“ There's a poor girl lies buried here,

Beneath this very place,
The earth upon her corpse is prest,
The stake is driven into her breast,

And a stone is on her face.”

The soldier had but just leant back,

And now he half rose up. “ There's sure no harm in dining here, My friend ? and yet, to be sincere,

I should not like to sup.”

“God rest her! she is still enough

Who sleeps beneath my feet!" The old man cried. “ No harm I trow She ever did herself, though now

She lies where four roads meet.

“ I have past by about that hour

When men are not most brave; It did not make my courage fail, And I have heard the nightingale

Sing sweetly on her grave.

“ I have past by about that hour

When Ghosts their freedom have; But there was here no ghastly sight, And quietly the glow-worm's light

Was shining on her grave.

“ There's one who like a Christian lies

Beneath the church-tree's shade; I'd rather go a long mile round Than pass at evening through the ground Wherein that man is laid.

« There's one who in the church-yard lies

For whom the bell did toll;
He lies in consecrated ground,
But for all the wealth in Bristol town

I would not be with his soul !

“ Did'st see a house below the hill

Which the winds and the rains destroy ? 'Twas then a farm where he did dwell, And I remember it full well

When I was a growing boy.

“ And she was a poor parish girl

Who came up from the west: From service hard she ran away, And at that house in evil day

Was taken in to rest.

“ The man he was a wicked man,

And an evil life he led ; Rage made his face grow deadly white, And his grey eyes were large and light,

And in anger they grew red !

“ The man was bad, the mother worse,

Bad fruit of evil stem; 'Twould make your hair to stand on end If I should tell to you, my friend,

The things that were told of them!

“ Did'st see an out-house standing by?

The walls alone remain ;
It was a stable then, but now
Its mossy roof has fallen through

All rotted by the rain.

“ The poor girl she had served with them

Some half-a-year or more,
When she was found hung up one day,
Stiff as a corpse and cold as clay,

Behind that stable door !

“ It is a wild and lonesome place,

No hut or house is near ; Should one meet a murderer there alone 'Twere vain to scream, and the dying groan

Would never reach mortal ear.

“ And there were strange reports about ;

But still the Coroner found
That she by her own hand had died,
And should buried be by the way side,

And not in Christian ground.