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THE health of Lucy Ashton soon required the assistance of a person more skilful in the office of a sick-nurse than the female domestics of the family. Ailsie Gourlay, sometimes called the Wise Woman of Bowden, was the person whom, for her own strong reasons, Lady Ashton selected as an attendant upon her daughter.
'Now, my little woman must be reasonable, said Mr Openshaw, who was always patient with Ailsie. 'There was no man in the house last night at all. No man comes into the house, as you know, if you think; much less goes up into the nursery.
"But ye said ye never saw the foul thief," reiterated her inquisitive companion. "I hae it frae as sure a hand," said Ailsie, "and frae them that spaed his fortune before the sark gaed ower his head." "Hark! I hear his horse's feet riding aff," said the other; "they dinna sound as if good luck was wi' them."
He listened to the exhortations of the chaplain, he wept bitterly, and joined in the prayers. And in the silence of that night he made a full confession to the chaplain, with the request that it might be made public the next day. He confessed the murder of Ailsie Dunbar; but he denied that the crime had been premeditated, as it had been made to appear at the trial.
A crone, Ailsie Gourlay by name, embodied with grim and grisly vigour by Alice Marriott, whose ample voice and exact elocution, together with her formidable stature and her faculty of identification with the character that she assumes and with the spirit of the story, made her of great value to this play hovered around Ravenswood, and aided to keep this presage of evil doom fitfully present in the consciousness of its victim.
And apparently such impunity has emboldened assassins. I have too much cause to fear that my poor old servant has shared Ailsie Dunbar's fate!" Before Claudia had finished her sentence Lord Vincent had dropped his cigar and was gazing at her in ill-concealed terror. "What cause have you for such absurd fears?
She had wellnigh forgotten the existence of little Edwin. It struck upon her with affright as the shaded light fell over the other cot; but she skilfully threw that corner of the room into darkness, and let the light fall on the sleeping Ailsie. The child had thrown down the coverings, and her deformity, as she lay with her back to them, was plainly visible through her slight nightgown.
He tried to reassure her, though the touch of her soft, clinging fingers set his blood dancing like wild fire in his veins. That night old Ailsie knelt beside her mistress and soothed her with the crooning tones of her childhood days. "Don't you fret, Missie; he doan know nuffin' 'bout it now. An' if he do he ain' gwine ter tell nobody."
"Ye waited on her for a quarter," said the paralytic woman, "and got twa red pieces, or I am far beguiled?" "Ay, ay," answered Ailsie, with a bitter grin; "and Sir William Ashton promised me a bonny red gown to the boot o' that a stake, and a chain, and a tar-barrel, lass! what think ye o' that for a propine? for being up early and doun late for fourscore nights and mair wi' his dwining daughter.
Ailsie Gourlay was not indeed fool enough to acknowledge a compact with the Evil One, which would have been a swift and ready road to the stake and tar-barrel. Her fairy, she said, like Caliban's, was a harmless fairy.
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