Then you may consider, my Lord Abbot, what they were for mortal eyes, especially such a run of them, which were every night varied in their horrors, and terminated in something perfectly distinct from all those preceding. On the second night the bridegroom was a foreign merchant, a man of bustle and punctuality, who said he could not remain late with his kind convivial friends, and was under the necessity of carrying his bride off at an early hour, having business of importance to transact on the morrow. It was a speculation, he said, on which he calculated making a good profit, and a man who was coming in to have a wife, and in all probability a small family to maintain, required to look after and attend to these matters. The witch caressed him in ecstacy when he made this speech, and proffered to go with him as soon as he chose. She saluted her cronies, and bade them farewell; and although there is no love among those sort of people, yet there was still so much of human nature remaining, that there seemed to subsist a degree of regret that they should never meet again. My own heart was even sore for the wretched beldame; for I had witnessed a scene the preceding night which had been withheld from her view, and those of the other brides that were to be; and I knew that a fate somewhat similar awaited them all. They mounted this one behind the spruce merchant on a tall gallant charger whose eyes gleamed like lightning, and away they set over the leas of Carterhaugh, at a light gallop; but at every bound the swiftness of the steed increased, till it was quickly beyond the speed of the eagle. The witch held like grim death, and would fain have expostulated with the bridegroom on the madness of risking their necks for a little per centage,--but her velocity was such that she could make no farther speech of it, than just a squeak now and then like a shot hare. The reckless merchant flew on, still increasing his rapidity, until he came to the very highest rock of the Harehead linn. The witch knew of the dreadful chasm that was before them, and weening that her husband did not know she uttered a piercing shriek; but the void was only thirty yards across and a hundred deep, so the fearless merchant, meaning to take it at one leap, made his charger bound from the top of the precipice. The infernal courser cleared the linn, but the witch's head failing, she toppled off about the middle space. There were two fishermen spearing salmon in the bottom of the gulf, who saw the phenomenon pass over their heads, and the wife lose her hold and fall off; they heard her likewise saying, as she came adown the air, "Aih, what a fa' I will get!" And as she said, so it fell out; for she alighted on the rocks a short space from the place where they stood, and was literally dashed in pieces; but the steed ran away with the merchant over hill and dale like a thunderbolt, and neither the one nor the other ever looked over his shoulder to see what had befallen the bride.