FIRESIDE STORIES. 493

 

advancing towards the house with a drawn sword in one hand,
while with the other he dragged a young lady by the hair of her
head. Lady Mary had just time to slip down and hide herself
under the stairs before Mr. Fox and his victim arrived at the foot
of them. As he pulled the young lady upstairs, she caught hold
of one of the banisters with her hand, upon which was a rich
bracelet. Mr. Fox cut it off with his sword, and the hand and
bracelet fell into Lady Mary’s lap, who then contrived to escape
unobserved, and got safe home to her brothers’ house.

A few days afterwards, Mr. Fox came to dine with them as
usual. After dinner the guests began to amuse each other with
extraordinary anecdotes, and Lady Mary said she would relate
to them a remarkable dream she had lately had. “I dreamt,”
said she, “that as you, Mr. Fox, had often invited me to your
house, I would go there one morning. When I came to the house
I knocked at the door, but no one answered. When I opened
the door, over the hall I saw written, ‘Be bold, be bold, but not
too bold.’ But,” said she, turning to Mr. Fox and smiling, “ it is
not so, nor it was not so.” Then she pursued the rest of the
story, concluding at every turn with, “It is not so, nor it was not
so,’ till she came to the discovery of the room full of bones, when
Mr. Fox took up the burden of the tale, and said,

It is not so, nor it was not so,
And God forbid it should be so!

which he continued to repeat at every subsequent turn of the
dreadful story, till she came to the circumstance of his cutting
off the young lady’s hand, when, upon his saying as usual,