Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/272

268 floor, she looked up, and motioned me to silence and a seat. I accordingly sat down, and looked with an eye of deep interest on the touching scene before me. There lay Age, his face gross and covetous, his mind seeking communion with the riches of the earth, while his body was fast hasting to dust, and his soul to its final account; and there knelt Youth, glowing in health and ripe in beauty, her tresses bright, and flowing over her neck, like sunshine visiting a bank of lilies; her hands, white and shapely and small, clasped over a white and a perturbed bosom; while from her long dark eyelashes the tears of sorrow descended drop by drop. On both, a young man in a homely garb, but with a face comely and interesting, sat and looked, and looked too with a brow on which might be read more of love for the maid than of sorrow for the man.

The old man uttered a groan, turned on his couch, half opened his eyes, and said, "Bessie, my bairn, let me have hold of thy hand; my sight is not so good as it ought to be; and I think I see queer things, that should not be seen by a man when he lies down to die. But I have wronged no man; I took but what the law gave me; and if the law grips with an iron hand, it's the worse for them that made it. I thought I heard the footstep of the young portioner of Glaiketha; he'll be come to borrow gold and to wadset land. But, Bessie my lass, gold's scarce, and land abundant; no that I refuse the minted money when the interest will do thee good, and when the security's sicker; sae gang thy ways, my wean, to the old pose ahint the cathud, or hear ye me; there's a saddle bag of good red gold riding on the rannel-tree that has nae seen sun or wind these seven-and-twenty summers."

"Oh! forget the cares of the world," said the maiden, with a voice smothering with sorrow, "and think of your health. This is not the young portioner of Glaiketha seeking for gold to cast away in eating and drinking and dancing, or in more evil pursuits; but a stranger youth come to repose him all night as strangers do, and recommence his journey in the morning."

"Repose him!" re-echoed the old man, his voice deepening and his faded eyes brightening as he spoke. "Have I wranged any of his kin, that he comes hither to riot on my substance? Have I ever darkened his father's door, that he should presume to darken mine? Alas! alas! the