ur guests."

"Why, I'll go there too; and so should you, Lady Margaret, as soon as you
have your line of battle properly formed in the hall here. It's a pretty
thing, I can tell you, to see a regiment of horse upon the march."

Thus speaking, he offered his arm with an air of old-fashioned gallantry,
which Lady Margaret accepted with such a courtesy of acknowledgment as
ladies were wont to make in Holyroodhouse before the year 1642, which,
for one while, drove both courtesies and courts out of fashion.

Upon the bartizan of the turret, to which they ascended by many a winding
passage and uncouth staircase, they found Edith, not in the attitude of a
young lady who watches with fluttering curiosity the approach of a smart
regiment of dragoons, but pale, downcast, and evincing, by her
countenance, that sleep had not, during the preceding night, been the
companion of her pillow. The good old veteran was hurt at her appearance,
which, in the hurry of preparation, her grandmother had omitted to
notice.

"What is come over you, you silly girl?" he said; "why, you look like an
officer's wife when she opens the News-letter after an action, and
expects to find her husband among the killed and wounded. But I know the
reason--you will persist in reading these nonsensical romances, day and
night, and whimpering for distresses that never existed. Why, how the
devil can you believe that Artamines, or what d'ye call him, fought
singlehanded with a whole battalion? One to three is as great odds as
ever fought and won, and I never knew any body that cared to take that,
except old Corporal Raddlebanes. But these d--d books put all pretty
men's actions out of countenance. I daresay you would think very little
of Raddlebanes, if he were alongside of Artamines.--I would have the
fellows that write such nonsense brought to the picquet for
leasing-making."

[Note: Romances of the Seventeenth Century. As few, in the present
age, are acquainted with the ponderous folios to which the age of
Louis XIV. gave rise, we need only say, that they combine the
dulness of the metaphysical courtship with all the improbabilities
of the ancient Romance of Chivalry. Their character will be most
easily learned from Boileau's Dramatic Satire, or Mrs Lennox's
Female Quixote.]

Lady Margaret, herself somewhat attached to the perusal of romances, took
up the cudgels. "Monsieur Scuderi," she said, "is a soldier, brother;
an