choicest herbage. In these nocturnal watchings he sometimes drove his
little flock over the water of Corrie, for the fords were hardly ankle-
deep; or permitted his sheep to cool themselves in the stream, and taste
the grass which grew along the brink. All this time not a drop of rain
fell, nor did a cloud appear in the sky.

"One evening, during her brother's absence with the flock, Phemie sat at
her cottage-door, listening to the bleatings of the distant folds and the
lessened murmur of the water of Corrie, now scarcely audible beyond its
banks. Her eyes, weary with watching along the accustomed line of road
for the return of Elphin, were turned on the pool beside her, in which
the stars were glimmering fitful and faint. As she looked she imagined
the water grew brighter and brighter; a wild illumination presently shone
upon the pool, and leaped from bank to bank, and suddenly changing into a
human form, ascended the margin, and, passing her, glided swiftly into
the cottage. The visionary form was so like her brother in shape and
air, that, starting up, she flew into the house, with the hope of finding
him in his customary seat. She found him not, and, impressed with the
terror which a wraith or apparition seldom fails to inspire, she uttered
a shriek so loud and so piercing as to be heard at Johnstone Bank, on the
other side of the vale of Corrie."

An old woman now rose suddenly from her seat in the window-sill, the
living dread of shepherds, for she travelled the country with a brilliant
reputation for witchcraft, and thus she broke in upon the narrative: "I
vow, young man, ye tell us the truth upset and down-thrust. I heard my
douce grandmother say that on the night when Elphin Irving
disappeared--disappeared I shall call it, for the bairn can but be gone
for a season, to return to us in his own appointed time--she was seated
at the fireside at Johnstone Bank; the laird had laid aside his bonnet to