“Ye were dreamin’, my bonny lamb,” cried the mother; and the parents, after a time, succeeded in calming the child and in getting him again to fall asleep.  Night after night, however, as long as the boy remained in that room, this scene was re-enacted; the same terror-stricken screams, the same hurried rush of the parents, the same frightened tale from the quivering lips of the child.  Dreams, no doubt, induced by some childish malady; a common enough form of nightmare, suggested by previous knowledge of a story likely to impress children.  But to the day of his death—­and he died an old man, a successful colonist, prosperous and respected, a man in no way prone to superstitious weakness—­the dreamer ever maintained that it was something more than a dream that had come to him those nights in Blenkinsopp Castle.  He could feel yet, he said, and shuddered to feel, the clasp of her arms and the kiss on his cheek from the cold lips of the White Lady; and the dream, if dream it were, was not due to suggestion, for he was conscious of no previous knowledge of the legend.

The White Lady of Blenkinsopp has fled now, scared from her haunt by the black smoke of tall chimneys and the deep—­throated blare of steam hooters; coal dust might well lay a more formidable spectre than that of a Lady in White.  But no man has ever yet discovered the whereabouts of her hidden treasure, though many have sought.

Seventy or eighty years ago, there came to the inn of a neighbouring village a lady, who confided to the hostess of the inn that in a dream she had seen herself find, under a certain stone, deep in the dungeon of a ruined castle, a chest of gold; and Blenkinsopp, she said, answered in every detail to the castle of her dream.  Assuredly, she thought, to her now was to be revealed the long-sought burial-place of the White Lady’s treasure.  But patiently though the dreamer waited on and importuned the castle’s owner, permission to make a systematic search among the ruins was too hard to obtain, and the disheartened seer of visions departed, and returned no more.  And so the hidden treasure to this day remains hidden; no prospector has yet lit on that rich “claim,” no “dowser” has poised his magic hazel twig above its bed, nor has clairvoyant revealed its whereabouts.

But rumour had it once that the long-sought hiding-place was found.  Orders had been given that the vaults of the castle should be cleared of rubbish, and fitted up as winter quarters for cattle, and as the workmen proceeded with their task they came on a low doorway, hitherto unknown, on a level with the bottom of the keep.  This doorway gave on a narrow passage, leading no man knew whither.  The report flew abroad that here at last was the Lady’s vault, and people flocked to see what might be seen.  None dared venture far along this passage, till one, bolder than the rest, taking his courage in both hands, went gingerly down the way so long untrod by human foot.