Free The Golden Leg by Dale Jarvis

make the corpse easier to carry, the murderers had hacked off
     his legs, and then had dumped them, and the body, down into the well.
    The murderers were never found, nor brought to justice. The ghost of the
     unfortunate sailor, forever in search of his unpunished murderers, can still be
     seen gliding through the night from time to time. He still cradles in his arms
     the sack containing his legs, with his head rolled back and resting between his
     shoulder blades, and his horrible, staring eyes gazing out behind for
     eternity.

A
long time ago, two hundred years at
     least, there lived a rich squire. The squire lived in great comfort in a large
     country manor named Harnage Grange with his wife and his family. The squire had
     several children, but the one he loved dearest was his eldest daughter,
     Margaret.
    Margaret’s beauty was famed throughout that part of England. Her skin was as
     pale as milk, and her hair was as red as flame. Margaret had many suitors, but
     only one of them captured her heart. She consented to be his wife, and a day for
     the wedding was set.
    The young couple were due to marry at nearby Langley Chapel. On the day of the
     wedding, the squire of Harnage Grange had his best horses harnessed to his
     finest carriage. He held out his hand to his daughter, and helped her up into
     the carriage, gathering up her long white train and arranging it
     carefully.
    Off they set, the driver keeping the spirited horses at a steady pace. As they
     approached the bridge at Harnage Ford, something spooked the horses, and they
     bolted, swerving andgalloping off the road and down the hill
     toward the rushing river. The wedding carriage shuddered and bounced, and as the
     horses neared the water, they tried to pull away.
    The sudden movement was too much for the carriage. One of the great wheels
     struck a rock and splintered at the sudden impact. The carriage rolled over,
     throwing the squire and Margaret clear, but it landed on top of one of the
     horses, knocking it into the river. The beast neighed in terror, and thrashed
     about, but unable to get clear of the wreckage, it drowned in the swift running
     water.
    The bride’s father pulled himself up to his knees and crawled to where his
     daughter lay senseless on the riverbank, her long white dress spattered with
     muddy earth and stained with blood. He lifted Margaret up in his arms, and
     carried her back to Harnage Grange, her long white train trailing in the earth
     behind them. The squire survived to tell the tale, but Margaret, sadly, died of
     her injuries a short time later.
    Langley Chapel fell into disrepair in the early 1800s, but the story of the
     terrible tragedy that occurred nearby refused to die. The tale of Margaret who
     perished on her wedding day was told over and over, and Harnage Ford soon
     acquired a rather eerie reputation.
    Two hundred years later, the spirits of both Margaret and the horse that
     drowned in the river are still said to haunt Harnage Ford. Even today, horses
     insist on stopping every time they reach the ford, and are often reluctant to
     cross the bridge. It is said by some that those horses can see what wehumans cannot—the ghostly remains of Margaret with her
     milk-white skin, her long white dress, and hair as red as flame, standing beside
     a stately phantom horse on the banks of the rushing river.

E
verything about Joseph’s day had been
     grey. The sky was like worn flannel, and the ocean that rolled underneath it was
     much the same. Even Joseph’s mood was grey; all day long his nets had come up
     empty.
    Joseph placed the oars in their oarlocks, and started to row to where his next
     net was set. There was a slight swell on the water, and as he rowed along, he
     thought of his wife, and their six children. He thought of the roof that needed
     patching, and he thought of his poor luck that day.
    “Well,” he said to himself, “it can’t get much worse.”
    With that, he grasped at the next net,