---,
where a scene not less awful was presented to me. The unhappy man was
lying in the middle of the floor, on his back, with his throat cut,
and James H----, in his bridegroom clothes, was bending over him, with
his hands busily occupied in stanching a wound that would have let out
ten lives, if he had had as many to destroy; the floor was literally
swimming in blood, and on a chair in the corner of the room lay the
fatal instrument, still open. My services were useless: the man was
dead; his attendants were engaged in stopping blood already curdled
with death. I hurried to the patient that was still living. She had
lost almost the whole blood of her body, and it was difficult to
detect in her any symptoms of life. I unloosed the cloths from her
hands; they were cut in a fearful manner--the blade of the razor,
which she had, in her struggles with her parent, endeavoured to wrest
from him, having been _whisked_ through them when hard clenched. No
one had been in the house; her marriage-dress was still
incomplete--her bosom bare, and her head uncovered; a proof that she
had been called from the mirror wherein she saw a half-dressed bride,
to see a father kill himself by his own hand against her efforts to
save him. Her screams were heard by the bridesmaid and bridegroom, as
they approached the house; but, before they entered, the struggle was
nearly over; they found her bending over the body of her father, which
lay on the floor, grasping the open wound with her hands. So spoke the
attendants as I dressed the wounds. I took up several arteries; but
there was one in the left wrist which, for a long period, defied my
efforts, unassisted as I was with professional aid, to stem its
torrent. I succeeded at last--so, at least, I thought--in my
endeavours to stop all the issues. Vain thought! _Death_ had stopped
them!

This was the first time I had seen a _dead bride_.

THE GHOST OF HOWDYCRAIGS.

"_They_ gather round, and wonder at the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly."--BLAIR.

After all that has been written, printed, and circulated, in the way
of "Statistical Accounts," "Topographical Descriptions," "Guides to
Picturesque Scenery," &c., there are still large tracts of country in
Scotland of which comparatively little is known. While certain
districts have risen, all at once, into notoriety, and occupied for a
time the efforts of the press and the attention of the public, there
are others, pe