Having made these sage reflections, he wrapped himself close in his cloak, and fixed his eye on the moon as she waded amid the stormy and dusky clouds, which the wind from time to time drove across her surface. The melancholy and uncertain gleams that she shot from between the passing shadows fell full upon the rifted arches and shafted windows of the old building, which were thus for an instant made distinctly visible in their ruinous state, and anon became again a dark, undistinguished, and shadowy mass. The little lake had its share of these transient beams of light, and showed its waters broken, whitened, and agitated under the passing storm, which, when the clouds swept over the moon, were only distinguished by their sullen and murmuring plash against the beach. The wooded glen repeated, to every successive gust that hurried through its narrow trough, the deep and various groan with which the trees replied to the whirlwind, and the sound sunk again, as the blast passed away, into a faint and passing murmur, resembling the sighs of an exhausted criminal after the first pangs of his torture are over. In these sounds, superstition might have found ample gratification for that State of excited terror which she fears and yet loves. But such feeling is made no part of Ochiltree's composition. His mind wandered back to the scenes of his youth. "I have kept guard on the outposts baith in Germany and America," he said to himself, "in mony a waur night than this, and when I ken'd there was maybe a dozen o' their riflemen in the thicket before me. But I was aye gleg at my duty—naebody ever catched Edie sleeping." As he muttered thus to himself, he instinctively shouldered his trusty pike-staff, assumed the port of a sentinel on duty, and, as a step advanced towards the tree, called, with a tone assorting better with his military reminiscences than his present state—"Stand! who goes there?" "De devil, goot Edie," answered Dousterswivel, "why does you speak so loud as a baarenhauter, or what you call a factionary—I mean a sentinel?" "Just because I thought I was a sentinel at that moment," answered the mendicant. "Here's an awsome night! Hae ye brought the lantern and a pock for the siller?" "Ay-ay, mine goot friend," said the German, "here it is—my pair of what you call saddlebag; one side will be for you, one side for me;—I will put dem on my horse to save you de trouble, as you are old man." "Have you a horse here, then?" asked Edie Ochiltree. "O yes, mine friend—tied yonder by de stile," responded the adept. "Weel, I hae just ae word to the bargain—there sall nane o' my gear gang on your beast's back." "What was it as you would be afraid of?" said the foreigner. "Only of losing sight of horse, man, and money," again replied the gaberlunzie. "Does you know dat you make one gentlemans out to be one great rogue?"