But the terrified child would not be comforted. He had seen a lady, "a
braw lady, a' in white," who had come to his bedside and, sitting down,
had bent and kissed him; she "cried sore," the child said, and wrung her
hands, and told him that if he would but come with her she would make
him a rich man, she would show him where gold was buried in the castle;
and when the boy answered that he dare not go with her, she had stooped
to lift and carry him. Then he had cried out, and she had slipped from
the room just as his father and mother hurried in.

"Ye were dreamin', my bonny lamb," cried the mother; and the parents,
after a time, succeeded in calming the child and in getting him again to
fall asleep. Night after night, however, as long as the boy remained in
that room, this scene was re-enacted; the same terror-stricken screams,
the same hurried rush of the parents, the same frightened tale from the
quivering lips of the child. Dreams, no doubt, induced by some childish
malady; a common enough form of nightmare, suggested by previous
knowledge of a story likely to impress children. But to the day of his
death--and he died an old man, a successful colonist, prosperous and
respected, a man in no way prone to superstitious weakness--the dreamer
ever maintained that it was something more than a dream that had come to
him those nights in Blenkinsopp Castle. He could feel yet, he said, and
shuddered to feel, the clasp of her arms and the kiss on his cheek from
the cold lips of the White Lady; and the dream, if dream it were, was
not due to suggestion, for he was conscious of no previous knowledge of
the legend.

The White Lady of Blenkinsopp has fled now, scared from her haunt by the
black smoke of tall chimneys and the deep--throated blare of steam
hooters; coal dust might well lay a more formidable spectre than that of
a Lady in White. But no man has ever yet discovered the whereabouts of