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Ma
It was now very cloudy, although the stars from time to time shed a twinkling and uncertain light. Hitherto nothing had broken the silence around him but the deep cry of the bog-blitter, or bull-of-the-bog, a large species of bittern, and the sighs of the wind as it passed along the dreary morass. To these was now joined the distant roar of the ocean, towards which the traveller seemed to be fast approaching. This was no circumstance to make his mind easy. Many of the roads in that country lay along the sea-beach, and were liable to be flooded by the tides, which rise with great height, and advance with extreme rapidity. Others were intersected with creeks and small inlets, which it was only safe to pass at particular times of the tide. Neither circumstance would have suited a dark night, a fatigued horse, and a traveller ignorant of his road. Ma
A miserable hut gave him an opportunity to execute his purpose. He found out the door with no small difficulty, and for some time knocked without producing any other answer than a duet between a female and a cur-dog, the latter yelping as if he would have barked his heart out, the other screaming in chorus. By degrees the human tones predominated; but the angry bark of the cur being at the instant changed into a howl, it is probable something more than fair strength of lungs had contributed to the ascendency.
'Sorrow be in your thrapple then!' these were the first articulate words, 'will ye no let me hear what the man wants, wi' your yaffing?'
'Am I far from Kippletringan, good dame?'
'Frae Kippletringan!!!' in an exalted tone of wonder, which we can but faintly express by three points of admiration. 'Ow, man! ye should hae hadden eassel to Kippletringan; ye maun gae back as far as the whaap, and baud the whaap till ye come to Ballenloan, and then - '
'This will never do, good dame! my horse is almost quite knocked up; can you not give me a night's lodgings?'
'Troth can I no; I am a lone woman, for James he's awa to Drumshourloch Fair with the year-aulds, and I daurna for my life open the door to ony o' your gang-there-out sort o' bodies.'
'But what must I do then, good dame? for I can't sleep here upon the road all night.'
'Troth, I ke
'Simple enough, to be wandering here at such a time of night,' thought Ma
'Ye maun baud wessel by the end o' the loan, and take tent o' the jaw-hole.'
'O, if ye get to eassel and wessel again, I am undone! Is there nobody that could guide me to this Place? I will pay him handsomely.'
The word pay operated like magic. 'Jock, ye villain,' exclaimed the voice from the interior, 'are ye lying routing there, and a young gentleman seeking the way to the Place? Get up, ye fause loon, and show him the way down the muckle loaning. He'll show you the way, sir, and I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye 'll be come in the ca
'Perhaps,' said Ma
'Hout, na, ye needna be blate about that; their house is muckle eneugh, and decking time's aye canty time.'
By this time Jock had found his way into all the intricacies of a tattered doublet and more tattered pair of breeches, and sallied forth, a great white-headed, bare-legged, lubberly boy of twelve years old, so exhibited by the glimpse of a rush-light which his half-naked mother held in such a ma
'Why, my little fellow,' he said, 'this is a ruin, not a house?'
'Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne; that's Ellangowan Auld Place. There's a hantle bogles about it; but ye needna be feared, I never saw ony mysell, and we're just at the door o' the New Place.'
Accordingly, leaving the ruins on the right, a few steps brought the traveller in front of a modern house of moderate size, at which his guide rapped with great importance. Ma