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doubt not but I told him then,I told him then,That I had kept me from all menSince we joined lips and swore.Whereat he smiled, and thinned awayAs the wind stirred to call up day . . .—’Tis past! And here alone I strayHaunting the Western Moor. NOTES.—“Windwhistle” (Stanza iv.). The highness and dryness ofWindwhistle Inn was impressed upon the writer two or three years ago,when, after climbing on a hot afternoon to the beautiful spot near whichit stands and entering the inn for tea, he was informed by the landladythat none could be had, unless he would fetch water from a valley half amile off, the house containing not a drop, owing to its situation.However, a tantalizing row of full barrels behind her back testified to awetness of a certain sort, which was not at that time desired. “Marshal’s Elm” (Stanza vi.) so picturesquely situated, is no longer aninn, though the house, or part of it, still remains. It used to exhibita fine old swinging sign. “Blue Jimmy” (Stanza x.) was a notorious horse-stealer of Wessex in thosedays, who appropriated more than a hundred horses before he was caught,among others one belonging to a neighbour of the writer’s grandfather.He was hanged at the now demolished Ivel-chester or Ilchester jail abovementioned—that building formerly of so many sinister associations in theminds of the local peasantry, and the continual haunt of fever, which atlast led to its condemnation. Its site is now an innocent-looking greenmeadow. _April_ 1902.
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