ancied himself again wandering on the heath, which
appeared to be peopled with spectres, who all beckoned to him not to
enter the cottage, and as he approached it, they vanished with a hollow
and despairing cry. The scene then changed, and he found himself again
seated by the fire, where the countenances of the men scowled upon him
with the most terrifying malignity, and he thought the old woman
suddenly seized him by the arms, and pinioned them to his side.
Suddenly the boy was startled from these agitated slumbers, by what
sounded to him like a cry of distress; he was broad awake in a moment,
and sat up in bed,--but the noise was not repeated, and he endeavoured
to persuade himself it had only been a continuation of the fearful
images which had disturbed his rest; when, on glancing at the door, he
observed underneath it a broad, red stream of blood silently stealing
its course along the floor. Frantic with alarm, it was but the work of
a moment to spring from his bed, and rush to the door, through a chink
of which, his eye nearly dimmed with affright he could watch
unsuspected whatever might be done in the adjoining room.

His fear vanished instantly when he perceived that it was only a _goat_
that they had been slaughtering; and he was about to steal into his bed
again, ashamed of his groundless apprehensions, when his ear was
arrested by a conversation which transfixed him aghast with terror to
the spot.

"This is an easier job than you had yesterday," said the man who held
the goat. "I wish all the throats we've cut were as easily and quietly
done. Did you ever hear such a noise as the old gentleman made last
night! It was well we had no neighbour within a dozen of miles, or they
must have heard his cries for help and mercy."

"Don't speak of it," replied the other; "I was never fond of
bloodshed,"

"Ha, ha!" said the other with a sneer, "you say so, do you?"

"I do," answered the first, gloomily; "the Murder Hole is the thing for
me--_that_ tells no tales--a single scuffle--a single plunge--and the
fellow's dead and buried to your hand in a moment. I would defy all the
officers in Christendom to discover any mischief _there_."

"Ay, Nature did us a good turn when she contrived such a place as that.
Who that saw a hole in the heath, filled with clear water, and so
small that the long grass meets over the top of it, would suppose that
the depth is unfathomable, and that it conceals more than forty people
who