Mr. Pleydell now dismissed Mrs. Rebecca. When she was gone, 'I
think I know the gipsy-woman,' said the lawyer.

'I was just going to say the same,' replied Mannering.

'And her name,' said Pleydell--

'Is Meg Merrilies,' answered the Colonel.

'Are you avised of that?' said the Counsellor, looking at his
military friend with a comic expression of surprise.

Mannering answered that he had known such a woman when he was at
Ellangowan upwards of twenty years before; and then made his
learned friend acquainted with all the remarkable particulars of
his first visit there.

Mr. Pleydell listened with great attention, and then replied, 'I
congratulated myself upon having made the acquaintance of a
profound theologian in your chaplain; but I really did not expect
to find a pupil of Albumazar or Messahala in his patron. I have a
notion, however, this gipsy could tell us some more of the matter
than she derives from astrology or second-sight. I had her through
hands once, and could then make little of her, but I must write to
Mac-Morlan to stir heaven and earth to find her out. I will gladly
come to--shire myself to assist at her examination; I am still in
the commission of the peace there, though I have ceased to be
sheriff. I never had anything more at heart in my life than
tracing that murder and the fate of the child. I must write to the