brains either of her daughter or Jeanie (she did not seem greatly to care which), when her hand was once more arrested by the man whom they called Frank Levitt, who, seizing her by the shoulder, flung her from him with great violence, exclaiming, 'What, Mother Damnable—again, and in my sovereign presence!—Hark ye, Madge of Bedlam! get to your hole with your playfellow, or we shall have the devil to pay here, and nothing to pay him with.'
Madge took Levitt's advice, retreating as fast as she could, and dragging Jeanie along with her into a sort of recess, partitioned off from the rest of the barn, and filled with straw, from which it appeared that it was intended for the purpose of slumber. The moonlight shone, through an open hole, upon a pillion, a pack-saddle, and one or two wallets, the travelling furniture of Madge and her amiable mother.—'Now, saw ye e'er in your life,' said Madge, 'sae dainty a chamber of deas? see as the moon shines down sae caller on the fresh strae! There's no a pleasanter cell in Bedlam, for as braw a place as it is on the outside.—Were ye ever in Bedlam?'
'No,' answered Jeanie faintly, appalled by the question, and the way in which it was put, yet willing to soothe her insane companion, being in circumstances so unhappily precarious, that even the society of this gibbering madwoman seemed a species of protection.
'Never in Bedlam?' said Madge, as if with some surprise.—'But ye'll hae been in the cells at Edinburgh!'
'Never,' repeated Jeanie.
'Weel, I think thae daft carles the magistrates send naebody to Bedlam but me—thae maun hae an unco respect for me, for whenever I am brought to them, thae aye hae me back to Bedlam. But troth, Jeanie' (she said this in a very confidential tone), 'to tell ye my private mind about it, I think ye are at nae great loss; for the keeper's a cross-patch, and he maun hae it a' his ain gate, to be sure, or he makes the place waur than hell. I often tell him he's the daftest in a' the house.—But what are they making sic a skirling for?—Deil ane o' them's get in here—it wadna be mensfu'! I will sit wi' my back again the door; it winna be that easy stirring me.'
'Madge!'—'Madge!'—'Madge Wildfire!'—'Madge devil! what have ye done with the horse?' was repeatedly asked by the men without.
'He's e'en at his supper, puir thing,' answered Madge; 'deil an ye were at yours, too, an it were scauding brimstone, and then we wad hae less o' your din.'
'His supper!' answered the more sulky ruffian—'What d'ye mean by that!—Tell me where he is, or I will knock your Bedlam brains out!'
'He's in Gaffer Gablewood's wheat-close, an ye maun ken.'
'His wheat-close, you crazed jilt!' answered the other, with an accent of great indignation.
'O, dear Tyburn Tam, man, what ill will the blades of the young wheat do to the puir nag?'
'That is not the question,' said the other robber; 'but what the country will say to us to-morrow, when they see him in such quarters?—Go, Tom, and bring him in; and avoid the soft ground, my lad; leave no hoof-track behind you.'
'I think you give me always the fag of it, whatever is to be done,' grumbled his companion.
'Leap, Laurence, you're long enough,' said the other; and the fellow left the barn accordingly, without farther remonstrance.
In the meanwhile, Madge had arranged herself for repose on the straw; but still in a half-sitting posture, with her back resting against the door of the hovel, which, as it opened inwards, was in this manner kept shut by the weight of the person.
'There's mair shifts by stealing, Jeanie,' said Madge Wildfire; 'though whiles I can hardly get our mother to think sae. Wha wad hae thought but mysell of making a bolt of my ain back-bane? But it's no sae strong as thae that I hae seen in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh. The hammermen of Edinburgh are to my mind afore the warld for making stancheons, ring-bolts, fetter-bolts, bars, and locks. And they arena that bad at girdles for carcakes neither, though the Cu'ross hammermen have the gree for that. My mother had ance a bonny Cu'ross girdle, and I thought to have baked carcakes on it for my puir wean that's dead and gane nae fair way—But we maun a' dee, ye ken, Jeanie—You Cameronian bodies ken that brawlies; and ye're for making a hell upon earth that ye may be less unwillin' to part wi' it. But as touching Bedlam that ye were speaking about, I'se ne'er recommend it muckle the tae gate or the other, be it right—be it wrang. But ye ken what the sang says.' And, pursuing the unconnected and floating wanderings of her mind, she sung aloud—
'Weel, Jeanie, I am something herse the night, and I canna sing muckle mair; and troth, I think, I am gaun to sleep.'
She drooped her head on her breast, a posture from which Jeanie, who would have given the world for an opportunity of quiet to consider the means and the probability of her escape, was very careful not to disturb her. After nodding, however, for a minute'or two, with her eyes half-closed, the unquiet and restless spirit of her malady again assailed Madge. She raised her head, and spoke, but with a lowered tone, which was again gradually overcome by drowsiness, to which the fatigue of a day's journey on horseback had probably given unwonted occasion,—'I dinna ken what makes me sae sleepy—I amaist never sleep till my bonny Lady Moon gangs till her bed—mair by token, when she's at the full, ye ken, rowing aboon us yonder in her grand silver coach—I have danced to her my lane sometimes for very joy—and whiles dead folk came and danced wi' me—the like o' Jock Porteous, or ony body I had ken'd when I was living—for ye maun ken I was ance dead mysell.' Here the poor maniac sung, in a low and wild tone,
'But after a', Jeanie, my woman, naebody kens weel wha's living and wha's dead—or wha's gone to Fairyland—there's another question. Whiles I think my puir bairn's dead—ye ken very weel it's buried—but that signifies naething. I have had it on my knee a hundred times, and a hundred till that, since it was buried—and how could that be were it dead, ye ken?—it's merely impossible.'—And here, some conviction half-overcoming the reveries of her imagination, she burst into a fit of crying and ejaculation, 'Wae's me! wae's me! wae's me!' till at length she moaned and sobbed herself into a deep sleep, which was soon intimated by her breathing hard, leaving Jeanie to her own melancholy reflections and observations.
CHAPTER SIXTH.
