Page:Story of Blue Beard, or, The effects of female curiosity.pdf/13

 THE MURDER HOLE.

In a remote district of country belonging to Lord Cassillis, between Ayrshire and Galloway, about three hundred years ago, a moor of apparently boundless extent stretched several miles along the road, and wearied the eye of the traveller by the sameness and desolation of its appearance; not a tree varied the prospect---not a shrub enlivened the eye by its freshness---nor a native flower bloomed to adorn this ungenial soil. One 'lonesome desert’ reached the horizon on every side, with nothing to mark that any mortal had ever visited the scene before, except a few rude huts that were scattered near its centre; and a road, or rather pathway, for those whom business or necessity obliged to pass in that direction. At length, deserted as this wild region had always been, it became still more gloomy. Strange rumours arose, that the path of unwary travellers had been beset on this 'blasted heath,’ and that treachery and murder had intercepted the solitary stranger as he traversed its dreary