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In another moment, the carriage was whirling past the library window; and Sir Henry felt little inclined, to join the formal party in the drawing-room. Sending therefore a brief message to Mrs. Glenallan, he threw open the library window, and with hurried steps reached a summer-house, half hidden in the shrubbery. He there fell into a deep reverie, which was by no means a pleasurable one.
"The Earl of Glenallan, cummer! ou, he winna see ony o' the gentles o' the country, and what likelihood is there that he wad see the like o' an auld gaberlunzie?"
"But who who is he?" continued Lord Glenallan, holding the Antiquary with a convulsive grasp. "Formerly I would have called him Lovel, but now he turns out to be Major Neville." "Whom my brother brought up as his natural son whom he made his heir Gracious Heaven! the child of my Eveline!"
"Ye're no that far wrang, lass; she minds naething o' what passes the day but set her on auld tales, and she can speak like a prent buke. She kens mair about the Glenallan family than maist folk the gudeman's father was their fisher mony a day.
"But minnie was asking ye," resumed the lesser querist, "what for the Glenallan family aye bury their dead by torch-light?"
When he was satisfied with this security against being overheard, Lord Glenallan came close up to the mendicant, whom he probably mistook for some person of a religious order in disguise, and said, in a hasty yet faltering tone, "In the name of all our religion holds most holy, tell me, reverend father, what am I to expect from a communication opened by a token connected with such horrible recollections?"
"Speak to your grandmither, Jenny Od, I wad rather hail the coble half a mile aff, and the nor-wast wind whistling again in my teeth." "Grannie," said the little mermaid, in a voice to which the old woman was better accustomed, "minnie wants to ken what for the Glenallan folk aye bury by candle-light in the ruing of St. Ruth!"
As he spoke, the Earl of Glenallan grew extremely pale, and had nearly fallen from his chair. The alarmed Antiquary ran hither and thither looking for remedies; but his museum, though sufficiently well filled with a vast variety of useless matters, contained nothing that could be serviceable on the present or any other occasion.
Neighbours cam and brought help; but the words she uttered in her ravings, when she got back the use of speech, were such, that I was fain to send them awa, and get up word to Glenallan House. The Countess sent down her Spanish servant Teresa if ever there was a fiend on earth in human form, that woman was ane.
The old woman paused in the act of twirling the spindle, turned round to the rest of the party, lifted her withered, trembling, and clay-coloured hand, raised up her ashen-hued and wrinkled face, which the quick motion of two light-blue eyes chiefly distinguished from the visage of a corpse, and, as if catching at any touch of association with the living world, answered, "What gars the Glenallan family inter their dead by torchlight, said the lassie? Is there a Glenallan dead e'en now?"
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