Pennant relates a story of a burglarious grand-larceny troop of rats, which nearly frightened a young lady out of her wits, by mistaking her chimney for one leading to a cheese-room. She was suddenly wakened by a tremendous clatter in her bed-chamber, and on looking up saw a terrific troop of rats running about in wild disorder. She had presence of mind enough to throw her candlestick at them (timor arma ministral) and to her great joy she found that they speedily departed by the way which they had entered her apartment, leaving only a cloud of soot over the room.
Forty years ago, the house of a surgeon in Swansea was greatly infested with rats, and he completely got rid of them by burning off all the hair from one of them which he had caught alive, and then allowing it to return to its hole. It was said that he never afterward saw a rat on his premises, except the burnt sufferer, which on the following day returned, and was caught in the same trap from which he had been but just set at liberty. I suppose that in their "Advertiser," the description of a ghost, and a notice of haunted premises was given, which caused the whole colony so unanimously to decamp.
[A DARK CHAPTER FROM THE DIARY OF A LAW CLERK.]
One Ephraim Bridgman, who died in 1783, had for many years farmed a large quantity of land in the neighborhood of Lavenham or Lanham (the name is spelt both ways), a small market-town about twelve miles south of Bury St. Edmunds. He was also land agent as well as tenant to a noble lord possessing much property thereabouts, and appears to have been a very fast man for those times, as, although he kept up appearances to the last, his only child and heir, Mark Bridgman, found on looking closely into his deceased father's affairs, that were every body paid, he himself would be left little better than a pauper. Still, if the noble landlord could be induced to give a very long day for the heavy balance due to him—not only for arrears of rent, but moneys received on his lordship's account—Mark, who was a prudent energetic young man, nothing doubted of pulling through without much difficulty—the farm being low rented and the agency lucrative. This desirable object, however, proved exceedingly difficult of attainment, and after a protracted and fruitless negotiation, by letter, with Messrs. Winstanley, of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, London, his lordship's solicitors, the young farmer determined, as a last resource, on a journey to town, in the vague hope that on a personal interview he should find those gentlemen not quite such square, hard, rigid persons as their written communications indicated them to be. Delusive hope! They were precisely as stiff, formal, accurate, and unvarying as their letters. "The exact balance due to his lordship," said Winstanley, senior, "is, as previously stated, £2103 14s. 6d., which sum, secured by warrant of attorney, must be paid as follows: one half in eight, and the remaining moiety in sixteen months from the present time." Mark Bridgman was in despair: taking into account other liabilities that would be falling due, compliance with such terms was, he felt, merely deferring the evil day, and he was silently and moodily revolving in his mind whether it might not be better to give up the game at once rather than engage in a prolonged, and almost inevitably disastrous struggle, when another person entered the office and entered into conversation with the solicitor. At first the young man did not appear to heed—perhaps did not hear what was said—but after a while one of the clerks noticed that his attention was suddenly and keenly aroused, and that he eagerly devoured every word that passed between the new comer and Mr. Winstanley. At length the lawyer, as if to terminate the interview, said, as he replaced a newspaper—The Public Advertiser—an underlined notice in which had formed the subject of his colloquy with the stranger, upon a side table, by which sat Mark Bridgman. "You desire us then, Mr. Evans, to continue this advertisement for some time longer?" Mr. Evans replied, "Certainly, six months longer, if necessary." He then bade the lawyers "good-day," and left the office.
"Well, what do you say, Mr. Bridgman!" asked Mr. Winstanley, as soon as the door had closed. "Are you ready to accept his lordship's very lenient proposal?"
"Yes," was the quick reply. "Let the document be prepared at once, and I will execute it before I leave." This was done, and Mark Bridgman hurried off, evidently, it was afterward remembered, in a high state of flurry and excitement. He had also, they found, taken the newspaper with him—by inadvertence, the solicitor supposed, of course.
Within a week of this time, the good folk of Lavenham—especially its womankind—were thrown into a ferment of wonder, indignation, and bewilderment! Rachel Merton, the orphan dressmaking girl, who had been engaged to, and about to marry Richard Green, the farrier and blacksmith—and that a match far beyond what she had any right to expect, for all her pretty face and pert airs, was positively being courted by Bridgman, young, handsome, rich, Mark Bridgman of Red Lodge (the embarrassed state of the gentleman-farmer's affairs was entirely unsuspected in Lavenham); ay, and by way of marriage, too—openly—respectfully, deferentially—as if he, not Rachel Merton, were the favored and honored party! What on earth, every body asked, was the world coming to?—a question most difficult of solution; but all doubt with respect to the bonâ fide nature of Mark Bridgman's intentions toward the fortunate dressmaker was soon at an end; he and Rachel being duly pronounced man and wife at the parish church within little more than a fortnight of the commencement of his strange and hasty wooing! All Lavenham agreed that Rachel Merton had shamefully jilted poor Green, and yet it may be doubted if there were many of them that, similarly tempted, would not have done the same. A pretty orphan girl, hitherto barely earning a subsistence by her needle, and about to throw herself away upon a coarse, repulsive person, but one degree higher than herself in the social scale—entreated by the handsomest young man about Lavenham to be his wife, and the mistress of Red Lodge, with nobody knows how many servants, dependents, laborers!—the offer was irresistible! It was also quite natural that the jilted blacksmith should fiercely resent—as he did—his sweetheart's faithless conduct; and the assault which his angry excitement induced him to commit upon his successful rival a few days previous to the wedding, was far too severely punished, every body admitted, by the chastisement inflicted by Mark Bridgman upon his comparatively weak and powerless assailant.
The morning after the return of the newly-married couple to Red Lodge from a brief wedding trip, a newspaper which the bridegroom had recently ordered to be regularly supplied was placed upon the table. He himself was busy with breakfast, and his wife, after a while, opened it, and ran her eye carelessly over its columns. Suddenly an exclamation of extreme surprise escaped her, followed by—"Goodness gracious, my dear Mark, do look here!" Mark did look, and read an advertisement aloud, to the effect that "If Rachel Edwards, formerly of Bath, who, in 1762, married John Merton, bandmaster of the 29th Regiment of Infantry, and afterward kept a school in Manchester, or any lineal descendant of hers, would apply to Messrs. Winstanley, solicitors, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, they would hear of something greatly to their advantage." "Why, dear Mark," said the pretty bride, as her husband ceased reading, "my mother's maiden name was Rachel Edwards, and I am, as you know, her only surviving child!" "God bless me, to be sure! I remember now hearing your father speak of it. What can this great advantage be, I wonder? I tell you what we'll do, love," the husband added, "you would like to see London, I know. We'll start by coach to-night, and I'll call upon these lawyers, and find out what it all means." This proposition was, of course, gladly acceded to. They were gone about a fortnight, and on their return it became known that Mark Bridgman had come into possession of £12,000 in right of his wife, who was entitled to that sum by the will of her mother's maiden sister, Mary Edwards, of Bath. The bride appears not to have had the slightest suspicion that her husband had been influenced by any other motive than her personal charms in marrying her—a pleasant illusion which, to do him justice, his unvarying tenderness toward her through life, confirmed and strengthened; but others, unblinded by vanity, naturally surmised the truth. Richard Green, especially, as fully believed that he had been deliberately, and with malice prepense, tricked out of £12,000, as of the girl herself; and this conviction, there can be no doubt, greatly increased and inflamed his rage against Mark Bridgman—so much so that it became at last the sole thought and purpose of his life, as to how he might safely and effectually avenge himself of the man who was flaunting it so bravely in the world, while he—poor duped and despised castaway—was falling lower and lower in the world every day he lived. This was the natural consequence of his increasingly dissolute and idle habits. It was not long before an execution for rent swept away his scanty stock in trade, and he thenceforth became a ragged, vagabond hanger-on about the place—seldom at work, and as often as possible drunk; during which fits of intemperance his constant theme was the bitter hatred he nourished toward Bridgman, and his determination, even if he swung for it, of being one day signally avenged. Mark Bridgman was often warned to be on his guard against the venomous malignity of Green; but this counsel he seems to have spurned, or treated with contempt.
While the vengeful blacksmith was thus falling into utter vagabondism, all was sunshine at Red Lodge. Mark Bridgman really loved his pretty and gentle, if vain-minded wife—a love deepened by gratitude, that through her means he had been saved from insolvency and ruin; and barely a twelvemonth of wedded life had passed, when the birth of a son completed their happiness. This child (for nearly three years it did not appear likely there would be any other) soon came to be the idol of its parents—of its father, even more than of its mother. It was very singularly marked, with two strawberries, exceedingly distinct, on its left arm, and one, less vivid, on its right. There are two fairs held annually at Lavenham, and one of these—when little Mark was between three and four years old—Mr. Bridgman came in from Red Lodge to attend, accompanied by his wife, son, and a woman-servant of the name of Sarah Hollins. Toward evening, Mrs. Bridgman went out shopping, escorted by her husband, leave having been previously given Hollins to take the child through the pleasure—that is the booth and show part of the fair; but with strict orders not to be absent more than an hour from the inn where her master and mistress were putting up. In little more than the specified time the woman returned, but without the child; she had suddenly missed him, about half an hour before, while looking on at some street-tumbling, and had vainly sought him through the town since. The woman's tidings excited great alarm; Mr. Bridgman himself instantly hurried off, and hired messengers were, one after another, dispatched by the mother in quest of the missing child. As hour after hour flew by without result, extravagant rewards, which set hundreds of persons in motion, were offered by the distracted parents; but all to no purpose. Day dawned, and as yet not a gleam of intelligence had been obtained of the lost one. At length some one suggested that inquiry should be made after Richard Green. This was promptly carried into effect, and it was ascertained that he had not been home during the night. Further investigation left no room for doubt that he had suddenly quitted Lavenham; and thus a new and fearful light was thrown upon the boy's disappearance. It was conjectured that the blacksmith must have gone to London; and Mr. Bridgman immediately set off thither, and placed himself in communication with the authorities of Bow Street. Every possible exertion was used during several weeks to discover the child, or Green, without success, and the bereaved father returned to his home a harassed, spirit-broken man. During his absence his wife had been prematurely confined of another son, and this new gift of God seemed, after a while, to partially fill the aching void in the mother's heart; but the sadness and gloom which had settled upon the mind of her husband was not perceptibly lightened thereby. "If I knew Mark was dead," he once remarked to the rector of Lavenham, by whom he was often visited, "I should resign myself to his loss, and soon shake off this heavy grief. But that, my dear sir, which weighs me down—is in fact slowly but surely killing me—is a terrible conviction and presentiment that Green, in order fully to work out his devilish vengeance, will studiously pervert the nature of the child—lead him into evil, abandoned courses—and that I shall one day see him—but I will not tell you my dreams," he added, after stopping abruptly, and painfully shuddering, as if some frightful spectre passed before his eyes. "They are, I trust, mere fancies; and yet—but let us change the subject."