. The
green mountain of Criffell ascended beside us; and the bleat of the
flocks from its summit, together with the winding of the evening
horn of the reapers, came softened into something like music over
land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a deep and wooded bay,
and sat silently looking on the serene beauty of the place. The
moon glimmered in her rising through the tall shafts of the pines
of Caerlaverock; and the sky, with scarce a cloud, showered down
on wood, and headland, and bay, the twinkling beams of a thousand
stars, rendering every object visible. The tide, too, was coming
with that swift and silent swell observable when the wind is gentle;
the woody curves along the land were filling with the flood, till
it touched the green branches of the drooping trees; while in the
centre current the roll and the plunge of a thousand pellocks told
to the experienced fisherman that salmon were abundant.

As we looked, we saw an old man emerging from a path that winded to
the shore through a grove of doddered hazel; he carried a halve-net
on his back, while behind him came a girl, bearing a small harpoon with
which the fishers are remarkably dexterous in striking their prey.
The senior seated himself on a large gray stone, which overlooked the
bay, laid aside his bonnet, and submitted his bosom and neck to the
refreshing sea-breeze; and taking his harpoon from his attendant,
sat with the gravity and composure of a spirit of the flood, with
his ministering nymph behind him. We pushed our shallop to the
shore, and soon stood at their side.

"This is old Mark Macmoran, the mariner, with his grand-daughter
Barbara," said Richard Faulder, in a whisper that had something
of fear in it; "he knows every creek and cavern and quicksand in
Solway,--has seen the Spectre Hound that haunts the Isle of Man;
has heard him bark, and at every bark has seen a ship sink; and he
has seen, too, the Haunted Ships in full sail; and, if all tales
be true, he has sailed in them himself: he's an awful person."

Though I perceived in the communication of my friend something
of the superstition of the sailor, I could not help thinking that
common rumor had made a happy choice in singling out old Mark to
maintain her intercourse with the invisible world. His hair, which
seemed to have refused all intercourse with the comb, hung matted
upon his shoulders; a kind of mantle, or rather blanket, pinned
with a wooden skewer round his neck, fell mid-l