, offered the strangers the produce of her little dairy, »while better
meat was getting ready.« And, according to another custom, not yet wholly in
desuetude, as the storm was now drifting off to leeward, the Master carried the
Keeper to the top of his highest tower to admire a wide and waste extent of
view, and to »weary for his dinner.«
 

                                Chapter Eleventh

 »Now dame,« quoth he, »Je vous dis sans doute,
 Had I nought of a capon but the liver,
 And of your white bread nought but a shiver,
 And after that a roasted pigge's head
 (But I ne wold for me no beast were dead),
 Then had I with you homely sufferaunce.«
                                                         Chaucer, Sumner's Tale.
 
It was not without some secret misgivings that Caleb set out upon his
exploratory expedition. In fact, it was attended with a treble difficulty. He
dared not tell his master the offence which he had that morning given to Bucklaw
(just for the honour of the family) - he dared not acknowledge he had been too
hasty in refusing the purse - and, thirdly, he was somewhat apprehensive of
unpleasant consequences upon his meeting Hayston, under the impression of an
affront, and probably by this time under the influence also of no small quantity
of brandy.
    Caleb, to do him justice, was as bold as any lion where the honour of the
family of Ravenswood was concerned; but his was that considerate valour which
does not delight in unnecessary risks. This, however, was a secondary
consideration; the main point was to veil the indigence of the housekeeping at
the castle, and to make good his vaunt of the cheer which his resources could
procure, without Lockhard's assistance, and without supplies from his master.
This was as prime a point of honour with him, as with the generous elephant with
whom we have already compared him, who, being overtasked, broke his skull
through the desperate exertions which he made to discharge his duty, when he
perceived they were bringing up another to his assistance.
    The village which they now approached had frequently afforded the distressed
butler resources upon similar emergencies: but his relations with it had been of
late much altered.
    It was a little hamlet which straggled along the side of a creek formed by
the discharge of a small brook into the sea, and was hidden from the castle, to
which it had been in former times an appendage, by the intervention of the
shoulder of a hill forming a projecting headland. It was called Wolf's Hope, (
i.e.
