over a ploughed field, then broke down a slap as he called it, in a dry stone fence, and lugged the unresisting animal through the breach, about a rood of the simple masonry giving way in the splutter with which he passed. Finally, he led the way, through a wicket, into something which had still the air of an avenue, though many of the trees were felled. The roar of the ocean was now near and full, and the moon, which began to make her appearance, gleamed on a turreted and apparently a ruined mansion, of considerable extent. Mannering fixed his eyes upon it with a disconsolate sensation.
"Why, my little fellow, this is a ruin, not a house?"
"Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne—that's Ellengowan Auld Place; there's a hantle bogles about it—but ye needna be feared—I never saw ony mysell, and we're just at the door of the New Place."
Accordingly, leaving the ruins on the
