hful mistresses, must needs go crusading to the Holy Land.
During his absence, the lady hied daily to the Wishing Well, and many a
tear she let fall therein as she thought of the lad that was so far
away. But after many a month, back from Palestine came young Arndilly,
and went, of course, straight to the old trysting-place, where he found
his lady-love praying for his safe return. The meeting was rapturous but
tragically short. A dark shape glided upon the scene, and drove a fatal
dirk in the young soldier's back. The lady shrieked aloud and swooned
away. For the rest of her life she was an imbecile: she never left the
castle, and spent her time crooning a plaintive song and rocking a
cradle. Her ghost still haunts the place, and those who have ears to
hear can, at nightfall, make out, above the sough of the wind, the
mournful notes of a weird lullaby, and mysterious cradle-rockings within
the ruined walls. Close by the Well, at the spot of the murder, a bush
sprang up, whereof the leaves resembled crosses; in autumn they turned
to a bright scarlet colour, as if typical of the blood that had flowed
there from its victim's wounds. Others will have it that the lady's
ghost may be seen flitting about, distractedly, in the woods, on a
particular night of the year--the anniversary, it is supposed, of
Arndilly's murder.

OSSIAN AND MACPHERSON.

The beautiful little town of Kingussie is famous for its association
with "Ossian" Macpherson, who was born near by. No man, born on Scottish
earth, except perhaps, Sir Walter Scott, had ever such an influence on
European literature as this Highland dominie. "His Ossian," as Professor
Macmillan Brown says, "was translated into almost every European
language; and its influence is apparent in Goethe's Werther, in
Schiller's Robbers, and in all the Storm-and-Stress literature of
Germany, in the productions and speeches of the French Revolutionists,
in the romantic literary movement that preceded and followed the
Revolution, and in much of the Italian, Spanish, and Danish poetry of
the time. It generally affected the prose style of eighteenth century
romance, and was a direct antidote to Johnsonianism in the imaginative
literature. In our own century it bent the genius of Scott to the
Highlands, and moulded the dramas of Byron, and the often vague imagery
of Shelley; it appears in the style of Kingsley's Hereward, and directly
or indirectly it is responsible for the pioneering efforts