Captain Brown followed the Mannerings to England; and finally he proved to be the long lost Harry Bertram, brother of Lucy. He had been abducted with the help of Meg Merrilies, a gypsy, and some smugglers, at the instigation of a man named Glossin, once agent for the Laird of Ellangowan, who had hoped to get possession of the Laird's property. He finally succeeded in this; but, after his crime was discovered, he died a violent death in prison. Bertram had been kidnapped and taken to Holland, where the name of Vanbeest Brown had been given him. Meg Merrilies is regarded as one of the great characters of fiction. "The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked stepmother, was more decrepit, probably, and what is commonly called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, and to the gestures of a form which, her sex considered, might be termed gigantic. Accordingly, the Knights of the Round Table did not recoil with more terror from the apparition of the loathly lady placed between 'an oak and a green holly,' than Lucy Bertram and Julia Mannering did from the appearance of this Galwegian sibyl upon the common of Ellangowan. "'For God's sake,' said Julia, pulling her purse, 'give that dreadful woman something, and bid her go away,' "'I cannot,' said Bertram: 'I must not offend her.' "'What keeps you here?' said Meg, exalting the harsh and rough tones of her hollow voice. 'Why do you not follow? Must your hour call you twice? Do you remember your oath?--were it at kirk or market, wedding or burial,'--and she held high her skinny forefinger in a menacing attitude....