shelves, its pools, and its overhanging and hazelly banks concealed. They
remitted further search till the stream should become pure; and old man
taking old man aside, began to whisper about the mystery of the youth's
disappearance; old women laid their lips to the ears of their coevals,
and talked of Elphin Irving's fairy parentage, and his having been
dropped by an unearthly hand into a Christian cradle. The young men and
maids conversed on other themes; they grieved for the loss of the friend
and the lover, and while the former thought that a heart so kind and true
was not left in the vale, the latter thought, as maidens will, on his
handsome person, gentle manners, and merry blue eye, and speculated with
a sigh on the time when they might have hoped a return for their love.
They were soon joined by others who had heard the wild and delirious
language of his sister: the old belief was added to the new assurance,
and both again commented upon by minds full of superstitious feeling, and
hearts full of supernatural fears, till the youths and maidens of
Corrievale held no more love trysts for seven days and nights, lest, like
Elphin Irving, they should be carried away to augment the ranks of the
unchristened chivalry.

"It was curious to listen to the speculations of the peasantry. 'For my
part,' said a youth, 'if I were sure that poor Elphin escaped from that
perilous water, I would not give the fairies a pound of hiplock wool for
their chance of him. There has not been a fairy seen in the land since
Donald Cargil, the Cameronian, conjured them into the Solway for playing
on their pipes during one of his nocturnal preachings on the hip of the
Burnswark hill.'

"'Preserve me, bairn,' said an old woman, justly exasperated at the
incredulity of her nephew, 'if ye winna believe what I both heard and saw
at the moonlight end of Craigyburnwood on a summer night, rank after rank