Dominie did not make his appearance. He had walked out, a servant said, early in the morning. It was so common for him to forget his meals, that his absence never deranged the family. The housekeeper, a decent old-fashioned presbyterian matron, having, as such, the highest respect for Sampson's theological acquisitions, had it in charge upon these occasions to take care that he was no sufferer by his absence of mind, and therefore usually waylaid him upon his return, to remind him of his sublunary wants, and to minister for their relief. It seldom, however, happened that he was absent from two meals together, as was the case in the present instance. We must explain the cause of this unusual occurrence.

The conversation which Mr Pleydell had held with Mannering upon the subject of the loss of Harry Bertram had awakened all the painful sensations which that event had inflicted upon Sampson. The affectionate heart of the poor Dominie had always reproached him, that his negligence in leaving the child in the care of Frank Kennedy had been the proximate cause of the murder of the one, the loss of the other, the death of Mrs Bertram, and the ruin of the family of his patron. It was a subject which he never spoke upon, if indeed his mode of conversation could be called speaking at any time; but which was often present to his imagination. The sort of hope so strongly affirmed and asserted in Mrs Bertram's last settlement, had excited a

corresponding feeling in the Dominie's bosom, which was exasperated into a sort of sickening anxiety, by the discredit with which Pleydell had treated it. « Assuredly, thought Sampson to himself, « he is a man of erudition, and well skilled in the weighty matters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity and incon-stancy of speech; and wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra, as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy Madam Margaret Bertram of Singleside?» All this, I say, the Dominie thought to himself; for had he uttered half the sentence, his jaws would have ached for a month under the unusual fatigue of such a continued exertion. The result of these cogitations was a resolution to go and visit the scene of the tragedy at Warroch Point, where he had not been for many years-not, indeed, since the fatal accident had happened. The walk was a long one, for the Point of Warroch lay on the farther side of the Ellangowan property, which was interposed between it and Woodbourne. Besides, the Dominie went astray more than once, and met with brooks swoln into torrents by the melting of the snow, where he, honest man, had only the summerrecollection of little trickling rills.

At length, however, he reached the woods which he had made the object of his walk, and traversed them with care, muddling his disturbed brains with vague efforts to recall every circumstance of the catastrophe. It will readily be supposed that the influence of local situation

and association was inadequate to produce conclusions different from those which he had formed under the immediate pressure of the occurrences themselves. With many a weary sigh, therefore, and many a groan," the poor Dominie returned from his hopeless pilgrimage, and wearily plodded his way towards Woodbourne, debating at times in his altered mind a question which was forced upon him by the cravings of an appetite rather of the keenest, namely, whether he had breakfasted that morning or no?— It was in this twilight humour, now thinking of the loss of the child, then involuntarily compelled to meditate upon the somewhat incongruous subject of hung-beef, rolls and butter, that his route, which was different from that which he had taken in the morning, conducted him past the small ruined tower, or rather vestige of a tower, called by the country people the Kaim of Derncleugh.

The reader may recollect the description of this ruin in the sixth chapter of our second volume, as the vault in which young Bertram, under the auspices of Meg Merrilies, witnessed the death of Hatteraick's lieutenant. The tradition of the country added ghostly terrors to the natural awe inspired by the situation of this place, which terrors the gypseys who so long inhabited the vicinity had probably invented, or at least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon MacDingawaie, bro

ther to the reigning chief, Knarth MacDingaware, murdered his brother and sovereign in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his crime, to this impregnable tower called the Kaim of Derncleugh, where he defended himself until nearly reduced by famine, when, setting fire to the place, he and the small remaining garrison desperately perished by their own swords rather than fall into the hands of their exasperated enemies. This tragedy, which, considering the wild times wherein it was placed, might have some foundation in truth, was larded with many legends of superstition and diablerie, so that most of the peasants of the neighbourhood, if benighted, would rather have chosen to make a considerable circuit than pass these haunted walls. The lights, often seen around the tower when used as the rendezvous of the lawless characters by whom it was occasionally frequented, were accounted for under authority of these tales of witchery, in a manner at once convenient for the private parties concerned, and satisfactory to the public.

Now it must be confessed, that our friend Sampson, although a profound scholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as to doubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born indeed at a time when a doubt in

the existence of witches was interpreted to be a justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such legends had been impressed upon him as an article indivisible from his religious faith, and perhaps it would have been equally difficult to have induced him to doubt the one as the other. With these feelings, and in a thick misty day, which was already drawing to its close, Dominie Sampson did not pass the Kaim of Derncleugh without some feelings of tacit horror.

What then was his astonishment, when, on passing the door-that door which was supposed to have been placed there by one of the latter lairds of Ellangowan to prevent presumptuous strangers from incurring the dangers of the haunted vault-that very door supposed to be always locked, and the key of which was popularly said to be deposited with the presbyterythat very door opened suddenly, and the figure of Meg Merrilies, well known, though not seen for many a revolving year, was placed at once before the eyes of the startled Dominie! She stood immediately before him in the foot-path, confronting him so absolutely, that he could not avoid her except by fairly turning back, which his manhood prevented him from thinking of.

<< I kenn'd ye wad be here,» she said with her harsh and hollow voice: « I ken wha ye seek; but ye maun do my bidding.">

« Get thee behind me!" said the alarmed Dominie-<< Avoid ye!--Conjuro te, scelestissima—