in the face she eyed her on one side, and eyed her on another-she stooped down, and she stood on tiptoe, examining her all the while with an eye of simple, but crafty scrutiny." Protect us, Sirs!" said the wandering maiden, "what wicked liars these two blue een o' mine are -I'll ne'er credit them again and yet, believe me, but it's like her. -Hech bet, she's sore changed since that merry time-it cannot be her. Harkee, my douce decent-looking dame, d'ye ken if Prudence Caird be living yet?"—" And what hast thou to say to Prudence Caird?" said the old woman, growing blacker with anger, and clutching, as she spoke, the long sharp fingers of her right hand, portending hostility to the blue eyes of Judith-" Say to Prudence Caird?" said the maiden-" a bonnie question, indeed!—what advice could a poor bewildered creature like me give to a douce person, who has had twice the benefit of the counsel of the minister and kirk session?" And, with unexpected agility, away Judith danced and leaped, eluding the indignation of her less active antagonist.

I could not help feeling anxious to learn something of the history of Judith; and while I was expressing this to Mary Halliday, the poor girl approached and received a bowl of curds and cream, which she acknowledged with abundance of fantastic bows and becks. "Look at her now," said my companion, "but say not a word." Judith seated herself on the margin of the river; and throwing a spoonful of the curds into the stream, said,—“ There, taste that, thou sweet and gentle water and when I bathe my burning brow in thy flood, or wade through thee, and through thee, on the warm moon-light evenings of summer, mind who fed yere bonnie mottled trouts, and yere lang silver eels, and no drown me as ye did my bonnie sister Peggy, and her young bridegroom." In a small thicket beside her, a bird or two, confiding in the harmlessness of a creature with whom they were well acquainted, continued to pour forth their uninterrupted strain of

song.

"Ye wee daft things," said Judith, changing from a tone of sadness to one of the most giddy gaiety "What sit ye lilting there for, on

the broad green bough-wasting yere sweetest songs on a fool quean like me-but ye shall not go unrewarded." So saying, she scattered a spoonful of curds beside her on the grass, and said, with some abatement of her mirth-" Come, and pickle at my hand, my poor feathered innocents -ilka bird of the forest, save the raven and the hooded crow, is a sister to me." A red-breast, as she spoke, with an audacity which that lover of the human face seldom displays save when the snow is on the ground, came boldly to her elbow, and began to obey her invitation. "Aha, Rabin, my red-bosomed lover, are ye there?-Ye'll find me stiff and streeket under the greenwood bough some morning, and ye mauna stint to deck me out daintily with green leaves, my bonnie man:”—and throwing the bird some more curds, she proceeded to sup the remainder herself, indulging between every mouthful in much bewildered talk.

The interest I took in the poor girl a few handfuls of nuts, and, above all, a few pleasant glances from one, who (though old, and bent, and withered now) was once twenty-one, had a handsome leg, and mirth in his eye, obtained me the good graces of the nymphs of Annan-water. Our conversation turned upon poor Judith Macrone. "She is a poor innocent," said Mary Halliday,

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as wild and as harmless as the birds she is feeding. She was ever a singular girl, and wit and folly seem to keep alternate sway over her mind." "She an innocent!" said Prudence Caird; " she's a cunning and a crafty quean, with a wicked memory, and a malicious tongue. It sets her weel to wag her fool-tongue at me, and say a word that is nae to my credit."- Hoot, toot, woman," said one of the fair-haired menials; "we can scarce keep our balance with all the wit we have-what can ye expect o' such an addercap as crazy Jude? But of all the queans of Annan-bank she is the quean for old-world stories. Set her on a sunny hill-side-give her her own will-and wise or daft, who likes na that?-and she'll clatter ye into a dead sleep, with tales of spirits and apparitions, and the dead who have not peace in the grave, and walk the

earth for a season. I heard douce John Stroudwater, the Cameronian elder, say, that assuredly an evil spirit has filled her head with fool-songs, and queer lang-sin-syne ballads, by and attour a foreknowledge of coming evil. It's well known that she foretold the drowning of her sister and her bridegroom, in that black pool before us, where poor Jude now sits so sorrowful." "Troth and atweel, and that's too true," said Prudence Caird-" and I was unwise to grow cankered with such a kittle customer. She tried my patience sore, but I never heard of any one's luck who crossed her-that one never did good that she wished harm to yet I hope she'll wish no kittle wish to me." "I know not," said Mary Halliday, with more than ordinary gravity, and in a tone something between hesitation and belief, "I know not how Judith is informed of evil fortune-but her foreknowledge of human misfortune, whether it comes from a good or an evil source, is of no use but to be wondered at, and, perhaps, sorrowed for. What is foredoomed will surely come to pass, and cannot be guarded against-and, therefore, I deem all warning of the event to be vain and useless. But touching her skill in minstrel lore with her, each oaktree has its tale, each loop of Annanwater its tradition, and every green knowe or holly-bush its ballad of true love, or song of knightly bravery.""But the story of her sister's bridal," said one of the menials, "is the best of all the tales told of idle Jude-it is said to be sorrowful-ye may pick sorrow out of ought, as weel as ye may pick mirth; and some cry for what others laugh at-but I know this, that lang Tam Southerinairn the tinker told me, that save the drowning of the bride and bridegroom in the mirkest pool of Annanwater, shame fall of ought saw he to sorrow for; and he would not have such a duck again as he had that blessed night, for all the tup-horns of Dryfesdale, and the heads they grow upon."

"I had better, without farther clipping and cutting of the bridal tale, relate it at once," said Mary Halliday; "it is a strange story, and soon told. The marriage of Margaret, the sister of Judith, happened in the very

lap of winter-the snow lay deep on the ground-the ice was thick on the river, and the wheel of her father's mill had not turned round for full forty days. The bride was a sweet, and a kind-hearted, beautiful girl; and there was not a cleverer lad than her bridegroom, David Carlyle, from the head to the foot of Annan-water. I heard the minister of the parish say, after he had joined their hands together, that fifty years he had been a marrier of loving hearts, but he had never married a fairer pair. The bridegroom's mother was a proud dame, of the ancient house of Morison-she took it sore to heart that her son should marry a miller's daughter; she forbade him, under pain of the mother's curse-and a woman's curse, they say, is a sore one to bed with his bride under a churl's roof-tree; and as he wished to be happy, to bring her home to his father's house on the night of the wedding. Now, ye will consider, that the house of the bride stood on one hill side, and the home of the bridegroom on another; while between them, in the bosom of the valley, lay no less a water than the Annan, with its bank knee-deep in snow, and its surface plated with ice. The mirk winter night and the mother's scorn did not prevent one of the blythesomest bridals from taking place that ever a piper played to, or a maiden danced in. Ye have never seen, Sir, one of our inland merry-makings, and seen the lads and the lasses moving merrily to the sound of the fiddle and the harpstring, else ye might have some notion of the mirth at Margaret's bridal. The young were loudest in their joy, but the old were blyther at the heart; and men forgot their white heads, and women that they were grandames-and who so glad as they. An old manone of the frank-hearted Bells of Middlebee, wiped his brow, as he sat down from a reel, and said- Aweel, Mary, my bonnie lass-there are just three things which intoxicate the heart of man: first, there is strong drink; secondly, there is music; and, thirdly, there is the company of beautiful women, when they move to the sound of dulcimer and flute. Blest be the Maker, for they are the most wonderful of all his works.' But the

swiftly to her feet, and wresting the bodkin from me. She resumed her seat; and taking the bride and bride groom's ribbons from her bosom, she put the latter into the larger grave, and the former in the less, and wrung her hands, threw her hair wildly over her face, and wept and sobbed aloud.

"All this had not passed unobserved of others. Mercy on us,' cried the laird of Gooseplat, but the young witch is casting cantraips, and making the figures of graves, and dooming to the bedral's spade, and the parish mortcloth, the quick instead of the dead.-Ise tell thee what, my cannie lass, two red peats and a tarbarrel would make a warm conclusion to these unsonsie spells ye are casting and may I be choked with a thimbleful of brandy, if ye should want a cross on the brow as deep as the bone, if I had my whittle.' -Other spectators came to more charitable conclusions. Red peats and sharp whittles,' muttered William Graeme of Cummerlair, Ise tell ye what, laird, if ye lay a hand of harm on the poor demented lassie, Ise lend ye a Lockerby lick to take home with ye.-Eh, Sirs, but this be fearful to look upon-she is showing us by dumb looks, and sure nods, and sad signs, and awful symbols, the coming of wrath and woe.-There are two graves, and the bridal ribbons laid like corses in them he that runs may read.' While this passed out of doors, the dancing and bridal mirth abounded more than ever. It was now ten o'clock; and as the bridal chamber lay a mile distant, the bride and bridegroom prepared to depart, accompanied by a sure friend or two, to witness the conclusion of the marriage. Let them go,' said more voices than one; we shall make the fiddle-strings chirp, and shake our legs, till the small hours of the morning.-Come, Tom Macthairm, play us up something wily and wanton: who can leap rafter high to a sorrowful psalm tune like that?'-The fiddler complied, and wall and rafter quivered and shook to the reviving merriment. The young couple now stood on the threshold, and looked towards their future habitation, in which the lights of preparation were shining.—' An' I were you, bride

groom,' said one adviser, I would go by the bridge-I have heard oftener than once to-night the soughing of the west wind, and the roaring of the linns-the Annan is fair water in summer-time, but I would not trust such a bonnie lass as the bride on its fickle bosom on a winter night.-An' I were you, bridegroom,' said another counsellor, I would lippen to the old proverbThe nearest road to the bride's bed's the best; the bosom of the Annanwater is bound in ice as hard and as firm as iron-ye might drive Burnswark-hill over its deepest pools, providing it had four feet. So dauner away down the edge of the wood, and cross at the Deadman's-plumpand if ye give me a shout, and the bride a kiss, when ye cross over't, it will give pleasure to us both.' The bride herself came forward to bid farewell to her sister, not unconscious that the time of sorrow had come over her spirit, and that whispers of the import of her predictions were circulated among the bridal guests. She stood before Judith with a cheek flushed with dancing, and parting benedictions from rustic lips, and her eyes gleaming with a wild and unusual light-which has often since been noticed by the tellers of her melancholy tale, as a light too unlike that of earthly eyes to be given for her good. Graves,' said the bride, with a laugh, which had something of a shriek in it, is this all you have as an apology for your fear?-where's your sight, if your senses be wandering?-My sister has only made the bridal beds, and strewed them with bridal favours.' She turned round to depart-Judith uttered a piercing shriek, and throwing her arms about her sister, clung to her, giving one convulsive sob after another; and, finally, throwing herself between her and the river, strove, but still strove in silence, to impress her with a sense of danger. It was in vain: the bride and bridegroom departed; while Judith covering, or rather shrouding herself in her mantle, and turning her face from the river, sat as mute and as still as a statue; a slight convulsive shudder was from time to time visible. The young pair reached the Annan, and attempted to pass over the pool called the Deadman's-plump ;

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