Chapter 28

Yes, it is he whose eyes look'd on thy childhood,
And watch'd with trembling hope thy dawn of youth,
That now, with these same eyeballs dimm'd with age,
And dimmer yet with tears, sees thy dishonour.
OLD PLAY.

At the entrance of the principal, or indeed, so to speak, the only
street in Kinross, the damsel, whose steps were pursued by Roland
Graeme, cast a glance behind her, as if to be certain he had not lost
trace of her and then plunged down a very narrow lane which ran
betwixt two rows of poor and ruinous cottages. She paused for a second
at the door of one of those miserable tenements, again cast her eye up
the lane towards Roland, then lifted the latch, opened the door, and
disappeared from his view.

With whatever haste the page followed her example, the difficulty
which he found in discovering the trick of the latch, which did not
work quite in the usual manner, and in pushing open the door, which
did not yield to his first effort, delayed for a minute or two his
entrance into the cottage. A dark and smoky passage led, as usual,
betwixt the exterior wall of the house, and the _hallan_, or clay
wall, which served as a partition betwixt it and the interior. At the
end of this passage, and through the partition, was a door leading
into the _ben_, or inner chamber of the cottage, and when Roland
Graeme's hand was upon the latch of this door, a female voice
pronounced, "_Benedictus qui veniat in nomine Domini, damnandus qui
in nomine inimici._" On entering the apartment, he perceived the
figure which the chamberlain had pointed out to him as Mother
Nicneven, seated beside the lowly hearth. But there was no other
person in the room. Roland Graeme gazed around in surprise at the
disappearance of Catherine Seyton, without paying much regard to the
supposed sorceress, until she attracted and riveted his regard by the
tone in which she asked him--"What seekest thou here?"

"I seek," said the page, with much embarrassment; "I seek--"

But his answer was cut short, when the old woman, drawing her huge
gray eyebrows sternly together, with a frown which knitted her brow
into a thousand wrinkles, arose, and erecting herself up to her full
natural size, tore the kerchief from her head, and seizing Roland by
the arm, made two strides across the floor of the apartment to a small
window through which the light fell full on her face, and showed the
astonished youth the countenance of Magdalen Graeme.--"Yes, Roland,"
she said, "thine eyes deceive thee not; they show thee truly the
features of her whom thou hast thyself deceived, whose wine thou hast
turned into gall, her bread of joyfulness into bitter poison, her hope
into the