Gents Mag 1902 part 2 p.424

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1902 part 2 p.424 night sallied into the half-settled vale, burning the hovels of the peasantry, driving off the cattle, and ruthlessly putting to the sword every man they met. According to the outlaws' fierce tenets, a man of Saxon lineage who would bow to the Norman forfeited all his rights to be considered a Saxon, and to such they meted accordingly. But ere daylight brought the possibility of being attacked by a concentrated force the outlaws had retired. Nor were the occasional keeps scattered here and there among the dales any great safeguard, for at dead of night a shower of arrows would often rattle against the walls, killing anyone who was abroad, and picking a way to loopholes and casements. One night in June, under cover of a fierce thunderstorm, a Saxon band stole down the valleys and set ablaze the woods clothing Harter Fell - to this day the ground remains barren, for the spell of the Saxon witch-familiar has never been broken. At Kendal the blaze was seen, and a small band set out to punish the offenders. Along the road, an old one even then, they marched to the foot of the dale, and here they met a group of peaceful villagers fleeing from the outlaws. Brutally the soldiers ill-treated them - to the Norman the Saxon was a slave of little value, a burden carried with the land - till a Saxon youth, his blood aflame with the coarseness around him, struck one man to the ground with his bare fist. "A fight-rally," shouted the captain in irony, as with the point of his sword he touched the boy's thigh, and laughed at the pain he caused. The rough warriors followed his example, till, maddened, the youngster turned on them, and calling on prodigious strength, with a stone killed the nearest of his tormentors. Instantly the joke dropped, and in a second, from a steel torn body, the Saxon's soul went to commune with his God. "You have wronged" said a hollow voice, and the superstitious soldiers fell back from their hacking of the dead. No one save the trembling villagers was to be seen, but this awful voice seemed to proceed from the bleeding corpse. "You have wronged!" came the words again, in a voice now triumphant, and over the dead man appeared a woman of middle age. Her face was smirched with ashes and soot, as though her breweing of hell-kail were blackening her skin as foully as her soul; her dress was a shapeless cloak of homespun, but so ancient and dirt-stained that its original hue had vanished. A jeering laugh now arose from the group of armed men. "And who gave thee to be our judge?" asked the captain. "I am responsible to the Baron of Kendal alone."
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