"Know you not that he wears a warlock jacket, against which the sharpest swords are pointless?" "What do you mean?" asked the soldier, keeping his horse in check. "I mean a doublet made for him by a warlock in Glenkens, woven of the skins of water-snakes caught in a south-running burn where three lairds' lands met, and woven for him under the beams of a March moon, on the haunted Moat of Urr." Gray laughed and said, "I should like to test this dagger, my poor MacLellan's gift, upon that same doublet." "Moreover," said the smith, lowering his voice, while a deeper scowl impressed his grisly visage, "it is said in Galloway here, that when Earl James, a child, was held by his godmother at the font in Tongland Abbey Kirk, the blessed water, as it fell from the hand of Abbot John, hissed upon his little face as upon iron in a white heat." "Peace, carle! can a stout fellow like thee be moonling enough to give such stories credence?" "'Tis folly, perhaps, to think of them, betouch us, too! so near the Moat of Urr," said the smith, with a perceptible shudder, as he glanced covertly over his shoulder. "And why here more than elsewhere?" "Know ye not?" asked the smith, in a whisper. "You forget that I am a stranger." "True. Then it was on _this_ spot that James Achanna, the earl's sooth fast-friend and henchman, sold himself to Satan, after conjuring him up by performing some nameless rites of hell." "Adieu, and God be wi' you," said Gray, laughing, yet nevertheless making the sign of the cross, for the place was savage and solitary, and he was not without a due share of the superstition incident to his age and country. Turning his horse, he rode rapidly off. As he did so, a cunning smile passed over the swarthy face of Malise MacKim, who swung his mace round his head as if he were about to brain an enemy. The day was far advanced, when, at Kelton, Gray crossed the Dee by a flat-bottomed boat, near a place where a group of peasants were assembled under a gallows-tree. Thereon hung a man, and there, by paying a fee to the doomster of Thrave, persons afflicted by wens, or similar excrescences, came to obtain the benefit of the _deid-strake_--a touch of the dead hand being deemed a certain cure. When Gray saw the poor corse swinging in the wind, he remembered the fate of Sir Herbert Maxwell, and reflected how easily Douglas might release Murielle from her marriage-ties by putting him to death, as he had done that powerful baron; yet his heart never trembled, nor did he swerve from his resolution of attempting to save MacLellan, in spite of every danger. CHAPTER XLVI. AN UNEXPECTED GUIDE. And a good evening to my friend Don Carlos. Some lucky star has led my steps this way: I was in search of you.--THE SPANISH STUDENT.