sincerest congratulations upon the joyful event which has taken place in her family. I long to be introduced to Captain Bertram, and to thank him for the well-deserved lesson he gave to my rashness and indiscretion."

"He has left us just now," said Lucy, "and in a manner that has frightened us very much."

Just at that moment the Colonel's carriage drove up, and, on observing the ladies, stopped, while Mannering and his learned counsel alighted and joined them. They instantly communicated the new cause of alarm.

"Meg Merrilies again!" said the Colonel; "she certainly is a most mysterious and unaccountable personage; but I think she must have something to impart to Bertram, to which she does not mean we should be privy."

"The devil take the bedlamite old woman!" said the counsellor : "will she not let things take their course, prout de lege, but must always be putting in her oar in her own way?—Then I fear from the direction they took they are going upon the Ellangowan estate. That rascal Glossin has shown us what ruffians he has at his disposal -I wish honest Liddesdale may be guard sufficient.'

"If you please," said Hazlewood, "I should be most happy to ride in the direction which they have taken. I am so well known in the country, that I scarce think any outrage will be offered in my presence, and I shall keep at such a cautious distance as not to appear to watch Meg, or interrupt any communication which she may make."

"Upon my word," said Pleydell (aside), "to be a sprig, whom I remember with a whey face and a satchel

VOL. IV.

X

not so very many years ago, I think young Hazlewood grows a fine fellow.—I am more afraid of a new attempt at legal oppression than at open violence, and from that this young man's presence would deter both Glossin and his understrappers. Hie away then, my boypeer out-peer out;-you'll find them somewhere about Derncleugh, or very probably in Warroch-wood."

"Come back to us to

Hazlewood turned his horse. dinner, Hazlewood," cried the Colonel. spurred his horse, and galloped off.

He bowed,

We now return to Bertram and Dinmont, who continued to follow their mysterious guide through the woods and dingles, between the open common and the ruined hamlet of Derncleugh. As she led the way, she never looked back upon her followers, unless to chide them for loitering, though the sweat, in spite of the season, poured from their brows. At other times she spoke to herself in such broken expressions as these :"It is to rebuild the auld house-it is to lay the cornerstone-and did I not warn him?-I tell'd him I was born to do it, if my father's head had been the steppingstane, let alane his. I was doomed-still I kept my purpose in the cage and in the stocks ;-I was banished -I kept it in an unco land;-I was scourged-I was branded-My resolution lay deeper than scourge or red iron could reach-and now the hour is come."

66

Captain," said Dinmont, in a half whisper, "I wish she binna uncanny! her words dinna seem to come in God's name, or like other folk's. Odd, they threep in our country that there are sic things."

"Don't be afraid, my friend," whispered Bertram in

return.

"Fear'd! fient a haet care I," said the dauntless farmer, "be she witch or deevil; it's a' ane to Dandie Dinmont."

"Haud your peace, gudeman," said Meg, looking sternly over her shoulder; "is this a time or place for you to speak, think ye?"

66

"But my good friend," said Bertram, as I have no doubt in your good faith, or kindness, which I have experienced; you should in return have some confidence in me I wish to know where you are leading us."

"There's but ae answer to that, Henry Bertram," said the sibyl.-"I swore my tongue should never tell, but I never said my finger should never show. Go on and meet your fortune, or turn back and lose it-that's a' I hae to say."

66 Go on then," answered Bertram; "I will ask no more questions."

They descended into the glen about the same place where Meg had formerly parted from Bertram. She paused an instant beneath the tall rock where he had witnessed the burial of a dead body, and stamped upon the ground, which, notwithstanding all the care that had been taken, showed vestiges of having been recently removed. "Here rests ane," she said; "he'll

maybe hae neibours sune."

She then moved up the brook until she came to the ruined hamlet, where, pausing with a look of peculiar and softened interest before one of the gables which

1

was still standing, she said in a tone less abrupt, though as solemn as before, "Do you see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling ?—there my kettle boiled for forty years there I bore twelve buirdly sons and daughters-Where are they now?-Where are the leaves that were on that auld ash-tree at Martinmas !-the west wind has made it bare-and I'm stripped too.— Do you see that saugh-tree?-it's but a blackened rotten stump now-I've sat under it mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when it hung its gay garlands ower the poppling water-I've sat there, and," elevating her voice, "I've held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs of the auld barons and their bloody wars-It will ne'er be green again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blithe or sad. But ye'll no forget her ?—and ye'll gar big up the auld wa's for her sake?—and let somebody live there that's ower gude to fear them of another warld-For if ever the dead came back amang the living, I'll be seen in this glen mony a night after these crazed banes are in the mould."

The mixture of insanity and wild pathos with which she spoke these last words, with her right arm bare and extended, her left bent and shrouded beneath the dark red drapery of her mantle, might have been a study worthy of our Siddons herself. "And now," she said, resuming at once the short, stern, and hasty tone which was most ordinary to her-" let us to the wark-let us to the wark."

She then led the way to the promontory on which

the Kaim of Derncleugh was situated, produced a large key from her pocket, and unlocked the door. The interior of this place was in better order than formerly. "I have made things decent," she said; "I may be streekit here or night. There will be few, few at Meg's lykewake, for mony of our folk will blame what I hae done, and am to do!"

She then pointed to a table, upon which was some cold meat, arranged with more attention to neatness than could have been expected from Meg's habits. "Eat," she said, "eat ;-ye'll need it this night yet."

Bertram in complaisance, eat a morsel or two; and Dinmont, whose appetite was unabated either by wonder, apprehension, or the meal of the morning, made his usual figure as a trencher-man. She then offered each a single glass of spirits, which Bertram drank diluted, and his companion plain.

"Will ye taste naething yoursell, Luckie?" said Dinmont.

"I shall not need it,” replied their mysterious hostess. "And now," she said, "ye maun hae arms—ye maunna gang on dry-handed ;-but use them not rashly-take captive, but save life-let the law hae its ain-he maun speak ere he die."

"Who is to be taken?-who is to speak?" said Bertram in astonishment, receiving a pair of pistols which she offered him, and which, upon examining, he found loaded and locked.

"The flints are gude," she said, "and the powder dry-I ken this wark weel."