ters, and the habitual love of traffic and of gain, chasing
each other through her thoughts.

"And now that we are before the door of their hut," said Ochiltree, "I
wad fain ken, Monkbarns, what has gar'd ye plague yoursell wi' me a'
this length? I tell ye sincerely I hae nae pleasure in ganging in there.
I downa bide to think how the young hae fa'en on a' sides o' me, and
left me an useless auld stump wi' hardly a green leaf on't."

"This old woman," said Oldbuck, "sent you on a message to the Earl of
Glenallan, did she not?"

"Ay!" said the surprised mendicant; "how ken ye that sae weel?"

"Lord Glenallan told me himself," answered the Antiquary; "so there is
no delation--no breach of trust on your part; and as he wishes me to take
her evidence down on some important family matters, I chose to bring
you with me, because in her situation, hovering between dotage and
consciousness, it is possible that your voice and appearance may
awaken trains of recollection which I should otherwise have no means of
exciting. The human mind--what are you about, Hector?"

"I was only whistling for the dog, sir," replied the Captain "she always
roves too wide--I knew I should be troublesome to you."

"Not at all, not at all," said Oldbuck, resuming the subject of his
disquisition--"the human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled
silk, where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make
any progress in disentangling it."

"I ken naething about that," said the gaberlunzie; "but an my auld
acquaintance be hersell, or anything like hersell, she may come to wind
us a pirn. It's fearsome baith to see and hear her when she wampishes
about her arms, and gets to her English, and speaks as if she were a
prent book, let a-be an auld fisher's wife. But, indeed, she had a grand
education, and was muckle taen out afore she married an unco bit beneath
hersell. She's aulder than me by half a score years--but I mind weel
eneugh they made as muckle wark about her making a half-merk marriage
wi' Simon Mucklebackit, this Saunders's father, as if she had been
ane o' the gentry. But she got into favour again, and then she lost it
again, as I hae heard her son say, when he was a muckle chield; and then
they got muckle siller, and left the Countess's land, and settled here.
But things never throve wi' them. Howsomever, she's a weel-educate
woman, and an she win to her English, as I hae heard her do at an orra
time, she may come to