could suggest or terror could enact was done. They were on the crisis of flying out of the house, and taking refuge at Wood-end, when Jack was heard cheerfully whistling as if returning from the field. Jack had made the tramp upon the stairs; for, hearing the sound of the horn, and the approach of many feet below, he thought it was time to be going; and had the armed troop been courageous enough, they Iwould have taken him in the fact. But their fears saved both him and his joke. He came up with a well-affected astonishment at seeing such a body of wild and strangely armed folk. "What is the matter?" exclaimed Jack; and the matter was detailed by a dozen voices, and with a dozen embellishments. "Pshaw!" said Jack, "it is all nonsense, I know. It is a horse kicking in the stable; or a cat that has chucked a tile out of the gutter, or something. Give me a candle; I durst go!" A candle was readily put into his hands, and he marched off, all following him to the foot of the staircase, but not a soul daring to mount a single step after him. Jack went "Why," he shouted, "here's nothing!" "O!" they cried from below, "look under the beds; look into the closets," and look into every imaginable place. Jack went very obediently, and duly and successively returned a shout, that there was nothing; it was all nonsense! At this there was more fear and consternation than ever. A thief might have been tolerated; but these supernatural noises! Who was to sleep in such a house? There was nothing for it, however, but for them to adjourn and move to the kitchen, and talk it all over; and torture it into a thousand forms; and exaggerate it into something

Up

The Wood

unprecedentedly awful and ominous. endians were regaled with a good portion of brownstout; thanked for their valuable services, and they set off. The family was left alone. "Mistress," said Jack, "now you'd better get your tea; I am sure you must want it." Nay Jack," said she, "I have had my tea: no tea for me to night. I haven't a heart like thee Jack; take my share and welcome."

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Jack sate down with the servant maids, and talked of this strange affair, which he persisted in calling "all nonsense;" and devoured the cakes which he had determined to win. Many a time did he laugh in his sleeve as he heard this "great fright," as it came to be called, talked over, and painted in many new colours by the fireside; but he kept his counsel strictly while he continued to live there; for he knew a terrible castigation would be the sure consequence of a disclosure; but after he quitted the place, he made a full and merry confession to his new comrades, and occasioned one long laughter to run all the country round. The people of the Fall, backed by the Wood-endians, persisted that the noises were something supernatural, and that this was an afterinvention of Jack's to disgrace them; but Jack and the public continued to have the laugh on their side.

After all, I know not whether the world of sprites and hobgoblins may not assume. a greater latitude of action and revelation in these out-of-the-world places than in populous ones; whether the Lars and Lemures, the Fairies, Robin-goodfellows, Hobthrushes and Barguests may not linger about the regions where there is a certain quietness, a simplicity of heart and faith, and ample old rooms, attics, galleries

and grim halls to range over, seeing that they hate cities, and knowledge, and the conceit that attends upon them; for certainly, I myself have seen such sights, and heard such sounds as would puzzle Dr. Brewster himself, with all his natural magic, to account for. In an old house in which my father lived when I was a boy, we had such a capering of the chairs, or what seemed such in the rooms over our heads; such aerial music in a certain chimney corner, as if Puck himself were playing on the bag-pipes; such running of black cats up the bed-curtains and down again, and disappearing, no one knew how; and such a variety of similar supernatural exhibitions, as was truly amusing. And a friend of mine, having suffered a joiner to lay a quantity of elm boards in a little room near a kitchen chimney to dry, was so annoyed by their tumbling and jumbling about, that when the man came the next day to fetch part of them, he desired him to take the whole, giving him the reason for it. "O!" said the man, "you need not be alarmed at that-that is always the way before a coffin is wanted!" As if the ghost of the deceased came and selected the boards for the coffin of its oldworld-mate the body.

But enough of the terrors of solitary houses without those of superstition. I close my chapter; and yet I expect, dear readers, that in every place where you peruse this, you will say, "O, these are nothing to what I could have told. If Mr. Howitt had but heard so and so." Thank you, my kind and fair friends in a thousand places-I wish I had.

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CHAPTER VI.

MIDSUMMER IN THE FIELDS.

I never see a clear stream running through the fields at this beautiful time of the year but I wish, like old Izaak Walton, to take rod and line, and pleasant book, and wander away into some sylvan, or romantic region, and give myself up wholly to the influence of the season; to angle, and read, and dream by the ever-lapsing water, in green and flowery meadows, for days and weeks, caring no more for all that is going on in this great and many-coloured world, than if there was no world at all beyond these happy meadows so full of sun-shine and quietness. Truly that good old man had hit on one of the ways to true enjoyment of life. He knew that simple habits and desires were mighty ingredients in genuine happiness; that to enjoy ourselves, we must first cast the world and all its cares out of our hearts; we must actually renounce its pomps and vanities; and then how sweet becomes every summer bank; how bright every summer stream; what a delicious tranquillity falls upon our hearts; what a self-enjoyment reigns all through it; what a love of God kindles in it from

all the fair things around. They may say what they will of the old prince of anglers, of his cruelty and inconsistency; from those charges I have vindicated him in another place, we know that he was pious and humane. We know that in the stillness of his haunts, and the leisure of his latter days, wise and kind thoughts flowed in upon his soul, and that the beauty and sweetness of nature which surrounded him, inspired him with feelings of joy and admiration, that streamed up towards the clear heavens above him in grateful thanksgiving. It is these things which have given to his volume an everlasting charm; and that affect me, at this particular time of the year, with a desire to haunt like places. It may be the green banks of the beautiful streams of Derbyshire— the Wye, or the Dove; for now are they most lovely, running on amongst the verdant hills and bosky dales of the Peak, surrounded by summer's richest charms. Their banks are overhung with deep grass, and many a fair flower droops over them; the foliage of the trees that shroud their many windings, is most delicate; and above them, grey rocks lift their heads, or greenest hills swell away to the blue sky. And as

evening falls over them, what a softness clothes those verdant mountains! what a depth of shadow fills those hollows! what a voice of waters rises on the hushed landscape! But even here, in the vale of Trent, it is beautiful. There are a thousand charms gathered about one of these little streams that are hastening towards our fair river. They are charms that belong to this point of time, and that in a week or two will be gone. The spring is gone, with all her long anticipated pleasures. The snow-drop, the