the furies. He passed Halliday in the garden without recognising, or
even being sensible that he had seen him, threw himself on his horse, and, by a
sort of instinct rather than recollection, took the first by-road in preference
to the public route to Hamilton.
    In all probability this prevented Lord Evandale from learning that he was
actually in existence; for the news that the Highlanders had obtained a decisive
victory at Killiecrankie, had occasioned an accurate look-out to be kept, by
order of the Government, on all the passes, for fear of some commotion among the
Lowland Jacobites. They did not omit to post sentinels on Bothwell Bridge, and
as these men had not seen any traveller pass westward in that direction, and as,
besides, their comrades stationed in the village of Bothwell were equally
positive that none had gone eastward, the apparition, in the existence of which
Edith and Halliday were equally positive, became yet more mysterious in the
judgment of Lord Evandale, who was finally inclined to settle in the belief,
that the heated and disturbed imagination of Edith had summoned up the phantom
she stated herself to have seen, and that Halliday had, in some unaccountable
manner, been infected by the same superstition.
    Meanwhile, the by-path which Morton pursued, with all the speed which his
vigorous horse could exert, brought him in a very few seconds to the brink of
the Clyde, at a spot marked with the feet of horses, who were conducted to it as
a watering-place. The steed, urged as he was to the gallop, did not pause a
single instant, but, throwing himself into the river, was soon beyond his depth.
The plunge which the animal made as his feet quitted the ground, with the
feeling that the cold water rose above his sword-belt, were the first incidents
which recalled Morton, whose movements had been hitherto mechanical, to the
necessity of taking measures for preserving himself and the noble animal which
he bestrode. A perfect master of all manly exercises, the management of a horse
in water was as familiar to him as when upon a meadow. He directed the animal's
course somewhat down the stream towards a low plain, or holm, which seemed to
promise an easy egress from the river. In the first and second attempt to get on
shore, the horse was frustrated by the nature of the ground, and nearly fell
backwards on his rider. The instinct of self-preservation seldom fails, even in
the most desperate circumstances, to recall the human mind to some degree of
equipoise, unless when altogether