"She tauld me that mornin that she weel kent she wouldna lang be a trouble to onybody. The day afore had been Sabbath, an' every Sabbath mornin, for the last ten years, her worthy neebor the elder, whom they had buried only four days afore, used to call on her, in the passing on his way to the kirk. 'Come awa, Elspat,' he would say; an' she used to be aye decent an' ready; for she liked his conversation; an' they aye gaed thegither to the kirk. She had been contracted, when a young lass, to a brither o' the elder's—a stout, handsome lad; but he had been ca'ed suddenly awa, atween the contract an' the marriage, an' Elspat, though she had afterwards mony a guid offer, had lived single for his sake. Weel, on the very mornin afore, just sax days after the elder's death, an' four after his burial, when Elspat was sittin dowie aside the fire, thinkin' o' her guid auld neebor, the cry cam to the door just as it used to do; but, though the voice was the same, the words were a wee different. 'Elspat,' it said, 'mak ready an' come awa.' She rose hastily to the window, an' there, sure enough, was the elder turning the corner in his Sunday's bonnet an' his Sunday's coat. An' weel did she ken, she said, the meanin o' his call, and kindly did she tak it. An' if it was but God's wull that she suld hae enough to put her decently under the ground without going in debt to ony one, she would be weel content. She had already the linen for the dead-dress, she said; for she had span it for the purpose afore her contract wi' William, an' she had the whisky, too, for the wake; but she had naething anent the coffin an' the bedral.
"Weel, we took our breakfast, an' I did my best to comfort the puir body; but she looked very down-hearted for a' that. Aboot the middle o' the day, in cam the minister's boy wi' a letter. It was directed to his master, he said; but it was a' for Elspat; an' there was a five-pound note in it. It was frae a man who had left the country, mony, mony a year afore, a guid deal in her faither's debt. You would hae thought the puir thing wad hae grat her een out when she saw the money; but never was money mair thankfully received, or taen mair directly frae Heaven. It set her aboon the warld, she said; an' coming at the time it did, an estate o' a thousand a-year wadna be o' mair use to her. Next mornin she didna rise, for her strength had failed her at ance, though she felt nae meikle pain, an' she sent me to get the note changed, an' to leave twenty shillings o't wi' the wright for a decent coffin, like her mither's, an' five shillings mair wi' the bedral, an' to tak in necessaries for a sick-bed wi' some o' the lave. Weel, I did that; an' there's still twa pounds o' the note yonder in the little cupboard.
"On the fifth mornin after she had been taken sae ill, I came in till ask after her—for my neebor here had relieved me o' that night's watchin, and I had gotten to my bed. The moment I opened the door I saw that the hail room was hung in white, just as ye' see it now; an' I'm sure it staid that way a minute or sae; but when I winked it went awa. I kent there was a change no far off; an' when I went up to the bed, Elspat didna ken me. She was wirkin wi' her hand at the blankets, as if she were pickin aff the little motes; an' I could hear the beginning o' the dead rattle in her throat. I sat at her bedside for awhile, wi' my neebor here; and when she spoke to us, it was to say that the bed had grown hard and uneasy, and that she wished to be brought oot to the chair. Weel, we indulged her, though we baith kent that it wasna in the bed the uneasiness lay. Her mind, puir body, was carried at the time; she just kent that there was to be a death an' a lykewake; but no that the death an' the lykewake were to be her ain; an' whan she looked at the bed, she bade us tak down the black curtains an' put up the white; an' tauld us where the white were to be found.
"'But where is the corp?' she said; 'it's no there—where is the corp?'
"'O Elspat, it will be there vera soon,' said my neebor; an' that satisfied her.
"She cam to hersel an hour afore she departed. God had been very guid to her, she said, a' her life lang, an' he hadna forsaken her at the last. He had been guid to her when he had gien her friens, an' guid to her when he took them to himsel; an' she kent she was now going to baith Him and them. There wasna such a difference, she said, atween life and death as folk were ready to think. She was sure that, though William had been ca'ed awa suddenly, he hadna been ca'ed without being prepared; an' now that her turn had come, an' that she was goin to meet wi' him, it was maybe as weel that he had left her early; for, till she had lost him, she had been owre licht an' thochtless; an' had it been her lot to hae lived in happiness wi' him, she micht hae remained licht an' thochtless still. She bade us baith fareweel, an' thanked an' blessed us; an' her last breath went awa in a prayer no half-an-hour after. Puir, decent body!—but she's no puir now."
"A pretty portrait," whispered my companion, "of one of a class fast wearing away. Nothing more interests me in the story than the woman's undoubting faith in the supernatural; she does not even seem to know that what she believes so firmly herself, is so much as doubted by others. Try whether you can't bring up, by some means, a few other stories furnished with a similar machinery—a story of the second sight, for instance."
"The only way of accomplishing that," I replied, "is by contributing a story of the kind myself."
"The vision of the room hung in white," I said, "reminds me of a story related, about a hundred and fifty years ago, by a very learned and very ingenious countryman of ours—George, first Earl of Cromarty. His lordship, a steady Royalist, was engaged, shortly before the Restoration (he was then, by the way, only Sir George Mackenzie), in raising troops for the king, on his lands on the western coast of Ross-shire. There came on one of those days of rain and tempest so common in the district; and Sir George, with some of his friends, were storm-bound in a solitary cottage, somewhere on the shores of Loch Broom. Towards evening, one of the party went out to look after their horses. He had been sitting beside Sir George, and the chair he had occupied remained empty. On Sir George's servant, an elderly Highlander, coming in, he went up to his master, apparently much appalled, and, tapping him on the shoulder, urged him to rise. 'Rise!' he said, 'rise! There's a dead man sitting on the chair beside you.' The whole party immediately started to their feet; but they saw only the empty chair. The dead man was visible to the Highlander alone. His head was bound up, he said, and his face streaked with blood, and one of his arms hung broken by his side. Next day, as a party of horsemen were passing along the steep side of a hill in the neighbourhood, one of the horses stumbled, and threw its rider; and the man, grievously injured by the fall, was carried, in a state of insensibility, to the cottage. His head was deeply gashed, and one of his arms was broken, though he ultimately recovered; and, on being brought to the cottage, he was placed, in a death-like swoon, in the identical chair which the Highlander had seen occupied by the spectre. Sir George relates the story, with many a similar story besides, in a letter to the celebrated Robert Boyle."
"I have perused it with much interest," said my friend "and wonder our booksellers should have suffered it to become so scarce. Do you not remember the somewhat similar story his lordship relates of the Highlander who saw the apparition of a troop of horse ride over the brow of a hill, and enter a field of oats, which, though it had been sown only a few days before, the horsemen seemed to cut down with their swords. He states that, a few months after, a troop of cavalry actually entered the same field, and carried away the produce, for fodder to their horses. He tells, too, if I remember aright, that, on the same expedition to which your story belongs, one of his Highlanders, on entering a cottage, started back with horror;—he had met in the passage, he said, a dead man in his shroud, and saw people gathering for a funeral. And, as his lordship relates, one of the inmates of the cottage, who was in perfect health, at the time of the vision, died suddenly only two days after."