lady,
and that one day he went into a fit of insane jealousy, or pretended
to do so, over the then Vavasour of Weston. Money lenders, too, were
pressing him hard, and he had become desperate. Rushing madly into the
house, he plunged a dagger into one and then into another of his
children, and afterwards tried to take the life of their mother, a
steel corset which she wore luckily saving her life. Leaving her for
dead, he mounted his horse with the intention of killing the only
other child he had, and who was then at Norton. But being pursued by
some villagers, his horse stumbled and threw him off, and the assassin
was caught, being pressed to death at York Castle for his crimes. Not
only have the stains of this bloody tragedy ever since been indelible,
but the spirit of Walter Calverley could not rest, having often been
seen galloping about the district at night on a headless horse.[28]
And, speaking of ghosts which appear in this eccentric fashion, we may
note that Eastbury House, near Blandford--now pulled down--had in a
certain marble-floored room, ineffaceable stains of blood,
attributable, it is said, to the suicide of William Doggett, the
steward of Lord Melcombe, whose headless spirit long haunted the
neighbourhood.

As a punishment for her unnatural cruelty in causing her child's
death, it is commonly reported that the spirit of Lady Russell is
doomed to haunt Bisham Abbey, Berkshire, the house where this act of
violence was committed. Lady Russell had by her first husband a son,
who, unlike herself, had a natural antipathy to every kind of
learning, and so great was his obstinate repugnance to learning to
write that he would wilfully blot over his copy-books in the most
careless and slovenly manner. This conduct so irritated his mother
that, to cure him of the propensity, she beat him again and again
severely, till at last she beat him to death. To atone for her
cruelty, she is now doomed to haunt the room where the fatal deed was
perpetrated; and, as her apparition glides along, she is always seen
in the act of washing the blood stains of her son from her hands.
Although ever trying to free herself of these marks of her unnatural
crime, it is in vain, as they are indelible stains which no water will
remove.

By a strange coincidence, some years ago, in altering a window
shutter, a quantity of antique copy-books were discovered pushed into
the rubble between the joints of the floor, and one of these books wa