Birkendelly's heart was now melted within him, and all his senses
overpowered by one overwhelming passion. On leaving his fair and kind
one, he got bewildered, and could not find the road to his own house,
believing sometimes that he was going there, and sometimes to his
sister's, till at length he came, as he thought, upon the Liffey, at
its junction with Loch Allan; and there, in attempting to call for a
boat, he awoke from a profound sleep, and found himself lying in his
bed within his sister's house, and the day sky just breaking.

If he was puzzled to account for some things in the course of his
dream, he was much more puzzled to account for them now that he was
wide awake. He was sensible that he had met his love, had embraced,
kissed, and exchanged vows and rings with her, and, in token of the
truth and reality of all these, her emerald ring was on his finger,
and his own away; so there was no doubt that they had met--by what
means it was beyond the power of man to calculate.

There was then living with Mrs. Bryan an old Scotswoman, commonly
styled Lucky Black. She had nursed Birkendelly's mother, and been
dry-nurse to himself and sister; and having more than a mother's
attachment for the latter, when she was married, old Lucky left her
country to spend the last of her days in the house of her beloved
young lady. When the Laird entered the breakfast-parlor that morning
she was sitting in her black velvet hood, as usual, reading _The
Fourfold State of Man_, and, being paralytic and somewhat deaf, she
seldom regarded those who went or came. But chancing to hear him say
something about the 9th of August, she quitted reading, turned round
her head to listen, and then asked, in a hoarse, tremulous voice:
"What's that he's saying? What's the unlucky callant saying about the
9th of August? Aih? To be sure it is St. Lawrence's Eve, although the