BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ix 



condemned to be burnt by the common hangman. How this 

 copy had escaped I never learned. I remember how it began : 



'"I sing the deeds of good King Harry, 

 And Ned his son and daughter Mary, 

 And of a short-lived inter-reign 

 Of one fair queen hight Lady Jane. ' 



" We turned to the Astrologer's Magazine and so frightened 

 the cook and housemaid by reading aloud its horrible tales of 

 witchcraft and apparitions that they were afraid to go about 

 after dark lest they should meet the ghost of old Martin, an 

 eccentric old bachelor brother of a late proprietor of the HalL 

 who had lived the last twenty years of his life secluded in 

 ■ the old garret which still bore his name and was said to be 

 haunted by his unlaid spirit. This garret was a quaint old 

 place, closeted round and papered with almanacs bearing 

 dates in the middle of the past century. We children used 

 to puzzle over the mystical signs of the Zodiac, and try to 

 comprehend the wonderful and mysterious predictions printed 

 on the old yellow paper. There was, too, a tiny iron grate 

 with thin rusted bars, and the hooks that had held up the 

 hangings of the forlorn recluse's bed. On one of the panes 

 in the dormer windows there was a rhyme written with a 

 diamond ring, and possibly of his own composition : 



" ' In a cottage we will live, 



Happy, though of low estate, 

 Every hoar more bliss will bring. 



We in goodness .shall be great. — M. E.' 



"We knew little of his history but what the old servants told 

 us. He had never associated with the family when alive. His 

 brother's wife made him live in the garret because she disliked 

 him, and he seldom went abroad. All the noises made by rats 

 or the wind in that part of the house were attributed to 

 the wanderings of poor Martin. There was also a little old 

 woman in grey, who was said to ' walk ' and to play such 



