body that needed it got sic a windfa'."

"Na, that's sure eneugh.--And yell hae heard o' the Countess o' Glenallan
being dead and lying in state, and how she's to be buried at St. Ruth's
as this night fa's, wi' torch-light; and a' the popist servants, and
Ringan Aikwood, that's a papist too, are to be there, and it will be the
grandest show ever was seen."

"Troth, hinny," answered the Nereid, "if they let naebody but papists
come there, it'll no be muckle o' a show in this country, for the auld
harlot, as honest Mr. Blattergowl ca's her, has few that drink o' her
cup o' enchantments in this corner o' our chosen lands.--But what can ail
them to bury the auld carlin (a rudas wife she was) in the night-time?--I
dare say our gudemither will ken."

Here she exalted her voice, and exclaimed twice or thrice, "Gudemither!
gudemither!" but, lost in the apathy of age and deafness, the aged sibyl
she addressed continued plying her spindle without understanding the
appeal made to her.

"Speak to your grandmither, Jenny--Od, I wad rather hail the coble half a
mile aff, and the nor-wast wind whistling again in my teeth."

"Grannie," said the little mermaid, in a voice to which the old woman
was better accustomed, "minnie wants to ken what for the Glenallan folk
aye bury by candle-light in the ruing of St. Ruth!"

The old woman paused in the act of twirling the spindle, turned round to
the rest of the party, lifted her withered, trembling, and clay-coloured
hand, raised up her ashen-hued and wrinkled face, which the quick
motion of two light-blue eyes chiefly distinguished from the visage of a
corpse, and, as if catching at any touch of association with the living
world, answered, "What gars the Glenallan family inter their dead by
torchlight, said the lassie?--Is there a Glenallan dead e'en now?"

"We might be a' dead and buried too," said Maggie, "for onything ye
wad ken about it;"--and then, raising her voice to the stretch of her
mother-in-law's comprehension, she added,

"It's the auld Countess, gudemither."

"And is she ca'd hame then at last?" said the old woman, in a voice
that seemed to be agitated with much more feeling than belonged to
her extreme old age, and the general indifference and apathy of her
manner--"is she then called to her last account after her lang race o'
pride and power?--O God, forgie her!"

"But minnie was asking ye," resumed the lesser querist, "what for the
Glenallan family aye bury their d