Sir Walter Scott edited an account of the murder for the Bannatyne Club, and Mr. Hill Burton has included the story in his narratives of Criminal Trials in Scotland. Sir Walter, relating another trial where a ghost attempted by a second party to affix his murder upon a certain person, gives the following remark of the presiding judge upon the responsibility of the ghost testimony: “Stop!” the Judge interrupted, gravely; “this will not do. The evidence of the ghost is very much to the purpose, no doubt, but we can’t receive it second-hand. None can speak with a clearer knowledge of what befell him during life. But he must of course be sworn in the usual way. Call the ghost in open court, therefore, and, if he appears, the jury and I will give all weight to his evidence; but in case he does not come forward, I cannot allow of his being heard, as now proposed through the medium of a third party.” Up to this date it is not known whether the bailiff has made a return of the summons or not. We presume not. But was it a ghost that confronted me? That question, now that time is progressively dimming the vividness of the impression that I received when first I saw that something on the brow of the hill, rises to the tribunal of my own investigation. I am as anxious to have the mystery solved as my reader possibly could be; indeed I am more anxious than any other person could be. Dim as it sometimes appears to my mind’s eye at times, there are occasions when it assumes all the exactness of an incident that transpired but a second since. I see it cross the wall, advance out of the shadow into the light, stand still, then whirl or wheel, make one human-looking step, and vanish. Will I ever see it again? That is another question that disturbs me some. I cannot do but wait; but with what feelings, wait? You, in your fair room with gas a-lit, or reading in the broad-falling down of sunlight on this page, cannot conceive. Put out your light and let the room grow dark, and pause and think, and then perhaps, despite the adamantive philosophy of your unbelief, you may recognize the sentiments I have; or on some still and luminous night, moonless, drive out to that old wood and by yourself, even now, with such great washings of rains and cleansing of snows and storms of wind, go to the rock where the girl was found and see how your nerves will quiver, or how your heart will throb; or, passing down the road, draw rein at the cottage where I stopped, and, saying naught to any one, place yourself where I stood and wait.