A terrible oath burst from Clermistonlee, for he was frenzied by wine, passion, and delay. "Insolent runnion! attend me, or by ---- I will beat down the door, and twist thy whaisling hause! Beware thee, fool," he added in a low tone; "I am the Lord Clermistonlee!"
On hearing that terrible name the affrighted boatman sprang from bed; an exclamation of fear and much anxious whispering followed. The door was immediately opened by a lean and withered old man, whose face was a mass of wrinkles. Scarcely daring to raise his grey twinkling eyes, he stood lamp in hand, cringing and bowing his bald head with the most abject humility before Clermistonlee, who cut short his muttered apologies by saying,
"Unmoor, dyvour loon, and pull me across the loch, if you would be spared the beating I owe you."
The old ferryman hurriedly dragged his leather galligaskins over his hodden grey breeches, donned his skyblue coat and broad bonnet, and bowing at every step of the way, though inwardly cursing the summons from his cosy nest and gudewife's side, led the proud Baron towards the little boat, for the use of which he paid a yearly rental to the city. They stepped on board; he unlocked the mooring-chain and shoved off.
Fed by the springs of the castle-rock and the rivulets that gurgled down its northern bank, the loch had of late become considerably swollen, and now rose high upon the bastions of the Well-house-tower. It was without current, and, save the ripple raised by the soft west wind, was still and motionless as a lake of ink.
Clermistonlee, with his rocquelaure rolled around him, and his broad beaver with its heavy plumage shading his face, lounged silently in the stern, watching the gigantic features of the city as they rose in sable outline behind him, towering up from the lake like a vast array of castles, or a barrier of splintered rock, a forest of gables and chimnies, whose summits shot upwards in a thousand fantastic shapes.
To the westward, from a cliff of perpendicular rock, three hundred feet in height, rose the towers of the castle. Beneath the gloomy shadow of this basaltic mass the loch vanished away into obscurity; but from under its impending brow there gleamed a light that tremulously shed one long red ray across the dark bosom of the water. It shone from the guard-fire in the Well-house-tower. Save the measured dash of the oars, and the creaking of the boat, all was so still that Clermistonlee heard the pulsations of his own evil heart.