Guy Mannering, Vol. I

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'A tait o' woo' would be scarce amang us,' said the goodwife,
brightening, 'if ye shouldna hae that, and as gude a tweel as ever
cam aff a pirn. I'll speak to Johnnie Goodsire, the weaver at the
Castletown, the morn. Fare ye weel, sir! and may ye be just as
happy yoursell as ye like to see a' body else; and that would be a
sair wish to some folk.'

I must not omit to mention that our traveller left his trusty
attendant Wasp to be a guest at Charlie's Hope for a season. He
foresaw that he might prove a troublesome attendant in the event
of his being in any situation where secrecy and concealment might
be necessary. He was therefore consigned to the care of the eldest
boy, who promised, in the words of the old song, that he should
have

A bit of his supper, a bit of his bed,

and that he should be engaged in none of those perilous pastimes
in which the race of Mustard and Pepper had suffered frequent
mutilation. Brown now prepared for his journey, having taken a
temporary farewell of his trusty little companion.

There is an odd prejudice in these hills in favour of riding.
Every farmer rides well, and rides the whole day. Probably the
extent of their large pasture farms, and the necessity of
surveying them rapidly, first introduced this custom; or a very
zealous antiquary might derive it from the times of the 'Lay of
the Last Minstrel,' when twenty thousand horsemen assembled at the
light of the beacon-fires. [Footnote: It would be affectation to
alter this reference. But the reader will understand that it was
inserted to keep up the author's incognito, as he was not likely
to be suspected of quoting his own works. This explanation is also
applicable to one or two similar passages, in this and the other
novels, introduced for the same reason.] But the truth is
undeniable; they like to be on horseback, and can be with
difficulty convinced that any one chooses walking from other
motives than those of convenience or necessity. Accordingly,
Dinmont insisted upon mounting his guest and accompanying him on
horseback as far as the nearest town in Dumfries-shire, where he
had directed his baggage to be sent, and from which he proposed to
pursue his intended journey towards Woodbourne, the residence of
Julia Mannering.

Upon the way he questioned his companion concerning the character
of the fox-hunter; but gained little information, as he had been
called to that office while Dinmont was making the round of the
Highland fairs. 'He was a shake-rag like fellow,' he said, 'and,
he dared to say, had gipsy blood in his veins; but at ony rate he
was nane o' the smaiks that had been on their quarters in the
moss; he would ken them weel if he saw them again. There are some
no bad folk amang the gipsies too, to be sic a gang,' added
Dandie; 'if ever I see that auld randle-tree of a wife again, I'll
gie her something to buy tobacco. I have a great notion she
meant me very fair after a'.'

When they were about finally to part, the good farmer held Brown
long by the hand, and at length said, 'Captain, the woo's sae weel
up the year that it's paid a' the rent, and we have naething to do
wi' the rest o' the siller when Ailie has had her new gown, and
the bairns their bits o' duds. Now I was thinking of some safe
hand to put it into, for it's ower muckle to ware on brandy and
sugar; now I have heard that you army gentlemen can sometimes buy
yoursells up a step, and if a hundred or twa would help ye on such
an occasion, the bit scrape o' your pen would be as good to me as
the siller, and ye might just take yer ain time o' settling it; it
wad be a great convenience to me.' Brown, who felt the full
delicacy that wished to disguise the conferring an obligation
under the show of asking a favour, thanked his grateful friend
most heartily, and assured him he would have recourse to his purse
without scruple should circumstances ever render it convenient for
him. And thus they parted with many expressions of mutual regard.

CHAPTER XXVII

If thou hast any love of mercy in thee,
Turn me upon my face that I may die.

JOANNA BALLIE.

Our traveller hired a post-chaise at the place where he separated
from Dinmont, with the purpose of proceeding to Kippletringan,
there to inquire into the state of the family at Woodbourne,
before he should venture to make his presence in the country known
to Miss Mannering. The stage was a long one of eighteen or twenty
miles, and the road lay across the country. To add to the
inconveniences of the journey, the snow began to fall pretty
quickly. The postilion, however, proceeded on his journey for a
good many miles without expressing doubt or hesitation. It was not
until the night was completely set in that he intimated his
apprehensions whether he was in the right road. The increasing
snow rendered this intimation rather alarming, for, as it drove
full in the lad's face and lay whitening all around him, it served
in two different ways to confuse his knowledge of the country, and
to diminish the chance of his recovering the right track. Brown
then himself got out and looked round, not, it may be well
imagined, from any better hope than that of seeing some house at
which he might make inquiry. But none appeared; he could therefore
only tell the lad to drive steadily on. The road on which they
were ran through plantations of considerable extent and depth, and
the traveller therefore conjectured that there must be a
gentleman's house at no great distance. At length, after
struggling wearily on for about a mile, the post-boy stopped, and
protested his horses would not budge a foot farther; 'but he saw,'
he said, 'a light among the trees, which must proceed from a
house; the only way was to inquire the road there.' Accordingly,
he dismounted, heavily encumbered with a long great-coat and a
pair of boots which might have rivalled in thickness the seven-
fold shield of Ajax. As in this guise he was plodding forth upon
his voyage of discovery, Brown's impatience prevailed, and,
jumping out of the carriage, he desired the lad to stop where he
was by the horses, and he would himself go to the house; a command
which the driver most joyfully obeyed.

Our traveller groped along the side of the inclosure from which
the light glimmered, in order to find some mode of approaching in
that direction, and, after proceeding for some space, at length
found a stile in the hedge, and a pathway leading into the
plantation, which in that place was of great extent. This promised
to lead to the light which was the object of his search, and
accordingly Brown proceeded in that direction, but soon totally
lost sight of it among the trees. The path, which at first seemed
broad and well marked by the opening of the wood through which it
winded, was now less easily distinguishable, although the
whiteness of the snow afforded some reflected light to assist his
search. Directing himself as much as possible through the more
open parts of the wood, he proceeded almost a mile without either
recovering a view of the light or seeing anything resembling a
habitation. Still, however, he thought it best to persevere in
that direction. It must surely have been a light in the hut of a
forester, for it shone too steadily to be the glimmer of an ignis
fatuus. The ground at length became broken and declined rapidly,
and, although Brown conceived he still moved along what had once
at least been a pathway, it was now very unequal, and the snow
concealing those breaches and inequalities, the traveller had one
or two falls in consequence. He began now to think of turning
back, especially as the falling snow, which his impatience had
hitherto prevented his attending to, was coming on thicker and
faster.

Willing, however, to make a last effort, he still advanced a
little way, when to his great delight he beheld the light opposite
at no great distance, and apparently upon a level with him. He
quickly found that this last appearance was deception, for the
ground continued so rapidly to sink as made it obvious there was a
deep dell, or ravine of some kind, between him and the object of
his search. Taking every precaution to preserve his footing, he
continued to descend until he reached the bottom of a very steep
and narrow glen, through which winded a small rivulet, whose
course was then almost choked with snow. He now found himself
embarrassed among the ruins of cottages, whose black gables,
rendered more distinguishable by the contrast with the whitened
surface from which they rose, were still standing; the side-walls
had long since given way to time, and, piled in shapeless heaps
and covered with snow, offered frequent and embarrassing obstacles
to our traveller's progress. Still, however, he persevered,
crossed the rivulet, not without some trouble, and at length, by
exertions which became both painful and perilous, ascended its
opposite and very rugged bank, until he came on a level with the
building from which the gleam proceeded.

It was difficult, especially by so imperfect a light, to discover
the nature of this edifice; but it seemed a square building of
small size, the upper part of which was totally ruinous. It had,
perhaps, been the abode in former times of some lesser proprietor,
or a place of strength and concealment, in case of need, for one
of greater importance. But only the lower vault remained, the arch
of which formed the roof in the present state of the building.
Brown first approached the place from whence the light proceeded,
which was a long narrow slit or loop-hole, such as usually are to
be found in old castles. Impelled by curiosity to reconnoitre the
interior of this strange place before he entered, Brown gazed in
at this aperture. A scene of greater desolation could not well be
imagined. There was a fire upon the floor, the smoke of which,
after circling through the apartment, escaped by a hole broken in
the arch above. The walls, seen by this smoky light, had the rude
and waste appearance of a ruin of three centuries old at least. A
cask or two, with some broken boxes and packages, lay about the
place in confusion. But the inmates chiefly occupied Brown's
attention. Upon a lair composed of straw, with a blanket stretched
over it, lay a figure, so still that, except that it was not
dressed in the ordinary habiliments of the grave, Brown would have
concluded it to be a corpse. On a steadier view he perceived it
was only on the point of becoming so, for he heard one or two of
those low, deep, and hard-drawn sighs that precede dissolution
when the frame is tenacious of life. A female figure, dressed in a
long cloak, sate on a stone by this miserable couch; her elbows
rested upon her knees, and her face, averted from the light of an
iron lamp beside her, was bent upon that of the dying person. She
moistened his mouth from time to time with some liquid, and
between whiles sung, in a low monotonous cadence, one of those
prayers, or rather spells, which, in some parts of Scotland and
the north of England, are used by the vulgar and ignorant to speed
the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling of the bell in
Catholic days. She accompanied this dismal sound with a slow
rocking motion of her body to and fro, as if to keep time with her
song. The words ran nearly thus:--

Wasted, weary, wherefore stay,
Wrestling thus with earth and clay?
From the body pass away.
Hark! the mass is singing.

From thee doff thy mortal weed,
Mary Mother be thy speed,
Saints to help thee at thy need.
Hark! the knell is ringing.

Fear not snow-drift driving fast,
Sleet, or hail, or levin blast.
Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast,
And the sleep be on thee cast
That shall ne'er know waking.

Haste thee, haste thee, to be gone,
Earth flits fast, and time draws on.
Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan,
Day is near the breaking.

The songstress paused, and was answered by one or two deep and
hollow groans, that seemed to proceed from the very agony of the
mortal strife. 'It will not be,' she muttered to herself; 'he
cannot pass away with that on his mind, it tethers him here--

Heaven cannot abide it,
Earth refuses to hide it. [Footnote: See Note 6.]

I must open the door'; and, rising, she faced towards the door of
the apartment, observing heedfully not to turn back her head, and,
withdrawing a bolt or two (for, notwithstanding the miserable
appearance of the place, the door was cautiously secured), she
lifted the latch, saying,

Open lock, end strife,
Come death, and pass life.

Brown, who had by this time moved from his post, stood before her
as she opened the door. She stepped back a pace, and he entered,
instantly recognising, but with no comfortable sensation, the same
gipsy woman whom he had met in Bewcastle. She also knew him at
once, and her attitude, figure, and the anxiety of her
countenance, assumed the appearance of the well-disposed ogress of
a fairy tale, warning a stranger not to enter the dangerous castle
of her husband. The first words she spoke (holding up her hands in
a reproving manner) were, 'Said I not to ye, Make not, meddle not?
Beware of the redding straik! [Footnote: The redding straik,
namely, a blow received by a peacemaker who interferes betwixt two
combatants, to red or separate them, is proverbially said to be
the most dangerous blow a man can receive.] You are come to no
house o' fair-strae death.' So saying, she raised the lamp and
turned its light on the dying man, whose rude and harsh features
were now convulsed with the last agony. A roll of linen about his
head was stained with blood, which had soaked also through the
blankets and the straw. It was, indeed, under no natural disease
that the wretch was suffering. Brown started back from this
horrible object, and, turning to the gipsy, exclaimed, 'Wretched
woman, who has done this?'

'They that were permitted,' answered Meg Merrilies, while she
scanned with a close and keen glance the features of the expiring
man. 'He has had a sair struggle; but it's passing. I kenn'd he
would pass when you came in. That was the death-ruckle; he's
dead.'

Sounds were now heard at a distance, as of voices. 'They are
coming,' said she to Brown; 'you are a dead man if ye had as mony
lives as hairs.' Brown eagerly looked round for some weapon of
defence. There was none near. He then rushed to the door with the
intention of plunging among the trees, and making his escape by
flight from what he now esteemed a den of murderers, but Merrilies
held him with a masculine grasp. 'Here,' she said, 'here, be still
and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see or hear, and nothing
shall befall you.'

Brown, in these desperate circumstances, remembered this woman's
intimation formerly, and thought he had no chance of safety but in
obeying her. She caused him to couch down among a parcel of straw
on the opposite side of the apartment from the corpse, covered him
carefully, and flung over him two or three old sacks which lay
about the place. Anxious to observe what was to happen, Brown
arranged as softly as he could the means of peeping from under the
coverings by which he was hidden, and awaited with a throbbing
heart the issue of this strange and most unpleasant adventure. The
old gipsy in the meantime set about arranging the dead body,
composing its limbs, and straighting 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.

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
was 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 against every human feeling--the
bitterness of his emotions almost choked him. He endeavoured 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 altogether 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 clue. 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 minutise, as if with the skill and
feelings of a connoisseur. A long, dark-coloured sea-cloak, which
she dragged out of a corner, was disposed for a pall. The face she
left bare, after closing the mouth and eyes, and arranged the
capes of the cloak 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.

'Ay, ay, dead enough,' said another; 'but here's what shall give
him a rousing lykewake.' 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
of them should approach too nearly the place of Brown's
concealment.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Nor board nor garner own we now,
Nor roof nor latched door,
Nor kind mate, bound, by holy vow,
To bless a good man's store
Noon lulls us in a gloomy den,
And night is grown our day;
Uprouse ye, then, my merry men!
And use it as ye may

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 out of which they drank their spirits.
'Here's to his good voyage!' said one of the seamen, drinking; 'a
squally night he's got, however, to drift through the sky in.'

We omit here various execrations with which these honest gentlemen
garnished their discourse, retaining only such of their expletives
as are least offensive.

''A does not mind wind and weather; 'a has had many a north-
easter in his day.'

'He had his last yesterday,' said another gruffly; 'and now old
Meg may pray for his last fair wind, as she's often done before.'

'I'll pray for nane o' him,' said Meg, 'nor for you neither, you
randy dog. The times are sair altered since I was a kinchen-mort.
Men were men then, and fought other in the open field, and there
was nae milling in the darkmans. And the gentry had kind hearts,
and would have given baith lap and pannel to ony puir gipsy; and
there was not one, from Johnnie Faa the upright man to little
Christie that was in the panniers, would cloyed a dud from them.
But ye are a' altered from the gude auld rules, and no wonder that
you scour the cramp-ring and trine to the cheat sae often. Yes, ye
are a' altered: you'll eat the goodman's meat, drink his drink,
sleep on the strammel in his barn, and break his house and cut his
throat for his pains! There's blood on your hands, too, ye dogs,
mair than ever came there by fair righting. See how ye'll die
then. Lang it was ere he died; he strove, and strove sair, and
could neither die nor live; but you--half the country will see
how ye'll grace the woodie.'

The party set up a hoarse laugh at Meg's prophecy.

'What made you come back here, ye auld beldam?' said one of the
gipsies; 'could ye not have staid where you were, and spaed
fortunes to the Cumberland flats? Bing out and tour, ye auld
devil, and see that nobody has scented; that's a' you're good for
now.'

'Is that a' I am good for now?' said the indignant matron. 'I was
good for mair than that in the great fight between our folk and
Patrico Salmon's; if I had not helped you with these very fambles
(holding up her hands), Jean Baillie would have frummagem'd you,
ye feckless do-little!'

There was here another laugh at the expense of the hero who had
received this amazon's assistance.

'Here, mother,' said one of the sailors, 'here's a cup of the
right for you, and never mind that bully-huff.'

Meg drank the spirits, and, withdrawing herself from farther
conversation, sat down before the spot where Brown lay hid, in
such a posture that it would have been difficult for any one to
have approached it without her rising. The men, however, showed no
disposition to disturb her.

They closed around the fire and held deep consultation together;
but the low tone in which they spoke, and the cant language which
they used, prevented Brown from understanding much of their
conversation. He gathered in general that they expressed great
indignation against some individual. 'He shall have his gruel,'
said one, and then whispered something very low into the ear of
his comrade.

'I'll have nothing to do with that,' said the other.

'Are you turned hen-hearted, Jack?'

'No, by G-d, no more than yourself, but I won't. It was something
like that stopped all the trade fifteen or twenty years ago. You
have heard of the Loup?'

'I have heard HIM (indicating the corpse by a jerk of his head)
tell about that job. G-d, how he used to laugh when he showed us
how he fetched him off the perch!'

'Well, but it did up the trade for one while,' said Jack.

'How should that be?' asked the surly villain.

'Why,' replied Jack, 'the people got rusty about it, and would not
deal, and they had bought so many brooms that--'

'Well, for all that,' said the other, 'I think we should be down
upon the fellow one of these darkmans and let him get it well.'

'But old Meg's asleep now,' said another; 'she grows a driveller,
and is afraid of her shadow. She'll sing out, some of these odd-
come-shortlies, if you don't look sharp.'

'Never fear,' said the old gipsy man; 'Meg's true-bred; she's the
last in the gang that will start; but she has some queer ways, and
often cuts queer words.'

With more of this gibberish they continued the conversation,
rendering it thus, even to each other, a dark obscure dialect,
eked out by significant nods and signs, but never expressing
distinctly, or in plain language, the subject on which it turned.
At length one of them, observing Meg was still fast asleep, or
appeared to be so, desired one of the lads 'to hand in the black
Peter, that they might flick it open.' The boy stepped to the door
and brought in a portmanteau, which Brown instantly recognised for
his own. His thoughts immediately turned to the unfortunate lad he
had left with the carriage. Had the ruffians murdered him? was the
horrible doubt that crossed his mind. The agony of his attention
grew yet keener, and while the villains pulled out and admired the
different articles of his clothes and linen, he eagerly listened
for some indication that might intimate the fate of the postilion.
But the ruffians were too much delighted with their prize, and too
much busied in examining its contents, to enter into any detail
concerning the manner in which they had acquired it. The
portmanteau contained various articles of apparel, a pair of
pistols, a leathern case with a few papers, and some money, etc.,
etc. At any other time it would have provoked Brown excessively to
see the unceremonious manner in which the thieves shared his
property, and made themselves merry at the expense of the owner.
But the moment was too perilous to admit any thoughts but what had
immediate reference to self-preservation.

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