purlite,' says I; 'I don't think I'm in a dying
condition.'

"'You carry your death-sentence at your breast,' says she, in a hollow
voice, like a drum with a hoarseness.

"'What do you elude to,' says I?--and looking at my breast, sir, I
seed nothing in life but this here watch-ribbon as you gived me, of
your own tartan, you know, sir.

"'Why wear ye the badge of the doomed Ben-na-Groich?' says she; 'know
you not that his web is spun?'

"'There you're misinformed,' says I, 'ma'am; they're all done by
machinery.'

"'Fool,' says she, quite in a passion, 'you've put yourself under a
ruined wall, and will be crushed to the dust by the tumble.'

"'Wrong again,' says I, 'for master has had the whole building
repaired.'

"'Blind mole, you will take no warning; perhaps because you don't
believe--see there!' And when I looked in to where she pointed, sure
enough I sees ten or a dozen stout chaps all a-sharping of their
swords upon great grinding-stones, at the other end of the house.

"'What's all them fellows arter?' says I.

"'Blood,' says she.

"'Blood and wounds!' says I, 'I never heared such a woman. 'Clect, at
Oxford, hearing of an old Roman Catholic lady they called the Civil,
as spoke in that 'ere fashion, and was a dealer in books and
stationery, but, cuss me, if you doesn't beat her hollow. Whose blood
do you mean, ma'am?'

"'His who calls himself Ben-na-Groich.'"

"Oh, brother Thomas, did you ever hear of the like?" shuddered Miss
Alice.

"A witch," said the gentleman thus appealed to, with a very
unsuccessful effort to appear disdainful. "What more, Copus?--did she
say anything else?"

"Lots more, but I've nearly forgotten it."

"How long did this detain you?"

"Oh, he kept us waiting three or four hours," interposed Miss Alice;
"and when he came out, he couldn't have been more unsteady if he had
been a-drinking."

"Yes, indeed, sir," added Maria, "his manners has been wery
extraordinary ever since; he has been either singing songs or sleeping
the whole way here."

"The interview was a very strange one. Did any one else see the ten or
twelve men?" inquired the chief.

"I seed one of them, sir," replied Maria--"a tall, handsome gentleman,
in a green frock coat. He went towards a horse that was tied near a
stack of fuel, just at the moment Copus came out."

"Indeed? Did _you_ see him, Copus?"

"Oh yes. I saw a figure something as she describes it. He is the
surest sign, the wild woman sa