was for many a year, and we believe still is, told round
many a cottage hearth, and though it appeals to what many would term
superstition, it yet sounded, in the ears of a rude and simple
audience, a thrilling, and let us hope, not altogether fruitless
homily.

DICKON THE DEVIL

About thirty years ago I was selected by two rich old maids to visit a
property in that part of Lancashire which lies near the famous forest
of Pendle, with which Mr. Ainsworth's "Lancashire Witches" has made us
so pleasantly familiar. My business was to make partition of a small
property, including a house and demesne, to which they had a long time
before succeeded as co-heiresses.

The last forty miles of my journey I was obliged to post, chiefly by
cross-roads, little known, and less frequented, and presenting scenery
often extremely interesting and pretty. The picturesqueness of the
landscape was enhanced by the season, the beginning of September, at
which I was travelling.

I had never been in this part of the world before; I am told it is now
a great deal less wild, and, consequently, less beautiful.

At the inn where I had stopped for a relay of horses and some
dinner--for it was then past five o'clock--I found the host, a hale
old fellow of five-and-sixty, as he told me, a man of easy and
garrulous benevolence, willing to accommodate his guests with any
amount of talk, which the slightest tap sufficed to set flowing, on
any subject you pleased.

I was curious to learn something about Barwyke, which was the name of
the demesne and house I was going to. As there was no inn within some
miles of it, I had written to the steward to put me up there, the best
way he could, for a night.

The host of the "Three Nuns," which was the sign under which he
entertained wayfarers, had not a great deal to tell. It was twenty
years, or more, since old Squire Bowes died, and no one had lived in
the Hall ever since, except the gardener and his wife.

"Tom Wyndsour will be as old a man as myself; but he's a bit taller,
and not so much in flesh, quite," said the fat innkeeper.

"But there were stories about the house," I repeated, "that they said,
prevented tenants from coming into it?"

"Old wives' tales; many years ago, that will be, sir; I forget 'em; I
forget 'em all. Oh yes, there always will be, when a house is left so;
foolish folk will always be talkin'; but I hadn't heard a word about
it this twenty year."

It was vain trying