Black be its fall ! If ye see the laird , tell him what ye hear ; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house , byre and stable , man , guest , and master , wife , miss , or bairn -- black , black be their fall ! '' And the woman , whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song , turned with a skip , and was gone . I stood where she left me , with my hair on end . In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse ; and this one , falling so pat , like a wayside omen , to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose , took the pith out of my legs . I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws . The more I looked , the pleasanter that country-side appeared ; being all set with hawthorn bushes full of flowers ; the fields dotted with sheep ; a fine flight of rooks in the sky ; and every sign of a kind soil and climate ; and yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy . Country folk went by from the fields as I sat there on the side of the ditch , but I lacked the spirit to give them a good-e ` en . At last the sun went down , and then , right up against the yellow sky , I saw a scroll of smoke go mounting , not much thicker , as it seemed to me , than the smoke of a candle ; but still there it was , and meant a fire , and warmth , and cookery , and some living inhabitant that must have lit it ; and this comforted my heart . So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my direction . It was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place of habitation ; yet I saw no other . Presently it brought me to stone uprights , with an unroofed lodge beside them , and coats of arms upon the top . A main entrance it was plainly meant to be , but never finished ; instead of gates of wrought iron , a pair of hurdles were tied across with a straw rope ; and as there were no park walls , nor any sign of avenue , the track that I was following passed on the right hand of the pillars , and went wandering on toward the house . The nearer I got to that , the drearier it appeared . It seemed like the one wing of a house that had never been finished . What should have been the inner end stood open on the upper floors , and showed against the sky with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry . Many of the windows were unglazed , and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote . The night had begun to fall as I got close ; and in three of the lower windows , which were very high up and narrow , and well barred , the changing light of a little fire began to glimmer . Was this the palace I had been coming to ? Was it within these walls that I was to seek new friends and begin great fortunes ?
Why , in my father 's house on Essen-Waterside , the XXXXX and the bright lights would show a mile away , and the door open to a beggar 's knock !
Clouston Shaws byre country-side eldritch fire habitation hunner left right