"O' puir Leddy Alison," whined Juden, half in sorrow, and half in spite. "Eh, sirs! but the auld Place o' Drumsheugh is fu' o' her memory, and I seemed to hear her sweet low voice in every sough o' the auld aik trees, and to see her shadow in every glint their branches threw on the moonlighted avenue and auld grey house." "Fool, fool," said Clermistonlee in a subdued voice, "you speak as if she had been murdered." "Nor did she fare mickle better," muttered Juden, under breath, however. "Poor Alison!--so gentle and unreproaching," said the lord in a low musing voice, "Alison--once that name was ever on my lips--her presence was ever with me, and her idea raised a rapture in this hollow heart, to which it has since been a stranger. Yes, my love was a very true one." "While it lasted," said Mersington. "Of course," rejoined the other, recovering himself. "I loved her to distraction once; or thought so, and by all the devils, 'tis quite the same thing. She is dead now, and peace be with her; but peril of thy life, Juden Stenton, trouble me no more with such untimely elegies. And pray, Master Morality, how have you dared to loiter away these two hours past?" "Ask that elfshotten Mear Meg?" said the butler, testily. "Either the cantrips o' Beatrix Gilruth, or Lucky Elshender (baith o' whom are weel deserving o' the branks and tar barrel, Mersington), hae clean bewitched that puir beast. May I never lay head on a pillow to-night, if I wasna' spell-bound on Halkerston's Crofts, where I continued to ride and spur, wi' the black Calton looming in front and St. Cuthbert's kirk behind! but I never neared the one, or got further from the other; and yet Meg was fleeing like the wind, or as fast as ever she did for city purse or king's plate on the sands o' Leith. The night was dark: a cauld wind swept owre the crofts, and soughed among the kirkyard yews and lang nettles by the drystane dykes; red lights gleamed in the runnels that bummel down the brae side, and redder stars were shooting in the lift. A cauld perspiration burst owre me, every hair bristled under my bannet----" "Rascal--art mocking us?" "Patience, my Lord," groaned poor Juden. "I kent there was a spell on me, and I tried to say some holy word or name; but, as the deil would hae'd, the sounds aye stuck in my throat; and there I sat, sweating and trembling, and spurring a galloping nag that never progressed; and there indubitably I must hae been until cockcrow, if I hadna----" "What?" exclaimed his master, stamping with impatience. "Made a grasp at a rowan tree that grew near, and pu'ed a bunch o' the last year's berries, when lo! the charm was broken, and Meg shot awa like the wind--and I cleared the lang gate as if the Paip and the Deil were behind me."