gossips, old and
young, are more particularly prone to a vigilant exercise of their
talents and avocations--we say it need not be a source of either
suspicion or surprise that many of these conduit-pipes of
intelligence, even before the day was broad awake, did pour forth an
overwhelming flood of alarm and exaggeration. According to these
veracious lovers of the marvellous, shrieks were heard about the
requisite time, and in the precise direction where it must needs
follow that Isabel was just in the act of being whisked off by one of
Pegg's emissaries, and that ere now she was doubtless offered as one
of the septennial sacrifices to her revenge.

It was a brave and comely morning, and a brave sight it was to see old
and young go forth to the river on that blessed day. The crisp and icy
brink of the brawling Ribble was beset by groups of idle folk, some
anxiously looking out for symptoms or traces of the body, others
occupied with rakes and various implements for searching the unknown
regions beneath the turbid and angry waters. Beyond were the antlered
and hoary woods of Waddow, every bow laden with the snows of
yestereven, sparkling silently in the broad and level sweep of light,
pouring in one uninterrupted flood over the wide and chilly waste--a
wilderness of snow, a gay and gorgeous mantle glittering on the bosom
of death and desolation.

Gaffer Wiswall was there. The old man almost beside himself with
grief, heart-stricken with the blow, felt alone, a scathed trunk,
doomed to survive when the green verdure of his existence had
departed.

Wet and weary were the searchers, and their toil unremitting, but the
body was not found. The "Well," Peg O'Nelly's Well, was tried, with
the like result. Surely this was a visitation of more than ordinary
spite and malignity. Hitherto the bodies of the victims, with but few
exceptions, had been rendered back to their disconsolate survivors,
the revengeful ghost apparently satisfied with their extinction; but
it is now high time to make the attempt, if possible, to rid
themselves of her persecutions.

"Look here!" said one of the bystanders, pointing to the river's
margin; "there hath gone a horse, or it may be two, along these
slippery banks, but a few hours ago, and the track seems to come from
the river."

"Let us see to the other side," said another, "if there be a fellow to
it." And, sure enough, on the opposite bank, there were footmarks
corresponding thereto, as tho