 be crying at Madge Wildfire's
tail, the little hell-rakers! and the beadle would be as hard upon us as if it
was our fault. I like their skirling as ill as he does, I can tell him; I'm sure
I often wish there was a het peat doun their throats when they set them up that
gate.«
    Conscious of the disorderly appearance of her own dress after the adventure
of the preceding night, and of the grotesque habit and demeanour of her guide,
and sensible how important it was to secure an attentive and patient audience to
her strange story from some one who might have the means to protect her, Jeanie
readily acquiesced in Madge's proposal to rest under the trees, by which they
were still somewhat screened, until the commencement of service should give them
an opportunity of entering the hamlet without attracting a crowd around them.
She made the less opposition, that Madge had intimated that this was not the
village where her mother was in custody, and that the two squires of the pad
were absent in a different direction.
    She sate herself down, therefore, at the foot of an oak, and by the
assistance of a placid fountain, which had been dammed up for the use of the
villagers, and which served her as a natural mirror, she began - no uncommon
thing with a Scottish maiden of her rank -to arrange her toilette in the open
air, and bring her dress, soiled and disordered as it was, into such order as
the place and circumstances admitted.
    She soon perceived reason, however, to regret that she had set about this
task, however decent and necessary, in the present time and society. Madge
Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most overweening
opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her misery, and whose
mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven about at random by each
fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to arrange her hair, place her
bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes and clothes, adjust her
neck-handkerchief and mittans, and so forth, than with imitative zeal she began
to bedizen and trick herself out with shreds and remnants of beggarly finery,
which she took out of a little bundle, and which, when disposed around her
person, made her appearance ten times more fantastic and apish than it had been
before.
    Jeanie groaned in spirit, but dared not interfere in a matter so delicate.
Across the man's cap or riding hat which she wore, Madge
