By C. E. Long, Esq. 



213 



facts. Scandal with superstition, subsequently, as her handmaid 

 contributed a joint composition ; and a tale which, if true, palpably 

 points at some other place, and at some other party, is required to 

 be carefully treasured up as an historical truth in its original 

 traditionary form in order that credulity may be comforted by not 

 having her faith shaken by facts and evidence in opposition to 

 fictions and hearsay. Your correspondent is of opinion that the 

 discovery of that very curious document, Mother Barnes's narrative 

 on which, together with her previous babblings no doubt, the 

 tradition is obviously founded, strengthens the case against Darell, 

 indeed, as he triumphantly affirms, "affords the most stricking and 

 unexpected testimony to the substantial truth of the story." Of the 

 story — yes — but not as applied to Darell and Littlecote. A tradition 

 must, of coarse have some foundation. In this case the foundation 

 of a murder somewhere, is undoubtedly established, if we give credit 

 to the old woman's dying declaration, but so far from her fixing the 

 facts, as she recounts them, on Darell and at Littlecote, the very 

 reverse is the case. She never makes the remotest allusion to him, 

 her near neighbour, nor to Littlecote, the largest mansion in her 

 own immediate neighbourhood. She arrived at the house, wherever 

 it was, by day-break, and she staid there during the whole of that 

 day, and we are called upon to suppose that, as to Donnington 

 Park, she did not know her right hand from her left, and that as 

 to the broad river which she crossed, with its "greate and longe 

 bridge," she mistook the Kennet at Hungerford, a place which she 

 must have known as well as she knew her own village of Shefford 

 and the little Lambourn stream which flows through it, for "the 

 Thames." But it is subsequently suggested that she may have been 

 taken by Newbury, and so, passing Donnington, crossed the Kennet. 

 It so happens that the Kennet is by no means broad at Newbury, 

 and that Donnington would still have been on her left, and not, as 

 she says it was, on her " righte hande." But the various embel- 

 lishments of this story, as we are now informed, the counting the 

 steps, the bed curtain, the recognition of the "tall slender gentle- 

 man in black velvet," &c, &c, all these are to be cast aside as the 

 "leather and prunella" of the case. "What legendary tale," 



