'What's to be done now. Counsellor?' said the Colonel to Pleydell.

'Why, I wish we could have seen Mac-Morlan,' said the Counsellor, 'who is
a sensible fellow himself, and would besides have acted under my advice.
But there is little harm. Our friend here must be made sui juris. He is
at present an escaped prisoner, the law has an awkward claim upon him; he
must be placed rectus in curia, that is the first object; for which
purpose, Colonel, I will accompany you in your carriage down to Hazlewood
House. The distance is not great; we will offer our bail, and I am
confident I can easily show Mr.--I beg his pardon--Sir Robert Hazlewood,
the necessity of receiving it.'

'With all my heart,' said the Colonel; and, ringing the bell, gave the
necessary orders. 'And what is next to be done?'

'We must get hold of Mac-Morlan, and look out for more proof.'

'Proof!' said the Colonel, 'the thing is as clear as daylight: here are
Mr. Sampson and Miss Bertram, and you yourself at once recognise the
young gentleman as his father's image; and he himself recollects all the
very peculiar circumstances preceding his leaving this country. What else
is necessary to conviction?'

'To moral conviction nothing more, perhaps,' said the experienced lawyer,
'but for legal proof a great deal. Mr. Bertram's recollections are his
own recollections merely, and therefore are not evidence in his own
favour. Miss Bertram, the learned Mr. Sampson, and I can only say, what
every one who knew the late Ellangowan will readily agree in, that this
gentleman is his very picture. But that will not make him Ellangowan's
son and give him the estate.'

'And what will do so?' said the Colonel.

'Why, we must have a distinct probation. There are these gipsies; but
then, alas! they are almost infamous in the eye of law, scarce capable of
bearing evidence, and Meg Merrilies utterly so, by the various accounts
which she formerly gave of the matter, and her impudent denial of all
knowledge of the fact when I myself examined her respecting it.'

'What must be done then?' asked Mannering.

'We must try,' answered the legal sage, 'what proof can be got at in
Holland among the persons by whom our young friend was educated. But then
the fear of being called in question for the murder of the gauger may
make them silent; or, if they speak, they are either foreigners or
outlawed smugglers. In short, I see doubts.'

'Under favour, most learned and honoured sir,' said the Dominie, 'I trust
HE who hath restored little Harry Bertram to his friends will not leave
His own work imperfect.'

'I trust so too, Mr. Sampson,' said Pleydell; 'but we must use the means;
and I am afraid we shall have more difficulty in procuring them than I at
first thought. But a faint heart never won a fair lady; and, by the way
(apart to Miss Mannering, while Bertram was engaged with his sister),
there's a vindication of Holland for you! What smart fellows do you think
Leyden and Utrecht must send forth, when such a very genteel and handsome
young man comes from the paltry schools of Middleburgh?'

'Of a verity,' said the Dominie, jealous of the reputation of the Dutch
seminary--'of a verity, Mr. Pleydell, but I make it known to you that I
myself laid the foundation of his education.'

'True, my dear Dominie,' answered the Advocate, 'that accounts for his
proficiency in the graces, without question. But here comes your
carriage, Colonel. Adieu, young folks. Miss Julia, keep your heart till I
come back again; let there be nothing done to prejudice my right whilst I
am non valens agere.'

Their reception at Hazlewood House was more cold and formal than usual;
for in general the Baronet expressed great respect for Colonel Mannering,
and Mr. Pleydell, besides being a man of good family and of high general
estimation, was Sir Robert's old friend. But now he seemed dry and
embarrassed in his manner. 'He would willingly,' he said, 'receive bail,
notwithstanding that the offence had been directly perpetrated,
committed, and done against young Hazlewood of Hazlewood; but the young
man had given himself a fictitious description, and was altogether that
sort of person who should not be liberated, discharged, or let loose upon
society; and therefore--'

'I hope, Sir Robert Hazlewood,' said the Colonel, 'you do not mean to
doubt my word when I assure you that he served under me as cadet in
India?'

'By no means or account whatsoever. But you call him a cadet; now he
says, avers, and upholds that he was a captain, or held a troop in your
regiment.'

'He was promoted since I gave up the command.'

'But you must have heard of it?'

'No. I returned on account of family circumstances from India, and have
not since been solicitous to hear particular news from the regiment; the
name of Brown, too, is so common that I might have seen his promotion in
the "Gazette" without noticing it. But a day or two will bring letters
from his commanding officer.'

'But I am told and informed, Mr. Pleydell,' answered Sir Robert, still
hesitating, 'that he does not mean to abide by this name of Brown, but is
to set up a claim to the estate of Ellangowan, under the name of
Bertram.'

'Ay, who says that?' said the Counsellor.

'Or,' demanded the soldier, 'whoever says so, does that give a right to
keep him in prison?'

'Hush, Colonel,' said the Lawyer; 'I am sure you would not, any more than
I, countenance him if he prove an impostor. And, among friends, who
informed you of this, Sir Robert?'

'Why, a person, Mr. Pleydell,' answered the Baronet, 'who is peculiarly
interested in investigating, sifting, and clearing out this business to
the bottom; you will excuse my being more particular.'

'O, certainly,' replied Pleydell; 'well, and he says--?'

'He says that it is whispered about among tinkers, gipsies, and other
idle persons that there is such a plan as I mentioned to you, and that
this young man, who is a bastard or natural son of the late Ellangowan,
is pitched upon as the impostor from his strong family likeness.'

'And was there such a natural son, Sir Robert?' demanded the Counsellor.

'O, certainly, to my own positive knowledge. Ellangowan had him placed as
cabin-boy or powder-monkey on board an armed sloop or yacht belonging to
the revenue, through the interest of the late Commissioner Bertram, a
kinsman of his own.'

'Well, Sir Robert,' said the Lawyer, taking the word out of the mouth of
the impatient soldier, 'you have told me news. I shall investigate them,
and if I find them true, certainly Colonel Mannering and I will not
countenance this young man. In the meanwhile, as we are all willing to
make him forthcoming to answer all complaints against him, I do assure
you, you will act most illegally, and incur heavy responsibility, if you
refuse our bail.'

'Why, Mr. Pleydell,' said Sir Robert, who knew the high authority of the
Counsellor's opinion, 'as you must know best, and as you promise to give
up this young man--'

'If he proves an impostor,' replied the Lawyer, with some emphasis.

'Ay, certainly. Under that condition I will take your bail; though I must
say an obliging, well-disposed, and civil neighbour of mine, who was
himself bred to the law, gave me a hint or caution this morning against
doing so. It was from him I learned that this youth was liberated and had
come abroad, or rather had broken prison. But where shall we find one to
draw the bail-bond?'

'Here,' said the Counsellor, applying himself to the bell, 'send up my
clerk, Mr. Driver; it will not do my character harm if I dictate the
needful myself.' It was written accordingly and signed, and, the Justice
having subscribed a regular warrant for Bertram alias Brown's discharge,
the visitors took their leave.

Each threw himself into his own corner of the post-chariot, and said
nothing for some time. The Colonel first broke silence: 'So you intend to
give up this poor young fellow at the first brush?'

'Who, I?' replied the Counsellor. 'I will not give up one hair of his
head, though I should follow them to the court of last resort in his
behalf; but what signified mooting points and showing one's hand to that
old ass? Much better he should report to his prompter, Glossin, that we
are indifferent or lukewarm in the matter. Besides, I wished to have a
peep at the enemies' game.'

'Indeed!' said the soldier. 'Then I see there are stratagems in law as
well as war. Well, and how do you like their line of battle?'

'Ingenious,' said Mr. Pleydell, 'but I think desperate; they are
finessing too much, a common fault on such occasions.'

During this discourse the carriage rolled rapidly towards Woodbourne
without anything occurring worthy of the reader's notice, excepting their
meeting with young Hazlewood, to whom the Colonel told the extraordinary
history of Bertram's reappearance, which he heard with high delight, and
then rode on before to pay Miss Bertram his compliments on an event so
happy and so unexpected.

We return to the party at Woodbourne. After the departure of Mannering,
the conversation related chiefly to the fortunes of the Ellangowan
family, their domains, and their former power. 'It was, then, under the
towers of my fathers,' said Bertram, 'that I landed some days since, in
circumstances much resembling those of a vagabond! Its mouldering turrets
and darksome arches even then awakened thoughts of the deepest interest,
and recollections which I was unable to decipher. I will now visit them
again with other feelings, and, I trust, other and better hopes.'

'Do not go there now,' said his sister. 'The house of our ancestors is at
present the habitation of a wretch as insidious as dangerous, whose arts
and villainy accomplished the ruin and broke the heart of our unhappy
father.'

'You increase my anxiety,' replied her brother, 'to confront this
miscreant, even in the den he has constructed for himself; I think I have
seen him.'

'But you must consider,' said Julia, 'that you are now left under Lucy's
guard and mine, and are responsible to us for all your motions, consider,
I have not been a lawyer's mistress twelve hours for nothing, and I
assure you it would be madness to attempt to go to Ellangowan just now.
The utmost to which I can consent is, that we shall walk in a body to the
head of the Woodbourne avenue, and from that perhaps we may indulge you
with our company as far as a rising ground in the common, whence your
eyes may be blessed with a distant prospect of those gloomy towers which
struck so strongly your sympathetic imagination.'

The party was speedily agreed upon; and the ladies, having taken their
cloaks, followed the route proposed, under the escort of Captain Bertram.
It was a pleasant winter morning, and the cool breeze served only to
freshen, not to chill, the fair walkers. A secret though unacknowledged
bond of kindness combined the two ladies, and Bertram, now hearing the
interesting accounts of his own family, now communicating his adventures
in Europe and in India, repaid the pleasure which he received. Lucy felt
proud of her brother, as well from the bold and manly turn of his
sentiments as from the dangers he had encountered, and the spirit with
which he had surmounted them. And Julia, while she pondered on her
father's words, could not help entertaining hopes that the independent
spirit which had seemed to her father presumption in the humble and
plebeian Brown would have the grace of courage, noble bearing, and high
blood in the far-descended heir of Ellangowan.

They reached at length the little eminence or knoll upon the highest part
of the common, called Gibbie's Knowe--a spot repeatedly mentioned in this
history as being on the skirts of the Ellangowan estate. It commanded a
fair variety of hill and dale, bordered with natural woods, whose naked
boughs at this season relieved the general colour of the landscape with a
dark purple hue; while in other places the prospect was more formally
intersected by lines of plantation, where the Scotch firs displayed their
variety of dusky green. At the distance of two or three miles lay the bay
of Ellangowan, its waves rippling under the influence of the western
breeze. The towers of the ruined castle, seen high over every object in
the neighbourhood, received a brighter colouring from the wintry sun.

'There,' said Lucy Bertram, pointing them out in the distance, 'there is
the seat of our ancestors. God knows, my dear brother, I do not covet in
your behalf the extensive power which the lords of these ruins are said
to have possessed so long, and sometimes to have used so ill. But, O that
I might see you in possession of such relics of their fortune as should
give you an honourable independence, and enable you to stretch your hand
for the protection of the old and destitute dependents of our family,
whom our poor father's death--'

'True, my dearest Lucy,' answered the young heir of Ellangowan; 'and I
trust, with the assistance of Heaven, which has so far guided us, and
with that of these good friends, whom their own generous hearts have
interested in my behalf, such a consummation of my hard adventures is now
not unlikely. But as a soldier I must look with some interest upon that
worm-eaten hold of ragged stone; and if this undermining scoundrel who is
now in possession dare to displace a pebble of it--'

He was here interrupted by Dinmont, who came hastily after them up the
road, unseen till he was near the party: 'Captain, Captain! ye're wanted.
Ye're wanted by her ye ken o'.'

And immediately Meg Merrilies, as if emerging out of the earth, ascended
from the hollow way and stood before them. 'I sought ye at the house,'
she said, 'and found but him (pointing to Dinmont). But ye are right, and
I was wrang; it is HERE we should meet, on this very spot, where my eyes
last saw your father. Remember your promise and follow me.'






CHAPTER XXIV
     To hail the king in seemly sort
      The ladie was full fain,
     But King Arthur, all sore amazed,
      No answer made again
     'What wight art thou,' the ladie said,
      'That will not speak to me?
     Sir, I may chance to ease thy pain,
      Though I be foul to see'

          The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.


The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of
her wicked step-mother, was more decrepit probably, and what is commonly
called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that
wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features
marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, and to the
gestures of a form which, her sex considered, might be termed gigantic.
Accordingly, the Knights of the Round Table did not recoil with more
terror from the apparition of the loathly lady placed between 'an oak and
a green holly,' than Lucy Bertram and Julia Mannering did from the
appearance of this Galwegian sibyl upon the common of Ellangowan.

'For God's sake,' said Julia, pulling out her purse, 'give that dreadful
woman something and bid her go away.'

'I cannot,' said Bertram; 'I must not offend her.'

'What keeps you here?' said Meg, exalting the harsh and rough tones of
her hollow voice. 'Why do you not follow? Must your hour call you twice?
Do you remember your oath? "Were it at kirk or market, wedding or
burial,"'--and she held high her skinny forefinger in a menacing
attitude.

Bertram--turned round to his terrified companions. 'Excuse me for a
moment; I am engaged by a promise to follow this woman.'

'Good Heavens! engaged to a madwoman?' said Julia.

'Or to a gipsy, who has her band in the wood ready to murder you!' said
Lucy.

'That was not spoken like a bairn of Ellangowan,' said Meg, frowning upon
Miss Bertram. 'It is the ill-doers are ill-dreaders.'

'In short, I must go,' said Bertram, 'it is absolutely necessary; wait
for me five minutes on this spot.'

'Five minutes?' said the gipsy, 'five hours may not bring you here
again.'

'Do you hear that?' said Julia; 'for Heaven's sake do not go!'

'I must, I must; Mr. Dinmont will protect you back to the house.'

'No,' said Meg, 'he must come with you; it is for that he is here. He
maun take part wi' hand and heart; and weel his part it is, for redding
his quarrel might have cost you dear.'

'Troth, Luckie, it's very true,' said the steady farmer; 'and ere I turn
back frae the Captain's side I'll show that I haena forgotten 't.'

'O yes,' exclaimed both the ladies at once, 'let Mr. Dinmont go with you,
if go you must, on this strange summons.'

'Indeed I must,' answered Bertram; 'but you see I am safely guarded.
Adieu for a short time; go home as fast as you can.'







He pressed his sister's hand, and took a yet more affectionate farewell
of Julia with his eyes. Almost stupefied with surprise and fear, the
young ladies watched with anxious looks the course of Bertram, his
companion, and their extraordinary guide. Her tall figure moved across
the wintry heath with steps so swift, so long, and so steady that she
appeared rather to glide than to walk. Bertram and Dinmont, both tall
men, apparently scarce equalled her in height, owing to her longer dress
and high head-gear. She proceeded straight across the common, without
turning aside to the winding path by which passengers avoided the
inequalities and little rills that traversed it in different directions.
Thus the diminishing figures often disappeared from the eye, as they
dived into such broken ground, and again ascended to sight when they were
past the hollow. There was something frightful and unearthly, as it were,
in the rapid and undeviating course which she pursued, undeterred by any
of the impediments which usually incline a traveller from the direct
path. Her way was as straight, and nearly as swift, as that of a bird
through the air. At length they reached those thickets of natural wood
which extended from the skirts of the common towards the glades and brook
of Derncleugh, and were there lost to the view.

'This is very extraordinary,' said Lucy after a pause, and turning round
to her companion; 'what can he have to do with that old hag?'

'It is very frightful,' answered Julia, 'and almost reminds me of the
tales of sorceresses, witches, and evil genii which I have heard in
India. They believe there in a fascination of the eye by which those who
possess it control the will and dictate the motions of their victims.
What can your brother have in common with that fearful woman that he
should leave us, obviously against his will, to attend to her commands?'

'At least,' said Lucy, 'we may hold him safe from harm; for she would
never have summoned that faithful creature Dinmont, of whose strength,
courage, and steadiness Henry said so much, to attend upon an expedition
where she projected evil to the person of his friend. And now let us go
back to the house till the Colonel returns. Perhaps Bertram may be back
first; at any rate, the Colonel will judge what is to be done.'

Leaning, then, upon each other's arm, but yet occasionally stumbling,
between fear and the disorder of their nerves, they at length reached the
head of the avenue, when they heard the tread of a horse behind. They
started, for their ears were awake to every sound, and beheld to their
great pleasure young Hazlewood. 'The Colonel will be here immediately,'
he said; 'I galloped on before to pay my respects to Miss Bertram, with
the 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
maybe 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 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 boy;
peer out--peer out, you 'll find them somewhere about Derncleugh, or very
probably in Warroch wood.'

Hazlewood turned his horse. 'Come back to us to dinner, Hazlewood,' cried
the Colonel. He bowed, spurred his horse, and galloped off.

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.'

'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 folks'. Od,
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?'

'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 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 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 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 blythe 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 trencherman. 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.'

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 very suspicious-looking bludgeons which she brought from a
corner. Bertram took a stout sapling, and Dandie selected a club which
might have served Hercules himself. They then left the hut together, and
in doing so Bertram took an opportunity to whisper to Dinmont, 'There's
something inexplicable 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.'

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 forward, 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 side-glance--'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 seaside. 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?'

'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 tod 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 XXV
     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 well-nigh 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 Merrilies, 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 roughies to keep the cauld wind frae you, ye desperate
do-nae-good. Ye're e'en ower weel off, and wotsna; 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 redcoats.'

'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 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 fir-timber, 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 Merrilies, 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.

At the same time this would have been no safe adventure. The flame, as it
rose and fell, while it displayed the strong, muscular, and broad-chested
frame of the ruffian, glanced also upon two brace of pistols in his belt,
and upon the hilt of his cutlass: 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 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 Merrilies; '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 gipsy; '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 ahead to
me all my life! And now, with Glossin's cursed contrivance, my crew have
been cut off, my boats destroyed, and I daresay the lugger's taken; there
were not men enough left on board to work her, far less to fight her--a
dredge-boat 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.'







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 instantly saw he was
betrayed, turned his first vengeance on Meg Merrilies, at whom he
discharged a pistol. She fell with a piercing and dreadful cry between
the shriek of pain and the sound of laughter when at its highest and most
suffocating height. 'I kenn'd it would be this way,' she said.

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 gunshot 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 assistants 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 XXVI
     For though, seduced and led astray,
       Thoust travell'd far and wander'd long,
     Thy God hath seen thee all the way,
       And all the turns that led thee wrong

          The Hall of Justice.


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 daylight and placed
erect upon his feet among three or four assistants who had remained
without the cave, he seemed stupefied 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 in the 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 hindrance. 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 Hatteraick, who was seated with his keepers on a sea-chest 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, that 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 tyke 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.