Guy Mannering.

294 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
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 firom 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 mean time, set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straightening 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.
Brown was a soldier, and a brave one; but he was also
a man, and at this moment his fears mastered his courage
so completely, that the cold drops burst out from every
pore. The idea of being dragged out of his miserable
concealment by wretches whose trade was that of mid