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 take the Book, when a shriek mair loud, believe me, than a mere woman’s shriek—and they can shriek loud enough, else they’re sair wranged—came over the water of Corrie, so sharp and shrilling, that the pewter plates dinneled on the wall; such a shriek, my douce grandmother said, as rang in her ear till the hour of her death, and she lived till she was aughty-and-aught, forty full ripe years after the event.  But there is another matter, which, doubtless, I cannot compel ye to believe: it was the common rumour that Elphin Irving came not into the world like the other sinful creatures of the earth, but was one of the kane-bairns of the fairies, whilk they had to pay to the enemy of man’s salvation every seventh year.  The poor lady-fairy—a mother’s aye a mother, be she elves’ flesh or Eve’s flesh—hid her elf son beside the christened flesh in Marion Irving’s cradle, and the auld enemy lost his prey for a time.  Now, hasten on with your story,

which is not a bodle the waur for me.  The maiden saw the shape of her brother, fell into a faint, or a trance, and the neighbours came flocking in—gang on with your tale, young man, and dinna be affronted because an auld woman helped ye wi ’t.”

“It is hardly known,” I resumed, “how long Phemie Irving continued in a state of insensibility.  The morning was far advanced, when a neighbouring maiden found her seated in an old chair, as white as monumental marble; her hair, about which she had always been solicitous, loosened from its curls, and hanging disordered over her neck and bosom, her hands and forehead.  The maiden touched the one, and kissed the other; they were as cold as snow; and her eyes, wide open, were fixed on her brother’s empty chair, with the intensity of gaze of one who had witnessed the appearance of a spirit.  She seemed insensible of any one’s presence, and sat fixed and still and motionless.  The maiden, alarmed at her looks, thus addressed her:—‘Phemie, lass, Phemie Irving!  Dear me, but this be awful!  I have come to tell ye that seven of your pet sheep have escaped drowning in the water; for Corrie, sae quiet and sae gentle yestreen, is rolling and dashing frae bank to bank this morning.  Dear me, woman, dinna let the loss of the world’s gear bereave ye of your senses.  I would rather make ye a present of a dozen mug-ewes of the Tinwald brood myself; and now I think

on ’t, if ye’ll send over Elphin, I will help him hame with them in the gloaming myself.  So, Phemie, woman, be comforted.’

“At the mention of her brother’s name she cried out, ‘Where is he?  Oh, where is he?’ gazed wildly round, and, shuddering from head to foot, fell senseless on the floor.  Other inhabitants of the valley, alarmed by the sudden swell of the river, which had augmented to a torrent, deep and impassable, now came in to inquire if any loss had been sustained, for numbers of sheep and teds of hay had been observed floating down about the dawn of the morning.  They assisted in reclaiming the unhappy maiden from her swoon; but insensibility was joy compared to the sorrow to which she awakened.  ‘They have ta’en him away, they have ta’en him away,’ she chanted, in a tone of delirious pathos; ‘him that was whiter and fairer than the lily on Lyddal Lee.  They have long sought, and they have long sued, and they had the power to prevail against my prayers at last.  They have ta’en him away; the flower is plucked from among the weeds, and the dove is slain amid a flock of ravens.  They came with shout, and they came with song, and they spread the charm, and they placed the spell, and the baptised brow has been bowed down to the unbaptised hand.  They have ta’en him away, they have ta’en him away; he was too lovely, and too good, and too noble, to bless us with his continuance

on earth; for what are the sons of men compared to him?—the light of the moonbeam to the morning sun, the glowworm to the eastern star.  They have ta’en him away, the invisible dwellers of the earth.  I saw them come on him with shouting and with singing, and they charmed him where he sat, and away they bore him; and the horse he rode was never shod with iron, nor owned before the mastery of human hand.  They have ta’en him away over the water, and over the wood, and over the hill.  I got but ae look of his bonnie blue ee, but ae; ae look.  But as I have endured what never maiden endured, so will I undertake what never maiden undertook, I will win him from them all.  I know the invisible ones of the earth; I have heard their wild and wondrous music in the wild woods, and there shall a christened maiden seek him, and achieve his deliverance.’  She paused, and glancing around a circle of condoling faces, down which the tears were dropping like rain, said, in a calm and altered but still delirious tone: ‘Why do you weep, Mary Halliday? and why do you weep, John Graeme?  Ye think that Elphin Irving—oh, it’s a bonnie, bonnie name, and dear to many a maiden’s heart, as well as mine—ye think he is drowned in Corrie; and ye will seek in the deep, deep pools for the bonnie, bonnie corse, that ye may weep over it, as it lies in its last linen, and lay it, amid weeping and wailing in the dowie kirkyard. 

Ye may seek, but ye shall never find; so leave me to trim up my hair, and prepare my dwelling, and make myself ready to watch for the hour of his return to upper earth.’  And she resumed her household labours with an alacrity which lessened not the sorrow of her friends.

“Meanwhile the rumour flew over the vale that Elphin Irving was drowned in Corriewater.  Matron and maid, old man and young, collected suddenly along the banks of the river, which now began to subside to its natural summer limits, and commenced their search; interrupted every now and then by calling from side to side, and from pool to pool, and by exclamations of sorrow for this misfortune.  The search was fruitless: five sheep, pertaining to the flock which he conducted to pasture, were found drowned in one of the deep eddies; but the river was still too brown, from the soil of its moorland sources, to enable them to see what its deep 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