Book One—Chapter Five.
Strange Adventures in Wood and Wild.
“How sweet it is when mother fancy rocks
The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood;
An old place full of many a lovely brook,
Tall trees, green arbours, and ground flowers in flocks.”
Wordsworth.
Scene: Still in the forest around the log fire, but the dying gipsy has raised herself to nearly a sitting position, her dim and hollow eyes are fixed on Leonard, and she beckons him to her side. As if under a strange spell, the boy obeys, leaving Effie kneeling by Ossian, and clasping his great neck in her terror.
“Fear not,” the gipsy gasps, “I knew—your—father. And his father. Kind, kind to me and mine were both.”
She took Leonard’s little white hand in her dark claws, and opened its palm towards the firelight. “Never—never—will old Nell Bayne read another fortune. But look; that line will lead you far ayont the seas. You are born to wander, born to roam over the ocean, by mountain, stream, and plain. Yet list! the water is not made to drown you, nor hemp nor lead to take your life, yet list! again,—
“When dead yon lordly pike shall float,
While loud and hoarse the ravens call,
Then grief and woe shall be thy lot,
Glen Lyle’s house must fall.”
The aged crone dropped the hand she held, and sunk back into the arms of her nurse, while the other gipsies, with scared faces, gathered closer round and knelt beside her.
Neither Leonard nor Effie saw nor heard anything more. They fled away from the firelight out into the darkness of the woods, which they much preferred to the solemn scene they had just witnessed.