Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/231

Rh addressed heard them with a loud laugh of utter contempt and scorn; and, with a thousand fantastic twirls and freaks, she threaded, with great dexterity, the whole maze of linen webs, and confronted old Prudence. She looked her full in the face, she eyed her on one side and eyed her on another, she stooped down and she stood on tiptoe, examining her all the while with an eye of simple but crafty scrutiny.

"Protect us, sirs!" said the wandering maiden, "what wicked liars these two blue een o' mine are—I'll ne'er credit them again; and yet, believe me, but it's like her. Hech be't, she's sore changed since that merry time—it cannot be her. Harkee, my douce decent-looking dame, d'ye ken if Prudence Caird be living yet?"

"And what hast thou to say to Prudence Caird?" said the old woman, growing blacker with anger, and clutching, as she spoke, the long sharp fingers of her right hand, portending hostility to the blue eyes of Judith.

"Say to Prudence Caird?" said the maiden; "a bonnie question, indeed! What advice could a poor bewildered creature like me give to a douce person who has had twice the benefit of the counsel of the minister and kirk session?"

And, with unexpected agility, away Judith danced and leaped and laughed, eluding the indignation of her less active antagonist.

I could not help feeling anxious to learn something of the history of Judith; and while I was expressing this to Mary Halliday, the poor girl approached and received a bowl of curds and cream, which she acknowledged with abundance of fantastic bows and becks.

"Look at her now," said my companion, "but say not a word."

Judith seated herself on the margin of the river; and, throwing a spoonful of the curds into the stream, said: "There, taste that, thou sweet and gentle water; and when I bathe my burning brow in thy flood, or wade through thee, and through thee, on the warm moonlight evenings of summer, mind who fed yere bonnie mottled trouts and yere lang silver eels, and no drown me as ye did my bonnie sister Peggy and her young bridegroom." In a small thicket beside her, a bird or two, confiding in the harmlessness of a creature with whom they were well acquainted, continued to pour forth their uninterrupted strain of song. "Ye wee daft things," said Judith, changing from a tone of sadness