THE LAUGHING HORSEMAN.

What a strange creature is a laughing fool!

As if man were created to no use,

But only to shew his teeth.

WEBSTER.

"WHERE was the body found ?" said the parish clerk.

"In the Deadman's Clough," replied the landlord, “close under the roots of the big black elm.”

"It is the strangest thing of the kind," said the clerk,

"That has happened in England, in my time," added the landlord.

There was a dead pause. No one else thought fit to join in the conversation of the two worthies, who were, in a manner, the secondary oracles of the parish. But the bystanders filled the yard of the Crow and Teapot, and peeped over each other's shoulders, and under their arms, with a shuddering curiosity, to catch a glimpse of the corse. At times, a half-suppressed whisper would rise among the crowd; and, occasionally, a scuffle took place, as those behind pushed forward those in the front ranks,

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who, as vehemently, resisted the suggestion. For, anxious as all were to see the mangled and hideous spectacle, none were willing to approach beyond a certain degree of appropinquity, seemingly marked out, by common consent, as the extremity of their advances.

"Lost for three weeks!" ejaculated the landlord, "and found in such a state !"

"Most unfit," said the clerk, "for a Christian body, under an old tree; and might have lain time unknown, without bell or book;-what of his immortal soul!"

“True, true! and such a life as he led, drinking at home-never spent a penny at a public; and gambling abroad, and getting money, the Lord knows how, and, yet, never a farthing to a starving body."

"Nor a penny in the poor's box; but, as to that, he never came within ten graves' length of a church door," said the clerk.

"Never, since the day that we first heard of his winning three hundred guineas from Will Codicil the rich lawyer's son; and that was the first winning Gripe Gibbons ever made, one way or other," added the host.

(6 Aye, but he made many a one after; never rattled a dice-box, or chucked a guinea, or dealt a card, but sure it was, great or small, the sweepings always came to one pocket,” said the landlord's plump wife, who began to feel impatient at the long silence under which she had remained.

"Even so," replied the clerk: "it is to be prayed for, that he may not have lost more than he gained. It ever seemed strange to me, the run of luck he had. I never knew of a gambler that always won,not one; saving, always, when it might be with the help, with the abetting of—of him—of one that's not to be named."

The insinuation, conveyed by these words, was not lost on the audience. Those who had been most eager in pressing forward towards the centre, now shrunk back a rank. The whole assembly presented a galaxy of faces, most unduly exaggerated in length; and looked at the speaker, as if eager to devour the words of strange import that fell from a man, who, according to his station, spake with authority.

"And I would fain know," continued the speaker, lowering his voice, and assuming a more mysterious tone, "I would fain know the meaning of that bauble that never left him when living, and hangs to his neck, now that he lies there, a mangled corse."

When the rising horror, which the sayings of the clerk had given birth to, had a little subsided, a woman, one of the bystanders, ventured to offer an answer to the implied query.

"I have heard Sukey Barnes, his old housekeeper, when she was well and hearty,-as blythesome an old woman as one would see on a summer's day,say her belief, that it was a charm against Him that we know of, and that he prized it more than all his ill-gotten winnings; and often, after his riotings,

when those fearful fits came on him, he would grasp it with his clasped hands, and cry to it to save him. Morning and night, sleeping and waking, he had it on him; but why, or for what, a Christian soul should put such a faith in a senseless thing o' metal, He only knows."

An oracular " humph!" accompanied with a look from under the bent eyebrows of the clerk, betokened his deep consideration of Meg Symonds' account; which increased so much the terror of the erowd, (and crowds were not by far so enlightened in those times, as in our own,) that, although it was yet day-light, many a one looked, fearfully, over the left shoulder, and seemed only to wait an example to depart, with all possible speed, from the vicinity of the fearful thing. At length, the landlord revolved his circumference, and, leading the way with the clerk into the house, was followed by the whole assembly, man, woman, and child, emulously disputing the priority of entrance, and alike desirous of being the last to quit the yard in which lay the unfortunate object of their anxiety.

The approaching gloom of the evening was dispelled by the fire of larch faggots, that roared, and fumed, and flustered, in the huge chimney of the inn-kitchen, a cheering defiance to the chills of February. A capacious semicircle, widely expanding around this welcome point of attraction, was speedily formed; within which, divers round and square ables were laden with earthen jugs, brown as the