered
Ravenswood.

"What else can it be?" replied Bucklaw; "the Marquis has been long
suspected to have an eye to Saint Germains."

"He should not engage me rashly in such an adventure," said Ravenswood;
"when I recollect the times of the first and second Charles, and of the
last James, truly I see little reason that, as a man or a patriot, I
should draw my sword for their descendants."

"Humph!" replied Bucklaw; "so you have set yourself down to mourn over
the crop-eared dogs whom honest Claver'se treated as they deserved?"

"They first gave the dogs an ill name, and then hanged them," replied
Ravenswood. "I hope to see the day when justice shall be open to Whig
and Tory, and when these nicknames shall only be used among coffee-house
politicians, as 'slut' and 'jade' are among apple-women, as cant terms
of idle spite and rancour."

"That will nto be in our days, Master: the iron has entered too deeply
into our sides and our souls."

"It will be, however, one day," replied the Master; "men will not always
start at these nicknames as at a trumpet-sound. As social life is better
protected, its comforts will become too dear to be hazarded without some
better reasons than speculative politics."

"It is fine talking," answered Bucklaw; "but my heart is with the old
song--

To see good corn upon the rigs,
And a gallow built to hang the Whigs,
And the right restored where the right should be.
Oh,