CHAPTER VII

_The Visitation Culminates_

The looking-glass was an old-fashioned piece of furniture, and had a

drawer beneath it. My uncle had searched it carefully for the papers

in the daytime; but the silent figure pulled the drawer quite out,

pressed a spring at the side, disclosing a false receptable behind it,

and from this he drew a parcel of papers tied together with pink tape.

All this time my uncle was staring at him in a horrified state,

neither winking nor breathing, and the apparition had not once given

the smallest intimation of consciousness that a living person was in

the same room. But now, for the first time, it turned its livid stare

full upon my uncle with a hateful smile of significance, lifting up

the little parcel of papers between his slender finger and thumb. Then

he made a long, cunning wink at him, and seemed to blow out one of his

cheeks in a burlesque grimace, which, but for the horrific

circumstances, would have been ludicrous. My uncle could not tell

whether this was really an intentional distortion or only one of those

horrid ripples and deflections which were constantly disturbing the

proportions of the figure, as if it were seen through some unequal and

perverting medium.

The figure now approached the bed, seeming to grow exhausted and

malignant as it did so. My uncle's terror nearly culminated at this

point, for he believed it was drawing near him with an evil purpose.

But it was not so; for the soldier, over whom twenty years seemed to

have passed in his brief transit to the dressing-table and back again,

threw himself into a great high-backed arm-chair of stuffed leather at

the far side of the fire, and placed his heels on the fender. His feet

and legs seemed indistinctly to swell, and swathings showed themselves

round them, and they grew into something enormous, and the upper

figure swayed and shaped itself into corresponding proportions, a

great mass of corpulence, with a cadaverous and malignant face, and

the furrows of a great old age, and colourless glassy eyes; and with

these changes, which came indefinitely but rapidly as those of a

sunset cloud, the fine regimentals faded away, and a loose, gray,

woollen drapery, somehow, was there in its stead; and all seemed to be

stained and rotten, for swarms of worms seemed creeping in and out,

while the figure grew paler and paler, till my uncle, who liked his

pipe, and employed the simile naturally, said the whole effigy grew to

the colour of tobacco ashes, and the clusters of worms into little

wriggling knots of sparks such as we see running over the residuum of

a burnt sheet of paper. And so with the strong draught caused by the

fire, and the current of air from the window, which was rattling in

the storm, the feet seemed to be drawn into the fire-place, and the

whole figure, light as ashes, floated away with them, and disappeared

with a whisk up the capacious old chimney.

It seemed to my uncle that the fire suddenly darkened and the air grew

icy cold, and there came an awful roar and riot of tempest, which

shook the old house from top to base, and sounded like the yelling of

a blood-thirsty mob on receiving a new and long-expected victim.

Good Uncle Watson used to say, "I have been in many situations of fear

and danger in the course of my life, but never did I pray with so much

agony before or since; for then, as now, it was clear beyond a cavil

that I had actually beheld the phantom of an evil spirit."

CONCLUSION

Now there are two curious circumstances to be observed in this

relation of my uncle's, who was, as I have said, a perfectly veracious

man.

First--The wax candle which he took from the press in the parlour and

burnt at his bedside on that horrible night was unquestionably,

according to the testimony of the old deaf servant, who had been fifty

years at Wauling, that identical piece of "holy candle" which had

stood in the fingers of the poor lady's corpse, and concerning which

the old Irish crone, long since dead, had delivered the curious curse

I have mentioned against the Captain.

Secondly--Behind the drawer under the looking-glass, he did actually

discover a second but secret drawer, in which were concealed the

identical papers which he had suspected the attorney of having made

away with. There were circumstances, too, afterwards disclosed which

convinced my uncle that the old man had deposited them there

preparatory to burning them, which he had nearly made up his mind to

do.

Now, a very remarkable ingredient in this tale of my Uncle Watson was

this, that so far as my father, who had never seen Captain Walshawe in

the course of his life, could gather, the phantom had exhibited a

horrible and grotesque, but unmistakeable resemblance to that defunct

scamp in the various stages of his long life.

Wauling was sold in the year 1837, and the old house shortly after

pulled down, and a new one built nearer to the river. I often wonder

whether it was rumoured to be haunted, and, if so, what stories were

current about it. It was a commodious and stanch old house, and withal

rather handsome; and its demolition was certainly suspicious.

THE CHILD THAT WENT WITH THE FAIRIES

Eastward of the old city of Limerick, about ten Irish miles under the

range of mountains known as the Slieveelim hills, famous as having

afforded Sarsfield a shelter among their rocks and hollows, when he

crossed them in his gallant descent upon the cannon and ammunition of

King William, on its way to the beleaguering army, there runs a very

old and narrow road. It connects the Limerick road to Tipperary with

the old road from Limerick to Dublin, and runs by bog and pasture,

hill and hollow, straw-thatched village, and roofless castle, not far

from twenty miles.

Skirting the healthy mountains of which I have spoken, at one part it

becomes singularly lonely. For more than three Irish miles it

traverses a deserted country. A wide, black bog, level as a lake,

skirted with copse, spreads at the left, as you journey northward, and

the long and irregular line of mountain rises at the right, clothed in

heath, broken with lines of grey rock that resemble the bold and

irregular outlines of fortifications, and riven with many a gully,

expanding here and there into rocky and wooded glens, which open as

they approach the road.

A scanty pasturage, on which browsed a few scattered sheep or kine,

skirts this solitary road for some miles, and under shelter of a

hillock, and of two or three great ash-trees, stood, not many years

ago, the little thatched cabin of a widow named Mary Ryan.

Poor was this widow in a land of poverty. The thatch had acquired the

grey tint and sunken outlines, that show how the alternations of rain

and sun have told upon that perishable shelter.

But whatever other dangers threatened, there was one well provided

against by the care of other times. Round the cabin stood half a dozen

mountain ashes, as the rowans, inimical to witches, are there called.

On the worn planks of the door were nailed two horse-shoes, and over

the lintel and spreading along the thatch, grew, luxuriant, patches of

that ancient cure for many maladies, and prophylactic against the

machinations of the evil one, the house-leek. Descending into the

doorway, in the _chiaroscuro_ of the interior, when your eye grew

sufficiently accustomed to that dim light, you might discover, hanging

at the head of the widow's wooden-roofed bed, her beads and a phial of

holy water.

Here certainly were defences and bulwarks against the intrusion of

that unearthly and evil power, of whose vicinity this solitary family

were constantly reminded by the outline of Lisnavoura, that lonely

hillhaunt of the "Good people," as the fairies are called

euphemistically, whose strangely dome-like summit rose not half a mile

away, looking like an outwork of the long line of mountain that sweeps

by it.

It was at the fall of the leaf, and an autumnal sunset threw the

lengthening shadow of haunted Lisnavoura, close in front of the

solitary little cabin, over the undulating slopes and sides of

Slieveelim. The birds were singing among the branches in the thinning

leaves of the melancholy ash-trees that grew at the roadside in front

of the door. The widow's three younger children were playing on the

road, and their voices mingled with the evening song of the birds.

Their elder sister, Nell, was "within in the house," as their phrase

is, seeing after the boiling of the potatoes for supper.

Their mother had gone down to the bog, to carry up a hamper of turf on

her back. It is, or was at least, a charitable custom--and if not

disused, long may it continue--for the wealthier people when cutting

their turf and stacking it in the bog, to make a smaller stack for the

behoof of the poor, who were welcome to take from it so long as it

lasted, and thus the potato pot was kept boiling, and hearth warm that

would have been cold enough but for that good-natured bounty, through

wintry months.

Moll Ryan trudged up the steep "bohereen" whose banks were overgrown

with thorn and brambles, and stooping under her burden, re-entered her

door, where her dark-haired daughter Nell met her with a welcome, and

relieved her of her hamper.

Moll Ryan looked round with a sigh of relief, and drying her forehead,

uttered the Munster ejaculation:

"Eiah, wisha! It's tired I am with it, God bless it. And where's the

craythurs, Nell?"

"Playin' out on the road, mother; didn't ye see them and you comin'

up?"

"No; there was no one before me on the road," she said, uneasily; "not

a soul, Nell; and why didn't ye keep an eye on them?"

"Well, they're in the haggard, playin' there, or round by the back o'

the house. Will I call them in?"

"Do so, good girl, in the name o' God. The hens is comin' home, see,

and the sun was just down over Knockdoulah, an' I comin' up."

So out ran tall, dark-haired Nell, and standing on the road, looked up

and down it; but not a sign of her two little brothers, Con and Bill,

or her little sister, Peg, could she see. She called them; but no

answer came from the little haggard, fenced with straggling bushes.

She listened, but the sound of their voices was missing. Over the

stile, and behind the house she ran--but there all was silent and

deserted.

She looked down toward the bog, as far as she could see; but they did

not appear. Again she listened--but in vain. At first she had felt

angry, but now a different feeling overcame her, and she grew pale.

With an undefined boding she looked toward the heathy boss of

Lisnavoura, now darkening into the deepest purple against the flaming

sky of sunset.

Again she listened with a sinking heart, and heard nothing but the

farewell twitter and whistle of the birds in the bushes around. How

many stories had she listened to by the winter hearth, of children

stolen by the fairies, at nightfall, in lonely places! With this fear

she knew her mother was haunted.

No one in the country round gathered her little flock about her so

early as this frightened widow, and no door "in the seven parishes"

was barred so early.

Sufficiently fearful, as all young people in that part of the world

are of such dreaded and subtle agents, Nell was even more than usually

afraid of them, for her terrors were infected and redoubled by her

mother's. She was looking towards Lisnavoura in a trance of fear, and

crossed herself again and again, and whispered prayer after prayer.

She was interrupted by her mother's voice on the road calling her

loudly. She answered, and ran round to the front of the cabin, where

she found her standing.

"And where in the world's the craythurs--did ye see sight o' them

anywhere?" cried Mrs. Ryan, as the girl came over the stile.

"Arrah! mother, 'tis only what they're run down the road a bit. We'll

see them this minute coming back. It's like goats they are, climbin'

here and runnin' there; an' if I had them here, in my hand, maybe I

wouldn't give them a hiding all round."

"May the Lord forgive you, Nell! the childhers gone. They're took, and

not a soul near us, and Father Tom three miles away! And what'll I do,

or who's to help us this night? Oh, wirristhru, wirristhru! The

craythurs is gone!"

"Whisht, mother, be aisy: don't ye see them comin' up?"

And then she shouted in menacing accents, waving her arm, and

beckoning the children, who were seen approaching on the road, which

some little way off made a slight dip, which had concealed them. They

were approaching from the westward, and from the direction of the

dreaded hill of Lisnavoura.

But there were only two of the children, and one of them, the little

girl, was crying. Their mother and sister hurried forward to meet

them, more alarmed than ever.

"Where is Billy--where is he?" cried the mother, nearly breathless, so

soon as she was within hearing.

"He's gone--they took him away; but they said he'll come back again,"

answered little Con, with the dark brown hair.

"He's gone away with the grand ladies," blubbered the little girl.

"What ladies--where? Oh, Leum, asthora! My darlin', are you gone away

at last? Where is he? Who took him? What ladies are you talkin' about?

What way did he go?" she cried in distraction.

"I couldn't see where he went, mother; 'twas like as if he was going

to Lisnavoura."

With a wild exclamation the distracted woman ran on towards the hill

alone, clapping her hands, and crying aloud the name of her lost

child.

Scared and horrified, Nell, not daring to follow, gazed after her, and

burst into tears; and the other children raised high their

lamentations in shrill rivalry.

Twilight was deepening. It was long past the time when they were

usually barred securely within their habitation. Nell led the younger

children into the cabin, and made them sit down by the turf fire,

while she stood in the open door, watching in great fear for the

return of her mother.

After a long while they did see their mother return. She came in and

sat down by the fire, and cried as if her heart would break.

"Will I bar the doore, mother?" asked Nell.

"Ay, do--didn't I lose enough, this night, without lavin' the doore

open, for more o' yez to go; but first take an' sprinkle a dust o' the

holy waters over ye, acuishla, and bring it here till I throw a taste

iv it over myself and the craythurs; an' I wondher, Nell, you'd forget

to do the like yourself, lettin' the craythurs out so near nightfall.

Come here and sit on my knees, asthora, come to me, mavourneen, and

hould me fast, in the name o' God, and I'll hould you fast that none

can take yez from me, and tell me all about it, and what it was--the

Lord between us and harm--an' how it happened, and who was in it."

And the door being barred, the two children, sometimes speaking

together, often interrupting one another, often interrupted by their

mother, managed to tell this strange story, which I had better relate

connectedly and in my own language.

The Widow Ryan's three children were playing, as I have said, upon the

narrow old road in front of her door. Little Bill or Leum, about five

years old, with golden hair and large blue eyes, was a very pretty

boy, with all the clear tints of healthy childhood, and that gaze of

earnest simplicity which belongs not to town children of the same age.

His little sister Peg, about a year older, and his brother Con, a

little more than a year elder than she, made up the little group.

Under the great old ash-trees, whose last leaves were falling at their

feet, in the light of an October sunset, they were playing with the

hilarity and eagerness of rustic children, clamouring together, and

their faces were turned toward the west and storied hill of

Lisnavoura.

Suddenly a startling voice with a screech called to them from behind,

ordering them to get out of the way, and turning, they saw a sight,

such as they never beheld before. It was a carriage drawn by four

horses that were pawing and snorting, in impatience, as it just pulled

up. The children were almost under their feet, and scrambled to the

side of the road next their own door.

This carriage and all its appointments were old-fashioned and

gorgeous, and presented to the children, who had never seen anything

finer than a turf car, and once, an old chaise that passed that way

from Killaloe, a spectacle perfectly dazzling.

Here was antique splendour. The harness and trappings were scarlet,

and blazing with gold. The horses were huge, and snow white, with

great manes, that as they tossed and shook them in the air, seemed to

stream and float sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, like so much

smoke--their tails were long, and tied up in bows of broad scarlet and

gold ribbon. The coach itself was glowing with colours, gilded and

emblazoned. There were footmen in gay liveries, and three-cocked hats,

like the coachman's; but he had a great wig, like a judge's, and their

hair was frizzed out and powdered, and a long thick "pigtail," with a

bow to it, hung down the back of each.

All these servants were diminutive, and ludicrously out of proportion

with the enormous horses of the equipage, and had sharp, sallow

features, and small, restless fiery eyes, and faces of cunning and

malice that chilled the children. The little coachman was scowling and

showing his white fangs under his cocked hat, and his little blazing

beads of eyes were quivering with fury in their sockets as he whirled

his whip round and round over their heads, till the lash of it looked

like a streak of fire in the evening sun, and sounded like the cry of

a legion of "fillapoueeks" in the air.

"Stop the princess on the highway!" cried the coachman, in a piercing

treble.

"Stop the princess on the highway!" piped each footman in turn,

scowling over his shoulder down on the children, and grinding his keen

teeth.

The children were so frightened they could only gape and turn white in

their panic. But a very sweet voice from the open window of the

carriage reassured them, and arrested the attack of the lackeys.

A beautiful and "very grand-looking" lady was smiling from it on them,

and they all felt pleased in the strange light of that smile.

"The boy with the golden hair, I think," said the lady, bending her

large and wonderfully clear eyes on little Leum.

The upper sides of the carriage were chiefly of glass, so that the

children could see another woman inside, whom they did not like so

well.

This was a black woman, with a wonderfully long neck, hung round with

many strings of large variously-coloured beads, and on her head was a

sort of turban of silk striped with all the colours of the rainbow,

and fixed in it was a golden star.

This black woman had a face as thin almost as a death's-head, with

high cheekbones, and great goggle eyes, the whites of which, as well

as her wide range of teeth, showed in brilliant contrast with her

skin, as she looked over the beautiful lady's shoulder, and whispered

something in her ear.

"Yes; the boy with the golden hair, I think," repeated the lady.

And her voice sounded sweet as a silver bell in the children's ears,

and her smile beguiled them like the light of an enchanted lamp, as

she leaned from the window with a look of ineffable fondness on the

golden-haired boy, with the large blue eyes; insomuch that little

Billy, looking up, smiled in return with a wondering fondness, and

when she stooped down, and stretched her jewelled arms towards him, he

stretched his little hands up, and how they touched the other children

did not know; but, saying, "Come and give me a kiss, my darling," she

raised him, and he seemed to ascend in her small fingers as lightly as

a feather, and she held him in her lap and covered him with kisses.

Nothing daunted, the other children would have been only too happy to

change places with their favoured little brother. There was only one

thing that was unpleasant, and a little frightened them, and that was

the black woman, who stood and stretched forward, in the carriage as

before. She gathered a rich silk and gold handkerchief that was in her

fingers up to her lips, and seemed to thrust ever so much of it, fold

after fold, into her capacious mouth, as they thought to smother her

laughter, with which she seemed convulsed, for she was shaking and

quivering, as it seemed, with suppressed merriment; but her eyes,

which remained uncovered, looked angrier than they had ever seen eyes

look before.

But the lady was so beautiful they looked on her instead, and she

continued to caress and kiss the little boy on her knee; and smiling

at the other children she held up a large russet apple in her fingers,

and the carriage began to move slowly on, and with a nod inviting them

to take the fruit, she dropped it on the road from the window; it

rolled some way beside the wheels, they following, and then she

dropped another, and then another, and so on. And the same thing

happened to all; for just as either of the children who ran beside had

caught the rolling apple, somehow it slipt into a hole or ran into a

ditch, and looking up they saw the lady drop another from the window,

and so the chase was taken up and continued till they got, hardly

knowing how far they had gone, to the old cross-road that leads to

Owney. It seemed that there the horses' hoofs and carriage wheels

rolled up a wonderful dust, which being caught in one of those eddies

that whirl the dust up into a column, on the calmest day, enveloped

the children for a moment, and passed whirling on towards Lisnavoura,

the carriage, as they fancied, driving in the centre of it; but

suddenly it subsided, the straws and leaves floated to the ground, the

dust dissipated itself, but the white horses and the lackeys, the

gilded carriage, the lady and their little golden-haired brother were

gone.

At the same moment suddenly the upper rim of the clear setting sun

disappeared behind the hill of Knockdoula, and it was twilight. Each

child felt the transition like a shock--and the sight of the rounded

summit of Lisnavoura, now closely overhanging them, struck them with a

new fear.

They screamed their brother's name after him, but their cries were

lost in the vacant air. At the same time they thought they heard a

hollow voice say, close to them, "Go home."

Looking round and seeing no one, they were scared, and hand in

hand--the little girl crying wildly, and the boy white as ashes, from

fear, they trotted homeward, at their best speed, to tell, as we have

seen, their strange story.

Molly Ryan never more saw her darling. But something of the lost

little boy was seen by his former playmates.

Sometimes when their mother was away earning a trifle at haymaking,

and Nelly washing the potatoes for their dinner, or "beatling" clothes

in the little stream that flows in the hollow close by, they saw the

pretty face of little Billy peeping in archly at the door, and smiling

silently at them, and as they ran to embrace him, with cries of

delight, he drew back, still smiling archly, and when they got out

into the open day, he was gone, and they could see no trace of him

anywhere.

This happened often, with slight variations in the circumstances of

the visit. Sometimes he would peep for a longer time, sometimes for a

shorter time, sometimes his little hand would come in, and, with

bended finger, beckon them to follow; but always he was smiling with

the same arch look and wary silence--and always he was gone when they

reached the door. Gradually these visits grew less and less frequent,

and in about eight months they ceased altogether, and little Billy,

irretrievably lost, took rank in their memories with the dead.

One wintry morning, nearly a year and a half after his disappearance,

their mother having set out for Limerick soon after cockcrow, to sell

some fowls at the market, the little girl, lying by the side of her

elder sister, who was fast asleep, just at the grey of the morning

heard the latch lifted softly, and saw little Billy enter and close

the door gently after him. There was light enough to see that he was

barefoot and ragged, and looked pale and famished. He went straight to

the fire, and cowered over the turf embers, and rubbed his hands

slowly, and seemed to shiver as he gathered the smouldering turf

together.

The little girl clutched her sister in terror and whispered, "Waken,

Nelly, waken; here's Billy come back!"

Nelly slept soundly on, but the little boy, whose hands were extended

close over the coals, turned and looked toward the bed, it seemed to

her, in fear, and she saw the glare of the embers reflected on his

thin cheek as he turned toward her. He rose and went, on tiptoe,

quickly to the door, in silence, and let himself out as softly as he

had come in.

After that, the little boy was never seen any more by any one of his

kindred.

"Fairy doctors," as the dealers in the preternatural, who in such

cases were called in, are termed, did all that in them lay--but in

vain. Father Tom came down, and tried what holier rites could do, but

equally without result. So little Billy was dead to mother, brother,

and sisters; but no grave received him. Others whom affection

cherished, lay in holy ground, in the old churchyard of Abington, with

headstone to mark the spot over which the survivor might kneel and say

a kind prayer for the peace of the departed soul. But there was no

landmark to show where little Billy was hidden from their loving eyes,

unless it was in the old hill of Lisnavoura, that cast its long shadow

at sunset before the cabin-door; or that, white and filmy in the

moonlight, in later years, would occupy his brother's gaze as he

returned from fair or market, and draw from him a sigh and a prayer

for the little brother he had lost so long ago, and was never to see

again.

STORIES OF LOUGH GUIR

When the present writer was a boy of twelve or thirteen, he first made

the acquaintance of Miss Anne Baily, of Lough Guir, in the county of

Limerick. She and her sister were the last representatives at that

place, of an extremely good old name in the county. They were both

what is termed "old maids," and at that time past sixty. But never

were old ladies more hospitable, lively, and kind, especially to young

people. They were both remarkably agreeable and clever. Like all old

county ladies of their time, they were great genealogists, and could

recount the origin, generations, and intermarriages, of every county

family of note.

These ladies were visited at their house at Lough Guir by Mr. Crofton

Croker; and are, I think, mentioned, by name, in the second series of

his fairy legends; the series in which (probably communicated by Miss

Anne Baily), he recounts some of the picturesque traditions of those

beautiful lakes--lakes, I should no longer say, for the smaller and

prettier has since been drained, and gave up from its depths some long

lost and very interesting relics.

In their drawing-room stood a curious relic of another sort: old

enough, too, though belonging to a much more modern period. It was the

ancient stirrup cup of the hospitable house of Lough Guir. Crofton

Croker has preserved a sketch of this curious glass. I have often had

it in my hand. It had a short stem; and the cup part, having the

bottom rounded, rose cylindrically, and, being of a capacity to

contain a whole bottle of claret, and almost as narrow as an

old-fashioned ale glass, was tall to a degree that filled me with

wonder. As it obliged the rider to extend his arm as he raised the

glass, it must have tried a tipsy man, sitting in the saddle, pretty

severely. The wonder was that the marvellous tall glass had come down

to our times without a crack.

There was another glass worthy of remark in the same drawing-room. It

was gigantic, and shaped conically, like one of those old-fashioned

jelly glasses which used to be seen upon the shelves of confectioners.

It was engraved round the rim with the words, "The glorious, pious,

and immortal memory"; and on grand occasions, was filled to the brim,

and after the manner of a loving cup, made the circuit of the Whig

guests, who owed all to the hero whose memory its legend invoked.

It was now but the transparent phantom of those solemn convivialities

of a generation, who lived, as it were, within hearing of the cannon

and shoutings of those stirring times. When I saw it, this glass had

long retired from politics and carousals, and stood peacefully on a

little table in the drawing-room, where ladies' hands replenished it

with fair water, and crowned it daily with flowers from the garden.

Miss Anne Baily's conversation ran oftener than her sister's upon the

legendary and supernatural; she told her stories with the sympathy,

the colour, and the mysterious air which contribute so powerfully to

effect, and never wearied of answering questions about the old castle,

and amusing her young audience with fascinating little glimpses of old

adventure and bygone days. My memory retains the picture of my early

friend very distinctly. A slim straight figure, above the middle

height; a general likeness to the full-length portrait of that

delightful Countess d'Aulnois, to whom we all owe our earliest and

most brilliant glimpses of fairy-land; something of her

gravely-pleasant countenance, plain, but refined and ladylike, with

that kindly mystery in her side-long glance and uplifted finger, which

indicated the approaching climax of a tale of wonder.

Lough Guir is a kind of centre of the operations of the Munster

fairies. When a child is stolen by the "good people," Lough Guir is

conjectured to be the place of its unearthly transmutation from the

human to the fairy state. And beneath its waters lie enchanted, the

grand old castle of the Desmonds, the great earl himself, his

beautiful young countess, and all the retinue that surrounded him in

the years of his splendour, and at the moment of his catastrophe.

Here, too, are historic associations. The huge square tower that rises

at one side of the stable-yard close to the old house, to a height

that amazed my young eyes, though robbed of its battlements and one

story, was a stronghold of the last rebellious Earl of Desmond, and is

specially mentioned in that delightful old folio, the _Hibernia

Pacata_, as having, with its Irish garrison on the battlements, defied

the army of the lord deputy, then marching by upon the summits of the

overhanging hills. The house, built under shelter of this stronghold

of the once proud and turbulent Desmonds, is old, but snug, with a

multitude of small low rooms, such as I have seen in houses of the

same age in Shropshire and the neighbouring English counties.

The hills that overhang the lakes appeared to me, in my young days

(and I have not seen them since), to be clothed with a short soft

verdure, of a hue so dark and vivid as I had never seen before.

In one of the lakes is a small island, rocky and wooded, which is

believed by the peasantry to represent the top of the highest tower of

the castle which sank, under a spell, to the bottom. In certain states

of the atmosphere, I have heard educated people say, when in a boat

you have reached a certain distance, the island appears to rise some

feet from the water, its rocks assume the appearance of masonry, and

the whole circuit presents very much the effect of the battlements of

a castle rising above the surface of the lake.

This was Miss Anne Baily's story of the submersion of this lost

castle:

_The Magician Earl_

It is well known that the great Earl of Desmond, though history

pretends to dispose of him differently, lives to this hour enchanted

in his castle, with all his household, at the bottom of the lake.

There was not, in his day, in all the world, so accomplished a

magician as he. His fairest castle stood upon an island in the lake,

and to this he brought his young and beautiful bride, whom he loved

but too well; for she prevailed upon his folly to risk all to gratify

her imperious caprice.

They had not been long in this beautiful castle, when she one day

presented herself in the chamber in which her husband studied his

forbidden art, and there implored him to exhibit before her some of

the wonders of his evil science. He resisted long; but her entreaties,

tears, and wheedlings were at length too much for him and he

consented.

But before beginning those astonishing transformations with which he

was about to amaze her, he explained to her the awful conditions and

dangers of the experiment.

Alone in this vast apartment, the walls of which were lapped, far

below, by the lake whose dark waters lay waiting to swallow them, she

must witness a certain series of frightful phenomena, which once

commenced, he could neither abridge nor mitigate; and if throughout

their ghastly succession she spoke one word, or uttered one

exclamation, the castle and all that it contained would in one instant

subside to the bottom of the lake, there to remain, under the

servitude of a strong spell, for ages.

The dauntless curiosity of the lady having prevailed, and the oaken

door of the study being locked and barred, the fatal experiments

commenced.

Muttering a spell, as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly

over him, his face became contracted and hooked, a cadaverous smell

filled the air, and, with heavy winnowing wings, a gigantic vulture

rose in his stead, and swept round and round the room, as if on the

point of pouncing upon her.

The lady commanded herself through this trial, and instantly another

began.

The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed,

she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hag: who, with

yellow skin hanging about her face and enormous eyes, swung herself on

crutches toward the lady, her mouth foaming with fury, and her

grimaces and contortions becoming more and more hideous every moment,

till she rolled with a yell on the floor, in a horrible convulsion, at

the lady's feet, and then changed into a huge serpent, with crest

erect, and quivering tongue. Suddenly, as it seemed on the point of

darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before

her, and, with his finger on his lip, enforcing the continued

necessity of silence. He then placed himself at his length on the

floor, and began to stretch himself out and out, longer and longer,

until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room, and his

feet to the other.

This horror overcame her. The ill-starred lady uttered a wild scream,

whereupon the castle and all that was within it, sank in a moment to

the bottom of the lake.

But, once in every seven years, by night, the Earl of Desmond and his

retinue emerge, and cross the lake, in shadowy cavalcade. His white

horse is shod with silver. On that one night, the earl may ride till

daybreak, and it behoves him to make good use of his time; for, until

the silver shoes of his steed be worn through, the spell that holds

him and his beneath the lake, will retain its power.

When I (Miss Anne Baily) was a child, there was still living a man

named Teigue O'Neill, who had a strange story to tell.

He was a smith, and his forge stood on the brow of the hill,

overlooking the lake, on a lonely part of the road to Cahir Conlish.

One bright moonlight night, he was working very late, and quite alone.

The clink of his hammer, and the wavering glow reflected through the

open door on the bushes at the other side of the narrow road, were the

only tokens that told of life and vigil for miles around.

In one of the pauses of his work, he heard the ring of many hoofs

ascending the steep road that passed his forge, and, standing in this

doorway, he was just in time to see a gentleman, on a white horse, who

was dressed in a fashion the like of which the smith had never seen

before. This man was accompanied and followed by a mounted retinue, as

strangely dressed as he.

They seemed, by the clang and clatter that announced their approach,

to be riding up the hill at a hard hurry-scurry gallop; but the pace

abated as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse who, from

his grave and lordly air, he assumed to be a man of rank, and

accustomed to command, drew bridle and came to a halt before the

smith's door.

He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to

the smith, and pointed down to one of his horse's hoofs.

Teigue stooped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that

it was shod with a silver shoe; which, in one place, he said, was worn

as thin as a shilling. Instantaneously, his situation was made

apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer.

The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck at him

suddenly, with something that whistled in the air like a whip; and an

icy streak seemed to traverse his body as if he had been cut through

with a leaf of steel. But he was without scathe or scar, as he

afterwards found. At the same moment he saw the whole cavalcade break

into a gallop and disappear down the hill, with a momentary hurtling

in the air, like the flight of a volley of cannon shot.

Here had been the earl himself. He had tried one of his accustomed

stratagems to lead the smith to speak to him. For it is well known

that either for the purpose of abridging or of mitigating his period

of enchantment, he seeks to lead people to accost him. But what, in

the event of his succeeding, would befall the person whom he had thus

ensnared, no one knows.

_Moll Rial's Adventure_

When Miss Anne Baily was a child, Moll Rial was an old woman. She had

lived all her days with the Bailys of Lough Guir; in and about whose

house, as was the Irish custom of those days, were a troop of

bare-footed country girls, scullery maids, or laundresses, or employed

about the poultry yard, or running of errands.

Among these was Moll Rial, then a stout good-humoured lass, with

little to think of, and nothing to fret about. She was once washing

clothes by the process known universally in Munster as beetling. The

washer stands up to her ankles in water, in which she has immersed the

clothes, which she lays in that state on a great flat stone, and

smacks with lusty strokes of an instrument which bears a rude

resemblance to a cricket bat, only shorter, broader, and light enough

to be wielded freely with one hand. Thus, they smack the dripping

clothes, turning them over and over, sousing them in the water, and

replacing them on the same stone, to undergo a repetition of the

process, until they are thoroughly washed.

Moll Rial was plying her "beetle" at the margin of the lake, close

under the old house and castle. It was between eight and nine o'clock

on a fine summer morning, everything looked bright and beautiful.

Though quite alone, and though she could not see even the windows of

the house (hidden from her view by the irregular ascent and some

interposing bushes), her loneliness was not depressing.

Standing up from her work, she saw a gentleman walking slowly down the

slope toward her. He was a "grand-looking" gentleman, arrayed in a

flowered silk dressing-gown, with a cap of velvet on his head; and as

he stepped toward her, in his slippered feet, he showed a very

handsome leg. He was smiling graciously as he approached, and drawing

a ring from his finger with an air of gracious meaning, which seemed

to imply that he wished to make her a present, he raised it in his

fingers with a pleased look, and placed it on the flat stones beside

the clothes she had been beetling so industriously.

He drew back a little, and continued to look at her with an

encouraging smile, which seemed to say: "You have earned your reward;

you must not be afraid to take it."

The girl fancied that this was some gentleman who had arrived, as

often happened in those hospitable and haphazard times, late and

unexpectedly the night before, and who was now taking a little

indolent ramble before breakfast.

Moll Rial was a little shy, and more so at having been discovered by

so grand a gentleman with her petticoats gathered a little high about

her bare shins. She looked down, therefore, upon the water at her

feet, and then she saw a ripple of blood, and then another, ring after

ring, coming and going to and from her feet. She cried out the sacred

name in horror, and, lifting her eyes, the courtly gentleman was gone,

but the blood-rings about her feet spread with the speed of light over

the surface of the lake, which for a moment glowed like one vast

estuary of blood.

Here was the earl once again, and Moll Rial declared that if it had

not been for that frightful transformation of the water she would have

spoken to him next minute, and would thus have passed under a spell,

perhaps as direful as his own.

_The Banshee_

So old a Munster family as the Bailys, of Lough Guir, could not fail

to have their attendant banshee. Everyone attached to the family knew

this well, and could cite evidences of that unearthly distinction. I

heard Miss Baily relate the only experience she had personally had of

that wild spiritual sympathy.

She said that, being then young, she and Miss Susan undertook a long

attendance upon the sick bed of their sister, Miss Kitty, whom I have

heard remembered among her contemporaries as the merriest and most

entertaining of human beings. This light-hearted young lady was dying

of consumption. The sad duties of such attendance being divided among

many sisters, as there then were, the night watches devolved upon the

two ladies I have named: I think, as being the eldest.

It is not improbable that these long and melancholy vigils, lowering

the spirits and exciting the nervous system, prepared them for

illusions. At all events, one night at dead of night, Miss Baily and

her sister, sitting in the dying lady's room, heard such sweet and

melancholy music as they had never heard before. It seemed to them

like distant cathedral music. The room of the dying girl had its

windows toward the yard, and the old castle stood near, and full in

sight. The music was not in the house, but seemed to come from the

yard, or beyond it. Miss Anne Baily took a candle, and went down the

back stairs. She opened the back door, and, standing there, heard the

same faint but solemn harmony, and could not tell whether it most

resembled the distant music of instruments, or a choir of voices. It

seemed to come through the windows of the old castle, high in the

air. But when she approached the tower, the music, she thought, came

from above the house, at the other side of the yard; and thus

perplexed, and at last frightened, she returned.

This aerial music both she and her sister, Miss Susan Baily, avowed

that they distinctly heard, and for a long time. Of the fact she was

clear, and she spoke of it with great awe.

_The Governess's Dream_

This lady, one morning, with a grave countenance that indicated

something weighty upon her mind, told her pupils that she had, on the

night before, had a very remarkable dream.

The first room you enter in the old castle, having reached the foot of

the spiral stone stair, is a large hall, dim and lofty, having only a

small window or two, set high in deep recesses in the wall. When I saw

the castle many years ago, a portion of this capacious chamber was

used as a store for the turf laid in to last the year.

Her dream placed her, alone, in this room, and there entered a

grave-looking man, having something very remarkable in his

countenance: which impressed her, as a fine portrait sometimes will,

with a haunting sense of character and individuality.

In his hand this man carried a wand, about the length of an ordinary

walking cane. He told her to observe and remember its length, and to

mark well the measurements he was about to make, the result of which

she was to communicate to Mr. Baily of Lough Guir.

From a certain point in the wall, with this wand, he measured along

the floor, at right angles with the wall, a certain number of its

lengths, which he counted aloud; and then, in the same way, from the

adjoining wall he measured a certain number of its lengths, which he

also counted distinctly. He then told her that at the point where

these two lines met, at a depth of a certain number of feet which he

also told her, treasure lay buried. And so the dream broke up, and her

remarkable visitant vanished.

She took the girls with her to the old castle, where, having cut a

switch to the length represented to her in her dream, she measured the

distances, and ascertained, as she supposed, the point on the floor

beneath which the treasure lay. The same day she related her dream to

Mr. Baily. But he treated it laughingly, and took no step in

consequence.

Some time after this, she again saw, in a dream, the same

remarkable-looking man, who repeated his message, and appeared

displeased. But the dream was treated by Mr. Baily as before.

The same dream occurred again, and the children became so clamorous to

have the castle floor explored, with pick and shovel, at the point

indicated by the thrice-seen messenger, that at length Mr. Baily

consented, and the floor was opened, and a trench was sunk at the spot

which the governess had pointed out.

Miss Anne Baily, and nearly all the members of the family, her father

included, were present at this operation. As the workmen approached

the depth described in the vision, the interest and suspense of all

increased; and when the iron implements met the solid resistance of a

broad flagstone, which returned a cavernous sound to the stroke, the

excitement of all present rose to its acme.

With some difficulty the flag was raised, and a chamber of stone work,

large enough to receive a moderately-sized crock or pit, was

disclosed. Alas! it was empty. But in the earth at the bottom of it,

Miss Baily said, she herself saw, as every other bystander plainly

did, the circular impression of a vessel: which had stood there, as

the mark seemed to indicate, for a very long time.

Both the Miss Bailys were strong in their belief hereafterwards, that

the treasure which they were convinced had actually been deposited

there, had been removed by some more trusting and active listener than

their father had proved.

This same governess remained with them to the time of her death, which

occurred some years later, under the following circumstances as

extraordinary as her dream.

_The Earl's Hall_

The good governess had a particular liking for the old castle, and

when lessons were over, would take her book or her work into a large

room in the ancient building, called the Earl's Hall. Here she caused

a table and chair to be placed for her use, and in the chiaroscuro

would so sit at her favourite occupations, with just a little ray of

subdued light, admitted through one of the glassless windows above

her, and falling upon her table.

The Earl's Hall is entered by a narrow-arched door, opening close to

the winding stair. It is a very large and gloomy room, pretty nearly

square, with a lofty vaulted ceiling, and a stone floor. Being

situated high in the castle, the walls of which are immensely thick,

and the windows very small and few, the silence that reigns here is

like that of a subterranean cavern. You hear nothing in this solitude,

except perhaps twice in a day, the twitter of a swallow in one of the

small windows high in the wall.

This good lady having one day retired to her accustomed solitude, was

missed from the house at her wonted hour of return. This in a country

house, such as Irish houses were in those days, excited little

surprise, and no harm. But when the dinner hour came, which was then,

in country houses, five o'clock, and the governess had not appeared,

some of her young friends, it being not yet winter, and sufficient

light remaining to guide them through the gloom of the dim ascent and

passages, mounted the old stone stair to the level of the Earl's Hall,

gaily calling to her as they approached.

There was no answer. On the stone floor, outside the door of the

Earl's Hall, to their horror, they found her lying insensible. By the

usual means she was restored to consciousness; but she continued very

ill, and was conveyed to the house, where she took to her bed.

It was there and then that she related what had occurred to her. She

had placed herself, as usual, at her little work table, and had been

either working or reading--I forget which--for some time, and felt in

her usual health and serene spirits. Raising her eyes, and looking

towards the door, she saw a horrible-looking little man enter. He was

dressed in red, was very short, had a singularly dark face, and a most

atrocious countenance. Having walked some steps into the room, with

his eyes fixed on her, he stopped, and beckoning to her to follow,

moved back toward the door. About half way, again he stopped once more

and turned. She was so terrified that she sat staring at the

apparition without moving or speaking. Seeing that she had not obeyed

him, his face became more frightful and menacing, and as it underwent

this change, he raised his hand and stamped on the floor. Gesture,

look, and all, expressed diabolical fury. Through sheer extremity of

terror she did rise, and, as he turned again, followed him a step or

two in the direction of the door. He again stopped, and with the same

mute menace, compelled her again to follow him.

She reached the narrow stone doorway of the Earl's Hall, through which

he had passed; from the threshold she saw him standing a little way

off, with his eyes still fixed on her. Again he signed to her, and

began to move along the short passage that leads to the winding stair.

But instead of following him further, she fell on the floor in a fit.

The poor lady was thoroughly persuaded that she was not long to

survive this vision, and her foreboding proved true. From her bed she

never rose. Fever and delirium supervened in a few days and she died.

Of course it is possible that fever, already approaching, had touched

her brain when she was visited by the phantom, and that it had no

external existence.

THE VISION OF TOM CHUFF

At the edge of melancholy Catstean Moor, in the north of England, with

half-a-dozen ancient poplar-trees with rugged and hoary stems around,

one smashed across the middle by a flash of lightning thirty summers

before, and all by their great height dwarfing the abode near which

they stand, there squats a rude stone house, with a thick chimney, a

kitchen and bedroom on the ground-floor, and a loft, accessible by a

ladder, under the shingle roof, divided into two rooms.

Its owner was a man of ill repute. Tom Chuff was his name. A

shock-headed, broad-shouldered, powerful man, though somewhat short,

with lowering brows and a sullen eye. He was a poacher, and hardly

made an ostensible pretence of earning his bread by any honest

industry. He was a drunkard. He beat his wife, and led his children a

life of terror and lamentation, when he was at home. It was a blessing

to his frightened little family when he absented himself, as he

sometimes did, for a week or more together.

On the night I speak of he knocked at the door with his cudgel at

about eight o'clock. It was winter, and the night was very dark. Had

the summons been that of a bogie from the moor, the inmates of this

small house could hardly have heard it with greater terror.

His wife unbarred the door in fear and haste. Her hunchbacked sister

stood by the hearth, staring toward the threshold. The children

cowered behind.

Tom Chuff entered with his cudgel in his hand, without speaking, and

threw himself into a chair opposite the fire. He had been away two or

three days. He looked haggard, and his eyes were bloodshot. They knew

he had been drinking.

Tom raked and knocked the peat fire with his stick, and thrust his

feet close to it. He signed towards the little dresser, and nodded to

his wife, and she knew he wanted a cup, which in silence she gave him.

He pulled a bottle of gin from his coat-pocket, and nearly filling the

teacup, drank off the dram at a few gulps.

He usually refreshed himself with two or three drams of this kind

before beating the inmates of his house. His three little children,

cowering in a corner, eyed him from under a table, as Jack did the

ogre in the nursery tale. His wife, Nell, standing behind a chair,

which she was ready to snatch up to meet the blow of the cudgel, which

might be levelled at her at any moment, never took her eyes off him;

and hunchbacked Mary showed the whites of a large pair of eyes,

similarly employed, as she stood against the oaken press, her dark

face hardly distinguishable in the distance from the brown panel

behind it.

Tom Chuff was at his third dram, and had not yet spoken a word since

his entrance, and the suspense was growing dreadful, when, on a

sudden, he leaned back in his rude seat, the cudgel slipped from his

hand, a change and a death-like pallor came over his face.

For a while they all stared on; such was their fear of him, they dared

not speak or move, lest it should prove to have been but a doze, and

Tom should wake up and proceed forthwith to gratify his temper and

exercise his cudgel.

In a very little time, however, things began to look so odd, that they

ventured, his wife and Mary, to exchange glances full of doubt and

wonder. He hung so much over the side of the chair, that if it had not

been one of cyclopean clumsiness and weight, he would have borne it to

the floor. A leaden tint was darkening the pallor of his face. They

were becoming alarmed, and finally braving everything his wife timidly

said, "Tom!" and then more sharply repeated it, and finally cried the

appellative loudly, and again and again, with the terrified

accompaniment, "He's dying--he's dying!" her voice rising to a scream,

as she found that neither it nor her plucks and shakings of him by the

shoulder had the slightest effect in recalling him from his torpor.

And now from sheer terror of a new kind the children added their

shrilly piping to the talk and cries of their seniors; and if anything

could have called Tom up from his lethargy, it might have been the

piercing chorus that made the rude chamber of the poacher's habitation

ring again. But Tom continued unmoved, deaf, and stirless.

His wife sent Mary down to the village, hardly a quarter of a mile

away, to implore of the doctor, for whose family she did duty as

laundress, to come down and look at her husband, who seemed to be

dying.

The doctor, who was a good-natured fellow, arrived. With his hat still

on, he looked at Tom, examined him, and when he found that the emetic

he had brought with him, on conjecture from Mary's description, did

not act, and that his lancet brought no blood, and that he felt a

pulseless wrist, he shook his head, and inwardly thought:

"What the plague is the woman crying for? Could she have desired a

greater blessing for her children and herself than the very thing that

has happened?"

Tom, in fact, seemed quite gone. At his lips no breath was

perceptible. The doctor could discover no pulse. His hands and feet

were cold, and the chill was stealing up into his body.

The doctor, after a stay of twenty minutes, had buttoned up his

great-coat again and pulled down his hat, and told Mrs. Chuff that

there was no use in his remaining any longer, when, all of a sudden, a

little rill of blood began to trickle from the lancet-cut in Tom

Chuffs temple.

"That's very odd," said the doctor. "Let us wait a little."

I must describe now the sensations which Tom Chuff had experienced.

With his elbows on his knees, and his chin upon his hands, he was

staring into the embers, with his gin beside him, when suddenly a

swimming came in his head, he lost sight of the fire, and a sound like

one stroke of a loud church bell smote his brain.

Then he heard a confused humming, and the leaden weight of his head

held him backward as he sank in his chair, and consciousness quite

forsook him.

When he came to himself he felt chilled, and was leaning against a

huge leafless tree. The night was moonless, and when he looked up he

thought he had never seen stars so large and bright, or sky so black.

The stars, too, seemed to blink down with longer intervals of

darkness, and fiercer and more dazzling emergence, and something, he

vaguely thought, of the character of silent menace and fury.

He had a confused recollection of having come there, or rather of

having been carried along, as if on men's shoulders, with a sort of

rushing motion. But it was utterly indistinct; the imperfect

recollection simply of a sensation. He had seen or heard nothing on

his way.

He looked round. There was not a sign of a living creature near. And

he began with a sense of awe to recognise the place.

The tree against which he had been leaning was one of the noble old

beeches that surround at irregular intervals the churchyard of

Shackleton, which spreads its green and wavy lap on the edge of the

Moor of Catstean, at the opposite side of which stands the rude

cottage in which he had just lost consciousness. It was six miles or

more across the moor to his habitation, and the black expanse lay

before him, disappearing dismally in the darkness. So that, looking

straight before him, sky and land blended together in an

undistinguishable and awful blank.

There was a silence quite unnatural over the place. The distant murmur

of the brook, which he knew so well, was dead; not a whisper in the

leaves about him; the air, earth, everything about and above was

indescribably still; and he experienced that quaking of the heart that

seems to portend the approach of something awful. He would have set

out upon his return across the moor, had he not an undefined

presentiment that he was waylaid by something he dared not pass.

The old grey church and tower of Shackleton stood like a shadow in the

rear. His eye had grown accustomed to the obscurity, and he could just

trace its outline. There were no comforting associations in his mind

connected with it; nothing but menace and misgiving. His early

training in his lawless calling was connected with this very spot.

Here his father used to meet two other poachers, and bring his son,

then but a boy, with him.

Under the church porch, towards morning, they used to divide the game

they had taken, and take account of the sales they had made on the

previous day, and make partition of the money, and drink their gin. It

was here he had taken his early lessons in drinking, cursing, and

lawlessness. His father's grave was hardly eight steps from the spot

where he stood. In his present state of awful dejection, no scene on

earth could have so helped to heighten his fear.

There was one object close by which added to his gloom. About a yard

away, in rear of the tree, behind himself, and extending to his left,

was an open grave, the mould and rubbish piled on the other side. At

the head of this grave stood the beech-tree; its columnar stem rose

like a huge monumental pillar. He knew every line and crease on its

smooth surface. The initial letters of his own name, cut in its bark

long ago, had spread out and wrinkled like the grotesque capitals of a

fanciful engraver, and now with a sinister significance overlooked the

open grave, as if answering his mental question, "Who for is t' grave

cut?"

He felt still a little stunned, and there was a faint tremor in his

joints that disinclined him to exert himself; and, further, he had a

vague apprehension that take what direction he might, there was danger

around him worse than that of staying where he was.

On a sudden the stars began to blink more fiercely, a faint wild light

overspread for a minute the bleak landscape, and he saw approaching

from the moor a figure at a kind of swinging trot, with now and then a

zig-zag hop or two, such as men accustomed to cross such places make,

to avoid the patches of slob or quag that meet them here and there.

This figure resembled his father's, and like him, whistled through his

finger by way of signal as he approached; but the whistle sounded not

now shrilly and sharp, as in old times, but immensely far away, and

seemed to sing strangely through Tom's head. From habit or from fear,

in answer to the signal, Tom whistled as he used to do five-and-twenty

years ago and more, although he was already chilled with an unearthly

fear.

Like his father, too, the figure held up the bag that was in his left

hand as he drew near, when it was his custom to call out to him what

was in it. It did not reassure the watcher, you may be certain, when a

shout unnaturally faint reached him, as the phantom dangled the bag

in the air, and he heard with a faint distinctness the words, "Tom

Chuff's soul!"

Scarcely fifty yards away from the low churchyard fence at which Tom

was standing, there was a wider chasm in the peat, which there threw

up a growth of reeds and bulrushes, among which, as the old poacher

used to do on a sudden alarm, the approaching figure suddenly cast

itself down.

From the same patch of tall reeds and rushes emerged instantaneously

what he at first mistook for the same figure creeping on all-fours,

but what he soon perceived to be an enormous black dog with a rough

coat like a bear's, which at first sniffed about, and then started

towards him in what seemed to be a sportive amble, bouncing this way

and that, but as it drew near it displayed a pair of fearful eyes that

glowed like live coals, and emitted from the monstrous expanse of its

jaws a terrifying growl.

This beast seemed on the point of seizing him, and Tom recoiled in

panic and fell into the open grave behind him. The edge which he

caught as he tumbled gave way, and down he went, expecting almost at

the same instant to reach the bottom. But never was such a fall!

Bottomless seemed the abyss! Down, down, down, with immeasurable and

still increasing speed, through utter darkness, with hair streaming

straight upward, breathless, he shot with a rush of air against him,

the force of which whirled up his very arms, second after second,

minute after minute, through the chasm downward he flew, the icy

perspiration of horror covering his body, and suddenly, as he expected

to be dashed into annihilation, his descent was in an instant arrested

with a tremendous shock, which, however, did not deprive him of

consciousness even for a moment.

He looked about him. The place resembled a smoke-stained cavern or

catacomb, the roof of which, except for a ribbed arch here and there

faintly visible, was lost in darkness. From several rude passages,

like the galleries of a gigantic mine, which opened from this centre

chamber, was very dimly emitted a dull glow as of charcoal, which was

the only light by which he could imperfectly discern the objects

immediately about him.

What seemed like a projecting piece of the rock, at the corner of one

of these murky entrances, moved on a sudden, and proved to be a human

figure, that beckoned to him. He approached, and saw his father. He

could barely recognise him, he was so monstrously altered.

"I've been looking for you, Tom. Welcome home, lad; come along to your

place."

Tom's heart sank as he heard these words, which were spoken in a

hollow and, he thought, derisive voice that made him tremble. But he

could not help accompanying the wicked spirit, who led him into a

place, in passing which he heard, as it were from within the rock,

deadful cries and appeals for mercy.

"What is this?" said he.

"Never mind."

"Who are they?"

"New-comers, like yourself, lad," answered his father apathetically.

"They give over that work in time, finding it is no use."

"What shall I do?" said Tom, in an agony.

"It's all one."

"But what shall I do?" reiterated Tom, quivering in every joint and

nerve.

"Grin and bear it, I suppose."

"For God's sake, if ever you cared for me, as I am your own child, let

me out of this!"

"There's no way out."

"If there's a way in there's a way out, and for Heaven's sake let me

out of this."

But the dreadful figure made no further answer, and glided backwards

by his shoulder to the rear; and others appeared in view, each with a

faint red halo round it, staring on him with frightful eyes, images,

all in hideous variety, of eternal fury or derision. He was growing

mad, it seemed, under the stare of so many eyes, increasing in number

and drawing closer every moment, and at the same time myriads and

myriads of voices were calling him by his name, some far away, some

near, some from one point, some from another, some from behind, close

to his ears. These cries were increased in rapidity and multitude, and

mingled with laughter, with flitting blasphemies, with broken insults

and mockeries, succeeded and obliterated by others, before he could

half catch their meaning.

All this time, in proportion to the rapidity and urgency of these

dreadful sights and sounds, the epilepsy of terror was creeping up to

his brain, and with a long and dreadful scream he lost consciousness.

When he recovered his senses, he found himself in a small stone

chamber, vaulted above, and with a ponderous door. A single point of

light in the wall, with a strange brilliancy illuminated this cell.

Seated opposite to him was a venerable man with a snowy beard of

immense length; an image of awful purity and severity. He was dressed

in a coarse robe, with three large keys suspensed from his girdle. He

might have filled one's idea of an ancient porter of a city gate; such

spiritual cities, I should say, as John Bunyan loved to describe.

This old man's eyes were brilliant and awful, and fixed on him as they

were, Tom Chuff felt himself helplessly in his power. At length he

spoke:

"The command is given to let you forth for one trial more. But if you

are found again drinking with the drunken, and beating your

fellow-servants, you shall return through the door by which you came,

and go out no more."

With these words the old man took him by the wrist and led him through

the first door, and then unlocking one that stood in the cavern

outside, he struck Tom Chuff sharply on the shoulder, and the door

shut behind him with a sound that boomed peal after peal of thunder

near and far away, and all round and above, till it rolled off

gradually into silence. It was totally dark, but there was a fanning

of fresh cool air that overpowered him. He felt that he was in the

upper world again.

In a few minutes he began to hear voices which he knew, and first a

faint point of light appeared before his eyes, and gradually he saw

the flame of the candle, and, after that, the familiar faces of his

wife and children, and he heard them faintly when they spoke to him,

although he was as yet unable to answer.

He also saw the doctor, like an isolated figure in the dark, and heard

him say:

"There, now, you have him back. He'll do, I think."

His first words, when he could speak and saw clearly all about him,

and felt the blood on his neck and shirt, were:

"Wife, forgie me. I'm a changed man. Send for't sir."

Which last phrase means, "Send for the clergyman."

When the vicar came and entered the little bedroom where the scared

poacher, whose soul had died within him, was lying, still sick and

weak, in his bed, and with a spirit that was prostrate with terror,

Tom Chuff feebly beckoned the rest from the room, and, the door being

closed, the good parson heard the strange confession, and with equal

amazement the man's earnest and agitated vows of amendment, and his

helpless appeals to him for support and counsel.

These, of course, were kindly met; and the visits of the rector, for

some time, were frequent.

One day, when he took Tom Chuff's hand on bidding him good-bye, the

sick man held it still, and said:

"Ye'r vicar o' Shackleton, sir, and if I sud dee, ye'll promise me a'e

thing, as I a promised ye a many. I a said I'll never gie wife, nor

barn, nor folk o' no sort, skelp nor sizzup more, and ye'll know o' me

no more among the sipers. Nor never will Tom draw trigger, nor set a

snare again, but in an honest way, and after that ye'll no make it a

bootless bene for me, but bein', as I say, vicar o' Shackleton, and

able to do as ye list, ye'll no let them bury me within twenty good

yerd-wands measure o' the a'd beech trees that's round the churchyard

of Shackleton."

"I see; you would have your grave, when your time really comes, a good

way from the place where lay the grave you dreamed of."

"That's jest it. I'd lie at the bottom o' a marl-pit liefer! And I'd

be laid in anither churchyard just to be shut o' my fear o' that, but

that a' my kinsfolk is buried beyond in Shackleton, and ye'll gie me

yer promise, and no break yer word."

"I do promise, certainly. I'm not likely to outlive you; but, if I

should, and still be vicar of Shackleton, you shall be buried

somewhere as near the middle of the churchyard as we can find space."

"That'll do."

And so content they parted.

The effect of the vision upon Tom Chuff was powerful, and promised to

be lasting. With a sore effort he exchanged his life of desultory

adventure and comparative idleness for one of regular industry. He

gave up drinking; he was as kind as an originally surly nature would

allow to his wife and family; he went to church; in fine weather they

crossed the moor to Shackleton Church; the vicar said he came there to

look at the scenery of his vision, and to fortify his good resolutions

by the reminder.

Impressions upon the imagination, however, are but transitory, and a

bad man acting under fear is not a free agent; his real character does

not appear. But as the images of the imagination fade, and the action

of fear abates, the essential qualities of the man reassert

themselves.

So, after a time, Tom Chuff began to grow weary of his new life; he

grew lazy, and people began to say that he was catching hares, and

pursuing his old contraband way of life, under the rose.

He came home one hard night, with signs of the bottle in his thick

speech and violent temper. Next day he was sorry, or frightened, at

all events repentant, and for a week or more something of the old

horror returned, and he was once more on his good behaviour. But in a

little time came a relapse, and another repentance, and then a relapse

again, and gradually the return of old habits and the flooding in of

all his old way of life, with more violence and gloom, in proportion

as the man was alarmed and exasperated by the remembrance of his

despised, but terrible, warning.

With the old life returned the misery of the cottage. The smiles,

which had begun to appear with the unwonted sunshine, were seen no

more. Instead, returned to his poor wife's face the old pale and

heartbroken look. The cottage lost its neat and cheerful air, and the

melancholy of neglect was visible. Sometimes at night were overheard,

by a chance passer-by, cries and sobs from that ill-omened dwelling.

Tom Chuff was now often drunk, and not very often at home, except when

he came in to sweep away his poor wife's earnings.

Tom had long lost sight of the honest old parson. There was shame

mixed with his degradation. He had grace enough left when he saw the

thin figure of "t' sir" walking along the road to turn out of his way

and avoid meeting him. The clergyman shook his head, and sometimes

groaned, when his name was mentioned. His horror and regret were more

for the poor wife than for the relapsed sinner, for her case was

pitiable indeed.

Her brother, Jack Everton, coming over from Hexley, having heard

stories of all this, determined to beat Tom, for his ill-treatment of

his sister, within an inch of his life. Luckily, perhaps, for all

concerned, Tom happened to be away upon one of his long excursions,

and poor Nell besought her brother, in extremity of terror, not to

interpose between them. So he took his leave and went home muttering

and sulky.

Now it happened a few months later that Nelly Chuff fell sick. She had

been ailing, as heartbroken people do, for a good while. But now the

end had come.

There was a coroner's inquest when she died, for the doctor had

doubts as to whether a blow had not, at least, hastened her death.

Nothing certain, however, came of the inquiry. Tom Chuff had left his

home more than two days before his wife's death. He was absent upon

his lawless business still when the coroner had held his quest.

Jack Everton came over from Hexley to attend the dismal obsequies of

his sister. He was more incensed than ever with the wicked husband,

who, one way or other, had hastened Nelly's death. The inquest had

closed early in the day. The husband had not appeared.

An occasional companion--perhaps I ought to say accomplice--of Chuff's

happened to turn up. He had left him on the borders of Westmoreland,

and said he would probably be home next day. But Everton affected not

to believe it. Perhaps it was to Tom Chuff, he suggested, a secret

satisfaction to crown the history of his bad married life with the

scandal of his absence from the funeral of his neglected and abused

wife.

Everton had taken on himself the direction of the melancholy

preparations. He had ordered a grave to be opened for his sister

beside her mother's, in Shackleton churchyard, at the other side of

the moor. For the purpose, as I have said, of marking the callous

neglect of her husband, he determined that the funeral should take

place that night. His brother Dick had accompanied him, and they and

his sister, with Mary and the children, and a couple of the

neighbours, formed the humble cort├Ęge.

Jack Everton said he would wait behind, on the chance of Tom Chuff

coming in time, that he might tell him what had happened, and make him

cross the moor with him to meet the funeral. His real object, I think,

was to inflict upon the villain the drubbing he had so long wished to

give him. Anyhow, he was resolved, by crossing the moor, to reach the

churchyard in time to anticipate the arrival of the funeral, and to

have a few words with the vicar, clerk, and sexton, all old friends of

his, for the parish of Shackleton was the place of his birth and early

recollections.

But Tom Chuff did not appear at his house that night. In surly mood,

and without a shilling in his pocket, he was making his way homeward.

His bottle of gin, his last investment, half emptied, with its neck

protruding, as usual on such returns, was in his coat-pocket.

His way home lay across the moor of Catstean, and the point at which

he best knew the passage was from the churchyard of Shackleton. He

vaulted the low wall that forms its boundary, and strode across the

graves, and over many a flat, half-buried tombstone, toward the side

of the churchyard next Catstean Moor.

The old church of Shackleton and its tower rose, close at his right,

like a black shadow against the sky. It was a moonless night, but

clear. By this time he had reached the low boundary wall, at the other

side, that overlooks the wide expanse of Catstean Moor. He stood by

one of the huge old beech-trees, and leaned his back to its smooth

trunk. Had he ever seen the sky look so black, and the stars shine

out and blink so vividly? There was a deathlike silence over the

scene, like the hush that precedes thunder in sultry weather. The

expanse before him was lost in utter blackness. A strange quaking

unnerved his heart. It was the sky and scenery of his vision! The same

horror and misgiving. The same invincible fear of venturing from the

spot where he stood. He would have prayed if he dared. His sinking

heart demanded a restorative of some sort, and he grasped the bottle

in his coat-pocket. Turning to his left, as he did so, he saw the

piled-up mould of an open grave that gaped with its head close to the

base of the great tree against which he was leaning.

He stood aghast. His dream was returning and slowly enveloping him.

Everything he saw was weaving itself into the texture of his vision.

The chill of horror stole over him.

A faint whistle came shrill and clear over the moor, and he saw a

figure approaching at a swinging trot, with a zig-zag course, hopping

now here and now there, as men do over a surface where one has need to

choose their steps. Through the jungle of reeds and bulrushes in the

foreground this figure advanced; and with the same unaccountable

impulse that had coerced him in his dream, he answered the whistle of

the advancing figure.

On that signal it directed its course straight toward him. It mounted

the low wall, and, standing there, looked into the graveyard.

"Who med answer?" challenged the new-comer from his post of

observation.

"Me," answered Tom.

"Who are you?" repeated the man upon the wall.

"Tom Chuff; and who's this grave cut for?" He answered in a savage

tone, to cover the secret shudder of his panic.

"I'll tell you that, ye villain!" answered the stranger, descending

from the wall, "I a' looked for you far and near, and waited long, and

now you're found at last."

Not knowing what to make of the figure that advanced upon him, Tom

Chuff recoiled, stumbled, and fell backward into the open grave. He

caught at the sides as he fell, but without retarding his fall.

An hour later, when lights came with the coffin, the corpse of Tom

Chuff was found at the bottom of the grave. He had fallen direct upon

his head, and his neck was broken. His death must have been

simultaneous with his fall. Thus far his dream was accomplished.

It was his brother-in-law who had crossed the moor and approached the

churchyard of Shackleton, exactly in the line which the image of his

father had seemed to take in his strange vision. Fortunately for Jack

Everton, the sexton and clerk of Shackleton church were, unseen by

him, crossing the churchyard toward the grave of Nelly Chuff, just as

Tom the poacher stumbled and fell. Suspicion of direct violence would

otherwise have inevitably attached to the exasperated brother. As it

was, the catastrophe was followed by no legal consequences.

The good vicar kept his word, and the grave of Tom Chuff is still

pointed out by the old inhabitants of Shackleton pretty nearly in the

centre of the churchyard. This conscientious compliance with the

entreaty of the panic-stricken man as to the place of his sepulture

gave a horrible and mocking emphasis to the strange combination by

which fate had defeated his precaution, and fixed the place of his

death.

The story was for many a year, and we believe still is, told round

many a cottage hearth, and though it appeals to what many would term

superstition, it yet sounded, in the ears of a rude and simple

audience, a thrilling, and let us hope, not altogether fruitless

homily.

DICKON THE DEVIL

About thirty years ago I was selected by two rich old maids to visit a

property in that part of Lancashire which lies near the famous forest

of Pendle, with which Mr. Ainsworth's "Lancashire Witches" has made us

so pleasantly familiar. My business was to make partition of a small

property, including a house and demesne, to which they had a long time

before succeeded as co-heiresses.

The last forty miles of my journey I was obliged to post, chiefly by

cross-roads, little known, and less frequented, and presenting scenery

often extremely interesting and pretty. The picturesqueness of the

landscape was enhanced by the season, the beginning of September, at

which I was travelling.

I had never been in this part of the world before; I am told it is now

a great deal less wild, and, consequently, less beautiful.

At the inn where I had stopped for a relay of horses and some

dinner--for it was then past five o'clock--I found the host, a hale

old fellow of five-and-sixty, as he told me, a man of easy and

garrulous benevolence, willing to accommodate his guests with any

amount of talk, which the slightest tap sufficed to set flowing, on

any subject you pleased.

I was curious to learn something about Barwyke, which was the name of

the demesne and house I was going to. As there was no inn within some

miles of it, I had written to the steward to put me up there, the best

way he could, for a night.

The host of the "Three Nuns," which was the sign under which he

entertained wayfarers, had not a great deal to tell. It was twenty

years, or more, since old Squire Bowes died, and no one had lived in

the Hall ever since, except the gardener and his wife.

"Tom Wyndsour will be as old a man as myself; but he's a bit taller,

and not so much in flesh, quite," said the fat innkeeper.

"But there were stories about the house," I repeated, "that they said,

prevented tenants from coming into it?"

"Old wives' tales; many years ago, that will be, sir; I forget 'em; I

forget 'em all. Oh yes, there always will be, when a house is left so;

foolish folk will always be talkin'; but I hadn't heard a word about

it this twenty year."

It was vain trying to pump him; the old landlord of the "Three Nuns,"

for some reason, did not choose to tell tales of Barwyke Hall, if he

really did, as I suspected, remember them.

I paid my reckoning, and resumed my journey, well pleased with the

good cheer of that old-world inn, but a little disappointed.

We had been driving for more than an hour, when we began to cross a

wild common; and I knew that, this passed, a quarter of an hour would

bring me to the door of Barwyke Hall.

The peat and furze were pretty soon left behind; we were again in the

wooded scenery that I enjoyed so much, so entirely natural and pretty,

and so little disturbed by traffic of any kind. I was looking from the

chaise-window, and soon detected the object of which, for some time,

my eye had been in search. Barwyke Hall was a large, quaint house, of

that cage-work fashion known as "black-and-white," in which the bars

and angles of an oak framework contrast, black as ebony, with the

white plaster that overspreads the masonry built into its interstices.

This steep-roofed Elizabethan house stood in the midst of park-like

grounds of no great extent, but rendered imposing by the noble stature

of the old trees that now cast their lengthening shadows eastward over

the sward, from the declining sun.

The park-wall was grey with age, and in many places laden with ivy. In

deep grey shadow, that contrasted with the dim fires of evening

reflected on the foliage above it, in a gentle hollow, stretched a

lake that looked cold and black, and seemed, as it were, to skulk from

observation with a guilty knowledge.

I had forgot that there was a lake at Barwyke; but the moment this

caught my eye, like the cold polish of a snake in the shadow, my

instinct seemed to recognize something dangerous, and I knew that the

lake was connected, I could not remember how, with the story I had

heard of this place in my boyhood.

I drove up a grass-grown avenue, under the boughs of these noble

trees, whose foliage, dyed in autumnal red and yellow, returned the

beams of the western sun gorgeously.

We drew up at the door. I got out, and had a good look at the front of

the house; it was a large and melancholy mansion, with signs of long

neglect upon it; great wooden shutters, in the old fashion, were

barred, outside, across the windows; grass, and even nettles, were

growing thick on the courtyard, and a thin moss streaked the timber

beams; the plaster was discoloured by time and weather, and bore great

russet and yellow stains. The gloom was increased by several grand

old trees that crowded close about the house.

I mounted the steps, and looked round; the dark lake lay near me now,

a little to the left. It was not large; it may have covered some ten

or twelve acres; but it added to the melancholy of the scene. Near the

centre of it was a small island, with two old ash trees, leaning

toward each other, their pensive images reflected in the stirless

water. The only cheery influence in this scene of antiquity, solitude,

and neglect was that the house and landscape were warmed with the

ruddy western beams. I knocked, and my summons resounded hollow and

ungenial in my ear; and the bell, from far away, returned a

deep-mouthed and surly ring, as if it resented being roused from a

score years' slumber.

A light-limbed, jolly-looking old fellow, in a barracan jacket and

gaiters, with a smile of welcome, and a very sharp, red nose, that

seemed to promise good cheer, opened the door with a promptitude that

indicated a hospitable expectation of my arrival.

There was but little light in the hall, and that little lost itself in

darkness in the background. It was very spacious and lofty, with a

gallery running round it, which, when the door was open, was visible

at two or three points. Almost in the dark my new acquaintance led me

across this wide hall into the room destined for my reception. It was

spacious, and wainscoted up to the ceiling. The furniture of this

capacious chamber was old-fashioned and clumsy. There were curtains

still to the windows, and a piece of Turkey carpet lay upon the floor;

those windows were two in number, looking out, through the trunks of

the trees close to the house, upon the lake. It needed all the fire,

and all the pleasant associations of my entertainer's red nose, to

light up this melancholy chamber. A door at its farther end admitted

to the room that was prepared for my sleeping apartment. It was

wainscoted, like the other. It had a four-post bed, with heavy

tapestry curtains, and in other respects was furnished in the same

old-world and ponderous style as the other room. Its window, like

those of that apartment, looked out upon the lake.

Sombre and sad as these rooms were, they were yet scrupulously clean.

I had nothing to complain of; but the effect was rather dispiriting.

Having given some directions about supper--a pleasant incident to look

forward to--and made a rapid toilet, I called on my friend with the

gaiters and red nose (Tom Wyndsour) whose occupation was that of a

"bailiff," or under-steward, of the property, to accompany me, as we

had still an hour or so of sun and twilight, in a walk over the

grounds.

It was a sweet autumn evening, and my guide, a hardy old fellow,

strode at a pace that tasked me to keep up with.

Among clumps of trees at the northern boundary of the demesne we

lighted upon the little antique parish church. I was looking down upon

it, from an eminence, and the park-wall interposed; but a little way

down was a stile affording access to the road, and by this we

approached the iron gate of the churchyard. I saw the church door

open; the sexton was replacing his pick, shovel, and spade, with which

he had just been digging a grave in the churchyard, in their little

repository under the stone stair of the tower. He was a polite, shrewd

little hunchback, who was very happy to show me over the church. Among

the monuments was one that interested me; it was erected to

commemorate the very Squire Bowes from whom my two old maids had

inherited the house and estate of Barwyke. It spoke of him in terms of

grandiloquent eulogy, and informed the Christian reader that he had

died, in the bosom of the Church of England, at the age of

seventy-one.

I read this inscription by the parting beams of the setting sun, which

disappeared behind the horizon just as we passed out from under the

porch.

"Twenty years since the Squire died," said I, reflecting as I loitered

still in the churchyard.

"Ay, sir; 'twill be twenty year the ninth o' last month."

"And a very good old gentleman?"

"Good-natured enough, and an easy gentleman he was, sir; I don't think

while he lived he ever hurt a fly," acquiesced Tom Wyndsour. "It ain't

always easy sayin' what's in 'em though, and what they may take or

turn to afterwards; and some o' them sort, I think, goes mad."

"You don't think he was out of his mind?" I asked.

"He? La! no; not he, sir; a bit lazy, mayhap, like other old fellows;

but a knew devilish well what he was about."

Tom Wyndsour's account was a little enigmatical; but, like old Squire

Bowes, I was "a bit lazy" that evening, and asked no more questions

about him.

We got over the stile upon the narrow road that skirts the churchyard.

It is overhung by elms more than a hundred years old, and in the

twilight, which now prevailed, was growing very dark. As side-by-side

we walked along this road, hemmed in by two loose stone-like walls,

something running towards us in a zig-zag line passed us at a wild

pace, with a sound like a frightened laugh or a shudder, and I saw, as

it passed, that it was a human figure. I may confess now, that I was a

little startled. The dress of this figure was, in part, white: I know

I mistook it at first for a white horse coming down the road at a

gallop. Tom Wyndsour turned about and looked after the retreating

figure.

"He'll be on his travels to-night," he said, in a low tone. "Easy

served with a bed, _that_ lad be; six foot o' dry peat or heath, or a

nook in a dry ditch. That lad hasn't slept once in a house this twenty

year, and never will while grass grows."

"Is he mad?" I asked.

"Something that way, sir; he's an idiot, an awpy; we call him 'Dickon

the devil,' because the devil's almost the only word that's ever in

his mouth."

It struck me that this idiot was in some way connected with the story

of old Squire Bowes.

"Queer things are told of him, I dare say?" I suggested.

"More or less, sir; more or less. Queer stories, some."

"Twenty years since he slept in a house? That's about the time the

Squire died," I continued.

"So it will be, sir; and not very long after."

"You must tell me all about that, Tom, to-night, when I can hear it

comfortably, after supper."

Tom did not seem to like my invitation; and looking straight before

him as we trudged on, he said,

"You see, sir, the house has been quiet, and nout's been troubling

folk inside the walls or out, all round the woods of Barwyke, this ten

year, or more; and my old woman, down there, is clear against talking

about such matters, and thinks it best--and so do I--to let sleepin'

dogs be."

He dropped his voice towards the close of the sentence, and nodded

significantly.

We soon reached a point where he unlocked a wicket in the park wall,

by which we entered the grounds of Barwyke once more.

The twilight deepening over the landscape, the huge and solemn trees,

and the distant outline of the haunted house, exercised a sombre

influence on me, which, together with the fatigue of a day of travel,

and the brisk walk we had had, disinclined me to interrupt the silence

in which my companion now indulged.

A certain air of comparative comfort, on our arrival, in great measure

dissipated the gloom that was stealing over me. Although it was by no

means a cold night, I was very glad to see some wood blazing in the

grate; and a pair of candles aiding the light of the fire, made the

room look cheerful. A small table, with a very white cloth, and

preparations for supper, was also a very agreeable object.

I should have liked very well, under these influences, to have

listened to Tom Wyndsour's story; but after supper I grew too sleepy

to attempt to lead him to the subject; and after yawning for a time, I

found there was no use in contending against my drowsiness, so I

betook myself to my bedroom, and by ten o'clock was fast asleep.

What interruption I experienced that night I shall tell you presently.

It was not much, but it was very odd.

By next night I had completed my work at Barwyke. From early morning

till then I was so incessantly occupied and hard-worked, that I had

not time to think over the singular occurrence to which I have just

referred. Behold me, however, at length once more seated at my little

supper-table, having ended a comfortable meal. It had been a sultry

day, and I had thrown one of the large windows up as high as it would

go. I was sitting near it, with my brandy and water at my elbow,

looking out into the dark. There was no moon, and the trees that are

grouped about the house make the darkness round it supernaturally

profound on such nights.

"Tom," said I, so soon as the jug of hot punch I had supplied him

with began to exercise its genial and communicative influence; "you

must tell me who beside your wife and you and myself slept in the

house last night."

Tom, sitting near the door, set down his tumbler, and looked at me

askance, while you might count seven, without speaking a word.

"Who else slept in the house?" he repeated, very deliberately. "Not a

living soul, sir"; and he looked hard at me, still evidently expecting

something more.

"That _is_ very odd," I said returning his stare, and feeling really a

little odd. "You are sure _you_ were not in my room last night?"

"Not till I came to call you, sir, this morning; _I_ can make oath of

that."

"Well," said I, "there was some one there, _I_ can make oath of that.

I was so tired I could not make up my mind to get up; but I was waked

by a sound that I thought was some one flinging down the two tin boxes

in which my papers were locked up violently on the floor. I heard a

slow step on the ground, and there was light in the room, although I

remembered having put out my candle. I thought it must have been you,

who had come in for my clothes, and upset the boxes by accident.

Whoever it was, he went out and the light with him. I was about to

settle again, when, the curtain being a little open at the foot of the

bed, I saw a light on the wall opposite; such as a candle from outside

would cast if the door were very cautiously opening. I started up in

the bed, drew the side curtain, and saw that the door _was_ opening,

and admitting light from outside. It is close, you know, to the head

of the bed. A hand was holding on the edge of the door and pushing it

open; not a bit like yours; a very singular hand. Let me look at

yours."

He extended it for my inspection.

"Oh no; there's nothing wrong with your hand. This was differently

shaped; fatter; and the middle finger was stunted, and shorter than

the rest, looking as if it had once been broken, and the nail was

crooked like a claw. I called out 'Who's there?' and the light and the

hand were withdrawn, and I saw and heard no more of my visitor."

"So sure as you're a living man, that was him!" exclaimed Tom

Wyndsour, his very nose growing pale, and his eyes almost starting out

of his head.

"Who?" I asked.

"Old Squire Bowes; 'twas _his_ hand you saw; the Lord a' mercy on us!"

answered Tom. "The broken finger, and the nail bent like a hoop. Well

for you, sir, he didn't come back when you called, that time. You came

here about them Miss Dymock's business, and he never meant they should

have a foot o' ground in Barwyke; and he was making a will to give it

away quite different, when death took him short. He never was uncivil

to no one; but he couldn't abide them ladies. My mind misgave me when

I heard 'twas about their business you were coming; and now you see

how it is; he'll be at his old tricks again!"

With some pressure and a little more punch, I induced Tom Wyndsour to

explain his mysterious allusions by recounting the occurrences which

followed the old Squire's death.

"Squire Bowes of Barwyke died without making a will, as you know,"

said Tom. "And all the folk round were sorry; that is to say, sir, as

sorry as folk will be for an old man that has seen a long tale of

years, and has no right to grumble that death has knocked an hour too

soon at his door. The Squire was well liked; he was never in a

passion, or said a hard word; and he would not hurt a fly; and that

made what happened after his decease the more surprising.

"The first thing these ladies did, when they got the property, was to

buy stock for the park.

"It was not wise, in any case, to graze the land on their own account.

But they little knew all they had to contend with.

"Before long something went wrong with the cattle; first one, and then

another, took sick and died, and so on, till the loss began to grow

heavy. Then, queer stories, little by little, began to be told. It was

said, first by one, then by another, that Squire Bowes was seen, about

evening time, walking, just as he used to do when he was alive, among

the old trees, leaning on his stick; and, sometimes when he came up

with the cattle, he would stop and lay his hand kindly like on the

back of one of them; and that one was sure to fall sick next day, and

die soon after.

"No one ever met him in the park, or in the woods, or ever saw him,

except a good distance off. But they knew his gait and his figure

well, and the clothes he used to wear; and they could tell the beast

he laid his hand on by its colour--white, dun, or black; and that

beast was sure to sicken and die. The neighbours grew shy of taking

the path over the park; and no one liked to walk in the woods, or come

inside the bounds of Barwyke: and the cattle went on sickening and

dying as before.

"At that time there was one Thomas Pyke; he had been a groom to the

old Squire; and he was in care of the place, and was the only one that

used to sleep in the house.

"Tom was vexed, hearing these stories; which he did not believe the

half on 'em; and more especial as he could not get man or boy to herd

the cattle; all being afeared. So he wrote to Matlock in Derbyshire,

for his brother, Richard Pyke, a clever lad, and one that knew nout o'

the story of the old Squire walking.

"Dick came; and the cattle was better; folk said they could still see

the old Squire, sometimes, walking, as before, in openings of the

wood, with his stick in his hand; but he was shy of coming nigh the

cattle, whatever his reason might be, since Dickon Pyke came; and he

used to stand a long bit off, looking at them, with no more stir in

him than a trunk o' one of the old trees, for an hour at a time, till

the shape melted away, little by little, like the smoke of a fire that

burns out.

"Tom Pyke and his brother Dickon, being the only living souls in the

house, lay in the big bed in the servants' room, the house being fast

barred and locked, one night in November.

"Tom was lying next the wall, and he told me, as wide awake as ever

he was at noonday. His brother Dickon lay outside, and was sound

asleep.

"Well, as Tom lay thinking, with his eyes turned toward the door, it

opens slowly, and who should come in but old Squire Bowes, his face

lookin' as dead as he was in his coffin.

"Tom's very breath left his body; he could not take his eyes off him;

and he felt the hair rising up on his head.

"The Squire came to the side of the bed, and put his arms under

Dickon, and lifted the boy--in a dead sleep all the time--and carried

him out so, at the door.

"Such was the appearance, to Tom Pyke's eyes, and he was ready to

swear to it, anywhere.

"When this happened, the light, wherever it came from, all on a sudden

went out, and Tom could not see his own hand before him.

"More dead than alive, he lay till daylight.

"Sure enough his brother Dickon was gone. No sign of him could he

discover about the house; and with some trouble he got a couple of the

neighbours to help him to search the woods and grounds. Not a sign of

him anywhere.

"At last one of them thought of the island in the lake; the little

boat was moored to the old post at the water's edge. In they got,

though with small hope of finding him there. Find him, nevertheless,

they did, sitting under the big ash tree, quite out of his wits; and

to all their questions he answered nothing but one cry--'Bowes, the

devil! See him; see him; Bowes, the devil!' An idiot they found him;

and so he will be till God sets all things right. No one could ever

get him to sleep under roof-tree more. He wanders from house to house

while daylight lasts; and no one cares to lock the harmless creature

in the workhouse. And folk would rather not meet him after nightfall,

for they think where he is there may be worse things near."

A silence followed Tom's story. He and I were alone in that large room;

I was sitting near the open window, looking into the dark night air. I

fancied I saw something white move across it; and I heard a sound like low

talking that swelled into a discordant shriek--"Hoo-oo-oo! Bowes, the

devil! Over your shoulder. Hoo-oo-oo! ha! ha! ha!" I started up, and saw,

by the light of the candle with which Tom strode to the window, the wild

eyes and blighted face of the idiot, as, with a sudden change of mood,

he drew off, whispering and tittering to himself, and holding up his long

fingers, and looking at the tips like a "hand of glory."

Tom pulled down the window. The story and its epilogue were over. I

confess I was rather glad when I heard the sound of the horses' hoofs

on the court-yard, a few minutes later; and still gladder when, having

bidden Tom a kind farewell, I had left the neglected house of Barwyke

a mile behind me.