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188 your large text hand, and in size and perpendicularity resemble the ribs of a roasted pig—I can hardly make it out."

"Read aloud," said Mannering.

"I will try:"'''You are a good seeker, but a bad finder; you set yourself to prop a falling house, but had a gay guess it would rise again. Lend your hand to the wark that's near, as you lent your e'e to the weird that was far. Have a carriage this night by ten o'clock, at the end of the Crooked Dykes at Portanferry, and let it bring the folk to Woodbourne that shall ask them, if they be there'' .—Stay, here follows, some poetry—

"A most mystic epistle truly, and closes in a vein of poetry worthy of the Cumæan sybil—And what have you done?"