And creaks 'mid whistling rain,

Gibbet and steel--the accursed wheel--

A murderer in his chain.

 

---William and Helen.

 

As the eddying currents sweep over its plains in howling, bleak December, the horse and her rider passed over what remained of Lincolnshire. Grantham is gone, and they are now more slowly looking up the ascent of Gonerby Hill, a path well known to Turpin; where often, in bygone nights, many a purse had changed its owner. With that feeling of independence and exhilaration which every one feels, we believe, on having climbed the hill-side, Turpin turned to gaze around. There was triumph in his eye. But the triumph was checked as his glance fell upon a gibbet near him to the right, on the round point of hill which is a landmark to the wide vale of Belvoir. Pressed as he was for time, Dick immediately struck out of the road, and approached the spot where it stood. Two scarecrow objects, covered with rags and rusty links of chains, depended from the tree. A night crow screaming around the carcases added to the hideous effect of the scene. Nothing but the living highwayman and his skeleton brethren was visible upon the solitary spot. Around him was the lonesome waste of hill, o'erlooking the moonlit valley: beneath his feet, a patch of bare and lightning-blasted sod: above, the wan, declining moon and skies, flaked with ghostly clouds; before him, the bleached bodies of the murderers, for such they were.

 

"Will this be my lot, I marvel?" said Dick, looking upwards, with an involuntary shudder.

 

"Ay, marry will it," rejoined a crouching figure, suddenly springing from beside a tuft of briars that skirted the blasted ground.

 

Dick started in his saddle, while Bess reared and plunged at the sight of this unexpected apparition.

 

"What, ho! thou devil's dam, Barbara, is it thou?" exclaimed Dick, reassured upon discovering it was the gipsy queen, and no spectre whom he beheld. "Stand still, Bess--stand, lass. What dost thou here, mother of darkness? Art gathering mandrakes for thy poisonous messes, or pilfering flesh from the dead? Meddle not with their bones, or I will drive thee hence. What dost thou here, I say, old dam of the gibbet?"

 

"I came to die here," replied Barbara, in a feeble tone; and, throwing back her hood, she displayed features well-nigh as ghastly as those of the skeletons above her.

 

"Indeed," replied Dick. "You've made choice of a pleasant spot, it must be owned. But you'll not die yet?"

 

"Do you know whose bodies these are?" asked Barbara, pointing upwards.

 

"Two of your race," replied Dick; "right brethren of the blade."

 

"Two of my sons," returned Barbara; "my twin children. I am come to lay my bones beneath their bones--my sepulchre shall be their sepulchre; my body shall feed the fowls of the air as theirs have fed them. And if ghosts can walk, we'll scour this heath together. I tell you what, Dick Turpin," said the hag, drawing as near to the highwayman as Bess would permit her; "dead men walk and ride--ay, ride!--there's a comfort for you. I've seen these do it. I have seen them fling off their chains, and dance--ay, dance with me--with their mother. No revels like dead men's revels, Dick. I shall soon join 'em."

 

"You will not lay violent hands upon yourself, mother?" said Dick, with difficulty mastering his terror.

 

"No," replied Barbara, in an altered tone. "But I will let nature do her task. Would she ............