BELFORD.

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CHAPTER XVI.

Belford-A Watch for Dominie-Embleton-Salmon-trout-Travelling Travellers-Isabella and Epitaph-Boat-stables-Dunstanborough-A Large Ruin-Grim Cliffs-Diamonds-Sir Guy the Seeker-The Catastrophe Rumble Churn--Rioting, Raging, Roaring-A Twofold Bath-Lilburne Tower-Basaltic Columns-A Storm-Herring Boats -A Tipsy Tailor-Newton-Abominations-Rock-mushrooms-Beadnel-Geologists and Antiquaries-Dismal Fog-North Sunderland— Limekilns-Lifeboat-Maritime Jewelry Monkshouse - Landlord and Fisherman-More Caution-Bamborough-The Ten-minute Gun -King Ida's Castle-Taken and Retaken-A Charitable BishopReady with Food, Schooling, and Rescue-Hearing and not SeeingRobin on French Poachers-Lifeboats-Fewer Wrecks and more Fish -Lasting Fog-Bamborough again--Hospitable Hostess-LuckerBerwick.

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BELFORD is one of those small market-towns which has had to exchange the daily sight of stage-coaches and the Royal Mail for a couple of omnibuses and a railway station a good mile away; and finds it possible to live with the new order of things, without forgetting one at least of the primitive virtues. For during my evening at the Black Swan, I heard a committee of four discussing how best to lay out ten pounds on a watch which was to be a farewell gift to a worthy schoolmaster about to sail for Australia.

By the first train the next morning I journeyed a few miles south to Christon Bank station, walked thence across fields to Embleton, a quiet village, with a good specimen of a village inn, the Hare and Hounds. Its claim to honourable mention was strengthened by

the excellent salmon-trout which the hostess set before me for breakfast. Nightingales' tongues may be pretty eating; but if one of the centurions had happened to cast a net into the Aln in the month of July, the Berwick smacks would have been anticipated some centuries by swift galleys conveying fish of Bernician rivers to the imperial table at Rome; and Apion would have had another rare dish to write about. What comfortable fast-days those monks of Hulne must have had!

Embleton, too, feels the influence of the railway. In former days, said the hostess, if a traveller came in the afternoon, he stayed all night: now he hastens away to save the last train," leaving the Hare and Hounds to mourn their empty beds. 'Tis the same story everywhere; that last train is always helping the travellers to "get on," so that whether they ever stop anywhere to sleep seems doubtful.

Happy is the parish which keeps its church in repair as here at Embleton; the vicarage, with its embrasures and solid weatherbeaten walls, looks as if it had once been a fortress. The tombstones and inscriptions are mostly in full mourning, both alike black, whereby much of the effect of epitaphs is lost. Isabella seems to be as frequent and a favourite name in Northumberland as Rebecca is in Yorkshire. On one of the stones here you may read:

Weep not for me my husband dear
But keep in mind that I lie here
And be mindful of the three

Motherless children I left with thee

In heaven I hope the fourth will meet
Where all our joys will be complete.

The villagers get double duty out of their boats, cutting them in two when they will no longer swim,

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and setting them keel uppermost on a dwarf wall, and so contriving a stable: wherein they exhibit thriftiness and ingenuity.

From the top of the bank at the end of the village Dunstanborough Castle is full in view. Half-an-hour of lane and field, past one or two of those heart-breaking "farm-places," and the birthplace of Duns Scotus, will bring us thither.

The ruin stands on a basaltic peninsula which, black and stern, advances upon the sea, and forms the most picturesque mass of Northumbrian cliffs. It is one of those ruins about which you may wander at pleasure, and approach on any side you please. Scramble up the bank, and you will be surprised by the large extent of ground within the walls-nine acres, on which, according to Camden, former occupants reaped two hundred bushels of corn, besides hay.

The great arched entrance between two round towers remains, but blocked up; and the lowermost chambers and vaults are used as stables or cattle lairs; and there are other towers on the edge of the cliff, much dilapidated, and though you see, as usual, bits of arches, of old fireplaces, stairs, and recesses, fringed here and there with drooping weeds, there is nothing picturesque in the ruin as a whole: Lilburne Tower, seen from the shore beyond the peninsula, is worth all the rest. But Nature lends her aid, and impresses you with the sight of the grim cliffs, adorned here and there with clusters of thrift; and of the sea swirling and foaming among the rocks and in the deep-worn crevices, while on each side the beach is strewn with great black stones in amazing number. Crystals are sometimes found among them known as Dunstanborough diamonds.

While wandering hither and thither, making out the remains of the chapel, or the well, or the sallyport, we may remember what the antiquaries tell us, that this castle was built by the same masons who wrought at Warkworth, in the reign of Edward II., upon the site of a fortress which had belonged to Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. The Earl of Tankerville is the present owner. Or if we incline to mingle romance with history, there is the legend of Sir Guy the Seeker, who while sheltering here from a storm, was accosted by a 'ghastly wight."

"Sir Knight! Sir Knight! if your heart be right,

And your nerves be firm and true,

Sir Knight! Sir Knight! a Beauty bright

In durance waits for you.

'That mortal ne'er drew vital air,

Who witness'd fear in me :

Come what come will, come good, come ill,
Lead on! I'll follow thee!'

And now they go both high and low,
Above and under-ground,

And in and out, and about and about,

And round, and round, and round."

Then there is a winding stair, and at the top a brazen gate, of which the bolt was a venomous snake; but the creature yields to the ghastly wight, and the two enter a sable hall wherein

"Of marble black as the raven's back

A hundred steeds stood round;
And of marble white by each a knight
Lay sleeping on the ground;"

and there within a crystal tomb is the captive lady, at sight of whom Sir Guy declares himself ready to undertake anything for her deliverance.

It is the old story of the sword and the horn; the

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knight makes the same mistake as all others had before him and since; and when he recovers from his swoon at daybreak, he begins to search for the winding stair.—

"But still he seeks, and aye he seeks,

And seeks, and seeks in vain ;
And still he repeats to all he meets,
"Could I find that sword again!'

Which words he follows with a groan,
As if his heart would break;

And, oh! that groan has so strange a tone
It makes all hearers quake !

A deep gully, known as Rumble Churn, which penetrates the eastern cliff, was long supposed to be the scene of all the supernatural grumblings of the Dunstanborough demons. The chasm bends as it enters, so that standing at the inner end you cannot see its mouth, yawning upon the sea; and below, it is choked with the big black stones, and when winds are piping loud, then the waves dash in, and the demons of the storm roll the stones up and down in mad glee. Even as Sir Guy heard it, so may you.

"With strange turmoil did it bubble and boil,

And echo from place to place;

So strong was its dash, and so high did it splash,
That it wash'd the castle's base:

The spray as it broke appear'd like smoke

From a sea volcano pouring;

And still did it rumble, and grumble, and tumble,
Rioting, raging, roaring."

Even in calm weather the water gurgles and moans

fitfully as it sinks and swells in the gloomy Churn; I