a certain ease, I cannot tell why. I hurried up to her. “Who was that that passed just now?” I asked.{61}
{61}
“That passed just now? There was naebody passed. I thought I heard a voice, and that it was maybe Geordie; but nobody has passed here that I could see.”
“Nonsense! you must have seen her,” I cried hastily; “she cannot be out of sight yet. No doubt you would know who she was—a lady, tall and slight—in a cloak”—
“Eh, sir, ye maun be joking!” cried the woman. “What lady, if it werna Miss Chatty, would be walking here at this time of the night? Lady! it might maybe be the schoolmaster’s daughter. She has one of those ulsters like her betters. But naebody has passed here this hour back, o’ that I’m confident,” she said.
“Why did you come out, then, just at this moment?” I cried. The woman contemplated me in the gleam from the fire from top to toe. “You’re the English gentleman that’s biding up at the house,” she said. “’Deed, I just heard a step, that was nae{62} doubt your step, and I thought it might be my man; but there has naebody, far less a lady, whatever she had on, passed my door coming or going. Is that you, Geordie?” she cried suddenly, as a step became audible approaching the gate from the outer side.
’
{62}
“Ay, it’s just me,” responded her husband out of the gloom.
“Have ye met a leddy as ye came along? The gentleman here will have it that there’s been a leddy passing the gate, and there’s been no leddy. I would have seen her through the window even if I hadna opened the door.”
“I’ve seen no leddy,” said Geordie, letting himself in with considerable noise at the foot entrance, which I now remembered to have closed behind me when I passed through it a few minutes before. “I’ve met no person; it’s no’ an hour for leddies to be about the roads on Sabbath day at e’en.{63}”
{63}
It was at this moment that a wild suggestion darted into my mind. How it came I cannot tell. I was not the sort of man, I said to myself, for any such folly. My imagination had been a little touched, to be sure, by that curious affair of the footsteps; but this, which seemed to make my heart stand
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