e; and the news of Preston,
when it came, was to those faithful friends no news, only confirmation
of their fears. None, after that, dared hope; they knew that he must
die. And the 24th of February 1716 saw a countryside plunged in grief,
for that day fell on the scaffold the head of one whom everybody loved,
who was every man's friend, who never turned empty away those who went
to him seeking help.

Blood-red were the northern lights that flashed and shimmered so wildly
in the heavens that night, red as the blood that had soaked into the
sawdust of a scaffold; never before in the memory of living man had
aurora gleamed with hue so startling. But the sorrow in the hearts of
his people passed not away like the fading of the northern lights. His
memory lives still in Northumberland; still, when they see the gleam and
flicker of the aurora, folk there call it "Lord Derwentwater's Light";
and even yet it is a tradition that dwellers by the stream which flows
past Dilston were wont to tell how, on that fatal day, its waters ran
red like blood.

When "a' was done that man could do, and a' was done in vain," there
remained but to convey his headless body, if it might be, to the spot
where his forebears lie at rest.

"Albeit that here in London Town,
It is my fate to die,
O, carry me to Northumberland,
In my fathers' grave to lie."

The Earl's body had been buried at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and of those
who went to recover it and to bring it home, there was one famous in
Northumberland story, Frank Stokoe of Chesterwood. A remarkable man was
Stokoe, of enormous personal strength and of great height--in stature a
veritable child of Anak--a man without fear, brave to recklessness, a
good friend and a terrible enemy. Added to all this, he was an
extraordinarily expert swordsman. He was a man, too, of much influence
and acknowledged authority in the county--a useful man to have on the
side of the King--one to whom the people listened, and to whom often an
appeal for help was made in ticklish affairs.

There was, for instance, that affair of the feud between Lowes of
Willimoteswick Castle and Leehall of Leehall, which kept a great part of
Tynedale in hot water for so many years. Leehall appears to have been
physically the better man; at any rate, on more than one occasion Lowes
seems to have escaped from the clutches of his enemy solely by the
superior speed of the horse he rode, or possibly he was a ligh