The Lancashire Witches by William Harrison Ainsworth (first ebook reader .txt) 📖

dusna seize her, an tear her i' pieces?" cried the infuriated child.

"He dares not--he has no power over me," said Alizon. "Oh, Jennet! cast him off. Your wicked agent appears to befriend you now, but he will lead you to certain destruction. Come with me, and I will save you."

"Off!" cried Jennet, repelling her with furious gestures. "Off! ey winna ge wi' ye. Ey winna be saved, os yo term it. Ey hate yo more than ever, an wad strike yo dead at my feet, if ey could. Boh as ey conna do it, ey win find some other means o' injurin' ye. Soh look to yersel, proud ledy--look to yersel? Ey ha already smitten you in a place where ye win feel it sore, an ey win repeat the blow. Ey now leave yo, boh we shan meet again. Come along, Tib!"

So saying, she sprang into the shrubbery, followed by the cat, leaving Alizon appalled by her frightful malignity.

[Illustration: ALIZON DEFIES JENNET.]


CHAPTER IV.--THE GORGE OF CLIVIGER.


The sun had already set as Nicholas Assheton reached Todmorden, then a very small village indeed, and alighting at a little inn near the church, found the ale so good, and so many boon companions assembled to discuss it, that he would fain have tarried with them for an hour or so; but prudence, for once, getting the better of inclination, and suggesting that he had fifteen or sixteen miles still to ride, over a rough and lonely road, part of which lay through the gorge of Cliviger, a long and solitary pass among the English Apennines, and, moreover, had a large sum of money about him, he tore himself away by a great effort.

On quitting the smiling valley of Todmorden, and drawing near the dangerous defile before mentioned, some misgivings crossed him, and he almost reproached himself with foolhardiness in venturing within it at such an hour, and wholly unattended. Several recent cases of robbery, some of them attended by murder, had occurred within the pass; and these now occurred so forcibly to the squire, that he was half inclined to ride back to Todmorden, and engage two or three of the topers he had left at the inn to serve him as an escort as far as Burnley, but he dismissed the idea almost as soon as formed, and, casting one look at the green and woody slopes around him, struck spurs into Robin, and dashed into the gorge.

On the right towered a precipice, on the bare crest of which stood a heap of stones piled like a column--the remains, probably, of a cairn. On this commanding point Nicholas perceived a female figure, dilated to gigantic proportions against the sky, who, as far as he could distinguish, seemed watching him, and making signs to him, apparently to go back; but he paid little regard to them, and soon afterwards lost sight of her.

Precipitous and almost inaccessible rocks, of every variety of form and hue; some springing perpendicularly up like the spire of a church, others running along in broken ridges, or presenting the appearance of high embattled walls; here riven into deep gullies, there opening into wild savage glens, fit spots for robber ambuscade; now presenting a fair smooth surface, now jagged, shattered, shelving, roughened with brushwood; sometimes bleached and hoary, as in the case of the pinnacled crag called the White Kirk; sometimes green with moss or grey with lichen; sometimes, though but rarely, shaded with timber, as in the approach to the cavern named the Earl's Bower; but generally bold and naked, and sombre in tint as the colours employed by the savage Rosa. Such were the distinguishing features of the gorge of Cliviger when Nicholas traversed it. Now the high embankments and mighty arches of a railway fill up its recesses and span its gullies; the roar of the engine is heard where the cry of the bird of prey alone resounded; and clouds of steam usurp the place of the mist-wreaths on its crags.

Formerly, the high cliffs abounded with hawks; the rocks echoed with their yells and screeches, and the spots adjoining their nests resembled, in the words of the historian of the district, Whitaker, "little charnel-houses for the bones of game." Formerly, also, on some inaccessible point built the rock-eagle, and reared its brood from year to year. The gaunt wolf had once ravaged the glens, and the sly fox and fierce cat-a-mountain still harboured within them. Nor were those the only objects of dread. The superstitious declared the gorge was haunted by a frightful, hirsute demon, yclept Hobthurst.

The general savage character of the ravine was relieved by some spots of exquisite beauty, where the traveller might have lingered with delight, if apprehension of assault from robber, or visit from Hobthurst, had not urged him on. Numberless waterfalls, gushing from fissures in the hills, coursed down their seamy sides, looking like threads of silver as they sprang from point to point. One of the most beautiful of these cascades, issuing from a gully in the rocks near the cavern called the Earl's Bower, fell, in rainy seasons, in one unbroken sheet of a hundred and fifty feet. Through the midst of the gorge ran a swift and brawling stream, known by the appellation of the Calder; but it must not be confounded with the river flowing past Whalley Abbey. The course of this impetuous current was not always restrained within its rocky channel, and when swollen by heavy rains, it would frequently invade the narrow causeway running beside it, and, spreading over the whole width of the gorge, render the road almost impassable.

Through this rocky and sombre defile, and by the side of the brawling Calder, which dashed swiftly past him, Nicholas took his way. The hawks were yelling overhead; the rooks were cawing on the topmost branches of some tall timber, on which they built; a raven was croaking lustily in the wood; and a pair of eagles were soaring in the still glowing sky.

By-and-by, the glen contracted, and a wall of steep rocks on either side hemmed the shuddering traveller in. Instinctively, he struck spurs into his horse, and accelerated his pace.

The narrow glen expands, the precipices fall further back, and the traveller breathes more freely. Still, he does not relax his speed, for his imagination has been at work in the gloom, peopling his path with lurking robbers or grinning boggarts. He begins to fear he shall lose his gold, and execrates his folly for incurring such heedless risk. But it is too late now to turn back.

It grows rapidly dusk, and objects became less and less distinct, assuming fantastical and fearful forms. A blasted tree, clinging to a rock, and thrusting a bare branch across the road, looks to the squire like a bandit; and a white owl bursting from a bush, scares him as if it had been Hobthurst himself. However, in spite of these and other alarms, for which he is indebted to excited fancy, he hurries on, and is proceeding at a thundering pace, when all at once his horse comes to a stop, arrested by a tall female figure, resembling that seen near the mountain cairn at the entrance of the gorge.

Nicholas's blood ran cold, for though in this case he could not apprehend plunder, he was fearful of personal injury, for he believed the woman to be a witch. Mustering up courage, however, he forced Robin to proceed.

If his progress was meant to be barred, a better spot for the purpose could not have been selected. A narrow road, scarcely two feet in width, ran round the ledge of a tremendous crag, jutting so far into the glen that it almost met the steep barrier of rocks opposite it. Between these precipitous crags dashed the river in a foaming cascade, nearly twelve feet in height, and the steep narrow causeway winding beside it, as above described, was rendered excessively slippery and dangerous from the constant cloud of spray arising from the fall.

At the highest and narrowest point of the ledge, and occupying nearly the whole of its space, with an overhanging rock on one side of her, and a roaring torrent on the other, stood the tall woman, determined apparently, from her attitude and deportment, to oppose the squire's further progress. As Nicholas advanced, he became convinced that it was the same person he had seen near the cairn; but, when her features grew distinguishable, he found to his surprise that it was Nance Redferne.

"Halloa! Nance," he cried. "What are you doing here, lass, eh?"

"Cum to warn ye, squoire," she replied; "yo once did me a sarvice, an ey hanna forgetten it. That's why I watched ye fro' the cairn cliffs, an motioned ye to ge back. Boh ye didna onderstand my signs, or wouldna heed 'em, so ey be cum'd here to stay ye. Yo're i' dawnger, ey tell ye."

"In danger of what, my good woman?" demanded the squire uneasily.

"O' bein' robbed, and plundered o' your gowd," replied Nance; "there are five men waitin' to set upon ye a mile further on, at the Bowder Stoans."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Nicholas; "they will get little for their pains. I have no money about me."

"Dunna think to deceive me, squoire," rejoined Nance; "ey knoa yo ha borrowed three hundert punds i' gowd fro' yung Ruchot Assheton; an os surely os ye ha it aw under your jerkin, so surely win yo lose it, if yo dunna turn back, or ge on without me keepin' ye company."

"I have no objection on earth to your company, Nance," replied the squire; "quite the contrary. But how the devil should these rascals expect me? And, above all, how should they conjecture I should come so well provided? For, sooth to say, such is not ordinarily the case with me."

"Ey knoa it weel, squoire," replied Nance, with a laugh; boh they ha received sartin information o' your movements."

"There is only one person who could give them such information," cried Nicholas; "but I cannot, will not suspect him."

"If yor're thinkin' o' Lawrence Fogg, yo're na far wide o' th' mark, squoire," replied Nance.

"What! Fogg leagued with robbers--impossible!" exclaimed Nicholas.

"Neaw, it's nah so unpossible os aw that," returned Nance; "yo 'n stare when ey tell yo he has robbed yo mony a time without your being aware on it. Yo were onwise enough to send him round to your friends to borrow money for yo."

"True, so I was. But, luckily, no one would lend me any," said Nicholas.

"There yo're wrong, squoire--fo' unluckily they aw did," replied Nance, with a scarcely-suppressed laugh. "Roger Nowell gied him one hundred; Tummus Whitaker of Holme, another; Ruchot Parker o' Browsholme, another. An more i' th' same way."

"And the rascal pocketed it all, and never brought me back one farthing," cried Nicholas, in a transport of rage. "I'll have him hanged--pshaw! hanging's too good for him. To deceive me, his friend, his benefactor, his patron, in such a manner; to dwell in my house, eat at my table, drink my wine, wear my habiliments, ride my horses, hunt with my hounds! Has the dog no conscience?"

"Varry little, ey'm afear'd," replied Nance.

"And the worst of it is," continued the squire--new lights breaking upon him, "I shall be liable for all the sums he has received. He was my confidential agent, and the lenders will come upon me. It must be six or seven hundred pounds that he has obtained in this nefarious way. Zounds! I shall go mad."

"Yo wur to blame fo' trustin him, squoire," rejoined Nance. "Yo ought to