tell, on my life."--"He has quarrelled with his
wine, I suppose, and is going to send it a challenge."

Such were the questions, and such the answers that passed in the jovial
party, and the matter was no more thought of.

But in the course of a very short space, about the length which the
ideas of the company were the next day at great variance, a sharp rap
came to the door. It was opened by a female; but, there being a chain
inside, she only saw one side of the person at the door. He appeared to
be a young gentleman, in appearance like him who had lately left the
house, and asked, in a low whispering voice, "if young Dalcastle was
still in the house?" The woman did not know. "If he is," added he,
"pray tell him to speak with me for a few minutes." The woman delivered
the message before all the party, among whom there were then sundry
courteous ladies of notable distinction, and George, on receiving it,
instantly rose from the side of one of them, and said, in the hearing
of them all, "I will bet a hundred merks that is Drummond."--"Don't go
to quarrel with him, George," said one.--"Bring him in with you," said
another. George stepped out; the door was again bolted, the chain drawn
across, and the inadvertent party, left within, thought no more of the
circumstance till the morning, that the report had spread over the city
that a young gentleman had been slain, on a little washing-green at the
side of the North Loch, and at the very bottom of the close where this
thoughtless party had been assembled.

Several of them, on first hearing the report, basted to the dead-room
in the Guard-house, where the corpse had been deposited, and soon
discovered the body to be that of their friend and late entertainer,
George Colwan. Great were the consternation and grief of all concerned,
and, in particular, of his old father and Miss Logan; for George had
always been the sole hope and darling of both, and the news of the
event paralysed them so as to render them incapable of all thought or
exertion. The spirit of the old laird was broken by the blow, and he
descended at once from a jolly, good-natured and active man to a mere
driveller, weeping over the body of his son, kissing his wound, his
lips, and his cold brow alternately; denouncing vengeance on his
murderers, and lamenting that he himself had not met the cruel doom, so
that the hope of his race might have been preserved. In short, finding
that all further motive of action a