AN ABDUCTION.
The Lady Eva, as well befits high-born dames, was somewhat romantic in her tastes, and would often row for hours upon the lake, and wander for miles through the woods, or even upon the mountains, unattended, save by her favourite bower-maiden. And one evening in autumn, after having been confined for two whole days to the hall by heavy and incessant rain, tired of playing chess with her father and battledore with her younger brothers, or superintending the needlework of her maids, and tempted by the brilliant moonlight and now unobscured skies, she summoned Barbara, and set out upon a stroll by the lake side.
The pair were sauntering along a path cut through the dense coppice, the lady leaning in condescending affection upon the shoulder of her maiden, and listening to a recital of how, on her return from some of her visits to her parents, she had been waylaid by Great Will of the Tarns, and how, on a recent evening, he had attempted to seize her rein, and would have stopped her, had she not whipt the palfrey, and bounded past him. The lady was expressing her indignation at this insolence, when a gigantic figure sprang upon the pathway, and snatching up the screaming Barbara with the same ease with which she herself would have lifted an infant, vanished on the instant amongst the thick hazels.
The Lady Eva stood for a minute struck powerless with terror and astonishment at this audacious outrage; but the sound of the monster crashing his headlong course through the coppice, and the half-stifled screams of his captive, soon recalled her suspended faculties, and then
“Fair” Eva “through the hazel grove
Flew, like a startled cushat-dove,”
back to the hall, where, breathless with terror and exertion, she gave the alarm that Barbara had been carried off by the Giant. There was noisy and instantaneous commotion A CHASE BUT NO RESCUE. amongst the carousing gentles at the upper, and the loitering lackeys at the lower end of the hall. Dick Hawksley, and a few more, darted off in immediate pursuit on foot, while several rushed to the stables, in obedience to the calls of their young masters, who were, one and all, loudly vociferating for their horses. Scarce a minute passed, ere half a dozen le Flemings, attended by as many mounted followers, were spurring like lightning through the wood in the direction of Yewdale. They came in sight of the Giant and his burthen as he neared Cauldron Dub, with the light-heeled falconer close behind, calling loudly upon him to stay his flight; but he held on with tremendous strides, till he reached the brow over the pool, when, finding that the horsemen were close upon him, and that it was hopeless to try to carry his prize farther, he stopped—uttered one terrible shout of rage and disappointment—and whirled his shrieking victim into the flooded beck, resuming his now unincumbered flight with increased speed. Dick Hawksley rushed over the bank a little lower down, and the horsemen, abandoning the chase, galloped to the brink of the stream, which was high with the recent rains. They saw the falconer plunge into the torrent, as the bower maiden, yet buoyant with her light garments, was borne rapidly down. They saw him seize her with one hand, and strike out gallantly for the bank with the other, but the current was too strong for him, encumbered as he was with the girl in his grasp. The devoted pair were swept down the stream, at a rate that made the spectators put their horses to a gallop to keep them in sight, even while the exertions of the brave falconer sufficed to sustain their heads above water, which was only till they came under the bridge, where the water, pent in by the narrow arch, acquired four-fold force, and there they heard him utter a hoarse cry of despair, and the gallant Hawksley and the Lady Eva’s beauteous favourite SPEEDY RETRIBUTION.were seen no more, till their bodies were found, days after, on the shore far down the lake. One or two of the horsemen continued to gallop down the side of the beck, in the bootless hope of being able even yet to render them some aid, but the most of them turned their horses’ heads, and went off once more at their utmost speed in pursuit of the murderous Giant. He, considering the chase at an end, had slackened his pace, and they were not long in overtaking him. Great Will struck out manfully with his club (time out of mind the giant’s favourite weapon) as they rushed upon him, but they speedily surrounded him, and, amid a storm of vengeful yells and bitter execrations, the Giant of the Tarns was stretched upon the sward, “with the blood running like a little brook” from a hundred wounds, for he was so frightfully slashed and mangled by their swords, that—as my informant näively averred—there was not so much whole skin left upon his huge body as would have made a tobacco-pouch.
It will be apparent enough to the most obtuse intellect, that, after such events as these, the localities where they occurred must, of necessity, be haunted, and, as the ghosts of murderers, as well as of murderees, if they be right orthodox apparitions, always appear to be re-enacting the closing scene of their earthly career, it is scarcely required of me to dilate farther upon the manner of their appearance. Of course I do not expect, and certainly do not wish to be called upon to prove the even down truth of every particular of the story, with which I have been doing my little best to amuse you; but the assured fact of the Dub and the Bridge being haunted, and that by sundry most pertinacious spirits, I am ready to maintain against all comers.
But here you are approaching the lovely secluded farm and cottage of Holme Ground, and whenever I am sick of this world and its vanities, which as yet, I am happy to say, maintain some hold upon my affections, it is here that I should be satisfied to take up my rest.
ROAD AND ROAD-SIDE.