CHAPTER XXV
Die, prophet! in thy speech;
For this, among the rest, was I ordained.
Henry VI. Part III.
The progress of the Borderer, who, as we have said, was the last of the party, was fearfully arrested by a hand, which caught hold of his leg as he dragged his long limbs after him in silence and perturbation through the low and narrow entrance of the subterranean passage. The steel heart of the bold yeoman had well-nigh given way, and he suppressed with difficulty a shout, which, in the defenceless posture and situation which they then occupied, might have cost all their lives. He contented himself, however, with extricating his foot from the grasp of this unexpected follower. ‘Be still,’ said a voice behind him, releasing him; ‘I am a friend-Charles Hazlewood.’
These words were uttered in a very low voice, but they produced sound enough to startle Meg Merrilies, who led the van, and who, having already gained the place where the cavern expanded, had risen upon her feet. She began, as if to confound any listening ear, to growl, to mutter, and to sing aloud, and at the same time to make a bustle among some brushwood which was now heaped in the cave.
‘Here, beldam, deyvil’s kind,’ growled the harsh voice of Dirk Hatteraick from the inside of his den, ‘what makest thou there?’
‘Laying the roughies to keep the cauld wind frae you, ye desperate do-nae-good. Ye’re e’en ower weel off, and wotsna; it will be otherwise soon.’
‘Have you brought me the brandy, and any news of my people?’ said Dirk Hatteraick.
‘There’s the flask for ye. Your people-dispersed, broken, gone, or cut to ribbands by the redcoats.’
‘Der deyvil! this coast is fatal to me.’
‘Ye may hae mair reason to say sae.’
While this dialogue went forward, Bertram and Dinmont had both gained the interior of the cave and assumed an erect position. The only light which illuminated its rugged and sable precincts was a quantity of wood burnt to charcoal in an iron grate, such as they use in spearing salmon by night. On these red embers Hatteraick from time to time threw a handful of twigs or splintered wood; but these, even when they blazed up, afforded a light much disproportioned to the extent of the cavern; and, as its principal inhabitant lay upon the side of the grate most remote from the entrance, it was not easy for him to discover distinctly objects which lay in that direction. The intruders, therefore, whose number was now augmented unexpectedly to three, stood behind the loosely-piled branches with little risk of discovery. Dinmont had the sense to keep back Hazlewood with one hand till he whispered to Bertram, ‘A friend-young Hazlewood.’
It was no time for following up the introduction, and they all stood as still as the rocks around them, obscured behind the pile of brushwood, which had been probably placed there to break the cold wind from the sea, without totally intercepting the supply of air. The branches were laid so loosely above each other that, looking through them towards the light of the fire-grate, they could easily discover what passed in its vicinity, although a much stronger degree of illumination than it afforded would not have enabled the persons placed near the bottom of the cave to have descried them in the position which they occupied.
The scene, independent of the peculiar moral interest and personal danger which attended it, had, from the effect of the light and shade on the uncommon objects which it exhibited, an appearance emphatically dismal. The light in the fire-grate was the dark-red glare of charcoal in a state of ignition, relieved from time to time by a transient flame of a more vivid or duskier light, as the fuel with which Dirk Hatteraick fed his fire was better or worse fitted for his purpose. Now a dark cloud of stifling smoke rose up to the roof of the cavern, and then lighted into a reluctant and sullen blaze, which flashed wavering up the pillar of smoke, and was suddenly rendered brighter and more lively by some drier fuel, or perhaps some splintered fir-timber, which at once converted the smoke into flame. By such fitful irradiation they could see, more or less distinctly, the form of Hatteraick, whose savage and rugged cast of features, now rendered yet more ferocious by the circumstances of his situation and the deep gloom of his mind, assorted well with the rugged and broken vault, which rose in a rude arch over and around him. The form of Meg Merrilies, which stalked about him, sometimes in the light, sometimes partially obscured in the smoke or darkness, contrasted strongly with the sitting figure of Hatteraick as he bent over the flame, and from his stationary posture was constantly visible to the spectator, while that of the female flitted around, appearing or disappearing like a spectre.
Bertram felt his blood boil at the sight of Hatteraick. He remembered him well under the name of Jansen, which the smuggler had adopted after the death of Kennedy; and he remembered also that this Jansen, and his mate Brown, the same who was shot at Woodbourne, had been the brutal tyrants of his infancy. Bertram knew farther, from piecing his own imperfect recollections with the narratives of Mannering and Pleydell, that this man was the prime agent in the act of violence which tore him from his family and country, and had exposed him to so many distresses and dangers. A thousand exasperating reflections rose within his bosom; and he could hardly refrain from rushing upon Hatteraick and blowing his brains out.
At the same time this would have been no safe adventure. The flame, as it rose and fell, while it displayed the strong, muscular, and broad-chested frame of the ruffian, glanced also upon two brace of pistols in his belt, and upon the hilt of his cutlass: it was not to be doubted that his desperation was commensurate with his personal strength and means of resistance. Both, indeed, were inadequate to encounter the combined power of two such men as Bertram himself and his friend Dinmont, without reckoning their unexpected assistant Hazlewood, who was unarmed, and of a slighter make; but Bertram felt, on a moment’s reflection, that there would be neither sense nor valour in anticipating the hangman’s office, and he considered the importance of making Hatteraick prisoner alive. He therefore repressed his indignation, and awaited what should pass between the ruffian and his gipsy guide.
‘And how are ye now?’ said the harsh and discordant tones of his female attendant.’ Said I not, it would come upon you-ay, and in this very cave, where ye harboured after the deed?’
‘Wetter and sturm, ye hag!’ replied Hatteraick, ‘keep your deyvil’s matins till they’re wanted. Have you seen Glossin?’
‘No,’ replied Meg Merrilies; ‘you’ve missed your blow, ye blood-spiller! and ye have nothing to expect from the tempter.’
‘Hagel!’ exclaimed the ruffian, ‘if I had him but by the throat! And what am I to do then?’
‘Do?’ answered the gipsy; ‘die like a man, or be hanged like a dog!’
‘Hanged, ye hag of Satan! The hemp’s not sown that shall hang me.’
‘It’s sown, and it’s grown, and it’s heckled, and it’s twisted. Did I not tell ye, when ye wad take away the boy Harry Bertram, in spite of my prayers, – did I not say he would come back when he had dree’d his weird in foreign land till his twenty-first year? Did I not say the auld fire would burn down to a spark, but wad kindle again?’
‘Well, mother, you did say so,’ said Hatteraick, in a tone that had something of despair in its accents; ‘and, donner and blitzen! I believe you spoke the truth. That younker of Ellangowan has been a rock ahead to me all my life! And now, with Glossin’s cursed contrivance, my crew have been cut off, my boats destroyed, and I daresay the lugger’s taken; there were not men enough left on board to work her, far less to fight her-a dredge-boat might have taken her. And what will the owners say? Hagel and sturm! I shall never dare go back again to Flushing.’
‘You’ll never need,’ said the gipsy.
‘What are you doing there,’ said her companion; ‘and what makes you say that?’
During this dialogue Meg was heaping some flax loosely together. Before answer to this question she dropped a firebrand upon the flax, which had been previously steeped in some spirituous liquor, for it instantly caught fire and rose in a vivid pyramid of the most brilliant light up to the very top of the vault. As it ascended Meg answered the ruffian’s question in a firm and steady voice: ‘BECAUSE THE HOUR’S COME, AND THE MAN.’
At the appointed signal Bertram and Dinmont sprung over the brushwood and rushed upon Hatteraick. Hazlewood, unacquainted with their plan of assault, was a moment later. The ruffian, who instantly saw he was betrayed, turned his first vengeance on Meg Merrilies, at whom he discharged a pistol. She fell with a piercing and dreadful cry between the shriek of pain and the sound of laughter when at its highest and most suffocating height. ‘I kenn’d it would be this way,’ she said.
Bertram, in his haste, slipped his foot upon the uneven rock which floored the cave-a fortunate stumble, for Hatteraick’s second bullet whistled over him with so true and steady an aim that, had he been standing upright, it must have lodged in his brain. Ere the smuggler could draw another pistol, Dinmont closed with him, and endeavoured by main force to pinion down his arms. Such, however, was the wretch’s personal strength, joined to the efforts of his despair, that, in spite of the gigantic force with which the Borderer grappled him, he dragged Dinmont through the blazing flax, and had almost succeeded in drawing a third pistol, which might have proved fatal to the honest farmer, had not Bertram, as well as Hazlewood, come to his assistance, when, by main force, and no ordinary exertion of it, they threw Hatteraick on the ground, disarmed him, and bound him. This scuffle, though it takes up some time in the narrative, passed in less than a single minute. When he was fairly mastered, after one or two desperate and almost convulsionary struggles, the ruffian lay perfectly still and silent. ‘He’s gaun to die game ony how,’ said Dinmont; ‘weel, I like him na the waur for that.’
This observation honest Dandie made while he was shaking the blazing flax from his rough coat and shaggy black hair, some of which had been singed in the scuffle. ‘He is quiet now,’ said Bertram; ‘stay by him and do not permit him to stir till I see whether the poor woman be alive or dead.’ With Hazlewood’s assistance he raised Meg Merrilies.
‘I kenn’d it would be this way,’ she muttered, ‘and it’s e’en this way that it should be.’
The ball had penetrated the breast below the throat. It did not bleed much externally; but Bertram, accustomed to see gunshot wounds, thought it the more alarming. ‘Good God! what shall we do for this poor woman?’ said he to Hazlewood, the circumstances superseding the necessity of previous explanation or introduction to each other.
‘My horse stands tied above in the wood,’ said Hazlewood. ‘I have been watching you these two hours. I will ride off for some assistants that may be trusted. Meanwhile, you had better defend the mouth of the cavern against every one until I return.’ He hastened away. Bertram, after binding Meg Merrilies’s wound as well as he could, took station near the mouth of the cave with a cocked pistol in his hand; Dinmont continued to watch Hatteraick, keeping a grasp like that of Hercules on his breast. There was a dead silence in the cavern, only interrupted by the low and suppressed moaning of the wounded female and by the hard breathing of the prisoner.
CHAPTER XXVI
For though, seduced and led astray,
Thoust travell’d far and wander’d long,
Thy God hath seen thee all the way,
And all the turns that led thee wrong
The Hall of Justice.
After the space of about three-quarters of an hour, which the uncertainty and danger of their situation made seem almost thrice as long, the voice of young Hazlewood was heard without. ‘Here I am,’ he cried, ‘with a sufficient party.’
‘Come in then,’ answered Bertram, not a little pleased to find his guard relieved. Hazlewood then entered, followed by two or three countrymen, one of whom acted as a peace-officer. They lifted Hatteraick up and carried him in their arms as far as the entrance of the vault was high enough to permit them; then laid him on his back and dragged him along as well as they could, for no persuasion would induce him to assist the transportation by any exertion of his own. He lay as silent and inactive in their hands as a dead corpse, incapable of opposing, but in no way aiding, their operations. When he was dragged into daylight and placed erect upon his feet among three or four assistants who had remained without the cave, he seemed stupefied and dazzled by the sudden change from the darkness of his cavern. While others were superintending the removal of Meg Merrilies, those who remained with Hatteraick attempted to make him sit down upon a fragment of rock which lay close upon the high-water mark. A strong shuddering convulsed his iron frame for an instant as he resisted their purpose. ‘Not there! Hagel! you would not make me sit THERE?’
These were the only words he spoke; but their import, and the deep tone of horror in which they were uttered, served to show what was passing in his mind.
When Meg Merrilies had also been removed from the cavern, with all the care for her safety that circumstances admitted, they consulted where she should be carried. Hazlewood had sent for a surgeon, and proposed that she should be lifted in the meantime to the nearest cottage. But the patient exclaimed with great earnestness, ‘Na, na, na! to the Kaim o’ Derncleugh-the Kaim o’ Derncleugh; the spirit will not free itself o’ the flesh but there.’
‘You must indulge her, I believe,’ said Bertram; ‘her troubled imagination will otherwise aggravate the fever of the wound.’
They bore her accordingly to the vault. On the way her mind seemed to run more upon the scene which had just passed than on her own approaching death. ‘There were three of them set upon him: I brought the twasome, but wha was the third? It would be HIMSELL, returned to work his ain vengeance!’
It was evident that the unexpected appearance of Hazlewood, whose person the outrage of Hatteraick left her no time to recognise, had produced a strong effect on her imagination. She often recurred to it. Hazlewood accounted for his unexpected arrival to Bertram by saying that he had kept them in view for some time by the direction of Mannering; that, observing them disappear into the cave, he had crept after them, meaning to announce himself and his errand, when his hand in the darkness encountering the leg of Dinmont had nearly produced a catastrophe, which, indeed, nothing but the presence of mind and fortitude of the bold yeoman could have averted.
When the gipsy arrived at the hut she produced the key; and when they entered, and were about to deposit her upon the bed, she said, in an anxious tone, ‘Na, na! not that way-the feet to the east’; and appeared gratified when they reversed her posture accordingly, and placed her in that appropriate to a dead body.
‘Is there no clergyman near,’ said Bertram, ‘to assist this unhappy woman’s devotions?’
A gentleman, the minister of the parish, who had been Charles Hazlewood’s tutor, had, with many others, caught the alarm that the murderer of Kennedy was taken on the spot where the deed had been done so many years before, and that a woman was mortally wounded. From curiosity, or rather from the feeling that his duty called him to scenes of distress, this gentleman had come to the Kaim of Derncleugh, and now presented himself. The surgeon arrived at the same time, and was about to probe the wound; but Meg resisted the assistance of either. ‘It’s no what man can do that will heal my body or save my spirit. Let me speak what I have to say, and then ye may work your will; I’se be nae hindrance. But where’s Henry Bertram?’ The assistants, to whom this name had been long a stranger, gazed upon each other. ‘Yes!’ she said, in a stronger and harsher tone, ‘I said HENRY BERTRAM OF ELLANGOWAN. Stand from the light and let me see him.’
All eyes were turned towards Bertram, who approached the wretched couch. The wounded woman took hold of his hand. ‘Look at him,’ she said, ‘all that ever saw his father or his grandfather, and bear witness if he is not their living image?’ A murmur went through the crowd; the resemblance was too striking to be denied. ‘And now hear me; and let that man,’ pointing to Hatteraick, who was seated with his keepers on a sea-chest at some distance-’let him deny what I say if he can. That is Henry Bertram, son to Godfrey Bertram, umquhile of Ellangowan; that young man is the very lad-bairn that Dirk Hatteraick carried off from Warroch wood the day that he murdered the gauger. I was there like a wandering spirit, for I longed to see that wood or we left the country. I saved the bairn’s life, and sair, sair I prigged and prayed they would leave him wi’ me. But they bore him away, and he’s been lang ower the sea, and now he’s come for his ain, and what should withstand him? I swore to keep the secret till he was ane-an’-twenty; I kenn’d he behoved to dree his weird till that day cam. I keepit that oath which I took to them; but I made another vow to mysell, that if I lived to see the day of his return I would set him in his father’s seat, if every step was on a dead man. I have keepit that oath too. I will be ae step mysell, he (pointing to Hatteraick) will soon be another, and there will be ane mair yet.’
The clergyman, now interposing, remarked it was a pity this deposition was not regularly taken and written down, and the surgeon urged the necessity of examining the wound, previously to exhausting her by questions. When she saw them removing Hatteraick, in order to clear the room and leave the surgeon to his operations, she called out aloud, raising herself at the same time upon the couch, ‘Dirk Hatteraick, you and I will never meet again until we are before the judgment-seat; will ye own to what I have said, or will you dare deny it?’ He turned his hardened brow upon her, with a look of dumb and inflexible defiance. ‘Dirk Hatteraick, dare ye deny, with my blood upon your hands, one word of what my dying breath is uttering?’ He looked at her with the same expression of hardihood and dogged stubbornness, and moved his lips, but uttered no sound. ‘Then fareweel!’ she said, ‘and God forgive you! your hand has sealed my evidence. When I was in life I was the mad randy gipsy, that had been scourged and banished and branded; that had begged from door to door, and been hounded like a stray tyke from parish to parish; wha would hae minded HER tale? But now I am a dying woman, and my words will not fall to the ground, any more than the earth will cover my blood!’
She here paused, and all left the hut except the surgeon and two or three women. After a very short examination he shook his head and resigned his post by the dying woman’s side to the clergyman.
A chaise returning empty to Kippletringan had been stopped on the highroad by a constable, who foresaw it would be necessary to convey Hatteraick to jail. The driver, understanding what was going on at Derncleugh, left his horses to the care of a blackguard boy, confiding, it is to be supposed, rather in the years and discretion of the cattle than in those of their keeper, and set off full speed to see, as he expressed himself, ‘whaten a sort o’ fun was gaun on.’ He arrived just as the group of tenants and peasants, whose numbers increased every moment, satiated with gazing upon the rugged features of Hatteraick, had turned their attention towards Bertram. Almost all of them, especially the aged men who had seen Ellangowan in his better days, felt and acknowledged the justice of Meg Merrilies’s appeal. But the Scotch are a cautious people: they remembered there was another in possession of the estate, and they as yet only expressed their feelings in low whispers to each other. Our friend Jock Jabos, the postilion, forced his way into the middle of the circle; but no sooner cast his eyes upon Bertram than he started back in amazement, with a solemn exclamation, ‘As sure as there’s breath in man, it’s auld Ellangowan arisen from the dead!’
This public declaration of an unprejudiced witness was just the spark wanted to give fire to the popular feeling, which burst forth in three distinct shouts: ‘Bertram for ever!’ ‘Long life to the heir of Ellangowan!’ ‘God send him his ain, and to live among us as his forebears did of yore!’
‘I hae been seventy years on the land,’ said one person.
‘I and mine hae been seventy and seventy to that,’ said another; ‘I have a right to ken the glance of a Bertram.’
‘I and mine hae been three hundred years here,’ said another old man, ‘and I sail sell my last cow, but I’ll see the young Laird placed in his right.’
The women, ever delighted with the marvellous, and not less so when a handsome young man is the subject of the tale, added their shrill acclamations to the general all-hail. ‘Blessings on him; he’s the very picture o’ his father! The Bertrams were aye the wale o’ the country side!’
‘Eh! that his puir mother, that died in grief and in doubt about him, had but lived to see this day!’ exclaimed some female voices.
‘But we’ll help him to his ain, kimmers,’ cried others; ‘and before Glossin sail keep the Place of Ellangowan we’ll howk him out o’t wi’ our nails!’
Others crowded around Dinmont, who was nothing both to tell what he knew of his friend, and to boast the honour which he had in contributing to the discovery. As he was known to several of the principal farmers present, his testimony afforded an additional motive to the general enthusiasm. In short, it was one of those moments of intense feeling when the frost of the Scottish people melts like a snow-wreath, and the dissolving torrent carries dam and dyke before it.
The sudden shouts interrupted the devotions of the clergyman; and Meg, who was in one of those dozing fits of stupefaction that precede the close of existence, suddenly started-’Dinna ye hear? dinna ye hear? He’s owned! he’s owned! I lived but for this. I am a sinfu’ woman; but if my curse brought it down, my blessing has taen it off! And now I wad hae liked to hae said mair. But it canna be. Stay’-she continued, stretching her head towards the gleam of light that shot through the narrow slit which served for a window-’is he not there? Stand out o’ the light, and let me look upon him ance mair. But the darkness is in my ain een,’ she said, sinking back, after an earnest gaze upon vacuity; ‘it’s a’ ended now,
Pass breath,
Come death!’
And, sinking back upon her couch of straw, she expired without a groan. The clergyman and the surgeon carefully noted down all that she had said, now deeply regretting they had not examined her more minutely, but both remaining morally convinced of the truth of her disclosure.
Hazlewood was the first to compliment Bertram upon the near prospect of his being restored to his name and rank in society. The people around, who now learned from Jabos that Bertram was the person who had wounded him, were struck with his generosity, and added his name to Bertram’s in their exulting acclamations.
Some, however, demanded of the postilion how he had not recognised Bertram when he saw him some time before at Kippletringan. To which he gave the very natural answer-’Hout, what was I thinking about Ellangowan then? It was the cry that was rising e’en now that the young Laird was found, that put me on finding out the likeness. There was nae missing it ance ane was set to look for’t.’
The obduracy of Hatteraick during the latter part of this scene was in some slight degree shaken. He was observed to twinkle with his eyelids; to attempt to raise his bound hands for the purpose of pulling his hat over his brow; to look angrily and impatiently to the road, as if anxious for the vehicle which was to remove him from the spot. At length Mr. Hazlewood, apprehensive that the popular ferment might take a direction towards the prisoner, directed he should be taken to the post-chaise, and so removed to the town of Kippletringan, to be at Mr. Mac-Morlan’s disposal; at the same time he sent an express to warn that gentleman of what had happened. ‘And now,’ he said to Bertram, ‘I should be happy if you would accompany me to Hazlewood House; but as that might not be so agreeable just now as I trust it will be in a day or two, you must allow me to return with you to Woodbourne. But you are on foot.’-’O, if the young Laird would take my horse!’-’Or mine’-’Or mine,’ said half-a-dozen voices. – ’Or mine; he can trot ten mile an hour without whip or spur, and he’s the young Laird’s frae this moment, if he likes to take him for a herezeld, [Footnote: See Note 8.] as they ca’d it lang syne.’ Bertram readily accepted the horse as a loan, and poured forth his thanks to the assembled crowd for their good wishes, which they repaid with shouts and vows of attachment.
While the happy owner was directing one lad to ‘gae doun for the new saddle’; another,’ just to rin the beast ower wi’ a dry wisp o’ strae’; a third, ‘to hie doun and borrow Dan Dunkieson’s plated stirrups,’ and expressing his regret ‘that there was nae time to gie the nag a feed, that the young Laird might ken his mettle,’ Bertram, taking the clergyman by the arm, walked into the vault and shut the door immediately after them. He gazed in silence for some minutes upon the body of Meg Merrilies, as it lay before him, with the features sharpened by death, yet still retaining the stern and energetic character which had maintained in life her superiority as the wild chieftainess of the lawless people amongst whom she was born. The young soldier dried the tears which involuntarily rose on viewing this wreck of one who might be said to have died a victim to her fidelity to his person and family. He then took the clergyman’s hand and asked solemnly if she appeared able to give that attention to his devotions which befitted a departing person.
‘My dear sir,’ said the good minister, ‘I trust this poor woman had remaining sense to feel and join in the import of my prayers. But let us humbly hope we are judged of by our opportunities of religious and moral instruction. In some degree she might be considered as an uninstructed heathen, even in the bosom of a Christian country; and let us remember that the errors and vices of an ignorant life were balanced by instances of disinterested attachment, amounting almost to heroism. To HIM who can alone weigh our crimes and errors against our efforts towards virtue we consign her with awe, but not without hope.’
‘May I request,’ said Bertram, ‘that you will see every decent solemnity attended to in behalf of this poor woman? I have some property belonging to her in my hands; at all events I will be answerable for the expense. You will hear of me at Woodbourne.’
Dinmont, who had been furnished with a horse by one of his acquaintance, now loudly called out that all was ready for their return; and Bertram and Hazlewood, after a strict exhortation to the crowd, which was now increased to several hundreds, to preserve good order in their rejoicing, as the least ungoverned zeal might be turned to the disadvantage of the young Laird, as they termed him, took their leave amid the shouts of the multitude.
As they rode past the ruined cottages at Derncleugh, Dinmont said, ‘I’m sure when ye come to your ain, Captain, ye’ll no forget to bigg a bit cot-house there? Deil be in me but I wad do’t mysell, an it werena in better hands. I wadna like to live in’t, though, after what she said. Od, I wad put in auld Elspeth, the bedral’s widow; the like o’ them’s used wi’ graves and ghaists and thae things.’
A short but brisk ride brought them to Woodbourne. The news of their exploit had already flown far and wide, and the whole inhabitants of the vicinity met them on the lawn with shouts of congratulation. ‘That you have seen me alive,’ said Bertram to Lucy, who first ran up to him, though Julia’s eyes even anticipated hers, ‘you must thank these kind friends.’
With a blush expressing at once pleasure, gratitude, and bashfulness, Lucy curtsied to Hazlewood, but to Dinmont she frankly extended her hand. The honest farmer, in the extravagance of his joy, carried his freedom farther than the hint warranted, for he imprinted his thanks on the lady’s lips, and was instantly shocked at the rudeness of his own conduct. ‘Lord sake, madam, I ask your pardon,’ he said. ‘I forgot but ye had been a bairn o’my ain; the Captain’s sae namely, he gars ane forget himsell.’
Old Pleydell now advanced. ‘Nay, if fees like these are going,’ he said-
‘Stop, stop, Mr. Pleydell,’ said Julia, ‘you had your fees beforehand; remember last night.’
‘Why, I do confess a retainer,’ said the Barrister; ‘but if I don’t deserve double fees from both Miss Bertram and you when I conclude my examination of Dirk Hatteraick to-morrow-Gad, I will so supple him! You shall see, Colonel; and you, my saucy misses, though you may not see, shall hear.’
‘Ay, that’s if we choose to listen, Counsellor,’ replied Julia.
‘And you think,’ said Pleydell, ‘it’s two to one you won’t choose that? But you have curiosity that teaches you the use of your ears now and then.’
‘I declare, Counsellor,’ answered the lively damsel, ‘that such saucy bachelors as you would teach us the use of our fingers now and then.’
‘Reserve them for the harpsichord, my love,’ said the Counsellor. ‘Better for all parties.’
While this idle chat ran on, Colonel Mannering introduced to Bertram a plain good-looking man, in a grey coat and waistcoat, buckskin breeches, and boots. ‘This, my dear sir, is Mr. Mac-Morlan.’
‘To whom,’ said Bertram, embracing him cordially, ‘my sister was indebted for a home, when deserted by all her natural friends and relations.’