ke of York by proxy. "But six generations
of the descendants of Colonel Stephen Payne," it is added, "have come
and gone since the utterance of the midwife's curse, but they never
yet have had a daughter born to them." Such is the immutability of the
decrees of Fate.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Harland's "Lancashire Legends" (1882), 4, 5.

[2] See Sir J. Bernard Burke's "Family Romance," 1853.

[3] "Popular Rhymes of Scotland" (1870), 217-18.

[4] See "Book of Days," I., 559.

[5] "The Rise of Great Families," 191-202.

CHAPTER II.

THE SCREAMING SKULL.

"Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, its portals foul;
Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall--
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul."
BYRON.

There are told of certain houses, in different parts of the country,
many weird skull stories, the popular idea being that if any profane
hand should be bold enough to remove, or in any way tamper with, such
gruesome relics of the dead, misfortune will inevitably overtake the
family. Hence, for years past, there have been carefully preserved in
some of our country homes numerous skulls, all kinds of romantic
traditions accounting for their present isolated and unburied
condition.

An old farmstead known as Bettiscombe, near Bridport, Dorsetshire, has
long been famous for its so-called "screaming skull," generally
supposed to be that of a negro servant who declared before his death
that his spirit would not rest until his body was buried in his native
land. But, contrary to his dying wish, he was interred in the
churchyard of Bettiscombe, and hence the trouble which this skull has
ever since occasioned. In the August of 1883, Dr. Richard Garnett, his
daughter, and a friend, while staying in the neighbourhood determined
to pay this eccentric skull a visit, the result of which is thus
amusingly told by Miss Garnett:

"One fine afternoon a party of three adventurous spirits started off,
hoping to discover the skull and investigate its history. This much we
knew, that the skull would only scream when it was buried, and so we
hoped to get leave to inter it in the churchyard. The village of
Bettiscombe was at length reached, and we found our way to the old
farmhouse, which stood at the end of the village by itself. It had
evidently been a manor house, and a very handsome one, too. We were
admitted into a fine paved hall, and attempted to break the i