to by Mary’s finger on the glass, as a token that he would be welcome.  It was sixty years since then.  A small corb would now hold all that remained of both mother and daughter.  He turned away his head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps.  Yet the wish to enter that house rose again like a yearning; and what more in the world than some souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved was there for him to yearn for?  All his hundred thousand pounds were now, dear as money had been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratification of seeing the room where she was born—­yea, where probably she had died.  In as short a time as his trembling limbs would carry him down the stair, which in the ardour of his young blood he had often taken at a bound, he was at the foot of it.  There was there the old familiar dark passage, with doors on either side, but it was the farthest door that was of any interest to him.  Arrived at it, he stood in doubt.  He would knock, and he would not; the mystery of an undefined fear was over him; and yet, what had he to fear?  For half a century the inmates had been changed, no doubt, over and over again, and he would be as unknowing as unknown.  At length the trembling finger achieves the furtive tap, and the door was opened by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by him in coming between him and the obscure light that came in by the half-sunk window in front; nor could she, even if she had had the power of vision, see more of him, for the lobby was still darker.

“Who may live here?” said he, in the expectation of hearing some name unknown to him.

The answer, in a broken, cracked voice, was not slow—­

“Mary Brown; and what may you want of her?”

“Mary Brown!” but not a word more could he say, and he stood as still as a post; not a movement of any kind did he show for so long a time that the woman might have been justified in her fear of a very spirit.

“And can ye say nae mair, sir?” rejoined she.  “Is my name a bogle to terrify human beings?”

But still he was silent, for the reason that he could not think, far less speak, nor even for some minutes could he achieve more than the repetition of the words, “Mary Brown.”

“But hadna ye better come in, good sir?” said she.  “Ye may ken our auld saying, ‘They that speak in the dark may miss their mark;’ for words carry nae light in their een ony mair than me, for, to say the truth, I am old and blind.”

And, moving more as an automaton than as one under a will, Halket was seated on a chair, with this said old and blind woman by his side, who sat silent and with blank eyes waiting for the stranger to explain what he wanted.  Nor was the opportunity lost by Halket, who, unable to understand how she should have called herself Mary Brown, began, in the obscure light of the room, to scrutinize her form and features; and in doing this, he went upon the presumption that this second Mary Brown only carried the name of the