A mysterious crime is traditionally reported to have, some years ago, taken place at the old parsonage at Market, or East Lavington, near Devizes—­now pulled down.  The ghost of the lady supposed to have been murdered haunted the locality, and it has been said a child came to an untimely end in the house.  “Previous to the year 1818,” writes a correspondent of Notes and Queries, “a witness states his father occupied the house, and writes that ’in that year on Feast Day, being left alone in the house, I went to my room.  It was the one with marks of blood on the floor.  I distinctly saw a white figure glide into the room.  It went round by the washstand near the bed and disappeared!’” It may be added that part of the road leading from Market Lavington to Easterton which skirts the grounds of Fiddington House, used to be looked upon as haunted by a lady who was locally known as the “Easterton ghost.”  But in the year 1869 a wall was built round the roadside of the pond, and curiously close to the spot where the lady had been in the habit of appearing two skeletons were disturbed—­one of a woman, the other of a child.  The bones were buried in the churchyard, and no ghost, it is said, has since been seen.  It would seem, also, that blood stains, wherever they may fall, are equally indelible; and even to this day the New Forest peasant believes that the marl he digs is still red with the blood of his ancient foes, the Danes, a form of superstition which we find existing in various places.

For very many years the road from Reigate to Dorking, leading through a lonely lane into the village of Buckland, was haunted by a local spectre known as the “Buckland Shag,” generally supposed to have been connected with a love tragedy.  In the most lonely part of this lane a stream of clear water ran by the side of—­which laid for years—­a large stone, concerning which the following story is told:  Once on a time, a lovely blue-eyed girl, whose father was a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood, was wooed and won by the subtle arts of an opulent owner of the Manor House of Buckland.

In the silence of the evening this lane was their accustomed walk, the scene of her devoted love and of his deceitful vows.  Here he swore eternal fidelity, and the unsuspecting girl trusted him with the confiding affection of her innocent heart.  It was at such a moment that the wily seducer communicated to her the real nature of his designs, the moon above being only the witness of his perfidy and her distress.  She heard the avowal in tremulous silence, but her deadly paleness, and her expressive look of mingled reproach and terror created alarm even in the mind of her would-be seducer, and he hastily endeavoured to recall the fatal declaration; but it was too late, she sprang from his agitated grasp, and, with a sigh of agony, fell dead at his feet.

When he beheld the work of his iniquitous designs, he was seized with distraction, and drawing a dagger from his bosom, he plunged it into his own false heart, and lay stretched by the side of her he had so basely wronged.  On the morrow, as a peasant passed over the little stream, he saw a dark stone with drops of blood trickling from its heart into the pure limpid water.  From that day the stream retained its untainted purity, and the stone continued its sacrifice of blood.