The old nurse, on her return to the cottage, found the green lady sitting beside the fire. “Mammie,” she said, “you have made friends to yourself to-day, who will be kinder to you than your foster-son. I must now leave you: my time is out, and you’ll be all left to yourselves; but I’ll have no rest, mammie, for many a twelvemonth to come. Ten years ago a travelling pedlar broke into our garden in the fruit season, and I sent out our old ploughman, who is now in Ireland, to drive him away. It was on a Sunday, and everybody else was in church. The men struggled and fought, and the pedlar was killed. But though I at first thought of bringing the case before the laird, when I saw the dead man’s pack with its silks and its velvets, and this unhappy piece of green satin (shaking her dress), my foolish heart beguiled me, and I bade the ploughman bury the pedlar’s body under our ash-tree, in the corner of our garden, and we divided his goods and money between us. You must bid the laird raise his bones, and carry them to the churchyard; and the gold, which you will find in the little _bole_ under the tapestry in my room, must be sent to a poor old widow, the pedlar’s mother, who lives on the shore of Leith. I must now away to Ireland to the ploughman; and I’ll be e’en less welcome to him, mammie, than at the laird’s; but the hungry blood cries loud against us both--him and me--and we must suffer together. Take care you look not after me till I have passed the knowe.” She glided away as she spoke in a gleam of light; and when the old woman had withdrawn her hand from her eyes, dazzled by the sudden brightness, she saw only a large black greyhound crossing the moor. And the green lady was never afterwards seen in Scotland. But the little hoard of gold pieces, stored in a concealed recess of her former apartment, and the mouldering remains of the pedlar under the ash-tree, gave evidence to the truth of her narrative. [Sidenote: MUNRO THE POST.]