place in confusion.  But the inmates chiefly occupied Brown’s attention.  Upon a lair composed of straw, with a blanket stretched over it, lay a figure, so still that, except that it was not dressed in the ordinary habiliments of the grave, Brown would have concluded it to be a corpse.  On a steadier view he perceived it was only on the point of becoming so, for he heard one or two of those low, deep, and hard-drawn sighs that precede dissolution when the frame is tenacious of life.  A female figure, dressed in a long cloak, sate on a stone by this miserable couch; her elbows rested upon her knees, and her face, averted from the light of an iron lamp beside her, was bent upon that of the dying person.  She moistened his mouth from time to time with some liquid, and between whiles sung, in a low monotonous cadence, one of those prayers, or rather spells, which, in some parts of Scotland and the north of England, are used by the vulgar and ignorant to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling of the bell in Catholic days.  She accompanied this dismal sound with a slow rocking motion of her body to and fro, as if to keep time with her song.  The words ran nearly thus:—­

Wasted, weary, wherefore stay,
Wrestling thus with earth and clay? 
From the body pass away. 
Hark! the mass is singing.

From thee doff thy mortal weed,
Mary Mother be thy speed,
Saints to help thee at thy need. 
Hark! the knell is ringing.

Fear not snow-drift driving fast,
Sleet, or hail, or levin blast. 
Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast,
And the sleep be on thee cast
That shall ne’er know waking.

Haste thee, haste thee, to be gone,
Earth flits fast, and time draws on. 
Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan,
Day is near the breaking.

The songstress paused, and was answered by one or two deep and hollow groans, that seemed to proceed from the very agony of the mortal strife.  ‘It will not be,’ she muttered to herself; ’he cannot pass away with that on his mind, it tethers him here—­

Heaven cannot abide it,
Earth refuses to hide it. [Footnote:  See Note 6.]

I must open the door’; and, rising, she faced towards the door of the apartment, observing heedfully not to turn back her head, and, withdrawing a bolt or two (for, notwithstanding the miserable appearance of the place, the door was cautiously secured), she lifted the latch, saying,

     Open lock, end strife,
      Come death, and pass life.

Brown, who had by this time moved from his post, stood before her as she opened the door.  She stepped back a pace, and he entered, instantly recognising, but with no comfortable sensation, the same gipsy woman whom he had met in Bewcastle.  She also knew him at once, and her attitude, figure, and the anxiety of her countenance, assumed the appearance of the well-disposed ogress of a fairy tale, warning a stranger