第164章

``Removed!'' she exclaimed; for that name never failed to produce its usual effect upon her; ``then we maun a' follow--a' maun ride when she is in the saddle.Tell them to let Lord Geraldin ken we're on before them.Bring my hood and scarf --ye wadna hae me gang in the carriage wi' my leddy, and my hair in this fashion?''

She raised her shrivelled arms, and seemed busied like a woman who puts on her cloak to go abroad, then dropped them slowly and stiffly; and the same idea of a journey still floating apparently through her head, she proceeded, in a hurried and interrupted manner,--``Call Miss Neville--What do you mean by Lady Geraldin? I said Eveline Neville, not Lady Geraldin--there's no Lady Geraldin; tell her that, and bid her change her wet gown, and no' look sae pale.Bairn! what should she do wi' a bairn?--maidens hae nane, I trow.--Teresa --Teresa--my lady calls us!--Bring a candle;--the grand staircase is as mirk as a Yule midnight--We are coming, my lady!''--With these words she sunk back on the settle, and from thence sidelong to the floor.

* Note I.Elspeth's death.

Edie ran to support her, but hardly got her in his arms, before he said, ``It's a' ower--she has passed away even with that last word.''

``Impossible,'' said Oldbuck, hastily advancing, as did his nephew.But nothing was more certain.She had expired with the last hurried word that left her lips; and all that remained before them were the mortal relics of the creature who had so long struggled with an internal sense of concealed guilt, joined to all the distresses of age and poverty.

``God grant that she be gane to a better place!'' said Edie, as he looked on the lifeless body; ``but oh! there was something lying hard and heavy at her heart.I have seen mony a ane dee, baith in the field o' battle, and a fair-strae death at hame; but I wad rather see them a' ower again, as sic a fearfu' flitting as hers!''

``We must call in the neighbours,'' said Oldbuck, when he had somewhat recovered his horror and astonishment, ``and give warning of this additional calamity.I wish she could have been brought to a confession.And, though of far less consequence, I could have wished to transcribe that metrical fragment.But Heaven's will must be done!''

They left the hut accordingly, and gave the alarm in the hamlet, whose matrons instantly assembled to compose the limbs and arrange the body of her who might be considered as the mother of their settlement.Oldbuck promised his assistance for the funeral.

``Your honour,'' said Alison Breck, who was next in age to the deceased, ``suld send doun something to us for keeping up our hearts at the lykewake, for a' Saunders's gin, puir man, was drucken out at the burial o' Steenie, and we'll no get mony to sit dry-lipped aside the corpse.Elspeth was unco clever in her young days, as I can mind right weel, but there was aye a word o' her no being that chancy.Ane suldna speak ill o' the dead --mair by token, o' ane's cummer and neighbour--but there was queer things said about a leddy and a bairn or she left the Craigburnfoot.And sae, in gude troth, it will be a puir lykewake, unless your honour sends us something to keep us cracking.''

``You shall have some whisky,'' answered Oldbuck, ``the rather that you have preserved the proper word for that ancient custom of watching the dead.--You observe, Hector, this is genuine Teutonic, from the Gothic _Leichnam,_ a corpse.It is quite erroneously called _Late-wake,_ though Brand favours that modern corruption and derivation.''