t no longer meddles with their destinies, or has any thing
to do with the repose of their departed friends. Indeed, human wretches in
the shape of body-snatchers seem here in England to have usurped the
office of the owl in our churchyards; "et vendunt tumulis corpora rapta
suis."[7]

Up to the year 1813, the barn owl had a sad time of it at Walton Hall. Its
supposed mournful notes alarmed the aged housekeeper. She knew full well
what sorrow it had brought into other houses when she was a young woman;
and there was enough of mischief in the midnight wintry blast, without
having it increased by the dismal screams of something which people knew
very little about, and which every body said was far too busy in the
churchyard at nighttime. Nay, it was a well-known fact, that if any person
were sick in the neighbourhood, it would be for ever looking in at the
window, and holding a conversation outside with somebody, they did not
know whom. The gamekeeper agreed with her in every thing she said on this
important subject; and he always stood better in her books when he had
managed to shoot a bird of this bad and mischievous family. However, in
1813, on my return from the wilds of Guiana, having suffered myself, and
learned mercy, I broke in pieces the code of penal laws which the knavery
of the gamekeeper and the lamentable ignorance of the other servants had
hitherto put in force, far too successfully, to thin the numbers of this
poor, harmless, unsuspecting tribe. On the ruin of the old gateway,
against which, tradition says, the waves of the lake have dashed for the
better part of a thousand years, I made a place with stone and mortar,
about 4 ft. square, and fixed a thick oaken stick firmly into it. Huge
masses of ivy now quite cover it. In about a month or so after it was
finished, a pair of barn owls came and took up their abode in it. I
threatened to strangle the keeper if ever, after this, he molested either
the old birds or their young ones; and I assured the housekeeper that I
would take upon myself the whole responsibility of all the sickness, woe,
and sorrow that the new tenants might bring into the Hall. She made a low
courtesy; as much as to say, "Sir, I fall into your will and pleasure:"
but I saw in her eye that she had made up her mind to have to do with
things of fearful and portentous shape, and to hear many a midnight
wailing in the surrounding woods. I do not think that up to the day of
this old lady's death