l 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 mot