She was sitting on a broken stone, in a strange, wild dress, and engaged in spinning a thread drawn from wool of three different colours. She was at the same time half singing and half muttering a kind of charm, which seemed to have reference to the child which had been born the night before; and as she finished, Mannering heard her murmur something about the thread of life being three times broken and three times mended, and distinctly heard her say: "He'll be a lucky lad an he win through wi't." [Footnote: "He will be a lucky lad if he lives through it."] He was about to speak to the gipsy, when he heard a hoarse voice calling to her in angry tones from outside, and in a moment after, a man, who was apparently a sea-captain, came in to where Meg Merrilies was seated. He was short in height, but prodigiously muscular, strong, and thick-set, with a surly and savage scowl upon his unpleasant features. He spoke with a foreign accent, and upbraided the gipsy for keeping him waiting so long, ordering her, with a curse, to come and bless his ship before it set out on its voyage. While still addressing the gipsy, he caught sight of Guy Mannering, and was about to draw a weapon against him, when she told him that he was a friend of Mr. Bertram's. He then introduced himself to Mannering, and said his name was Dirck Hatteraick, the captain of the vessel that was lying off the shore. Mannering wished him good-day shortly after, and as he saw him embarking in a small boat, he was convinced, from his conversation and appearance, that the captain was a smuggler. On returning to the new house at Ellangowan, Mannering learned from Mr. Bertram that this Dirck Hatteraick was the terror of all the excise and custom-house cruisers, with which he had had many a fierce fight. Before Guy Mannering took his departure from Ellangowan, Mr. Bertram asked him the result of his studying the stars on the preceding night, and, in reply, was handed a paper by Mannering, which he was told he should keep in a sealed envelope for five whole years. When the visitor had gone, Mrs. Bertram, the mother of the baby boy, was very anxious to read the paper, for she was a superstitious lady; but after a struggle with her curiosity, she contented herself with making a small velvet bag, into which she sewed the paper, and the whole was then hung as a charm round the neck of her young child.