"
"You are right there," said his companion, "for it if were not that
these forfeitures, and that last fine that the old driveller Turntippet
is gaping for, and which, I dare say, is laid on by this time, have
fairly driven me out of house and home, I were a coxcomb and a cuckoo to
boot to trust your fair promises of getting me a commission in the
Irish brigade. What have I to do with the Irish brigade? I am a
plain Scotchman, as my father was before me; and my grand-aunt, Lady
Girnington, cannot live for ever."
"Ay, Bucklaw," observed Craigengelt, "but she may live for many a long
day; and for your father, he had land and living, kept himself close
from wadsetters and money-lenders, paid each man his due, and lived on
his own."
"And whose fault it it that I have not done so too?" said
Bucklaw--"whose but the devil's and yours, and such-like as you, that
have led me to the far end of a fair estate? And now I shall be obliged,
I suppose, to shelter and shift about like yourself: live one week upon
a line of secret intelligence from Saint Germains; another upon a report
of a rising in the Highlands; get my breakfast and morning draught of
sack from old Jacobite ladies, and give them locks of my old wig for the
Chevalier's hair; second my friend in his quarrel till he comes to the
field, and then flinch from him lest so important a political agent
should perish from the way.
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