Young Charles Radcliffe heard it as he rode down the hill from Dilston Castle towards the Devil Water. Those wild despairing sobs came only from a kitchen wench whose lover -- a scurvy Hexham beggar -- had four days since stolen a cow from the Dilston byre. The rogue had soon been caught with the cow, hidden in a copse. The castle steward said the thief had protested that his mother was starving -- some such tale. But the thief was very properly hanged forthwith. The kitchen wench might think herself lucky that no more had happened to her than a good tongue-lashing from Mrs. Busby, the castle housekeeper. And yet the stupid girl, half crazed, they said, wept on and on. “Greeting,” they idiotically called weeping up here in their barbarous tongue, which was partly Scottish and partly the English of five hundred years ago, or so said Mr. Brown, the chaplain. The unseen girl gave a louder wail and the noise aggravated all Charles’s pent-up boredom. The dripping mists lifted at last, and he rode aimlessly off in search of amusement.
