“I think you give me always the fag of it, whatever is to be done,” grumbled his companion.
“Leap, Laurence, you’re long enough,” said the other; and the fellow left the barn accordingly, without farther remonstrance.
In the meanwhile, Madge had arranged herself for repose on the straw; but still in a half-sitting posture, with her back resting against the door of the hovel, which, as it opened inwards, was in this manner kept shut by the weight of the person.
“There’s mair shifts by stealing, Jeanie,” said Madge Wildfire; “though whiles I can hardly get our mother to think sae. Wha wad hae thought but mysell of making a bolt of my ain back-bane? But it’s no sae strong as thae that I hae seen in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh. The hammermen of Edinburgh are to my mind afore the warld for making stancheons, ring-bolts, fetter-bolts, bars, and locks. And they arena that bad at girdles for carcakes neither, though the Cu’ross hammermen have the gree for that. My mother had ance a bonny Cu’ross girdle, and I thought to have baked carcakes on it for my puir wean that’s dead and gane nae fair way—But we maun a’ dee, ye ken, Jeanie—You Cameronian bodies ken that brawlies; and ye’re for making a hell upon earth that ye may be less unwillin’ to part wi’ it. But as touching Bedlam that ye were speaking about, I’se ne’er recommend it muckle the tae gate or the other, be it right—be it wrang. But ye ken what the sang says.” And, pursuing the unconnected and floating wanderings of her mind, she sung aloud—
“In the bonny cells of Bedlam,
Ere I was ane-and-twenty,
I had hempen bracelets strong,
And merry whips, ding-dong,
And prayer and fasting plenty.
“Weel, Jeanie, I am something herse the night, and I canna sing muckle mair; and troth, I think, I am gaun to sleep.”
She drooped her head on her breast, a posture from which Jeanie, who would have given the world for an opportunity of quiet to consider the means and the probability of her escape, was very careful not to disturb her. After nodding, however, for a minute’or two, with her eyes half-closed, the unquiet and restless spirit of her malady again assailed Madge. She raised her head, and spoke, but with a lowered tone, which was again gradually overcome by drowsiness, to which the fatigue of a day’s journey on horseback had probably given unwonted occasion,—“I dinna ken what makes me sae sleepy—I amaist never sleep till my bonny Lady Moon gangs till her bed—mair by token, when she’s at the full, ye ken, rowing aboon us yonder in her grand silver coach—I have danced to her my lane sometimes for very joy—and whiles dead folk came and danced wi’ me—the like o’ Jock Porteous, or ony body I had ken’d when I was living—for ye maun ken I was ance dead mysell.” Here the poor maniac sung, in a low and wild tone,
“My banes are buried in yon kirkyard
Sae far ayont the sea,
And it is but my blithesome ghaist
That’s speaking now to thee.
“But after a’, Jeanie, my woman, naebody kens weel wha’s living and wha’s dead—or wha’s gone to Fairyland—there’s another question. Whiles I think my puir bairn’s dead—ye ken very weel it’s buried—but that signifies naething. I have had it on my knee a hundred times, and a hundred till that, since it was buried—and how could that be were it dead, ye ken?—it’s merely impossible.”—And here, some conviction half-overcoming the reveries of her imagination, she burst into a fit of crying and ejaculation, “Wae’s me! wae’s me! wae’s me!” till at length she moaned and sobbed herself into a deep sleep, which was soon intimated by her breathing hard, leaving Jeanie to her own melancholy reflections and observations.