Her sister’s son was a saddler, a sagacious, well-informed man, truthful and honest, and as little imaginative as may be. He was employed at the time at the _Mains_ of Invergordon--some six or seven miles from Cromarty--and slept in an apartment of the old castle, since burnt down. No one could be less influenced by superstitious beliefs of the period; and yet when, after scaling the steep circular stair that led to his solitary room, he used to shut the ponderous door and pass his eye along the half-lighted walls, here and there perforated by a narrow arched window, there was usually something in the tone of his feelings which served to remind him that there is a dread of the supernatural too deeply implanted in man’s nature to be ever wholly eradicated. On going to bed one evening, and awakening as he supposed after a short slumber, he was much surprised to see the room filled as with a greyish light, in which the walls and the floor could be seen nearly as distinctly as by day. Suddenly the door fell open and there entered a tall young man in black, his hat wrapped up in crape, and with muslin weepers on his sleeves. Another and another entered, attired after the same fashion, until their number might, as he supposed, amount to about fifty. He lay gazing at them in astonishment, conscious of a kind of indistinct wish to ascertain whether he was in reality waking or asleep--a feeling of common enough experience in the dreams of imperfect slumber--when the man who had first come in, gliding up to his bedside, moved his lips as if addressing him, and passing off entered the staircase and disappeared. A second then came up, and heartily shaking him by the hand, also quitted the apartment, followed by all the others in the order in which they had entered, but without shutting the door; and the last recollection of the sleeper was of an emotion of intense terror, which seemed wholly to overpower him when gazing on the dark opening of the stair beyond. It was broad daylight ere he awoke, and his first glance, as the dream of the previous evening flashed on his mind, was at the door, which sure enough lay open. “I must have missed slipping on the latch,” he said, “or some of the servants must have entered during the night;--but how strange a coincidence!” The particulars of his dream--and it cost him no slight effort to deem it such--employed his thoughts until evening; when, setting out for his mother’s, he found his aunt Isabel, in much grief and dejection, seated beside the fire. He had taken his place beside her, and was striving as he best could to lighten the melancholy which he saw preying on her spirits, when a young man, bespattered with travel, and apparently much fatigued, entered the apartment. Isabel started from her seat, and clasping her hands with a fearful presentiment of some overwhelming calamity, inquired of him what had happened at Minitarf? He stood speechless for a few seconds as if