[24] When a person changes his condition suddenly, as when a miser becomes liberal, or a churl good-humoured, he is said, in Scotch, to be fey; that is, predestined to speedy death, of which such mutations of humour are received as a sure indication.
[25] A pedlar.
CHAPTER VI.
——If, by your art, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
Tempest.
The storm had somewhat relaxed its rigour just before the entrance of Norna, otherwise she must have found it impossible to travel during the extremity of its fury. But she had hardly added herself so unexpectedly to the party whom chance had assembled at the dwelling of Triptolemus Yellowley, when the tempest suddenly resumed its former vehemence, and raged around the building with a fury which made the inmates insensible to any thing except the risk that the old mansion was about to fall above their heads.
Mistress Baby gave vent to her fears in loud exclamations of “The Lord guide us—this is surely the last day—what kind of a country of guisards and gyre-carlines is this!—and you, ye fool carle,” she added, turning on her brother, (for all her passions had a touch of acidity in them,) “to quit the bonny Mearns land to come here, where there is naething but sturdy beggars and gaberlunzies within ane’s house, and Heaven’s anger on the outside on’t!”
“I tell you, sister Baby,” answered the insulted agriculturist, “that all shall be reformed and amended,—excepting,” he added, betwixt his teeth, “the scaulding humours of an ill-natured jaud, that can add bitterness to the very storm!”
The old domestic and the pedlar meanwhile exhausted themselves in entreaties to Norna, of which, as they were couched in the Norse language, the master of the house understood nothing.