'Will ye remember my errand now?' said Meg Merrilies; 'I ken by the cast o' your ee that ye're anither man than when you cam in.'
'I will, Mrs. Margaret,' repeated Sampson, stoutly; 'I will deliver unto him the sealed yepistle, and will add what you please to send by word of mouth.'
'Then I'll make it short,' says Meg. 'Tell him to look at the stars without fail this night, and to do what I desire him in that letter, as he would wish
That Bertram's right and Bertram's might
Should meet on Ellangowan height.
I have seen him twice when he saw na me; I ken when he was in this country first, and I ken what's brought him back again. Up an' to the gate! ye're ower lang here; follow me.'
Sampson followed the sibyl accordingly, who guided him about a quarter of a mile through the woods, by a shorter cut than he could have found for himself; then they entered upon the common, Meg still marching before him at a great pace, until she gained the top of a small hillock which overhung the road.
'Here,' she said, 'stand still here. Look how the setting sun breaks through yon cloud that's been darkening the lift a' day. See where the first stream o' light fa's: it's upon Donagild's round tower, the auldest tower in the Castle o' Ellangowan; that's no for naething! See as it's glooming to seaward abune yon sloop in the bay; that's no for naething neither. Here I stood on this very spot,' said she, drawing herself up so as not to lose one hair-breadth of her uncommon height, and stretching out her long sinewy arm and clenched hand—'here I stood when I tauld the last Laird o' Ellangowan what was coming on his house; and did that fa' to the ground? na, it hit even ower sair! And here, where I brake the wand of peace ower him, here I stand again, to bid God bless and prosper the just heir of Ellangowan that will sune be brought to his ain; and the best laird he shall be that Ellangowan has seen for three hundred years. I'll no live to see it, maybe; but there will be mony a blythe ee see it though mine be closed. And now, Abel Sampson, as ever ye lo'ed the house of Ellangowan, away wi' my message to the English Colonel, as if life and death were upon your haste!'
So saying, she turned suddenly from the amazed Dominie and regained with swift and long strides the shelter of the wood from which she had issued at the point where it most encroached upon the common. Sampson gazed after her for a moment in utter astonishment, and then obeyed her directions, hurrying to Woodbourne at a pace very unusual for him, exclaiming three times, 'Prodigious! prodigious! pro-di-gi-ous!'
CHAPTER XLVII
It is not madness
That I have utter'd, bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word, which madness
Would gambol from.
Hamlet.