"He shall have his half of the road," growled one of the tall thin gipsies, his features half-buried in a slouch hat, "but he shall have no more. The highway is as free to our cuddies as to his horse."
Never before had the Laird of Ellangowan received such a discourteous reception. Anxious at the last to leave a good impression, he stammered out as he passed one of the older men, "And your son, Gabriel Baillie, is he well?" (He meant the young man who had been sent by means of the press-gang to foreign parts.) With a deep scowl the old man replied, "If I had heard otherwise, _you_ would have heard it too!"
At last Godfrey Bertram thought that he had escaped. He had passed the last laden donkey of the expelled tribe. He was urging his beast toward Ellangowan with a saddened spirit, when suddenly at a place where the road was sunk between two high banks, Meg Merrilies appeared above him, a freshly cut sapling in her hand, her dark eyes flashing anger, and her elf-locks straying in wilder confusion than ever.
"Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan," she cried, "ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths--see if the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that? Ye have riven the thatch off seven cottars' houses--look if your roof-tree stands the faster. There are thirty yonder that would have shed their lifeblood for you--thirty, from the child of a week to the auld wife of a hundred, that you have made homeless, that you have sent out to sleep with the fox and the blackcock. Our bairns are hanging on our weary backs--look to it that your braw cradle at hame is the fairer spread! Now ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram. These are the last words ye shall ever hear from Meg Merrilies, and this the last staff that I shall ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan!"
[Illustration: "MEG MERRILIES appeared above him, a freshly cut sapling in her hand, her dark eyes flashing anger, and her elf-locks straying in wilder confusion than ever.
"'Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan,' she cried, 'ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths--see if the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that!'"]
And with the gesture of a queen delivering sentence she broke the sapling she had held in her hand, and flung the fragments into the road. The Laird was groping in his pocket for half a crown, and thinking meanwhile what answer to make. But disdaining both his reply and his peace-offering, Meg strode defiantly downhill after the caravan.