It was
all real, infernally, hideously real, even to the most minute details:
the flying up and down of his kilt, sporan, and swordless scabbard;
the bursting of the seam of his coat, near the shoulder; and the
absence of one of his clumsy shoe-buckles. I tried hard to shut my
eyes, but was compelled to keep them open, and follow his every
movement as, darting past me, he left the roadway, and, leaping
several of the smaller obstacles that barred his way, finally
disappeared behind some of the bigger boulders. I then heard the loud
rat-tat of drums, accompanied by the shrill voices of fifes and
flutes, and at the farther end of the Pass, their arms glittering
brightly in the silvery moonbeams, appeared a regiment of scarlet-clad
soldiers. At the head rode a mounted officer, after him came the
band, and then, four abreast, a long line of warriors; in their centre
two ensigns, and on their flanks, officers and non-commissioned
officers with swords and pikes; more mounted men bringing up the rear. On they came, the fifes and flutes ringing out with a weird clearness
in the hushed mountain air. I could hear the ground vibrate, the
gravel crunch and scatter, as they steadily and mechanically
advanced--tall men, enormously tall men, with set, white faces and
livid eyes. Every instant I expected they would see me, and I became
sick with terror at the thought of meeting all those pale, flashing
eyes. But from this I was happily saved; no one appeared to notice me,
and they all passed me by without as much as a twist or turn of the
head, their feet keeping time to one everlasting and monotonous tramp,
tramp, tramp. I got up and watched until the last of them had turned
the bend of the Pass, and the sheen of his weapons and trappings could
no longer be seen; then I remounted my boulder and wondered if
anything further would happen. It was now half-past two, and blended
with the moonbeams was a peculiar whiteness, which rendered the whole
aspect of my surroundings indescribably dreary and ghostly. Feeling
cold and hungry, I set to work on my beef sandwiches, and was
religiously separating the fat from the lean, for I am one of those
foolish people who detest fat, when a loud rustling made me look up. Confronting me, on the opposite side of the road, was a tree, an ash,
and to my surprise, despite the fact that the breeze had fallen and
there was scarcely a breath of wind, the tree swayed violently to and
fro, whilst there proceeded from it the most dreadful moanings and
groanings. I was so terrified that I caught hold of my bicycle and
tried to mount, but I was obliged to desist as I had not a particle of
strength in my limbs. Then to assure myself the moving of the tree was
not an illusion, I rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, called aloud; but
it made no difference--the rustling, bending, and tossing still
continued. Summing up courage, I stepped into the road to get a closer
view, when to my horror my feet kicked against something, and, on
looking down, I perceived the body of an English soldier, with a
ghastly wound in his chest. I gazed around, and there, on all sides of
me, from one end of the valley to the other, lay dozens of
bodies,--bodies of men and horses,--Highlanders and English,
white-cheeked, lurid eyes, and bloody-browed,--a hotch-potch of livid,
gory awfulness. Here was the writhing, wriggling figure of an officer
with half his face shot away; and there, a horse with no head; and
there--but I cannot dwell on such horrors, the very memory of which
makes me feel sick and faint. The air, that beautiful, fresh mountain
air, resounded with their moanings and groanings, and reeked with the
smell of their blood. As I stood rooted to the ground with horror, not
knowing which way to look or turn, I suddenly saw drop from the ash,
the form of a woman, a Highland girl, with bold, handsome features,
raven black hair, and the whitest of arms and feet. In one hand she
carried a wicker basket, in the other a knife, a broad-bladed,
sharp-edged, horn-handled knife. A gleam of avarice and cruelty came
into her large dark eyes, as, wandering around her, they rested on the
rich facings of the English officers' uniforms. I knew what was in
her mind, and--forgetting she was but a ghost--that they were all
ghosts--I moved heaven and earth to stop her. I could not. Making
straight for a wounded officer that lay moaning piteously on the
ground, some ten feet away from me, she spurned with her slender,
graceful feet, the bodies of the dead and dying English that came in
her way. Then, snatching the officer's sword and pistol from him, she
knelt down, and, with a look of devilish glee in her glorious eyes,
calmly plunged her knife into his heart, working the blade backwards
and forwards to assure herself she had made a thorough job of it. Anything more hellish I could not have imagined, and yet it fascinated
me--the girl was so fair, so wickedly fair and shapely. Her act of
cruelty over, she spoiled her victim of his rings, epaulets, buttons
and gold lacing, and, having placed them in her basket, proceeded
elsewhere. In some cases, unable to remove the rings easily, she
chopped off the fingers, and popped them, just as they were, into her
basket. Neither was her mode of dispatch always the same, for while
she put some men out of their misery in the manner I have described,
she cut the throats of others with as great a nonchalance as if she
had been killing fowls, whilst others again she settled with the
butt-ends of their guns or pistols. In all she murdered a full
half-score, and was decamping with her booty when her gloating eyes
suddenly encountered mine, and with a shrill scream of rage she rushed
towards me. I was an easy victim, for strain and pray how I would, I
could not move an inch. Raising her flashing blade high over her head,
an expression of fiendish glee in her staring eyes, she made ready to
strike me. This was the climax, my overstrained nerves could stand no
more, and ere the blow had time to descend, I pitched heavily forward
and fell at her feet. When I recovered, every phantom had vanished,
and the Pass glowed with all the cheerful freshness of the early
morning sun. Not a whit the worse for my venture, I cycled swiftly
home, and ate as only one can eat who has spent the night amid the
banks and braes of bonnie Scotland. CASE VII

    "PEARLIN' JEAN" OF ALLANBANK


Few ghosts have obtained more notoriety than "Pearlin' Jean," the
phantasm which for many years haunted Allanbank, a seat of the
Stuarts. The popular theory as to the identity of the apparition is as
follows:--

Mr. Stuart, afterwards created first baronet of Allanbank, when on a
tour in France, met a young and beautiful French Sister of Charity of
the name of Jean, whom he induced to leave her convent. Tiring of her
at length, Mr. Stuart brutally left her, and, returning abruptly to
Scotland, became engaged to be married to a lady of his own
nationality and position in life.