Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 2 - 1819.djvu/278

268 to a secret, and highly important commission beyond sea, which could only be entrusted to a person of rank, talent, and perfect confidence, and which, as it required great trust and reliance on the envoy employed, could not but prove both honourable and advantageous to him. We need not enter into the nature and purpose of this commission, farther than to acquaint our readers that the charge was in prospect highly acceptable to the Master of Ravenswood, who hailed with pleasure the hope of emerging from his present state of indigence and inaction, into independence and honourable exertion.

While he listened thus eagerly to the details with which the Marquis now thought it necessary to entrust him, the messenger who had been dispatched to the Tower of Wolf's Crag, returned with Caleb Balderstone's humble duty, and an assurance, that "a' should be in seemly order, sic as the hurry of time permitted, to receive their lordships as it behoved."