The Antiquary — Complete, Walter Scott [best novels for beginners .TXT] 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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“Maister Ringan Aikwood Poinders, I do not know what you call sackless,— but let alone all de oils and de soot dat you say he has, and I will tell you I was dis night robbed of fifty pounds by your oil and sooty friend, Edies Ochiltree; and he is no more in your barn even now dan I ever shall be in de kingdom of heafen.”
“Weel, sir, if ye will gae up wi’ me, as the burial company has dispersed, we’se mak ye down a bed at the lodge, and we’se see if Edie’s at the barn. There was twa wild-looking chaps left the auld kirk when we were coming up wi’ the corpse, that’s certain; and the priest, wha likes ill that ony heretics should look on at our church ceremonies, sent twa o’ the riding saulies after them; sae we’ll hear a’ about it frae them.”
Thus speaking, the kindly apparition, with the assistance of the mute personage, who was his son, disencumbered himself of his cloak, and prepared to escort Dousterswivel to the place of that rest which the adept so much needed.
“I will apply to the magistrates to-morrow,” said the adept; “oder, I will have de law put in force against all the peoples.”
While he thus muttered vengeance against the cause of his injury, he tottered from among the ruins, supporting himself on Ringan and his son, whose assistance his state of weakness rendered very necessary.
When they were clear of the priory, and had gained the little meadow in which it stands, Dousterswivel could perceive the torches which had caused him so much alarm issuing in irregular procession from the ruins, and glancing their light, like that of the ignis fatuus, on the banks of the lake. After moving along the path for some short space with a fluctuating and irregular motion, the lights were at once extinguished.
“We aye put out the torches at the Halie-cross Well on sic occasions,” said the forester to his guest. And accordingly no farther visible sign of the procession offered itself to Dousterswivel, although his ear could catch the distant and decreasing echo of horses’ hoofs in the direction towards which the mourners had bent their course.
CHAPTER FIFTH. O weel may the boatie row And better may she speed, And weel may the boatie row That earns the bairnies’ bread! The boatie rows, the boatie rows, The boatie rows fu’ weel, And lightsome be their life that bear The merlin and the creel! Old Ballad.
We must now introduce our reader to the interior of the fisher’s cottage mentioned in CHAPTER eleventh of this edifying history. I wish I could say that its inside was well arranged, decently furnished, or tolerably clean. On the contrary, I am compelled to admit, there was confusion,— there was dilapidation,—there was dirt good store. Yet, with all this, there was about the inmates, Luckie Mucklebackit and her family, an appearance of ease, plenty, and comfort, that seemed to warrant their old sluttish proverb, “The clartier the cosier.” A huge fire, though the season was summer, occupied the hearth, and served at once for affording light, heat, and the means of preparing food. The fishing had been successful, and the family, with customary improvidence, had, since unlading the cargo, continued an unremitting operation of broiling and frying that part of the produce reserved for home consumption, and the bones and fragments lay on the wooden trenchers, mingled with morsels of broken bannocks and shattered mugs of half-drunk beer. The stout and athletic form of Maggie herself, bustling here and there among a pack of half-grown girls and younger children, of whom she chucked one now here and another now there, with an exclamation of “Get out o’ the gate, ye little sorrow!” was strongly contrasted with the passive and half-stupified look and manner of her husband’s mother, a woman advanced to the last stage of human life, who was seated in her wonted chair close by the fire, the warmth of which she coveted, yet hardly seemed to be sensible of—now muttering to herself, now smiling vacantly to the children as they pulled the strings of her toy or close cap, or twitched her blue checked apron. With her distaff in her bosom, and her spindle in her hand, she plied lazily and mechanically the old-fashioned Scottish thrift, according to the old-fashioned Scottish manner. The younger children, crawling among the feet of the elder, watched the progress of grannies spindle as it twisted, and now and then ventured to interrupt its progress as it danced upon the floor in those vagaries which the more regulated spinning-wheel has now so universally superseded, that even the fated Princess in the fairy tale might roam through all Scotland without the risk of piercing her hand with a spindle, and dying of the wound. Late as the hour was (and it was long past midnight), the whole family were still on foot, and far from proposing to go to bed; the dame was still busy broiling car-cakes on the girdle, and the elder girl, the half-naked mermaid elsewhere commemorated, was preparing a pile of Findhorn haddocks (that is, haddocks smoked with green wood), to be eaten along with these relishing provisions.
While they were thus employed, a slight tap at the door, accompanied with the question, “Are ye up yet, sirs?” announced a visitor. The answer, “Ay, ay,—come your ways ben, hinny,” occasioned the lifting of the latch, and Jenny Rintherout, the female domestic of our Antiquary, made her appearance.
“Ay, ay,” exclaimed the mistress of the family—“Hegh, sirs! can this be you, Jenny?—a sight o’ you’s gude for sair een, lass.”
“O woman, we’ve been sae ta’en up wi’ Captain Hector’s wound up by, that I havena had my fit out ower the door this fortnight; but he’s better now, and auld Caxon sleeps in his room in case he wanted onything. Sae, as soon as our auld folk gaed to bed, I e’en snodded my head up a bit, and left the house-door on the latch, in case onybody should be wanting in or out while I was awa, and just cam down the gate to see an there was ony cracks amang ye.”
“Ay, ay,” answered Luckie Mucklebackit, “I see you hae gotten a’ your braws on; ye’re looking about for Steenie now—but he’s no at hame the night; and ye’ll no do for Steenie, lass—a feckless thing like you’s no fit to mainteen a man.”
“Steenie will no do for me,” retorted Jenny, with a toss of her head that might have become a higher-born damsel; “I maun hae a man that can mainteen his wife.”
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