"Without fail. We maun tak' gude care o' her—the last o' a braw stud of sixty, my faith! But when a mear hath baith the wheezlock and the yeuk——"
"How! has she both?"
"Had ye, a month syne, tar-barrelled that auld carlin, Elshender, owre the muir at St. Rocque, Meg would hae been sound, wind and limb, frae that moment."
"'Sblood! Juden, dost think the cantrips of this old hag have really bedevilled my favourite nag?"
"I'm no just free to say, my Lord; but it is unco queer that Meg (puir beastie!) should fa' ill o' sae mony things just after Lucky Elshender flyted wi' ye for riding through her kail for a near cut to the Grange, the day ye dined wi' auld Fountainhall."
"By all the devils, Juden, if I thought this bearded hag had any hand in the mare's illness, I would have her under the hands of the pricker to-morrow," replied Clermistonlee, who was deeply imbued with the Scottish prejudice against old women. "We had before us to-day two hags, whom we consigned to the flames; one for confessing witchcraft, and the other for obstinately refusing to confess it."
Juden rubbed his hands.
"Ou aye—ou aye—he! he!" chuckled Mersington. "Hae her up before the fifteen—a full blawn case o' sorcery—on wi' the thumbikins! I have kent rack and screw bring mony a queer story to light:—riding to Banff on a besom-shank—sailing to the Inch in a milkbowie—bewitching wheels that ane minute flew round as if the mill was mad, and the next stood like the Bass rock—raising a storm o' wind in the lift by the damnable agency of a black beetle, 'ane golach,' as Rosehaugh called it in the indictment. We had a grand case o' that lately in the northern courts."
"But the gude auld fashion o' tar-barrelling is clean gaing out in thae fushionless days," said Juden, whom Mersington treated with considerable familiarity. "We havena had a respectable bleeze on the Castle-hill these aucht years and mair."
"You may chance to have one very shortly," replied his lord impatiently, "if Meg gets not the better of her ailings soon. But enough of this.—Let us to supper."