"She was the tallest woman I ever saw, and her hair was as black as midnight, unless where it was gray, and she had a scar abune the brow, that ye might hae laid the lith [*joint ] of your finger in. Naebody that's seen her will ever forget her; and I am morally sure that it was on the ground o' what that gipsy-woman said that my mistress made her will, having taen a dislike at the young leddy o' Ellangowan, and she liked her far waur after she was obliged to send her 20L—for she said, Miss Bertram, no content wi' letting the Ellangowan property pass into strange hands, owing to her being a lass and no a lad, was coming, by her poverty, to be a burden and a disgrace to Singleside too.—But I hope my mistress's is a good will for a' that, for it would be hard an me to lose the wee bit legacy—I served for little fee and bountith, weel I wot."
The counsellor relieved her fears on this head, then inquired after Jenny Gibson, and understood she had accepted Mr. Dinmont's offer; "and I have done sae mysell too, since he was sae discreet as to ask me," said Mrs. Rebecca; they are very decent folk the Dinmonts, though my lady didna dow to hear muckle about the friends on that side the house. But she liked the Charlies-hope hams, and the cheeses, and the muir-fowl, that they were aye sending, and the lamb's-wool hose and mittens—she liked them weel eneugh."
Mr. Pleydell now dismissed Mrs. Rebecca. When she was gone, "I think I know the gipsy woman," said the lawyer.
"I was just going to say the same," replied Mannering.
"And her name—" said Pleydell.
"Is Meg Merrilies," answered the Colonel.
"Are you avised of that?" said the counsellor, looking at his military friend with a comic expression of surprise.
Mannering answered that he had known such a woman when he was at Ellangowan upwards of twenty years before; and then made his learned friend acquainted with all the remarkable particulars of his first visit there.
Mr. Pleydell listened with great attention, and then replied, "I congratulated myself upon having made the acquaintance of a profound theologian in your chaplain; but I really did not expect to find a pupil of Albumazar or Messabala in his patron. I have a notion, however, this gipsy could tell us some more of the matter than she derives from astrology or second-sight—I had her through hands once, and could then make little of her, but I must write to Mac-Morlan to stir heaven and earth to find her out. I will gladly come to—shire myself to assist at her examination—I am still in the commission of the peace there, though I have ceased to be Sheriff—I never had anything more at heart in my life than tracing that murder, and the fate of the child. I must write to the Sheriff of Roxburghshire too, and to an active justice of peace in Cumberland."
"I hope when you come to the country you will make Woodbourne your headquarters?"