GUY MANNERING;

OR,

THE ASTROLOGER.

CHAPTER 1.

"He could not deny, that, looking round upon the dreary region, and seeing nothing but bleak fields, and naked trees, hills obscured by fogs, and flats covered with inundations, he did for some time suffer melancholy to prevail upon him, and wished himself again safe at home."

IT

TRAVELS OF WILL. MARVEL, IDLER, No. 49.

was in the beginning of the month of November, 17-, when a young English gentleman, who had just left the university of Oxford, made use of the liberty afforded him to visit some parts of the north of England; and curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of the sister country. He had visited, upon the day that opens our history, some monastic ruins in the

county of Dumfries, and spent much of the day in making drawings of them from different points; so that, upon mounting his horse to resume his journey, the brief and gloomy twilight of the season had already commenced. His way lay through a wide. track of black moss, extending for miles on each side and before him. Little eminences arose like islands on its surface, bearing here and there patches of corn, which even at this season was green, and sometimes a hut, or farm-house, shaded by a willow or two, and surrounded by large elder-bushes. These insulated dwellings communicated with each other by winding passages through the moss, impassable by any but the natives themselves. The public road, however, was tolerably well-made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger. Still it is uncomfortable to travel, alone and in the dark, through an unknown country, and there are few ordinary occasions upon which Fancy frets

herself so much as in a situation like that

of Mannering.

As the light grew faint and more faint, and the morass appeared blacker and blacker, our traveller questioned more closely each chance passenger upon his distance from the village of Kippletringan, where he proposed to quarter for the night. His queries were usually answered by a counter-challenge respecting the place from whence he came. While sufficient day-light remained to shew the dress and appearance of a gentleman, these cross interrogatories were usually put in the form of a case supposed, as, " Ye'll hae been at the auld abbey o' Halycross, sir? there's mony English gentlemen gang to see that."Or, "Your honour will be come frae the house o' Pouderloupat?" But when the voice of the querist alone was distinguishable, the response usually was, "Where are ye coming frae at sick a time o' night as the like o' this ?"—or, "Ye'll no be of this country, freend?" The answers, when

cr

obtained, were neither very reconcileable to each other, nor accurate in the informa tion which they afforded. Kippletringan was distant at first, "agay bit." Then the gay bit" was more accurately described, as aiblins three miles;" then the "three miles" diminished into " like a mile and a bittock;" then extended themselves into "four miles or there awa ;" and, lastly, a female voice having hushed a wailing infant which the spokeswoman carried in her arms, assured Guy Mannering, "It was a weary lang gait yet to Kippletringan, and unco heavy road for foot passengers." The poor hack upon which Mannering was mounted was probably of opinion that it suited him as ill as the female respondent; he began to flag very much, answered each application of the spur with a groan, and stumbled at every stone (and they were not few) which lay in his road.

Mannering now grew impatient. He was occasionally betrayed into a deceitful hope, that the end of his journey was near,