him but of his innocent victim that tales are still
told in the Rede valley.

From the night when his spirit was by treachery and violence reft from
his body, there was no rest for Percival Reed.

In the gloaming, when trees stand out in the semblance of highway
robbers, and a Liddesdale drow meets a North Sea haar, his sorrowful
spirit was wont to be seen by the lonely traveller, making moan, seeking
rest. Far and near, through all that part of the Border that he had so
faithfully "kept," the spirit wandered. A moan or sigh from it on the
safe side of the Carter Bar would scatter a party of Scottish reivers
across the moorland as no English army could have done. Any belated
horseman riding out of the dark would take the heart out of the most
valiant of Northumbrians because they feared that they saw "Parcy Reed."
Not always in the same form did the Keeper appear. That was the terror
of it. At times he would come gallantly cantering across the moorland as
he had done when blood ran warm in his veins. At other times he would be
only a sough in the night wind. A feeling of dread, an undefinable
something that froze the marrow and made the blood run cold. And yet,
again, he would come as a fluttering, homeless soul, whimpering and
formless, with a moaning cry for Justice--Justice--Judgment on him who
had by black treachery hurried him unprepared to his end. The folk of
Redesdale bore it until they could bear it no longer. The blood of many
a Hall was spilt by the men of Percival Reed's clan without giving any
ease to that clamouring ghost. At last they sought the help of a
"skeely" man. He was only a thatcher, but whilst he plied his trade of
covering mortal dwellings with sufficient to withstand the blasts of
heaven, he had also studied deeply matters belonging to another sphere.
"Gifted," says his chronicler, "with words to lay it at rest," he
summoned the ghost to his presence, and "offered it the place and form
it might wish to have."

Five miles of land did that disembodied spirit of the Keeper of
Redesdale choose for his own. As might be guessed, he fixed on the banks
of the Rede, and he chose that part of it that lies between Todlawhaugh
and Pringlehaugh. The fox that barks from the bracken on the hillside at
early morning, the grouse that crows from the heather, the owl that
hoots from the fir woods at night, to those did the ghost of Percival
Reed act as keeper. By day he roosted, like a bat or a night bird, on