THE LAUGHING HORSEMAN.

WHERE was the body found?' said the parish clerk. In the Deadman's Clough,' replied the landlord, 'close under the roots of the big black elm.'

It is the strangest thing of the kind,'-said the clerk,

That has happened in England, in my time,' added the landlord.

There was a dead pause. No one else thought fit to join in the conversation of the two worthies, who were, in a manner, the secondary oracles of the parish. But the bystanders filled the yard of the Crow and Teapot, and peeped over each other's shoulders, and under their arms, with a shuddering curiosity, to catch a glimpse of the corse. At times, a half-suppressed whisper would rise among the crowd; and, occasionally, a scuffle took place, as those behind pushed forward those in the front ranks, who, as vehemently, resisted the suggestion. For, anxious as all were to see the mangled and hideous spectacle, none were willing to approach beyond a certain degree of appropinquity, seemingly marked out, by common consent, as the extremity of their advances.

Lost for three weeks!' ejaculated the landlord, and found in such a state!'

'Most unfit,' said the clerk, for a Christian body, under an old tree; and might have lain time unknown, without bell or book ;-what of his immortal soul !'

True, true! and such a life as he led, drinking at home-never spent a penny in public; and gambling abroad, and getting money, the Lord knows how, and, yet, never a farthing to a starving body.'

Nor a penny in the poor's box; but, as to that, he never came within ten graves' length of a church door,' said the clerk.

Never, since the day that we first heard of his winning three hundred guineas from Will Codicil, the rich lawyer's son; and that was the first winning Gripe Gibbons ever made, one way or other,' added the host. VOL. II. Sept. 1830.

L

'Aye, but he made many a one after; never rattled a dice-box, or chucked a guinea, or dealt a card, but sure it was, great or small, the sweepings always came to one pocket,' said the landlord's plump wife, who began to feel impatient at the long silence under which she had remained.

Even so,' replied the clerk: it is to be prayed for, that he may not have lost more than he gained. It ever seemed strange to me, the run of luck he had. I never knew of a gambler that always won,-not one; saving, always, when it might be with the help, with the abetting of-of him-of one that's not to be named.' The insinuation, conveyed by these words, was not lost on the audience. Those who had been most eager in pressing forward towards the centre, now shrunk back a rank. The whole assembly presented a galaxy of faces, most unduly exaggerated in length; and looked at the speaker, as if eager to devour the words of strange import that fell from a man, who, according to his station, spake with authority.

And I would fain know,' continued the speaker, lowering his voice, and assuming a more mysterious tone, 'I would fain know the meaning of that bauble that never left him when living, and hangs to his neck, now that he lies there, a mangled corse."

When the rising horror, which the sayings of the clerk had given birth to, had a little subsided, a woman, one of the bystanders, ventured to offer an answer to the implied query.

I have heard Sukey Barnes, his old housekeeper, when she was well and hearty,-as blythesome an old woman as one would see on a summer's day,-say her belief, that it was a charm against Him that we know of, and that he prized it more than all his ill-gotten winnings; and often, after his riotings, when those fearful fits came on him, he would grasp it with his clasped hands, and cry to it to save him. Morning and night, sleeping and waking, he had it on him; but why, or for what, a Christian soul should put such a faith in a senseless thing o' metal, He only knows.'

An oracular humph!' accompanied with a look from under the bent eyebrows of the clerk, betokened his deep consideration of Meg Symonds' account; which increased so much the terror of the crowd, (and crowds were not by far so enlightened in those times, as in our own,) that, although it was yet day-light, many a one looked, fearfully, over the left shoulder, and seemed only to wait an example to depart, with all possible speed, from the vicinity of the fearful thing. At length, the landlord revolved his circumference, and, leading the way with the clerk into the house, was followed by the whole assembly, man, woman, and child, emulously disputing the priority of entrance, and alike fearful of being the last to quit the yard in which lay the unfortunate object of their anxiety.

The approaching gloom of the evening was dispelled by the fire of large faggots, that roared, and fumed, and flustered, in the huge chimney of the inn-kitchen, a cheering defiance to the chills of February. A capacious semicircle, widely expanding around this welcome point of attraction, was speedily formed; within which, divers round and square tables were laden with earthen jugs, brown as the English barleycorn juice wherewith they were replete. As the contents of the measures diminished, the courage of the inmates waxed higher; and stories, dark and mysterious, were dealt out in lavish profusion. The atmosphere seemed infected with the contagion of the strange and the supernatural; no subject was broached but savoured of more than earthly interest: none listened to but what spake of the grave, and its fearful scenery, or the still more exciting theme of the delusions and machinations of the enemy of man. The old ran through the memory of their days, and the days of their fathers, to cull from the traditions of the murdered and the slayer. The swollen corpse of the water fiend's victim--the black damning marks of the strangled-the rattling of the gibbet chains-and the noiseless step of the things that mortal eye may hardly look upon and live, were, by turns, presented to the thirsting and fevered imagina

tion; whilst the young drank in, with greedy ears, the sleep-destroying histories, till not a soul in the room but was saturated with the dreadful topic that thrilled their blood, with the nervous excitement of an irresistible stimulant.

One of the company, in particular, was chained in attention to these narratives. The subject seemed, by a sort of enchantment or fascination, to enwrap his soul, and chain down every faculty; yet, to look at him, no one would have selected him as an object likely to be affected, in any peculiar degree, by supernatural terrors. He was a young man, apparently not more than five and twenty; his hale frame, and ruddy cheeks, indicated bodily health, as well as freedom from any burthensome excess of care; and he seemed well able to defend himself from such foes as might be overcome by dint of strength: but, under the influence of the fears which at present assailed, he became like Samson, weak, not indeed, as another man,' but chicken-hearted as a child. Never was man so tranalated by terror.

He of the timorous mind sat on a pedlar's box, which, at once, denoted his profession, and inclosed the chief of his worldly substance. Though not immoderate in its dimensions, it, on this occasion, carried double; for, squatted upon it, close by the owner, sat a favoured she, the faultless Phyllis of the perambulant Corydon, whose left arm half surrounded her reluctant waste, while the right in part supported its owner, as he leaned against the huge chimney-piece into whose comfortable vicinity he had drawn. It was a moot point, whether the occasional squeezes which the pedlar bestowed on the object of his affections, were, in fact, the designations of love or of fear; whether produced by an ebullition of tender feeling, or by a desire of being certified that he was in the immediate companionship of tangible creatures of flesh and blood-things of his own nature. And so he sat and listened, and listened and sat, till his blood curdled cold in his veins, and his naturally curled locks began to as

sume

Briefly,

an inclination to perpendicularity. he was frightened to death, as near as a man might be.

The

Time passed on. It had grown quite dark-without a light you could not have seen your hand. Moon and stars were as effectually be-clouded, as if they had ceased to exist. The broad blaze flickered in the chimney jollily, and gleamed on the little snug diamond window panes with infinite gaiety. ghosts and goblins became familiar; and this, added to the cheery look of the apartment, with, here and there, glimpses anticipatory of the wherewith preparing for supper,-taking into consideration, too, the ennobling powers of the stout ale,-raised up the hearts of the wondering company. We must except, however, the pedlar; he, nerveless to shake away his fear, still clung to Cicely Simkins ;-and peeping, now over his right, now over his left shoulder, quivered inwardly at his own shadow, as it rose and fell, with the waving of the flame.

The conversation was suddenly interrupted. A loud calling at the outer door of the inn betokened the traveller impatient to deliver his horse to the care of the ostler, and himself to the shelter of the house. The landlord was, extempore, on his legs; and, in a few moments, ushered in, with the customary phrases of hospitiary welcome, the new-comer.

The traveller, though a good-looking man in the main, had something odd about him,-so much so, that his appearance, for a time, put an end to the converse, and a dead blank ensued. He gazed about him, carelessly; marched, with great slinging steps, to the hearth; and, rubbing his hands briskly over the flame, took the seat by the pedlar's Dulcinea, which the landlord had recently deserted, and called for a pint of usquebaugh.

Now, there was nothing strange in all this :-you or I, or any other traveller, on a cold night, and after a ride, it may be of thirty miles, would have done the Yet so it was, that the guests stared, first at

same.