its terrors when it
can be surveyed and appreciated.

"_Te misereat, miserescat, vel commiserescat mei,_"

quoted the schoolmaster, who, before he could find an equivalent in
his mother-tongue, was tripped up by the nimble constructor of
raiment.

"The dule and his dam are verily let loose on us," said he.

"Our Lady and her grace forefend!" cried he of the awl and lapstone,
whose pipe having unaccountably been extinguished, was just in the act
of being thrust down into the red and roaring billets when he beheld a
blue flame hovering on them; a spiral wreath of light shot upwards,
and the log was reduced to a mass of glowing ashes and half-burnt
embers. At this critical moment the stranger deliberately approached
the hearth. He threw a whole flagon of liquor wilfully upon the waning
faggots, and in a moment fiz, splutter, and smoke proclaimed that the
warfare of the elements, like many others, had ended in the
destruction of both the contending belligerents. The yule-log was
extinguished. There was a general rush, and a consternation of so
unequivocal a nature, that tables, benches, platters, and drinking
utensils were included in one vast overthrow. Some thought they saw
the glowing emblem of Yule transferred to the stranger's eyes, which
twinkled like twin loopholes to the furnace within.

"I have thee now!" said he; but who this unfortunate might be whom
they had so left, even in the very claws of the Evil One, they knew
not, nor did they care to inquire. Each, too happy to escape, rushed
forth hatless and sore dismayed into the street, with all the horrors
of a pelting and pitiless night upon his head, and thought himself
well off by the exchange, and too much overjoyed that his own person
was not the victim in the catastrophe.

In the morning Isabel, the landlord's ward, and his coal-black steed
were amissing!

Now, it was but a mile or so from this ancient borough to Brunckerley,
or Bromiley hippin (stepping) stones, across the Ribble, where, upon
this insecure but long-used mode of transit, the steps of our
forefathers were guided over the ford. These same stepping-stones were
quite as often the instruments or executioners of Peggy's vengeance as
the well itself dignified by her name. It need not, therefore, be a
matter of surprise that when the appalling and fearful events of the
preceding night were bruited forth in the public thoroughfares upon
New-Year's morning--a season when news-carriers and