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.”

Five miles of land did that disembodied spirit of the Keeper of Redesdale choose for his own.  As might be guessed, he fixed on the banks of the Rede, and he chose that part of it that lies between Todlawhaugh and Pringlehaugh.  The fox that barks from the bracken on the hillside at early morning, the grouse that crows from the heather, the owl that hoots from the fir woods at night, to those did the ghost of Percival Reed act as keeper.  By day he roosted, like a bat or a night bird, on some tree in a lonely wood.  By night he kept his special part of the marches.  Still the Keeper of Redesdale was Percival Reed.  Todlaw Mill, in ruins long ago, was his favourite haunt, and there, as the decent folk of the valley went on the Sabbath to the meeting-house at Birdhope Cragg, they often saw him, a dreary sight for human eyes, patiently awaiting his freedom.  The men would uncover their heads and bow as they passed, and the Keeper of Redesdale, courteous in the spirit as in the body, would punctiliously return their salutations.

Thus did the years wear on until the appointed days were fulfilled, and the Rede Valley knew its Keeper no more.  On the last day of the time fixed by him, the skeely man was thatching a cottage at the Woollaw.  Suddenly he felt something touch him, as though the wing of a bird had brushed by.  He came down the ladder on which he stood, and it seemed as though the bird’s feathers had brushed against his heart, and had come from a place where the cold and ice are not cold and ice as mortals know them, for “he was seized,” says the chronicler, “with a cold trembling.”  Some power, too strong for his own skill to combat, had laid hold on him, and shivering, still shivering, he fell into the hands of Death.

Such was the passing of Percival Reed, Keeper of Redesdale, who took with him, when at length he relinquished his charge, a humble henchman, a hind of the Rede Valley.

DANDY JIM THE PACKMAN

It was the back end of the year.  The crops were all in, and but little was left of the harvest moon that had seen the Kirn safely won on the farms up “Ousenam” Water.  A disjaskit creature she looked as the wind drove a scud of dark cloud across her pale face, or when she peered over the black bank below her, only to be hidden once more by an angry drift of rain.  It was no night for lonely wayfarers.  Oxnam and Teviot were both in spate, and their moan could be heard when the wind rested