Again I could not help smiling, even although the man's face was pale with fear.
"Ay, young master, but let me tell you this: One night three of the strongest men in these parts were over at the Queen's Head, in the parish of St. John, drinking. You may have heard of them even in London. Three brothers, and each man of them stood over six foot and a half high. Well, they declared after they had each drunk a quart of strong ale that they feared nothing under heaven. Then the landlord made a bet that they dared not go and spend the hours from eleven to one o'clock in the middle of the night at Pycroft. Well they took the bet, for five pounds it was, and the next night Jack, and Jim, and Tom Turtle started for Pycroft. A lot of us walked with them to the gates, and although we were in great fear we waited for them to return. We comforted ourselves by trying to sing psalms and saying our prayers, as the parson advised us to do. But we didn't have to wait two hours, young master. Before midnight they was back to us again, and each of them was trembling like an aspen leaf."
"Why, what did they see?"
"Ay, master, we could never get that from them, except by little bits. One spoke of blue flames, another told of howling, another said he had seen Old Solomon come to life again, and he chased them through the woods. The next day, when they told the parson, he went up there; but naught could he see. Every door was locked and barred, every window was fastened."
"And were there any evidences that any one had been there through the night?"
"Ay, there were; the parson saw footmarks which were half the footmarks of a man, and half of a beast. But that was not all. When the parson tried to look into the place, through a window where a small pane of glass was broken, he smelt brimstone—brimstone, young master. And since then the parson hath it that while a man may be safe to go there while the sun is shining, ten chances to one but he will be met with the devil after sundown. And so no man will buy the house master, and no man will go there after dark."
"But from whom did this old man Solomon get the house?" I asked.
"It is said that he was one of the Pycrofts, but I know not. Some have it that old Lord Denman had it at one time, but I do not know. Others say there's a spell cast upon it. Certain it is that the parson says that on a huge stone near the front door these words are carved—
A Pycroft built this house
In the hardest of stone,
And the mortar was truly mixed
With a Pycroft's blood and bone,
If another here would live
Because of a well-lined purse,
The mortar shall become
The buyer's lasting curse."
In spite of myself the labourer's talk made me pause, but I was not the son of my father for naught. The teaching of a lifetime was not to be destroyed because of an ignorant man's vain babbling, and I held to my resolution to visit the old place again that night. I therefore presently rode back, and after a hearty meal I fell asleep, from which I did not wake till sundown.