J. S. Le Fanus Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 | Page 2

say to thee, whoe'er thou beest."
"You know Laura Silver Bell?"
"That's a byneyam; the lass's neyam is Laura Lew," she answered,
looking straight before her.
"One name's as good as another for one that was never christened,
mother."
"How know ye that?" she asked grimly; for it is a received opinion in
that part of the world that the fairies have power over those who have
never been baptised.
The stranger turned on her a malignant smile.
"There is a young lord in love with her," the stranger says, "and I'm that

lord. Have her at your house to-morrow night at eight o'clock, and you
must stick cross pins through the candle, as you have done for many a
one before, to bring her lover thither by ten, and her fortune's made.
And take this for your trouble."
He extended his long finger and thumb toward her, with a guinea
temptingly displayed.
"I have nowt to do wi' thee. I nivver sid thee afoore. Git thee awa'! I
earned nea goold o' thee, and I'll tak' nane. Awa' wi' thee, or I'll find ane
that will mak' thee!"
The old woman had stopped, and was quivering in every limb as she
thus spoke.
He looked very angry. Sulkily he turned away at her words, and strode
slowly toward the wood from which he had come; and as he
approached it, he seemed to her to grow taller and taller, and stalked
into it as high as a tree.
"I conceited there would come something o't", she said to herself.
"Farmer Lew must git it done nesht Sunda'. The a'ad awpy!"
Old Farmer Lew was one of that sect who insist that baptism shall be
but once administered, and not until the Christian candidate had
attained to adult years. The girl had indeed for some time been of an
age not only, according to this theory, to be baptised, but if need be to
be married.
Her story was a sad little romance. A lady some seventeen years before
had come down and paid Farmer Lew for two rooms in his house. She
told him that her husband would follow her in a fortnight, and that he
was in the mean time delayed by business in Liverpool.
In ten days after her arrival her baby was born, Mall Carke acting as
sage femme on the occasion; and on the evening of that day the poor
young mother died. No husband came; no wedding-ring, they said, was
on her finger. About fifty pounds was found in her desk, which Farmer

Lew, who was a kind old fellow and had lost his two children, put in
bank for the little girl, and resolved to keep her until a rightful owner
should step forward to claim her.
They found half-a-dozen love-letters signed "Francis," and calling the
dead woman "Laura."
So Farmer Lew called the little girl Laura; and her sobriquet of "Silver
Bell" was derived from a tiny silver bell, once gilt, which was found
among her poor mother's little treasures after her death, and which the
child wore on a ribbon round her neck.
Thus, being very pretty and merry, she grew up as a North-country
farmer's daughter; and the old man, as she needed more looking after,
grew older and less able to take care of her; so she was, in fact, very
nearly her own mistress, and did pretty much in all things as she liked.
Old Mall Carke, by some caprice for which no one could account,
cherished an affection for the girl, who saw her often, and paid her
many a small fee in exchange for the secret indications of the future.
It was too late when Mother Carke reached her home to look for a visit
from Laura Silver Bell that day.
About three o'clock next afternoon, Mother Carke was sitting knitting,
with her glasses on, outside her door on the stone bench, when she saw
the pretty girl mount lightly to the top of the stile at her left under the
birch, against the silver stem of which she leaned her slender hand, and
called,
"Mall, Mall! Mother Carke, are ye alane all by yersel'?"
"Ay, Laura lass, we can be clooas enoo, if ye want a word wi' me," says
the old woman, rising, with a mysterious nod, and beckoning her stiffly
with her long fingers.
The girl was, assuredly, pretty enough for a "lord" to fall in love with.
Only look at her. A profusion of brown rippling hair, parted low in the

middle of her forehead, almost touched her eyebrows, and made the
pretty oval of her face, by the breadth of that rich line, more marked.
What a pretty little nose! what scarlet lips, and large, dark, long-fringed
eyes!
Her face is transparently tinged with