refuse complying, by shaking down some fodder to the animal, which
had been neglected like most things else in the castle of the sluggard.

While she was accommodating "the milky mother" with the food which she
should have received two hours sooner, a slipshod wench peeped into the
stable, and perceiving that a stranger was employed in discharging the
task which she, at length, and reluctantly, had quitted her slumbers to
perform, ejaculated,

"Eh, sirs! the Brownie! the Brownie!" and fled, yelling as if she had
seen the devil.

To explain her terror it may be necessary to notice that the old house of
Dumbiedikes had, according to report, been long haunted by a Brownie, one
of those familiar spirits who were believed in ancient times to supply
the deficiencies of the ordinary labourer--

Whirl the long mop, and ply the airy flail.

Certes, the convenience of such a supernatural assistance could have been
nowhere more sensibly felt than in a family where the domestics were so
little disposed to personal activity; yet this serving maiden was so far
from rejoicing in seeing a supposed aerial substitute discharging a task
which she should have long since performed herself, that she proceeded to
raise the family by her screams of horror, uttered as thick as if the
Brownie had been flaying her. Jeanie, who had immediately resigned her
temporary occupation, and followed the yelling damsel into the courtyard,
in order to undeceive and appease her, was there met by Mrs. Janet
Balchristie, the favourite sultana of the last Laird, as scandal
went--the housekeeper of the present. The good-looking buxom woman,
betwixt forty and fifty (for such we described her at the death of the
last Laird), was now a fat, red-faced, old dame of seventy, or
thereabouts, fond of her place, and jealous of her authority. Conscious
that her administration did not rest on so sure a basis as in the time
of the old proprietor, this considerate lady had introduced into the
family the screamer aforesaid, who added good features and bright eyes
to the powers of her lungs. She made no conquest of the Laird, however,
who seemed to live as if there was not another woman in the world but
Jeanie Deans, and to bear no very ardent or overbearing affection even
to her. Mrs. Janet Balchristie, notwithstanding, had her own uneasy
thoughts upon the almost daily visits to St. Leonard's Crags, and often,
when the Laird looked at her wistfully and paused, according