"Wetter and sturm, ye hag!" replied Hatteraick, "keep your deyvil's matins till they're wanted. Have you seen Glossin?"

"No," replied Meg Merrilies. "you've missed your blow, ye blood-spiller! and ye have nothing to expect from the tempter."

"Hagel!" exclaimed the ruffian, "if I had him but by the throat!-and what am I to do then?"

"Do?" answered the gipsy; "die like a man, or be hanged like a dog!"

"Hanged, ye hag of Satan!-the hemp's not sown that shall hang me."

"lt's sown, and it's grown, and it's heckled, and it's twisted. Did I not tell ye, when ye wad take away the boy Harry Bertram, in spite of my prayers,--did I not say he would come back when he had dree'd his weird in foreign land till his twenty-first year?--Did I not say the auld fire would burn down to a spark, but wad kindle again?"

"Well, mother, you did say so," said Hatteraick in a tone that had something of despair in its accents; "and, donner and blitzen! I believe you spoke the truth--that younker of Ellangowan has been a rock ahead to me all my life! and now, with Glossin's cursed contrivance, my crew have been cut off, my boats destroyed, and I dare say the lugger's taken--there were not men enough left on board to work her, far less to fight her--a dredge-boat might have taken her. And what will the owners say?--Hagel and sturm! I shall never dare go back again to Flushing."

"You'll never need," said the gipsy.

"What are you doing there," said her companion, "and what makes you say that?"

During this dialogue, Meg was heaping some flax loosely together.

Before answer to this question, she dropped a firebrand upon the flax, which had been previously steeped in some spirituous liquor, for it instantly caught fire, and rose in a vivid pyramid of the most brilliant light up to the very top of the vault. As it ascended, Meg answered the ruffian's question in a firm and steady voice:-"Because the Hour's come, and the Man."

At the appointed signal, Bertram and Dinmont sprung over the brushwood, and rushed upon Hatteraick. Hazlewood, unacquainted with their plan of a.s.sault, was a moment later. The ruffian, who instantly saw he was betrayed, turned his first vengeance on Meg Merrilies, at whom he discharged a pistol. She fell, with a piercing and dreadful cry, between the shriek of pain and the sound of laughter, when at its highest and most suffocating height.

"I kenn'd it would be this way," she said.

Bertram, in his haste, slipped his foot upon the uneven rock which floored the cave; a fortunate stumble, for Hatteraick's second bullet whistled over him with so true and steady an aim, that had he been standing upright, it must have lodged in his brain. Ere the smuggler could draw another pistol, Dinmont closed with him, and endeavoured by main force to pinion down his arms. Such, however, was the wretch's personal strength, joined to the efforts of his despair, that, in spite of the gigantic force with which the Borderer grappled him, he dragged Dinmont through the blazing flax, and had almost succeeded in drawing a third pistol, which might have proved fatal to the honest farmer, had not Bertram, as well as Hazlewood, come to his a.s.sistance, when, by main force, and no ordinary exertion of it, they threw Hatteraick on the ground, disarmed him, and bound him. This scuffle, though it takes up some time in the narrative, pa.s.sed in less than a single minute. When he was fairly mastered, after one or two desperate and almost convulsionary struggles, the ruffian lay perfectly still and silent. "He's gaun to die game ony how," said Dinmont; "weel, I like him na the waur for that."

This observation honest Dandie made while he was shaking the blazing flax from his rough coat and s.h.a.ggy black hair, some of which had been singed in the scuffle. "He is quiet now," said Bertram; "stay by him, and do not permit him to stir till I see whether the poor woman be alive or dead." With Hazlewood's a.s.sistance he raised Meg Merrilies.

"I kenn'd it would be this way," she muttered, and it's e'en this way that it should be."

"The ball had penetrated the breast below the throat. It did not bleed much externally; but Bertrarn, accustomed to see gun-shot.

wounds, thought it the more alarming. "Good G.o.d! what shall we do for this poor woman?" said he to Hazlewood, the circ.u.mstances superseding the necessity of previous explanation or introduction to each other.

"My horse stands tied above in the wood," said Hazlewood. "I have been watching you these two hours--I will ride off for some a.s.sistants that may be trusted. Meanwhile, you had better defend the mouth of the cavern against every one till I return." He hastened away. Bertram, after binding Meg Merrilies's wound as well as he could, took station near the mouth of the cave with a c.o.c.ked pistol in his hand; Dinmont continued to watch Hatteraick, keeping a grasp, like that of Hercules, on his breast. There was a dead silence in the cavern, only interrupted by the low and suppressed moaning of the wounded female, and by the hard breathing of the prisoner.

CHAPTER LV.

For though, seduced and led astray, Thou'st travell'd far and wander'd long, Thy G.o.d hath seen thee all the way, And all the turns that led thee wrong.

The Hall of Justice.

After the s.p.a.ce of about three-quarters of an hour, which the uncertainty and danger of their situation made seem almost thrice as long, the voice of young Hazlewood was heard without. "Here I am," he cried, "with a sufficient party."

"Come in then," answered Bertram, not a little pleased to find his guard relieved. Hazlewood then entered, followed by two or three countrymen, one of whom acted as a peace-officer. They lifted Hatteraick up, and carried him in their arms as far as the entrance of the vault was high enough to permit them; then laid him on his back, and dragged him along as well as they could, for no persuasion would induce him to a.s.sist the transportation by any exertion of his own. He lay as silent and inactive in their hands as a dead corpse, incapable of opposing, but in no way aiding, their operations. When he was dragged into daylight, and placed erect upon his feet among three or four a.s.sistants, who had remained without the cave, he seemed stupefied and dazzled by the sudden change from the darkness of his cavern. While others were superintending the removal of Meg Merrilies, those who remained with Hatteraick attempted to make him sit down upon a fragment of rock which lay close upon the high-water mark. A strong shuddering convulsed his iron frame for an instant, as he resisted their purpose. "Not there--Hagel!--you would not make me sit There?"

These were the only words he spoke; but their import, and the deep tone of horror in which they were uttered, served to show what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

When Meg Merrilies had also been removed from the cavern, with all the care for her safety that circ.u.mstances admitted, they consulted where she should be carried. Hazlewood had sent for a surgeon, and proposed that she should be lifted in the meantime to the nearest cottage. But the patient exclaimed with great earnestness, "Na, na, na! To the Kaim o' Derncleugh--the Kaim o'

Derncleugh--the spirit will not free itself o' the flesh but there."

"You must indulge her, I believe," said Bertram "her troubled imagination will otherwise aggravate the fever of the wound."

They bore her accordingly to the vault. On the way her mind seemed to run more upon the scene which had just pa.s.sed, than on her own approaching death. "There were three of them set upon him--I brought the twasome--but wha was the third?--lt would be himself, returned to work his airs vengeance!" '

It was evident that the unexpected appearance of Hazlewood, whose person the outrage of Hatteraick left her no time to recognise, had produced a strong effect on her imagination. She often recurred to it. Hazlewood accounted for his unexpected arrival to Bertram, by saying, that he had kept them in view for some time by the direction of Mannering; that, observing them disappear into the cave, he had crept after them, meaning to announce himself and his errand, when his hand in the darkness encountering the leg of Dinmont, had nearly produced a catastrophe, which, indeed, nothing but the presence of mind and fort.i.tude of the bold yeoman could have averted.

When the gipsy arrived at the hut, she produced the key; and when they entered, and were about to deposit her upon the bed, she said, in an anxious tone, "Na, na! not that way, the feet to the east;"

and appeared gratified when they reversed her posture accordingly, and placed her in that appropriate to dead body.

"Is there no clergyman near," said Bertram, "to a.s.sist this unhappy woman's devotions?"

A gentleman, the minister of the parish, who had been Charles Hazlewood's tutor, had, with many others, caught the alarm, that the murderer of Kennedy was taken on the spot where the deed had been done so many years before, and that a woman was mortally wounded. From curiosity, or rather from the feeling that his duty called him to scenes of distress, this gentleman had come to the Kaim of Derncleugh, and now presented himself. The surgeon arrived at the same time, and was about to probe the wound; but Meg resisted the a.s.sistance of either. "It's no what man can do, that will heal my body, or save my spirit. Let me speak what I have to say, and then ye may work your will; I'se be nae hinderance.--But where's Henry Bertram?"--the a.s.sistants, to whom this same had been long a stranger, gazed upon each other.--"Yes!" she said, in a stronger and harsher tone, "Isaid Henry Bertram of Ellangowan.

Stand from the light and let me see him."

All eyes--were turned towards Bertram, who approached the wretched couch. The wounded woman took hold of his hand. "Look at him," she said, "all that ever saw his father or his grandfather, and bear witness if he is not their living image?" A murmur went through the crowd--the resemblance was too striking to be denied. "And now hear me--and let that man," pointing to Hatteraick, who was seated with his keepers on a sea-chest at some distance-" let him deny what I say, if he can. That is Henry Bertram, son to G.o.dfrey Bertram, umquhile of Ellangowan; that young man is the very lad-bairn that Dirk Hatteraick carried off from Warroch Wood the day that he murdered the gauger. I was there like a wandering spirit--for I longed to see that wood or we left the country. I saved the bairn's life, and sair, sair I prigged [*Begged] and prayed they would leave him wi' me--But they bore him away, and he's been lang ower the sea, and now he's come for his ain, and what should withstand him?--I swore to keep the secret till he was ane-an'-twenty--I kenn'd he believed to dree his weird [*Fulfil his destiny] till that day cam--I keepit that oath which I took to them--but I made another vow to mysell, that if I lived to see the day of his return, I would set him in his father's seat, if every step was on a dead man. I have keepit that oath too, I will be ae step mysell--He (pointing to Hatteraick) will soon be another, and there will be ane mair yet."

The clergyman, now interposing, remarked it was a pity this deposition was not regularly taken and written down, and the surgeon urged the necessity of examining the wound, previously to exhausting her by questions. When she saw them remove Hatteraick, in order to clear the room and leave the surgeon to his operations, she called out aloud, raising herself at the same time upon the couch, "Dirk Hatteraick, You and I will never meet again until we are before the judgment-seat-Will ye own to what I have said, or will you dare deny it?" He turned his hardened brow upon her, with a look of dumb and inflexible defiance. "Dirk Hatteraick, dare ye deny, with my blood upon your hands, one word of what my dying breath is uttering?"--He looked at her with the same expression of hardihood and dogged stubbornness, and moved his lips, but uttered no sound. "Then fareweel!" she said, "and G.o.d forgive you! Your hand has sealed my evidence.--When I was in life, I was the mad randy gipsy, that had been scourged, and banished, and branded--that had begged from door to door, and been hounded like a stray tike [*Dog.] from parish to parish--wha would hae minded her tale?--But now I am a dying woman, and my words will not fall to the ground, any more than the earth will cover my blood!"

She here paused, and all left the hut except the surgeon and two or three women. After a very short examination, he shook his head, and resigned his post by the dying woman's side to the clergyman.

A chaise returning empty to Kippletringan had been stopped on the high-road by a constable, who foresaw it would be necessary to convey Hatteraick to jail. The driver, understanding what was going on at Derncleugh, left his horses to the care of a black-guard boy, confiding, it is to be supposed, rather in the years and discretion of the cattle, than in those of their keeper, and set off full speed to see, as he expressed himself, "whaten a sort o' fun was gaun on." He arrived just as the group of tenants and peasants, whose numbers increased every moment, satiated with gazing upon the rugged features of Hatteraick, had turned their attention towards Bertram. Almost all of them, especially the aged men who had seen Ellangowan in his better days, felt and acknowledged the justice of Meg Merrilies's appeal. But the Scotch are a cautious people; they remembered there was another in possession of the estate, and they as yet only expressed their feelings in low whispers to each other. Our friend Jock Jabos, the postilion, forced his way into the middle of the circle; but no sooner cast his eyes upon Bertram, than he started back in amazement, with a solemn exclamation, "As sure as there's breath in man, it's auld Ellangowan arisen from the dead!"

This public declaration of an unprejudiced witness was just the spark wanted to give fire to the popular feeling, which burst forth in three distinct shouts:--"Bertram forever!"--"Long life to the heir of Ellangowan!"--"G.o.d send him his ain, and to live among us as his forebears did of yore!"

"I hae been seventy years an the land," said one person.

"I and mine hae been seventy and seventy to that said another; "I have a right to ken the glance of a Bertram."

"I and mine hae been three hundred years here," said another old man, "and I sall sell my last cow, but I'll see the young laird placed in his right."

The women, ever delighted with the marvellous, and not less so when a handsome young man is the subject of the tale, added their shrill acclamations to the general all-hail. "Blessings on him--he's the very picture o' his father!--the Bertrams were aye the wale o'

the country-side!"

"Eh! that his puir mother, that died in grief and in doubt about him, had but--lived to see this day!" exclaimed some female voices.

"But we'll help him to his ain, kimmers," cried others; "and before Glossin sall keep the Place of Ellangowan, we'll howk him out o't wi' our nails!"

Others crowded around Dinmont, who was nothing loth to tell what he knew of his friend, and to boast the honour which he had in contributing to the discovery. As he was known to several of the princ.i.p.al farmers present, his testimony afforded an additional motive to the general enthusiasm. In short, it was one of those moments of intense feeling, when the frost of the Scottish people melts like a snow-wreath, and the dissolving torrent carries dam and d.y.k.e before it.

The sudden shouts interrupted the devotions of the clergyman; and Meg, who was in one of those dozing fits of stupefaction that precede the close of existence, suddenly started-" Dinna ye bear?-dinna ye hear?--he's owned!-he's owned!--I lived but for this. I am a sinful woman; but if my curse brought it down, my blessing has taen it off! And now I wad hae liked to hae said mair. But it canna be.

Stay"--she continued, stretching her head towards the gleam of light that shot through the narrow slit which served for a window, "Is he not there?--stand out o' the light, and let me look upon him ance mair. But the darkness is in my ain een," she said, sinking back, after an earnest gaze upon vacuity--"it's a' ended now,

Pa.s.s breath, Come death."

And, sinking back upon her couch of' straw, she expired without a groan. The clergyman and the surgeon carefully noted down all that she had said, now deeply regretting they had not examined her more minutely, but both remaining morally convinced of the truth of her disclosure.

Hazlewood was the first to compliment Bertram upon the near prospect of his being restored to his name and rank in society. The people around, who now learned from Jabos that Bertram was the person who had wounded him, were struck with his generosity, and added his name to Bertram's in their exulting acclamations.