These were wont to occupy a niche beneath the window of the staircase: and in 1775, when Mr. West visited the Hall, they still remained in the place where they had lain from time immemorial. All attempts, it is said, to dispossess them of the station they had chosen to occupy, have invariably proved fruitless. As the report goes, they have been buried, burnt, reduced to powder and dispersed in the wind, sunk in the well, and thrown into the lake, several times, to no purpose as to their permanent removal or destruction. Till at length, so persistent was found to be their attachment to the niche which they had selected for their abiding place, they are said to have been, as a last resource to keep them out of sight, walled up within it; and there they remain. Of course, many persons now living in the neighbourhood can bear testimony to the fact that the skulls did really occupy the place assigned to them by tradition. A popular tale of immemorial standing relates that the skulls were those of an aged man and his wife, who lived on their own property adjoining the lands of the Philipsons, whose head regarded it with a covetous eye, and had long desired to number it among his extensive domains. The owners however not being willing to part with it, he determined in evil hour to have it at any cost. The old people, as the story runs, were in the habit of going frequently to the Hall, to share in the viands which fell from the lord's table, for he was a bounteous man to the poor; and it happened once that a pie was given to them, into which had been put some articles of plate. After their return home, the valuables were missed, and the cottage being searched, the things were found therein. The result was as the author of the mischief had plotted. They were accused of theft, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be executed, and their persecutor ultimately got their inheritance. When brought up for execution, the condemned persons requested the chaplain in attendance to read the 109th psalm; for under their circumstances, there was an awful significance in the imprecatory verses, which denounced the conduct of evil doers like Philipson; and in the solemn malison prophesied against the cruel, they pronounced a curse upon the owners of Calgarth, which the gossips of the neighbourhood say has ever since cast its blight upon the proprietorship of the estate; and that, notwithstanding whatever authentic records may prove to the contrary, the traditionary malediction has been regularly fulfilled down to the present time. After the death of his victims, the oppressor was greatly tormented; for, as if to perpetuate the memory of such injustice, and as a memento of their innocence, their skulls came and took up a position in the window of one of the rooms in the Hall, from