by Bill
Martin, a notorious smuggler and poacher. I was very young at the time;
the Squire had been a kind friend to me and my mother; and the horrid
sight made such a powerful impression on my mind, that it almost
deprived me of my senses, and it has haunted me ever since. I see him at
all hours of the day, but most generally the vision comes before me at
night, and produces these terrible fits. The doctors call it disease--I
think it fate."

"How dreadful!" and Sophy recoiled involuntarily a few paces from her
guest.

There was a long silence. Sophy tried to shake off the chill which had
fallen upon her heart by vigorously poking the fire. At length she
ventured a glance at her silent companion. He was looking down intently
at her.

"You seem pretty old," she said, with that bluntness so common to
uneducated people, and from which those above them wince in
disgust--"are you married?"

"No, my dear; a bachelor, at your service."

"If you had a wife and children, they would cure you of these strange
fancies."

"Do you really think so?"

"I am sure of it."

There was another long silence.

Her companion heaved a deep, melancholy sigh, and his thoughts seemed to
break out into words, without any intention on the part of their owner.

"I have plenty to keep both wife and children, and I would gladly marry
to-morrow, if I thought any good woman would have me."

Sophy smiled, and looked down into her lap. She twisted the strings of
her checked apron round her fingers, the apron itself into every
possible shape. At length she started from her seat.

"Where are you going?" cried the stranger, in a tone of alarm.

"To make you up a bed."

"I would rather remain by the fire all night; if you will promise to
stay with me."

"But my mother would wonder what had become of me. I must leave you, and
go to bed."

Noah caught her little hand as she glided past him, and pulled her
violently back--

"I will not part with you--you must stay."

"Bless me, how timid you are! How you shake and tremble! I cannot
understand this fear in a big man like you."

"I should grow courageous if you were always by my side."

"Perhaps you would soon be as much afraid of me as of the ghost," said
Sophy, looking up into his sad eyes with a playful smile.

"The ghost again! But tell me, my pretty maid, have you a sweetheart?"

"What girl of eighteen, who is not positively ugly, has not?" returned
Sophy, evasively.

"But, o