heart, they will live long and happy on the earth. When I saw him again he was stretched in his shroud, and she was weeping with an infant son on her knee, beside the coffin of her husband. Such remembrances can never pass away from the heart, and they came thick upon me as the companion of my early years approached. We had been long separated. I had resided in a distant part, till the loss of all I loved brought me back to seek for happiness in my native place, in the dwellings of departed friends, and the haunts of early joys.

Something of a smile passed over her face when she saw me, but it darkened suddenly down; we said little for a while; the histories of our own sorrows were written on our faces; there was no need for speech. Alas! alas!' said she, a kind husband, and three sweet bairns, all gone to the green church-yard! but ye were blest in the departure of your children compared to me. A mother's eye wept over them, a mother's knees nursed them, and a mother's hand did all that a mother's hand could do, till the breath went to heaven from between their sweet lips: O, woman, woman, ye were blest compared with me! And she sobbed aloud, and looked upon the lake, which lay clear and unruffled before us. At the sound of her voice the young man raised himself from the ground, gave one wild look at my companion, and uttering a cry, and covering his face with his hands, dropt flat on the earth, and lay mute and without motion.

"See him, see him," said she to me, "his name is Benjie Spedlands, he was once the sweetest youth in the parish, but now the hand of heaven is heavy upon him and sore; he is enduring punishment for a season and a time; and heavy as was his trespass, so heavy has been his chastening." I entreated her to tell me how he had offended, and also how it happened that her appearance gave him such pain, and made him cry and cover his face. "It is a strange and a mournful story," she answered," but it eases my spirit to relate it. O woman, I was once a merry and a happy creature, with a face as gladsome as the light of day; but for these eight long years

I have had nought but cheerless days and joyless nights; sad thoughts and terrible dreams. Sorrow came in a dream to me, but it will not pass from me till I go to the grave.

"It happened during the summer time, after I had lost my husband, that I was very down-spirited and lonesome, and my chief and only consolation was to watch over my fatherless son. He was a sweet child; and on the day he was two years old, when I ought to have been glad, and praised HIM who had protected the widow and the orphan, I became more than usually melancholy, for evil forebodings kept down my spirits sorely, and caused me to wet the cheeks of my child with tears. You have been a mother, and may have known the tenderness and love which even an infant will show her when she is distressed. He hung his little arms round my neck, hid his head in my bosom, and raised up such a murmur and a song of sorrow and sympathy, that I blessed him and smiled, and the bairn smiled, and so we fell asleep. It was about midnight that I dreamed a dream.

"I dreamed myself seated at my own threshold, dandling my boy in the sun: sleep gives us many joys which are taken from us when we wake, and shadows out to us many woes which are interpreted by sorrow. I thought my husband was beside me; but, though he smiled, his look was more grave than in life, and there seemed a light about him, a purer light than that of day. I thought I saw the sun setting on the green hills before me. I heard the song of the maidens as they returned from the folds; saw the rooks flying in a long black and wavering train towards their customary pines; and beheld first one large star, and then another, arising in the firmament. And I looked again, and saw a little black cloud hanging between heaven and earth; it became larger and darker till it filled all the air, from the sky down to the bosom of the Ladye's Lowe. I wondered what this might mean, when presently the cloud began to move and roll along the earth, coming nearer and nearer, and it covered all the green fields, and shut out the light of heaven. And as it came closer, I thought I beheld the shapes of men, and heard voices more

shrill than human tongue. And the cloud stood still at the distance of a stone-cast. I grew sore afraid, and clasped my child to my bosom, and sought to fly, but I could not move; the form of my husband had fled, and there was no one to comfort me. And I looked again, and, lo! the cloud seemed cleft asunder, and I saw a black chariot, drawn by six black steeds, issue from the cloud. And I saw a Shadow seated for a driver, and heard a voice say, 'I am the bearer of woes to the sons and daughters of men; carry these SORROWS abroad, they are in number eight.' And all the steeds started forward; and when the chariot came to my threshold, the phantom tarried and said, 'A woe and a woe for the son of the widow Rachel.' And I arose and beheld in the chariot the coffins of seven children; and their names, and their years, were written thereon. And there lay another coffin; and, as I bent over it, I read the name of my son, and his years were numbered six; a tear fell from my cheek, and the letters vanished. And I heard the Shadow say, 'Woman, what hast thou done? Can thy tears contend with me?' and I saw a hand pass, as a hand when it writes, over the coffin again. And I looked, and I saw the name of my son, and his years ·were numbered nine. And a faintness came into my heart, and a dimness into mine eye, and I sought to wash the words out with my tears, when the shadow said, Woman, woman, take forth thy woe and go thy ways, I have houses seven to visit, and may not tarry for thy tears; three years have I given for thy weeping, and I may give no more.'

"I have often wondered at my own strength, though it was all in a dream; Vision,' I said, if thy commission is from the evil one, lash thy fiend-steeds and begone.' The shadow darkened as I spoke: Vision,' I said, if thy mission is from Him who sits on the holy hill,—the Lord giveth and taketh away, blessed be his name; do thy message and depart.' And suddenly the coffin was laid at my door, the steeds and chariot fled, the thick clouds followed, and I beheld them no more. I gazed upon the name, and the years nine; and as I looked, it vanished from my sight; and I awoke weeping, and found my

locks drenched in sweat, and the band of my bosom burst asunder with the leaping of my heart.

"And I told my dream, and all the people of the parish wondered; and those who had children waxed sorrowful, and were dismayed. And a woman who dwells by the Rowantree-burn came unto me, and said, I hear that you have dreamed an evil dream; know ye how ye may eschew it?' And I answered, I have dreamed an evil dream, and I know not how I may eschew it, save by prayers and humiliation.' And the woman said to me, Marvel not at what I may say; I am old, and the wisdom of ancient times is with me; such wisdom as foolish men formerly accounted evil-listen to my words. Take the under garment of thy child, and dip it at midnight in that water called the Ladye's Lowe, and hang it forth to dry in the new moon-beam. Take thy bible on thy knees, and keep watch beside it; mickle is the courage of a woman when the child that milked her bosom is in danger. And a form, like unto the form of a lady, will arise from the lake, and will seek to turn the garment of thy son; see that ye quail not, but arise and say, 'Spirit, by all the salvation contained between the boards of this book, I order thee to depart and touch not the garment.'

"And while this woman spake, there came another woman, the wife of one who had sailed to a distant land, and had left her with two sweet children, and the name of the one was Samuel, and the name of the other John. Now John was a fair and comely child, the image of her husband, but he was not his mother's joy, for she loved Samuel, who bore the image of one she had loved in her youth; and this made her husband sorrowful, and caused him to sail to a far country. And when she came in, she said, 'So ye have dreamed a bad dream, and ye have sought this ill woman of the Rowantree-burn to give the interpretation thereof; if evil is threatened, evil is the way you seek to avert it. Now listen unto me; the wind bloweth as it listeth; the ways of God will not be changed by the wisdom of man; providence may seek thy child for a saint; see that ye cast him not to the fiends by dealing with unholy charms and

spells, and with graceless hags. I have two fair children; one of them is his father's love, the other is mine; say, saw ye not the name of John written on one of those visionary coffins? for I hope my Samuel will long be the grace of the green earth before he goes to the dowie mools.' And the eyes of the woman of the Rowantree-burn flashed with anger, and she said, 'Hearken to the words of this shameless woman, she seeks the destruction of the child of wedlock, and wishes life to the child of wantonness and sin. Lo! I say, hearken unto her. But the evil of her ways shall be to her as sadness, and what has given her joy shall be to the world a hissing and a scorn; to her a scourge, and a curse. She will lose the sweet youth John, even as she wishes, but long and full of evil shall be the life of the child she loves.' And upon this, these two foolish women reproached each other with works of sin and with deeds of darkness; and waxing wroth with their words, they tore each other's raiment and hair, and smote and bruised one another, and the clamour of their tongues increased exceedingly.

"Now in the midst of all this folly, there came to my fireside a man cunning in the culture of corn, and versed in the cure of those evils which afflict dumb creatures. And when he saw the strife between the woman of the Rowantree-burn and the mariner's wife, he laughed aloud in the fulness of his joy. Strong may the strife be, and long may it continue,' said he, for pleasant is the feud between the raven and the hooded-crow, and the small birds sing when the hawks of heaven fight. That woman has destroyed the firstlings of the flock, has dried up the udders to the sucking lambs, and lessened the riches of men who live by sweet cheese and fattened herds. She hath also cast her spells over the deep waters of Annan and Ae; the fish have fled, and the nets of the fishermen are dipped in vain. The fowls of heaven too have felt the cunning of her hand; the wild swans have left the Ladye's Lowe, the wild geese have fled from the royal lakes of Lochmaben ; and the black-cock and the ptarmigan come no more to the snare of the fowler. Let her

therefore scream and weep under the strong hand and sharp nails of her bitter enemy. And for the other woman, even she whose husband lives on the deep waters, and to whom she bears children in the image of other men, let her, I say, suffer from the fingers of witchcraft: pleasant is the strife between workers of wickedness; and woe to the wit, and sorrow to the hand, that seeks to sunder them. Now touching this singular dream of thine, I have a word to say,' and it is this; believe it not, it is the work of the grand architect of human misery who seeks to draw people to sin in the dreams and shadows of the night. To men whose hearts are warm, and whose blood is young, he descends in soft and voluptuous visions. I have myself beheld a maiden with a languishing look, and an eye blue and ensnaring, standing at my bed-side, clothed out in a midnight dream with the shadowy beauty of a sleeping imagination; and this appeared too on that very night when my inward gifts and graces had raised me from an humble sower of seedcorn to become an elder of our godly kirk; praise be blest, and may the deed be lauded of men. But it is not alone to the staid and the devout that the enemy appears in dreams; he presents the soldier with imaginary fields of peril and blood, and blesses his ear with the yell and the outcry of battle, and the trumpet-sound. To the maiden, he comes in gallant shapes and costly raiment, with becks and bows, and feet which pace gracefully over the floor to the sound of flute and dulcimer, and all manner of music. To the sleeping eye of a mother he digs a deep pit for the babe of her bosom, and lays the child that sucks her breast by the side of a fathomless stream. He shows her shrouds, and empty coffins; figures stretched in white linen, and kirkyard processions, and raises in her ear the wail of the matrons and the lyke-wake song. Heed not dreams therefore; they are the delusions of him who seeks to sink our souls. But bless thy God, and cherish thy child; keep his feet from the evil path, and his hand from the evil thing, and his tongue from uttering foolishness; and the boy shall become a stripling, and the stripling a man, wise in all his ways, and renowned in his gene

ration, and thou shalt rejoice with abundance of joy.'

"While this devout person cheered my heart with his counsel, he was not unheard of those two foolish women; they liked not the wisdom of his words, nor his sayings concerning themselves, and they began with a fierce and sudden outcry. A pretty elder indeed,' said the woman of the Rowantree-burn, to come here in the shades and darkness of night to expound dreams to a rosie young widow. I'll warrant ye would not care if the man-child were at the bottom of the Ladye's Lowe, so long as a full farm, a well plenished house, and a loving dame in lily-white linen, were to the fore. I wish I were a real witch for his sake, he should dree a kittle cast.' The words of the mariner's wife chimed in with those of her antagonist. A pretty elder, truly,' said she, smiting her hands together close to his nose, 'he'll come here to talk of sinful dreams, and flutes, and dulcimers, and shaking of wanton legs, and the smiling of ensnaring eyes. And yet should the bairn of a poor body have a fairer look than ane's ain husband, he will threaten us with kirk censure and session rebuke, though it's weel kenned that mothers cannot command the complexion of their babes, nor controul the time when it pleases Providence to send them weeping into the world. There was my ain son Samuel; his father had sailed but ten months and a day when the sweet wean came; where was the marvel of that? If there was not an indulgence, and acts of wondrous bounty and kindness, and blessings in the shape of babes showered upon mariners, sorrowful would their lives be, dwelling so far from their wives in the deep wide waters.'

"Woman, woman,' said the elder, I came not hither to hearken to thy confession; go home and repent, and leave me to admonish the owner of this house, touching the dream with which her spirit is sorely troubled.' Admonish!' said the mariner's spouse, I dare ye, sir, to use that word of scorn and kirk scandal to the widow of as douce a man as ever stept in a black-leather shoe-admonish, indeed! If ye are so full of the gracious spirit of counsel and admo

nition, wherefore have ye not come to cheer me in my lonesome home, where all I have is two bairns to keep sadness from my fireside? My husband is sailing on the great deep, and has not blest my sight these three long years; mickle need have I of some one to soothe my widow-like lot; I could find ye something like scripture warrant for such kindness which ye wot not of.' And the woman went her ways; the man tarried but a little while; and the woman of the Rowantree-burn departed also, admonishing me to remember her words and do as she had desired.

"It was on the third evening after I dreamed my dream, that I thought on the woman's words; and I debated with myself, if such seekings after future events by means of charms and spells were wise, and according to the word. But old beliefs, and legendary stories, and the assurances of many wise and venerable people, have ever proved too hard for the cunning of wisdom and the pure light of the gospel; and I thought on my grandmother, to whom the person of my grandfather, then in a remote land, was shown in a vision one hallowmass-eve, and so I went my ways. It was near midnight when I reached the Ladye's Lowe, and, seating myself on the place where I now sit, I looked sadly to the heaven, and sorrowfully to the waters. The moon had arisen with her horns half filled; the stars had gathered around her; the sheep lay white and clustering on the hill sides; the wild swans sailed in pairs along the quiet bosom of the lake; and the only sound I heard was that of the mother-duck, as she led her swarm of yellow young ones to graze on the tender herbage on the margin of the lake. I had wetted, as the woman bade me, the under garment of my child, and hung it forth to dry on a little bush of broom, and there I sat watching it and ruminating on my lot, on the sorrows and joys of a mother. Midnight came; the lake lay still and beautiful; the wind was heard by fits among the bushes, and gushed gently over the bosom of the water with a sweet and a lulling sound. I looked and I thought, and I thought and looked, till mine eyes waxed weary with watching, and I closed them for a time against the dazzling

undulation of the water which swelled and subsided beneath the clear moonlight. As I sat, something came before me as a vision in a dream, and I know not yet whether I slumbered or waked. Summer I thought was changed into winter, the reeds were frozen by the brooks, snow lay white and dazzling on the ground, and a sheet of thick and transparent ice was spread over the bosom of the Ladye's Lowe. And, as I looked, the lake became crowded with men; I beheld the faces of many whom I knew, and heard the curling-stones rattle and ring, as they glided along the ice or smote upon one another; and the din and clamour of men flew far and wide. And my son appeared unto me, a child no more, but a stripling tall and fair and graceful, his fair hair curling on his shoulders-my heart leapt with joy. And seven young men were with him; I knew them all, his school companions; and their seven mothers came, I thought, and stood by my side, and as we looked we talked of our children. As they glided along the ice, they held by each other's hands and sang a song; above them all, I heard the voice of my son, and my heart rejoiced. As the song concluded, I heard a shriek as of many drowning, but I saw nothing, for the ice was fled from the bosom of the lake, and all that was visible was the wild swans with the lesser water fowl. But all at once, I saw my son come from the bottom of the lake; his locks were disordered and drenched; and deadly paleness was in his looks. One bore him out of the water in his arms, and laid him at my feet on the bank. I swooned away; and when I came to myself, I found the morning light approaching, the lake fowl sheltering themselves among the reeds; and, stiff with cold, and with a heavy heart, I returned home.

"Years passed on-my son grew fair and comely, out-rivalled his comrades at school, and became the joy of the young, and the delight of the old. I often thought of my dream as I gazed on the child; and I said in the fulness of a mother's pride, surely it was a vain and an idle vision, coloured into sadness by my fears; for a creature so full of life, and strength, and spirit, cannot pass

away from the earth before his prime. Still at other times the vision pressed on my heart, and I had sore combats with a misgiving mind; but I confided in Him above, and cheered my spirit as well as I might. I went with my son to the kirk, I accom panied him to the market, I walked with him on the green hills, and on the banks of the deep rivers; I was with him in the dance, and my heart rejoiced to see him surpass the chil dren of others: wherever he went, a mother's fears, and a mother's feet, followed him. Some derided my ima ginings, and called me the dreaming widow; while others spoke with joy of his beauty and attainments, and said he was a happy son who had so tender and so prudent a mother.

"It happened in the seventh year from my dream, that a great curling bonspiel was to be played between the youths and the wedded men of the parish; and a controversy arosé concerning the lake on which the game should be decided. It was the middle of December; the winter had been open and green; till suddenly the storm set in, and the lakes were frozen equal to bear the weight of a heavy man in the first night's frost. Several sheets of frozen water were mentioned: ancient tale, and ancient belief, had given a charm to the Ladye's Lowe which few people were willing to break; and the older and graver portion of the peasantry looked on it as a place of evil omen, where many might meet, but few would part. All this was withstood by a vain and froward youth, who despised ancient beliefs as idle superstitions-traditionary legends as the labour of credulous men; and who, in the pride and vanity of human knowledge, made it his boast that he believed nothing. He pro posed to play the Bonspiel on the Ladye's Lowe-the foolish young men his companions supported his wish; and not a few among the sedater sort consented to dismiss proverbial fears, and play their game on these ominous waters. I thought it was a sad sight to see so many grey heads pass my threshold, and so many young heads following, to sport on so perilous a place; but curiosity could not be restrained-young and old, the dame and the damsel, crowded the banks