They bore her accordingly to the vault. On the way her mind seemed to
run more upon the scene which had just passed than on her own
approaching death. 'There were three of them set upon him: I brought
the twasome, but wha was the third? It would be HIMSELL, returned to
work his ain vengeance!'
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
Mannering; that, observing them disappear into the cave, he had crept
after them, meaning to announce himself and his errand, when his hand
in the darkness encountering the leg of Dinmont had nearly produced a
catastrophe, which, indeed, nothing but the presence of mind and
fortitude of the bold yeoman could have averted.
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 Kennedy was taken on the spot where the deed had been done
so many years before, and that a woman was mortally wounded. From
curiosity, or rather from the feeling that his duty called him to
scenes of distress, this gentleman had come to the Kaim of Derncleugh,
and now presented himself. The surgeon arrived at the same time, and
was about to probe the wound; but Meg resisted the assistance of
either. 'It's no what man can do that will heal my body or save my
spirit. Let me speak what I have to say, and then ye may work your
will; I'se be nae hindrance. But where's Henry Bertram?' The
assistants, to whom this name had been long a stranger, gazed upon each
other. 'Yes!' she said, in a stronger and harsher tone, 'I said HENRY
BERTRAM OF ELLANGOWAN. Stand from the light and let me see him.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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