, founded, perhaps, rather in equity
than in law, the last which he had maintained against his powerful antagonist.
His son witnessed his dying agonies, and heard the curses which he breathed
against his adversary, as if they had conveyed to him a legacy of vengeance.
Other circumstances happened to exasperate a passion, which was, and had long
been, a prevalent vice in the Scottish disposition.
    It was a November morning, and the cliffs which overlooked the ocean were
hung with thick and heavy mist, when the portals of the ancient and half-ruinous
tower, in which Lord Ravenswood had spent the last and troubled years of his
life, opened, that his mortal remains might pass forward to an abode yet more
dreary and lonely. The pomp of attendance, to which the deceased had, in his
latter years, been a stranger, was revived as he was about to be consigned to
the realms of forgetfulness.
    Banner after banner, with the various devices and coats of this ancient
family and its connections, followed each other in mournful procession from
under the low-browed archway of the courtyard. The principal gentry of the
country attended in the deepest mourning, and tempered the pace of their long
train of horses to the solemn march befitting the occasion. Trumpets, with
banners of crape attached to them, sent forth their long and melancholy notes to
regulate the movements of the procession. An immense train of inferior mourners
and menials closed the rear, which had not yet issued from the castle-gate, when
the van had reached the chapel where the body was to be deposited.
    Contrary to the custom, and even to the law of the time, the body was met by
a priest of the Scottish Episcopal communion, arrayed in his surplice, and
prepared to read over the coffin of the deceased the funeral service of the
church. Such had been the desire of Lord Ravenswood in his last illness, and it
was readily complied with by the Tory gentlemen, or cavaliers, as they affected
to style themselves, in which faction most of his kinsmen were enrolled. The
Presbyterian church-judicatory of the bounds, considering the ceremony as a
bravading insult upon their authority, had applied to the Lord Keeper, as the
nearest privy councillor, for a warrant to prevent its being carried into
effect; so that, when the clergyman had opened his prayer-book, an officer of
the law, supported by some armed men, commanded him to be silent. An insult,
which fired the whole assembly with indignation, was particularly and instantly
resented by the only son of the deceased, Edgar,
