Had Lady Fettercairn overheard all this she would have had good reason to fear that Finella's twenty thousand a year was slipping away from the Craigengowan family, all the more so that the scene of this tender interview was a spot below the mansion-house, said to be traditionally fatal to the Melforts of Fettercairn, the Howe of Craigengowan—for there a terrible adventure occurred to the first Lord, he who sold his Union vote, and of whom the men of the Mearns were wont to say he had not only sold his country to her enemies, but that he had also sold his soul to the evil one.
It chanced that in the gloaming of the 28th of April, 1708, the first anniversary of that day on which the Scottish Parliament dissolved to meet no more, he was walking in a place which he had bought with his Union bribe—the Howe of Craigengowan, then a secluded dell, overshadowed by great alders and whin bushes—when he saw at the opposite end the figure of a man approaching pace for pace with himself, and his outline was distinctly seen against the red flush of the western sky.
As they neared each other slowly, a strange emotion of superstitious awe stole into the hard heart of Lord Fettercairn. So strong was this that he paused for a minute, and rested on his cane. The stranger did precisely the same.
The peer—the ex-Commissioner on Forfeited Estates—'pulled himself together,' and put his left hand jauntily into the silver hilt of his sword—a motion imitated exactly, and to all appearance mockingly, by the other, whose gait, bearing, and costume—a square-skirted crimson coat, a long-flapped white vest, black breeches and stockings rolled over the knee, and a Ramillie wig—were all the same in cut and colour as his own!
Lord Fettercairn afterwards used to assert that he would never be able to describe the undefinable, the strange and awful sensation that crept over him when, as they neared each other, pace by pace, he saw in the other's visage the features of himself reproduced, as if he had been looking into a mirror.
A cold horror ran through every vein. He knew and felt that his own features were pallid and convulsed with mortal terror and dismay, while he could see that those of his dreadful counterpart were radiant with spite and triumphant malice.
Himself seemed to look upon himself—the same in face, figure, dress; every detail was the same, save that the other clutched a canvas bag, inscribed '£500' the price of the Union vote (or, as some said, the price of his soul)—on seeing which my Lord Fettercairn shrieked in an agony of terror, and fell prone on his face—a fiendish yell and laugh from the other making all the lonely Howe re-echo as he did so.
How long he lay there he knew not precisely; but when he opened his eyes the pale April moon was shining down the Howe, producing weird and eerie shadows, the alder and whin bushes looked black and gloomy, and the window lights were shining redly in the tall and sombre mass of Craigengowan, the gables, turrets, and vanes of which stood up against the starry sky.
He never quite recovered the shock, but died some years after; and even now on dark nights, when owls hoot, ravens croak, toads crawl, and the clock at Craigengowan strikes twelve, something strange—no one can exactly say what—is to be seen in the Howe, even within sound of the railway engine.
But to resume our own story: