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It was evident that the unexpected appearance of Hazlewood, whose person the outrage of Hatteraick left her no time to recognise, had produced a strong effect on her imagination. She often recurred to it. Hazlewood accounted for his unexpected arrival to Bertram by saying that he had kept them in view for some time by the direction of Ma
When the gipsy arrived at the hut she produced the key; and when they entered, and were about to deposit her upon the bed, she said, in an anxious tone, 'Na, na! not that way - the feet to the east'; and appeared gratified when they reversed her posture accordingly, and placed her in that appropriate to a dead body.
'Is there no clergyman near,' said Bertram, 'to assist this unhappy woman's devotions?'
A gentleman, the minister of the parish, who had been Charles Hazlewood's tutor, had, with many others, caught the alarm that the murderer of Ke
All eyes were turned towards Bertram, who approached the wretched couch. The wounded woman took hold of his hand. 'Look at him,' she said, 'all that ever saw his father or his grandfather, and bear witness if he is not their living image?' A murmur went through the crowd; the resemblance was too striking to be denied. 'And now hear me; and let that man,' pointing to Hatteraick, who was seated with his keepers on a sea-chest at some distance - 'let him deny what I say if he can. That is Henry Bertram, son to Godfrey Bertram, umquhile of Ellangowan; that young man is the very lad-bairn that Dirk Hatteraick carried off from Warroch wood the day that he murdered the gauger. I was there like a wandering spirit, for I longed to see that wood or we left the country. I saved the bairn's life, and sair, sair I prigged and prayed they would leave him wi' me. But they bore him away, and he's been lang ower the sea, and now he's come for his ain, and what should withstand him? I swore to keep the secret till he was ane-an'-twenty; I ke
The clergyman, now interposing, remarked it was a pity this deposition was not regularly taken and written down, and the surgeon urged the necessity of examining the wound, previously to exhausting her by questions. When she saw them removing Hatteraick, in order to clear the room and leave the surgeon to his operations, she called out aloud, raising herself at the same time upon the couch, 'Dirk Hatteraick, you and I will never meet again until we are before the judgment-seat; will ye own to what I have said, or will you dare deny it?' He turned his hardened brow upon her, with a look of dumb and inflexible defiance. 'Dirk Hatteraick, dare ye deny, with my blood upon your hands, one word of what my dying breath is uttering?' He looked at her with the same expression of hardihood and dogged stubbor
She here paused, and all left the hut except the surgeon and two or three women. After a very short examination he shook his head and resigned his post by the dying woman's side to the clergyman.
A chaise returning empty to Kippletringan had been stopped on the highroad by a constable, who foresaw it would be necessary to convey Hatteraick to jail. The driver, understanding what was going on at Derncleugh, left his horses to the care of a blackguard boy, confiding, it is to be supposed, rather in the years and discretion of the cattle than in those of their keeper, and set off full speed to see, as he expressed himself, 'whaten a sort o' fun was gaun on.' He arrived just as the group of tenants and peasants, whose numbers increased every moment, satiated with gazing upon the rugged features of Hatteraick, had turned their attention towards Bertram. Almost all of them, especially the aged men who had seen Ellangowan in his better days, felt and acknowledged the justice of Meg Merrilies's appeal. But the Scotch are a cautious people: they remembered there was another in possession of the estate, and they as yet only expressed their feelings in low whispers to each other. Our friend Jock Jabos, the postilion, forced his way into the middle of the circle; but no sooner cast his eyes upon Bertram than he started back in amazement, with a solemn exclamation, 'As sure as there's breath in man, it's auld Ellangowan arisen from the dead!'
This public declaration of an unprejudiced witness was just the spark wanted to give fire to the popular feeling, which burst forth in three distinct shouts: 'Bertram for ever!' 'Long life to the heir of Ellangowan!' 'God send him his ain, and to live among us as his forebears did of yore!'
'I hae been seventy years on the land,' said one person.
'I and mine hae been seventy and seventy to that,' said another; 'I have a right to ken the glance of a Bertram.'
'I and mine hae been three hundred years here,' said another old man, 'and I sail sell my last cow, but I'll see the young Laird placed in his right.'
The women, ever delighted with the marvellous, and not less so when a handsome young man is the subject of the tale, added their shrill acclamations to the general all-hail. 'Blessings on him; he's the very picture o' his father! The Bertrams were aye the wale o' the country side!'
'Eh! that his puir mother, that died in grief and in doubt about him, had but lived to see this day!' exclaimed some female voices.
'But we'll help him to his ain, kimmers,' cried others; 'and before Glossin sail keep the Place of Ellangowan we'll howk him out o't wi' our nails!'
Others crowded around Dinmont, who was nothing both to tell what he knew of his friend, and to boast the honour which he had in contributing to the discovery. As he was known to several of the principal farmers present, his testimony afforded an additional motive to the general enthusiasm. In short, it was one of those moments of intense feeling when the frost of the Scottish people melts like a snow-wreath, and the dissolving torrent carries dam and dyke before it.
The sudden shouts interrupted the devotions of the clergyman; and Meg, who was in one of those dozing fits of stupefaction that precede the close of existence, suddenly started - 'Di