She made a start forward, and then drew back, withheld by an impulse of terror, and holding up her poor thin hands deprecatingly, faltered out— "Oh! come not nigh me, Willie. I am a wedded wife." "And false to me, Annora. Is it not so?" he asked, with a voice that thrilled through her. She wept, and laid her hands upon her crushed heart, while Willie’s sad eyes, that had a glare in them, caused doubtless by his wound, seemed to pierce her soul; they seemed so bright, so earnest, and beseeching in the autumn twilight. "They told you I was false to you, or slain in France, and you believed them?" "I did, Willie," she sobbed, as she covered her face. "I have lain on many a field, lassie, where the rain of heaven and the wind of night swept over me—fields where the living could scarce be kenned frae the dead, yet I was never slain." "But, oh," she urged, "Willie, never, never will ye ken——" "I ken a’! They told you that I was dead, too, and graved in yonder kirk." "They did, Willie dear—they did." "Yet I am here before you. I came home to wed you, lassie, and to join my Lord Glencairn in the north, and to fight against this accursed Cromwell and his Puritans, but it maunna be," he added, sadly, in a hollow tone. "Oh, leave me, Willie, leave me. If you should be seen wi’ me——" "Seen!" he exclaimed, with a bitter laugh. "Oh, leave me; for what seek ye here?" "But a lock o’ your bonnie hair, lassie—a lock to lay beside my heart." Her scissors were at the chatelaine that dangled from her girdle; she glanced fearfully at the windows of the manse, where lights were beginning to glimmer; but undoing her hair, she cut a long and ripply tress, and handed it to Willie. As she drew near, the expression of his eyes again froze her blood, they seemed so sadly earnest and glazed; and as his fingers closed upon the coveted tress, and touched hers, they felt icy cold and clammy, like those of a corpse. Then a shriek of terror burst from her, and falling on the grass, she became senseless, and oblivious of everything. For days after this she raved of her meeting with Willie Calderwood, and of the lock of hair she had given him. Some thought her mind wandered; but others pointed significantly to the facts that her scissors had been found by her side, and to where a large tress had been certainly cut from her left temple. The young laird of Piteadie was assuredly dead, and buried among his kindred in St. Mary’s Chapel; but the age was one of superstition, of wraiths, and omens; and people whispered, and shook their heads, and knew not what to think, save that she must have seen a spectre. Ere a week elapsed, Annora died quietly in her mother’s arms, forgiving and blessing her; but adhering to the story of the gift to her dead lover. So strong at last grew the excitement in the neighbourhood that some began to aver that he was not dead at all, but was leading a troop of horse, under Glencairn, in the north.