In the next
room he heard Grizzie moving, as if, like himself, getting up with
all speed. Down to the kitchen he ran, in haste to get out and
reach the great door. But when he opened the kitchen door, a
strange sight met his eyes, and for a moment arrested him.
The night was dark as pitch, for, though the snow had ceased to
fall, great clouds of it yet filled the vault of the sky, and
behind them was no moon from which any smallest glimmer might come
soaking through. But, on the opposite side of the court, the heap
of snow familiar to his eyes was shining with an unknown, a faint,
phosphorescent radiance. The whole heap was illuminated, and was
plainly visible: but the strangest thing was, that the core of the
light had a vague SHADOWY resemblance--if one may use the word of a
shape of LIGHT--to the form of a man. There were the body and
out-stretched limbs of one who had cast himself supine in sorest
weariness, ready for the grave which had found him. The vision
flickered, and faded and revived, and faded again, while, in his
wonder forgetting for one brief moment the cries that had roused
him, the laird stood and gazed. It was the strangest, ghostliest
thing he had ever seen! Surely he was on the point of discovering
some phenomenon hitherto unknown! What Grizzie would have taken it
for, unhappily we do not know, for, just as the laird heard her
footsteps on the stair, and he was himself starting to cross the
frozen space between, the light, which had been gradually paling,
suddenly went out.
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