“Why, now, you go father than I do, Caleb,” said the Master, drowning a certain degree of consciousness in a forced laugh; “you are for marrying me into a family that you will not allow me to visit, how this? and you look as pale as death besides.” “Oh, sir,” repeated Caleb again, “you would but laugh if I tauld it; but Thomas the Rhymer, whose tongue couldna be fause, spoke the word of your house that will e’en prove ower true if you go to Ravenswood this day. Oh, that it should e’er have been fulfilled in my time!” “And what is it, Caleb?” said Ravenswood, wishing to soothe the fears of his old servant. Caleb replied: “He had never repeated the lines to living mortal; they were told to him by an auld priest that had been confessor to Lord Allan’s father when the family were Catholic. But mony a time,” he said, “I hae soughed thae dark words ower to myself, and, well-a-day! little did I think of their coming round this day.” “Truce with your nonsense, and let me hear the doggerel which has put it into your head,” said the Master, impatiently. With a quivering voice, and a cheek pale with apprehension, Caleb faltered out the following lines: “When the last Laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride, And woo a dead maiden to be his bride, He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie’s flow, And his name shall be lost for evermoe!” “I know the Kelpie’s flow well enough,” said the Master; “I suppose, at least, you mean the quicksand betwixt this tower and Wolf’s Hope; but why any man in his senses should stable a steed there——” “Oh, ever speer ony thing about that, sir—God forbid we should ken what the prophecy means—but just bide you at hame, and let the strangers ride to Ravenswood by themselves. We have done eneugh for them; and to do mair would be mair against the credit of the family than in its favour.” “Well, Caleb,” said the Master, “I give you the best possible credit for your good advice on this occasion; but as I do not go to Ravenswood to seek a bride, dead or alive, I hope I shall choose a better stable for my horse than the Kelpie’s quicksand, and especially as I have always had a particular dread of it since the patrol of dragoons were lost there ten years since. My father and I saw them from the tower struggling against the advancing tide, and they were lost long before any help could reach them.” “And they deserved it weel, the southern loons!” said Caleb; “what had they ado capering on our sands, and hindering a wheen honest folk frae bringing on shore a drap brandy? I hae seen them that busy, that I wad hae fired the auld culverin or the demi-saker that’s on the south bartizan at them, only I was feared they might burst in the ganging aff.”