flight of steps so precipitous that the feeble beam of his lantern could
give the explorer no help in fathoming their depth; and when this
lantern was lowered as far as it was in his power to do so, the flame
burned blue and went out, killed by the noxious gases that stagnant
centuries had breathed. Dizzy and frightened, the explorer with
difficulty groped his way back to the fresher air of the vault, and no
persuasion could induce him, or any of his fellows, to venture again so
far as to that long flight of steps. The employer of those labourers was
a man entirely devoid of curiosity or of imagination, possessed of no
interest whatsoever in archaeology; so it fell out that the passage was
closed, without any further effort being made to discover to what
mysteries it might lead.

About the year 1845, one who then wrote about the castle visited the
place, and found that boys had broken a small hole in the wall where the
passage had been built up. Through this hole they were wont to amuse
themselves by chucking stones, listening, fascinated, to the strange
sounds that went echoing, echoing through the mysterious depths far
below. Here, say some, lies the buried treasure of the White Lady of
Blenkinsopp. But there are not wanting unsympathetic souls, who pride
themselves on being nothing if not practical, who pretend to think that
this hidden depth is nothing more mysterious than the old draw-well of
the castle.

This story of the White Lady is not the only legend of the supernatural
with which the old family of Blenkinsopp is connected.

Where Tipalt Burn falls into Tyne, stand on the opposite bank the ruins
of Bellister Castle. There, many hundred years ago, dwelt a branch of
the Blenkinsopps. To Bellister there came one night at the gloaming a