Page:Cuthbert Bede - The White Wife.djvu/22

Rh for we had had an unusually mild and green Christmas, and the morning was quite warm for the season, with a light rain and thin mist. I followed my father a short distance in the rear, indulging myself by playing as I went along, throwing stones into the dyke, or at birds, as boys are wont to do. We had passed west of the site upon which Achanleek mill was afterwards erected, and I was looking on the south side of the highway, when I observed the appearance of a woman walking lightly along the margin of the little stream that was about twenty yards from the highway. She was dressed in white clothes, though they were not of a pure white, but were somewhat sullied—a circumstance that raised the idea in my mind that she had been wandering all the night among the marsh and moss. She appeared to be carrying a child at her breast, its little form lapped over and covered with a white robe. The woman was advancing in the same direction with ourselves, and walking parallel with us along the bank of the stream by the highway.

Although her white figure looked somewhat sepulchral, as seen through the thin mist and