ht
have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those
parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour
which made his name a byword through the West. It chanced that
this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be
known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held
lands near the Baskerville estate. But the young maiden, being
discreet and of good repute, would ever avoid him, for she
feared his evil name. So it came to pass that one Michaelmas
this Hugo, with five or six of his idle and wicked companions,
stole down upon the farm and carried off the maiden, her father
and brothers being from home, as he well knew. When they had
brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper
chamber, while Hugo and his friends sat down to a long carouse,
as was their nightly custom. Now, the poor lass upstairs was like
to have her wits turned at the singing and shouting and terrible
oaths which came up to her from below, for they say that the
words used by Hugo Baskerville, when he was in wine, were such as
might blast the man who said them. At last in the stress of her
fear she did that which might have daunted the bravest or most
active man, for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered
(and still covers) the south wall she came down from under the
eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues
betwixt the Hall and her father's farm.

"It chanced that some little time later Hugo left his guests to
carry food and drink--with other worse things, perchance--to his
captive, and so found the cage empty and the bird escaped. Then,
as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for,
rushing down the stairs into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the
great table, flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he
cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night
render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but
overtake the wench. And while the revellers stood aghast at the
fury of the man, one more wicked or, it may be, more drunken than
the rest, cried out that they should put the hounds upon her.
Whereat Hugo ran from the house, crying to his grooms that they
should saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the
hounds a kerchief of the maid's, he swung them to the line, and
so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor.

"Now, for some space the revellers stood agape, unable to
understand all that had been done i