8 
here in England to have usurped the office of tbe owl in our 
churchyards: “ et vendunt tumulis corpora rapta suis.” 
Up to the year 1813, the barn owl had a sad time of it 
at Walton Hall. Its supposed mournful notes alarmed the aged 
housekeeper. She know full well what sorrow it had brought 
into other houses when she was a young woman; and there was 
enough of mischief in the midnight wintry blast, without having 
it increased by the dismal screams of something which people- 
knew very little about, and which everybody said was far too 
busy in the churchyard at night time. Nay, it was a well-known 
fact, that if any person were sick in the neighbourhood, it 
would be for ever looking in at the window, and holding a con¬ 
versation outside with somebody, they did not know whom. The 
gamekeeper agreed with her in everything she said on this 
impotant subject ; and he always stood better in her books 
when he had managed to shoot a bird of this bad and mis¬ 
chievous family. However, in 1813, on my return from the wilds 
of Guiana, having suffered myself, and learned mercy, I broke in 
pieces the code of penal laws which the knavery of the game- 
keeper and the lamentable ignorance of the other servants had 
hitherto put in force, far too successfully, to thin the numbers of 
this poor, harmless, unsuspecting tribe. On the ruin of the old 
gateway, against which, tradition says, the waves of the lake have 
dashed for the better part of a thousand years, I made a place 
with stone and mortar, about four feet square, and fixed a thick 
oaken stick firmly into it. Huge masses of ivy now quite cover 
it. In about a month or so after it was finished, a pair of barn 
owls came and took up their abode in it. I threatened to strangle 
the keeper if ever, after this, he molested either the old birds or 
their young ones ; and I assured the housekeeper that I would 
take upon myself the whole responsibility of all the sickness, woe, 
and sorrow, that the new tenants might bring into the hall. She 
made a low courtesy ; as much as to say, “ Sir, I fall into your 
will and pleasure but I saw in her eye that she had made up 
4 
