e. A second night, as is not
very surprising, the visitation was again repeated. On the third night
she appeared with a sorrowful and displeased countenance, upbraided him
with want of love and affection, and conjured him, for the last time, to
attend to her instructions, which, if he now neglected, she would never
have power to visit earth or communicate with him again. In order to
convince him there was no delusion, he "saw in his dream" that she took
up the nursling at whose birth she had died, and gave it suck; she
spilled also a drop or two of her milk on the poor man's bed-clothes, as
if to assure him of the reality of the vision.

The next morning the terrified widower carried a statement of his
perplexity to Mr. Matthew Reid, the clergyman. This reverend person,
besides being an excellent divine in other respects, was at the same
time a man of sagacity, who understood the human passions. He did not
attempt to combat the reality of the vision which had thrown his
parishioner into this tribulation, but he contended it could be only an
illusion of the devil. He explained to the widower that no created being
could have the right or power to imprison or detain the soul of a
Christian--conjured him not to believe that his wife was otherwise
disposed of than according to God's pleasure--assured him that
Protestant doctrine utterly denies the existence of any middle state in
the world to come--and explained to him that he, as a clergyman of the
Church of Scotland, neither could nor dared authorize opening graves or
using the intervention of prayer to sanction rites of a suspicious
character. The poor man, confounded and perplexed by various feelings,
asked his pastor what he should do. "I will give you my best advice,"
said the clergyman. "Get your new bride's consent to be married
to-morrow, or to-day, if you can; I will take it on me to dispense with
the rest of the banns, or proclaim them three times in one day. You will
have a new wife, and, if you think of the former, it will be only as of
one from whom death has separated you, and for whom you may have
thoughts of affection and sorrow, but as a saint in Heaven, and not as a
prisoner in Elfland." The advice was taken, and the perplexed widower
had no more visitations from his former spouse.

An instance, perhaps the latest which has been made public, of
communication with the Restless People--(a more proper epithet than that
of _Daoine Shi_, or Men of Peace, as th