By this time Jock had found his way into all the intricacies of a tattered doublet and more tattered pair of breeches, and sallied forth, a great white-headed, bare-legged, lubberly boy of twelve years old, so exhibited by the glimpse of a rush-light which his half-naked mother held in such a manner as to get a peep at the stranger without greatly exposing herself to view in return.  Jock moved on westward by the end of the house, leading Mannering’s horse by the bridle, and piloting with some dexterity along the little path which bordered the formidable jaw-hole, whose vicinity the stranger was made sensible of by means of more organs than one.  His guide then dragged the weary hack along a broken and stony cart-track, next over a ploughed field, then broke down a slap, as he called it, in a drystone fence, and lugged the unresisting animal through the breach, about a rood of the simple masonry giving way in the splutter with which he passed.  Finally, he led the way through a wicket into something which had still the air of an avenue, though many of the trees were felled.  The roar of the ocean was now near and full, and the moon, which began to make her appearance, gleamed on a turreted and apparently a ruined mansion of considerable extent.  Mannering fixed his eyes upon it with a disconsolate sensation.

‘Why, my little fellow,’ he said, ‘this is a ruin, not a house?’

’Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne; that’s Ellangowan Auld Place.  There’s a hantle bogles about it; but ye needna be feared, I never saw ony mysell, and we’re just at the door o’ the New Place.’

Accordingly, leaving the ruins on the right, a few steps brought the traveller in front of a modern house of moderate size, at which his guide rapped with great importance.  Mannering told his circumstances to the servant; and the gentleman of the house, who heard his tale from the parlour, stepped forward and welcomed the stranger hospitably to Ellangowan.  The boy, made happy with half-a-crown, was dismissed to his cottage, the weary horse was conducted to a stall, and Mannering found himself in a few minutes seated by a comfortable supper, for which his cold ride gave him a hearty appetite.

CHAPTER II

     Comes me cranking in,
     And cuts me from the best of all my land
     A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle, out

          Henry IV, Part 1.

The company in the parlour at Ellangowan consisted of the Laird and a sort of person who might be the village schoolmaster, or perhaps the minister’s assistant; his appearance was too shabby to indicate the minister, considering he was on a visit to the Laird.