erately up the Birky Brow.
The sun was down, but it was the month of August and a fine evening,
and the Laird, seized with an unconquerable desire to see and speak
with that incomparable creature, could restrain himself no longer, but
shouted out to her to stop till he came up. She beckoned acquiescence,
and slackened her pace into a slow movement. The Laird turned the
corner quickly, but when he had rounded it the maiden was still there,
though on the summit of the brow. She turned round, and, with an
ineffable smile and curtsy, saluted him, and again moved slowly on.
She vanished gradually beyond the summit, and while the green feathers
were still nodding in view, and so nigh that the Laird could have
touched them with a fishing-rod, he reached the top of the brow
himself. There was no living soul there, nor onward, as far as his
view reached. He now trembled in every limb, and, without knowing what
he did, rode straight on to the big town, not daring well to return
and see what he had seen for three several times; and certain he would
see it again when the shades of evening were deepening, he deemed
it proper and prudent to decline the pursuit of such a phantom any
farther.

He alighted at the Queen's Head, called for some brandy and water,
quite forgot what was his errand to the great muckle town that
afternoon, there being nothing visible to his mental sight but lovely
images, with white gauze frocks and green veils. His friend M'Murdie
joined him; they drank deep, bantered, reasoned, got angry, reasoned
themselves calm again, and still all would not do. The Laird was
conscious that he had seen the beautiful apparition, and, moreover,
that she was the very maiden, or the resemblance of her, who, in the
irrevocable decrees of Providence, was destined to be his. It was in
vain that M'Murdie reasoned of impressions on the imagination, and

"Of fancy moulding in the mind,
Light visions on the passing wind."

Vain also was a story that he told him of a relation of his own, who
was greatly harassed by the apparition of an officer in a red uniform
that haunted him day and night, and had very nigh put him quite
distracted several times, till at length his physician found out the
nature of this illusion so well that he knew, from the state of his
pulse, to an hour when the ghost of the officer would appear, and by
bleeding, low diet, and emollients contrived to keep the apparition
away altogether.

The Laird admit