walked on,
having left the town, the sun poured his last beams on a group of
persons that appeared hastily collecting and gathering round a spot,
well known in the neighborhood of Knaresborough, called Thistle Hill.

"Let us avoid the crowd," said the curate. "Yet what, I wonder, can be
its cause?" While he spoke, two peasants hurried by towards the throng.

"What is the meaning of the crowd yonder?" asked the curate.

"I don't know exactly, your honor, but I hears as how Jem Ninnings,
digging for stone for the limekiln, have dug out a big wooden chest."

A shout from the group broke in on the peasant's explanation,--a sudden
simultaneous shout, but not of joy; something of dismay and horror
seemed to breathe in the sound.

Walter looked at the curate. An impulse, a sudden instinct, seemed to
attract them involuntarily to the spot whence that sound arose; they
quickened their pace, they made their way through the throng. A deep
chest, that had been violently forced, stood before them; its contents
had been dragged to day, and now lay on the sward--a bleached and
mouldering skeleton! Several of the bones were loose, and detached from
the body. A general hubbub of voices from the spectators,--inquiry,
guess, fear, wonder,--rang confusedly around.

"Yes!" said one old man, with gray hair, leaning on a pickaxe, "it is
now about fourteen years since the Jew pedlar disappeared. These are
probably his bones,--he was supposed to have been murdered!"

"Nay!" screeched a woman, drawing back a child who, all unalarmed,
was about to touch the ghastly relics, "nay, the pedlar was heard
of afterwards. I'll tell ye, ye may be sure these are the bones of
Clarke,--Daniel Clarke,--whom the country was so stirred about when we
were young!"

"Right, dame, right! It is Clarke's skeleton," was the simultaneous cry.
And Walter, pressing forward, stood over the bones, and waved his hand
as to guard them from further insult. His sudden appearance, his tall
stature, his wild gesture, the horror, the paleness, the grief of his
countenance, struck and appalled all present. He remained speechless,
and a sudden silence succeeded the late clamor.

"And what do you here, fools?" said a voice, abruptly. The spectators
turned: a new comer had been added to the throng,--it was Richard
Houseman. His dress loose and disarranged, his flushed cheeks and
rolling eyes, betrayed the source of consolation to which he had flown
from his domestic afflic