ontinued.
"It is he, I believe," said she, uttering the words as it were
inwardly. "It can be none other but he. But, no, it is impossible! I
saw him stabbed through and through the heart; I saw him roll backward
on the green in his own blood, utter his last words, and groan away his
soul. Yet, if it is not he, who can it be?"

"It is he!" cried Mrs. Logan, hysterically.

"Yes, yes, it is he!" cried the landlady, in unison.

"It is who?" said Mrs. Calvert. "Whom do you mean, mistress?"

"Oh, I don't know! I don't know! I was affrighted."

"Hold your peace then till you recover your senses, and tell me, if you
can, who that young gentleman is who keeps company with the new Laird
of Dalcastle?"

"Oh, it is he! It is he!" screamed Mrs. Logan, wringing her hands.

"Oh, it is he! It is he!" cried the landlady, wringing hers.

Mrs. Calvert turned the latter gently and civilly out of the apartment,
observing that there seemed to be some infection in the air of the
room, and she would be wise for herself to keep out of it.

The two dames had a restless and hideous night. Sleep came not to their
relief, for their conversation was wholly about the dead, who seemed to
be alive, and their minds were wandering and groping in a chaos of
mystery. "Did you attend to his corpse, and know that he positively
died and was buried?" said Mrs. Calvert.

"Oh, yes, from the moment that his fair but mangled corpse was brought
home, I attended it till that when it was screwed in the coffin. I
washed the long stripes of blood from his lifeless form, on both sides
of the body. I bathed the livid wound that passed through his generous
and gentle heart. There was one through the flesh of his left side too,
which had bled most outwardly of them all. I bathed them, and bandaged
them up with wax and perfumed ointment, but still the blood oozed
through all, so that when he was laid in the coffin he was like one
newly murdered. My brave, my generous young master. He was always as a
son to me, and no son was ever more kind or more respectful to a
mother. But he was butchered--he was cut off from the earth ere he had
well reached to manhood--most barbarously and unfairly slain. And how
is it, how can it be, that we again see him here, walking arm in arm
with his murderer?"

"The thing cannot be, Mrs. Logan. It is a phantasy of our disturbed
imaginations, therefore let us compose ourselves till we investigate
this matter farther."

"It cannot