Guy Mannering, Vol. I

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'It will be seen and heard of--earth and sea will not hold their
peace langer! Can ye say if the same man be now the sheriff of the
county that has been sae for some years past?'

'Na, he's got some other birth in Edinburgh, they say; but gude
day, gudewife, I maun ride.' She followed him to his horse, and,
while he drew the girths of his saddle, adjusted the walise, and
put on the bridle, still plied him with questions concerning Mr.
Bertram's death and the fate of his daughter; on which, however,
she could obtain little information from the honest farmer.

'Did ye ever see a place they ca' Derncleugh, about a mile frae
the Place of Ellangowan?'

'I wot weel have I, gudewife. A wild-looking den it is, wi' a whin
auld wa's o' shealings yonder; I saw it when I gaed ower the
ground wi' ane that wanted to take the farm.'

'It was a blythe bit ance!' said Meg, speaking to herself. 'Did ye
notice if there was an auld saugh tree that's maist blawn down,
but yet its roots are in the earth, and it hangs ower the bit
burn? Mony a day hae I wrought my stocking and sat on my sunkie
under that saugh.'

'Hout, deil's i' the wife, wi' her saughs, and her sunkies, and
Ellangowans. Godsake, woman, let me away; there's saxpence t' ye
to buy half a mutchkin, instead o' clavering about thae auld-warld
stories.'

'Thanks to ye, gudeman; and now ye hae answered a' my questions,
and never speired wherefore I asked them, I'll gie you a bit canny
advice, and ye maunna speir what for neither. Tib Mumps will be
out wi' the stirrup-dram in a gliffing. She'll ask ye whether ye
gang ower Willie's Brae or through Conscowthart Moss; tell her ony
ane ye like, but be sure (speaking low and emphatically) to tak
the ane ye dinna tell her.' The farmer laughed and promised, and
the gipsy retreated.

'Will you take her advice?' said Brown, who had been an attentive
listener to this conversation.

'That will I no, the randy quean! Na, I had far rather Tib Mumps
kenn'd which way I was gaun than her, though Tib's no muckle to
lippen to neither, and I would advise ye on no account to stay in
the house a' night.'

In a moment after Tib, the landlady, appeared with her stirrup-
cup, which was taken off. She then, as Meg had predicted, inquired
whether he went the hill or the moss road. He answered, the
latter; and, having bid Brown good-bye, and again told him, 'he
depended on seeing him at Charlie's Hope, the morn at latest,' he
rode off at a round pace.

CHAPTER XXIII

Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway

--Winter's Tale.

The hint of the hospitable farmer was not lost on Brown. But while
he paid his reckoning he could not avoid repeatedly fixing his
eyes on Meg Merrilies. She was in all respects the same witch-like
figure as when we first introduced her at Ellangowan Place. Time
had grizzled her raven locks and added wrinkles to her wild
features, but her height remained erect, and her activity was
unimpaired. It was remarked of this woman, as of others of the
same description, that a life of action, though not of labour,
gave her the perfect command of her limbs and figure, so that the
attitudes into which she most naturally threw herself were free,
unconstrained, and picturesque. At present she stood by the window
of the cottage, her person drawn up so as to show to full
advantage her masculine stature, and her head somewhat thrown
back, that the large bonnet with which her face was shrouded might
not interrupt her steady gaze at Brown. At every gesture he made
and every tone he uttered she seemed to give an almost
imperceptible start. On his part, he was surprised to find that he
could not look upon this singular figure without some emotion.
'Have I dreamed of such a figure?' he said to himself, 'or does
this wild and singular-looking woman recall to my recollection
some of the strange figures I have seen in our Indian pagodas?'

While he embarrassed himself with these discussions, and the
hostess was engaged in rummaging out silver in change of half-a-
guinea, the gipsy suddenly made two strides and seized Brown's
hand. He expected, of course, a display of her skill in palmistry,
but she seemed agitated by other feelings.

'Tell me,' she said, 'tell me, in the name of God, young man, what
is your name, and whence you came?'

'My name is Brown, mother, and I come from the East Indies.'

'From the East Indies!' dropping his hand with a sigh; 'it cannot
be then. I am such an auld fool, that everything I look on seems
the thing I want maist to see. But the East Indies! that cannot
be. Weel, be what ye will, ye hae a face and a tongue that puts me
in mind of auld times. Good day; make haste on your road, and if
ye see ony of our folk, meddle not and make not, and they'll do
you nae harm.'

Brown, who had by this time received his change, put a shilling
into her hand, bade his hostess farewell, and, taking the route
which the farmer had gone before, walked briskly on, with the
advantage of being guided by the fresh hoof-prints of his horse.
Meg Merrilies looked after him for some time, and then muttered to
herself, 'I maun see that lad again; and I maun gang back to
Ellangowan too. The Laird's dead! aweel, death pays a' scores; he
was a kind man ance. The Sheriff's flitted, and I can keep canny
in the bush; so there's no muckle hazard o' scouring the cramp-
ring. I would like to see bonny Ellangowan again or I die.'

Brown meanwhile proceeded northward at a round pace along the
moorish tract called the Waste of Cumberland. He passed a solitary
house, towards which the horseman who preceded him had apparently
turned up, for his horse's tread was evident in that direction. A
little farther, he seemed to have returned again into the road.
Mr. Dinmont had probably made a visit there either of business or
pleasure. 'I wish,' thought Brown, 'the good farmer had staid till
I came up; I should not have been sorry to ask him a few questions
about the road, which seems to grow wilder and wilder.'

In truth, nature, as if she had designed this tract of country to
be the barrier between two hostile nations, has stamped upon it a
character of wildness and desolation. The hills are neither high
nor rocky, but the land is all heath and morass; the huts poor and
mean, and at a great distance from each other. Immediately around
them there is generally some little attempt at cultivation; but a
half-bred foal or two, straggling about with shackles on their
hind legs, to save the trouble of inclosures, intimate the
farmer's chief resource to be the breeding of horses. The people,
too, are of a ruder and more inhospitable class than are elsewhere
to be found in Cumberland, arising partly from their own habits,
partly from their intermixture with vagrants and criminals, who
make this wild country a refuge from justice. So much were the men
of these districts in early times the objects of suspicion and
dislike to their more polished neighbours, that there was, and
perhaps still exists, a by-law of the corporation of Newcastle
prohibiting any freeman of that city to take for apprentice a
native of certain of these dales. It is pithily said, 'Give a dog
an ill name and hang him'; and it may be added, if you give a man,
or race of men, an ill name they are very likely to do something
that deserves hanging. Of this Brown had heard something, and
suspected more, from the discourse between the landlady, Dinmont,
and the gipsy; but he was naturally of a fearless disposition, had
nothing about him that could tempt the spoiler, and trusted to get
through the Waste with daylight. In this last particular, however,
he was likely to be disappointed. The way proved longer than he
had anticipated, and the horizon began to grow gloomy just as he
entered upon an extensive morass.

Choosing his steps with care and deliberation, the young officer
proceeded along a path that sometimes sunk between two broken
black banks of moss earth, sometimes crossed narrow but deep
ravines filled with a consistence between mud and water, and
sometimes along heaps of gravel and stones, which had been swept
together when some torrent or waterspout from the neighbouring
hills overflowed the marshy ground below. He began to ponder how a
horseman could make his way through such broken ground; the traces
of hoofs, however, were still visible; he even thought he heard
their sound at some distance, and, convinced that Mr. Dinmont's
progress through the morass must be still slower than his own, he
resolved to push on, in hopes to overtake him and have the benefit
of his knowledge of the country. At this moment his little terrier
sprung forward, barking most furiously.

Brown quickened his pace, and, attaining the summit of a small
rising ground, saw the subject of the dog's alarm. In a hollow
about a gunshot below him a man whom he easily recognised to be
Dinmont was engaged with two others in a desperate struggle. He
was dismounted, and defending himself as he best could with the
butt of his heavy whip. Our traveller hastened on to his
assistance; but ere he could get up a stroke had levelled the
farmer with the earth, and one of the robbers, improving his
victory, struck him some merciless blows on the head. The other
villain, hastening to meet Brown, called to his companion to come
along, 'for that one's CONTENT,' meaning, probably, past
resistance or complaint. One ruffian was armed with a cutlass, the
other with a bludgeon; but as the road was pretty narrow, 'bar
fire-arms,' thought Brown, 'and I may manage them well enough.'
They met accordingly, with the most murderous threats on the part
of the ruffians. They soon found, however, that their new opponent
was equally stout and resolute; and, after exchanging two or three
blows, one of them told him to 'follow his nose over the heath, in
the devil's name, for they had nothing to say to him.'

Brown rejected this composition as leaving to their mercy the
unfortunate man whom they were about to pillage, if not to murder
outright; and the skirmish had just recommenced when Dinmont
unexpectedly recovered his senses, his feet, and his weapon, and
hastened to the scene of action. As he had been no easy
antagonist, even when surprised and alone, the villains did not
choose to wait his joining forces with a man who had singly proved
a match for them both, but fled across the bog as fast as their
feet could carry them, pursued by Wasp, who had acted gloriously
during the skirmish, annoying the heels of the enemy, and
repeatedly effecting a moment's diversion in his master's favour.

'Deil, but your dog's weel entered wi' the vermin now, sir!' were
the first words uttered by the jolly farmer as he came up, his
head streaming with blood, and recognised his deliverer and his
little attendant.

'I hope, sir, you are not hurt dangerously?'

'O, deil a bit, my head can stand a gay clour; nae thanks to them,
though, and mony to you. But now, hinney, ye maun help me to catch
the beast, and ye maun get on behind me, for we maun off like
whittrets before the whole clanjamfray be doun upon us; the rest
o' them will no be far off.' The galloway was, by good fortune,
easily caught, and Brown made some apology for overloading the
animal.

'Deil a fear, man,' answered the proprietor; 'Dumple could carry
six folk, if his back was lang eneugh; but God's sake, haste ye,
get on, for I see some folk coming through the slack yonder that
it may be just as weel no to wait for.'

Brown was of opinion that this apparition of five or six men, with
whom the other villains seemed to join company, coming across the
moss towards them, should abridge ceremony; he therefore mounted
Dumple en croupe, and the little spirited nag cantered away with
two men of great size and strength as if they had been children of
six years old. The rider, to whom the paths of these wilds seemed
intimately known, pushed on at a rapid pace, managing with much
dexterity to choose the safest route, in which he was aided by the
sagacity of the galloway, who never failed to take the difficult
passes exactly at the particular spot, and in the special manner,
by which they could be most safely crossed. Yet, even with these
advantages, the road was so broken, and they were so often thrown
out of the direct course by various impediments, that they did not
gain much on their pursuers. 'Never mind,' said the undaunted
Scotchman to his companion, 'if we were ance by Withershins'
Latch, the road's no near sae soft, and we'll show them fair play
for't.'

They soon came to the place he named, a narrow channel, through
which soaked, rather than flowed, a small stagnant stream, mantled
over with bright green mosses. Dinmont directed his steed towards
a pass where the water appeared to flow with more freedom over a
harder bottom; but Dumple backed from the proposed crossing-place,
put his head down as if to reconnoitre the swamp more nearly,
stretching forward his fore-feet, and stood as fast as if he had
been cut out of stone.

'Had we not better,' said Brown, 'dismount, and leave him to his
fate; or can you not urge him through the swamp?'

'Na, na,' said his pilot, 'we maun cross Dumple at no rate, he has
mair sense than mony a Christian.' So saying, he relaxed the
reins, and shook them loosely. 'Come now, lad, take your ain way
o't, let's see where ye'll take us through.'

Dumple, left to the freedom of his own will, trotted briskly to
another part of the latch, less promising, as Brown thought, in
appearance, but which the animal's sagacity or experience
recommended as the safer of the two, and where, plunging in, he
attained the other side with little difficulty.

'I'm glad we're out o' that moss,' said Dinmont, 'where there's
mair stables for horses than change-houses for men; we have the
Maiden-way to help us now, at ony rate.' Accordingly, they
speedily gained a sort of rugged causeway so called, being the
remains of an old Roman road which traverses these wild regions in
a due northerly direction. Here they got on at the rate of nine or
ten miles an hour, Dumple seeking no other respite than what arose
from changing his pace from canter to trot. 'I could gar him show
mair action,' said his master, 'but we are twa lang-legged chields
after a', and it would be a pity to stress Dumple; there wasna the
like o' him at Staneshiebank Fair the day.'

Brown readily assented to the propriety of sparing the horse, and
added that, as they were now far out of the reach of the rogues,
he thought Mr. Dinmont had better tie a handkerchief round his
head, for fear of the cold frosty air aggravating the wound.

'What would I do that for?' answered the hardy farmer; 'the best
way's to let the blood barken upon the cut; that saves plasters,
hinney.'

Brown, who in his military profession had seen a great many hard
blows pass, could not help remarking, 'he had never known such
severe strokes received with so much apparent indifference.'

'Hout tout, man! I would never be making a humdudgeon about a
scart on the pow; but we'll be in Scotland in five minutes now,
and ye maun gang up to Charlie's Hope wi' me, that's a clear
case.'

Brown readily accepted the offered hospitality. Night was now
falling when they came in sight of a pretty river winding its way
through a pastoral country. The hills were greener and more abrupt
than those which Brown had lately passed, sinking their grassy
sides at once upon the river. They had no pretensions to
magnificence of height, or to romantic shapes, nor did their
smooth swelling slopes exhibit either rocks or woods. Yet the view
was wild, solitary, and pleasingly rural. No inclosures, no roads,
almost no tillage; it seemed a land which a patriarch would have
chosen to feed his flocks and herds. The remains of here and there
a dismantled and ruined tower showed that it had once harboured
beings of a very different description from its present
inhabitants; those freebooters, namely, to whose exploits the wars
between England and Scotland bear witness.

Descending by a path towards a well-known ford, Dumple crossed the
small river, and then, quickening his pace, trotted about a mile
briskly up its banks, and approached two or three low thatched
houses, placed with their angles to each other, with a great
contempt of regularity. This was the farm-steading of Charlie's
Hope, or, in the language of the country, 'the town.' A most
furious barking was set up at their approach by the whole three
generations of Mustard and Pepper, and a number of allies, names
unknown. The farmer [Footnote: See Note 3.] made his well-known
voice lustily heard to restore order; the door opened, and a half-
dressed ewe-milker, who had done that good office, shut it in
their faces, in order that she might run 'ben the house' to cry
'Mistress, mistress, it's the master, and another man wi' him.'
Dumple, turned loose, walked to his own stable-door, and there
pawed and whinnied for admission, in strains which were answered
by his acquaintances from the interior. Amid this bustle Brown was
fain to secure Wasp from the other dogs, who, with ardour
corresponding more to their own names than to the hospitable
temper of their owner, were much disposed to use the intruder
roughly.

In about a minute a stout labourer was patting Dumple, and
introducing him into the stable, while Mrs. Dinmont, a well-
favoured buxom dame, welcomed her husband with unfeigned rapture.
'Eh, sirs! gudeman, ye hae been a weary while away!'

CHAPTER XXIV

Liddell till now, except in Doric lays,
Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song, though not a purer stream
Rolls towards the western main

Art of Preserving Health.

The present store-farmers of the south of Scotland are a much more
refined race than their fathers, and the manners I am now to
describe have either altogether disappeared or are greatly
modified. Without losing the rural simplicity of manners, they now
cultivate arts unknown to the former generation, not only in the
progressive improvement of their possessions but in all the
comforts of life. Their houses are more commodious, their habits
of life regulated so as better to keep pace with those of the
civilised world, and the best of luxuries, the luxury of
knowledge, has gained much ground among their hills during the
last thirty years. Deep drinking, formerly their greatest failing,
is now fast losing ground; and, while the frankness of their
extensive hospitality continues the same, it is, generally
speaking, refined in its character and restrained in its excesses.

'Deil's in the wife,' said Dandie Dinmont, shaking off his
spouse's embrace, but gently and with a look of great affection;
'deil's in ye, Ailie; d'ye no see the stranger gentleman?'

Ailie turned to make her apology--'Troth, I was sae weel pleased
to see the gudeman, that--but, gude gracious! what's the matter
wi' ye baith?' for they were now in her little parlour, and the
candle showed the streaks of blood which Dinmont's wounded head
had plentifully imparted to the clothes of his companion as well
as to his own. 'Ye've been fighting again, Dandie, wi' some o' the
Bewcastle horse-coupers! Wow, man, a married man, wi' a bonny
family like yours, should ken better what a father's life's worth
in the warld'; the tears stood in the good woman's eyes as she
spoke.

'Whisht! whisht! gudewife,' said her husband, with a smack that
had much more affection than ceremony in it; 'never mind, never
mind; there's a gentleman that will tell you that, just when I had
ga'en up to Lourie Lowther's, and had bidden the drinking of twa
cheerers, and gotten just in again upon the moss, and was whigging
cannily awa hame, twa landloupers jumpit out of a peat-hag on me
or I was thinking, and got me down, and knevelled me sair aneuch,
or I could gar my whip walk about their lugs; and troth, gudewife,
if this honest gentleman hadna come up, I would have gotten mair
licks than I like, and lost mair siller than I could weel spare;
so ye maun be thankful to him for it, under God.' With that he
drew from his side-pocket a large greasy leather pocket-book, and
bade the gudewife lock it up in her kist.

'God bless the gentleman, and e'en God bless him wi' a' my heart;
but what can we do for him, but to gie him the meat and quarters
we wadna refuse to the poorest body on earth--unless (her eye
directed to the pocketbook, but with a feeling of natural
propriety which made the inference the most delicate possible),
unless there was ony other way--' Brown saw, and estimated at its
due rate, the mixture of simplicity and grateful generosity which
took the downright way of expressing itself, yet qualified with so
much delicacy; he was aware his own appearance, plain at best, and
now torn and spattered with blood, made him an object of pity at
least, and perhaps of charity. He hastened to say his name was
Brown, a captain in the----regiment of cavalry, travelling for
pleasure, and on foot, both from motives of independence and
economy; and he begged his kind landlady would look at her
husband's wounds, the state of which he had refused to permit him
to examine. Mrs. Dinmont was used to her husband's broken heads
more than to the presence of a captain of dragoons. She therefore
glanced at a table-cloth not quite clean, and conned over her
proposed supper a minute or two, before, patting her husband on
the shoulder, she bade him sit down for 'a hard-headed loon, that
was aye bringing himsell and other folk into collie-shangies.'

When Dandie Dinmont, after executing two or three caprioles, and
cutting the Highland fling, by way of ridicule of his wife's
anxiety, at last deigned to sit down and commit his round, black,
shaggy bullet of a head to her inspection, Brown thought he had
seen the regimental surgeon look grave upon a more trifling case.
The gudewife, however, showed some knowledge of chirurgery; she
cut away with her scissors the gory locks whose stiffened and
coagulated clusters interfered with her operations, and clapped on
the wound some lint besmeared with a vulnerary salve, esteemed
sovereign by the whole dale (which afforded upon fair nights
considerable experience of such cases); she then fixed her plaster
with a bandage, and, spite of her patient's resistance, pulled
over all a night-cap, to keep everything in its right place. Some
contusions on the brow and shoulders she fomented with brandy,
which the patient did not permit till the medicine had paid a
heavy toll to his mouth. Mrs. Dinmont then simply, but kindly,
offered her assistance to Brown.

He assured her he had no occasion for anything but the
accommodation of a basin and towel.

'And that's what I should have thought of sooner,' she said; 'and
I did think o't, but I durst na open the door, for there's a' the
bairns, poor things, sae keen to see their father.'

This explained a great drumming and whining at the door of the
little parlour, which had somewhat surprised Brown, though his
kind landlady had only noticed it by fastening the bolt as soon as
she heard it begin. But on her opening the door to seek the basin
and towel (for she never thought of showing the guest to a
separate room), a whole tide of white-headed urchins streamed in,
some from the stable, where they had been seeing Dumple, and
giving him a welcome home with part of their four-hours scones;
others from the kitchen, where they had been listening to old
Elspeth's tales and ballads; and the youngest, half-naked, out of
bed, all roaring to see daddy, and to inquire what he had brought
home for them from the various fairs he had visited in his
peregrinations. Our knight of the broken head first kissed and
hugged them all round, then distributed whistles, penny-trumpets,
and gingerbread, and, lastly, when the tumult of their joy and
welcome got beyond bearing, exclaimed to his guest--'This is a'
the gude-wife's fault, Captain; she will gie the bairns a' their
ain way.'

'Me! Lord help me,' said Ailie, who at that instant entered with
the basin and ewer, 'how can I help it? I have naething else to
gie them, poor things!'

Dinmont then exerted himself, and, between coaxing, threats, and
shoving, cleared the room of all the intruders excepting a boy and
girl, the two eldest of the family, who could, as he observed,
behave themselves 'distinctly.' For the same reason, but with less
ceremony, all the dogs were kicked out excepting the venerable
patriarchs, old Pepper and Mustard, whom frequent castigation and
the advance of years had inspired with such a share of passive
hospitality that, after mutual explanation and remonstrance in the
shape of some growling, they admitted Wasp, who had hitherto
judged it safe to keep beneath his master's chair, to a share of a
dried-wedder's skin, which, with the wool uppermost and unshorn,
served all the purposes of a Bristol hearth-rug.

The active bustle of the mistress (so she was called in the
kitchen, and the gudewife in the parlour) had already signed the
fate of a couple of fowls, which, for want of time to dress them
otherwise, soon appeared reeking from the gridiron, or brander, as
Mrs. Dinmont denominated it. A huge piece of cold beef-ham, eggs,
butter, cakes, and barley-meal bannocks in plenty made up the
entertainment, which was to be diluted with home-brewed ale of
excellent quality and a case-bottle of brandy. Few soldiers would
find fault with such cheer after a day's hard exercise and a
skirmish to boot; accordingly Brown did great honour to the
eatables. While the gudewife partly aided, partly instructed, a
great stout servant girl, with cheeks as red as her top-knot, to
remove the supper matters and supply sugar and hot water (which,
in the damsel's anxiety to gaze upon an actual live captain, she
was in some danger of forgetting), Brown took an opportunity to
ask his host whether he did not repent of having neglected the
gipsy's hint.

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