down an inch, lost. The great object was with a
quick slicing slash to strip the skill down the
left temple.

Guy Fawkes Day was a most turbulent festival,
quite a saturnalia for the roughs and the street-
boys. No Jews of the middle ages could have
more dreaded Christmas Day than our quiet
shopkeepers dreaded the anniversary of the
Gunpowder Plot. The mob came round in the
morning to every door, shouting for bundles of
fagots for the evening bonfires. The awed
shopkeepers began towards dusk to put hurdles
before their windows. When the bonfires were
lighted (with a tar-barrel or so, if they could
be got), the noise began, and the sputter and
the hiss of enormous squibs as big as walkingsticks.
In the dances and processions round
the fire, if any one fell in and then scrambled out
a little singed, all the better.

One year, this licence degenerated into a
riot. The destruction of stray barn doors
for the fire, became alarming; some wild
spirits even threw an old gig, whole, upon the
flames. This was "heaping it up a leetle too
mountaynous" even for the stoutest Protestant.
The volunteers were called out by beat of drum,
as the boys had begun to fire squibs in at the
town-hall windows; but the mob intercepted the
gallant citizen soldiers before they could muster,
and chased them away. Even the drum-major
and his cocked-hat were not respected. They
drove them back to their shops, torn, tattered,
and without their arms. The town was preparing
itself for a sack, like Badajoz. The
major defended himself with his sword, and
getting into a corner, declared, with a terrible
oath, that if he was not left alone he would
charge them, let what might happen. Eventually
some soldiers passing through the town,
without their fire-arms, were provided with
fowling-pieces; and they charged the mob, and
took prisoners many rioters, chiefly boys. The
jail being full, and a rescue threatened, the boys
were locked up in the great council chamber,
and there, with a big blazing fire, a nice time
they had of it, singing and uttering fearful
slander against the mayor and town council, all
night, relating their exploits, and threatening
still more fun and mischief in the following year.
The next day the ringleaders were fined, and the
rest dismissed with tremendous cautions.

One great feature of old Salisbury and its
festivals (even its elections, if I remember
right) were the morris-dancers—yes, the veritable
morris-dancers of the middle ages—such
fantastic posture-makers as Ben Jonson has
introduced into several of his masques—men who
waved napkins in one hand and short sticks
in the other, and kept in front of processions,
turning round with strange antics as they
danced, to face those who followed. Hob-a-Nob,
the giant, was also a distinguished personage,
and his attendant was a man wearing a sword
and carrying a side-drum. On great days, the
chief trades had each its allegorical representatives.
Bishop Blaize, with mitre and crosier,
represented the wool-combers, and there were
painted shepherds and shepherdesses with gilt
crooks, carrying lambs in a basket. Nor was
the hobby-horse forgotten. He made great
play by his curvets and prancings, and effected
sudden rushes at quiet timid people in the crowd,
snapping at coat-tails and tearing gowns, to the
general dismay of the sufferers, and the delight
of the youngsters. It was amusing at the close
of the day to come at the door of some suburban
public-house upon Bishop Blaize with a pipe in
his mouth, and on the shepherd and shepherdess
who guarded the clothing interest sharing a
tankard of ale.

In my youth there was a murder committed
near Salisbury that excited a prodigious interest.
After a heavy snow-storm, a sailor named Curtis,
on the tramp from Portsmouth, came to the
Salisbury Infirmary, much bruised and cut, as
he said, from blows and wounds received in a
fight with footpads from whom he had finally
escaped. The man was taken care of, and when
he went away, having no money, he left several
silver spoons, as some return for the kindness
that had been shown him. Certain days after his
departure for Portsmouth, the body of an old Jew
pedlar, well known in the country, and who had
been missed latterly on his accustomed rounds,
was found by Reuben Marlow, huntsman to a
gentleman in the neighbourhood, as he was looking
for a fox's earth. It lay in an old gravel
or chalk pit on Hanham Hill, near Dogdean
Farm, which stands to the left of the Salisbury
and Blandford-road. The huntsman came upon
the body, as he was moving about the snow in
the underwood, and he called out to his companion,
rapping out a grisly oath as he spake,
"By the Lord, Jack, why, here's the Jew!" For
the whole country had been talking about the
pedlar's disappearance. The Jew's throat, it
was found, had been cut, and his pack, which
had contained silver plate, especially spoons, had
been rifled.

Some shrewd people, putting things together,
remembered that the sailor at the infirmary had
left spoons in payment, and, moreover, it was
discovered that the two men had been seen
together. The sailor, however, had the start,
and the fleet had already received orders for
sailing. There seemed no chance of laying
hands on him; but Providence was against him.
The same wind that had suddenly melted the
snow and disclosed the murdered body, had
also delayed the vessel that was to have borne
the murderer safely from his pursuers. The man
was caught, and the proofs were collected against
him from every side. The crime was fully
proved. He was hanged, and gibbeted over
the pit where the Jew's body had been found.
For years, the carcase, scorched by the sun and
soaked by the dews, was the terror of travellers
by night. At last, some dragoons being quartered
near there, the obnoxious gibbet was removed,
on the plea that the soldiers' horses
rubbed off their bridles against it.

The old workhouse at Fisherton, near Crane
Bridge, was in my younger days the scene of a
singular ghost story. I remember the old workhouse,