"
"I was thinking, sir," said the man, _more Scotico_, that is,
returning no direct answer on the subject on which he was addressed,
"my best way would be to come down to your honour, and take your
advice yet, in case my trouble should come back."
"Do so, then, knave," replied Lundin, "and remember what
Ecclesiasticus saith--'Give place to the physician-let him not go from
thee, for thou hast need of him.'"
His exhortation was interrupted by an apparition, which seemed to
strike the doctor with as much horror and surprise, as his own visage
inflicted upon sundry of those persons whom he had addressed.
The figure which produced this effect on the Esculapius of the
village, was that of a tall old woman, who wore a high-crowned hat and
muffler. The first of these habiliments added apparently to her
stature, and the other served to conceal the lower part of her face,
and as the hat itself was slouched, little could be seen besides two
brown cheek-bones, and the eyes of swarthy fire, that gleamed from
under two shaggy gray eyebrows. She was dressed in a long
dark-coloured robe of unusual fashion, bordered at the skirts, and on
the stomacher, with a sort of white trimming resembling the Jewish
phylacteries, on which were wrought the characters of some unknown
language. She held in her hand a walking staff of black ebony.
"By the soul of Celsus," said Doctor Luke Lundin, "it is old Mother
Nicneven herself--she hath come to beard me within mine own bounds,
and in the very execution of mine office! Have at thy coat, Old Woman,
as the song says--Hob Anster, let her presently be seized and
committed to the tolbooth; and if there are any zealous brethren here
who would give the hag her deserts, and duck her, as a witch, in the
loch, I pray let them in no way be hindered.
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