a very slight scratch; nay, now you draw on the stocking, I can see nothing.' "You do indeed see nothing," answered Minna, somewhat wildly; "but the time will soon come that all-ay, all-will be seen and known." So saying, she hastily completed her dress, and led the way to the breakfast, where she assumed her place amongst the guests; but with a countenance so pale and haggard, and manners and speech so altered, and so bewildered, that it excited the attention of the whole company, and the utmost anxiety on the part of her father, Magnus Troil. Many and various were the conjectures of the guests, concerning a distemperature which seemed rather mental than corporeal. Some hinted the maiden had been struck with an evil eye, and something they muttered about Norna of the Fitful-head; some talked of the departure of Captain Cleveland, and murmured it was a shame for a young lady to take on so after a land-louper, of whom no one knew any thing;" and this contemptuous epithet was in particular bestowed on the Captain by Mistress Baby Yellowley, while she was in the act of wrapping round her old skinny neck the very handsome owerlay (as she called it,) wherewith the said Captain had presented her. The old Lady Glowrowrum had a system of her own, which she hinted to Mistress Yellowley, after thanking God that her own connection with the Burgh-Westra family was by the lass's mother, who was a canny Scotswoman, like herself. 66 For, as to these Troils, you see, Dame Yellowley, for as high as they hold their heads, they say that ken, (winking sagaciously,) that there is a bee in their bonnet;-that Norna, as they call her, its no her right name neither, is at whiles far beside her right mind, and they that ken the cause, say the Fowde was some gate or other linked in with it, for he will never hear an ill word of her. But I was in Scotland then, or I might have kend the real cause, as well as other folk. At ony rate there is a kind of wildness in the blood. Ye ken very weel daft folk dinna bide to be contradicted; and I'll say that for the Fowde-he likes to be contradicted as ill as ony man in Zetland. But it shall never be said that I said ony ill of the house that I am sae nearly connected wi'. Only ye will mind, dame, it is through the Sinclairs, that we are a-kin, not through the Troils,-and the Sinclairs are kend far and wide for a wise generation, dame. But I see there is the stirrup-cup coming round." "I wonder," said Mistress Baby to her brother, as soon as the Lady Glowrowrum turned from her, what gars that muckle wife dame, dame, dame that gate at me. She might ken the blude of the Clinkscales is as gude as ony Glowrowrum amang them." The guests, meanwhile, were fast taking their departure, scarcely noticed by Magnus, who was so much engrossed with Minna's indisposition, that, contrary to his hospitable wont, he suffered them to go away unsaluted. And thus concluded, amidst anxiety and illness, the festival of Saint John, as celebrated on that season at the house of Burgh-Westra; adding another caution to that of the Emperor of Ethiopia,—with how little security man can reckon upon the days which he destines to happiness. CHAPTER IV. But this sad evil which doth her infest, That either seems some cursed witch's deed, Fairy Queen, Book III. Canto III. THE term had now elapsed, by several days, when Mordaunt Mertoun, as he had promised at his departure, should have returned to his father's abode at Jarlshoff, but there were no tidings of his return. Such delay might, at another time, have excited little curiosity and no anxiety; for old Swertha, who took upon her the office of thinking and conjecturing for the little household, would have concluded that he had remained behind the other guests upon some party of sport or pleasure. But she knew that Mordaunt had not been lately in favour with Magnus Troil; she knew that he proposed his stay at Burgh-Westra should be a short one, upon account of his father's health, to whom, notwithstanding the little encouragement which his filial piety received, he paid uniform attention. Swertha knew all this, and she became anxious. She watched the looks of her master, the elder Mordaunt; but, wrapt in dark and stern uniformity of composure, his countenance, like the surface of a midnight lake, suffered no one to penetrate into what was beneath. His studies, his solitary meals, his lonely walks, succeeded each other in unvaried rotation, and seemed undisturbed by the least thought about Mordaunt's absence. At length such reports reached Swertha's ear, from various quarters, that she became totally unable to conceal her anxiety, and resolved, at the risk of provoking her master into fury, or perhaps that of losing her place in his household, to force upon his notice the doubts which afflicted her own mind. Mordaunt's good humour and goodly person must indeed have made no small impression on the withered and selfish heart of the poor old woman, to induce her to take a course so desperate, and from which her friend the Ranzelman endeavoured in vain to deter her. Still, however, conscious that a miscarriage in the matter would, like the loss of Trinculo's bottle in the horse-pool, be attended not only with dishonour, but with infinite loss, she determined to proceed on her high emprize with as much caution as was consistent with the attempt. We have already mentioned, that it seemed a part of the very nature of this reserved and unsocial being, at least since his retreat into the utter solitude of Jarlshoff, to endure no one to start a subject of conversation, or to put any question to him, that did not arise out of urgent and pressing emergency. Swertha was sensible, therefore, that, in order favourably to open the discourse which she · proposed to hold with her master, she must contrive that it should originate with himself. To accomplish this purpose, while busied in preparing the table for Mr. Mertoun's simple and solitary dinner-meal, she formally adorned the table with two covers instead of one, and made all her other little preparations as if he was to have a guest or companion at dinner. The stratagem succeeded; for Mertoun, on coming from his study, no sooner saw the table thus arranged, than he asked Swertha, who, waiting the effect of her stratagem as a fisher watches his ground-baits, was fiddling up and down the room, "Whether Mordaunt was not returned from Burgh-Westra?” This question was the cue for Swertha, and she answered, in a voice of sorrowful anxiety, h lf-real, half-affected, "Na, na!-nae sic divot had dunted at their door. It wad be blithe news, indeed to ken that young Master Mordaunt, poor dear bairn, were safe at hame." "And, if he be not at home, why should you lay a cover for him, you doting fool?" replied Mertoun, in a tone well calculated to stop the old woman's proceedings. But she replied, boldly, "that, indeed, somebody should take thought about Master Mertoun; a' that she could do was to have seat and plate ready for him, when he came. But she thought the dear bairn had been ower lang awa'; and, if she maun speak out, she had her ain fears when and whether he might ever come hame." "Your fears!" said Mertoun, his eyes flashing as they usually did, when his hour of ungovernable passion approached; "do you speak of your idle fears to me, who know that all of your sex, that is not fickleness, and folly, and self-conceit, and selfwill, is a bundle of idiotical fears, vapours, and tremors? What are your fears to me, you foolish old hag?" It is an admirable quality in womankind, that when a breach of the laws of natural affection comes under their observation, the whole sex is in arms. Let a rumour arise in the street of a parent that has misused a child, or a child that has insulted a parent, I say nothing of the case of husband and wife, where the interest may be accounted for in sympathy, and all the women within hearing, will take animated and decided part with the sufferer. ,Swertha, notwithstanding her greed and avarice, had her share of the generous feeling, which does so much honour to her sex, and was, on this occasion, so much carried on by its impulse, that she |