“Ha!” said he, “the light is come!  I see the sign.  I am directed, and I will follow it.  There is yet ONE hope.  The immolation!  I shall be saved, yet so as by fire.  It is for this my hair has become white;—­the sublime warning for my self-sacrifice!  The colour of ashes!—­white—­white!  It is so!—­I will sacrifice my body in material fire, to save my soul from that which is eternal!  But I had anticipated the SIGN!  The self-sacrifice is accepted!”

We must here draw a veil over that which ensued, as the description of it would be both unnatural and revolting.  Let it be sufficient to say, that the next morning he was found burnt to a cinder, with the exception of his feet and legs, which remained as monuments of, perhaps, the most dreadful suicide that ever was committed by man.  His razor, too, was found bloody, and several clots of gore were discovered about the hearth; from which circumstances it was plain that he had reduced his strength so much by loss of blood, that when he committed himself to the flames, he was unable, even had he been willing, to avoid the fiery and awful sacrifice of which he made himself the victim.  If anything could deepen the impression of fear and awe, already so general among the people, it was the unparalleled nature of his death.  Its circumstances are yet remembered in the parish and county wherein it occurred—­for it is no fiction, gentle reader! and the titular bishop who then presided over the diocese declared, that while he lived no person bearing the unhappy man’s name should ever be admitted to the clerical order.

The shock produced by his death struck the miserable woman into the utter darkness of settled derangement.  She survived him some years, but wandered about through the province, still, according to the superstitious belief of the people, tormented by the terrible enmity of the Lianhan Shee.

XVI

THE HAUNTED COVE

By SIR GEORGE DOUGLAS, Bart.

Commonplace in itself and showing positive vulgarity in the style in which its pleasure-grounds are laid out, Clyffe, near Berwick-on-Tweed, has yet one delightful feature of its own,—­to wit, a private bay to which access is obtained by a tunnel seventy or eighty yards long, cut through the soft formation of the cliff from the sloping gardens above.  The result is that, if you are a visitor at Clyffe, you have your own private bathing ground, your own private beach where the children may play, without fear of being encroached upon, unless, indeed, a boat should be run in among the rocks from seaward.  In the early nineties of the last century, the only daughter of the house of Clyffe was engaged to be married to a young officer quartered at the military depot at Berwick.  They were a blameless but not particularly interesting couple, and one of their hobbies was to meet and promenade on the smooth sands of Clyffe bay in the brilliant autumn moonlight.