uch for Ericson. He stood still upon the
bridge and leaned over the wall of it. Robert stood beside, almost in
despair about getting him home.

'Have patience with me, Robert,' said Ericson, in his natural voice. 'I
shall be better presently. I don't know what's come to me. If I had been
a Celt now, I should have said I had a touch of the second sight. But I
am, as far as I know, pure Northman.'

'What did you see?' asked Robert, with a strange feeling that miles of
the spirit world, if one may be allowed such a contradiction in words,
lay between him and his friend.

Ericson returned no answer. Robert feared he was going to have a
relapse; but in a moment more he lifted himself up and bent again to the
brae.

They got on pretty well till they were about the middle of the
Gallowgate.

'I can't,' said Ericson feebly, and half leaned, half fell against the
wall of a house.

'Come into this shop,' said Robert. 'I ken the man. He'll lat ye sit
doon.'

He managed to get him in. He was as pale as death. The bookseller got
a chair, and he sank into it. Robert was almost at his wit's end. There
was no such thing as a cab in Aberdeen for years and years after
the date of my story. He was holding a glass of water to Ericson's
lips,--when he heard his name, in a low earnest whisper, from the door.
There, round the door-cheek, peered the white face and red head of
Shargar.

'Robert! Robert!' said Shargar.

'I hear ye,' returned Robert coolly: he was too anxious to be surprised
at anything. 'Haud yer tongue. I'll come to ye in a minute.'

Ericson recovered a little, refused the whisky offered by the
bookseller, rose, and staggered out.

'If I were only home!' he said. 'But where is home?'

'We'll try to mak ane,' returned Robert. 'Tak a haud o' me. Lay yer
weicht upo' me.--Gin it warna for yer len'th, I cud cairry ye weel
eneuch. Whaur's that Shargar?' he muttered to himself, looking up and
down the gloomy street.

But no Shargar was to be seen. Robert peered in vain into every dark
court they crept past, till at length he all but came to the conclusion
that Shargar was only 'fantastical.'

When they had reached the hollow, and were crossing then canal-bridge
by Mount Hooly, Ericson's strength again failed him, and again he leaned
upon the bridge. Nor had he leaned long before Robert found that he had
fainted. In desperation he began to hoist the tall form upon his back,
when he heard the quick step of a runner b