t little life his own mad conduct has left him." Without
another word, he took a phial from the table, and, pouring out a
draught, handed it to me; I mechanically drunk it off; but ere I had
taken it from my lips, he was gone. I heard the doors close and the
bolts shoot after him with strange forebodings; and when the sound of
his footsteps had died away in the long passage beyond, fell back in a
wild maze of apprehension and self-censure, till I again sank into a
heavy sleep.

When I awoke, there was a yellow twilight in my little cabin, from the
scattering of a red ray of the sunset which streamed through a
crevice in the door. I had therefore slept a whole day; my fever was
abated; the gnawing pain had left my head, and I longed to eat. I
knocked upon the boards, and the door was presently opened; but it was
some time ere my eyes could endure the flood of light which then burst
in. The figure which at length became visible amid it, was little
worthy so goodly a birth. The lank, slack, ill-hinged anatomy of Peg,
with a bottle in one hand, and a long horn spoon in the other,
advanced, and in no gracious tone demanded what was my will. I turned
and lay silent; for I never felt an awkward situation so embarrassing
as then. My gorge rose at the malignant cause of all my disasters; but
interest and discretion told me to be civil if I spoke at all. I gave
no answer; she was in no humour to suffer such trifling with her time.
"Hear till him, Jamie!" she exclaimed to some one behind her, "hear
till him, the fashious scunner! he dunts folk frae their wark as if he
was the laird o' the Lang Marches himsell, and then----" "Good
Mistress Margaret----" "Mistress me nae mistresses! there's ne'er a
wife i' the parish has a right to be mistressed, since she deeit wha's
wean ye wad betray! Deil hae me gin I can keep my knieves aff ye, ye
ill-faured bluid-seller!"--"Ill-faured _what_?" shouted I. "No just
ill-faured neither, blest be the Maker, and mair's the pity; ye're a
clean boy eneugh, as I weel may say, wha had the strippin' and
streekin' o' ye; but I say that ye're just a bluid-seller, a reformer,
a spy, gin ye like it better!" She backed down the steps, and holding
a leaf of the door at each side, stretched in her neck, and went on,
"Ay, spy, Willie Macdonnell, spy to your teeth.--Isna your name upon
your sark breast? and arena the arms that ye disgrace upon your seal,
and daur ye deny them? daur ye deny that ye're the swearer