careered through his brain. Honest Geordie had no guile; and if he had had any, the new birth he had undergone, with the consequent baptism, would have taken it clean away, so that there was no chance of a suspicion of the part which guidwife Christian had played on the said occasion. Yet, wonder as he might, if he had known all, he would have wondered more how any woman, even with the advantage of a "New Light," could have snored under the purpose she had revolved in her mind, and which she had so darkly revealed to her old master. Ah yes, that female member, of which so much has been said--even that it contains on the subtle point thereof a little nerve which anatomists cannot find in the corresponding organ in man--can swim lightly _tanquam suber_, and yet never give an indication of the depths below. But Geordie became wild;--was she dead outright? Dead people do not snore, but the dying do in apoplexy. He took her by the shoulders, and shook her. "Christian, woman, will ye no speak, when I can get nae rest? Wha was that man wha called here yestreen?" No, she wouldn't. "And did I no see you look at him as ye never looked at man before?" No avail. "And what took ye out so soon after he was awa'?" No reply. "And what's mair"--the murder was now out,--"did ye no meet him secretly at the stair-foot, and stand and speak to him in strange words and strange signs?" Not yet. "And what, in the name o' Heaven, and a' the ither powers up and down and round and round, was the aith that ye swore to him?" Another pause. "And what money-bribe was it ye spak o' sae secretly and darkly?" All in vain. At length the knurr of the clock, and the most solemn of all the hours, "one," sounded hoarsely. Wearied, exhausted, and sorely troubled, Geordie fell asleep, greatly aided thereto by the eternal oscillation of that little tongue at the back of the greater and mute one, the sound of which ceased when the blacksmith was fairly and certainly over, just as if its services had been no longer needed that night.