“H’m! Well, the original version of the tradition is to be found in Surinn’s ‘Legends and Myths of Baronial Europe,’ a very scarce and bulky book, which came out between forty and fifty years ago, and the incident occurred, if I remember rightly, in the middle of the last century. The narrative is entitled ‘The Ban of Craunston.’ It was a wild and lawless period in out-of-the-way parts, and this corner of the world came in no wise behind the spirit of the age, for the coast was the happy hunting ground of wreckers and smugglers, and the roads of highwaymen and other freebooters. At that time, one Richard Dorrien was Squire of Cranston. He was a bachelor, and his younger brother lived at the Hall with him. The latter, Hubert by name, was an open-hearted, bright-spirited youngster, immensely popular with both sexes; whereas Richard, the Squire, seems to have been a gloomy, violent-tempered man, disliked and feared on all sides. Well, the brothers got on rather well together—possibly on account of the total dissimilarity of their characters—until the apple of discord was thrown into their midst in the shape of a young lady who came to take up her abode in Wandsborough, then a straggling little place, consisting of a score of houses. She was a foreigner—though of what nationality the chronicle omits to state—of extraordinary beauty, and lived alone with a duenna of regulation age and hideosity. It is said that this young woman was a Jacobite emissary, and it was in that capacity that she and Richard Dorrien became acquainted, for he was an ardent Jacobite, and over head and ears involved in the plots of the day. But be this as it may, it was a case of love at first sight. The churlish and misanthropical Squire became violently enslaved; unfortunately, however, the lady declined his addresses. More unfortunately still, she did not decline those of his brother—quite the reverse. Well, now, this position of affairs could but have one ending, in a state of society wherein men ran each other through on far less provocation than would induce you in these days to knock a fellow down. But there was no open quarrel. On the contrary, the Squire was so studiously cordial to his brother that the latter was thrown quite off his guard. Not so one or two of his intimates, who went so far as to warn him—and nearly got run through for their pains. Matters went on in this way till the day before Hubert was to wed the fair unknown. On the afternoon of that day the two brothers put off in their sailing cutter to tack about the bay. They were alone together, and seemed on the best of terms. The afternoon closed in squally and rough, and the boat and its occupants were lost to view in the mist. Darkness came on, and still the Dorriens did not return. The seafaring people at Minchkil began to get anxious, and talked of going in search, but there was a high sea running and every sign of a rising gale; moreover, they knew that the missing men were nearly as amphibious as they themselves. Then suddenly there sounded through the night the wild unearthly howling of a dog. Awed to the heart, it was some time before the superstitious seafarers could make up their minds to investigate further. The sound came from the cliff above them to westward, and thither at last they all proceeded. There, at the very extremity of the headland which looks down on The Skegs, stood a huge boar-hound, which they recognised as the Squire’s favourite dog, Satan, a savage brute, of whom the whole neighbourhood stood in terror. The animal stood there on the brink of the cliff—his neck stretched out over the churning waves below—throwing out his long-drawn, deep-voiced bay into the misty darkness. Then the men knew that something had happened. And now mark this. At the very moment this discovery was made, Richard Dorrien appeared suddenly before the young foreign lady, dripping and soaked from head to foot, and told her, without the slightest warning, that her lover was drowned. She seemed turned to stone. She gazed at him for a moment with a wild stare, gasped out one word—‘Murdered!’—and, still fixing him with that glassy stare, fell prone to the floor in a swoon. He never saw her again.
“A terrible gale raged all that night, and in the morning fragments of the missing boat were washed ashore. The craft had been splintered almost to matchwood. It was not till many days afterwards that Hubert Dorrien’s corpse came to light. At first the survivor would hardly mention the subject, much less give any account of it. Eventually, however, it leaked out that the boat had been driven upon The Skegs by the gale, and its occupants, thrown into the water, were forced to swim for their lives. And now, although nothing can be more reasonable and probable than this solution of the matter, it was not long before dark rumours began to get about. Of course, there could be no vestige of proof either way; for the tragedy out there in the black and storm-lashed bay was witnessed by no mortal eye. Months went by. The survivor became more and more morose, shunned everybody, and took to hard drinking. The cause of all the turmoil left the neighbourhood the week following on the tragedy. One morning. Cranston was in a state of alarm. The Squire was missing. Enquiry at length elicited that he had put out to sea the previous night accompanied only by his huge hound. Richard Dorrien was never seen again, neither was his dog. The night was wild and tempestuous, and it was at first thought that his boat had been swamped. But days and weeks went by, and no trace of wreckage came to light—and finally all hope was abandoned.
“Then suddenly an awful state of scare arose among the seafaring population. Ghostly bayings began to be heard at night on the cliff in the neighbourhood of The Skegs. They were heard by fishermen in their boats at sea and by belated wanderers out on the down. Some had even made out the shape of a large dog resting on the summit of the loftier of The Skegs. Forthwith, the theory took root that Richard Dorrien had, beyond doubt, murdered his brother, and in expiation was doomed to haunt the scene of the tragedy and take the shape of his huge and savage boar-hound. Those who have any idea to what depths of superstition the country population was in those days plunged, can easily imagine the frantic terror which such an apparition would have for the pliers of a dangerous calling. Why, to this day you can’t induce one of the fisher folk to venture too near The Skegs—let alone land there.”
“But wasn’t there a death warning conveyed by the apparition?” asked Roland.
“Ah! now we come to the strangest part of the whole story. There got about soon afterwards a curious prophecy; no one has ever been able to tell with whom it originated. Perhaps you know it?”
“I know that this shape is said to appear whenever one of us had lived long enough, and that it is predicted that we are none of us to die in our beds, but yet bloodlessly, which is a consolation to any of us who may be engaged in a scrimmage. But the prediction has been falsified—on the last occasion at any rate. My brother Vernon tumbled into a crevasse, you know, and as the poor chap must have been dashed to pieces the tradition fails.”
“Well, I don’t want to encourage you in any uncomfortable apprehensions, Dorrien; but what you say does not necessarily follow.”
“Now you mention it, no more it does. And it is undoubtedly a queer thing that we should all have come to grief by water. I suppose, as a glacier is frozen water, the last instance holds good. Then there was my uncle, who died suddenly on deck, and was buried at sea. My grandfather, again, was drowned while skating, and they say the tradition carries itself further back still. However, as we seem all born to be drowned we can none of us be hanged, so there’s a bright side to even that situation. By the way, was the ‘Ban’ to the fore on the last occasion?”
“I only know that so it was reported. A shepherd came running in from Durnley Downs one night, with a white face and chattering teeth, and vowed he had seen and heard the dog on The Skegs. Two days afterwards the news of the disaster arrived. But I wouldn’t trouble my head about the affair, if I were you.”
“Not I. Life is a precious deal too prosaic and tangible a concern for a man to bother himself about local superstitions.”