Bingo, why, Bingo! hey, boy—here, sir, here!—   He's gone and off, but he'll be home before us;—
  'Tis the most wayward cur e'er mumbled bone,
  Or dogg'd a master's footstep.—Bingo loves me
  Better than ever beggar loved his alms;
  Yet, when he takes such humour, you may coax
  Sweet Mistress Fantasy, your worship's mistress,
  Out of her sullen moods, as soon as Bingo.
                       The Dominie And His Dog.
Richie Moniplies was as good as his word. Two or three mornings after the young lord had possessed himself of his new lodgings, he appeared before Nigel, as he was preparing to dress, having left his pillow at an hour much later than had formerly been his custom.
 
As Nigel looked upon his attendant, he observed there was a gathering gloom upon his solemn features, which expressed either additional importance, or superadded discontent, or a portion of both.
 
“How now,” he said, “what is the matter this morning, Richie, that you have made your face so like the grotesque mask on one of the spouts yonder?” pointing to the Temple Church, of which Gothic building they had a view from the window.
 
Richie swivelled his head a little to the right with as little alacrity as if he had the crick in his neck, and instantly resuming his posture, replied,—“Mask here, mask there—it were nae such matters that I have to speak anent.”
 
“And what matters have you to speak anent, then?” said his master, whom circumstances had inured to tolerate a good deal of freedom from his attendant.
 
“My lord,”—said Richie, and then stopped to cough and hem, as if what he had to say stuck somewhat in his throat.
 
“I guess the mystery,” said Nigel, “you want a little money, Richie; will five pieces serve the present turn?”
 
“My lord,” said Richie, “I may, it is like, want a trifle of money; and I am glad at the same time, and sorry, that it is mair plenty with your lordship than formerly.”
 
“Glad and sorry, man!” said Lord Nigel, “why, you are reading riddles to me, Richie.”
 
“My riddle will be briefly read,” said Richie; “I come to crave of your lordship your commands for Scotland.”
 
“For Scotland!—why, art thou mad, man?” said Nigel; “canst thou not tarry to go down with me?”
 
“I could be of little service,” said Richie, “since you purpose to hire another page and groom.”
 
“Why, thou jealous ass,” said the young lord, “will not thy load of duty lie the lighter?—Go, take thy breakfast, and drink thy ale double strong, to put such absurdities out of thy head—I could be angry with thee for thy folly, man—but I remember how thou hast stuck to me in adversity.”
 
“Adversity, my lord, should never have parted us,” said Richie; “methinks, had the warst come to warst, I could have starved as gallantly as your lordship, or more so, being in some sort used to it; for, though I was bred at a flasher's stall, I have not through my life had a constant intimacy with collops.”
 
“Now, what is the meaning of all this trash?” said Nigel; “or has it no other end than to provoke my patience? You know well enough, that, had I twenty serving-men, I would hold the faithful follower that stood by me in my distress the most valued of them all. But it is totally out of reason to plague me with your solemn capriccios.”
 
“My lord,” said Richie, “in declaring your trust in me, you have done what is honourable to yourself, if I may with humility say so much, and in no way undeserved on my side. Nevertheless, we must part.”
 
“Body of me, man, why?” said Lord Nigel; “what reason can there be for it, if we are mutually satisfied?”
 
“My lord,” said Richie Moniplies, “your lordship's occupations are such as I cannot own or countenance by my presence.”
 
“How now, sirrah!” said his master, angrily.
 
“Under favour, my lord,” replied his domestic, “it is unequal dealing to be equally offended by my speech and by my silence. If you can hear with patience the grounds of my departure, it may be, for aught I know, the better for you here and hereafter—if not, let me have my license of departure in silence, and so no more about it.”
 
“Go to, sir!” said Nigel; “speak out your mind—only remember to whom you speak it.”
 
“Weel, weel, my lord—I speak it with humility;” (never did Richie look with more starched dignity than when he uttered the word;) “but do you think this dicing and card-shuffling, and haunting of taverns and playhouses, suits your lordship—for I am sure it does not suit me?”
 
“Why, you are not turned precisian or puritan, fool?” said Lord Glenvarloch, laughing, though, betwixt resentment and shame, it cost him some trouble to do so.
 
“My lord,” replied the follower, “I ken the purport of your query. I am, it may be, a little of a precisian, and I wish to Heaven I was mair worthy of the name; but let that be a pass-over.—I have stretched the duties of a serving-man as far as my northern conscience will permit. I can give my gude word to my master, or to my native country, when I am in a foreign land, even though I should leave downright truth a wee bit behind me. Ay, and I will take or give a slash with ony man that speaks to the derogation of either. But this chambering, dicing, and play-haunting, is not my element—I cannot draw breath in it—and when I hear of your lordship winning the siller that some poor creature may full sairly miss—by my saul, if it wad serve your necessity, rather than you gained it from him, I wad take a jump over the hedge with your lordship, and cry 'Stand!' to the first grazier we met that was coming from Smithfield with the price of his Essex calves in his leathern pouch!”
 
“You are a simpleton,” said Nigel, who felt, however, much conscience-struck; “I never play but for small sums.”
 
“Ay, my lord,” replied the unyielding domestic, “and—still with reverence—it is even sae much the waur. If you played with your equals, there might be like sin, but there wad be mair warldly honour in it. Your lordship kens, or may ken, by experience of your ain, whilk is not as yet mony weeks auld, that small sums can ill be missed by those that have nane larger; and I maun e'en be plain with you, that men notice it of your lordship, that ye play wi' nane but the misguided creatures that can but afford to lose bare stakes.”
 
“No man dare say so!” replied Nigel, very angrily. “I play with whom I please, but I will only play for what stake I please.”
 
“That is just what they say, my lord,” said the unmerciful Richie, whose natural love of lecturing, as well as his bluntness of feeling, prevented him from having any idea of the pain which he was inflicting on his master; “these are even their own very words. It was but yesterday your lordship was pleased, at that same ordinary, to win from yonder young hafflins gentleman, with the crimson velvet doublet, and the cock's feather in his beaver—him, I mean, who fought with the ranting captain—a matter of five pounds, or thereby. I saw him come through the hall; and, if he was not cleaned out of cross and pile, I never saw a ruined man in my life.”
 
“Impossible!” said Lord Glenvarloch—“Why, who is he? he looked like a man of substance.”
 
“All is not gold that glistens, my lord,” replied Richie; “'broidery and bullion buttons make bare pouches. And if you ask who he is—maybe I have a guess, and care not to tell.”
 
“At least, if I have done any such fellow an injury,” said the Lord Nigel, “let me know how I can repair it.”
 
“Never fash your beard about that, my lord,—with reverence always,” said Richie,—“he shall be suitably cared after. Think on him but as ane wha was running post to the devil, and got a shouldering from your lordship to help him on his journey. But I will stop him, if reason can; and so your lordship needs asks nae mair about it, for there is no use in your knowing it, but much the contrair.”
 
“Hark you, sirrah,” said his master, “I have borne with you thus far, for certain reasons; but abuse my good-nature no farther—and since you must needs go, why, go a God's name, and here is to pay your journey.” So saying, he put gold into his hand, which Richie told over piece by piece, with the utmost accuracy.
 
“Is it all right—or are they wanting in weight—or what the devil keeps you, when your hurry was so great five minutes since?” said the young lord, now thoroughly nettled at the presumptuous precision with which Richie dealt forth his canons of morality.
 
“The tale of coin is complete,” said Richie, with the most imperturbable gravity; “and, for the weight, though they are sae scrupulous in this town, as make mouths at a piece that is a wee bit light, or that has been cracked within the ring, my sooth, they will jump at them in Edinburgh like a cock at a grosart. Gold pieces are not so plenty there, the mair the pity!”
 
“The more is your folly, then,” said Nigel, whose anger was only momentary, “that leave the land where there is enough of them.”
 
“My lord,” said Richie, “to be round with you, the grace of God is better than gold pieces. When Goblin, as you call yonder Monsieur Lutin,—and you might as well call him Gibbet, since that is what he is like to end in,—shall recommend a page to you, ye will hear little such doctrine as ye have heard from me.—And if they were my last words,” he said, raising his voice, “I would say you are misled, and are forsaking the paths which your honourable father trode in; and, what is more, you are going—still under correction—to the devil with a dishclout, for ye are laughed at by them that lead you into these disordered bypaths.”
 
“Laughed at!” said Nigel, who, like others of his age, was more sensible to ridicule than to reason—“Who dares laugh at me?”
 
“My lord, as sure as I live by bread—nay............