The bones of several murdered persons were with difficulty brought up
from the abyss into which they had been thrust; but so narrow is the
aperture, and so extraordinary the depth, that all who see it are
inclined to coincide in the tradition of the country people that it is
unfathomable. The scene of these events still continues nearly as it
was 300 years ago. The remains of the old cottage, with its blackened
walls (haunted of course by a thousand evil spirits,) and the extensive
moor, on which a more modern _inn_ (if it can be dignified with such an
epithet) resembles its predecessor in every thing but the character of
its inhabitants; the landlord is deformed, but possesses extraordinary
genius; he has himself manufactured a violin, on which he plays with
untaught skill,--and if any _discord_ be heard in the house, or any
_murder_ committed in it, this is his only instrument. His daughter
(who has never travelled beyond the heath) has inherited her father's
talent, and learnt all his tales of terror and superstition, which she
relates with infinite spirit; but when you are led by her across the
heath to drop a stone into that deep and narrow gulf to which our story
relates,--when you stand on its slippery edge, and (parting the long
grass with which it is covered) gaze into its mysterious depths,--when
she describes, with all the animation of an _eye witness_, the
struggles of the victims grasping the grass as a last hope of
preservation, and trying to drag in their assassin as an expiring
effort of vengeance,--when you are told that for 300 years the clear
waters in this diamond of the desert have remained untasted by mortal
lips, and that the solitary traveller is still pursued at night by the
howling of the bloodhound,--it is _then only_ that it is possible fully
to appreciate the terrors of THE MURDER HOLE.
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