th a degree of interest and attention which hitherto had
been foreign to her nature, who had never seen anything to love or
admire beyond herself.

For a person in his station, Noah Cotton was a remarkable man. His
features were high and regular, his air and demeanour that of a
gentleman; or rather of one who had been more used to mingle with
gentlemen, than with the class to which his dress indicated him to
belong. His age exceeded forty. His raven hair, that curled in close
masses round his high temples, was thickly sprinkled with grey; his
sallow brow deeply furrowed, but the lines were not those produced by
sorrow, but care. He looked ill and unhappy, and though his dress was of
the coarse manufacture generally adopted by the small yeoman or farmer,
his linen was fine and scrupulously clean; in short, he was vastly
superior to any of the men that frequented the "Brig's Foot."

"You are ill," said Sophy, laying her hand upon his shoulder, and
speaking in a soft gentle tone. "Let me get you something to eat. I can
give you some new bread, and a bowl of fresh milk."

"Thank you, my kind girl," he replied, unclosing his large, dark,
melancholy eyes, and regarding her neat little figure, and fair, girlish
face, with fixed attention,--"I am not hungry."

"Oh, do take a little." And Sophy placed the simple contents of the
cupboard on the table before him. "It would give me real pleasure to see
you eat."

"Then I will try to please you."

But, after taking a draught of the milk, Noah pushed the bowl from him,
and turned gloomily to the fire, which was, now brightening into a
ruddy glow, throwing cheerful red gleams to every distant corner of the
room.

"And did you really see the ghost?" asked Sophy, who was dying with
curiosity to hear the tale from his own mouth. And she drew a low bench
beside him, and gazed earnestly up into his face. "I thought the stories
about it were all humbug,--a trick played off upon the public by that
worthless scamp, Bob Mason."

The man started from his abstracted fit.

"Don't speak of it now, my pretty maid. Let you and I talk of something
else."

"But I should like so to know all about it. You said, when you were
coming to, out of that frightful fit, that it was the ghost of a Mr.
Carlos."

"Then I was a fool!" muttered Noah; but, recovering himself, he
said,--"I was one of the band of men who found the body of Squire
Carlos, on the night he was murdered in his own plantation,