"
But perhaps the animosity here shown to Leehall comes more from one who
was a lover of horses--as who in Northumberland is not?--than from a
partisan of Lowes. However, the feud ran on, year in, year out, as is
the custom of such things, and no doubt it might have been bequeathed
from father to son, like a property under entail, had it not been for
the intervention of Frank Stokoe. Lowes and Leehall, it seems, had met
by chance near Sewing Shields, with the usual result. Only, upon this
occasion, the former was possibly not on the back of an animal the
superior in speed and stamina of the horse on which Leehall was mounted.
At least, Lowes was captured.
But, having got him, his enemy did not proceed to cut him into gobbets,
or even to "wipe the floor" with him. Something lingering and long was
more to his taste; he would make Lowes "eat dirt." With every mark,
therefore, of ignominy and contempt, he dragged his fallen foe home to
Leehall, and there chained him near to the kitchen fire-place, leaving
just such length of chain loose as would enable the prisoner to sit with
the servants at meals. The position can scarcely have been altogether a
pleasing one to the servants, to say nothing of the prisoner. Doubtless
the former, or some of them, may have found a certain joy in baiting,
and in further humiliating, a helpless man, their master's beaten enemy.
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