eud with any one, that you form such an idea?" said Sir
Patrick Charteris.

"To my shame and sin be it spoken, I have feud with Highland and
Lowland, English and Scot, Perth and Angus. I do not believe poor
Oliver had feud with a new hatched chicken. Alas! he was the more fully
prepared for a sudden call!"

"Hark ye, smith," said the provost, "answer me distinctly: Is there
cause of feud between the household of Sir John Ramorny and yourself?"

"To a certainty, my lord, there is. It is now generally said that Black
Quentin, who went over Tay to Fife some days since, was the owner of the
hand which was found in Couvrefew Street upon the eve of St. Valentine.
It was I who struck off that hand with a blow of my broadsword. As this
Black Quentin was a chamberlain of Sir John, and much trusted, it is
like there must be feud between me and his master's dependants."

"It bears a likely front, smith," said Sir Patrick Charteris. "And now,
good brothers and wise magistrates, there are two suppositions, each of
which leads to the same conclusion. The maskers who seized our fellow
citizen, and misused him in a manner of which his body retains some
slight marks, may have met with their former prisoner as he returned
homewards, and finished their ill usage by taking his life. He himself
expressed to Henry Gow fears that this would be the case. If this be
really true, one or more of Sir John Ramorny's attendants must have
been the assassins. But I think it more likely that one or two of the
revellers may have remained on the field, or returned to it, having
changed perhaps their disguise, and that to those men (for Oliver
Proudfute, in his own personal appearance, would only have been a
subject of sport) his apparition in the dress, and assuming, as he
proposed to do, the manner, of Henry Smith, was matter of deep hatred;
and that, seeing him alone, they had taken, as they thought, a certain
and safe mode to rid themselves of an enemy so dangerous as all men know
Henry Wynd is accounted by those that are his unfriends. The same train
of reasoning, again, rests the guilt with the household of Sir John
Ramorny. How think you, sirs? Are we not free to charge the crime upon
them?"

The magistrates whispered together for several minutes, and then replied
by the voice of Bailie Craigdallie: "Noble knight, and our worthy
provost, we agree entirely in what your wisdom has spoken concerning
this dark and bloody matter; nor do we doubt yo