our paths been ranged up before our een, like great black towering
mountains of darkness? How could we have found contentment in our goods
and gear, if we saw them melting from us next year like snow from a dyke;
how could we sit down on the elbow-chair of ease, could we see the
misfortunes that may make next week a black one; or how could we look a
kind friend in the face without tears, could we see him, ere a month
maybe was gone, lying streiked beneath his winding sheet, his eyes closed
for evermore, and his mirth hushed to an awful silence! No, no, let us
rest content that Heaven decrees what is best for us; let us do our duty
as men and Christians, and every thing, both here and hereafter, will
work together for our good.

Having taken a piece of chalk out of her big, greasy, leather pouch, she
wrote down on the table, "Your wife, your son, and your prentice." This
was rather curious, and every one of them, a wee thunderstruck like,
cried out as they held up their hands, "Losh me! did onybody ever see or
hear tell of the like o' that? She's no canny!"--It was gey droll, I
thought; and I was aware from the Witch of Endor, and sundry mentions in
the Old Testament, that things out of the course of nature have more than
once been permitted to happen; so I reckoned it but right to give the
poor woman a fair hearing, as she deserved.

"Oh!" said Nanse to me, "ye ken our Benjie's eight year auld; see if she
kens; ask her how old he is."

I had scarcely written down the question, when she wrote beneath it, "The
bonny laddie, your only son, is eight year old: He'll be an admiral yet."

"An admiral!" said his mother; "that's gey and extraordinar. I never
kenned he had ony inkling for the seafaring line; and I thought, Mansie,
you intended bringing him up to your ain trade. But, howsoever, ye're
wrong ye see. I tell't ye he wad either make a spoon or spoil a horn. I
tell't ye, ower and ower again, that he would be either something or
naething; what think ye o' that noo?--See if she kens that Mungo comes
from the country; and where the Lammermoor hills is."

When I had put down the question, in a jiffie she wrote down beside it,
"That boy comes from the high green hills, and his name is Mungo."

Dog on it! this astonished us more and more, and fairly bamboozled my
understanding; as I thought there surely must be some league and paction
with the Old One; but the further in the deeper. She then pointed to my
wife,