rapidly that terror seemed to have given wings to his feet.
A loud cry near the spot he had left arose on his ears without
suspending his flight. The hound had stopped at the place where the
Pedlar's wounds bled so profusely, and deeming the chase now over, it
lay down there, and could not be induced to proceed; in vain the men
beat it with frantic violence, and tried again to put the hound on the
scent,--the sight of blood had satisfied the animal that its work was
done, and with dogged resolution it resisted every inducement to pursue
the same scent a second time. The pedlar boy in the meantime paused not
in his flight till morning dawned--and still as he fled, the noise of
steps seemed to pursue him, and the cry of his assassins still sounded
in the distance. Ten miles off he reached a village, and spread instant
alarm throughout the neighbourhood--the inhabitants were aroused with
one accord into a tumult of indignation--several of them had lost sons,
brothers, or friends on the heath, and all united in proceeding
instantly to seize the old woman and her sons, who were nearly torn to
pieces by their violence. Three gibbets were immediately raised on the
moor, and the wretched culprits confessed before their execution to the
destruction of nearly fifty victims in the Murder Hole which they
pointed out, and near which they suffered the penalty of their crimes.
The bones of several murdered persons were with difficulty brought up
from the abyss into which they had been thrust; but so narrow is the
aperture, and so extraordinary the depth, that all who see it are
inclined to coincide in the tradition of the country people that it is
unfathomable. The scene of these events still continues nearly as it
was 300 years ago. The remains of the old cottage, with its blackened
walls (haunted of course by a thousand evil spirits,) and the extensive
moor, on which a more modern _inn_ (if it can be dignified with such an
epithet) resembles its predecessor in every thing but the character of
its inhabitants; the landlord is deformed, but possesses extraordinary
genius; he has himself manufactured a violin, on which he plays with
untaught skill,--and if any _discord_ be heard in the house, or any
_murder_ committed in it, this is his only instrument. His daughter
(who has never travelled beyond the heath) has inherited her father's
talent, and learnt all his tales of terror and superstition, which she
relates with infinite spirit; bu