"For those that pay him weel," added the bailie under his beard, while he scratched his chin.
"Will his prayers bring home my bairn, if a fair wind fails him, think ye?"
"I dinna ken. Like Our Lady's image in the Nunraw of Haddington, they bring rain when the Tranent folk need it to gar their kail grow; or make the weather fair and clear, as the case may be; then why may they not bring hame the young laird?"
"Ay, why, indeed!" muttered the nurse.
"Oh, peace, you silly carlin!"
"As you please, madam," retorted Maud. "But there is a wise woman in Preston-grange——"
"And what of her?"
"She can forsee things to come, and the return o' folk that are far awa, by turning a riddle wi' shears."
"Nay, nay; I would rather see my son no more than see him by necromancy and acts against God's holy word, Nurse. But Preston's men have been abroad to-day, and they seldom ride on a good errand," said Lady Alison, starting from her seat with a new glow of anger and terror in her breast; "but woe to them if aught happens to my son, for bearded men shall weep for it, and I will kill Preston on his own hearthstone, as I would a serpent in its lair! If that foul riever, who slew my husband under tryst, and my brave and winsome Willie—— but he dare not!" she added, checking the bitter surmise by a husky and intense whisper; "no, he dare not!"
And, sinking into her chair, with nervous fingers she grasped the arms of it, and fixed her wild dark eyes upon the wall, as if she saw there in imagination the hereditary foeman of her husband's house.