Will then laid his arm over the boy and the hott o' claes, and fell sound asleep. Our men were a' placed two and three around the hale muir to guard the cattle, and all were resting on their arms, to be ready to rush together on any alarm. I was sitting and keeping a good look out a' round about, and Will he was swuffing and sleeping. Every thing was quiet, except now and then that the hum of an ox was to be heard which missed his neighbour, or the eiry whistle o' the moss-plover. It was a while before the day-sky, and I was just beginning to turn drowsy, when I thought I saw something white on the muir, about two hundred strides from me. "St Mary be my buckler!" said I to mysel: "What can you be? It is surely a flight o' white mist risen out o' the earth, for I see it moving. If it be a mist fawn, as I dare say it can be naething else, it has drawn itself up into a form the likest that of a woman of ought ever I saw." As I was mumbling and speaking this to mysel, I perceived that it still drew nearer, and that it wasna ane o' the fairy fawns o' mist whiles to be seen stealing about i' the night-time, but a lady a' clad in white. It glided athort the moor, and athort the moor, as if it had been looking for something it had lost; and at last I saw it spring away from one point to another at a considerable distance, as swift as a flash o' fire, as if something had startled or offended it. I learned after that the point from which it fled was the very spot where Habby Elliot lay, and who at that time was lying in a sound and troubled sleep. When it again stopped, its motions were very extraordinary,--for though the morning was dark, there was such a pale and a pure whiteness about it, that I saw it the better. It was like a streamer o' light, or the reflection of a starn in the water, that aye in the darkest nights appears brightest. When it paused at the place I mentioned, it bent its body backward, its arms were crossed on its breast, and I saw like its hair streaming in the air behind it. Then it spread both its hands toward heaven, as in the act of making fervent supplication. From that point it came straight toward me, after giving a shiver that made all my een dazzle. "Will Laidlaw!" cried I, but in a violent whisper below my breath; "Will Laidlaw o' Craik! for God's sake waken up, and see what this is."