When Meg Merrilies had attained these groves, through which the wintry sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to pause a moment as if to recollect the way. "We maun go the precise track," she said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a zigzag and involved course than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular boundary. Even in winter it was a sheltered and snugly sequestered spot; but when arrayed in the verdure of spring, the earth sending forth all its wild flowers, the shrubs spreading their waste of blossom around it, and the weeping birches, which towered over the underwood, drooping their long and leafy fibres to intercept the sun, it must have seemed a place for a youthful poet to study his earliest sonnet, or a pair of lovers to exchange their first mutual avowal of affection. Apparently it now awakened very different recollections. Bertram's brow, when he had looked round the spot, became gloomy and embarrassed. Meg, after uttering to herself, "This is the very spot!" looked at him with a ghastly side-glance,--"D'ye mind it?""Yes answered Bertram, "imperfectly I do.""Ay!" pursued his guide, "on this very spot the man fell from his horse--I was behind that bourtree-bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove, and sair he cried for mercy--but he was in the hands of them that never kenn'd the word!--Now will I show you the further track--the last time ye travelled it was in these arms."She led them accordingly by a long and winding passage almost overgrown with brushwood, until, without any very perceptible descent, they suddenly found themselves by the seaside. Meg then walked very fast on between the surf and the rocks, until she came to a remarkable fragment of rock detached from the rest. "Here,"she said in a low and scarcely audible whisper, "here the corpse was found.""And the cave," said Bertram, in the some tone, is close beside it--are you guiding us there?""Yes," said the gipsy in a decided tone. "Bend up both your hearts--follow me as I creep in--I have placed the firewood so as to screen you. Bide behind it for a gliff [*Little] till I say, The hour and the man are baith come; then rin in on him, take his arms, and bind him till the blood burst frae his finger nails.""I will, by my soul," said Henry--"if he is the man Isuppose--Jansen?""Ay, Jansen, Hatteraick, and twenty mair names are his.""Dinmont, you must stand by me now," said Bertram, "for this fellow is a devil.""Ye needna doubt that," said the stout yeoman--"but I wish I could mind a bit prayer or I creep after the witch into that hole that she's opening--It wad be a sair thing to leave the blessed sun, and the free air, and gang and, be killed, like a tod that's run to earth, in a dungeon like that. But, my sooth, they will be hard-bitten terriers will worry Dandie; so, as I said, deil hae me if I baulk you." This was uttered in the lowest tone of voice possible. The entrance was now open. Meg crept in upon her hands and knees, Bertram followed and Dinmont, after giving a rueful glance toward the daylight, whose blessings he was abandoning, brought up the rear.
CHAPTER LIV.
--Die, prophet! in thy speech; For this, among the rest, was I ordained.
Henry VI. Part III.
The progress of the Borderer, who, as we have said,--was the last of the party, was fearfully arrested by a hand, which caught hold of his leg as he dragged his long limbs after him in silence and perturbation through the low and narrow entrance of the subterranean passage. The steel heart of the bold yeoman had well-nigh given way, and he suppressed with difficulty a shout, which, in the defenceless posture and situation which they then occupied, might have cost all their lives. He contented himself, however, with extricating his foot from the grasp of the unexpected follower. Be still," said a voice behind him, releasing him I am a friend--Charles Hazlewood."These words were uttered in a very low voice, but they produced sound enough to startle Meg Merrilies, who led the van, and who, having already gained the place where the cavern expanded, had risen upon her feet. She began, as if to confound any listening ear, to growl, to mutter, and to sing aloud, and at the same time to make a bustle among some brushwood which was now heaped in the cave.
"Here--beldam--Deyvil's kind," growled the harsh voice of Dirk Hatteraick from the inside of his den, what makest thou there?""Laying the roughies [*Withered boughs.] to keep the cauld wind frae a--you, ye desperate do-nae-good--Ye're e'en ower weel off, and wots na; it will be otherwise soon.""Have you brought me the brandy, and any news of my people?" said Dirk Hatteraick.
"Here's the flask for ye. Your people-dispersed--broken--gone--or cut to ribbands by the red-coats.""Der Deyvil!--this coast is fatal to me.""Ye may hae mair reason to say sae."