"Aweel, aweel, Maggie, ilka land has its ain lauch—But where's Steenie the night, when a's come and gane? And where's the gudeman?"* * Note G. Gynecocracy. "I hae putten the gudeman to his bed, for he was e'en sair forfain; and Steenie's awa out about some barns-breaking wi' the auld gaberlunzie, Edie Ochiltree: they'll be in sune, and ye can sit doun." "Troth, gudewife" (taking a seat), "I haena that muckle time to stop—but I maun tell ye about the news. Yell hae heard o' the muckle kist o' gowd that Sir Arthur has fund down by at St. Ruth?—He'll be grander than ever now—he'll no can haud down his head to sneeze, for fear o' seeing his shoon." "Ou ay—a' the country's heard o' that; but auld Edie says that they ca' it ten times mair than ever was o't, and he saw them howk it up. Od, it would be lang or a puir body that needed it got sic a windfa'." "Na, that's sure eneugh.—And yell hae heard o' the Countess o' Glenallan being dead and lying in state, and how she's to be buried at St. Ruth's as this night fa's, wi' torch-light; and a' the popist servants, and Ringan Aikwood, that's a papist too, are to be there, and it will be the grandest show ever was seen." "Troth, hinny," answered the Nereid, "if they let naebody but papists come there, it'll no be muckle o' a show in this country, for the auld harlot, as honest Mr. Blattergowl ca's her, has few that drink o' her cup o' enchantments in this corner o' our chosen lands.—But what can ail them to bury the auld carlin (a rudas wife she was) in the night-time?—I dare say our gudemither will ken." Here she exalted her voice, and exclaimed twice or thrice, "Gudemither! gudemither!" but, lost in the apathy of age and deafness, the aged sibyl she addressed continued plying her spindle without understanding the appeal made to her. "Speak to your grandmither, Jenny—Od, I wad rather hail the coble half a mile aff, and the nor-wast wind whistling again in my teeth." "Grannie," said the little mermaid, in a voice to which the old woman was better accustomed, "minnie wants to ken what for the Glenallan folk aye bury by candle-light in the ruing of St. Ruth!" The old woman paused in the act of twirling the spindle, turned round to the rest of the party, lifted her withered, trembling, and clay-coloured hand, raised up her ashen-hued and wrinkled face, which the quick motion of two light-blue eyes chiefly distinguished from the visage of a corpse, and, as if catching at any touch of association with the living world, answered, "What gars the Glenallan family inter their dead by torchlight, said the lassie?—Is there a Glenallan dead e'en now?" "We might be a' dead and buried too," said Maggie, "for onything ye wad ken about it;"—and then, raising her voice to the stretch of her mother-in-law's comprehension, she added, "It's the auld Countess, gudemither."