“only too true.”  Her husband also declared that his wife was desirous of sending for a magistrate and of telling him the whole story, but that he advised her against it.  But not appearing to stand her trial in the ensuing February, she was outlawed, and obtained refuge in the mansion house of the Swinton family in the concealed apartment already described.[32] According to Sir Walter Scott, she “returned and lived and died in Edinbugh”; but her life must have been comparatively short, as her husband married again on October 6th, 1719.

Akin to this dramatic episode may be mentioned one concerning Robert Perceval, the second son of the Right Hon. Sir John Perceval, when reading for the law in his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn.  The clock had just struck the hour of midnight, when, on looking up from his book, he was astonished to see a figure standing between himself and the door, completely muffled up in a long cloak so as to defy recognition.

“Who are you?” But the figure made no answer.

“What do you want?” No reply.

The figure stood motionless.  Thinking it made a low hollow laugh, the young student struck at the intruder with his sword, but the weapon met with no resistance, and not a single drop of blood stained it.

This was amazing, and still no answer.  Determined to solve the mystery of this strange being, he cast aside its cloak, when lo! “he saw his own apparition, bloody and ghostly, whereat he was so astonished that he immediately swooned away, but, recovering, he saw the spectre depart.”

At first this occurrence left the most unpleasant impressions on his mind, but as days passed by without anything happening, the warning, or whatever it was, faded gradually from his memory, and he lived as before, drinking and quarrelling, managing to embroil himself at play with the celebrated Beau Fielding.  The day at last came, however, when his equanimity was disturbed, for, as he was walking from his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn to a favourite tavern in the Strand, he imagined that he was followed by an ungainly looking man.  He tried to avoid him, but the man followed on, and after a time, fully convinced that he was dogged by this man, he demanded “Who he was, and why he followed him?”

[Illustration:  THE FIGURE STOOD MOTIONLESS.]

But the man replied, “I am not following you; I’m following my own business.”

By no means satisfied, young Perceval crossed over to the opposite side of the street, but the man followed him step by step, and before many minutes had elapsed he was joined by another man as ungainly-looking as himself.  Perceval, no longer doubting that he was followed, called upon the two men to retire at their peril, and although he succeeded in making them take to their heels after a sharp sword skirmish, he was himself wounded in the leg, and made his way to the nearest tavern.  This unpleasant encounter, reviving the memory of the ghastly figure he had seen in his chambers, made him feel that he was a doomed man, and he was not far wrong, for that night near the so-called May-pole in the Strand he was found dead—­but how he died was a secret never divulged.