Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 22 (1831).djvu/103

 look after his fair runaway: there must be some order taken with him, for he thinks he hath wrong, and is not the mean hind that will sit down with it. Luckily he knows nought of my lord, but thinks he has only me to deal with. But how, in the fiend’s name, came he hither?”

“Why, with Mike Lambourne, an you must know,” answered Foster.

“And who is Mike Lambourne?” demanded Varney. “By Heaven! thou wert best set up a bush over thy door, and invite every stroller who passes by, to see what thou shouldst keep secret even from the sun and air.”

“Ay! ay! this is a courtlike-requital of my service to you, Master Richard Varney,” replied Foster. “Didst thou not charge me to seek out for thee a fellow who had a good sword, and an unscrupulous conscience? and was I not busying myself to find a fit man—for, thank Heaven, my acquaintance lies not amongst such companions—when, as Heaven would have it, this tall fellow, who is in all his qualities the very flashing knave thou didst wish, came hither to fix acquaintance upon me in the plenitude of his impudence, and I admitted his claim, thinking to do you a pleasure—and now see what thanks I get for disgracing myself by converse with him!”

“And did he,” said Varney, “being such a fellow as thyself, only lacking, I suppose, thy present humour of hypocrisy, which lies as thin over thy hard ruffianly heart as gold lacquer upon rusty iron