'Ride your ways,' said the gipsy, 'ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan;ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day have ye quenched seven smokinghearths; see if the fire in your ain parlour burn the blyther for that.Ye have riven the thack off seven cottar houses; look if your ainroof-tree stand the faster. Ye may stable your stirks in the shealings atDerncleugh; see that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane atEllangowan. Ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram; what do ye glower after ourfolk for? There's thirty hearts there that wad hae wanted bread ere yehad wanted sunkets, and spent their life-blood ere ye had scratched yourfinger. Yes; there's thirty yonder, from the auld wife of an hundred tothe babe that was born last week, that ye have turned out o' their bitso' bields, to sleep with the tod and the blackcock in the muirs! Rideyour ways, Ellangowan. Our bairns are hinging at our weary backs; lookthat your braw cradle at hame be the fairer spread up; not that I amwishing ill to little Harry, or to the babe that's yet to be born--Godforbid--and make them kind to the poor, and better folk than theirfather! And now, ride e'en your ways; for these are the last words ye'llever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last reise that I'll evercut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan.'
So saying, she broke the sapling she held in her hand, and flung it intothe road. Margaret of Anjou, bestowing on her triumphant foes herkeen-edged malediction, could not have turned from them with a gesturemore proudly contemptuous. The Laird was clearing his voice to speak, andthrusting his hand in his pocket to find a half-crown; the gipsy waitedneither for his reply nor his donation, but strode down the hill toovertake the caravan.
Ellangowan rode pensively home; and it was remarkable that he did notmention this interview to any of his family. The groom was not soreserved; he told the story at great length to a full audience in thekitchen, and concluded by swearing, that 'if ever the devil spoke by themouth of a woman, he had spoken by that of Meg Merrilies that blessedday.'