Welsh Brontë declined to receive congratulations until he had deposited his antagonist safely at home in bed. The fight was followed by no evil consequences, and Sam Clarke and Welsh Brontë became fast friends from that day forth. All were agreed as to the closing scene. During the last few seconds the fight became so fierce and furious that the blood of the spectators ran cold. Nothing like it for wild fury and Titanic ferocity had ever been witnessed, and no such battle has ever, since or before, been fought in County Down. IV. THE BRONTËS AND THE GHOSTS. The glen, on the edge of which the Brontës lived, lay secluded among the hills, remote from the more frequented thoroughfares of the country. It was a beautiful and romantic spot by day, but lonesome and desolate at night. For miles round it had the reputation of being haunted, and few passed that way after dark. Those who were obliged to do so heard unnatural splashes in the stream, and rustlings among the bracken, and strange moanings and sobbings among the trees, when there was not a breath of air stirring. Strange and fitful cries were said to be heard in the glen, and doleful wailings, as of some one in agony. Long ago, according to tradition, a woman had been murdered in the glen by her false lover and betrayer. Hugh Brontë had told the story, with minute details and local color, till everybody who frequented the gatherings at the kiln knew it by heart. The villain had enticed his victim to Rathfriland fair, on pretence of getting the wedding ring. He had there attempted to strangle her, but she had escaped from his grasp, and was making her way home to her mother, through fields and byways, when, according to one of Patrick Brontë’s unpublished songs: “Over hedges and ditches he took the near way, Until he got before her on that dismal day.” He waylaid her in the lonely glen, and murdered her under circumstances of great atrocity. On that night the ghost of the murdered woman rushed upon the assassin, and, with a wild scream, dragged him from his bed and through the window of his cabin, and down, down, down, with unearthly yells, to the bottomless pit. The whole story was told in verse, I believe, by Patrick Brontë, and sung to a sad air at local gatherings. It ran partly thus: “This young man he went to his bed all in a dreadful fright. And Kitty’s ghost appeared to him, it was an awful sight. She clasped her a-rums round him, saying, You’re a false young man, But now I’ll be avenged of you, so do the best you can.” The punishment was, according to local sentiment, well deserved; but both were doomed to walk the earth for a thousand years. They had made their abode in the glen, hence the doleful and dismal voices.