CHAPTER IX.
Ay, and when huntsmen wind the merry horn, And from its covert starts the fearful prey, Who, warm'd with youth's blood in his swelling veins, Would, like a lifeless clod, outstretched lie, Shut out from all the fair creation offers?
Ethwald, Act I.Scene 1.
LIGHT meals procure light slumbers; and therefore it is not surprising that, considering the fare which Caleb's conscience, or his necessity, assuming, as will sometimes happen, that disguise, had assigned to the guests of Wolf's Crag, their slumbers should have been short.
In the morning Bucklaw rushed into his host's apartment with a loud halloo, which might have awaked the dead.
"Up! up! in the name of Heaven! The hunters are out, the only piece of sport I have seen this month; and you lie here, Master, on a bed that has little to recommend it, except that it may be something softer than the stone floor of your ancestor's vault." "I wish," said Ravenswood, raising his head peevishly, "you had forborne so early a jest, Mr.Hayston; it is really no pleasure to lose the very short repose which I had just begun to enjoy, after a night spent in thoughts upon fortune far harder than my couch, Bucklaw." "Pschaw, pshaw!" replied his guest; "get up--get up; the hounds are abroad.

I have saddled the horses myself, for old Caleb was calling for grooms and lackeys, and would never have proceeded without two hours' apology for the absence of men that were a hundred miles off.

Get up, Master; I say the hounds are out--get up, I say; the hunt is up." And off ran Bucklaw.
"And I say," said the Master, rising slowly, "that nothing can concern me less.

Whose hounds come so near to us ?" "The Honourable Lord Brittlebrains's," answered Caleb, who had followed the impatient Laird of Bucklaw into his master's bedroom, "and truly I ken nae title they have to be yowling and howling within the freedoms and immunities of your lordship's right of free forestry." "Nor I, Caleb," replied Ravenswood, "excepting that they have bought both the lands and the right of forestry, and may think themselves entitled to exercise the rights they have paid their money for." "It may be sae, my lord," replied Caleb; "but it's no gentleman's deed of them to come here and exercise such-like right, and your lordship living at your ain castle of Wolf's Crag.

Lord Brittlebrains would weel to remember what his folk have been." "And what we now are," said the Master, with suppressed bitterness of feeling.