Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/484

476 But, if ’twere pity, if twere’twere [sic] pain, His voice was thick and low, And ’Tis no news,” he said “to hear You loved John Ashton so!

“I knew you, and I came to see— But since he’s dead, with you I’ll go at once to seek the corpse; And haply find it, too!”

Full simple was the lassie’s heart, For all her angry tears: She would have fear’d her lover’s death; She had no other fears:

She laid her reaping-hook aside, And stoop’d beneath the boughs, And follow’d with undoubting foot Among the hazel knowes.

A shaggy fell was just beyond; The village lights were far; And all was dusk, and all was still, Beneath the evening star:

Her mother was a mile away: No ear on earth to know What sounds might scare the hooting owl Or hush the beck below.—

That night a stranger horseman rode Full fiercely down the glen: And he may ride, or he may rest, Or he may come again,

But never more shall Ducie reap The harvests of the vale: Her maiden sleep is sound and deep At foot of Harwood Dale.