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At dawn I rode out in the direction where I knew his tribe was encamped. After three hours I saw some black tents in the distance, but before I got to them I met an old crone with a burden covered with sacking on her back. "Is that the boy?" I asked. "Yes," she said; "he is very bad, and wanted to be taken to you so I was bringing him."
"I hopped up on the window sill and looked out, and saw a beautiful large ship with three masts tied up in a small bay at the end of the house. I was then coming away, when I heard a noise and looking around, saw coming through the kitchen a very ugly old crone hobbling towards me, muttering to herself.
He stood for a little watching the slow movements of the old crone, who was so withered and woe-looking that, with but slight effort of imagination, he might have believed the grave had given up one dead to prepare another for the sepulchre.
Then the crone, foaming with rage and desperation, darted out upon the Archivarius; she threw the Golden Pot behind her, and holding up the long talons of her skinny fists, was for clutching the Archivarius by the throat; but he instantly doffed his nightgown, and hurled it against her.
Farewell, gammer; thanks and gramercy for your goods! I will not marry; no, believe me, I will not. I fairly quit my interest therein, and totally abandon and renounce it from this time forward, even as much as at present. With this, as he endeavoured to make an escape out of the room, the old crone did anticipate his flight and make him stop.
A crone seeing me smoke, inquired if the fire did not burn: I handed my pipe, which nearly choked her, and she ran away from a steaming kettle, thinking it a weapon. As my companions observed, there was not a "Miskal of sense in a Maund of heads:" yet the people looked upon my sun-burnt skin with a favour they denied to the "lime-white face."
Presently up dashed the Bishop and his men, and, at sight of the cottage and the old woman, gave pause. The crone was hobbling along with difficulty, leaning heavily upon a gnarled stick and bearing the spindle on her other arm. She would have gone by the Bishop's company, while muttering to herself, but the Bishop ordered one of his men to question her.
He smiled and nodded, but made no reply. "Now," said he, "my old crone, come and let me hear what you have to say for me;" and as he spoke another coin was dropped into her withered and skinny hand. "Bring me a candle," said she, in a voice that whistled with age, and if one could judge by her hag-like and repulsive features, with a malignity that was a habit of her life.
"Pray that ye may find me in my quiet grave," said the old woman, in a hollow and sepulchral voice, but without the agitation of a single feature. "Ye're auld, cummer, and sae am I mysell; but we maun abide His will we'll no be forgotten in His good time." "Nor our deeds neither," said the crone: "what's dune in the body maun be answered in the spirit."
On one occasion the same detective who arrested Fisher wanted to take another man out of an apartment where he had been run to earth. All the evidence against the forger was inside the apartment and he was actively engaged in burning it up in the kitchen stove. In half an hour to arrest him would have been useless! The detectives stormed and threatened, but the old crone merely grinned at them.
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