Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/184

 Wansdyke that in old time hard blows were struck by Dane and Saxon, Celt and Roman. Thousands of Romans, with skulls beaten in by British axes and bronze swords, lie peacefully under the thin turf of the Wiltshire Downs. The white horse standard was forced back here by Arthur's warriors at the crowning victory at Badbury. Those British villages, now mere rings of stone, mere dimples in the turf, were first torn down by the rough hands of men who had helped to destroy Jerusalem with Titus. Those Druid circles were once trodden by the white-robed priests, who urged on the scythed chariots against the Romans. The thrush pipes sweetly now from the wood, where once the yelling painted warriors rushed on the spears of Vespasian; and the mole burrows silently, where once the legionaries dug trenches to shelter themselves from the British slingers.

The crow remembers, as he flies from grassy camp to camp, many traditions of the plain, and of its dangers in former days, when Death often met the traveller in this great ocean of wild waste.

On a dark calm October night in 1816, the Exeter mail having traversed many miles of the plain, rattled at last in the dark up to Winterslow House, where the guard sounded his bugle and the coachman stopped. There was but a dim light at the inn, and the coachman had hardly pulled up his four smoking horses, when a dark shape suddenly leaped with a roar upon one of the leaders. No one knew what monster it could be. It seemed a horrible nightmare—the passengers leaped down panic-struck. Two dandies, awakened out of their sleep by the monster's roars of rage and fury, and by the horse's screams and neighs of angry terror, leaped out of the vehicle, dashed into the inn, and barricaded themselves in an upper room to bide the result, or at all events to keep death at bay as long as possible. A large mastiff belonging to the inn, eager for battle and careless of what the monster might be, leaped to the rescue, but was instantly killed. When lights came, it proved to be a lioness that had escaped from a caravan on its way to Salisbury fair. It had left the horse, which, striking out like a boxer with its fore hoofs pursued its retreating assailant and beat it to the ground. Presently the keeper arrived, and, accustomed to tame such beasts, forced the lioness by blows and threats into an outhouse, where it was secured.

Floating above Lady Down, the crow notes that the spot is remarkable for the apparition of a headless lady, who, centuries ago, was slain there by her injured husband, who overtook her as she was flying from him with a lover. But on the downs, towards Marlborough, a Wiltshire tradition of the highwaymen times compels the crow to alight on the stone that records the fact. One dark night at the beginning of this century, when pistols were as regular travelling furniture as cigar cases are now, a Wiltshire gentleman, riding over the downs beyond Hungerford, was attacked by two thieves on foot—a short grim man and a tall savage man. His pistols missed fire, but the traveller having a stout heart and a strong arm, drove back the fellows with the heavy butt-end of his riding whip, and eventually, after a tough fight, beat down the shorter of his two enemies. After a further tussle the taller man also threw up the game and fled. The traveller, resolute on retaliation, pursued him fast, but the man was swift-footed fear gave him wings, and though the moon had just risen, he contrived to dodge about in and out of Roman encampments, behind bushes and old earthworks, so as to evade for a long time the keen and unrelenting pursuit. Hour after hour the pursuit and the flight continued, till, just towards daybreak, the traveller caught the tired rogue in the open, and pushed him to his full speed. A lash of the horse and he gained on him. Nearer and nearer now, till at last in a far valley of the downs he ran in on him, and leaping off his horse threw him heavily to the ground, grasped his throat, and bade him surrender. The man made no resistance, no curse broke from him, no cry for mercy. He was dead! His heart had broken. Like a hunted hare, he had died of fatigue before the hounds' teeth could meet in him.

From Inkpen Beacon, the highest chalk hill of England, and just south of Hungerford, the crow looks down from his airy height on the spot where in 1856 the last bustard was caught. This clumsy bird, the ostrich of Europe, was once common on the Wiltshire downs, where it could stride and stalk as it used to do before the drum drove it away from the plain of Chalons. It used to be run down with greyhounds, but its flesh hardly repaid this singular chase. In 1805, one of these strong birds, four feet long and very powerful in the claws and beak, attacked a horseman near Heytesbury, treating the genus homo as an intruder on its wild domain. The bustard is now all but extinct.

That brave mansion of the Pophams, Littlecot, whose mullioned windows overlook the valley of the Kennet, is the scene of the old legend of Wild Darell, which Scott tells in the notes to Rokeby. One night, in the reign of Elizabeth, a midwife was sent for out of Berkshire. The pay was to be light, the groom said, but the woman must be blindfolded, and must ask no questions and tell no tales. She consented, and mounted behind the man, who took her a long rough ride over the downs. She lost all sense of direction or distance. At last she arrived at a house, was shown up a grand staircase, and performed her duties. When they were ended, the tapestry lifted, and a ferocious man entered: who seized the new-born child, dashed it under the grate, destroying it as ruthlessly as if it had been a wolf's cub. The woman returned unhappy, and brooding over the murder. She bore the agonies of remorse for some time, but at last was driven to tell the secret and free her conscience. She went and confessed the matter to a magistrate. Had she any clue? Yes, she had counted the number of stairs up which she had