same track which the late Ellangowan had used when riding to
Derncleugh in quest of his child on the miserable evening of
Kennedy's murder.

When Meg Merrilies had attained these groves, through which the
wintry sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to
pause a moment as if to recollect the way. 'We maun go the precise
track,' she said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a
zigzag and involved course than according to her former steady and
direct line of motion. At length she guided them through the mazes
of the wood to a little open glade of about a quarter of an acre,
surrounded by trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular
boundary. Even in winter it was a sheltered and snugly sequestered
spot; but when arrayed in the verdure of spring, the earth sending
forth all its wild flowers, the shrubs spreading their waste of
blossom around it, and the weeping birches, which towered over the
underwood, drooping their long and leafy fibres to intercept the
sun, it must have seemed a place for a youthful poet to study his
earliest sonnet, or a pair of lovers to exchange their first
mutual avowal of affection. Apparently it now awakened very
different recollections. Bertram's brow, when he had looked round
the spot, became gloomy and embarrassed. Meg, after uttering to
herself, 'This is the very spot!' looked at him with a ghastly
side-glance--'D'ye mind it?'

'Yes!' answered Bertram, 'imperfectly I do.'

'Ay!' pursued his guide, 'on this very spot the man fell from his
horse. I was behind that bourtree bush at the very moment. Sair,
sair he strove, and sair he cried for mercy; but he was in the