Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/149

 *

where; but a lot of skeletons have been found when digging in the moor round about. However, one night the landlord caught a Tartar. There was a scuffle in the room, and some pistol shots were heard, and the landlord was found dead on the floor: the traveller turned out to be a famous highwayman, who so cowed the rest of the house that he rode off in the morning with a good share of the landlord's plunder to which he quietly helped himself." But then the story may not be true, or only true in part, for tradition is a sad scandal-monger; and tradition, unlike a rolling stone, gathers substance as it goes on. I should perhaps state, in fairness to the worthy ostler's tale-telling talent, that I have only given his grim story in brief, and have purposely omitted some very gruesome and thrilling details that he positively gloated over. These my readers can supply for themselves if they be so minded, providing a trap-door in the floor of the chamber, with a deep well immediately below, and flavouring to taste.

But to return to the "Bell" at Stilton, from which I have wandered far afield. This gray and ancient hostelry, with its weather-tinted walls, produced an impression upon us difficult to analyse; it verily seemed as though there must be some old legend or mystery connected with the building and only waiting to be discovered. The glamour of romance seemed to brood over it: a romance in which the "knights of the road" figured prominently, and we began to weave a little story "all our own," after the most approved manner of Harrison