she said her "mutch" was the only thing that
gave her comfort, and the next she slackened the strings and let it back
upon her neck, in a passion at it for making her too hot. Her talk was a
wild, somewhat weird, farrago of utterly meaningless balderdash, mere
inarticulate gabble, snatches of old Jacobite ballads and exaggerated
phrases from the drama, to which she suited equally exaggerated action.
She "babbled of green fields" and Highland glens; she prophesied "the
drawing of the claymore," with a lofty disregard of cause or
common-sense; and she broke out suddenly, with uplifted hands and eyes,
into ecstatic "Heaven bless hims!" and "Heaven forgive hims!" She had
been a camp-follower in her younger days, and she was never tired of
expatiating on the gallantry, the fame, and the beauty of the 42nd
Highlanders. Her patriotism knew no bounds, and her prolixity was much
on the same scale. This Witch of Endor offered to tell my fortune, with
much dignity and proper oracular enunciation. But on my holding forth my
hand a somewhat ludicrous incident occurred. "Na, na," she said; "wait
till I have a draw of my pipe." Down she sat in the corner, puffing
vigorously and regaling the lady behind the counter with conversation
more remarkable for stinging satire than prophetic dignity. The person
in question had "mair weeg than hair on her head" (did not the chignon
plead guilty at these words?)--"wad be better if she had less
tongue"--and would come at last to the grave, a goal which, in a few
words, she invested with "warning circumstance" enough to make a Stoic
shudder. Suddenly, in the midst of this, she rose up and beckoned me to
approach. The oracles of my Highland sorceress had no claim to
consideration except in the matter of obscurity. In "question hard and
sentence intricate" she beat the priests of Delphi; in bold, unvarnished
falsity (as regards the past) even spirit-rapping was a child to her.
All that I could gather may be thus summed up shortly: that I was to
visit America, that I was to be very happy, and that I was to be much
upon the sea, predictions which, in consideration of an uneasy stomach,
I can scarcely think agreeable with one another. Two incidents alone
relieved the dead level of idiocy and incomprehensible gabble. The first
was the comical announcement that "when I drew fish to the Marquis of
Bute, I should take care of my sweetheart," from which I deduce the fact
that at some period of my life I shall