eath
ye'll never die. Willie Faa and his folk maun live as weel as the laird
o' Clennel. But, there's my thumb, not a four-footed thing, nor the
feather o' a bird, shall be touched by me or mine. But I see the light
is out in the laird's chamber window--he is asleep and high up amang the
turrets--and wherefore should ye set human bodies in byres and stables
in a night like this, when your Ha' fire is bleezing bonnily, and there
is room eneugh around it for us a'? Gie us a seat by the cheek o' your
hearth, and ye shall be nae loser; and I promise ye that we shall be
off, bag and baggage, before the skreigh o' day, or the laird kens where
his head lies."

Andrew would fain have refused this request, but he knew that it
amounted to a command; and, moreover, while he had been speaking with
the chief of the tribe, the maid-servants of the household, who had
followed him and the other men-servants to the door, had divers of them
been solicited by the females of the gang to have futurity revealed to
them. And whether it indeed be that curiosity is more powerful in woman
than in man (as it is generally said to be), I do not profess to
determine; but certain it is, that the laird of Clennel's maid-servants,
immediately on the hint being given by the gipsies, felt a very ardent
desire to have a page or two from the sybilline leaves read to them--at
least that part of them which related to their future husbands, and the
time when they should obtain them. Therefore, they backed the petition
or command of King Willie, and said to Andrew--

"Really, Mr. Smith, it would be very unchristian-like to put poor
wandering folk into cauld out-houses on a night like this; and, as
Willie says, there is room enough in the Ha'."

"That may be a' very true, lasses," returned Andrew, "but only ye think
what a dirdum there would be if the laird were to waken or get wit o't!"

"Fearna the laird," said Elspeth, the wife of King Willie--"I will lay a
spell on him that he canna be roused frae sleep, till I, at sunrise,
wash my hands in Darden Lough."

The sybil then raised her arms and waved them fantastically in the air,
uttering, as she waved them, the following uncouth rhymes by way of
incantation--

"Bonny Queen Mab, bonny Queen Mab,
Wave ye your wee bits o' poppy wings
Ower Clennel's laird, that he may sleep
Till I hae washed where Darden springs."

Thus assured, Andrew yielded to his fears and the wishes of his
fello