adsome shoutings the folk of Bamborough came in
haste to greet their Prince and Princess, and to speed them up to the
castle, where the King, their father, welcomed them full joyously. But
there were angry murmurs from the men of Northumbria, who called for
vengeance on her who had so nearly ruined their dear land, and who had
striven to slay both Prince and Princess. Childe Wynd held up his hand:
"To me belongs the payment," he said, and the men laughed loud when they
saw his stern face, for those were days when grim and bloody deeds were
gaily done, and blithe they were to think of torture for the Witch
Queen. Cowering in a corner of her bower in the turret, white-faced and
haggard, they found her, and dragged her out to Childe Wynd. But no
speedy end by a clean sword blade was to be hers, nor any slower death
by lingering torture.

"Woe be to thee, thou wicked witch!" said the Prince; and she shivered
and whimpered piteously, for well she knew that in far-off lands across
the sea Childe Wynd had studied magic, and that for her were designed
eternal terrors.

"Woe be to thee, thou wicked witch,
An ill death mayst thou dee;
As thou my sister hast lik'ned,
So lik'ned shalt thou be.

I will turn you into a toad,
That on the ground doth wend;
And won, won, shalt thou never be,
Till this world hath an end."

To the fairy days of long, long ago belong Prince Wynd and the Princess
Margaret and the wicked Witch Wife. But still in the country near
Bamborough, as maids go wandering in the gloaming down by the yellow
sands and the rough grass where the sea-pinks grow, they will be
suddenly startled by a horrible great dun-coloured thing that moves
quickly towards them, as though to do them a harm. With loudly beating
hearts they run home to tell that they have encountered the venomous
toad that hates all virtuous maidens, who once was a queen, her who
created the Laidley Worm of Spindleston-Heugh.

A BORDERER IN AMERICA

It would be matter for wonder if, in the histories of old Border
families, record of strange personal experiences did not at times crop
up. Sons of the Border have wandered far, and have sojourned in many
lands, and borne their part in many an untoward event. But it is not
likely that any can lay claim to adventures more strange and romantic
than those which, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, befell a
youthful member of one of the most ancient