Lady Margaret thought that Colonel Grahame, in commanding an execution at the door of her house, and refusing to grant a reprieve at her request, had fallen short of the deference due to her rank, and had even encroached on her seignorial rights.
"The Colonel," she said, "ought to have remembered, brother, that the barony of Tillietudlem has the baronial privilege of pit and gallows; and therefore, if the lad was to be executed on my estate, (which I consider as an unhandsome thing, seeing it is in the possession of females, to whom such tragedies cannot be acceptable,) he ought, at common law, to have been delivered up to my bailie, and justified at his sight." "Martial law, sister," answered Major Bellenden, "supersedes every other.
But I must own I think Colonel Grahame rather deficient in attention to you; and I am not over and above pre-eminently flattered by his granting to young Evandale (I suppose because he is a lord, and has interest with the privy-council) a request which he refused to so old a servant of the king as I am.

But so long as the poor young fellow's life is saved, I can comfort myself with the fag-end of a ditty as old as myself." And therewithal, he hummed a stanza: 'And what though winter will pinch severe Through locks of grey and a cloak that's old?
Yet keep up thy heart, bold cavalier, For a cup of sack shall fence the cold.' "I must be your guest here to-day, sister.

I wish to hear the issue of this gathering on Loudon-hill, though I cannot conceive their standing a body of horse appointed like our guests this morning .-- Woe's me, the time has been that I would have liked ill to have sate in biggit wa's waiting for the news of a skirmish to be fought within ten miles of me! But, as the old song goes, 'For time will rust the brightest blade, And years will break the strongest bow; Was ever wight so starkly made, But time and years would overthrow ?'" "We are well pleased you will stay, brother," said Lady Margaret; "I will take my old privilege to look after my household, whom this collation has thrown into some disorder, although it is uncivil to leave you alone." "O, I hate ceremony as I hate a stumbling horse," replied the Major.
"Besides, your person would be with me, and your mind with the cold meat and reversionary pasties .-- Where is Edith ?" "Gone to her room a little evil-disposed, I am informed, and laid down in her bed for a gliff," said her grandmother; "as soon as she wakes, she shall take some drops." "Pooh! pooh! she's only sick of the soldiers," answered Major Bellenden.
"She's not accustomed to see one acquaintance led out to be shot, and another marching off to actual service, with some chance of not finding his way back again.

She would soon be used to it, if the civil war were to break out again." "God forbid, brother!" said Lady Margaret.
"Ay, Heaven forbid, as you say--and, in the meantime, I'll take a hit at trick-track with Harrison." "He has ridden out, sir," said Gudyill, "to try if he can hear any tidings of the battle." "D--n the battle," said the Major; "it puts this family as much out of order as if there had never been such a thing in the country before--and yet there was such a place as Kilsythe, John." "Ay, and as Tippermuir, your honour," replied Gudyill, "where I was his honour my late master's rear-rank man." "And Alford, John," pursued the Major, "where I commanded the horse; and Innerlochy, where I was the Great Marquis's aid-de-camp; and Auld Earn, and Brig o' Dee." "And Philiphaugh, your honour," said John.
"Umph!" replied the Major; "the less, John, we say about that matter, the better." However, being once fairly embarked on the subject of Montrose's campaigns, the Major and John Gudyill carried on the war so stoutly, as for a considerable time to keep at bay the formidable enemy called Time, with whom retired veterans, during the quiet close of a bustling life, usually wage an unceasing hostility.
It has been frequently remarked, that the tidings of important events fly with a celerity almost beyond the power of credibility, and that reports, correct in the general point, though inaccurate in details, precede the certain intelligence, as if carried by the birds of the air.

Such rumours anticipate the reality, not unlike to the "shadows of coming events," which occupy the imagination of the Highland Seer.