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To Hall of Girsonfield Providence seemed to take special care of Percival Reed, for no other reason than to goad him to extremity. The devils who possessed him were skilfully nursing their prey.

There came at last a day, when no raids were afoot, when Hall met some of the Crozier clan, and opinions were frankly expressed with regard to the keeper of Redesdale. Things had been going badly with the Croziers. Their beef-tubs were empty. The Borders were evidently going to the dogs. It was no longer possible for any hard-working reiver to make a living on them. Percival Reed would have to get his leave, or it was all up with reiving in Redesdale. To all of these complaints Hall lent a willing ear; nay, more, to their surprise, a sympathetic one. Apparently he, too, had some little schemes afoot, with which the keeper’s over-vigilance had seriously interfered. What a merry jest it would be, next time the Croziers crossed the Border by moonlight, if the keeper’s plans for that night were known to them, and if, instead of finding in the clan Hall enemies, they found them allies. The Croziers might have all the spoil, but the Halls would share the joke, and Percival Reed would crow less crouse for the future.

It was a quite simply arranged affair. The Halls entered with zest into the plot. Second place was not good enough for them, and the Reeds had boasted long enough.

And Percival Reed, in all innocence, soon heard rumour of a foray by the Croziers, and confided in his friend Girsonfield exactly how he meant to meet it. This information speedily found its way to the Scottish side of the Border, and in Hall of Girsonfield Reed found a more than usually willing supporter. The appointed night came, and ere they started in the uncertain light of a misty moon the keeper of Redesdale supped at Girsonfield. “Ye’re loaded, are ye, Parcy?” asked the genial host in the burring Northumbrian voice we know so well even to-day. “I’ll give a look to our primings while ye drink a stirrup-cup.” More than a look he gave. Strong spirit from the Low Countries might be good jumping powder for the Keeper of Redesdale, but it was a damping potion for the keeper’s musket when gently poured on its priming. At Batenshope, on the Whitelee ground, Reeds and Halls and Croziers met, and a joyous crew were the Croziers that night as they homewards rode up the Rede valley. For at the first fire of Percival Reed’s musket it burst, and he dropped from his horse a murdered man. The Reeds knew it for treason, and the subsequent conduct of the Halls left them no room for doubt. It was, indeed, a fine foundation for a family feud, and for generation after generation the feud went on.

What was the end of Hall of Girsonfield no one has chronicled; it is not hard to imagine the purgatory of his latter years.

But it is not of him but of his innocent victim that tales are still told in the Rede valley.

From the night when his spirit was by treachery and violence reft from his body, there was no rest for Percival Reed.

In the gloaming, when trees stand out in the semblance of highway robbers, and a Liddesdale drow meets a North Sea haar, his sorrowful spirit was wont to be seen by the lonely traveller, making moan, seeking rest. Far and near, through all that part of the Border that he had so faithfully “kept,” the spirit wandered. A moan or sigh from it on the safe side of the Carter Bar would scatter a party of Scottish reivers across the moorland as no English army could have done. Any belated horseman riding out of the dark would take the heart out of the most valiant of Northumbrians because they feared that they saw “Parcy Reed.” Not always in the same form did the Keeper appear. That was the terror of it. At times he would come gallantly cantering across the moorland as he had done when blood ran warm in his veins. At other times he would be only a sough in the night wind. A feeling of dread, an undefinable something that froze the marrow and made the blood run cold. And yet, again, he would come as a fluttering, homeless soul, whimpering and formless, with a moaning cry for Justice–Justice–Judgment on him who had by black treachery hurried him unprepared to his end. The folk of Redesdale bore it until they could bear it no longer. The blood of many a Hall was spilt by the men of Percival Reed’s clan without giving any ease to that clamouring ghost. At last they sought the help of a “skeely” man. He was only a thatcher, but whilst he plied his trade of covering mortal dwellings with sufficient to withstand the blasts of heaven, he had also studied deeply matters belonging to another sphere. “Gifted,” says his chronicler, “with words to lay it at rest,” he summoned the ghost to his presence, and “offered it the place and form it might wish to have.”