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, writing down, "Your name is Nancy"--and turning to me, as she made
some dumbie signs, she chalked down, "Your name is Mansie Wauch, that
saved the precious life of an old bedridden woman from the fire; and will
soon get a lottery ticket of twenty thousand pounds."

Knowing the truth of the rest of what she had said, I could not help
jumping on the floor with joy, and seeing that she was up to every thing,
as plain as if it had happened in her presence. The good news set us all
a skipping like young lambs, my wife and the laddies clapping their hands
as if they had found a fiddle; so, jealousing they might lose their
discretion in their mirth, I turned round to the three, holding up my
hand, and saying, "In the name o' Gudeness, dinna mention this to ony
leeving sowl; as, mind ye, I havena taken out the ticket yet. The doing
so might not only set them to the sinful envying of our good fortune, as
forbidden in the tenth commandment, but mig