not to enter the dangerous castle of her husband.  The first words she spoke (holding up her hands in a reproving manner) were, ’Said I not to ye, Make not, meddle not?  Beware of the redding straik! [Footnote:  The redding straik, namely, a blow received by a peacemaker who interferes betwixt two combatants, to red or separate them, is proverbially said to be the most dangerous blow a man can receive.] You are come to no house o’ fair-strae death.’  So saying, she raised the lamp and turned its light on the dying man, whose rude and harsh features were now convulsed with the last agony.  A roll of linen about his head was stained with blood, which had soaked also through the blankets and the straw.  It was, indeed, under no natural disease that the wretch was suffering.  Brown started back from this horrible object, and, turning to the gipsy, exclaimed, ’Wretched woman, who has done this?’

‘They that were permitted,’ answered Meg Merrilies, while she scanned with a close and keen glance the features of the expiring man.  ’He has had a sair struggle; but it’s passing.  I kenn’d he would pass when you came in.  That was the death-ruckle; he’s dead.’

Sounds were now heard at a distance, as of voices.  ’They are coming,’ said she to Brown; ’you are a dead man if ye had as mony lives as hairs.’  Brown eagerly looked round for some weapon of defence.  There was none near.  He then rushed to the door with the intention of plunging among the trees, and making his escape by flight from what he now esteemed a den of murderers, but Merrilies held him with a masculine grasp.  ‘Here,’ she said, ’here, be still and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see or hear, and nothing shall befall you.’

Brown, in these desperate circumstances, remembered this woman’s intimation formerly, and thought he had no chance of safety but in obeying her.  She caused him to couch down among a parcel of straw on the opposite side of the apartment from the corpse, covered him carefully, and flung over him two or three old sacks which lay about the place.  Anxious to observe what was to happen, Brown arranged as softly as he could the means of peeping from under the coverings by which he was hidden, and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of this strange and most unpleasant adventure.  The old gipsy in the meantime set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straighting the arms by its side.  ’Best to do this,’ she muttered, ‘ere he stiffen.’  She placed on the dead man’s breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both.  Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose voices had been heard without.