My mind was now thoroughly made up. “Can you spare me quarter of an hour at St. Bride’s?” said I. “I have a little necessary business with Carlyle.”
“An hour, if you prefer,” said he. “I do not seek to deny that the money for your seat is an object to me; and you could always get the first to Glascow with saddle-horses.”
“Well,” said I, “I never thought to leave old Scotland.”
“It will brisken you up,” says he.
“This will be an ill journey for someone,” I said. “I think, sir, for you. Something speaks in my bosom; and so much it says plain—that this is an ill-omened journey.”
“If you take to prophecy,” says he, “listen to that.”
There came up a violent squall off the open Solway, and the rain was dashed on the great windows.
“Do ye ken what that bodes, warlock?” said he, in a broad accent: “that there’ll be a man Mackellar unco sick at sea.”
When I got to my chamber, I sat there under a painful excitation, hearkening to the turmoil of the gale, which struck full upon that gable of the house. What with the pressure on my spirits, the eldritch cries of the wind among the turret-tops, and the perpetual trepidation of the masoned house, sleep fled my eyelids utterly. I sat by my taper, looking on the black panes of the window, where the storm appeared continually on the point of bursting in its entrance; and upon that empty field I beheld a perspective of consequences that made the hair to rise upon my scalp. The child corrupted, the home broken up, my master dead, or worse than dead, my mistress plunged in desolation—all these I saw before me painted brightly on the darkness; and the outcry of the wind appeared to mock at my inaction.