The swarthy man answered to the name of _Ballantrae_; he of the dreamy eyes was sometimes called _Balmile_, and sometimes _my Lord_, or _my Lord Gladsmuir_; but when the title was given him, he seemed to put it by as if in jesting, not without bitterness.
The mistral blew in the city.

The first day of that wind, they say in the countries where its voice is heard, it blows away all the dust, the second all the stones, and the third it blows back others from the mountains.

It was now come to the third day; outside the pebbles flew like hail, and the face of the river was puckered, and the very building-stones in the walls of houses seemed to be curdled with the savage cold and fury of that continuous blast.

It could be heard to hoot in all the chimneys of the city; it swept about the wine-shop, filling the room with eddies; the chill and gritty touch of it passed between the nearest clothes and the bare flesh; and the two gentlemen at the far table kept their mantles loose about their shoulders.

The roughness of these outer hulls, for they were plain travellers' cloaks that had seen service, set the greater mark of richness on what showed below of their laced clothes; for the one was in scarlet and the other in violet and white, like men come from a scene of ceremony; as indeed they were.
It chanced that these fine clothes were not without their influence on the scene which followed, and which makes the prologue of our tale.