your soul: I will curse you in your homestead
and in the wife it shelters and in the children that will never
bear your name. Yea, and ye shall be cursed.

CAMPBELL. (_Startled--betrays agitation--the snuff is spilled from
his trembling hand._) Hoot toot, woman! ye're, ye're--(_Angrily_) Ye
auld beldame, to say such things to me! I'll have ye first
whippet and syne droont for a witch. Damn thae stubborn and
supersteetious cattle! (_To_ SANDEMAN) We should have come in here
before him and listened in the barn, Sandeman!

SANDEMAN. Ah, listen behind the door you mean! Now I never
thought of that!

CAMPBELL. Did ye not! Humph! Well, no doubt there are a good many
things in the universe that yet wait for your thought upon them.
What would be your objections, now?

SANDEMAN. There are two objections, Kilmhor, that you would
understand.

CAMPBELL. Name them.

SANDEMAN. Well, in the first place, we have not wings like crows
to fly--and the footsteps on the snow--Second point--the woman
would have told him we were there.

CAMPBELL. Not if I told her I had power to clap her in Inverness
jail.

MARY STEWART (_in contempt_). Yes, even if ye had told me ye had
power to clap me in hell, Mr. Campbell.

CAMPBELL. Lift me that screeching Jezebel oot o' here; Sandeman,
we'll mak' a quick finish o' this. (_Soldiers take her towards
barn._) No, not there; pitch the old girzie into the snow.

MARY STEWART. Ye'll never find him, Campbell, never, never!

CAMPBELL (_enraged_). Find him! Aye, by God I'll find him, if I
have to keek under every stone on the mountains from the Boar of
Badenoch to the Sow of Athole. (_Old woman and soldiers go
outside._) And now, Captain Sandeman, you an' me must have a word
or two. I noted your objection to listening ahint doors and so
on. Now, I make a' necessary allowances for youth and the grand
and magneeficent ideas commonly held, for a little while, in that
period. I had them myself. But, man, gin ye had trod the floor of
the Parliament Hoose in Edinburry as long as I did, wi' a pair o'
thin hands at the bottom o' toom pockets, ye'd ha'e shed your
fine notions, as I did. Noo, fine pernickety noansense will no'
do in this business--

SANDEMAN. Sir!

CAMPBELL. Softly, softly, Captain Sandeman, and hear till what I
have to say. I have noticed with regret several things in your
remarks and bearing which are displeasing to me. I would say just
one word in your ear; it is this. These things,