706 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



" Think ye the lasses are a' safe enough an' to be trusted :" said I. 



"For ony thing that I ken, sir." 



" Then where could the bairn come frae ?" 



" The Lord kens, sir. There was a bairn, or the semblance o' ane, naebody 

 can doubt ; but I'm thinking it was a fairy, an' that I'mhauntit" 



" Did you ever murder any bairns, Sandy ?" 



" Oh no ! I wadna murder a bairn for the hale workl." 



" But were ye ever the cause o' any lasses murdering their bairns ?" 



"Not that I keno'." 



" Then where could the bairn come frae ? for you are sensible that there 

 is or was a bairn among your hay. It is rather a bad-looking job, Sandy, 

 and I wish you were quit of it." 



"I wish the same, sir,. But there can be nae doubt that the creature 

 among the hay was either a fairy or the ghaist of a bairn, for the hay was 

 a' forkit off the swathe on the meadow. An' how could ony body fork up a 

 bairn, an' neither him nor me ken ?" 



We got the cart loaded once more, knitted the ropes firmly, and set out ; 

 but we had not proceeded a hundred yards before the child fell a- cry ing 

 again among the hay with more vehemence and with more choaking screams 

 than ever. " Gudeness have a care o'us ! Heard ever ony leevin the like o' 

 that! I declare the creature's there again!" cried Sandy, and, flinging himself 

 from the cart with a summerset, he ran off, and never once looked over his 

 shoulder as long as he was in our sight. We were very sorry to hear after- 

 wards that he had fled all the way to the highlands of Perthshire, where 

 he still lives in a deranged state of muid. 



We dined at "The Hunter's Tryste/' and spent the afternoon in hilarity ; 

 but such a night of fun as Monsieur Alexandre made us I never witnessed 

 and never shall again. On the stage, where I had often seen him, his powers 

 were extraordinary, and altogether unequalled ; that was allowed by every 

 one : but the effect there was not to be compared with that which he pro- 

 duced in a private party. The family at the inn consisted of the landlord, 

 his wife, and her daughter, who was the landlord's step-daughter, a very 

 pretty girl, and dressed like a lady ; but, I am sure that family never spent 

 an afternoon of such astonishment and terror from the day they were united 

 until death parted them though they may be all living yet, for any thing 

 that I know, for I have never been there since. But Alexandre made people 

 of all ages and sexes speak from every part of the house, from under the beds, 

 from the basin-stands, and from the garret, where a dreadful quarrel took 

 place. And then he placed a bottle on the top of the clock, and made a child 

 scream out of it, and declare that the mistress had corked it in there to murder 

 it. The young lady ran, opened the bottle, and looked into it, and then, 

 losing all power with amazement, she let it fall from her hand and smashed 

 it to pieces. He made a bee buz round my head and face until I struck at it 

 several times and had nearly felled myself. Then there was a drunken man 

 came to the door, and insisted in a rough obstreperous manner on being let 

 in to shoot Mr. Hogg ; on which the landlord ran to the door and bolted it, 

 and ordered the man to go about his business, for there was no room in the 

 house, and there he should not enter on any account. We all heard the voice of 

 the man going round and round the house, grumbling, swearing, and threaten- 

 ing andallthe while Alexandre was just standingwith his back to us at the room- 

 door, always holding his hand to his mouth, but nothing else. The people 

 ran to the windows to see the drunken man going by, and Miss Jane even 

 ventured to the corner of the house to look after him ; but neither drunken 

 man nor any other man was to be seen. At length, on calling her in to serve 

 us with some wine and toddy, we heard the drunken man's voice coming in 

 at the top of the chimney. Such a state of amazement as Jane was in I never 



