"Bless you, my Thomas, and all that is yours, my son! with my blessing, and the blessing of God, which is above all riches! But go to your bed, my bairn, and do not let me make dispeace in the family." At this moment his spouse opened the door of the bedroom, and began, in her usual manner, to rate and abuse him for keeping untimeous hours. Still holding his mother's hands in his, he commanded her, in a voice he had never before assumed to her, to be silent. She looked at him in amazement, as if she had doubted the reality of his presence; and was on the point of becoming more violent, when his fierce glance, immediately followed by the sunken, sickly look which one night of suffering had given him, alarmed her for his safety, and she desisted, anxiously assisting his mother to undress and put him to bed. He soon fell into a troubled sleep, from which he awoke in the afternoon, unrefreshed and feverish. His wife was seated by his bed when he awoke. Turning his languid eye towards her, he inquired for his mother. A scene of angry altercation would have ensued; but he was too ill to reply to the irritating language and reproaches of his spouse. The anger increased his fever, and delirium came on towards the evening. A physician was sent for, who at once pronounced his life to be in extreme danger; and, indeed, for many days it was despaired of. The horrors of that night were the theme of his discourse, while the fever raged in his brain. The smallest noise, even the opening of a door, made him shriek and struggle to escape from those who watched him. His efforts were accompanied by cries for mercy from Major Weir; his bed was the coach, and his wife and mother the headless phantoms. Clinkscales had told the manner and where he had found him, on the morning he was taken ill. The sensation this excited through the city became extreme. Deacon Dickson told the hour in which he left his house, and the language of the sufferer filled up the space until he was met by the carrier. The nocturnal apparition of the major's carriage had, for many years, been a nursery tale of Edinburgh. Many firmly believed in its reality. There were not awanting several who affirmed they had seen it; and scarce an inhabitant of the Cowgate or St. Mary's Wynd, but thought they had heard it often before the present occurrence.