“To your right hand, counter-march and retreat to your former ground,” said Captain Dalgetty; the military phrase having produced the correspondent word of command; and then starting up, professed he had been profoundly atttentive to every word that had been spoken.

“It is the custom in summer,” said Lord Menteith, without attending to his apology, “to send the cows to the upland pastures to have the benefit of the grass; and the maids of the village, and of the family, go there to milk them in the morning and evening.  While thus employed, the females of this family, to their great terror, perceived that their motions were watched at a distance by a pale, thin, meagre figure, bearing a strong resemblance to their deceased mistress, and passing, of course, for her apparition.  When some of the boldest resolved to approach this faded form, it fled from them into the woods with a wild shriek.  The husband, informed of this circumstance, came up to the glen with some attendants, and took his measures so well as to intercept the retreat of the unhappy fugitive, and to secure the person of his unfortunate lady, though her intellect proved to be totally deranged.  How she supported herself during her wandering in the woods could not be known—­some supposed she lived upon roots and wild-berries, with which the woods at that season abounded; but the greater part of the vulgar were satisfied that she must have subsisted upon the milk of the wild does, or been nourished by the fairies, or supported in some manner equally marvellous.  Her re-appearance was more easily accounted for.  She had seen from the thicket the milking of the cows, to superintend which had been her favourite domestic employment, and the habit had prevailed even in her deranged state of mind.

“In due season the unfortunate lady was delivered of a boy, who not only showed no appearance of having suffered from his mother’s calamities, but appeared to be an infant of uncommon health and strength.  The unhappy mother, after her confinement, recovered her reason—­at least in a great measure, but never her health and spirits.  Allan was her only joy.  Her attention to him was unremitting; and unquestionably she must have impressed upon his early mind many of those superstitious ideas to which his moody and enthusiastic temper gave so ready a reception.  She died when he was about ten years old.  Her last words were spoken to him in private; but there is little doubt that they conveyed an injunction of vengeance upon the Children of the Mist, with which he has since amply complied.

“From this moment, the habits of Allan M’Aulay were totally changed.  He had hitherto been his mother’s constant companion, listening to her dreams, and repeating his own, and feeding his imagination, which, probably from the circumstances preceding his birth, was constitutionally deranged, with all the wild and terrible superstitions so common to the mountaineers, to which his unfortunate mother had become much addicted