Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

From the New York Commercial Advertiser.

The old man--Crossing the Kats-kill and its rich meadows, we passed to Cairo. About two miles before reaching this town, however, an ancient and spacious stone house was pointed out to us, bearing the date of 1705, in large iron figures. This venerable mansion stands in the midst of an extensive farm of about a thousand acres, well cultivated, and presenting a scene which, for a single farm, is hardly anywhere to be equalled for the rich, picturesque and beautiful. During a part of the seventeenth, and nearly the whole of the eighteenth century, it belonged to a single owner! De Montfort, when young, was a man of violent passions. A servant girl having once run away, he pursued and overtook her, and in his exasperation tied her to his horse's tail, to lead her home. By a fright, or some other cause, the horse ran off, and the unfortunate girl was dashed to pieces against the rocks and stones. The unhappy master was arrested and tried and convicted of murder! He was rich, of a powerful family of the times, and through the combined means of wealth and family influence, it being allowed on all hands to be a hard case, he was sentenced to be executed at ninety nine years old. He lived on: and generation after generation passed away, and yet De Montfort lived! Death seemed to have no arrow barbed for him. At length the time approached. Ninety, ninety five, ninety eight years had rolled away since his birth.--The ninety ninth came on, and yet he lived! But generations had risen up and gone down to the tomb, since his offence. Nay, the tale had almost become a forgotten tradition, although many years before, the keen eyes of superstition had seen, and her tremulous tongue related, many tales of startling terror concerning the appearances at the fatal spot, pointed out to this day, where the poor girl had lost her life. The hopeless swain who, in returning from visiting his rustic mistress, was so unlucky as to have been detained in the lap of bliss to the solemn hour of midnight, was sure to encounter a nocturnal apparition of some sort. Sometimes sighs and lamentations were heard in the air, like the plaintiveness of the soft whistling wind. At others, a white cow, which was said to have been a favorite when the deceased was alive, would stand lowing among the rocks, while again at others, a shagged white dog would stand pointing and howling towards the mansion. But they always vanished on approaching them, though it perhaps would have been difficult to prove that the spectators approached very near. A white horse of gigantic size with fiery eye balls and distended nostrils, was often seen to run past the fatal spot., with the fleetness of the wind, dragging a female behind, with tattered garments and streaming hair, screaming for help. At other times, the horse would appear to drag a hideous skeleton clattering after him, half enveloped in a winding sheet, with cries and dismal howlings: while again a female figure would at times appear sitting upon a huge fragment of rock, with a lighted candle upon each finger, singing wildly, or uttering a piercing cry, or a hysterical laugh. People too, began to wonder that De Montfort did not die. while many shook their heads, and indicated that he could not--that his soul was bound to earth till the time should come. But these things, too, passed away. And now the revolution had intervened. A new government bore rule; and the old man was not molested. For seventy five years he had led a quiet and inoffensive life, and who would rudely break in upon his repose. He died tranquilly at more than a hundred years old. "Peace to his ashes!" Tradition has added to his sentence that he was to wear a cord continually upon his neck. and a few years ago, there were those living who pretended that they had seen a neat silken string, worn in compliance to the sentence, but to appearance as an ornament.