Johnston."
"But none that I like half so well, and none that are half so
much worth my liking," answered the smith. "I promise you, father,
that, when I crossed the Wicks of Baiglie, and saw the bonny city
lie stretched fairly before me like a fairy queen in romance, whom
the knight finds asleep among a wilderness of flowers, I felt even
as a bird when it folds its wearied wings to stoop down on its own
nest."
"Aha! so thou canst play the maker [old Scottish for poet] yet?"
said the glover. "What, shall we have our ballets and our roundels
again? our lusty carols for Christmas, and our mirthful springs to
trip it round the maypole?"
"Such toys there may be forthcoming, father," said Henry Smith,
"though the blast of the bellows and the clatter of the anvil make
but coarse company to lays of minstrelsy; but I can afford them no
better, since I must mend my fortune, though I mar my verses."
"Right again--my own son just," answered the glover; "and I trust
thou hast made a saving voyage of it?"
"Nay, I made a thriving one, father: I sold the steel habergeon
that you wot of for four hundred marks to the English Warden of the
East Marches, Sir Magnus Redman. He scarce scrupled a penny after
I gave him leave to try a sword dint upon it. The beggardly Highland
thief who bespoke it boggled at half the sum, though it had cost
me a year's labour."
"What dost thou start at, Conachar?" said Simon, addressing himself,
by way of parenthesis, to the mountain disciple; "wilt thou never
learn to mind thy own business, without listening to what is passing
round thee? What is it to thee that an Englishman thinks that cheap
which a Scottishman may hold dear?"
Conachar turned round to speak, but, after a moment's consideration,
looked down, and endeavoured to recover his composure, which had
been deranged by the contemptuous manner in which the smith had
spoken of his Highland customer.
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