with purple robes or military uniforms, and their heads attired with cocked hats, or three-tailed periwigs. I have not, in my own mind, the slightest doubt that she told the tale to me in the precise terms in which she received it from the person principally concerned. Whether it was to be believed in its full extent as a supernatural visitation, she did not pretend to determine; but she strongly averred her conviction, that the lady to whom the event happened was a woman not easily to be imposed upon by her own imagination, however excited; and that the whole tone of her character, as well as the course of her life, exempted her from the slightest suspicion of an attempt to impose on others. With out farther preface, and without any effort at orna ment or decoration, I proceed to my narration, only premising, that though I suppress the name of the lady, out of respect to surviving relations, yet it is well known to me.

1

A lady, wife to a gentleman of respectable property on the borders of Argyleshire, was, about the middle of the last century, left a widow, with the management of an embarrassed estate, and the care of an only son. The young gentleman approached that period of life when it was necessary that he should be sent into the world in some active professional line. The natural inclination of the youth, like most others of that age and country, was to enter into the army, a disposition which his mother saw with anxiety, as all the perils of the military

profession were aggravated to her imagination by maternal tenderness, and a sense of her own desolate situation. A circumstance, however, occurred which induced her to grant her consent to her son's embracing this course of life with less reluctance than it would otherwise have been given.

I

A Highland gentleman, named Campbell (we suppress his designation), and nearly related to Mrs. MAMA, was about this time named to the command of one of the independent companies levied for protecting the peace of the Highlands, and preventing the marauding parties in which the youth of the wilder clans were still occasionally exercised. These companies were called Sidier-dhu, i. e. black soldiers, to distinguish them from the Sidier-roy, or red soldiers, of the regular army; and hence, when embodied into a marching regiment (the well known forty-second), the corps long retained, and still retains, the title of the Black Watch. At the period of the story, the independent companies retained their original occupation, and were generally considered as only liable to do duty in their native country. Each of these corps consisted of about three hundred men, using the Highland garb and arms, and commanded by such gentlemen as the Brunswick government imagined they might repose confidence in. They were understood to engage only to serve in the Highlands, and no where else, and were looked upon rather as a kind of volunteers than as regular soldiers.

A service of this limited nature, which seemed to involve but little risk of actual danger, and which

was to be exercised in his native country alone, was calculated to remove many of the objections which a beloved mother might be supposed to have against her only son entering into the army. She had also the highest reliance on the kindness and affection of her kinsman, Captain Campbell, who, while he offered to receive the young gentleman as a cadet into his independent company, gave her his solemn assurance to watch over him in every respect as his own son, and to prevent his being exposed to any unnecessary hazard until he should have attained the age and experience necessary for his own guidance. Mrs.

greatly reconciled to parting with her son, in consequence of these friendly assurances on the part of his future commander, it was arranged that the youth should join the company at a particular time; and in the mean while, Mrs., who was then residing at Edinburgh, made the necessary preparations for his proper equipment.

These had been nearly completed, when Mrs.

received a piece of melancholy intelligence, which again unsettled her resolution; and while it filled her with grief on account of her relation, awakened in the most cruel manner all the doubts and apprehensions which his promises had lulled to sleep. A body of Katerns, or freebooters, belonging, if I mistake not, to the county of Lochiel, had made a descent upon a neighbouring district of

Argyleshire, and driven away a considerable creagh or spoil of cattle. Captain Campbell, with such of his independent company as he could assemble upon a sudden alarm, set off in pursuit of the depredators, and after a fatiguing march came up with them. A slight skirmish took place, in course of which the cattle were recovered, but not before Captain Campbell had received a severe wound. It was not immediately, perhaps not necessarily, mortal, but was rendered so by want of shelter and surgical assist ance; and the same account which brought to Edin burgh an account of the skirmish, communicated to Mrs. the death of her affectionate kinsman. To grief for his loss, she had now to add the painful recollection, that her son, if he pursued the line which had been resolved on, would be deprived of the aid, countenance, and advice, of the person to whose care, as to that of a father, she had resolved to confide him. And the very event, which was otherwise so much attended with grief and per plexity, served to show that the service of the inde pendent companies, however limited in extent, did not exempt those engaged in it from mortal peril. At the same time, there were many arguments against retracting her consent, or altering a plan in which so much progress had been already made; and she felt as if, on the one hand, she sacrificed her son's life if she permitted him to join the corps; on the other, that his honour or spirit might be called in question by her obliging him to renounce

the situation. These contending emotions threw her a widow, with no one to advise her, and the mother of an only son, whose fate depended upon her resolving wisely-into an agony of mind, which many readers may suppose will account satisfactorily for the following extraordinary apparition.

...I need not remind my Edinburgh friends, that in ancient times their forefathers lived, as they do still in Paris, in flats, which have access by a common stair. The apartments occupied by Mrs. parte pequen

were immediately above those of a family with whom she was intimate, and she was in the habit of drinkingutea with them every evening. It was duskish, and she began to think that her agitation of mind had detained her beyond the hour at which she should have joined her friends, when, opening the door of her little parlour to leave her own lodging, she saw standing directly opposite to her in the pas+ sage the exact resemblance of Captain Campbell, in his complete Highland dress, with belted plaid, dirk, pistols, pouch, and broad sword. Appalled at this vision, she started back, closed the door of the room, staggered backwards to a chair, and endeavoured to convince herself that the appari tion she had seen was only the effect of a heated imagination. In this, being a woman of a strong mind, she partly succeeded, yet could not prevail upon herself again to open the door which seemed to divide her from the shade of her deceased relation, until she heard a tap on the floor beneath,