Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series - 1819.djvu/255

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A LEGEND OF MONTROSE.
245

where to be found. The unfortunate husband returned next day, and, with the assistance of his people, undertook a more anxious and distant search, but to equally little purpose. It was believed universally, that, in the ecstacy of her terror, she must either have thrown herself over one of the numerous precipices which overhang the river, or into a deep lake about a mile from the castle. Her loss was the more lamented, as she was six months advanced in her pregnancy; Angus M'Aulay, her eldest son, having been born about eighteen months before.——But I tire you, Captain Dalgetty, and you seem inclined to sleep."

"By no means," answered the soldier; "I am no whit somnolent; I always hear best with my eyes shut. It is a fashion I learned when I stood centinel."

"And I dare say," said Lord Menteith, aside to Anderson, "the weight of the halbert of the serjeant of the rounds often made him open them."

Being apparently, however, in the hu-