practised, under her master's auspices), was the first to catch the sound. Though somewhat deaf upon ordinary occasions, her ear for bad news was as sharp as a kite's scent for carrion; for Dorothy, otherwise an industrious, faithful, and even affectionate creature, had that strong appetite for collecting and retailing sinister intelligence which is often to be marked in the lower classes. Little accustomed to be listened to, they love the attention which a tragic tale ensures to the bearer, and enjoy, perhaps, the temporary equality to which misfortune reduces those who are ordinarily accounted their superiors. Dorothy had no sooner possessed herself of a slight packet of the rumours which were flying abroad than she bounced into her master's bedroom, who had taken the privilege of age and the holytide to sleep longer than usual.
'There he lies, honest man,' said Dorothy, half in a screeching and half in a wailing tone of sympathy—'there he lies; his best friend slain, and he knowing as little about it as the babe new born, that kens not life from death.'
'How now!' said the glover, starting up out of his bed. 'What is the matter, old woman? Is my daughter well?'
'Old woman!' said Dorothy, who, having her fish hooked, chose to let him play a little. 'I am not so old,' said she, flouncing out of the room, 'as to bide in the place till a man rises from his naked bed—'
And presently she was heard at a distance in the parlour beneath, melodiously singing to the scrubbing of her own broom.
'Dorothy—screech owl—devil—say but my daughter is well!'
'I am well, my father,' answered the Fair Maid of Perth, speaking from her bedroom, 'perfectly well, but what, for Our Lady's sake, is the matter? The bells ring backward, and there is shrieking and crying in the streets.'
'I will presently know the cause. Here, Conachar, come speedily and tie my points. I forgot—the Highland loon is far beyond Fortingall. Patience, daughter, I will presently bring you news.'
'Ye need not hurry yourself for that, Simon Glover,' quoth the obdurate old woman; 'the best and the worst of it may be tauld before you could hobble over your door stane. I ken the haill story abroad; 'for,' thought I, 'our goodman is so wilful that he'll be for banging out to the tuilzie, be the cause what it like; and sae I maun e'en stir my shanks, and learn the cause of all this, or he will hae his auld nose in the midst of it, and maybe get it nipt off before he knows what for.''
'And what is the news, then, old woman?' said the impatient glover, still busying himself with the hundred points or latchets which were the means of attaching the doublet to the hose.
Dorothy suffered him to proceed in his task till she conjectured it must be nearly accomplished; and foresaw that; if she told not the secret herself, her master would be abroad to seek in person for the cause of the disturbance. She, therefore, halloo'd out: 'Aweel—aweel, ye canna say it is me fault, if you hear ill news before you have been at the morning mass. I would have kept it from ye till ye had heard the priest's word; but since you must hear it, you have e'en lost the truest friend that ever gave hand to another, and Perth maun mourn for the bravest burgher that ever took a blade in hand!'
'Harry Smith! Harry Smith!' exclaimed the father and the daughter at once.
'Oh, ay, there ye hae it at last,' said Dorothy; 'and whose fault was it but your ain? ye made such a piece of work about his companying with a glee woman, as if he had companied with a Jewess!'
Dorothy would have gone on long enough, but her master exclaimed to his daughter, who was still in her own apartment: 'It is nonsense, Catharine—all the dotage of an old fool. No such thing has happened. I will bring you the true tidings in a moment,' and snatching up his staff, the old man hurried out past Dorothy and into the street, where the throng of people were rushing towards the High Street.
Dorothy, in the mean time, kept muttering to herself: 'Thy father is a wise man, take his ain word for it. He will come next by some scathe in the hobbleshow, and then it will be, 'Dorothy, get the lint,' and 'Dorothy, spread the plaster;' but now it is nothing but nonsense, and a lie, and impossibility, that can come out of Dorothy's mouth. Impossible! Does auld Simon think that Harry Smith's head was as hard as his stithy, and a haill clan of Highlandmen dinging at him?'
Here she was interrupted by a figure like an angel, who came wandering by her with wild eye, cheek deadly pale, hair dishevelled, and an apparent want of consciousness, which terrified the old woman out of her discontented humour.
'Our Lady bless my bairn!' said she. 'What look you sae wild for?'
'Did you not say some one was dead?' said Catharine, with a frightful uncertainty of utterance, as if her organs of speech and hearing served her but imperfectly.
'Dead, hinny! Ay—ay, dead eneugh; ye'll no hae him to gloom at ony mair.'
'Dead!' repeated Catharine, still with the same uncertainty of voice and manner. 'Dead—slain—and by Highlanders?'
'I'se warrant by Highlanders, the lawless loons. Wha is it else that kills maist of the folks about, unless now and than when the burghers take a tirrivie, and kill ane another, or whiles that the knights and nobles shed blood? But I'se uphauld it's been the Highlandmen this bout. The man was no in Perth, laird or loon, durst have faced Henry Smith man to man. There's been sair odds against him; ye'll see that when it's looked into.'
'Highlanders!' repeated Catharine, as if haunted by some idea which troubled her senses. 'Highlanders! Oh, Conachar—Conachar!'
'Indeed, and I dare say you have lighted on the very man, Catharine. They quarrelled, as you saw, on the St. Valentine's Even, and had a warstle. A Highlandman has a long memory for the like of that. Gie him a cuff at Martinmas, and his cheek will be tingling at Whitsunday. But what could have brought down the lang legged loons to do their bloody wark within burgh?'
'Woe's me, it was I,' said Catharine—'it was I brought the Highlanders down—I that sent for Conachar—ay, they have lain in wait—but it was I that brought them within reach of their prey. But I will see with my own eyes —and then—something we will do. Say to my father I will be back anon.'
'Are ye distraught, lassie?' shouted Dorothy, as Catharine made past her towards the street door. 'You would not gang into the street with the hair hanging down your haffets in that guise, and you kenn'd for the Fair Maid of Perth? Mass, but she's out in the street, come o't what like, and the auld Glover will be as mad as if I could withhold her, will she nill she, flyte she fling she. This is a brave morning for an Ash Wednesday! What's to be done? If I were to seek my master among the multitude, I were like to be crushed beneath their feet, and little moan made for the old woman. And am I to run after Catharine, who ere this is out of sight, and far lighter of foot than I am? so I will just down the gate to Nicol Barber's, and tell him a' about it.'
While the trusty Dorothy was putting her prudent resolve into execution, Catharine ran through the streets of Perth in a manner which at another moment would have brought on her the attention of every one who saw her hurrying on with a reckless impetuosity wildly and widely different from the ordinary decency and composure of her step and manner, and without the plaid, scarf, or mantle which 'women of good,' of fair character and decent rank, universally carried around them, when they went abroad. But, distracted as the people were, every one inquiring or telling the cause of the tumult, and most recounting it different ways, the negligence of her dress and discomposure of her manner made no impression on any one; and she was suffered to press forward on the path she had chosen without attracting more notice than the other females who, stirred by anxious curiosity or fear, had come out to inquire the cause of an alarm so general—it might be to seek for friends for whose safety they were interested.
As Catharine passed along, she felt all the wild influence of the agitating scene, and it was with difficulty she forbore from repeating the cries of lamentation and alarm which were echoed around her. In the mean time, she rushed rapidly on, embarrassed like one in a dream, with a strange sense of dreadful calamity, the precise nature of which she was unable to define, but which implied the terrible consciousness that the man who loved her so fondly, whose good qualities she so highly esteemed, and whom she now felt to be dearer than perhaps she would before have acknowledged to her own bosom, was murdered, and most probably by her means. The connexion betwixt Henry's supposed death and the descent of Conachar and his followers, though adopted by her in a moment of extreme and engrossing emotion, was sufficiently probable to have been received for truth, even if her understanding had been at leisure to examine its credibility. Without knowing what she sought except the general desire to know the worst of the dreadful report, she hurried forward to the very spot which of all others her feelings of the preceding day would have induced her to avoid.
Who would, upon the evening of Shrovetide, have persuaded the proud, the timid, the shy, the rigidly
