“Why, what has he seen?—a ghost? they are wery superstitious, and believe in the second sight.”
“Oh, first sight is quite enough for us. I saw them myself, though they were at such a distance, I confess, I took them for a flock of sheep.”
“Who?—what was it you saw?—speak, Copus.” Thus adjured, our travelled friend, with a face from which the expression of alarm had not yet entirely subsided, commenced his narrative.
“This morning, sir, when we first changed ’osses, I gets off the rumble, sir, and leaves Mariar by herself. I goes into the small house while the cattle was a-coming—a lonely place, sir, in the midst of a moor, sir—and says I to the landlady, says I, ‘here’s a fine day,’ says I.’
“‘Make the most of it,’ says she, ‘you bid fair never to see another.’
“‘You’re wery purlite,’ says I; ‘I don’t think I’m in a dying condition.’
“‘You carry your death-sentence at your breast,’ says she, in a hollow voice, like a drum with a hoarseness.
“‘What do you elude to,’ says I?—and looking at my breast, sir, I seed nothing in life but this here watch-ribbon as you gived me, of your own tartan, you know, sir.
“‘Why wear ye the badge of the doomed Ben-na-Groich?’ says she; ‘know you not that his web is spun?’
“‘There you’re misinformed,’ says I, ‘ma’am; they’re all done by machinery.’