charmed sleep. At last,
stealing down into the kitchen, while the thieves were busy over her
master's strong box, she secured the hand, blew out the flames, and at
once the whole household was aroused."[14]

But the next story bears a closer resemblance to the Stainmore
narrative. One dark night, when all was shut up, there came a tap at the
door of a lone inn in the middle of a barren moor. The door was opened,
and there stood without, shivering and shaking, a poor beggar, his rags
soaked with rain, and his hands white with cold. He asked piteously for
a lodging, and it was cheerfully granted him; there was not a spare bed
in the house, but he could lie on the mat before the kitchen fire, and
welcome.

So this was settled, and everyone in the house went to bed except the
cook, who from the back kitchen could see into the large room through a
pane of glass let into the door. She watched the beggar, and saw him, as
soon as he was left alone, draw himself up from the floor, seat himself
at the table, extract from his pocket a brown withered human hand, and
set it upright in the candlestick. He then anointed the fingers, and
applying a match to them, they began to flame. Filled with horror, the
cook rushed up the back stairs, and endeavoured to arouse her master and
the men of the house. But all was in vain--they slept a charmed sleep;
so in despair she hastened down again, and placed herself at her post of
observation.

She saw the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb remained
unlighted, because one inmate of the house was awake. The beggar was
busy collecting the valuables around him into a large sack, and having
taken all he cared for in the large room, he entered another. On this
the woman ran in, and, seizing the light, tried to extinguish the
flames. But this was not so easy. She blew at them, but they burnt on as
before. She poured the dregs of a beer-jug over them, but they blazed
up the brighter. As a last resource, she caught up a jug of milk, and
dashed it over the four lambent flames, and they died out at once.
Uttering a loud cry, she rushed to the door of the apartment the beggar
had entered, and locked it. The whole family was aroused, and the thief
easily secured and hanged. This tale is told in Northumberland.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: Delrio. See also Thorpe's _Mythology_, vol. iii. p. 274.]

L

THE BLOODY FOOTSTEP

Local Records

On the threshold of one of the doors of Smithil