"Then why involve yourself in it?" said Ratcliffe.
"Why, I love this poor exiled king with all my heart; and my father was an old Gilliecrankie-man, and I long to see some amends on the courtiers that have bought and sold old Scotland, whose crown has been so long independent."
"And for the sake of these shadows," said his monitor, "you are going to involve your country in war, and yourself in trouble?"
"I involve? No!—but, trouble for trouble, I had rather it came to-morrow than a month hence. Come, I know it will; and, as our country folks say, better soon than syne—it will never find me younger—and, as for hanging, as Sir John Falstaff says, I can become a gallows as well as another. You know the end of the old ballad;
"Sae dauntonly, sae wantonly,
Sae rantingly gaed he,
He play'd a spring, and danced a round,
Beneath the gallows tree."
