I was but a boy when these events took place. All the village remember
the story, and tell of Rosamund Gray, and old blind Margaret.
I parted from Allan Clare on that disastrous night, and set out for
Edinburgh the next morning, before the facts were commonly known--I
heard not of them--and it was four months before I received a letter
from Allan.
"His heart" he told me "was gone from him--for his sister had died of a
phrensy fever!"--not a word of Rosamund in the letter--I was left to
collect her story from sources which may one day be explained.
I soon after quitted Scotland, on the death of my father, and returned
to my native village. Allan had left the place, and I could gain no
information, whether he were dead or living.
I passed the _cottage_. I did not dare to look that way, or to enquire
_who_ lived there.--A little dog, that had been Rosamund's, was yelping
in my path. I laughed aloud like one mad, whose mind had suddenly gone
from him--I stared vacantly around me, like one alienated from common
perceptions.
But I was young at that time, and the impression became gradually
weakened, as I mingled in the business of life. It is now _ten years_
since these events took place, and I sometimes think of them as unreal.
Allan Clare was a dear friend to me--but there are times, when Allan and
his sister, Margaret and her grandaughter, appear like personages of a
dream--an idle dream.