monks of Melrose had rather a suspicious reputation in the matter of worldly conformity. The impudent ballad says,

"O, the monks of Melrose, they made good kail

On Fridays, when they fasted;

They never wanted beef or ale

As long as their neighbors' lasted."

Naughty, roistering fellows! I thought I could perceive how this poor Father Francis had worn his life out exhorting them to repentance, and given up the ghost at last in despair, and so been made at once into a saint and a corbel.

There were fragments of tracery, of mouldings and cornices, and grotesque bits of architecture there, which I would have given a good deal to be the possessor of. Stepping into a little cottage hard by to speak to the guide about unlocking the gates, when we went out on our moonlight excursion at midnight, I caught a glimpse, in an inner apartment, of a splendid, large, black dog. I gave one exclamation and jump, and was into the room after him.

66

"Ah,” said the old man, "that was just like Sir Walter; he always had an eye for a dog.”

It gave me a kind of pain to think of him and his dogs, all lying in the dust together; and yet it was pleasant to hear this little remark of him, as if it were made by those who had often seen, and were fond of thinking of him. The dog's name was Coal, and he was black enough, and remarkable enough, to make a figure in a story a genuine Melrose Abbey dog. I should not wonder if he were a descendant, in a remote degree, of the "mauthe doog," that supernatural beast, which Scott commemorates in his notes. The least touch in the world of such blood in his veins would be, of

course, an appropriate circumstance in a dog belonging to an old ruined abbey.

Well, I got home, and narrated my adventures to my friends, and showed them my reliquary purchases, and declared my strengthening intention to make my ghostly visit by moonlight, if there was any moon to be had that night, which was a doubtful possibility.

In the course of the evening came in Mr. who had volunteered his services as guide and attendant during the interesting operation.

"When does the moon rise?" said one.

"O, a little after eleven o'clock, I believe," said Mr.

Some of the party gaped portentously.

"You know," said I, "Scott says we must see it by moonlight; it is one of the proprieties of the place, as I understand." "How exquisite that description is, of the effect of moonlight!" says another.

"I think it probable," says Mr. never saw it by moonlight himself.

-, dryly, "that Scott He was a man of very

regular habits, and seldom went out evenings."

The blank amazement with which this communication was received set S into an inextinguishable fit of laughter. "But do you really believe he never saw it?" said I, rather crestfallen.

"Well," said the gentleman, "I have heard him charged with never having seen it, and he never denied it."

Knowing that Scott really was as practical a man as Dr. Franklin, and as little disposed to poetic extravagances, and an exceedingly sensible, family kind of person, I thought very probably this might be true, unless he had seen it some time in his early youth. Most likely good Mrs. Scott never would

have let him commit the impropriety that we were about to, and run the risk of catching the rheumatism by going out to see how an old abbey looked at twelve o'clock at night.

We waited for the moon to rise, and of course it did not rise; nothing ever does when it is waited for. We went to one window, and went to another; half past eleven came, and no moon. "Let us give it up," said I, feeling rather foolish. However, we agreed to wait another quarter of an hour, and finally Mr. announced that the moon was risen; the only reason we did not see it was, because it was behind the Eildon Hills. So we voted to consider her risen at any rate, and started out in the dark, threading the narrow streets of the village with the comforting reflection that we were doing what Sir Walter would think rather a silly thing. When we got out before the abbey there was enough light behind the Eildon Hills to throw their three shadowy cones out distinctly to view, and to touch with a gloaming, uncertain ray the ivyclad walls. As we stood before the abbey, the guide fumbling with his keys, and finally heard the old lock clash as the door slowly opened to admit us, I felt a little shiver of the ghostly come over me, just enough to make it agreeable.

In the daytime we had criticized Walter Scott's moonlight description in the lines which say, —

"The distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave."

"We hear nothing of the Tweed, at any rate," said we; "that must be a poetic license." But now at midnight, as we walked silently through the mouldering aisles, the brawl of the Tweed was so distinctly heard that it seemed as if it was close by the old, lonely pile; nor can any term describe the sound more

exactly than the word "rave," which the poet has chosen. It was the precise accuracy of this little item of description which made me feel as if Scott must have been here in the night. I walked up into the old chancel, and sat down where William of Deloraine and the monk sat, on the Scottish monarch's tomb, and thought over the words

"Strange sounds along the chancel passed,

And banners wave without a blast;

Still spake the monk when the bell tolled one."

And while we were there the bell tolled twelve.

And then we went to Michael Scott's grave, and we looked through the east oriel, with its

"Slender shafts of shapely stone,

By foliage tracery combined."

The fanciful outlines showed all the more distinctly for the entire darkness within, and the gloaming moonlight without. The tall arches seemed higher in their dimness, and vaster than they did in the daytime. "Hark!" said I; "what's that?" as we heard a rustling and flutter of wings in the ivy branches over our heads. Only a couple of rooks, whose antiquarian slumbers were disturbed by the unwonted noise there at midnight, and who rose and flew away, rattling down some fragments of the ruin as they went. It was somewhat odd, but 1 could not help fancying, what if these strange, goblin rooks were the spirits of old monks coming back to nestle and brood among their ancient cloisters! Rooks are a ghostly sort of bird. I think they were made on purpose to live in old yew trees and ivy, as much as yew trees and ivy were to grow round old churches and abbeys. If we once could get inside

of a rook's skull, to find out what he is thinking of, I'll warrant that we should know a great deal more about these old buildings than we do now. I should not wonder if there were long traditionary histories handed down from one generation of rooks to another, and that these are what they are talking about when we think they are only chattering. I imagine I see the whole black fraternity the next day, sitting, one on a gargoyle, one on a buttress, another on a shrine, gossiping over the event of our nightly visit.

We walked up and down the long aisles, and groped out into the cloisters; and then I thought, to get the full ghost