Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/284

280 convulsive effort to rise, the voice of Haudthegrup quavered and hesitated, as the voice of a man will do when his hands are busied, and then the sound as of gold falling was heard. At this mishap the tongue of the inteceder uttered a curse, and the power of speech returning to the dying man, he smote his hands together and exclaimed, "He's herrying me, he's herrying me, and I maun gang to the brimstone pit with no a penny in my pocket." And with these words he expired.

The singular prophecy of Gawain met with a remarkable fulfilment. The day of the burial of the laird was wild and stormy, the place of interment was in an old churchyard on the south side of the river Orr. The mourners were mounted, and the coffin was borne on horses' necks, covered with a pall of black velvet, the parochial mortcloth, which reached nigh to the ground. Haudthegrup was chief mourner, and, to elude the expense of a toll-bar, he proposed to ford the river, red and swollen with rain. When he reached the middle of the stream, his horse, unaccustomed to such processions, startled and plunged, and fairly flung his rider over his ears. In his fall, he seized the coffin of Warlsworm, and the quick and the dead alike found a grave in the links of the Orr.

"Alas, for Haudthegrup!" said one of the mourners; "watch when he swims, and let us try to save him."

"Swims!" rejoined another mourner, "how think ye will he swim, and seven hundred stolen pieces of Warlsworm's gold in his pocket? I'll prophesy, when his body's found he'll be holding his hands on his breeches-pockets to preserve his treasure."