“I went up to the parlour, and related that such a person enquired for him. He started when I told him, and eagerly desired to know the man’s dress; but no sooner did I mention his dress, and the jewel in his ear, than he said, ‘Begone! tell him I will not admit him to speech of me. Say that I defy him, and will make my defiance good at the great battle in the valley of Armageddon, when the voice of the angel shall call all fowls which fly under the face of heaven to feed on the flesh of the captain and the soldier, the warhorse and his rider. Say to the Evil One, I have power to appeal our conflict even till that day, and that in the front of that fearful day he will again meet with Harrison.’ I went back with this answer to the stranger, and his face was writhed into such a deadly frown as a mere human brow hath seldom worn. ‘Return to him,’ he said, ‘and say it is MY HOUR, and that if he come not instantly down to speak with me, I will mount the stairs to him. Say that I COMMAND him to descend, by the token, that, on the field of Naseby, _he did not the work negligently_.’” “I have heard,” whispered Wildrake—who felt more and more strongly the contagion of superstition—“that these words were blasphemously used by Harrison when he shot my poor friend Dick.” “What happened next?” said Everard. “See that thou speakest the truth.” “As gospel unexpounded by a steeple-man,” said the Independent; “yet truly it is but little I have to say. I saw my master come down, with a blank, yet resolved air; and when he entered the hall and saw the stranger, he made a pause. The other waved on him as if to follow, and walked out at the portal. My worthy patron seemed as if he were about to follow, yet again paused, when this visitant, be he man or fiend, re-entered, and said, ‘Obey thy doom. ‘By pathless march by greenwood tree, It is thy weird to follow me— To follow me through the ghastly moonlight— To follow me through the shadows of night— To follow me, comrade, still art thou bound; I conjure thee by the unstaunch’d wound— I conjure thee by the last words I spoke When the body slept and the spirit awoke, In the very last pangs of the deadly stroke.’ “So saying, he stalked out, and my master followed him into the wood.—I followed also at a distance. But when I came up, my master was alone, and bearing himself as you now behold him.” “Thou hast had a wonderful memory, friend,” said the Colonel, coldly, “to remember these rhymes in a single recitation—there seems something of practice in all this.” “A single recitation, my honoured sir?” exclaimed the Independent— “alack, the rhyme is seldom out of my poor master’s mouth, when, as sometimes haps, he is less triumphant in his wrestles with Satan. But it was the first time I ever heard it uttered by another; and, to say truth, he ever seems to repeat it unwillingly, as a child after his pedagogue, and as it was not indited by his own head, as the Psalmist saith.”