, Barwick confessed to the mayor of York, that 'on Monday
was seventh night' (there seems to be an error here) he 'found the
conveniency of a pond' (as Aubrey puts it) 'adjoining to a quickwood
hedge,' and there drowned the woman, and buried her hard by. At the
assizes, Barwick withdrew his confession, and pleaded 'Not Guilty'.
Lofthouse, his wife, and a third person swore, however, that the
dead woman was found buried in her clothes by the pond side, and on
the prisoner's confession being read, he was found guilty, and
hanged in chains. Probably he was guilty, but Aubrey's dates are
confused, and we are not even sure whether there were two ponds, and
two quickset hedges, or only one of each. Lofthouse may have seen a
stranger, dressed like his sister-in-law, this may have made him
reflect on Barwick's tale about taking her to Selby; he visited that
town, detected Barwick's falsehood, and the terror of that discovery
made Barwick confess.

Surtees, in his History of Durham, published another tale, which
Scott's memory did not retain. In 1630, a girl named Anne Walker
was about to have a child by a kinsman, also a Walker, for whom she
kept house. Walker took her to Dame Care, in Chester le Street,
whence he and Mark Sharp removed her one evening late in November.
Fourteen days afterwards, late at night, Graime, a fuller, who lived
six miles from Walker's village, Lumley, saw a woman, dishevelled,
blood-stained, and with five wounds in her head, standing in a room
in his mill. She said she was Anne Walker, that Mark Sharp had
slain her with a collier's pick, and thrown her body into a coal-
pit, hiding the pick under the bank. After several visitations,
Graime went with his legend to a magistrate, the body and pick-axe
were discovered, Walker and Sharp were arrested, and tried at
Durham, in August, 1631. Sharp's boots, all bloody, were found
where the ghost said he had concealed them 'in a stream'; how they
remained bloody, if in water, is hard to explain. Against Walker
there was no direct evidence. The prisoners, the judge summing up
against them, were found guilty and hanged, protesting their
innocence.

It is suggested that Graime himself was the murderer, else, how did
he know so much about it? But Walker and Sharp were seen last with
the woman, and the respectable Walker was not without a motive,
while, at this distance, we can conjecture no motive in the case of
Graime. {262} Cockburn's Voyage up the