"I was just going to say the same," replied Mannering.
"And her name," said Pleydell———
"Is Meg Merrilies," answered the Colonel.
"Are you avised of that?" said the counsellor, looking at his military friend with a comic expression of surprise.
Mannering answered, that he had known such a woman when he was at Ellangowan twenty-five years before; and then made his learned friend acquainted with all the remarkable particulars of his first visit there.
Mr Pleydell listened with great attention, and then replied, "I congratulated myself upon having made the acquaintance of a profound theologian in your chaplain, but I really did not expect to find a pupil of Albumazar or Messahala in his patron.—I have a notion, however, this gypsy could tell us some more of the matter than she derives from astrology or second-sight—I had her through hands
