ful years, when all was fresh and joyous; when
our thoughts were in all the prime, the spring-tide of their
existence, and our emotions, young and jocund as ourselves, bubbled
forth fresh and clear as the mountain-spring from its source. The
change is not in the objects around us; it is in ourselves. Looking
through the medium of our own jaded and enervated feelings, we fancy
all things have the same worn-out aspect, and contrast the present
with the freshness and vigour of our former existence.

Turn we now to the former inmates at Waddow, an old-fashioned building
in that old-fashioned age, now re-edified and re-built. It is
beautifully situated on a slope on the Yorkshire side of the Ribble,
beyond the "hippin-stones" we have named.

In a low, dark chamber, panelled with dingy oak, into which the
morning sun burst joyously, its garish brightness ill assorting with
the solemnity and even sadness of the scene, there sat an elderly
matron, owner and occupier of the place. The casements were so beset
with untrimmed branches and decayed tendrils that her form looked dim
and almost impalpable, seen through the mist, the vagrant motes
revelling in the sunbeams. It seemed some ghostly, some attenuated
shape, that sat, still and stately, in that gloomy chamber. Before her
stood a female domestic, antique and venerable as herself, and the
conversation was carried on scarcely above a whisper, as though
silence brooded over that mansion, rarely disturbed by voice or
footstep.

"I heed not these idle tales. A hammer and a willing hand will pound
yon bugbear into dirt," said the dame. "If there be none else, I'll
try what the hand of a feeble but resolute woman can do. Yon
Dagon--yon graven image of papistrie, which scares ye so, shall be
broken for the very beasts to trample on."

"But the dins last night were"----

"Tell me not of such folly. When yonder senseless thing is gone, you
shall be quiet, maybe, if the rats will let ye. Send Jock hither, and
let Jim the mason be sent for, and the great iron mallet. Quick,
Mause, at my bidding. We shall see whether or not yonder grim idol
will dare to stir after it is cast down."

With a look of surprise, and even horror, at this impious intent, did
the ancient housekeeper move slowly forth to execute her commands.

The innocent cause of all this broil was a certain stone figure,
rudely sculptured, which, time out of mind, had been the disturbing
but undisturbed inmate of an ob