"A piece of lighted match betwixt the fingers"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Two

At the miser Milnwood's table, all members of the household are watched "by sharp, envious eyes which seemed to measure the quantity that each dependent swallowed . . . In its progress from the lips to the stomach."

The robust appetite of the recently-arrived Cuddie causes Milnwood to regard him as a "cormorant."

Dinner interrupted by entry of the opportunist Bothwell and his troops in search of the religious fanatic Balfour: "in they tramped, a tremendous clatter upon the stone floor with the iron-shod heels of their large jack boots and the clash and clang of their long, heavy basket-hilted broadswords."

All members of the household -- for guilt or conscience or fear of being plundered -- find reason to fear Bothwell's domiciliary intrusion.

As part of interrogation, Bothwell threatens to torture Henry "by tying a piece of lighted match betwixt your fingers."

Cuddie's mother Mause an endless font of Biblical imprecation.

Riding with Henry as his prisoner, Bothwell affably explains how a soldier gets his fill of brandy at every household -- served by the Royalists out of affection, by the moderates out of fear, and by the radicals through force.

The royal-blooded but disenfranchised Bothwell on why he has not been recognized by James II: "his most sacred majesty is more engaged in grafting scions of his own than with nourishing those planted by his grandfather's grandfather.

Henry to be tried by: "the military commission, to whom it has pleased our king, our privy council, and our parliament that used to be tenacious of our liberties, to commit the sole charge of our goods and our lives."



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