was somewhere in a red or blue room, and who had been, as
usual, with all those bearded individuals who hung on walls, either at
the crusades under Peter the hermit, or at Flodden under James, or at
Culloden under Charles. The clock struck, with a sound of grating rust,
two; and--tramp, tramp--he trudged along the passage. The door opened,
and in came my chronicler.

"Doctor, I saw your light," said he, "and you know it was always my
duty, when the family were in their old home here, to see that all the
lights were out o' nights; aye ever after the east wing was burned down,
through aunt Marjory's love of reading old romances. I hope I did not
disturb you."

"No," replied I; "pray, Francis, I need not ask which of these two
pictured beauties is Amelia, my patient? The likeness is good."

"Yes, there she is," said he, with a return of his old enthusiasm. "See
her light locks and her blue eyes. She was the mother of that fair
child. Don't you see the daughter in the mother and the mother in the
daughter? But I cannot look long on these pictures. My heart fails and
my head runs round. Look at the dark one. It was a terrible night that
when she came to Redcleugh. My wife, who now lies in Deathscroft, down
among the elms yonder, could not sleep for the screeching of the owls,
as if every horned devil of them shouted woe! woe!--to the house of
Redcleugh."

"Nonsense, Francis, omens--all nonsense," I said, interrupting him.

"So said I to Christy, just as you say, doctor. So say we all, every one
of us, here and everywhere, always, just until we are pulled up at a
jerk by some one of God's acts, when we see His finger pointed to the
sign. You are not so old as I am, and have something to learn. Signs are
made only when there are to be judgments, and judgments are not
according to the common ways of heaven."

"What did Mr. Bernard do," asked I, "to bring upon him this judgment
which appears to you to have been so fearful?"

"I am not in the secrets of God's ways with erring man," replied he.
"But who can tell how my master got Lillah--that's her there with these
dark eyes--his first wife? He had been away for years in the eastern
countries, and he never wrote to any one that he was to bring a wife
with him. He brought her, amidst the storm of that fearful night, as if
she had been a bird which he had rescued from the blast, so cowering and
timid did she appear, always clinging to the laird, and looking at him
with such