-the Journalist is far more chary of any such prandial chronicles, and trivial fond records. He no longer journalizes roast and boiled, nor chronicles small beer. Long before the headaches become noticeable, he has been a vegetarian. But even a vegetarian may be "a man of an unbounded stomach;" and we have our fears that Byrom so far indulged in greens and pudding "With all his might," as to do himself no good by the lapse from carnivoracity. He seems to have had a mighty sweet tooth, and to have given it full play, in season and perhaps out of season, if perchance a tempting tartlet or a plenipotent pancake lay in the way. The recurrence becomes almost ludicrous of such entries in the diary as, "With Mr. Lloyd to his house, where we had two large apple-tarts and two cheesecakes"-"Dined at Dr. Hartley's upon apple-dumplings and toasted cheese" "We all dined; I ate some greens and bread and the crust of a gooseberry-pie, and drank three or four glasses of their bottled ale, which was pleasant enough" "Ate some currants there and oatcake much, and bohea tea, and when I came home a gooseberry-tart and toast and water"-"Had a cheese-cake (3d.) by the way, which being better than ordinary, 1d. more price, did not sit so easy, being buttery ""Dined there upon greens, potatoes, and pancakes, and drank two or three glasses of wine"-"Dined with Mr. Lightbourne and his lady upon bread, celery, and pancakes, drank some wine, and talked about vegetable diet till four or five"-" Had pancakes and toasted cheese, and drank a little Madeira after dinner " "Had four tarts and some cheese and bread and some palm wine" "I had greens to supper, vastly good, and toasted bread and cheese, [ate] heartily, and drank white wine "I ate panpuddings, as they call them, (fritters,) heartily, and a little toasted cheese"-"I ate heartily of plum-pudding and greens and salad, and drank some wine ""We supped there, and I ate asparagus and pudding "-"We had pease-pudding to dinner, of which I ate heartily "Ate very heartily of the spinach and pancakes" and once more, and a significant entry too, "I stayed dinner, and at the beginning of dinner, eating the asparagus, I was put into a hurry, which Dr. Hartley took notice of, and said that he believed that I was not well, and I went with him into his study, having drank a glass of wine; I was not sick, it was only something stopping on my chest; and came in again to the room and ate my dinner, ate heartily of pancake and drank three or four glasses of wine, and talked a little. about serious matters." Dr. Byrom was not to be baffled by asparagus, by a mere something stopping on his chest; he would not emulate Master Slender outside Master Page's porch, but rather Parson Evans, who chuckled over the prospect of "pippins and seeze to come:" a compromise was effected with the obstructive asparagus; once again his bosom's lord sat lightly on its throne, and he "went in " for pancakes "with a will," and won, and entered it in his Diary, and we of a hundred and twenty years later read, and admire, not without foreboding of other stoppages on the chest, and chronic headaches in arrear. Byrom's character as an affectionate husband and father, and a true-hearted friend, is engagingly developed in this new volume. His letters home are full of heart, "simple, grave, sincere ;" the growth of the religious tone in them is most marked and emphatic. Had we space, we might cull some interesting passages from them, and from the correspondence of one or two Manchester friends; to which might be appended a few curious fragments illustrative of high life and home life in the first half of the eighteenth century, of the Porteous riots in Edinburgh, and the fashion of wearing clerical gown and cassock in the streets, and the introduction of tea-kettles, and the making butter by a machine; not forgetting Byrom's progress in his profession as teacher of short-hand, and his success in securing a patent for his method, by Act of Parliament, Anno decimo quinto Georgii II. Regis, scil: A.D. 1742. With which triumph, and at which date, the present publication breaks off, in promising proximity to the Forty-Five. From Titan. GREYSTONE HALL. CHAPTER I. EARLY one autumn morning, I took my way from my humble seaside lodging, setting forth on a day's ramble. I shall not tell you where this retreat of mine is, or descant upon the thousand and one charms of its situation; I wish the little tenement to be still mine, par excellence, whenever I am inclined to inhabit it. It was the embarrassment of wealth that made me pause, before I had gone many yards from my door, to decide in which direction I should turn my steps that day. Summer was gone, certainly; but I never wail her departure. As I watched the clouds, driven by a wild wind across a wild sky, and hearkened to the waves breaking and booming against the old grey crags far beneath, my spirits rose buoyantly. I opened the arms of my body and my soul to welcome my rough, true friend-Autumn. Spring too often presents herself to me as a cruel yet irresistibly attractive coquette. She mocks at passions she rouses cannot satisfy desires that she awakes; she hints mysteriously of gifts of knowledge, power, love, which she never be stows; she is exacting and retentive; lays heavy burdens on souls, and taunts their toiling, striving, groaning, as she skims along her lightsome way. Summer finds me wearied out by spring's tyrannous sway. She gives me a drugged draught of honey-sweetness, and lays me away among her roses, bidding me believe that inaction is calm, indifferent languor peace. I might sleep on, dream deeper and deeper, till my sleep should be that from which is no waking; but autumn comes, breaks summer's spells, repairs spring's mischief, and calls up what in me is kindred to its own strength. So hail to thee, O Autumn! Something weird in the wildness of this early morning reminded me of a deserted house I had often seen from a distance in my rambles, and meant to visit. I would go there now, I thought; so turned from the sea a while towards the desolate hills and heaths. There is something inexpressibly grand in the influence of these apparently boundless tracts of swelling and falling, heathergrown, greystone-sown moorland. I felt it to the full that morning, plunging on against the storm-wind, only guided by a vague idea of the direction in which lay the place of my destination; stopping now and then to turn and see how far be hind I had left the ocean; to observe how sometimes it flashed beneath a watery gleam, sometimes lay a black mass beneath a cloud-horizon. At last I grew slightly weary of longcontinued battling with a wind that shouted in triumph, or shrieked in defeat, as I sunk deep in heather, or emerged to go on and on. I was not sorry when the nature of the scene changed. I had cut across a pretty broad promontory, and now came upon a tiny, rocky bay. From this bay a narrow valley ran up, widening gradually, and at some miles from the water becoming woody and fertile-looking. A road wound along it, leading to a considerable town, where they consume the fish caught in this bay. I descended the hill-side to the group of cottages, and asked of a woman whom I met toiling up the beach with a heavy load of fish, if any one lived at Greystone Hall. No one, she told me at least no one was known to live there; but people did tell of strange lights and sights about; but their folk were mostly feared to pass it by, and so there was no coming to the rights of it. It had the character of an uncanny place, then! I went on, more eagerly than before, pursuing the road through the valley for a couple of miles, then taking a branch road to the left, each side of it shut out all chance of any sunbeam penetrating into its dank dampness. It led to a pool, as appropriately called the Black, round which the trees gathered even more densely; and rank, poisonous-looking weeds flourished. I especially noted the deadly night-shade. I shivered when I emerged from this damp, dismal place was glad to sun myself in a short-lived gleam that lingered longer on the terrace than elsewhere. that led me to the park gates. The called it the Black Walk: well it might gates were locked; but between one of be so called. The cedars and yews on the carved pillars and the wall there was a gap, through which I easily entered, stumbling over a fallen and broken vase, moss-grown and half buried in dead leaves. An avenue of old beeches, yellowed, and fast baring, in whose tops the wind moaned dismally, led up to the house. Great gaunt branches battered its boarded-up windows. I prowled about, taking in the strange influence of the place, and seeking the whereabouts of a certain line and clump of black trees, which I had always remarked when viewing the house from the hills round. I sought lazily and dreamily, setting wild thoughts to wild music the while. I confess to having been much startled when, as I paused close to the west wing of the house, a voice addressed me. Turning, I saw a small figure standing at the top of the terrace steps-met two blue eyes, that questioned my right to be where I was. I had a name to give, that, for reasons best known to us two, placed me on friendly terms with the owner of those blue eyes, and we entered into conversation. The owner of those blue eyes -clear, calm, youthful eyes-was a woman upwards of sixty, whom I shall call Marg❜ret. For weeks, Greystone Hall was a haunt of mine; I grew acquainted, but not familiar, with its grand desolation, and bit by bit learned something of the history of its last inhabitants. On sunny autumn noons, I paced up and down the terrace for hours, dreaming over what I had heard from Margret. When twilight fell, and the wind soughed sighingly, and the branches of the trees threw themselves about as if possessed, I sometimes too keenly felt-for past grief and excitement had left me with shattered nerves-that "There are spirits in the air, And genii of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair As star-beams among twilight trees." Too keenly, I say, because I was obliged to avoid excitement: my reason might then have given way, had I yielded myself to the experiencing of the soul-thrilling awe which even fancied communion with the spirit-world induces. Margret guided me to the entrance of the dark avenue I had been seeking. She There was much about this Black Pool and Black Walk in what I learned from Margret concerning Greystone Hall. My sickly smile met no answering smile, when I observed, lightly, that, of course, such a place as that was haunted. I received only an evasive reply, which heightened my appetite for the unwholesome food of a ghostly story, which I was sure Margret could tell me. She stood looking over those black tree-tops, beyond, and far away, towards the western sky, down which the sun sloped rapidly. It was not that day that I heard anything of the story of the pool from Margret; but I went home determined that I would hear it-and hear it I did on a subsequent occasion. This is how the Black Pool first fell into ill repute: Before Margret's time, a young master of Greystone Hall brought a fair bride home to the old house very late in the year. At Christmas there was to be a grand gathering of the scattered members of two very large families, and a merry festival it was expected to be. On the morning of the day before Christmas day, the young husband rose early and looked out. Snow had been falling, softly, silently, all the night through; it had spread a white pall over all nature. This was a novel sight to the young master, who had been abroad for years, and had wooed and won his bride in a foreign land. A boyish longing to be out amid this white, deep-lying snow, seized him. Without awaking his wife, he left the house. The servants were idle under the loose government of young rulers; few of them were stirring; no one of them met his master. The wife woke, little conscious that she had slept away her last hours of earthly peace and happiness. No one could tell her anything of her husband, for whom she inquired eagerly. Never mind! he ment of a white veil hung on a snag at the water's edge. Truly it was a bridal-veil to which that fragment belonged! was planning some pleasant surprise; but it was wrong of him to be so long. He was gone to the town, and some one detained him; but he ought to have told Two bodies were found when the pool her. But his horse was safe in the stable, was dragged-the white wife lay by her and he so seldom walked far. Wilder grew pale husband on the death-cold couch of the wife's suppositions as the hours wore snow at the pool's brink. The dark away wearily. Was the snow deep? watcher by the window, a man even could any one be lost in it? Only in the younger than the bridegroom, threw himmoor-hollows; nothing could have taken self down at the bride's cold feet, in an him there. They strove to reassure her. agony of frantic grief, wildly calling upon She sent out messengers to the shore, to her name. The two who lay dead before the town, to ride over the moors: daylight him were his nearest relatives. No one failed, and they delayed to return. It wondered at the passionate grief that setwas Christmas eve. All day, guests had tled into morbid melancholy: no one wonpoured in; each new arrival distracted dered that he hastened from the scene of the poor child-she was very young- this tragedy, when the doubly-wedded with fresh suggestions and attempts at couple were laid in one grave, and for years consolation. Nothing could keep him much was never heard of in those parts. No one longer he had walked to the town- suspected foul play. The pool was known would return with this friend or the other. to be very deep; and the snow had drifted Meanwhile they dressed her for the eve into a dangerous overhanging ridge; he ning dance, in her bridal-dress, and had been heedless, and had fallen in. It wreath, and veil, that she might be ready was not till the death of an old, old crone when he should come. She shivered and who had laid out the bodies, that a whisshook, and was as white as the Christmas per got about of there having been marks snow. When no one saw, she stole out of violence on the dead man's throat. In alone: she was well-nigh maddened by the dim light and the horrified confusion vague dread, and stole out into the cold no one had sought for or seen these. The and snow, to commence a vague search. woman's silence had been purchased, or The love-and-fear-quickened senses of that some mistake made as to the import of her poor, white bride, noted signs no other death-bed ravings. The heart-struck and searcher had heeded. She followed the bereaved cousin had kept the key of the track of footprints, distinct from all the door where the corpses lay, jealous of any rest for her. It was a bright night, the eyes but his own on them. He was terristars shining in a crystal-clear, cold sky.ble in his grief, and people shrank from She followed these footsteps down the little-used fir-walk to the pool (called Black from that time). A shrill cry of sharp, sudden agony startled the expectant guests in the warm and lighted rooms; it blanched all cheeks. No wonder if those of a dark-faced watcher by the window-a cousin to the bridegroom, and, gossip said, a former lover of the bride's-showed an ashen pallor. It sent a thrill of horror through the busy servants, making them pause to gaze on each other aghast ringing out clear on the frosty silence, it struck awe into travellers on the highway, and appalled the messengers riding into the courtyard, weary and benumbed, and bringing no tidings. It was a woman's cry! Where was the young wife? him. This is how the Black Pool first came to be looked upon as an ill-omened place. At one time there was talk of having it filled up; but the country people shook their heads-it would be fruitless labor to try, for the pool was fathomless, was the general opinion; and the house standing empty, there was no inducement to try-no one to bear the expense, or to encourage the attempt. CHAPTER II. I was sure that what I had heard was only an introductory chapter; for I had come to no ghost; and Margret's eyes were as decidedly those of a "ghost-seer," as any dark unfathomable eyes Schiller There was but one opinion as to the might have chosen to describe; so I fanspot from which the cry came. In a few cied, at all events. But she was not a moments a group of fear-stricken folk person one would importune; and I paid were gathered round the pool. A frag-several visits to Greystone Hall without hearing anything more at all connected | forget their croaking talk; and when the and memorable. babe came, and throve, and when ChristAfter some days of illness, I made my mas passed, and nobody saw anything of way again to a place that had a fascina- the Snow-Lady, whose cry, they said, had tion for me. I was hardly in plight for been heard, low in calm, and loud in so long a walk; and Margret, pitying my storm, ever since that Christmas eve, ten weariness, entertained me with an early years ago, almost everybody thought the cup of tea in her own room. It was a ghost had gone; only a few shook their room that had been hers when the Hall heads, and said, wait till the Christmas was inhabited; she had kept it just as it eve, when the snow lies deep: there had used to be when she first came to live been no snow that year." there, more than forty years ago. Marg'ret was more inclined to talk than usual on that day I think partly because I looked as if I wanted amusing. I shall always set down good and gentle motives for everything that good creature did; she reminded me of one whom I had lost not so very long before. When I went home that evening, I wrote down what Margret had told me, as nearly as possible in her own words, which impressed me greatly. I shall copy now from that note-book. I asked how long the house remained empty after the sad event she had told me of some days ago. 66 For many and many a year-ten full; for it belonged to Mr. Treylynn, that cousin of the drowned gentleman; and he would neither live in it nor let it." 66 Mayhap: at all events, the fine old place was beginning to have a ruinous look about it, when we heard that Mr. Treylynn had married some time before, and his wife had taken a fancy to live at the Hall, and that her first child should be born there." "Spite of its being haunted?" "A pure, sweet spirit had the lady; she was too happy and too innocent to give heed to the stories that were told her. The Hall was put into grand order; and home came Mr. Treylynn and his lady. People talked about its being unlucky to bring her home to such a place; but, however it came about, she was devoted to her husband, and so cheery and pleasant, that the very sight of her made folk "Were you living at the Hall ?” "I was. A proud girl it made me, when the mistress, who had known something of my mother, took me, young as I was, for her own maid.” Margret paused. "Well, how long did things go smooth ly?" A son had been born to the She |