You descend, clinging to the trees, and
scrambling as best you may,--and now you stand on haunted ground! Tread
softly, for this is the Boggart's clough; and see in yonder dark corner,
and beneath the projecting mossy stone, where that dusky sullen cave
yawns before us, like a bit of Salvator's best, there lurks the strange
elf, the sly and mischievous Boggart. Bounce! I see him coming; oh no,
it was only a hare bounding from her form; there it goes--there!
I will tell you of some of the pranks of this very Boggart, and how he
teased and tormented a good farmer's family in a house hard by, and I
assure you it was a very worthy old lady who told me the story. But
first, suppose we leave the Boggart's demesne, and pay a visit to the
theatre of his strange doings.
You see that old farm house about two fields distant, shaded by the
sycamore-tree: that was the spot which the Boggart or Bar-gaist selected
for his freaks; there he held his revels, perplexing honest George
Cheetham--for that was the farmer's name--scaring his maids, worrying
his men, and frightening the poor children out of their seven senses, so
that at last not even a mouse durst show himself indoors at the farm, as
he valued his whiskers, five minutes after the clock had struck twelve.
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