While he remained on the spot, dazed and uncertain, looking at the blackened hearthstone, his old servant entered hastily to bid him return at once to Ellangowan. His wife had been taken dangerously ill. Godfrey spurred as fast as horse would carry him, but Death had gone faster, and had arrived before him. When he reached the gate, the Lady of Ellangowan was dead, leaving him with a little baby girl less than an hour old. The shock of Kennedy's murder and her own little Harry's loss had killed her.
INTERLUDE OF INTERROGATION
The melancholy conclusion of the first Guy Mannering tale kept the children quieter than usual. I think they regretted a little the gallant opening of Waverley, but as ever they were full of questions.
"And all that happened here, in our Galloway?" began Sweetheart, looking about her at the hills of dark heather and the sparkling Solway sands, from which the storm-clouds were just beginning to lift.
"Yes," I answered her, "though it is doubtful if Scott ever was in Galloway. But he had seen Criffel across from Dumfries-shire, and the castle of Ellangowan is certainly described from the ruins of Caerlaverock, opposite New Abbey. Besides, had he not good old Joseph Train, the Castle Douglas exciseman, to tell him everything—than whom no man knew Galloway better?"
"Did gipsies really steal children?" said Maid Margaret, with some apprehension. She was somewhat anxious, for an affirmative answer might interfere with certain wide operations in blackberrying which she was planning.
"Sometimes they did," I answered, "but not nearly so often as they were blamed for. They had usually enough mouths of their own to feed. So, unless they were sure of a ransom, or perhaps occasionally for the sake of revenge, gipsies very seldom were guilty of kidnapping."
"But they always do steal them in books," said Hugh John; "well, I would just like to see them cart me off! And if they took Sir Toady Lion, they would soon send him back. He eats so much!"
This was Hugh John's idea of a joke, and somewhat hastily I interrupted fraternal strife by returning to the general subject.
"Adam Smith, a very learned man, who afterwards wrote The Wealth of Nations, was stolen by gipsies when a child," I said.