We ascended to the house, and conducted Cora at once to her room. All she asked was darkness and solitude. I had seen her on the bed, passive and worn out with the storm of sorrow that had swept over her. Chaleco joined me in the next room.
“Let her sleep if she can,” he said; “you and I must go in yonder; we have some questions to ask of the old people.”
Chaleco took me to the kitchen. An old woman was on the hearth, spinning flax; and at a back door where the sun lay warmly, sat a stout old man smoking. I had not seen, or more probably not observed this couple before, but now they struck me as familiar, like persons lost sight of from childhood. Chaleco went out and sat down by the old man, while I drew toward the woman, and asked some questions regarding her work. She gave a little start, looked up, and evidently disappointed, began fumbling in her pocket for a pair of horn spectacles, which were eagerly placed across her nose.
Never did I undergo a perusal of the face like that. It seemed to me that the grey eyes under those glasses grew keen and large as they gazed. At length she started up, breaking the thread from her distaff, and hurried toward the back door with every appearance of affright.
“Guidman—guidman, coom here,” she said, “coom and see the young gipsy leddy! As God is above all, she is here, body and soul!”
“Gang awa, woman, these new fangled barnacles are deceiving things. Ye dinna see as ye did,” answered the old man, deliberately knocking the ashes from his pipe, by tapping the bowl on his thumb nail.
“Well, then, look for yoursel, guidman,” said the dame, taking me by the shoulders, and half pushing me toward the door.
When the old man’s eyes fell on my person he stood up and dropped his bonnet.
“A weel, a weel!” he exclaimed, “wonders will never cease; na dout it’s the leddy hersel with hardly a year on her heed sin she went, years sine, with the bairn in her arms.” Then turning to Chaleco, he said, “Ye wer speerin about the stranger leddy; there she stans.”
“But the lady you speak of would have been older than this,” said Chaleco.