" So saying, he turned from her, and with
a swift, yet cautiously noiseless step, plunged into the darkness on the
side most remote from the sounds which they heard approaching, and was
soon lost to her sight. Jeanie remained by the cairn terrified beyond
expression, and uncertain whether she ought to fly homeward with all the
speed she could exert, or wait the approach of those who were advancing
towards her. This uncertainty detained her so long, that she now
distinctly saw two or three figures already so near to her, that a
precipitate flight would have been equally fruitless and impolitic.
CHAPTER FIFTEENTH.
She speaks things in doubt,
That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
And botch the words up to fit their own thoughts.
Hamlet.
Like the digressive poet Ariosto, I find myself under the necessity of
connecting the branches of my story, by taking up the adventures of
another of the characters, and bringing them down to the point at which
we have left those of Jeanie Deans. It is not, perhaps, the most
artificial way of telling a story, but it has the advantage of sparing
the necessity of resuming what a knitter (if stocking-looms have left
such a person in the land) might call our "dropped stitches;" a labour in
which the author generally toils much, without getting credit for his
pains.
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