To hail the king in seemly sort

The ladie was full fain,

But King Arthur, all sore amazed,

No answer made again

‘What wight art thou,’ the ladie said,

‘That will not speak to me?

Sir, I may chance to ease thy pain,

Though I be foul to see’

The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.

The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked step-mother, 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 out 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.

Bertram — turned round to his terrified companions. ‘Excuse me for a moment; I am engaged by a promise to follow this woman.’

‘Good Heavens! engaged to a madwoman?’ said Julia.

‘Or to a gipsy, who has her band in the wood ready to murder you!’ said Lucy.

‘That was not spoken like a bairn of Ellangowan,’ said Meg, frowning upon Miss Bertram. ‘It is the ill-doers are ill — dreaders.’

‘In short, I must go,’ said Bertram, ‘it is absolutely necessary; wait for me five minutes on this spot.’

‘Five minutes?’ said the gipsy, ‘five hours may not bring you here again.’

‘Do you hear that?’ said Julia; ‘for Heaven’s sake do not go!’

‘I must, I must; Mr. Dinmont will protect you back to the house.’

‘No,’ said Meg, ‘he must come with you; it is for that he is here. He maun take part wi’ hand and heart; and weel his part it is, for redding his quarrel might have cost you dear.’

‘Troth, Luckie, it’s very true,’ said the steady farmer; ‘and ere I turn back frae the Captain’s side I’ll show that I haena forgotten ‘t.’

‘O yes,’ exclaimed both the ladies at once, ‘let Mr. Dinmont go with you, if go you must, on this strange summons.’

‘Indeed I must,’ answered Bertram; ‘but you see I am safely guarded. Adieu for a short time; go home as fast as you can.’

He pressed his sister’s hand, and took a yet more affectionate farewell of Julia with his eyes. Almost stupefied with surprise and fear, the young ladies watched with anxious looks the course of Bertram, his companion, and their extraordinary guide. Her tall figure moved across the wintry heath with steps so swift, so long, and so steady that she appeared rather to glide than to walk. Bertram and Dinmont, both tall men, apparently scarce equalled her in height, owing to her longer dress and high head-gear. She proceeded straight across the common, without turning aside to the winding path by which passengers avoided the inequalities and little rills that traversed it in different directions. Thus the diminishing figures often disappeared from the eye, as they dived into such broken ground, and again ascended to sight when they were past the hollow. There was something frightful and unearthly, as it were, in the rapid and undeviating course which she pursued, undeterred by any of the impediments which usually incline a traveller from the direct path. Her way was as straight, and nearly as swift, as that of a bird through the air. At length they reached those thickets of natural wood which extended from the skirts of the common towards the glades and brook of Derncleugh, and were there lost to the view.

‘This is very extraordinary,’ said Lucy after a pause, and turning round to her companion; ‘what can he have to do with that old hag?’

‘It is very frightful,’ answered Julia, ‘and almost reminds me of the tales of sorceresses, witches, and evil genii which I have heard in India. They believe there in a fascination of the eye by which those who possess it control the will and dictate the motions of their victims. What can your brother have in common with that fearful woman that he should leave us, obviously against his will, to attend to her commands?’

‘At least,’ said Lucy, ‘we may hold him safe from harm; for she would never have summoned that faithful creature Dinmont, of whose strength, courage, and steadiness Henry said so much, to attend upon an expedition where she projected evil to the person of his friend. And now let us go back to the house till the Colonel returns. Perhaps Bertram may be back first; at any rate, the Colonel will judge what is to be done.’

Leaning, then, upon each other’s arm, but yet occasionally stumbling, between fear and the disorder of their nerves, they at length reached the head of the avenue, when they heard the tread of a horse behind. They started, for their ears were awake to every sound, and beheld to their great pleasure young Hazlewood. ‘The Colonel will be here immediately,’ he said; ‘I galloped on before to pay my respects to Miss Bertram, with the sincerest congratulations upon the joyful event which has taken place in her family. I long to be introduced to Captain Bertram, and to thank him for the well-deserved lesson he gave to my rashness and indiscretion.’

‘He has left us just now,’ said Lucy, ‘and in a manner that has frightened us very much.’

Just at that moment the Colonel’s carriage drove up, and, on observing the ladies, stopped, while Mannering and his learned counsel alighted and joined them. They instantly communicated the new cause of alarm.

‘Meg Merrilies again!’ said the Colonel. ‘She certainly is a most mysterious and unaccountable personage; but I think she must have something to impart to Bertram to which she does not mean we should be privy.’

‘The devil take the bedlamite old woman,’ said the Counsellor; ‘will she not let things take their course, prout de lege, but must always be putting in her oar in her own way? Then I fear from the direction they took they are going upon the Ellangowan estate. That rascal Glossin has shown us what ruffians he has at his disposal; I wish honest Liddesdale maybe guard sufficient.’

‘If you please,’ said Hazlewood, ‘I should be most happy to ride in the direction which they have taken. I am so well known in the country that I scarce think any outrage will be offered in my presence, and I shall keep at such a cautious distance as not to appear to watch Meg, or interrupt any communication which she may make.’

‘Upon my word,’ said Pleydell (aside), ‘to be a sprig whom I remember with a whey face and a satchel not so very many years ago, I think young Hazlewood grows a fine fellow. I am more afraid of a new attempt at legal oppression than at open violence, and from that this young man’s presence would deter both Glossin and his understrappers. — Hie away then, my boy; peer out — peer out, you ‘ll find them somewhere about Derncleugh, or very probably in Warroch wood.’

Hazlewood turned his horse. ‘Come back to us to dinner, Hazlewood,’ cried the Colonel. He bowed, spurred his horse, and galloped off.

We now return to Bertram and Dinmont, who continued to follow their mysterious guide through the woods and dingles between the open common and the ruined hamlet of Derncleugh. As she led the way she never looked back upon her followers, unless to chide them for loitering, though the sweat, in spite of the season, poured from their brows. At other times she spoke to herself in such broken expressions as these: ‘It is to rebuild the auld house, it is to lay the corner-stone; and did I not warn him? I tell’d him I was born to do it, if my father’s head had been the stepping — stane, let alane his. I was doomed — still I kept my purpose in the cage and in the stocks; I was banished — I kept it in an unco land; I was scourged, I was branded — my resolution lay deeper than scourge or red iron could reach; — and now the hour is come.’

‘Captain,’ said Dinmont, in a half whisper, ‘I wish she binna uncanny! her words dinna seem to come in God’s name, or like other folks’. Od, they threep in our............