Myths and Legends
to death that he might haunt the place and frighten searchers from their quest. For years no fisherman could be induced to land there after nightfall, for did not an islander once encounter "Old Bab" on his rounds, with a red ring around his neck, a frock hanging about him, phosphorescence gleaming from his body, who peered at the intruder with a white and dreadful face, and nearly scared him to death?
A spot near the Piscataqua River was another hiding-place, and early in this century the ground was dug over, two of the seekers plying pick and spade, while another stood within the circle they had drawn about the spot and loudly read the Bible. Presently their implements clicked on an iron chest, but it slid sideway into the ground as they tried to uncover it, and at last an interruption occurred that caused them to stop work so long that when they went to look for it again it had entirely disappeared. This diversion was the appearance of a monster horse that flew toward them from a distance without a sound, but stopped short at the circle where the process of banning fiends was still going on, and, after grazing and walking around them for a time, it dissolved into sir.
Kidd's plug is a part of the craggy steep known as Cro' Nest, on the Hudson. It is a projecting knob, like a bung closing an orifice, which is believed to conceal a cavern where the redoubtable captain placed a few barrels of his wealth. Though it is two hundred feet up the cliff, inaccessible either from
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