Mrs. Eadie’s malady had, in the meantime, undergone no change. On the contrary, she was become more constantly mystical, and the mournful feelings awakened by the sight of her early home, desolated by time and the ravages of war, rather served to increase her superstitious reveries. Every feature of the landscape recalled some ancient domestic tradition; and as often as she alluded to the ghostly stories that were blended with her ancestral tales, she expatiated in the loftiest and wildest flights of seeming inspiration and prophecy. But still she enjoyed lucid intervals of a serene and tender melancholy. On one occasion, while she was thus walking with the young ladies in the environs of the castle, she stopped abruptly, and, looking suddenly around, burst into tears. ‘It was here,’ said she--‘on this spot, that the blossoms of my early hopes fell, and were scattered for ever.’ At that moment, a gentleman, some ten or twelve years older than Walkinshaw, dressed in the Highland garb, was seen coming towards the castle, and the majestic invalid uttered a terrific shriek, and fainted in the arms of her companions. The stranger, on hearing the scream, and seeing her fall, ran to the assistance of the ladies. When Mrs. Eadie was so far recovered as to be able to look up, the stranger happened to be standing behind Ellen, on whose lap her head was laid, and, not seeing him, she lay, for some time after the entire restoration of her faculties, in a state of profound solemnity and sorrow. ‘O Frazer!’ she exclaimed pathetically. ‘I have seen him,’ she added; ‘and my time cannot now be long.’ At that instant her eye lighted on the stranger as he moved into another position. She looked at him for some time with startled amazement and awe; and, turning round to one of the young ladies, said, with an accent of indescribable grief, ‘I have been mistaken.’ She then rose, and the stranger introduced himself. He was the same person in whom, on his arrival from France, she had fourteen years before discovered the son of her early lover. Seeing him on the spot where she had parted from his father, and dressed in the garb and tartan of the clan which her lover wore on that occasion, she had, in her visionary mood, believed he was an apparition. Saving these occasional hallucinations, her health certainly received new energy from her native air; and, by her presence at the castle, she was of essential service to the recruiting of her young friend.