lowers of Douglas. Yes, I met him sneaking through
the lanes and bye passages with a common minstrel wench, with her messan
and her viol on his one arm and her buxom self hanging upon the other.
What thinks your honour? Is not this a trim squire, to cross a prince's
love with the fairest girl in Perth, strike off the hand of a knight and
baron, and become gentleman usher to a strolling glee woman, all in the
course of the same four and twenty hours?"

"Marry, I think the better of him that he has so much of a gentleman's
humour, clown though he be," said Ramorny. "I would he had been a
precisian instead of a galliard, and I should have had better heart to
aid thy revenge. And such revenge!--revenge on a smith--in the quarrel
of a pitiful manufacturer of rotten cheverons! Pah! And yet it shall
be taken in full. Thou hast commenced it, I warrant me, by thine own
manoeuvres."

"In a small degree only," said the apothecary. "I took care that two or
three of the most notorious gossips in Curfew street, who liked not to
hear Catharine called the Fair Maid of Perth, should be possessed
of this story of her faithful Valentine. They opened on the scent so
keenly, that, rather than doubt had fallen on the tale, they would have
vouched for it as if their own eyes had seen it. The lover came to
her father's within an hour after, and your worship may think what a
reception he had from the angry glover, for the damsel herself would not
be looked upon. And thus your honour sees I had a foretaste of revenge.
But I trust to receive the full draught from the hands of your lordship,
with whom I am in a brotherly league, which--"

"Brotherly!" said the knight, contemptuously. "But be it so, the priests
say we are all of one common earth. I cannot tell, there seems to me
some difference; but the better mould shall keep faith with the baser,
and thou shalt have thy revenge. Call thou my page hither."

A young man made his appearance from the anteroom upon the physician's
summons.

"Eviot," said the knight, "does Bonthron wait? and is he sober?"

"He is as sober as sleep can make him after a deep drink," answered the
page.

"Then fetch him hither, and do thou shut the door."

A heavy step presently approached the apartment, and a man entered,
whose deficiency of height seemed made up in breadth of shoulders and
strength of arm.

"There is a man thou must deal upon, Bonthron," said the knight. The man
smoothed his rugged features an