'Hout, na, ye needna be blate about that; their house is muckle
eneugh, and decking time's aye canty time.'

By this time Jock had found his way into all the intricacies of a
tattered doublet and more tattered pair of breeches, and sallied
forth, a great white-headed, bare-legged, lubberly boy of twelve
years old, so exhibited by the glimpse of a rush-light which his
half-naked mother held in such a manner as to get a peep at the
stranger without greatly exposing herself to view in return. Jock
moved on westward by the end of the house, leading Mannering's
horse by the bridle, and piloting with some dexterity along the
little path which bordered the formidable jaw-hole, whose vicinity
the stranger was made sensible of by means of more organs than
one. His guide then dragged the weary hack along a broken and
stony cart-track, next over a ploughed field, then broke down a
slap, as he called it, in a drystone fence, and lugged the
unresisting animal through the breach, about a rood of the simple
masonry giving way in the splutter with which he passed. Finally,
he led the way through a wicket into something which had still the
air of an avenue, though many of the trees were felled. The roar
of the ocean was now near and full, and the moon, which began to
make her appearance, gleamed on a turreted and apparently a ruined
mansion of considerable extent. Mannering fixed his eyes upon it
with a disconsolate sensation.

'Why, my little fellow,' he said, 'this is a ruin, not a house?'

'Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne; that's Ellangowan Auld
Place. There's a hantle bogles about it; but ye needna be feared,