thumberland bagpipe, and his neighbour
was a good performer on the flageolet. When we had pleased our master by
continued good conduct, he would send for these two musicians, who gave
us a delightful evening concert in the general play-room, Mr. Storey
himself supplying an extra treat of fruit, cakes, and tea.

"Tudhoe had her own ghosts and spectres, just as the neighbouring
villages had theirs. One was the Tudhoe mouse, well known and often seen
in every house in the village; but I cannot affirm that I myself ever saw
it. It was an enormous mouse, of a dark brown colour, and did an
immensity of mischief. No cat could face it; and as it wandered through
the village, all the dogs would take off, frightened out of their wits,
and howling as they ran away. William Wilkinson, Mr. Storey's farming
man, told me he had often seen it, but that it terrified him to such a
degree that he could not move from the place where he was standing.

"Our master kept a large tom-cat in the house. A fine young man, in the
neighbouring village of Ferry-hill, had been severely bitten by a cat,
and he died raving mad. On the day that we got this information from
Timothy Pickering, the carpenter at Tudhoe, I was on the prowl for
adventures, and in passing through Mr. Storey's back kitchen, his big
black cat came up to me. Whilst I was tickling its bushy tail, it turned
round upon me, and gave me a severe bite in the calf of the leg. This I
kept a profound secret, but I was quite sure I should go mad every day,
for many months afterwards.

"There was a blacksmith's shop leading down the village to Tudhoe Old
Hall. Just opposite this shop was a pond, on the other side of the
road. When any sudden death was to take place, or any sudden ill to
befall the village, a large black horse used to emerge from it, and walk
slowly up and down the village, carrying a rider without a head. The
blacksmith's grandfather, his father, himself, his three sons, and two
daughters, had seen this midnight apparition rise out of the pond, and
return to it before the break of day. John Hickson and Neddy Hunt, two
hangers-on at the blacksmith's shop, had seen this phantom more than
once, but they never durst approach it. Indeed, every man and woman and
child believed in this centaur-spectre, and I am not quite sure if our
old master himself did not partly believe that such a thing had
occasionally been seen on very dark nights.

"Tudhoe has no river, a