For a person in his station, Noah Cotton was a remarkable man. His features were high and regular, his air and demeanour that of a gentleman; or rather of one who had been more used to mingle with gentlemen, than with the class to which his dress indicated him to belong. His age exceeded forty. His raven hair, that curled in close masses round his high temples, was thickly sprinkled with grey; his sallow brow deeply furrowed, but the lines were not those produced by sorrow, but care. He looked ill and unhappy, and though his dress was of the coarse manufacture generally adopted by the small yeoman or farmer, his linen was fine and scrupulously clean; in short, he was vastly superior to any of the men that frequented the "Brig's Foot." "You are ill," said Sophy, laying her hand upon his shoulder, and speaking in a soft gentle tone. "Let me get you something to eat. I can give you some new bread, and a bowl of fresh milk." "Thank you, my kind girl," he replied, unclosing his large, dark, melancholy eyes, and regarding her neat little figure, and fair, girlish face, with fixed attention,--"I am not hungry." "Oh, do take a little." And Sophy placed the simple contents of the cupboard on the table before him. "It would give me real pleasure to see you eat." "Then I will try to please you." But, after taking a draught of the milk, Noah pushed the bowl from him, and turned gloomily to the fire, which was, now brightening into a ruddy glow, throwing cheerful red gleams to every distant corner of the room. "And did you really see the ghost?" asked Sophy, who was dying with curiosity to hear the tale from his own mouth. And she drew a low bench beside him, and gazed earnestly up into his face. "I thought the stories about it were all humbug,--a trick played off upon the public by that worthless scamp, Bob Mason." The man started from his abstracted fit. "Don't speak of it now, my pretty maid. Let you and I talk of something else." "But I should like so to know all about it. You said, when you were coming to, out of that frightful fit, that it was the ghost of a Mr. Carlos." "Then I was a fool!" muttered Noah; but, recovering himself, he said,--"I was one of the band of men who found the body of Squire Carlos, on the night he was murdered in his own plantation, by Bill Martin, a notorious smuggler and poacher. I was very young at the time; the Squire had been a kind friend to me and my mother; and the horrid sight made such a powerful impression on my mind, that it almost deprived me of my senses, and it has haunted me ever since. I see him at all hours of the day, but most generally the vision comes before me at night, and produces these terrible fits. The doctors call it disease--I think it fate." "How dreadful!" and Sophy recoiled involuntarily a few paces from her guest.