One hand was thrust under the ample skirt of his shag dressing-gown; the other drummed on the window panes; but a stern expression gathered on his broad and lofty brow, and sparkled in his deep-set hazel eyes.
Mersington sat near the cheerful fire. His weazel-like visage was radiant at times with a malicious smile, which briefly gave way for one of sincere pleasure, each time he applied to his thin and ever thirsty lips the tankard of burnt sack, which his affectionate hand never quitted for a moment. His mighty senatorial wig--the badge of his wisdom and power--hung on the chair-knob behind him, and his bald pate shone like a varnished ball in the evening twilight. His pale grey eyes wore their usual expression, by which it was impossible to detect whether he was drunk or sober; but they often wandered to a panel opposite, where the following was chalked in a bold irregular hand.
_His honor the Laird of Holsterlee bets the Right Honourable Lord Clermistonlee_ £10,000 _of gude Scots monie payable at Whitsuntide--his mear Meg against Fleur de Lysy or Royal Charles. To be run at Easter on the sandis of Leith, God willing._
"Forsooth! you are a proper man to start from the board, and turn your back on a guest thus," said Mersington. "Whistle a bar o' that oure again.
"There was a clocker, it dabbit at a man, And he dee'd wi' fear, And he dee'd wi' fear----"
"he--he, it seems to gie you as mickle comfort as the burnt sack."
"Perdition, man!" exclaimed the other, wheeling so briskly round, that he startled his guest in the act of taking another long deep draught. "How can you jest with my distress? I tell thee, friend Mersington, if the lands of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes, on which I have built my hopes, slip through my fingers thus, I may yet come to the husks and the swine-trough, like the prodigal of old. Behold my manor of Drumsheugh on the brae yonder; for these ten years a puff of smoke hath not curled from its chimneys; the moss is on its hearths, and cobwebs obscure the gilding of its galleries and chambers: the long grass waves in the avenue as it doth in the stable-court, where my good and careful father mustered eighty troopers in jack and plate the night before Dunbar was fought and won by Cromwell. My ancient tower of Clermiston is in the same condition, and both are mortgaged to that prince of scribes and scoundrels, Grasper, the Writer in Mauchin's Close. This match with Holsterlee, too! S'blood! Juden says the mare is elfshotten, and our best jockies opine that I can never win against Holster's racers, which have won the city purse these five years consecutively."