Sandy Crawford had fallen asleep, little dreaming of either alarm or danger; but, about midnight, he was disturbed by an indistinct and inarticulate sound, which, though it conveyed no meaning to his ear, was loud enough to awake him. Slowly and heavily he opened his eyes; but it was not dark, as he expected it to be. On the contrary, a strange light glimmered around him, and, on turning his head to see whence it proceeded, he saw in the middle of the floor a spectre, which might have well appalled the heart of a hero. The ghost of Howdycraigs, to which his present visiter bore a striking resemblance, rushed back upon his memory, and he would have trembled, but that he did not recollect any bad consequences which followed that memorable event. Thus, in time, even ghosts might fail to terrify, were they to repeat their visits too often. In the present instance, it were difficult to say if Sandy was not strengthened for the sight by some faint hope that this might be a second marriage-making expedition of the same benevolent spirit, and that it might eventually help him to a _wife_, the getting of which thing he had begun to regard as no easy matter. The ghost of Gairyburn, however, at first bade fair for being as famous in its day and generation as the ghost of Howdycraigs had been; and doubtless it had succeeded in a less hazardous enterprise. Like the other, its head was tied up in a white handkerchief, its body was carefully wrapped in the folds of an ample winding-sheet. On its feet it wore white stockings, but no shoes--the absence of which exhibited a finely-turned ankle to such advantage, that any male onlooker might have been excused for wishing it a substantial woman. But then its face and hands were as white as the finest flour or the whitest chalk could have made them--thus setting every earthly feeling, except fear, at defiance. In one hand it carried a candle, which burned as blue as any spiritual light ever burned, while with the other it managed its apparel, which was scrupulously clean--thus making it appear that it had been washed since it left its subterranean abode, from which circumstance it were reasonable to infer that it was either a female ghost, or had got a wife to do these things for it.