"'Why wear ye the badge of the doomed Ben-na-Groich?' says she; 'know you not that his web is spun?' "'There you're misinformed,' says I, 'ma'am; they're all done by machinery.' "'Fool,' says she, quite in a passion, 'you've put yourself under a ruined wall, and will be crushed to the dust by the tumble.' "'Wrong again,' says I, 'for master has had the whole building repaired.' "'Blind mole, you will take no warning; perhaps because you don't believe--see there!' And when I looked in to where she pointed, sure enough I sees ten or a dozen stout chaps all a-sharping of their swords upon great grinding-stones, at the other end of the house. "'What's all them fellows arter?' says I. "'Blood,' says she. "'Blood and wounds!' says I, 'I never heared such a woman. 'Clect, at Oxford, hearing of an old Roman Catholic lady they called the Civil, as spoke in that 'ere fashion, and was a dealer in books and stationery, but, cuss me, if you doesn't beat her hollow. Whose blood do you mean, ma'am?' "'His who calls himself Ben-na-Groich.'" "Oh, brother Thomas, did you ever hear of the like?" shuddered Miss Alice. "A witch," said the gentleman thus appealed to, with a very unsuccessful effort to appear disdainful. "What more, Copus?--did she say anything else?" "Lots more, but I've nearly forgotten it." "How long did this detain you?" "Oh, he kept us waiting three or four hours," interposed Miss Alice; "and when he came out, he couldn't have been more unsteady if he had been a-drinking." "Yes, indeed, sir," added Maria, "his manners has been wery extraordinary ever since; he has been either singing songs or sleeping the whole way here." "The interview was a very strange one. Did any one else see the ten or twelve men?" inquired the chief. "I seed one of them, sir," replied Maria--"a tall, handsome gentleman, in a green frock coat. He went towards a horse that was tied near a stack of fuel, just at the moment Copus came out." "Indeed? Did _you_ see him, Copus?" "Oh yes. I saw a figure something as she describes it. He is the surest sign, the wild woman said, of something awful; they calls him Kickan-drubb." "How strange!" repeated the chieftain, for the hundredth time--"a regular conspiracy, and nobody here to defend us. The old tiger down-stairs, Angus Mohr, would be the first to kill us if he could, and what is to become of us, Heaven only knows." "Better let the horses stay at the door, sir; the carriage may be useful," suggested Copus. "There's no time to be lost, indeed," replied the master; "but yet what would be the use of flying? We are safer here than on the road." "No, no; let us go, brother Ben--brother Thomas, I mean--for do you know that Fash-na-Cairn has vowed he'll have your life?" "Who the devil is Fash-na-Cairn? I never did him any harm."