Chapter 10

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 frenzy 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 inquire _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 grand-daughter, appear like personages of a dream--an idle dream.

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