Chapter 18 - Page 2

that you will nto allow me to visit, how this? and you
look as pale as death besides."

"Oh, sir," repeated Caleb again, "you would but laugh if I tauld it; but
Thomas the Rhymer, whose tongue couldna be fause, spoke the word of your
house that will e'en prove ower true if you go to Ravenswood this day.
Oh, that it should e'er have been fulfilled in my time!"

"And what is it, Caleb?" said Ravenswood, wishing to soothe the fears of
his old servant.

Caleb replied: "He had never repeated the lines to living mortal; they
were told to him by an auld priest that had been confessor to Lord
Allan's father when the family were Catholic. But mony a time," he said,
"I hae soughed thae dark words ower to myself, and, well-a-day! little
did I think of their coming round this day."

"Truce with your nonsense, and let me hear the doggerel which has put it
into your head," said the Master, impatiently.

With a quivering voice, and a cheek pale with apprehension, Caleb
faltered out the following lines:

"When the last Laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride, And woo a
dead maiden to be his bride, He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie's
flow, And his name shall be lost for evermoe!"

"I know the Kelpie's flow well enough," said the Master; "I suppose, at
least, you mean the quicksand betwixt this tower and Wolf's Hope; but
why any man in his senses should stable a steed there----"

"Oh, ever speer ony thing about that, sir--God forbid we should ken what
the prophecy means--but just bide you at hame, and let the strangers
ride to Ravenswood by themselves. We have done eneugh for them; and
to do mair would be mair against the credit of the family than in its
favour."

"Well, Caleb," said the Master, "I give you the best possible credit for
your good advice on this occasion; but as I do not go to Ravenswood to
seek a bride, dead or alive, I hope I shall choose a better stable for
my horse than the Kelpie's quicksand, and especially as I have always
had a particular dread of it since the patrol of dragoons were
lost there ten years since. My father and I saw them from the tower
struggling against the advancing tide, and they were lost long before
any help could reach them."

"And they deserved it weel, the southern loons!" said Caleb; "what had
they ado capering on our sands, and hindering a wheen honest folk frae
bringing on shore a drap brandy? I hae seen them that busy, that I
wad hae fired the auld culverin or the demi-saker that's on the south
bartizan at them, only I was feared they might burst in the ganging
aff."