In a few minutes, to me a time of awful duration--for who could tell what might be following me up from the hollow?--Andrew appeared half-dressed, and not in the best of tempers, remarking it was an odd thing to go out riding when honest people were in their beds, except, he added, I meant to take to the highway. Thereupon, rendered more communicative by the trial I had gone through, I told him the whole story, what I had intended and how I had been frustrated. He listened, scratched his head, and saying someone ought to see if anything was the matter with the old woman, turned in to put on the rest of his clothes.
“You had better go home to bed, Ranald,” he said.
“Won’t you be frightened, Andrew?” I asked.
“Frightened? What should I be frightened at? It’s all waste to be frightened before you know whether the thing is worth it.”
My courage had been reviving fast in the warm presence of a human being. I was still seated on Missy. To go home having done nothing for Jamie, and therefore nothing for Elsie, after all my grand ideas of rescue and restoration, was too mortifying. I should feel so small when I woke in the morning! And yet suppose the something which gave that fearful cry in the cottage should be out roaming the fields and looking for mel I had courage enough, however, to remain where I was till Andrew came out again, and as I sat still on the mare’s back, my courage gradually rose. Nothing increases terror so much as running away. When he reappeared, I asked him:
“How should I tell?” returned Andrew. “The old woman has a very queer cock, I know, that always roosts on the top of her bed, and crows like no cock I ever heard crow. Or it might be Wandering Willie--he goes to see her sometimes, and the demented creature might strike up his pipes at any unearthly hour.”
I was not satisfied with either suggestion; but the sound I had heard had already grown so indistinct in my memory, that for anything I could tell it might have been either. The terror which it woke in my mind had rendered me incapable of making any observations or setting down any facts with regard to it. I could only remember that I had heard a frightful noise, but as to what it was like I could scarcely bear the smallest testimony.