the clerk had given birth to, had a little subsided, a woman, one of the bystanders, ventured to offer an answer to the implied query.

"I have heard Sukey Barnes, his old housekeeper, when she was well and hearty,-as blithsome an old woman as one would see on a a summer's day, say her belief, that it was a charm against Him that we know of, and that he prized it more than all his ill gotten winnings; and often, after his riotings, when those fearful fits came on him, he would grasp it with his clasped hands, and cry to it to save him. Morning and night, sleeping and waking, he had it on him; but why, or for what, a Christian soul should put such a faith in a senseless thing o' metal, He only knows."

An oracular "humph!" accompanied with a look from under the bent eyebrows of the clerk, betokened his deep consideration of Meg Symonds' account; which increased so much the terror of the crowd (and crowds were not by far so enlightened in those times as in our own), that, although it was yet daylight, many a one looked fearfully over the left shoulder, and seemed only to wait an example to depart, with all possible speed, from the vicinity of the fearful thing. At length, the landlord revolved his circumference, and, leading the way with the clerk into the house, was followed by the whole assembly, man, woman, and child, emulously disputing the priority of entrance, and alike desirous of not being the last to quit the yard in which lay the unfortunate object of their anxiety.

The approaching gloom of the evening was

dispelled by the fire of larch faggots, that roared, and fumed, and flustered, in the huge chimney of the inn kitchen, a cheering defiance to the chills of February. A capacious semicircle, widely expanding around this welcome point of attraction, was speedily formed; within which divers round and square tables were laden with earthen jugs, brown as the English barleycorn juice wherewith they were replete. As the contents of the measures diminished, the courage of the inmates waxed higher; and stories, dark and mysterious, were dealt out in lavish profusion. The atmosphere seemed infected with the contagion of the strange and the supernatural; no subject was broached but savoured of more than earthly interest: none listened to but what spake of the grave, and its fearful scenery, or the still more exciting theme of the delusions and machinations of the enemy of man.

The old ran through the

memory of their days, and the days of their fathers, to cull from the traditions of the murdered and the slayer. The swollen corpse of the water-fiend's victim-the black damning marks of the strangled-the rattling of the gibbet chains -and the noiseless step of the things that mortal eye may hardly look upon and live, were, by turns, presented to the thirsting and fevered imagination; whilst the young drank in, with greedy ears, the sleep-destroying histories, till not a soul in the room but was saturated with the dreadful topic that thrilled their blood, with the nervous excitement of an irresistible stimulant.

One of the company in particular was chained in attention to these narratives. The subject

seemed, by a sort of enchantment or fascination, to enwrap his soul and chain down every faculty; yet, to look at him, no one would have selected him as an object likely to be affected, in any peculiar degree, by supernatural terrors. He was a young man, apparently not more than five and twenty; his hale frame and ruddy cheeks indicated bodily health, as well as freedom from any burdensome excess of care; and he seemed as well able to defend himself from such foes as might be overcome by dint of strength: but, under the influence of the fears which at present assailed, he became, like Samson, weak-not, indeed, as another man," but chicken-hearted as a child. Never was man so translated by terror.

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He of the timorous mind sat on a pedler's box, which, at once, denoted his profession, and enclosed the chief of his worldly substance. Though not immoderate in its dimensions, it, on this occasion, carried double; for, squatted upon it, close by the owner, sat a favoured she, the faultless Phyllis of the perambulant Corydon, whose left arm half surrounded her reluctant waist, while the right in part supported its owner, as he leaned against the huge chimney-piece, into whose comfortable vicinity he had drawn. It was a moot point, whether the occasional squeezes which the pedler bestowed on the object of his affections were, in fact, the designations of love or fear; whether produced by an ebullition of tender feeling, or by a desire of being certified that he was in the immediate companionship of tangible creatures of flesh and blood-things of his own nature.

And so he sat and listened, and listened and sat, till his blood curdled cold in his veins, and his naturally curled locks began to assume an inclination to perpendicularity. Briefly, he was frightened to death, as near as a man might be.

Time passed on. It had grown quite darkwithout a light you could not have seen your hand. Moon and stars were as effectually beclouded, as if they had ceased to exit. The broad blaze flickered in the chimney jollily, and gleamed on the little snug diamond windowpanes with infinite gaiety. The ghosts and goblins became familiar; and this, added to the cheery look of the apartment, with, here and there, glimpses anticipatory of the wherewith preparing for supper,-taking into consideration, too, the ennobling powers of the stout ale,raised up the hearts of the wondering company. We must except, however, the pedler; he, nerveless, to shake away his fear, still clung to Cicely Simkins; and peeping now over his right, now over his left shoulder, quivered inwardly at his own shadow, as it rose and fell with the waving of the flame.

The conversation was suddenly interrupted. A loud calling at the outer door of the inn betokened the traveller impatient to deliver his horse to the care of the ostler, and himself to the shelter of the house. The landlord was, extempore, on his legs; and, in a few moments, ushered in, with the customary phrases of hospitality welcome, the

new comer.

The traveller, though a good-looking man in the main, had something odd about him,—so

much so, that his appearance for a time put an end to the converse, and a dead blank ensued. He gazed about him carelessly-marched, with great slinging steps, to the hearth; and, rubbing his hands briskly over the flame, took the seat by the pedler's Dulcinea, which the landlord had recently deserted, and called for a pint of usquebaugh.

Now, there was nothing strange in all this :you or I, or any other traveller, on a cold night, and after a ride, it may be of thirty miles, would have done the same. Yet so it was, that the guests stared, first at each other, and then at the stranger, as if at a loss what to make of it. They looked at the traveller, and scrutinized, as if they would have seen through him,—which they certainly would had he been transparent, or only semi-opaque. But his frame was too dense to admit of such researches; and he lolled as he sat, and stretched his legs to the fire, and sipped his liquor like a man of middle earth.

Stay! We have given no account of his personal appearance; which, as before hinted, was a little queer. He was a tall man, not corpulent, his legs degenerating to spindle; but what they wanted in natural coatings, was made up by a prodigy of jack-boots, with huge spurs, that jingled and jaunted like a whole company of the tenth hussars. His coat and light pantaloons, of a parson's gray, were worse for wear, and began to rustify. A prim small ruff betokened him of the old school, and accorded well with a steeplecrowned beaver, with superlative brim's; when laid aside, this disclosed a head of uncombed