"A thousand humble pardons, noble gentlemen," stammered the poor warder; "but—but—a hag, said ye?"
"Ay, thy gudewife, carle," said Blackcastle; "I know her well enough by her long-eared coif."
"God assoil us! Ye have seen a spirit; for my wife was drowned at the ford this fatal morning, and noo we are streekin' her puir wat corpse for the burial! Oh! sirs," wept the keeper, "what is this o't—what is this o't?"
"By St. Mary! we have seen a spectre!" shouted Hailes, dashing spurs into his horse, and clearing the bridge at abound; and furiously all the train followed him through the dark but wide street of Musselburgh.
This event shed a species of horror over the whole party, whose faculties, never very clear at any time, were past inquiring whether or not it was a supernatural figure they had seen; so they all spurred on to leave the bridge and stream behind, and to reach Loretto as soon as possible. But whether the delay which occurred at the gate was productive of good or evil consequences to the lovers at the Hermitage, another chapter or so will disclose.
CHAPTER LI.
LADY EFFIE'S LETTER.
"But now we part, and it may be that years shall wing their flight
Ere thou again wilt cheer my heart, or rise upon my sight;
Then fare thee well! in other days, in years of after life,
On fancy's wings, I'll turn to thee, and bless the land of Fife."—Anon.
The weather had become gloomy, and continued so. Though the month was merry and sunny June, and all the woods of fertile Fife were then in their fullest foliage, the sky lowered heavily over the German Sea, and the waves of the Firth broke sullenly on the pillared bluffs of Grail and Elie; and, driven by the east wind, the breakers of Largo Bay broke furiously upon the Dyke, and dashed their spray on the sandy shore beyond it.
This noble bay, in which the Scottish ships and their prizes were still at anchor, forms a semicircle of about ten miles of coast, marked by a peculiar ridge of sand, called by fishermen the Dyke, and old tradition says it was a wall or rampart, that ran from Kincraig, round all the bay, to Methul, and that it contained a forest, called the Wood of Forth. In corroboration of this, the anchors of ships have been known to drag up the roots of oaks from their beds in the sand below.