“Deil a bit—deil a bit,” answered Moniplies, hastily, “not a blood-drop's kin to them, if she had a drop of blood in her body—I tell you but what all human beings allege to be truth, that swell within hue and cry of Lombard Street—that lady, or quean, or whatever you choose to call her, has been dead in the body these many a year, though she haunts them, as we have seen, even at their very devotions.”
“You will allow her to be a good spirit at least,” said Nigel Olifaunt, “since she chooses such a time to visit her friends?”
“For that I kenna, my lord,” answered the superstitious follower; “I ken no spirit that would have faced the right down hammer-blow of Mess John Knox, whom my father stood by in his very warst days, bating a chance time when the Court, which my father supplied with butcher-meat, was against him. But yon divine has another airt from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess David Black, of North Leith, and sic like.—Alack-a-day! wha can ken, if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southron read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm fraw the heart, may be powerful to drive them away, even as the Evil Spirit was driven by he smell of the fish's liver from the bridal-chamber of Sara, the daughter of Raguel? As to whilk story, nevertheless, I make scruple to say whether it be truth or not, better men than I am having doubted on that matter.”
“Well, well, well,” said his master, impatiently, “we are now near home, and I have permitted you to speak of this matter for once, that we may have an end to your prying folly, and your idiotical superstitions, for ever. For whom do you, or your absurd authors or informers, take this lady?”
“I can sae naething preceesely as to that,” answered Moniplies; “certain it is her body died and was laid in the grave many a day since, notwithstanding she still wanders on earth, and chiefly amongst Maister Heriot's family, though she hath been seen in other places by them that well knew her. But who she is, I will not warrant to say, or how she becomes attached, like a Highland Brownie, to some peculiar family. They say she has a row of apartments of her own, ante-room, parlour, and bedroom; but deil a bed she sleeps in but her own coffin, and the walls, doors, and windows are so chinked up, as to prevent the least blink of daylight from entering; and then she dwells by torchlight—”
“To what purpose, if she be a spirit?” said Nigel Olifaunt.
“How can I tell your lordship?” answered his attendant. “I thank God I know nothing of her likings, or mislikings—only her coffin is there; and I leave your lordship to guess what a live person has to do with a coffin. As little as a ghost with a lantern, I trow.”
“What reason,” repeated Nigel, “can a creature, so young and so beautiful, have already habitually to contemplate her bed of last-long rest?”
“In troth, I kenna, my lord,” answered Moniplies; “but there is the coffin, as they told me who have seen it: it is made of heben-wood, with silver nails, and lined all through with three-piled damask, might serve a princess to rest in.”
“Singular,” said Nigel, whose brain, like that of most active young spirits, was easily caught by the singular and the romantic; “does she not eat with the family?”