nd out later that this
was Picardy, a village where the French weavers wrought for the Linen
Company. Here I got a fresh direction for Pilrig, my destination; and a
little beyond, on the wayside, came by a gibbet and two men hanged in
chains. They were dipped in tar, as the manner is; the wind span them,
the chains clattered, and the birds hung about the uncanny jumping-jacks
and cried. The sight coming on me suddenly, like an illustration of my
fears, I could scarce be done with examining it and drinking in
discomfort. And as I thus turned and turned about the gibbet, what
should I strike on, but a weird old wife, that sat behind a leg of it,
and nodded, and talked aloud to herself with becks and courtesies.

"Who are these two, mother?" I asked, and pointed to the corpses.

"A blessing on your precious face!" she cried. "Twa joes[7] o' mine:
just twa o' my old joes, my hinny dear."

"What did they suffer for?" I asked.

"Ou, just for the guid cause," said she. "Aften I spaed to them the way
that it would end. Twa shillin' Scots; no pickle mair; and there are twa
bonny callants hingin' for 't! They took it frae a wean[8] belanged to
Brouchton."

"Ay!" said I to myself, and not to the daft limmer, "and did they come
to such a figure for so poor a business? This is to lose all indeed."

"Gie's your loof,[9] hinny," says she, "and let me spae your weird to
ye."

"No, mother," said I, "I see far enough the way I am. It's an unco thing
to see too far in front."

"I read it in your bree," she said. "There's a bonnie lassie that has
bricht een, and there's a wee man in a braw coat, and a big man in a
pouthered wig, and there's the shadow of the wuddy,[10] joe, that lies
braid across your path. Gie's your loof, hinny, and let Auld Merren spae
it to ye bonny."

The two chance shots that seemed to point at Alan and the daughter of
James More, struck me hard; and I fled from the eldritch creature,
casting her a baubee, which she continued to sit and play with under the
moving shadows of the hanged.

My way down the causeway of Leith Walk would have been more pleasant to
me but for this encounter. The old rampart ran among fields, the like of
them I had never seen for artfulness of agriculture; I was pleased,
besides, to be so far in the still countryside; but the shackles of the
gibbet clattered in my head; and the mops and mows of the old witch, and
the thought of the dead men, hag-rode my spirits. To hang on a gallo