"Ay, and she has done me the honour to open a correspondence with me, supposing me to be as deep in astrological mysteries as when we first met. Here is her scroll, delivered to me by the Dominie." Pleydell put on his spectacles. "A vile greasy scrawl, indeed--and the letters are uncial or semi-uncial, as somebody calls your large text hand, and in size and perpendicularity resemble the ribs of a roasted pig--I can hardly make it out." "I will try," answered the lawyer. "' You are a good seeker, but a bad finder; you set yourself to prop a falling house, but had a gey guess it would rise again. Lend your hand to the wark that's near, as you lent your ee to the weird [*Destiny] that was far. Have a carriage This night by ten o'clock, at the end of the Crooked Dykes at Portanferry, and let it bring the folk to Woodbourne that shall ask them, if they be there IN GOD'S NAME.'-Stay, here follows some poetry- Dark shall be light, And wrong done to right, When Bertram's right and Bertram's might Shall meet on Ellangowan's height.' A most mystic epistle truly, and closes in a vein of poetry worthy of the Cumaean sibyl--and what have you done?" "Why," said Mannering, rather reluctantly, "I was loth to risk any opportunity of throwing light on this business. The woman is perhaps crazed, and these effusions may arise only from visions of her imagination;--but you were of opinion that she knew more of that strange story than she ever told. " "And so," said Pleydell, "you sent a carriage to the place named?" "You will laugh at me if I own I did," replied the Colonel. "Who, I?" replied the advocate. "No, truly, I think it was the wisest thing you could do." "Yes," answered Mannering, well pleased to have escaped the ridicule he apprehended; "you know the worst is paying the chaise-hire--I sent a post-chaise and four from Kippletringan, with instructions corresponding to the letter--the horses will have a long and cold station on the outposts to-night if our intelligence be false." "Ay, but I think it will prove otherwise," said the lawyer. "This woman has played a part till she believes it; or, if she be a thorough-paced impostor, without a single grain of self-delusion to qualify her knavery, still she may think herself bound to act in character-this I know, that I could get nothing out of her by the common modes of interrogation, and the wisest thing we can do is to give her an opportunity of making the discovery her own way. And now have you more to say, or shall we go to the ladies?" "Why, my mind is uncommonly agitated," answered the Colonel, "and--but I really have no more to say--only I shall count the minutes till the carriage returns; but you cannot be expected to be so anxious." "Why, no--use is all in all," said the more experienced lawyer,--"I am much interested certainly, but I think I shall be able to survive the interval, if the ladies will afford us some music."