here until long after the usual bedtime of this orderly family.
Mr. Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness which
irritated the lady's feelings more and more; until, at last, she could
bear the thing {p.162} no longer; but one evening, just as she heard
the bell ring as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made
her appearance within the forbidden parlor with a salver in her hand,
observing that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long, they would
be the better of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring
some for their acceptance. The stranger, a person of distinguished
appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady, and accepted a cup;
but her husband knit his brows, and refused very coldly to partake the
refreshment. A moment afterwards the visitor withdrew--and Mr. Scott,
lifting up the window-sash, took the cup which he had left empty on
the table, and tossed it out upon the pavement. The lady exclaimed for
her china, but was put to silence by her husband's saying, "I can
forgive your little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty. I
may admit into my house, on a piece of business, persons wholly
unworthy to be treated as guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor of
mine comes after Mr. Murray of Broughton's."

This was the unhappy man who, after attending Prince Charles Stuart as
his secretary throughout the greater part of his expedition,
condescended to redeem his own life and fortune by bearing evidence
against the noblest of his late master's adherents, when

"Pitied by gentle hearts Kilmarnock died--
The brave, Balmerino, were on thy side."

When confronted with Sir John Douglas of Kelhead (ancestor of the
Marquess of Queensberry), before the Privy Council in St. James's, the
prisoner was asked, "Do you know this witness?" "Not I," answered
Douglas; "I once knew a person who bore the designation of Murray of
Broughton--but that was a gentleman and a man of honor, and one that
could hold up his head!"

The saucer belonging to Broughton's teacup had been preserved; and
Walter, at a very early period, made prize {p.163} of it. One can
fancy young Alan Fairford pointing significantly to the relic, when
Mr. Saunders was vouchsafing him one of his customary lectures about
listening with, unseemly sympathy to "the blawing, bleezing stories
which the Hieland gentlemen told of those troublous times."[86]

[Footnote 86: _Redgauntlet_, letter