CHAPTER XXIII.
Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway -- Winter's Tale.
The hint of the hospitable farmer was not lost on Brown.

But while he paid his reckoning he could not avoid repeatedly fixing his eyes on Meg Merrilies.

She was in all respects the same witch-like figure as when we first introduced her at Ellangowan Place.

Time had grizzled her raven locks and added wrinkles to her wild features, but her height remained erect, and her activity was unimpaired.

It was remarked of this woman, as of others of the same description, that a life of action, though not of labour, gave her the perfect command of her limbs and figure, so that the attitudes into which she most naturally threw herself were free, unconstrained, and picturesque.