George Poinder, stay you with Ratcliffe and tha mad yelling bitch; and you other two, come with me round under the shadow of the brae." And he crept forward with the stealthy pace of an Indian savage, who leads his band to surprise an unsuspecting party of some hostile tribe.
Ratcliffe saw them glide of, avoiding the moonlight, and keeping as much in: the shade as possible.
"Robertson's done up," said he to himself; "thae young lads are aye sae thoughtless.

What deevil could he hae to say to Jeanie Deans, or to ony woman on earth, that he suld gang awa and get his neck raxed for her?
And this mad quean, after cracking like a pen-gun, and skirling like a pea-hen for the haill night, behoves just to hae hadden her tongue when her clavers might have dune some gude! But it's aye the way wi' women; if they ever hand their tongues ava', ye may swear it's for mischief.

I wish I could set her on again without this blood-sucker kenning what I am doing.

But he's as gleg as MacKeachan's elshin,* that ran through sax plies of bendleather and half-an-inch into the king's heel." * [_Elshin,_ a shoemaker's awl.] He then began to hum, but in a very low and suppressed tone, the first stanza of a favourite ballad of Wildfire's, the words of which bore some distant analogy with the situation of Robertson, trusting that the power of association would not fail to bring the rest to her mind:-- "There's a bloodhound ranging Tinwald wood, There's harness glancing sheen: There's a maiden sits on Tinwald brae, And she sings loud between." Madge had no sooner received the catch-word, than she vindicated Ratcliffe's sagacity by setting off at score with the song:-- "O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride?
There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide." Though Ratcliffe was at a considerable distance from the spot called Muschat's Cairn, yet his eyes, practised like those of a cat to penetrate darkness, could mark that Robertson had caught the alarm.

George Poinder, less keen of sight, or less attentive, was not aware of his flight any more than Sharpitlaw and his assistants, whose view, though they were considerably nearer to the cairn, was intercepted by the broken nature of the ground under which they were screening themselves.