pernatural fears, which were to him not
indeed supernatural, but very natural; so much so, as we have said, that
a mere inanimate and dead, very dead burying-place, had been more than
once the means of cutting him out of a savoury piece of pork, and a good
Logie-brewed tankard. It was the allusion made by Janet that recalled
the suspicion that he had seen "something." Ah, "something!" what a
pregnant vocable--so mysterious, so provocative of curiosity--an
"it!"--of all the words in our language, the most suggestive of a
difference from the real being of flesh and blood, carrying a name got
at the baptismal font, whereby it shall be known and pass current like a
counter. And is it not at best only a counter, yea, a counterfeit? We
are only to each other as signs of things which are not seen; and yet we
laugh when we hear the "it," as if it might not be the very thing of
which we are one of the signs! Is it not thus that we are all humbugged
in this world of ours? For we take the sign for the thing; yea, talk to
the sign, and love it, or hate it, or worship it--all the while being as
ignorant as mules, "ne pictum quidem vidit;" the very sign may be as far
from the reality, as in philosophy we see it every day. And thus, all
wandering and groping in the dark, the blind leading the blind, we
screech like owls at a spark of light from the real fountain beyond
Aldebaran.

And the owls were more busy than pleasant that night in the deep woods
of Balgay Hill. It was a sign that the moon was not kindly to their
heavy eyes. The scene, as Aminadab issued from the postern, might have
been felt as beautiful, from the very awe which it inspired. But
Aminadab was no lover of Nature, especially if he saw in her recesses
any hiding-places for such beings as Brahma, more mysterious to him from
knowing nothing at all about him, except that he was some Ashtoreth, or
Chemosh, or Milcom, in a new form, let loose from hell, to disturb the
pure souls of Seceders destined for heaven. The full moon fell on the
hollow in the hills, surmounted by the dark woods of Balgay right aface
of him, the house of Logie behind, and the declinations on either side,
in one of which lay the little Golgotha. There, in the midst of the
hollow, stood, grim and desolate, the dark brick-built Cradle, casting
its shadow to the south; the four-corner prominences shooting out like
horns, and so unlike the habitation of a human being, yea, unlike any
composition of bric