was hidden, and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of this strange and most unpleasant adventure. The old gypsy, in the mean time, set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straiting the arms by its side. «Best to do this," she muttered, «ere he stiffen." She placed on the dead man's breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head, and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both. Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose voices had been heard without. was Brown was a soldier, and a brave one; but he was also a man, and at this moment his fears mastered his courage so completely, that the cold drops burst out from every pore. The idea of being dragged out of his miserable concealment by wretches, whose trade that of midnight murder, without weapons or the slightest means of defence, except entreaties, which would be only their sport, and cries for help, which could never reach other ear than their own his safety entrusted to the precarious compassion of a being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and imposture must have hardened her He en against every human feeling the bitterness of his emotions almost choaked him. deavoured to read in her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her features, something that promised those feelings of compassion, which females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altoge ther smother. There was no such touch of humanity about this woman. The interest, whatever it was, that determined her in his favour, arose not from the impulse of compassion, but from some internal, and probably capricious, association of feelings, to which he had no clew. It rested, perhaps, on a fancied likeness, such as Lady Macbeth found to her father in the sleeping monarch. Such were the reflections that passed in rapid succession through Brown's mind, as he gazed from his hiding place upon this extraordinary personage. Meantime the gang did not yet approach, and he was almost prompted to resume his original intention of attempting an escape from the hut, and cursed internally his own irresolution, which had consented to his being cooped up where he had neither room for resistance nor flight. Meg Merrilies seemed equally on the watch. She bent her ear to every sound that whistled round the old walls. Then she turned again to the dead body, and found something new to arrange or alter in its position. «He's a bonny corpse," she muttered to herself, «and weel worth the streaking.” — And in this dismal occupation she appeared to feel a sort of professional pleasure, entering slowly into all the minutiæ, as if with the skill and feelings of a connoisseur. A long dark-coloured sea-cloak, which she dragged out of a corner, was dis posed for a pall The face she left bare, after closing the mouth and eyes, and arranged the capes of the cloack so as to hide the bloody bandages, and give the body, as she muttered, «a mair decent appearance." At once three or four men, equally ruffians in appearance and dress, rushed into the hut. "Meg, ye limb of Satan, how dare you leave the door open ?" was the first salutation of the party. «And wha ever heard of a door being barred when a man was in the dead - thraw? how d'ye think the spirit was to get awa' through bolts and bars like thae ?> Is he dead then ?» said one who went to the side of the couch to look at the body. «Eye, eye dead enough," said another but here's what shall give him a rousing likewake. So saying, he fetched a keg of spirits from a corner, while Meg hastened to display pipes and tobacco. From the activity with which she undertook the task, Brown conceived good hope of her fidelity towards her guest. It was obvious that she wished to engage the ruffians in their debauch, to prevent the discovery which might take place, if, by accident, any one of them should approach too nearly the place of Brown's concealment. XXXUL K ང་དང་ CHAPTER XXVIIL Nor board nor garner own we now, JOANNA BAILLIE. BROWN could now reckon his foes they were five in number; two of them were very powerful men, who appeared to be either real seamen, or strollers who assumed that character; the other three, an old man and two lads, were slighter made, and, from their black hair and dark complexion, seemed to belong to Meg's tribe. They passed from one to another the cup |