Mary Sargeant Gove Nichols

“ He was a man of few words, and never told aught that he had seen that common eyes could never see, unless it were to do some good, or avert some evil. And he would have been a brave friend or foe who dared ask Angus aught respecting ghostology. What Angus chose to reveal, was told simply, truthfully, and with no seeming sense of the marvellous. I remember a night in Edinburgh when I was young and inexperienced, with hot blood in my heart and my head, that a singular adventure befel me. I had been sent by my father to the Horns public-house to meet a drover, who was to pay him some money. ”

“ But we have been accustomed to consider these “children of the mist,” even when they happen to belong to the stronger sex, to be weak, even as hysterical women. Their bodies we suppose to be emaciated, their nerves without tone, and if they see into the next world, we judge it is because the vail of flesh is fretted so thin by disease, that it becomes as it were transparent. But Angus McLean was no hysterical, nervous, or nerveless being, bearing about the misery of unmanliness and seeing ghosts in every graveyard. ”

“ When I have spoken with him on the subject, he has always said, “It is my gift, Allan. It never comes at call, and I am glad it does not, but it always comes for good. I thank God for it, and I am sure you do, Allan, for had you not cause?” ”