ye sincerely I hae nae pleasure in ganging in there. I downa bide to think
how the young hae fa'en on a' sides o' me, and left me an useless auld stump wi'
hardly a green leaf on't.«
    »This old woman,« said Oldbuck, »sent you on a message to the Earl of
Glenallan, did she not?«
    »Ay!« said the surprised mendicant; »how ken ye that sae weel?«
    »Lord Glenallan told me himself,« answered the Antiquary; »so there is no
delation - no breach of trust on your part; and as he wishes me to take her
evidence down on some important family matters, I chose to bring you with me,
because in her situation, hovering between dotage and consciousness, it is
possible that your voice and appearance may awaken trains of recollection which
I should otherwise have no means of exciting. The human mind -- what are you
about, Hector?«
    »I was only whistling for the dog, sir,« replied the Captain; »she always
roves too wide - I knew I should be troublesome to you.«
    »Not at all, not at all,« said Oldbuck, resuming the subject of his
disquisition - »the human mind is to be treated like a skein of ravelled silk,
where you must cautiously secure one free end before you can make any progress
in disentangling it.«
    »I ken naething about that,« said the gaberlunzie; »but an my auld
acquaintance be hersell, or onything like hersell, she may come to wind us a
pirn. It's fearsome baith to see and hear her when she wampishes about her arms,
and gets to her English, and speaks as if she were a prent book, let a-be an
auld fisher's wife. But, indeed, she had a grand education, and was muckle taen
out afore she married an unco bit beneath hersell. She's aulder than me by half
a score years - but I mind weel eneugh they made as muckle wark about her making
a half-merk marriage wi' Simon Mucklebackit, this Saunders's father, as if she
had been ane o' the gentry. But she got into favour again, and then she lost it
again, as I hae heard her son say, when he was a muckle chield; and then they
got muckle siller, and left the Countess's land, and settled here. But things
never throve wi' them. Howsomever, she's a weel-educate woman,