her this warst and last o' the
evils o' mortals?"

"It's just the like o' her the auld villain likes best," rejoined Christy.
"He doesna gie a doit for a gizzened sinner, wha will fa' into his hands at
the lang run without trouble. But the young, the blooming, and the bonny
are aye sair beset by temptations; and, heard ye never, Mrs Webster, o'
Marion's meetings at the Three Sisters, sometimes, they say, at the dead
hour, wi' some lover that naebody ever kenned."

"Ay, ay, dame," said Widow Lindsay; "that's just _his_ way. He comes in the
shape o' a young lover, and beguiles the hearts o' young maidens. Ye mind
o' bonny Peggy Lorimer o' the town's end, wha never did mair guid after she
met a stranger in the woods o' Ballochgray. Ae glance o' his ee, she said,
took awa her heart; and, every day after, she pined and pined, and wandered
amang the woods till she grew like a wraith, but nae mair o' him did she
ever see. I stricked her wi' my ain hands, and sic a corpse I never
handled. There wasna a pound o' flesh on her bones; and the carriers at the
burial aye said, that there wasna a corpse ava in the coffin. But puir
Marion has dreed a waur weird."

"My puir bairn! my puir bairn!" cried the mother. "The folk o' Leslie aye
said she wad ride in her carriage, for she was the bonniest lass that ever
was seen in Christ's Kirk. But, wear-awins! little kenned they what kind o'
a carriage she wad ride awa in on her marriage night."

"Some folks say, the monks will pray her back again," rejoined Meg; "but,
my faith, they'll hae hard work o't. He'll no let her awa without a fearfu
tuilzie, Christy."

"She'll never mair be seen on earth, woman," answered Christy. "And, even
if she were to be prayed back again, she wad never be the creature she was
again. A coal black lire, and singit ee-brees, wadna set her auld lovers in
Christ's Kirk in a bleeze again."

"They should watch the smoking field o' Dysart," cried Widow Lindsay. "If
she come again ava, it will be through that deil's porch. But what noise is
that, Kitty? Didna ye hear the sound o' carriage wheels?"

The party listened attentively; and, to be sure, there was a carriage
coming rattling along the street.

"Get out the Latin Bible, Wat!" cried Kitty. "He's maybe coming to tak us
awa next."

The listening continued; and when the sounds ceased, as the carriage
stopped at the door, and the postilion's whip cracked over the restless
horses, a cry of terror rang throug