"And now that we are before the door of their hut," said Ochiltree, "I wad fain ken, Monkbarns, what has gar'd ye plague yoursell wi' me a' this length? I tell ye sincerely I hae nae pleasure in ganging in there. I downa bide to think how the young hae fa'en on a' sides o' me, and left me an useless auld stump wi' hardly a green leaf on't." "This old woman," said Oldbuck, "sent you on a message to the Earl of Glenallan, did she not?" "Ay!" said the surprised mendicant; "how ken ye that sae weel?" "Lord Glenallan told me himself," answered the Antiquary; "so there is no delation—no breach of trust on your part; and as he wishes me to take her evidence down on some important family matters, I chose to bring you with me, because in her situation, hovering between dotage and consciousness, it is possible that your voice and appearance may awaken trains of recollection which I should otherwise have no means of exciting. The human mind—what are you about, Hector?" "I was only whistling for the dog, sir," replied the Captain "she always roves too wide—I knew I should be troublesome to you." "Not at all, not at all," said Oldbuck, resuming the subject of his disquisition—"the human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled silk, where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make any progress in disentangling it." "I ken naething about that," said the gaberlunzie; "but an my auld acquaintance be hersell, or anything like hersell, she may come to wind us a pirn. It's fearsome baith to see and hear her when she wampishes about her arms, and gets to her English, and speaks as if she were a prent book, let a-be an auld fisher's wife. But, indeed, she had a grand education, and was muckle taen out afore she married an unco bit beneath hersell. She's aulder than me by half a score years—but I mind weel eneugh they made as muckle wark about her making a half-merk marriage wi' Simon Mucklebackit, this Saunders's father, as if she had been ane o' the gentry. But she got into favour again, and then she lost it again, as I hae heard her son say, when he was a muckle chield; and then they got muckle siller, and left the Countess's land, and settled here. But things never throve wi' them. Howsomever, she's a weel-educate woman, and an she win to her English, as I hae heard her do at an orra time, she may come to fickle us a'." CHAPTER NINETEENTH Life ebbs from such old age, unmarked and silent, As the slow neap-tide leaves yon stranded galley.— Late she rocked merrily at the least impulse That wind or wave could give; but now her keel Is settling on the sand, her mast has ta'en An angle with the sky, from which it shifts not. Each wave receding shakes her less and less, Till, bedded on the strand, she shall remain Useless as motionless. Old Play.