Guy Mannering.

154 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
Laird, that the Evil One would have power over the knavebairn that was that night born, and he charged him tlhat
the babe should be bred up in the ways of piety, and that
he should aye hae a godly minister at'his elbow, to pray
wi' the bairn and Jbr him. And the aged man vanished
away, and no man of this country ever saw mair o' him."
"Now, that will not pass," said the postilion, who, at a
respectful distance, was listening to the conversation,
"beging M3r. Skreigh's and the company's pardon,there was no sae mony hairs on the warlock's face as
there's on Letter-Gae's * ain at this moment; and he had
as gude a pair o' boots as a man need streik on his legs,
and gloves too;-and I should understand boots by this
time, I think."
"W Vhisht, Jock," said the landlady.
"Ay? and what do ye ken o' the matter, friend Jabos?"
said the precentor, contemptuously.
" No muckle, to be sure, Mr. Skreigh-only that I
lived within a penny-stane cast o' the head o' the avenue
at Ellangowan, when a man cam jingling to our door
that night the young Laird was born, and my mother
sent me, that was a hafflin callant, to show the stranger
the gate to the Place, which, if he had been sic a warlock, he might hae kenn'd himsell, ane wad think-and
he was a young, weel-faured, weel-dressed lad, like an
Englishman. And I tell ye he had as gude a hat, and
boots, and gloves, as ony gentleman need to have. To
be sure he did gie an awsome glance up at the auld castle
-and there was some spae-wark gaed on —I aye heard
that;' but as for his vanishing, I held the stirrup mysell
when he gaed away, and he gied me a round half-crown
* The precentor is called by Allan Ramsay, —" The Letter-Gae of
haly rhyme."