The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird
won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son
that raised him he gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way
up the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the
hallucination left him - he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade
- and the thirst of vengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself
and pointing with an imperious finger into the black night from which he
had come, he uttered the single command, "Brocken Dykes," and fainted.
He had never been loved, but he had been feared in honour. At that
sight, at that word, gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding
mouth, the old Elliott spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons.
"Wanting the hat," continues my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly
follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, "wanting guns, for
there wasna twa grains o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than
their sticks into their hands, the fower o' them took the road.
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