tanding before
us sticked young Blackhall with his whinger, for a wrang word said ower
their wine, or brandy, or what not: he gaed in as light as a lark, and
he came out wi' his feet foremost. I was at the winding of the corpse;
and when the bluid was washed off, he was a bonny bouk of man's body."
It may be easily believed that this ill-timed anecdote hastened the
Master's purpose of quitting a company so evil-omened and so odious.
Yet, while walking to the tree to which his horse was tied, and busying
himself with adjusting the girths of the saddle, he could not avoid
hearing, through the hedge of the little garden, a conversation
respecting himself, betwixt the lame woman and the octogenarian sibyl.
The pair had hobbled into the garden to gather rosemary, southernwood,
rue, and other plants proper to be strewed upon the body, and burned by
way of fumigation in the chimney of the cottage. The paralytic wretch,
almost exhausted by the journey, was left guard upon the corpse, lest
witches or fiends might play their sport with it.

The following law, croaking dialogue was necessarily overheard by the
Master of Ravenswood:

"That's a fresh and full-grown hemlock, Annie Winnie; mony a cummer lang
syne wad hae sought nae better horse to flee over hill and how, through
mist and moonlight, and light down in the King of France's cellar."

"Ay, cummer! but the very deil has turned as hard-hearted now as the
Lord Keeper and the grit folk, that hae breasts like whinstane. They
prick us and they pine us, and they pit us on the pinnywinkles for
witches; and, if I say my prayers backwards ten times ower, Satan will
never gie me amends o' them."

"Did ye ever see the foul thief?" asked her neighbour.

"Na!" replied the other spokeswoman; "but I trow I hae dreamed of him
mony a time, and I think the day will come they will burn me for't. But
ne'er mind, cummer! we hae this dollar of the Master's, and we'll send
doun for bread and for yill, and tobacco, and a drap brandy to burn, and
a wee pickle saft sugar; and be there deil, or nae deil, lass, we'll hae
a merry night o't."

Here her leathern chops uttered a sort of cackling, ghastly laugh,
resembling, to a certain degree, the cry of the screech-owl.

"He's a frank man, and a free-handed man, the Master," said Annie
Winnie, "and a comely personage--broad in the shouthers, and narrow
around the lunyies. He wad mak a bonny corpse; I wad like to hae the
streiking and winding o' h