He soon found an aperture through which he could observe her without being himself visible; and could not help feeling that her figure, her employment, and her situation conveyed the exact impression of an ancient sibyl.
She sate upon a broken corner-stone in the angle of a paved apartment, part of which she had swept clean to afford a smooth space for the evolutions of her spindle.

A strong sunbeam through a lofty and narrow window fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light for her occupation; the rest of the apartment was very gloomy.

Equipt in a habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common people with something of an Eastern costume, she spun a thread drawn from wool of three different colours, black, white, and grey, by assistance of those ancient implements of housewifery now almost banished from the land, the distaff and spindle.

As she spun, she sung what seemed to be a charm.
Mannering, after in vain attempting to make himself master of the exact words of her song, afterwards attempted the following paraphrase of what, from a few intelligible phrases, he concluded to be its purport:-- Twist ye, twine ye! even so Mingle shades of joy and woe, Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife, In the thread of human life.
While the mystic twist is spinning, And the infant's life beginning, Dimly seen through twilight bending, Lo, what varied shapes attending! Passions wild, and Follies vain, Pleasures soon exchanged for pain, Doubt, and Jealousy, and Fear In the magic dance appear.
Now they wax, and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle.
Twist ye, twine ye! even so Mingle human bliss and woe.
Ere our translator, or rather our free imitator, had arranged these stanzas in his head, and while he was yet hammering out a rhyme for DWINDLE, the task of the sibyl was accomplished, or her wool was expended.

She took the spindle, now charged with her labours, and, undoing the thread gradually, measured it by casting it over her elbow and bringing each loop round between her forefinger and thumb.