he precise track,' she
said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a zigzag and involved
course than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At
length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open
glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes,
which made a wild and irregular boundary. Even in winter it was a
sheltered and snugly sequestered spot; but when arrayed in the verdure of
spring, the earth sending forth all its wild flowers, the shrubs
spreading their waste of blossom around it, and the weeping birches,
which towered over the underwood, drooping their long and leafy fibres to
intercept the sun, it must have seemed a place for a youthful poet to
study his earliest sonnet, or a pair of lovers to exchange their first
mutual avowal of affection. Apparently it now awakened very different
recollections. Bertram's brow, when he had looked round the spot, became
gloomy and embarrassed. Meg, after uttering to herself, 'This is the very
spot!' looked at him with a ghastly side-glance--'D'ye mind it?'

'Yes!' answered Bertram, 'imperfectly I do.'

'Ay!' pursued his guide, 'on this very spot the man fell from his horse.
I was behind that bourtree bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove,
and sair he cried for mercy; but he was in the hands of them that never
kenn'd the word! Now will I show you the further track; the last time ye
travelled it was in these arms.'

She led them accordingly by a long and winding passage, almost overgrown
with brushwood, until, without any very perceptible descent, they
suddenly found themselves by the seaside. Meg then walked very fast on
between the surf and the rocks, until she came to a remarkable fragment
of rock detached from the rest. 'Here,' she said in a low and scarcely
audible whisper--'here the corpse was found.'

'And the cave,' said Bertram, in the same tone, 'is close beside it; are
you guiding us there?'

'Yes,' said the gipsy in a decided tone. 'Bend up both your hearts;
follow me as I creep in; I have placed the fire-wood so as to screen you.
Bide behind it for a gliff till I say, "The hour and the man are baith
come"; then rin in on him, take his arms, and bind him till the blood
burst frae his finger nails.'

'I will, by my soul,' said Henry, 'if he is the man I suppose--Jansen?'

'Ay, Jansen, Hatteraick, and twenty mair names are his.'

'Dinmont, you must stand by me now,' said Bertram, 'for this fe