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Laura Silver Bell
by
She tried to drive it away; but it growled and hissed awfully, and set up its back as if it would spring at her, and finally it skipped up into a tite, where they grew thickest at each side of her path, and accompanied her, high overhead, hopping from bough to bough as if meditating a pounce upon her shoulders. Her fancy being full or strange thoughts, she was frightened, and she fancied that it was haunting her steps, and destined to undergo some hideous transformation, the moment she ceased to guard her path with prayers.
She was frightened for a while after she got home. The dark looks or Mother Carke were always before her eyes, and a secret dread prevented her passing the threshold of her home again that night.
Next day it was different. She had got rid of the awe with which Mother Carke had inspired her. She could not get the tall dark-featured lord, in the black velvet dress, out of her head. He had “taken her fancy”; she was growing to love him. She could think of nothing else.
Bessie Hennock, a neighbour’s daughter, came to see her that day, and proposed a walk toward the ruins of Hawarth Castle, to gather “blaebirries.” So off the two girls went together.
In the thicket, along the slopes near the ivied walls of Hawarth Castle, the companions began to fill their baskets. Hours passed. The sun was sinking near the west, and Laura Silver Bell had not come home.
Over the hatch of the farm-house door the maids leant ever and anon with outstretched necks, watching for a sign of the girl’s return, and wondering, as the shadows lengthened, what had become of her.
At last, just as the rosy sunset gilding began to overspread the landscape, Bessie Hennock, weeping into her apron, made her appearance without her companion.
Her account of their adventures was curious.
I will relate the substance of it more connectedly than her agitation would allow her to give it, and without the disguise of the rude Northumbrian dialect.
The girl said, that, as they got along together among the brambles that grow beside the brook that bounds the Pie-Mag field, she on a sudden saw a very tall big-boned man, with an ill-favoured smirched race, and dressed in worn and rusty black, standing at the other side of a little stream. She was frightened; and while looking at this dirty, wicked, starved figure, Laura Silver Bell touched her, gazing at the same tall scarecrow, but with a countenance full of confusion and even rapture. She was peeping through the bush behind which she stood, and with a sigh she said
“Is na that a conny lad? Agoy! See his bonny velvet clothes, his sword and sash; that’s a lord, I can tell ye; and wed I know who he follows, who he luves, and who he’ll wed.”
Bessie Hennock thought her companion daft.
“See how luvesome he luks!” whispered Laura.
Bessie looked again, and saw him gazing at her companion with a malignant smile, and at the same time he beckoned her to approach.
“Darrat ta! gaa not near him! he’ll wring thy neck!” gasped Bessie in great fear, as she saw Laura step forward with a look of beautiful bashfulness and joy.
She took the hand he stretched across the stream, more for love of the hand than any need of help, and in a moment was across and by his side, and his long arm about her waist.
“Fares te weel, Bessie, I’m gain my ways,” she called, leaning her head to his shoulder; “and tell gud Fadder Lew I’m gain my ways to be happy, and may be, at lang last, I’ll see him again.”