Give him this letter, don't fail, and tell him the time's coming now. Bid him to look at the stars as he looked at them before, and to do what I desire him in the letter." She then led the frightened dominie by a short cut through the woods for about a quarter of a mile, and on reaching the common told him to stand still. "Look," she said, "how the setting sun breaks through the cloud that's been darkening the sky all day. See the stream o' light that falls on the old tower of Ellangowan; that's not for nothing. Here I stood," she went on, stretching out her long sinewy arm and clenched hand--"here I stood when I told the last Laird of Ellangowan what was coming on his house, and did that fall to the ground? And here I stand again to bid God prosper the just heir of Ellangowan that will soon be brought to his own. I'll no live to see it, maybe; but there will be many a blithe eye see it though mine be closed. And now, Abel Sampson, as ever ye loved the house of Ellangowan, away with my message to the English colonel as if life and death were upon your haste." So saying, she turned suddenly from the amazed dominie, who hurried back to Woodbourne, exclaiming as he went, "Prodigious! prodigious! pro-di-gi-ous!" The kindly interest of Meg Merrilies in the fate of Bertram did not, however, end here. Shortly after quitting the dominie she met young Hazlewood on the road, and told him, in a mysterious way, that the guard of soldiers had been drawn off from the custom-house, and brought to his father's house, in the expectation of an attack being made upon it that night. "Nobody means to touch his house," she added; "so send the horsemen back to their post quietly. They will have work to-night; the guns will flash and the swords will glitter in the moonlight." She then asked him if he bore any malice to the man that wounded him, and on Hazlewood assuring her that he had always thought it was an accident, she said: "Then do what I bid ye, for if he was left to his ill wishers he would be a bloody corpse ere morn." And she then disappeared into the wood. Charles Hazlewood, who now felt certain some diabolical plot was on foot for the murder of the man who had accidentally wounded him, rode back at once to his father's house. He found the place occupied with dragoons, and instantly endeavoured to persuade his father to send them back to the custom-house. Glossin had, however, impressed the old man with a fixed idea of the impending danger to his house, and he refused to allow the soldiers to go. While his son was still arguing with him, the sheriff of the country came in hurriedly, and told him that he had had information that the removal of the troops from the custom- house was only part of a plan, and that they should at once return. Orders were accordingly given without delay, and the dragoons were shortly after on their way again to the place from which they came.