of a poor woman's
cottage.

The terrified president lifted his eyes, and saw a goodly shepherd, with
a long staff in his hand, crying to his dog, Batty, to drive his sheep
to a distance; and, a little beyond, a poor woman sat at her door,
looking for her black cat, that sat on the roof of the cottage, and
would not come down for all the energies of her squeaking voice.

"What could all this mean?" now ejaculated Durie. "Have I not been for
three months tortured with these sounds, which I attributed to evil
spirits? I have ridden from them twenty miles, and here they are again,
in the form of fair honest denominations of living animals. I am in
greater perplexity than ever. While I thought them evil spirits, I
feared them as such; but now, God help me, they have taken on the forms
of a dog and cat, and this shepherd and this old woman are kindred
devils, under whose command they are. What shall I do, whither run to
avoid them, since twenty miles have been to them as a flight in the
air?"

"It's a braw morning, sir," said the shepherd. "How far hae ye come this
past night?--for I ken nae habitation near whar ye may hae rested."

"It's seldom we see strangers hereawa," said the old woman, "at this
early hour--will ye come in, sir, and rest ye?"

Durie looked first at the one and then at the other, bewildered and
speechless. The fair face of nature before him, with the forms of God's
creatures, and the sounds of human voices in his ears, were as nothing
to recollections and sensations which he could not shake from his mind.
He had, for certain, heard these dreadful sounds for three months; he
had ridden twenty miles, and now he heard them again, mixed up with the
delusive accompaniments of the enticing speeches of a man and a woman.
He would fly, but felt himself unable; and, standing under the influence
of the charm of his own terrors, he continued to look, first at the
shepherd and then at the old woman, in wonder and dismay. The people
knew as little what to think of him as he did in regard to them. He
looked wild and haggard, his eyes rolled about in his head, his voice
was mute; and the cloak, which he had partially unloosed from his head,
hung in strange guise down his back, and flapped in the wind. The old
castle had its "red cap," a fact known to both the shepherd and the old
woman, who had latterly heard strange sounds coming from it. Might not
Durie be the spirit in another form? The question was reasonable,