"Bless me, no; wha in our quiet countryside would lift a hand against a man's life? If he hadna done it, he wadna have fled away; and if Kirstin had ony certainty that he hadna done it, do you think she could have bidden still? Na, I ken Kirstin Lillie better. Patrick was aye a weakly lad, ower gentle for the like of that, but Kirstin could never have sitten down in idleset if there had been ony hope. Mony a heart was wae for him at the time, but the story has blawn by now; few folk think of it. I wadna have tell't ye, Miss Ross, if ye hadna noticed Kirstin first yoursel--but ye'll no mention it again." "I certainly will not do anything that could hurt Miss Lillie's feelings," said Anne. "Ye see, she's half housekeeper of Schole the now; she pays nae rent, or if there's ony, it's just for the name, and the house is sae dismal-looking that naebody seeks to see't. You would think they couldna thole a living face dear them; they gang to the Kirk regular, and whiles ye will see them wandering on the sands; but for visiting onybody, or having onybody visiting them, ye might as weel think of the spirits in heaven having commune with us that are on the earth." "And that minds me," said Mrs. Yammer, breaking in with a long loud sigh, which the impatient Miss Crankie knew by dire experience was the prelude to a doleful story, "of the awfu' fright I got after my man John Yammer was laid in his grave, that brought on my palpitation. Ye see, Miss Ross, I was sitting my lane, yae eerie night about Martinmas, in my wee parlor that looks out on the green; and Johann, she was away at Aberford, laying in some saut meat for the winter--wasna it saut meat, Johann?" "Never you mind, Tammie, my woman," said Johann, persuasively. "We're dune wi' saut meat for this year." "Ay, but it was just to let Miss Ross see the danger of ower muckle thought, and how it brought on my palpitation. Eh woman, Johann, if ye only kent how my puir heart beats whiles, louping in my breast like a living creature!" And the whole story was inflicted upon Anne--of how Mrs. Yammer, on the aforesaid dreary Martinmas night, fancied she saw the shadow of the umquhile John, gloomily lowering on her parlor wall; of how her heart "played thud and cracked, like as it wad burst," as the shadowy head nodded solemnly, darkening the whole apartment; of how at last Johann returned, and with profane laughter, discovered the ghost to be the shadow of a branch of the old elm without, some bare twigs upon the extremity of which were fashioned into the likeness of an exceeding retrousee nose, "the very marrow" of that prominent feature in the face of the late lamented John; of which discovery his mournful relic was but half convinced, and her heart had palpitated since, "sometimes less, and sometimes mair, but I've never been quit o't for a week at a time."