among his _Tales and Sketches_, tells of a beautiful spirit-lady,
dressed in white and green, who appears three times on St.
Lawrence's Eve to the Laird of Birkendelly. On the morning, after
the night on which she had promised to wed him, he is found, a
blackened corpse, on Birky Brow. _Mary Burnet_ is the story of a
maiden who is drowned when keeping tryst with her lover. She
returns to earth, like Kilmeny, and assures her parents of her
welfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, haunts
her lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to his
legends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the very
stretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seems
ungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's most
memorable achievement, however, is his _Confessions of a Fanatic_
(1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted with
religious mania, who believes himself urged into crime by a
mysterious being. The story abounds in frightful situations and
weird scenes, one of the most striking being the reflection, seen
at daybreak on Arthur's Seat, of a human head and shoulders,
dilated to twenty times its natural size. Professor Saintsbury
has suggested that Lockhart probably had the principal hand in
this story. "Christopher North" was another member of the
_Noctes_ confraternity who came sometimes under the spell of the
unearthly.

The supernatural tales of Mrs. Gaskell, whose gift for
story-telling made Dickens call her his Scheherazade, were, like
those of Cunningham, based directly on tradition. She was always
attracted by the subject of witchcraft; and she had collected a
store of "creepy" legends of the kind which made the nervous
ladies of Cranford bid their sedan-chairmen hasten rapidly down
Darkness Lane at nights. The best of Mrs. Gaskell's short tales
is perhaps _The Nurse's Story_, which appeared in the Christmas
number of _Household Words_ in 1852. Mrs. Gaskell has a happy
gift for preserving the natural aroma of a tale of bygone days.
_The Nurse's Story_ has a hint of the old-world grace of Lamb's
_Dream Children_. The carefully disposed tableau of ghosts--the
unforgiving old man, and the vindictive sister, spurning the lady
and her child from the hall--is too definite and distinct, but
the conception of the wraith of the dead child outside the manor,
pleading piteously to be let in, and luring away the living
child, is delicately wrought. The tale is told i