 said Annie Winnie,
»and a comely personage - broad in the shouthers, and narrow around the lungies
- he wad mak a bonny corpse - I wad like to hae the streaking and winding o'
him.«
    »It is written on his brow, Annie Winnie,« returned the octogenarian, her
companion, »that hand of woman, or of man either, will never straught him -
dead-deal will never be laid on his back - make you your market of that, for I
hae it frae a sure hand.«
    »Will it be his lot to die on the battle-ground then, Ailsie Gourlay? - Will
he die by the sword, or the ball, as his forbears hae dune before him, mony ane
o' them?«
    »Ask nae mair questions about it - he'll no be graced sae far,« replied the
sage.
    »I ken ye are wiser than ither folk, Ailsie Gourlay - But wha tell'd ye
this?«
    »Fashna your thumb about that, Annie Winnie,« answered the sibyl - »I hae it
frae a hand sure eneugh.«
    »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.«
    »Mak haste, sirs,« cried the paralytic hag from the cottage, »and let us do
what is needfu', and say what is fitting; for if the dead corpse binna
straughted it will girn and thraw, and that will fear the best o' us.«
    Ravenswood was now out of hearing. He despised most of the ordinary
prejudices about witchcraft, omens, and vaticination, to which his age and
country still gave such implicit credit, that to express a doubt of them, was
accounted a crime equal to the unbelief of Jews or Saracens; he knew also that
the prevailing belief concerning witches, operating upon the hypochondriac
habits of those whom age, infirmity, and poverty rendered liable to suspicion,
and enforced by the fear of death, and the pangs of the most cruel tortures,
often extorted those confessions which encumber and disgrace the criminal
records of Scotland during the seventeenth century. But the vision of that
morning, whether real or imaginary, had impressed his mind with a superstitious
feeling which he in vain endeavoured to
