er paid little attention
to these rumours, and, after bitterly lamenting his wife for a year of
mourning, began to think on the prudence of forming a new marriage,
which, to a poor artisan with so young a family, and without the
assistance of a housewife, was almost a matter of necessity. He readily
found a neighbour with whose good looks he was satisfied, whilst her
character for temper seemed to warrant her good usage of his children.
He proposed himself and was accepted, and carried the names of the
parties to the clergyman (called, I believe, Mr. Matthew Reid) for the
due proclamation of banns. As the man had really loved his late partner,
it is likely that this proposed decisive alteration of his condition
brought back many reflections concerning the period of their union, and
with these recalled the extraordinary rumours which were afloat at the
time of her decease, so that the whole forced upon him the following
lively dream:--As he lay in his bed, awake as he thought, he beheld, at
the ghostly hour of midnight, the figure of a female dressed in white,
who entered his hut, stood by the side of his bed, and appeared to him
the very likeness of his late wife. He conjured her to speak, and with
astonishment heard her say, like the minister of Aberfoyle, that she was
not dead, but the unwilling captive of the Good Neighbours. Like Mr.
Kirke, too, she told him that if all the love which he once had for her
was not entirely gone, an opportunity still remained of recovering her,
or _winning her back_, as it was usually termed, from the comfortless
realms of Elfland. She charged him on a certain day of the ensuing week
that he should convene the most respectable housekeepers in the town,
with the clergyman at their head, and should disinter the coffin in
which she was supposed to have been buried. "The clergyman is to recite
certain prayers, upon which," said the apparition, "I will start from
the coffin and fly with great speed round the church, and you must have
the fleetest runner of the parish (naming a man famed for swiftness) to
pursue me, and such a one, the smith, renowned for his strength, to hold
me fast after I am overtaken; and in that case I shall, by the prayers
of the church, and the efforts of my loving husband and neighbours,
again recover my station in human society." In the morning the poor
widower was distressed with the recollection of his dream, but, ashamed
and puzzled, took no measures in consequenc