to turn toward the houses and the streets. We walked back toward
Edinburgh. She eyed me, as we went on in the moonlight, with
innocent, wondering looks. "What an unaccountable influence you
have over me!" she exclaimed.

"Did you ever see me, did you ever hear my name, before we met
that evening at the river?"

"Never."

"And I never heard _your_ name, and never saw _you_ before.
Strange! very strange! Ah! I remember somebody--only an old
woman, sir--who might once have explained it. Where shall I find
the like of her now?"

She sighed bitterly. The lost friend or relative had evidently
been dear to her. "A relation of yours?" I inquired--more to keep
her talking than because I felt any interest in any member of her
family but herself.

We were again on the brink of discovery. And again it was decreed
that we were to advance no further.

"Don't ask me about my relations!" she broke out. "I daren't
think of the dead and gone, in the trouble that is trying me now.
If I speak of the old times at home, I shall only burst out
crying again, and distress you. Talk of something else, sir--talk
of something else."


The mystery of the apparition in the summer-house was not cleared
up yet. I took my opportunity of approaching the subject.

"You spoke a little while since of dreaming of me," I began.
"Tell me your dream."

"I hardly know whether it was a dream or whether it was something
else," she answered. "I call it a dream for want of a better
word."

"Did it happen at night?"

"No. In the daytime--in the afternoon."

"Late in the afternoon?"

"Yes--close on the evening."

My memory reverted to the doctor's story of the shipwrecked
passenger, whose ghostly "double" had appeared in the vessel that
was to rescue him, and who had himself seen that vessel in a
dream.

"Do you remember the day of the month and the hour?" I asked.

She mentioned the day, and she mentioned the hour. It was the day
when my mother and I had visited the waterfall. It was the hour
when I had seen the apparition in the summer-house writing in my
book!

I stopped in irrepressible astonishment. We had walked by this
time nearly as far on the way back to the city as the old Palace
of Holyrood. My companion, after a glance at me, turned and
looked at the rugged old building, mellowed into quiet beauty by
the lovely moonlight.

"This is my fa vorite walk," she said, simply, "since I have been
in Edinburgh. I don't mind the loneliness. I like the perfect
tranquillity here at night." She glanced at me again. "What is
the matter?" she asked. "You say nothing; you only look at me."

"I want to hear more of your dream," I said. "How did you come to
be sleeping in the daytime?"

"It is not easy to say what I was doing," she replied, as we
walked on again. "I was miserably anxious and ill. I felt my
helpless condition keenly on that day. It was dinner-time, I
remember, and I had no appetite. I went upstairs (at the inn
where I am staying), and lay down, quite worn out, on my bed. I
don't know whether I fainted or whether I slept; I lost all
consciousness of what was going on about me, and I got some other
consciousness in its place. If this was dreaming, I can only say
it was the most vivid dream I ever had in my life."

"Did it begin by your seeing me?" I inquired.

"It began by my seeing your drawing-book--lying open on a table
in a summer-house."

"Can you describe the summer-house as you saw it?"

She described not only the summer-house, but the view of the
waterfall from the door. She knew the size, she knew the binding,
of my sketch-book--locked up in my desk, at that moment, at home
in Perthshire!

"And you wrote in the book," I went on. "Do you remember what you
wrote?"

She looked away from me confusedly, as if she were ashamed to


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