THE BATH ROAD 43 



Barnes had taken away with her into a rent found in 

 the curtain of the Haunted Room at Littlecote, marked 

 the scene of the murder. Wild Barrel 1 was tried for 

 his life, it is said, but escaped by bribing the officers of 

 the law with the reversion of his large estates. But — so 

 runs the rumour- — the memory of his crime pursued 

 him. He was haunted by ghastly spectres which he 

 tried to forget in wild excesses, but which no seas of 

 claret would lay. Finally as he was riding recklessly 

 down the steep downs, with the scene of his atrocity in 

 sight, at headlong speed, the reins loose, his body 

 swaying in the saddle, pale, wild-eyed, unkempt, the 

 very picture of debauched and guilty recklessness, 

 tearing from the Furies of the past, that past con- 

 fronted him. The apparition of a babe burning in a 

 flame barred his path. The horse reared violently at 

 the supernatural sight. Darrell was as violently thrown, 

 and the wicked neck, which had escaped the halter by a 

 bribe, was broken at last as it deserved to be. The 

 stile is still shown by the country people where the 

 wretched, haunted man, met his fate ; the spectres 

 of the pale huntsman and his hounds often cross their 

 simple paths in the gloaming of summer evenings when 

 the downs loom gray and ghostly — or did cross them, 

 rather, before School Boards, the franchise, the abolition 

 of the smock frock, and the general improvement of 

 everything on and off the earth, banished such inspiriting 

 sights for ever. Wild Darrell is remembered but as a 

 name now, and as a name for all that is wicked. 



And yet not quite so if we are to judge from a recent 

 publication ; in point of fact *' not at all so by any 

 means no more," as the South Sea Islanders say when 

 they have eaten a Wesley an missionary. For we live 

 in an age of the rehabilitation of condemned reputations, 

 and a generation which has learnt from a German pro- 

 fessor that Tiberius was an amiable potentate, and not 

 a fourteen-bottle man, and from an English historian 

 that Henry the Eighth was a confirmed theological 



