172 THE SMUGGLER. 



drift-coal, and over it hung a large hissing pot, as huge and 

 capacious as that of the witches in Macbeth, or of the no less 

 famous Meg Merrilies. Galley Ray, however, was a very dif- 

 ferent person in appearance from the heroine of "Guy Man- 

 nering," and we must endeavour to call up her image as she 

 stood by the fire-side, watching the cauldron and a kettle 

 which stood close to it. 



The red and fitful light flashed upon no tall, gaunt form, 

 and lighted up no wild and commanding features. There was 

 nothing at all poetical in her aspect: it was such as may be 

 seen every day in the haunts of misery and vice. Originally 

 of the middle height, though once strong and upright, she had 

 somewhat sunk down under the hand of Time, and was now 

 rather short than otherwise. About fifty she had grown fat 

 and heavy; but fifteen years more had robbed her flesh of 

 firmness and her skin of its plumped out smoothness; and 

 though she had not yet reached the period when emaciation 

 accompanies decrepitude, her muscles were loose and hanging, 

 her face withered and sallow. Her hair, once as black as jet, 

 was now quite grey, not silver; but with the white greatly 

 predominating over the black. Yet, strange to say, her eyes 

 were still clear and bright, though small, and somewhat red 

 round the lids; and, stranger still, her front teeth were white 

 as ivory, offering a strange contrast to the wrinkled and yellow 

 skin. Her look was keen ; but there was that sort of habitual 

 jocularity about it, which in people of her caste is often partly 

 assumed, as an ever ready excuse for evading a close question, 

 or covering a dangerous suggestion by a jest, and partly 

 natural, or at least springing from a fearful kind of philosophy, 

 gained by the exhaustion of all sorts of criminal pleasures, 

 which leaves behind, too surely, the impression that everything 

 is but a mockery on earth. Those who have adopted that 

 philosophy never give a thought beyond this world. Her 

 figure was somewhat bowed, and over her shoulders she had 

 the fragments of a coarse woollen shawl, from beneath which 

 appeared, as she stirred the pot, her sharp yellow elbows and 

 long arms. On her head she wore a cap, which had remained 

 there, night and day, for months ; and, thurst back from her fore- 

 head, which was low and heavy, appeared the dishevelled grey 

 hair, while beneath the thick and beetling brows came the keen 

 eyes, and a nose somewhat aquiline and depressed at the point. 



