"The waning planet seemed to linger on the hill, and shed a long sickly wake on the midnight tarn, that sleeped in the hollow of the mountain, bright and smooth as if the brown moss had been inlaid with polished steel, except where a wild-duck glided over the shining surface, or the wing of the slow-sailing owl flitted winnowingly across, dimming it for a moment, like a mirror breathed upon. I was sitting on the small moss-grown cairn, at the eastern end; the shadow of the black hills was cast so clearly in the water, that you could not trace the shore of the small lake, nor define the water-line beneath the hazel bushes; and the stars were reflected in another heaven scarcely less pure than their own. I heard the rushing of the burn over its rugged channel, as it blended with the loch, and the melancholy bleating of the sheep on the hill-side, and the low bark of the colleys, and the distant shout of the herds watching the circular folds, high up on the moor,--when I felt a touch on my shoulder, and, glancing down, I saw a long, pale female hand resting on it, as of a person, who was standing behind me: it was thin and wasted, and semi-transparent as alabaster, or a white cornelian stone, with the blue veins twining amongst the prominent sinews, and on the marriage-finger there was a broken ring--I saw it as clearly as I see my own hand now, for the ends of the small gold wire of which it was composed stood up and out from the fleshless finger. I kenned weel who was there, but I had no power to speak. The sigh was repeated, and then I heard a low still voice, inarticulate and scarcely audible at first, like a distant echo from the hill-side, although I had a fearful conviction that it was uttered close behind me;--presently it assumed a composed but most melancholy tone--yes, Mr Brail, so sure as there is a God above us, Jessy Miller--yea, the dead spoke in that awful moment to the living." "Oh, nonsense, man!" I said; "really you are getting mad in earnest now, Lennox; this will never do." He paid no attention to me, but went on--