Katharine, being still debarred all access to her mother, began to dread that she would be obliged to leave her father’s house; and, in case of a last extremity, she bethought her of sounding the dispositions of old Nanny. She was a character not easily to be comprehended. She spoke much to herself, but little to any other person—worked so hard that she seldom looked up, and all the while sung scraps of old songs and ballads, the import of which it was impossible to understand; but she often chaunted these with a pathos that seemed to flow from the heart, and that never failed to affect the hearer. She wore a russet worsted gown, clouted shoes, and a quoif, or mutch, upon her head, that was crimped and plaited so close around her face that very little of the latter was visible. In this guise was Nanny, toiling hard and singing her mournful ditty, when Katharine came in and placed herself on a seat by her side. “Nanny, this seems to be more than ordinary a busy day with you; pray, what is all this baking and boiling for?” “Dear bairn, dear bairn, what do I ken—the like o’ me maun do as we’re bidden—guests are coming, my bairn—O, ay—there’s mony a braw an’ bonny lad coming this way—mony a ane that will gaur a young thing’s e’en stand i’ back water— “They are coming! they are coming! Alak! an’ wae’s me! Though the sword be in the hand, Yet the tear’s in the e’e. Is there blood in the moorlands Where the wild burnies rin? Or what gars the water Wind reid down the lin? O billy, dear billy, Your boding let be, For it’s nought but the reid lift That dazzles your e’e.” “Prithee go on, Nanny; let me hear what it was that reddened the water?” “Dear bairn, wha kens; some auld thing an’ out o’ date; but yet it is sae like the days that we hae seen, ane wad think the poeter that made it had the second sight. Mony a water as weel as the Clyde has run reid wi’ blude, an’ that no sae lang sin’ syne!—ay, an’ the wild burnies too! I hae seen them mysel leave a reid strip on the sand an’ the grey stanes—but the hoody craw durstna pick there!—Dear bairn, has the Chapelhope burn itsel never had the hue?” Here Katharine’s glance and Nanny’s met each other, but were as quickly withdrawn, for they dreaded one another’s converse; but they were soon relieved from that dilemma by Nanny’s melancholy chime— “In yon green houm there sat a knight,— An’ the book lay open on his knee, An’ he laid his hand on his rusty sword. An’ turned to Heaven his watery e’e. But in yon houm there is a kirk, An’ in that kirk there is a pew, An’ in that pew there sat a king, Wha signed the deed we maun ever rue. He wasna king o’ fair Scotland, Though king o’ Scotland he should hae been,— And he lookit north to the land he loved, But aye the green leaves fell atween.