"No," replied Meg Merrilies. "you've missed your blow, ye blood-spiller! and ye have nothing to expect from the tempter."
"Hagel!" exclaimed the ruffian, "if I had him but by the throat!-and what am I to do then?"
"Do?" answered the gipsy; "die like a man, or be hanged like a dog!"
"Hanged, ye hag of Satan!-the hemp's not sown that shall hang me."
"lt's sown, and it's grown, and it's heckled, and it's twisted. Did I not tell ye, when ye wad take away the boy Harry Bertram, in spite of my prayers,—did I not say he would come back when he had dree'd his weird in foreign land till his twenty-first year?—Did I not say the auld fire would burn down to a spark, but wad kindle again?"
"Well, mother, you did say so," said Hatteraick in a tone that had something of despair in its accents; "and, donner and blitzen! I believe you spoke the truth—that younker of Ellangowan has been a rock ahead to me all my life! and now, with Glossin's cursed contrivance, my crew have been cut off, my boats destroyed, and I dare say the lugger's taken—there were not men enough left on board to work her, far less to fight her—a dredge-boat might have taken her. And what will the owners say?—Hagel and sturm! I shall never dare go back again to Flushing."
"You'll never need," said the gipsy.
"What are you doing there," said her companion, "and what makes you say that?"
During this dialogue, Meg was heaping some flax loosely together. Before answer to this question, she dropped a firebrand upon the flax, which had been previously steeped in some spirituous liquor, for it instantly caught fire, and rose in a vivid pyramid of the most brilliant light up to the very top of the vault. As it ascended, Meg answered the ruffian's question in a firm and steady voice:-"Because the Hour's come, and the Man."
At the appointed signal, Bertram and Dinmont sprung over the brushwood, and rushed upon Hatteraick. Hazlewood, unacquainted with their plan of assault, was a moment later. The ruffian, who instantly saw he was betrayed, turned his first vengeance on Meg Merrilies, at whom he discharged a pistol. She fell, with a piercing and dreadful cry, between the shriek of pain and the sound of laughter, when at its highest and most suffocating height.