Page:History of Duncan Campbell, and his dog Oscar (3).pdf/10

 words, which I have often heard him repeat without any variation.

I had been driving some young cattle to the heights of Willensfie—it grew late before I got home. I was thinking, and thinking how cruel it was to kill the poor piper! to cut out his tonguotongue, [sic] and stab him in thothe [sic] back. I thought it was no wonder that his ghost took it extremely ill; when, all on a sudden I perceived a light before me:—I thought the wand in my hand was all on fire, and threw it away, but I perceived the light glide slowly by my right foot, and burn behind me; I was nothing afraid, and turned about to look at the light, and there I saw the piper, who was standing hard at my back, and when I turned round, he looked me in the face.’ ‘What was he like, Duncan?’ ‘He was like a dead body! but I got a short view of him; for that moment all around me grew dark as a pit!—I tried to run, but sunk powerless to the earth, and lay in a kind of dream, I do not know how long; when I came to myself, I got up, and endeavoured to run, but fell to the ground every two steps. I was not a hundred yards from the house, and I am sure fell upwards of a hundred times. Next day I was in a very high fever; the servants made me a comfortable bed in the kitchen, to which I was confined by illness many days, during which timotime [sic] I suffered the most dreadful agonies by night, always imagining the piper to be standing over me on the one side or the other. As soon as I was able to walk, I left Dewar, and for a long time durst never sleep alone during the night, nor stay by myself in the day time.’ The superstitious ideas impressed upon Duncan’s mind by this unfortunate encounter with the ghost of the piper, seem never to have been eradicated;