‘Do you think,’ was her mystical reply, ‘that an animal, which, for good reasons, the wise Egyptians hardly erred in worshipping, made to us but an inarticulate noise? It was to me a prophetic salutation. On the morning before my father left Glengael to join the royal standard, I heard the same sound. An ancient woman, my mother’s nurse, and one of her own blood, told me that it was a fatal enunciation, for then the moon was in the wane; but heard, she said, when the new moon is first seen, it is the hail of a victory or a bridal.’ ‘It is strange,’ replied the minister, unguardedly attempting to reason with her, ‘that the knowledge of these sort of occurrences should be almost exclusively confined to the inhabitants of the Highlands.’ ‘It is strange,’ said she; ‘but no one can expound the cause. The streamers of the northern light shine not in southern skies.’ At that moment she shuddered, and, grasping the minister wildly by the arm, she seemed to follow some object with her eye that was moving past them. ‘What’s the matter--what do you look at?’ he exclaimed with anxiety and alarm. ‘I thought it was Walkinshaw’s uncle,’ said she with a profound and heavy sigh, as if her very spirit was respiring from a trance. ‘It was nobody,’ replied the minister thoughtfully. ‘It was his wraith,’ said Mrs. Eadie. The tone in which this was expressed curdled his very blood, and he was obliged to own to himself, in despite of the convictions of his understanding, that there are more things in the heavens and the earth than philosophy can yet explain; and he repeated the quotation from _Hamlet_, partly to remove the impression which his levity had made. ‘I am glad to hear you allow so much,’ rejoined Mrs. Eadie; ‘and I think you must admit that of late I have given you many proofs in confirmation. Did I not tell you when the cock crowed on the roof of our friend’s cottage, that we should soon hear of some cheerful change in the lot of the inmates? and next day came Walkinshaw from Glasgow with the news of the happy separation from his uncle. On the evening before I received my letter from Glengael, you may well remember the glittering star that announced it in the candle. As sure as the omen in the crowing of the cock, and the shining of that star, were fulfilled, will the auguries which I have noted be found the harbingers of events.’ Distressing as these shadows and gleams of lunacy were to those by whom Mrs. Eadie was justly beloved and venerated, to herself they afforded a high and holy delight. Her mind, during the time the passion lasted, was to others obscure and oracular. It might be compared to the moon in the misty air when she is surrounded with a halo, and her light loses its silveryness, and invests the landscape with a shroudy paleness and solemnity. But Mrs. Eadie felt herself as it were ensphered in the region of spirits, and moving amidst marvels and mysteries sublimer than the faculties of ordinary mortals could explore.