by the situation of this place, which terrors the
gipsies who so long inhabited the vicinity had probably invented, or at
least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the
times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother to
the reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother and
sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and
that, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of
the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to
retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his crime, to this
impregnable tower called the Kaim of Derucleugh, where he defended
himself until nearly reduced by famine, when, setting fire to the place,
he and the small remaining garrison desperately perished by their own
swords, rather than fall into the hands of their exasperated enemies.
This tragedy, which, considering the wild times wherein it was placed,
might have some foundation in truth, was larded with many legends of
superstition and diablerie, so that most of the peasants of the
neighbourhood, if benighted, would rather have chosen to make a
considerable circuit than pass these haunted walls. The lights, often
seen around the tower, when used as the rendezvous of the lawless
characters by whom it was occasionally frequented, were accounted for,
under authority of these tales of witchery, in a manner at once
convenient for the private parties concerned and satisfactory to the
public.

Now it must be confessed that our friend Sampson, although a profound
scholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as to
doubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born, indeed, at a time
when a doubt in the existence of witches was interpreted as equivalent to
a justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such legends had
been impressed upon the Dominie as an article indivisible from his
religious faith, and perhaps it would have been equally difficult to have
induced him to doubt the one as the other. With these feelings, and in a
thick misty day, which was already drawing to its close, Dominie Sampson
did not pass the Kaim of Derncleugh without some feelings of tacit
horror.

What, then, was his astonishment when, on passing the door--that door
which was supposed to have been placed there by one of the latter Lairds
of Ellangowan to prevent presumptuous strangers from incurring the