An’ aye the Robin sang by the wud,
An’ his note had a waesome fa’;
An’ the corbie croupit in the clud,
But he durstna light ava;
Till out cam the wee grey moudiwort
Frae neath the hollow stane,
An’ it howkit a grave for the auld grey head,
For the head lay a’ its lane!
But I will seek out the Robin’s nest,
An’ the nest of the ouzel shy,
For the siller hair that is beddit there
Maun wave aboon the sky.”
The sentiments of old Nanny appeared now to her young mistress to be more doubtful than ever. Fain would she have interpreted them to be such as she wished, but the path which that young female was now obliged to tread required a circumspection beyond her experience and discernment to preserve, while danger and death awaited the slightest deviation.
CHAPTER VI.
Next morning Clavers, with fifty dragoons, arrived at Chapelhope, where they alighted on the green; and putting their horses to forage, he and Sir Thomas Livingston, Captain Bruce, and Mr Adam Copland, before mentioned, a gentleman of Clavers’ own troop, went straight into the kitchen. Walter was absent at the hill. The goodwife was sitting lonely in the east room, brooding over her trials and woes in this life, and devising means to get rid of her daughter, and with her of all the devouring spirits that haunted Chapelhope; consequently the first and only person whom the gentlemen found in the kitchen was old Nanny. Clavers, who entered first, kept a shy and sullen distance, for he never was familiar with any one; but Bruce, who was a jocular Irish gentleman, and well versed in harassing and inveigling the ignorant country people to their destruction, made two low bows (almost to the ground) to the astonished dame, and accosted her as follows: “How are you to–day, mistress?—I hope you are very well?”
“Thank ye kindly, sir,” said Nanny, curtseying in return; “deed I’m no sae weel as I hae been; I hae e’en seen better days; but I keep aye the heart aboon, although the achings and the stitches hae been sair on me the year.”
“Lack–a–day! I am so very sorry for that!—Where do they seize you? about the heart, I suppose?—Oh, dear soul! to be sure you do not know how sorry I am for your case—it must be so terribly bad! You should have the goodness to consult your physician, and get blood let.”
“Dear bairn, I hae nae blude to spare—an’ as for doctors, I haena muckle to lippen to them. To be sure, they are whiles the means, under Providence”——