"Will you and Mr De Walden listen to me for five minutes, captain, before we go into court?" "I scarcely am inclined to humour you in your absurdities, Lennox; but come, if you have any thing to say, out with it at once--make haste, my man." Seeing he hesitated, and looked earnestly at the jailer--"Oh, I perceive--will you have the kindness to leave us alone with the prisoner for five minutes?" "Certainly," said the man--"I shall remain outside." The moment he disappeared, Lennox dropped on his knees, and seemed to be engaged in prayer for some moments: he then suddenly rose, and retired a few paces from us. "Gentlemen, what I am going to tell you I have seen, you will very possibly ascribe to the effects of a heated imagination; nevertheless, I will speak the truth. The man who wounded you, Mr Brail, and now lies in the last extremity in the next room"--here he seemed to be suffocating for want of breath--"is no other than Mr Adderfang, the villain who through life has been my evil genius. Ay, you may smile incredulously; I expected nothing else; but it is nevertheless true, and even he shall, if he can speak when you see him, confirm what I have told you. Do you not see the palpable intervention of an overruling Providence in this, gentlemen? _Here_ I encounter, against all human probability, in a strange country, with the very fiend who drove me forth, broken-hearted and deranged in mind, from my own! It is not chance, gentlemen--you will blaspheme," continued he impetuously, "if you call it chance--one from the dead has visited me, and told me it was not chance." His eye flashed fire as he proceeded with great animation and fluency--"Mr Brail, do not smile--do not smile. Believe me that I speak the words of truth and soberness, when I tell you that _she_ was _here_ last night; ay, as certainly as there is a God in heaven to reward the righteous and punish iniquity." I let him go on. "I was sitting, as you saw me, in that chair, sir, looking forth on the setting moon, as it hung above the misty hill-top, and was watching its lower limb as it seemed to flatten and lose its roundness against the outline of the land, and noticing the increasing size of the pale globe as the mist of morning rose up and floated around it,--when I heard a deep sigh close behind me. I listened, and could distinguish low moaning sobs, but I had no power to turn round to look what it was. Suddenly the window before me became gradually obscured, the dark walls thinned and grew transparent, the houses and town disappeared, and I was conscious, ay, as sensible as I am that I speak to you now, Mr Brail, that I saw before me my own mountain lake, on the moonlight bank of which I last parted from Jessy Miller before she fell.