EAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST, 251 



up lightly behind him. She was, however, a personage that 

 could be better seen than felt : she came in contact with the 

 ploughman's back, he said, as if she had been an ill-filled 

 sack of wool ; and when, on reaching the opposite side of the 

 streamlet, she leaped down as lightly as she had mounted, 

 and he turned fearfully round to catch a second glimpse of 

 her, it was in the conviction that she was a creature consi- 

 derably less earthly in her texture than himself She had 

 opened, with two pale, thin arms, the enveloping hood, exhi- 

 biting a face equally pale and thin, which seemed marked, 

 however, by the roguish, half-humorous expression of one who 

 had just succeeded in playing off a good joke. " My dead 

 mistress ! !" exclaimed the ploughman. " Yes, John, your 

 mistress" replied the ghost. " But ride home, my bonny 

 man, for it's growing late : you and I will be better acquaint- 

 ed ere long." John accordingly rode home, and told his story. 

 Next evening, about the same hour, as two of the laird's 

 servant-maids were engaged in washing in an out-house, there 

 came a slight tap to the door. " Come in," said one of 

 the maids ; and the lady entered, dressed, as on the previous 

 night, in green. She swept past them to the inner part of 

 the washing-room ; and, seating herself on a low bench, from 

 which, ere her death, she used occasionally to superintend 

 their employment, she began to question them, as if still in 

 the body, about the progress of their work. The girls, how- 

 ever, were greatly too frightened to make any reply. She then 

 visited an old woman who had nursed the laird, and to whom 

 she used to show, ere her departure, greatly more kindness 

 than her husband. And she now seemed as much interested 

 in her welfare as ever. She inquired whether the laird was 

 kind to her ; and, looking round her little smoky cottage, 

 regretted she should be so indifferently lodged, and that her 

 cupboard, which was rather of the emptiest at the time, should 

 not be more amply furnished. For nearly a twelvemonth after, 



