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 corner stone-and did I not warn him?--I tell'd him I was born to do it, if my father's head had been the stepping-stane, 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!" 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 "Captain," said Dinmont, in a half whisper, "I "Fear'd! fient a haet care I," said the dauntless farmer: "be she witch or deevil, it's a' ane to Dandie Dinmont." 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 "Haud your peace, gudeman," said Meg, look-night yet." ing sternly over her shoulder; " is this a time or place for you to speak, think ye?" "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." “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 moved. "Here rests ane," she said; " he'll maybe hae neibors sune.” 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." cable in all this-But we need not use these arms unless we see necessity and lawful occasion - take care to do as you see me do." Then, without answering his questions, she armed Dinmont also with a large pistol, and desired them to choose sticks for themselves, out of a parcel of She then moved up the brook until she came to very suspicious-looking bludgeons which she brought the ruined hamlet, where, pausing with a look of from a corner. Bertram took a stout sapling, and peculiar and softened interest before one of the Dandie selected a club which might have served gables which was still standing, she said, in a tone Hercules himself. They then left the hut together, less abrupt, though as solemn as before, "Do you and, in doing so, Bertram took an opportunity to see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling?-whisper to Dinmont, "There's something inexpliThere 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 sate 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 Dinmont gave a sagacious nod; and they continued to follow, over wet and over dry, through bog and through fallow, the footsteps of their conductress. She guided them to the wood of Warroch by the same track which the late Ellangowan had used when riding to Derncleugh in quest of his child, on the miserable evening of Kennedy's murder. When Meg Merrilies had attained these groves, through which the wintry sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to pause a moment as if to recollect the way. "We maun go the precise track," she said, and continued to go for ward, but rather in a zigzag and involved course, than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular boundary. Even in winter it was a sheltered and snugly sequestered spot; but when arrayed in the verdure of spring, the earth sending forth all its wild flowers, the shrubs spreading their waste of blossom around it, and the weeping birches, which towered over the underwood, drooping their long and leafy fibres to intercept the sun, it must have seemed a place for a youthful poet to study his earliest sonnet, or a pair of lovers to exchange their first mutual avowal of affection. Apparently it now awakened very different recollections. Bertram's brow, when he had looked round the spot, became gloomy and embarrassed. Meg, after uttering to herself, "This is the very spot!" looked at him with a ghastly sideglance," D'ye mind it?” "Yes! answered Bertram, "imperfectly I do." "Ay!" pursued his guide, "on this very spot the man fell from his horse-I was behind that bourtree-bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove, and sair he cried for mercy-but he was in the hands of them that never kenn'd the word!Now will I show you the further track-the last time ye travelled it, was in these arms." She led them accordingly by a long and winding passage almost overgrown with brushwood, until, without any very perceptible descent, they suddenly found themselves by the sea-side. Meg then walked very fast on between the surf and the rocks, until she came to a remarkable fragment of rock, detached from the rest. "Here," she said, in a low and scarcely audible whisper, "here the corpse was found." "And the cave," said Bertram, in the same tone, "is close beside it—are you guiding us there?" "Yes," said the gipsy, in a decided tone. "Bend up both your hearts-follow me as I creep in-I have placed the fire-wood so as to screen you. Bide behind it for a gliff till I say, The hour and the man are baith come! then rin in on him, take his arms, and bind him till the blood burst frae his finger nails." "I will, by my soul!" said Henry—"if he is the man I suppose-Jansen?" 66 Ay, Jansen, Hatteraick, and twenty mair names are his." "Dinmont, you must stand by me now," said Bertram, "for this fellow is a devil." "Ye needna doubt that," said the stout yeoman "But I wish I could mind a bit prayer or I creep after the witch into that hole that she's opening It wad be a sair thing to leave the blessed sun, and the free air, and gang and be killed, like a toad that's run to earth, in a dungeon like that. But, my sooth, they will be hard-bitten terriers will worry Dandie; so, as I said, deil hae me if I baulk you." This was uttered in the lowest tone of voice possible. The entrance was now open. Meg crept in upon her hands and knees, Bertram followed, and Dinmont, after giving a rueful glance toward the daylight, whose blessings he was abandoning, brought up the rear. CHAPTER LIV. Die, prophet, in thy speech! For this, among the rest, was I ordained. Henry VI. Part III. THE progress of the Borderer, who, as we have said, was the last of the party, was fearfully arrested by a hand, which caught hold of his leg as he dragged his long limbs after him in silence and perturbation through the low and narrow entrance of the subterranean passage. The steel heart of the bold yeoman had wellnigh given way, and he suppressed with difficulty a shout, which, in the defenceless posture and situation which they then occupied, might have cost all their lives. He contented himself, however, with extricating his foot from the grasp of this unexpected follower. "Be still," said a voice behind him, releasing him; "I am a friend Charles Hazlewood." These words were uttered in a very low voice, but they produced sound enough to startle Meg Merrilees, who led the van, and who, having already gained the place where the cavern expanded, had risen upon her feet. She began, as if to confound any listening ear, to growl, to mutter, and to sing aloud, and at the same time to make a bustle among some brushwood which was now heaped in the cave. "Here-beldam-Deyvil's kind," growled the harsh voice of Dirk Hatteraick from the inside of his den; "what makest thou there?" "Laying the roughies1 to keep the cauld wind frae you, ye desperate do-nae-good-Ye're e'en ower weel off, and wots na;-it will be otherwise soon.' "Have you brought me the brandy, and any news of my people?" said Dirk Hatteraick. "There's the flask for ye. Your people-dispersed-broken-gone- or cut to ribbands by the red coats." "Der Deyvil!-this coast is fatal to me." "Ye may hae mair reason to say sae." While this dialogue went forward, Bertram and Dinmont had both gained the interior of the cave, and assumed an erect position. The only light which illuminated its rugged and sable precincts was a quantity of wood burnt to charcoal in an iron grate, such as they use in spearing salmon by night. On these red embers Hatteraick from time to time threw a handful of twigs or splintered wood; but these, even when they blazed up, afforded a light much disproportioned to the extent of the cavern; and, as its principal inhabitant lay upon the side. of the grate most remote from the entrance, it was not easy for him to discover distinctly objects which lay in that direction. The intruders, therefore, whose number was now augmented unexpectedly to three, stood behind the loosely-piled branches with little risk of discovery. Dinmont had the sense to keep back Hazlewood with one hand till he whispered to Bertram, "A friend-young Hazlewood." It was no time for following up the introduction, and they all stood as still as the rocks around them, obscured behind the pile of brushwood, which had been probably placed there to break the cold wind from the sea, without totally intercepting the supply of air. The branches were laid so loosely above 1 Withered boughs. each other, that, looking through them towards the light of the fire-grate, they could easily discover what passed in its vicinity, although a much stronger degree of illumination than it afforded, would not have enabled the persons placed near the bottom of the cave to have descried them in the position which they occupied. The scene, independent of the peculiar moral interest and personal danger which attended it, had, from the effect of the light and shade on the uncommon objects which it exhibited, an appearance emphatically dismal. The light in the fire-grate was the dark-red glare of charcoal in a state of ignition, relieved from time to time by a transient flame of a more vivid or duskier light, as the fuel with which Dirk Hatteraick fed his fire was better or worse fitted for his purpose. Now a dark cloud of stifling smoke rose up to the roof of the cavern, and then lighted into a reluctant and sullen blaze, which flashed wavering up the pillar of smoke, and was suddenly rendered brighter and more lively by some drier fuel, or perhaps some splintered firtimber, which at once converted the smoke into flame. By such fitful irradiation, they could see, more or less distinctly, the form of Hatteraick, whose savage and rugged cast of features, now rendered yet more ferocious by the circumstances of his situation, and the deep gloom of his mind, assorted well with the rugged and broken vault which rose in a rude arch over and around him. The form of Meg Merrilees, which stalked about him, sometimes in the light, sometimes partially obscured in the smoke or darkness, contrasted strongly with the sitting figure of Hatteraick as he bent over the flame, and from his stationary posture was constantly visible to the spectator, while that of the female flitted around, appearing or disappearing like a spectre. Bertram felt his blood boil at the sight of Hatteraick. He remembered him well under the name of Jansen, which the smuggler had adopted after the death of Kennedy; and he remembered also, that this Jansen, and his mate Brown, the same who was shot at Woodbourne, had been the brutal tyrants of his infancy. Bertram knew farther, from piecing his own imperfect recollections with the narratives of Mannering and Pleydell, that this man was the prime agent in the act of violence which tore him from his family and country, and had exposed him to so many distresses and dangers. A thousand exasperating reflections rose within his bosom; and he could hardly refrain from rushing upon Hatteraick and blowing his brains out. what should pass between the ruffian and his gipsy guide. "And how are ye now?" said the harsh and discordant tones of his female attendant: "Said I not it would come upon you-ay, and in this very cave, where ye harboured after the deed?" "Wetter and sturm, ye hag!" replied Hatteraick, "keep your deyvil's matins till they're wanted.Have you seen Glossin?" "No," replied Meg Merrilees; "you've missed your blow, ye blood-spiller! and ye have nothing to expect from the tempter." "Hagel!" exclaimed the ruffian, "if I had him but by the throat!--And what am I to do then?" "Do?" answered the gypsy;-" die like a man, or be hanged like a dog!" "Hanged, ye hag of Satan!-the hemp's not sown that shall hang me." "It's sown, and it's grown, and it's heckled, and it's twisted. Did I not tell ye, when ye wad take away the boy Harry Bertram, in spite of my prayers -did I not say he would come back when he had dree'd his weird in foreign land till his twenty-first year?-did I not say the auld fire would burn down to a spark, but wad kindle again?" "Well, mother, you did say so," said Hatteraick, in a tone that had something of despair in its accents; "and donner and blitzen! I believe you spoke the truth-that younker of Ellangowan has been a rock a-head to me all my life!-and now, with Glossin's cursed contrivance, my crew have been cut off, my boats destroyed, and I dare say the lugger's taken-there were not men enough left on board to work her, far less to fight her-a dredgeboat might have taken her. And what will the owners say?-Hagel and sturm! I shall never dare go back again to Flushing." "You'll never need," said the gipsy. "What are you doing there?" said her companion; " and what makes you say that?" During this dialogue, Meg was heaping some flax loosely together. Before answer to this question, she dropped a firebrand upon the flax, which had been previously steeped in some spirituous liquor, for it instantly caught fire, and rose in a vivid pyramid of the most brilliant light up to the very top of the vault. As it ascended, Meg answered the ruffian's question in a firm and steady voice:"Because the Hour's come, and the Man." " I kenn'd it would be this way," she said. At the appointed signal, Bertram and Dinmont sprung over the brushwood, and rushed upon Hatteraick. Hazlewood, unacquainted with their plan of assault, was a moment later. The ruffian, who At the same time this would have been no safe instantly saw he was betrayed, turned his first venadventure. The flame, as it rose and fell, while it geance on Meg Merrilies, at whom he discharged displayed the strong, muscular, and broad-chested a pistol. She fell, with a piercing and dreadful cry, frame of the ruffian, glanced also upon two brace between the shriek of pain and the sound of laughof pistols in his belt, and upon the hilt of his cut-ter, when at its highest and most suffocating height. lass it was not to be doubted that his desperation was commensurate with his personal strength and means of resistance. Both, indeed, were inadequate to encounter the combined power of two such men as Bertram himself and his friend Dinmont, without reckoning their unexpected assistant Hazlewood, who was unarmed, and of a slighter make; but Bertram felt, on a moment's reflection, that there would be neither sense nor valour in anticipating the hangman's office, and he considered the importance of making Hatteraick prisoner alive;— he therefore repressed his indignation, and awaited Bertram, in his haste, slipped his foot upon the uneven rock which floored the cave ;-a fortunate stumble, for Hatteraick's second bullet whistled over him with so true and steady an aim, that had he been standing upright, it must have lodged in his brain. Ere the smuggler could draw another pistol, Dinmont closed with him, and endeavoured by main force to pinion down his arms. Such, however, was the wretch's personal strength, joined to the efforts of his despair, that, in spite of the gigantic force with which the Borderer grappled him, he dragged Dinmont through the blazing flax, and had almost succeeded in drawing a third pistol, which might have proved fatal to the honest farmer, had not Bertram, as well as Hazlewood, come to his assistance, when, by main force, and no ordinary exertion of it, they threw Hatteraick on the ground, disarmed him, and bound him. This scuffle, though it takes up some time in the narrative, passed in less than a single minute. When he was fairly mastered, after one or two desperate and almost convulsionary struggles, the ruffian lay perfectly still and silent. "He's gaun to die game ony how," said Dinmont: "weel, I like him na the waur for that." This observation honest Dandie made while he was shaking the blazing flax from his rough coat and shaggy black hair, some of which had been singed in the scuffle. "He is quiet now," said Bertram;-" stay by him, and do not permit him to stir till I see whether the poor woman be alive or dead." With Hazlewood's assistance he raised Meg Merrilies. "I kenn'd it would be this way," she muttered, " and it's e'en this way that it should be." The ball had penetrated the breast below the throat. It did not bleed much externally; but Bertram, accustomed to see gun-shot wounds, thought it the more alarming. "Good God! what shall we do for this poor woman?" said he to Hazlewood, the circumstances superseding the necessity of previous explanation or introduction to each other. "My horse stands tied above in the wood," said Hazlewood-"I have been watching you these two hours- I will ride off for some assistance that may be trusted. Meanwhile, you had better defend the mouth of the cavern against every one until I return." He hastened away. Bertram, after binding Meg Merrilies's wound as well as he could, took station near the mouth of the cave with a cocked pistol in his hand; Dinmont continued to watch Hatteraick, keeping a grasp, like that of Hercules, on his breast. There was a dead silence in the cavern, only interrupted by the low and suppressed moaning of the wounded female, and by the hard breathing of the prisoner. CHAPTER LV. For though, seduced and led astray, AFTER the space of about three quarters of an hour, which the uncertainty and danger of their situation made seem almost thrice as long, the voice of young Hazlewood was heard without. "Here I am," he cried, "with a sufficient party." "Come in then," answered Bertram, not a little pleased to find his guard relieved. Hazlewood then entered, followed by two or three countrymen, one of whom acted as a peace-officer. They lifted Hatteraick up, and carried him in their arms as far as the entrance of the vault was high enough to permit them; then laid him on his back, and dragged him along as well as they could, for no persuasion would induce him to assist the transportation by any exertion of his own. He lay as silent and inactive in their hands as a dead corpse, incapable of opposing, but in no way aiding, their operations. When he was dragged into day-light, and placed erect upon his feet among three or four assistants, who had remained without the cave, he seemed stupified and dazzled by the sudden change from the darkness of his cavern. While others were superintending the removal of Meg Merrilies, those who remained with Hatteraick attempted to make him sit down upon a fragment of rock which lay close upon the high-water mark. A strong shuddering convulsed his iron frame for an instant, as he resisted their purpose. "Not there— Hagel !— you would not make me sit there?" These were the only words he spoke; but their import, and the deep tone of horror in which they were uttered, served to show what was passing in his mind. When Meg Merrilies had also been removed from the cavern, with all the care for her safety that circumstances admitted, they consulted where she should be carried. Hazlewood had sent for a surgeon, and proposed that she should be lifted in the meantime to the nearest cottage. But the patient exclaimed, with great earnestness, "Na, na, na! to the Kaim o' Derncleugh-the Kaim o' Derncleugh; the spirit will not free itself o' the flesh but there." "You must indulge her, I believe," said Bertram;-"her troubled imagination will otherwise aggravate the fever of the wound." They bore her accordingly to the vault. On the way her mind seemed to run more upon the scene which had just passed, than on her own approaching death. "There were three of them set upon him;-I brought the twasome-but wha was the third? It would be himsell, returned to work his ain vengeance!" It was evident that the unexpected appearance of Hazlewood, whose person the outrage of Hatteraick left her no time to recognise, had produced a strong effect on her imagination. She often recurred to it. Hazlewood accounted for his unexpected arrival to Bertram, by saying that he had kept them in view for some time by the direction of Mannering; that, observing them disappear into the cave, he had crept after them, meaning to announce himself and his errand, when his hand inthe darkness encountering the leg of Dinmont, had nearly produced a catastrophe, which, indeed, nothing but the presence of mind and fortitude of the bold yeoman could have averted. When the gipsy arrived at the hut, she produced the key; and when they entered, and were about to deposit her upon the bed, she said, in an anxious tone, "Na, na! not that way-the feet to the east;" and appeared gratified when they reversed her posture accordingly, and placed her in that appropriate to a dead body. "Is there no clergyman near," said Bertram, "to assist this unhappy woman's devotions?" A gentleman, the minister of the parish, who had been Charles Hazlewood's tutor, had, with many others, caught the alarm, that the murderer of Kennedy was taken on the spot where the deed had been done so many years before, and that a woman was mortally wounded. From curiosity, or rather from the feeling that his duty called him to scenes of distress, this gentleman had come to the Kaim of Derncleugh, and now presented himself. The surgeon arrived at the same time, and was about to probe the wound; but Meg resisted the assistance of either. "It's no what man can do, that will heal my body, or save my spirit. Let me speak what I have to say, and then ye may work your will-I'se be nae hinderance. But where's Henry Bertram?"- The assistants, to whom this name had been long a stranger, gazed upon each other.-"Yes!" she said, in a stronger and harsher tone, "I said Henry Bertram of Ellangowan. Stand from the light and let me see him." All eyes were turned towards Bertram, who approached the wretched couch. The wounded woman took hold of his hand. "Look at him," she said, "all that ever saw his father or his grandfather, and bear witness if he is not their living image?" A murmur went through the crowd-the resemblance was too striking to be denied. "And now hear me and let that man," pointing to Hatteraiek, who was seated with his keepers on a seachest at some distance-" let him deny what I say, if he can. That is Henry Bertram, son to Godfrey Bertram, umquhile of Ellangowan; that young man is the very lad-bairn that Dirk Hatteraick carried off from Warroch wood the day that he murdered the gauger. I was there like a wandering spirit -for I longed to see that wood or we left the country. I saved the bairn's life, and sair, sair I prigged and prayed they would leave him wi' me But they bore him away, and he's been lang ower the sea, and now he's come for his ain, and what should withstand him?—I swore to keep the secret till he was ane-an'-twenty-I kenn'd he behoved to dree his weird till that day cam-I keepit that oath which I took to them-but I made another vow to mysell, and if I lived to see the day of his return, I would set him in his father's seat, if every step was on a dead man. I have keepit that oath too;-I will be ae step mysell-he" (pointing to Hatteraick) "will soon be another, and there will be ane mair yet." The clergyman now interposing, remarked it was a pity this deposition was not regularly taken and written down, and the surgeon urged the necessity of examining the wound, previously to exhausting her by questions. When she saw them removing Hatteraick, in order to clear the room and leave the surgeon to his operations, she called out aloud, raising herself at the same time upon the couch, "Dirk Hatteraick, you and I will never meet again until we are before the judgment-seat-Will ye own to what I have said, or will you dare deny it!" He turned his hardened brow upon her, with a look of dumb and inflexible defiance.- "Dirk Hatteraick, dare ye deny, with my blood upon your hands, one word of what my dying breath is uttering!" He looked at her with the same expression of hardihood and dogged stubbornness, and moved his lips, but uttered no sound." Then fareweel!" she said, "and God forgive you !—your hand has sealed my evidence. When I was in life, I was the mad randy gipsy, that had been scourged, and banished, and branded that had begged from door to door, and been hounded like a stray tike from parish to parish-wha would hae minded her tale! But now I am a dying woman, and my words will not fall to the ground, any more than the earth will cover my blood!" She here paused, and all left the hut except the surgeon and two or three women. After a very short examination, he shook his head, and resigned his post by the dying woman's side to the clergyman. A chaise returning empty to Kippletringan had been stopped on the high-road by a constable, who foresaw it would be necessary to convey Hatteraick to jail. The driver, understanding what was going on at Derncleugh, left his horses to the care of a blackguard boy, confiding, it is to be supposed, rather in the years and discretion of the cattle, than in those of their keeper, and set off full speed, to see, as he expressed himself, "whaten a sort o' fun was gaun on." He arrived just as the group of tenants and peasants, whose numbers increased every moment, satiated with gazing upon the rugged features of Hatteraick, had turned their attention towards Bertram. Almost all of them, especially the aged men who had seen Ellangowan in his better days, felt and acknowledged the justice of Meg Merrilies's appeal. But the Scotch are a cautious people;-they remembered there was another in possession of the estate, and they as yet only expressed their feelings in low whispers to each other. Our friend Jock Jabos, the postilion, forced his way into the middle of the circle; but no sooner cast his eyes upon Bertram, than he started back in amazement, with a solemn exclamation, "As sure as there's breath in man, it's auld Ellangowan arisen from the dead!" This public declaration of an unprejudiced witness was just the spark wanted to give fire to the popular feeling, which burst forth in three distinct shouts :-"Bertram for ever!"-" Long life to the heir of Ellangowan!"- -"God send him his ain, and to live among us as his forebears did of yore! "I hae been seventy years on the land," said one person. !" "I and mine hae been seventy and seventy to that," said another; "I have a right to ken the glance of a Bertram." "I and mine hae been three hundred years here," said another old man, " and I sall sell my last cow, but I'll see the young laird placed in his right." The women, ever delighted with the marvellous, and not less so when a handsome young man is the subject of the tale, added their shrill acclamations to the general all-hail." Blessings on him-he's the very picture o' his father!-the Bertrams were aye the wale o' the country side!" "Eh! that his puir mother, that died in grief and in doubt about him, had but lived to see this day!" exclaimed some female voices. "But we'll help him to his ain, kimmers," cried others; " and before Glossin sall keep the Place of Ellangowan, we'll howk him out o't wi' our nails!" Others crowded around Dinmont, who was nothing loth to tell what he knew of his friend, and to boast the honour which he had in contributing to the discovery. As he was known to several of the principal farmers present, his testimony afforded an additional motive to the general enthusiasm. In short, it was one of those moments of intense feeling, when the frost of the Scottish people melts like a snow-wreath, and the dissolving torrent carries dam and dyke before it. The sudden shouts interrupted the devotions of the clergyman; and Meg, who was in one of those dozing fits of stupefaction that precede the close of existence, suddenly started -"Dinna ye hear?dinna ye hear?-he's owned!- he's owned!-I lived but for this.—I am a sinfu' woman; but if my |