Page:Guy Mannering Vol 3.djvu/161

Rh are mad, and yet there is a strange combination in what you say."

"I am not mad! I have been imprisoned for mad—scourged for mad—banished for mad—but mad I am not. Hear ye, Charles Hazlewood of Hazlewood; d'ye bear malice against him that wounded you?"

"No, dame, God forbid; my arm is quite well, and I have always said the shot was discharged by accident. I should be glad to tell the young man so."

"Then do what I bid ye, and ye'll do him mair gude than ever he did you ill; for if he was left to his ill-wishers he would be a bloody corpse ere morn, or a banished man—but there's ane abunea'.—Do as I bid you, send back the soldiers. There's nae mair fear o' Hazlewood-house than there's o' Cruffell-fell." And she vanished with her usual celerity of pace.

It would seem that the appearance of this female, and the mixture of frenzy and enthusiasm in her address, seldom failed