aunched from its pedestal, fell upon his
head, and crushed him to the ground. A mangled and breathless mass was
taken from beneath the image, and the hands and visage of Paslew were
found spotted with blood dashed from the gory carcass. The author of the
wizard's destruction was suspected, but never found, nor was it
positively known who had done the deed till years after, when Hal o'
Nabs, who meanwhile had married pretty Dorothy Croft, and had been
blessed by numerous offspring in the union, made his last confession,
and then he exhibited no remarkable or becoming penitence for the act,
neither was he refused absolution.

Thus it came to pass that the abbot and his enemy perished together. The
mutilated remains of the wizard were placed in a shell, and huddled into
the grave where his wife had that morning been laid. But no prayer was
said over him. And the superstitious believed that the body was carried
off that very night by the Fiend, and taken to a witch's sabbath in the
ruined tower on Rimington Moor. Certain it was, that the unhallowed
grave was disturbed. The body of Paslew was decently interred in the
north aisle of the parish church of Whalley, beneath a stone with a
Gothic cross sculptured upon it, and bearing the piteous
inscription:--"_Miserere mei_."

But in the belief of the vulgar the abbot did not rest tranquilly. For
many years afterwards a white-robed monastic figure was seen to flit
along the cloisters, pass out at the gate, and disappear with a wailing
cry over the Holehouses. And the same ghostly figure was often seen to
glide through the corridor in the abbot's lodging, and vanish at the
door of the chamber leading to the little oratory. Thus Whalley Abbey
was supposed to be haunted, and few liked to wander through its deserted
cloisters, or ruined church, after dark. The abbot's tragical end was
thus recorded:--

Johannes Paslew: Capitali Effectus Supplicio.
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