"
"It was my Lord of A----'s courier," said Ravenswood, "who was doomed to
experience his ostentatious hospitality, which I believe ended in sour
beer and herrings. Read, and you will see the news he has brought us."
"I will as fast as I can," said Bucklaw; "but I am no great clerk, nor
does his lordship seem to be the first of scribes."
The reader will peruse in, a few seconds, by the aid our friend
Ballantyne's types, what took Bucklaw a good half hour in perusal,
though assisted by the Master of Ravenswood. The tenor was as follows:
"RIGHT HONOURABLE OUR COUSIN:
"Our hearty commendations premised, these come to assure you of the
interest which we take in your welfare, and in your purpose towards its
augmentation. If we have been less active in showing forth our effective
good-will towards you than, as a loving kinsman and blood-relative, we
would willingly have desired, we request that you will impute it to lack
fo opportunity to show our good-liking, not to any coldness of our will.
Touching your resolution to travel in foreign parts, as at this time we
hold the same little advisable, in respect that your ill-willers may,
according to the custom of such persons, impute motives for your
journey, whereof, although we know and believe you to be as clear as
ourselves, yet natheless their words may find credence in places where
the belief in them may much prejudice you, and which we should see with
more unwillingness and displeasure than with means of remedy.
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