midnight
They call it the Lazy Brig. The old folk say it 's because there 's a fairy sitting by the burn , a gossiping buddy who casts a spell on strangers so that he can have a good look at them and talk about them afterwards to the other fairies . '' But at the second loch , Glencorse Pond , she nearly quarrelled with him , though she was pleased with his evident awe at the place . Here black wild hills ran down to a half-moon of wind-fretted water , near a mile long , and dark trees stood on its banks with such a propriety of desolate beauty that it seemed as if it must be a conscious work of art ; one could believe that the scene had been wrought by some winged artist divine enough to mould mountains yet possessed by an ecstasy of human , grief . There was a little island on the loch , a knoll of sward so thickly set with tall swaying firs that from this distance it looked like a bunch of draggled crow 's feathers set in the water , and from this there ran to the northern shore a broad stone causeway , so useless that it provoked the imagination and made the mind 's eye see a string of hatchet-faced men , wrapped in cloaks and swinging lanthorns , passing that way at midnight . It was , Ellen said , a reservoir ; but it was no ordinary reservoir , for under its waters lay an ancient chapel and its graveyard . `` Mrs. Bonar , the ploughman 's wife who lives in the cottage up yonder on Bell 's Hill -- do you see it ? -- told me she 'd often seen the ghosts rising up through the water at night .