42 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



times like some page of horror torn out of Sheridan Le 

 Fanu, and to which the great magician of the world fan- 

 tastical could alone have given fit form and colour. 

 Summoned by his eerie genius, with what terrible 

 vividness would each incident, each actor in the buried 

 infamy, rise from the dead ! The whole story would 

 pass before us under a ghostly, shimmering, ghoul-like 

 glamour : the midwife at Shefford, a village seven miles 

 off, waked in the dead of night, with a promise of high 

 pay for her ofhce on condition that she should be blind- 

 folded ! the headlong ride through the wild weather 

 behind the silent serving man ! the arrival at a large 

 house which was strange to her ! the mounting of the 

 long stairs, which the woman, shadowed already with 

 some grim foreboding, counted carefully as she passed 

 up them ! the delivery in a gloomy, richly furnished 

 room of a masked lady ! the entrance of a tall man " of 

 ferocious aspect," who seized the newborn child, thrust 

 it into the fire that was blazing on the hearth, ground it 

 under his heavy boot till it was cinders ! then the 

 trembling departure of the pale spectator of the hideous 

 scene, blindfolded as she had come, aghast, speechless, 

 carrying a heavy bribe with her as the price of guilty 

 silence, but carrying also a piece of the curtain which 

 she had cut out of the bed — all this scene of horror how 

 the author of The Dragon Volant would have described 

 it for us ! And all this horror is history ! 



The original deposition made on her death-bed by 

 the midwife, whose name was Mrs. Barnes, and com- 

 mitted to writing by Mr. Bridges, magistrate of Great 

 Shefford is in existence to this day, and is proof beyond 

 cavil. It is from this point that rumour begins. That 

 rumour, backed in my opinion by damning circumstance, 

 has for tvvc» hundred years connected the tragedy with 

 Littlccote house and William Darrell, commonly called 

 Wild Darrell, then its proprietor. It is alleged that the 

 midwife's depositions set justice on the murderer's track, 

 and that the fitting of the piece of curtain which Mrs. 



