142 SOUTER FELL SPECTRES. 



appeared to relax, and the troops intermingled, and 

 rode at unequal paces, till all was lost in darkness. 

 Now, of course all the Lancasters were insulted, as 

 their servant had been : but their justification was 

 not long* delayed. On the Midsummer eve of the 

 fearful 1745, twenty-six persons, expressly sum- 

 moned by the family, saw all that had been seen 

 before, and more. Carriages were now interspersed 

 with the troops ; and everybody knew that no car- 

 riages ever had been, or could be, on the summit 

 of Souter Fell. The multitude was beyond imagi- 

 nation ; for the troops filled a space of half a mile, 

 and marched quickly till night hid them, — still 

 marching. There was nothing vaporous or indis- 

 tinct about the appearance of these spectres. So 

 real did they seem, that some of the people went 

 up the next morning to look for the hoof-marks 

 of the horses ; and awful it was to them to find not 

 one footprint on heather or grass. The witnesses 

 attested the whole story on oath before a magis- 

 trate; and fearful were the expectations held by 

 the whole country side about the coming events of 

 the Scotch rebellion. It now came out that two 

 other persons had seen something of the sort in the 

 interval, viz., in 1743, — but had concealed it, to 

 escape the insults to which their neighbours were 

 subjected. Mr. "Wren, of "Wilton Hall, and his 

 farm-servant, saw, one summer evening, a man and 

 a dog on the mountain, pursuing some horses along 

 a place so steep that a horse could hardly by any 

 possibility keep a footing on it. Their speed was 

 prodigious, and their disappearance at the south 

 end of the fell so rapid, that Mr. Wren and the 

 servant went up the next morning, to find the 



