THE MAID OF LINDEN LANE.
WHAT THE OLD WOMAN SAID TO THE SCHOOL-GIRL.
———
BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
———
Little maiden, you may laughThat you see me wear a staff!For your laughter’s but the chaffFrom the melancholy grain!Through the shadows long and coolYou are tripping down to school,But your teacher’s cloudy ruleOnly dulls the shining poolWith its loud and stormy rain!There’s a higher lore to learnThan his knowledge can discern;There’s a valley deep and dernIn a desolate domain!But for this he has no chart!Shallow science—shallow art!Thither—oh be still my heart—One too many did departFrom the halls of Linden Lane!I can teach you better things;For I know the secret springsWhere the spirit wells and singsTill it overflows the brain!Come when eve is closing in,When the spiders all begin,Like philosophers, to spinGilded tissues vain and thinThrough the shades of Linden Lane.While you sit as in a trance,Where the moon-made shadows dance,From the distaff of RomanceI will spin a silken skein!Down the misty years gone byI will turn your azure eye;You shall see the changeful skyFalling dark or hanging highO’er the halls of Linden Lane!Come, and sitting by the trees,O’er the long and level leas,Stretched between us and the seas,I can point the battle-plain:If the air comes from the shoreWe may hear the billows roar;But oh! never, nevermoreShall the wind come as of yoreTo the halls of Linden Lane!Those were weary days of wo,Ah! yes, many years ago,When a cruel foreign foeSent his fleets across the main!Though all this is in your books,There are countless words and looks,Which, like flowers in hidden nooks,Or the melody of brooks,There’s no volume can retain!Come, and if the night be fair,And the moon be in the air,I can tell you when and whereWalked a tender loving twain:Though it cannot be, alas!Yet, as in a magic glass,We will sit and see them passThrough the long and rustling grassAt the foot of Linden Lane!
Little maiden, you may laughThat you see me wear a staff!For your laughter’s but the chaffFrom the melancholy grain!Through the shadows long and coolYou are tripping down to school,But your teacher’s cloudy ruleOnly dulls the shining poolWith its loud and stormy rain!There’s a higher lore to learnThan his knowledge can discern;There’s a valley deep and dernIn a desolate domain!But for this he has no chart!Shallow science—shallow art!Thither—oh be still my heart—One too many did departFrom the halls of Linden Lane!I can teach you better things;For I know the secret springsWhere the spirit wells and singsTill it overflows the brain!Come when eve is closing in,When the spiders all begin,Like philosophers, to spinGilded tissues vain and thinThrough the shades of Linden Lane.While you sit as in a trance,Where the moon-made shadows dance,From the distaff of RomanceI will spin a silken skein!Down the misty years gone byI will turn your azure eye;You shall see the changeful skyFalling dark or hanging highO’er the halls of Linden Lane!Come, and sitting by the trees,O’er the long and level leas,Stretched between us and the seas,I can point the battle-plain:If the air comes from the shoreWe may hear the billows roar;But oh! never, nevermoreShall the wind come as of yoreTo the halls of Linden Lane!Those were weary days of wo,Ah! yes, many years ago,When a cruel foreign foeSent his fleets across the main!Though all this is in your books,There are countless words and looks,Which, like flowers in hidden nooks,Or the melody of brooks,There’s no volume can retain!Come, and if the night be fair,And the moon be in the air,I can tell you when and whereWalked a tender loving twain:Though it cannot be, alas!Yet, as in a magic glass,We will sit and see them passThrough the long and rustling grassAt the foot of Linden Lane!
Little maiden, you may laughThat you see me wear a staff!For your laughter’s but the chaffFrom the melancholy grain!Through the shadows long and coolYou are tripping down to school,But your teacher’s cloudy ruleOnly dulls the shining poolWith its loud and stormy rain!
Little maiden, you may laugh
That you see me wear a staff!
For your laughter’s but the chaff
From the melancholy grain!
Through the shadows long and cool
You are tripping down to school,
But your teacher’s cloudy rule
Only dulls the shining pool
With its loud and stormy rain!
There’s a higher lore to learnThan his knowledge can discern;There’s a valley deep and dernIn a desolate domain!But for this he has no chart!Shallow science—shallow art!Thither—oh be still my heart—One too many did departFrom the halls of Linden Lane!
There’s a higher lore to learn
Than his knowledge can discern;
There’s a valley deep and dern
In a desolate domain!
But for this he has no chart!
Shallow science—shallow art!
Thither—oh be still my heart—
One too many did depart
From the halls of Linden Lane!
I can teach you better things;For I know the secret springsWhere the spirit wells and singsTill it overflows the brain!Come when eve is closing in,When the spiders all begin,Like philosophers, to spinGilded tissues vain and thinThrough the shades of Linden Lane.
I can teach you better things;
For I know the secret springs
Where the spirit wells and sings
Till it overflows the brain!
Come when eve is closing in,
When the spiders all begin,
Like philosophers, to spin
Gilded tissues vain and thin
Through the shades of Linden Lane.
While you sit as in a trance,Where the moon-made shadows dance,From the distaff of RomanceI will spin a silken skein!Down the misty years gone byI will turn your azure eye;You shall see the changeful skyFalling dark or hanging highO’er the halls of Linden Lane!
While you sit as in a trance,
Where the moon-made shadows dance,
From the distaff of Romance
I will spin a silken skein!
Down the misty years gone by
I will turn your azure eye;
You shall see the changeful sky
Falling dark or hanging high
O’er the halls of Linden Lane!
Come, and sitting by the trees,O’er the long and level leas,Stretched between us and the seas,I can point the battle-plain:If the air comes from the shoreWe may hear the billows roar;But oh! never, nevermoreShall the wind come as of yoreTo the halls of Linden Lane!
Come, and sitting by the trees,
O’er the long and level leas,
Stretched between us and the seas,
I can point the battle-plain:
If the air comes from the shore
We may hear the billows roar;
But oh! never, nevermore
Shall the wind come as of yore
To the halls of Linden Lane!
Those were weary days of wo,Ah! yes, many years ago,When a cruel foreign foeSent his fleets across the main!Though all this is in your books,There are countless words and looks,Which, like flowers in hidden nooks,Or the melody of brooks,There’s no volume can retain!
Those were weary days of wo,
Ah! yes, many years ago,
When a cruel foreign foe
Sent his fleets across the main!
Though all this is in your books,
There are countless words and looks,
Which, like flowers in hidden nooks,
Or the melody of brooks,
There’s no volume can retain!
Come, and if the night be fair,And the moon be in the air,I can tell you when and whereWalked a tender loving twain:Though it cannot be, alas!Yet, as in a magic glass,We will sit and see them passThrough the long and rustling grassAt the foot of Linden Lane!
Come, and if the night be fair,
And the moon be in the air,
I can tell you when and where
Walked a tender loving twain:
Though it cannot be, alas!
Yet, as in a magic glass,
We will sit and see them pass
Through the long and rustling grass
At the foot of Linden Lane!
Yonder did they turn and go,Through the level lawn below,With a stately step and slow,And long shadows in their train:Weaving dreams no thoughts could marDown they wandered long and far,Gazing toward the horizon’s barOn their love’s appointed star,Rising in the Lion’s Mane.As across a summer sea,Love passed o’er the quiet lea,Light as only love may be,Freighted with no care or pain.Such the night; but with the mornBrayed the distant bugle horn!Louder! louder! still ’twas borne!Then were anxious faces wornIn the halls of Linden Lane!With the trumpet’s nearer bray,Saw we arms and banners gayFlashing but a league away,Stretching far along the plain!Neighing answer to the callBurst our chargers from the stall;Mounted, here they leaped the wall,There the stream! While in the hallEyes were dashed with sudden rain!Belted for the fiercest fight,And with swimming plume of white,Passed the lover out of sightWith the hurrying host amain!Then the thunders of the gunOn the shuddering breezes run;And the clouds o’erswept the sunTill the heavens hung dark and dunO’er the halls of Linden Lane!
Yonder did they turn and go,Through the level lawn below,With a stately step and slow,And long shadows in their train:Weaving dreams no thoughts could marDown they wandered long and far,Gazing toward the horizon’s barOn their love’s appointed star,Rising in the Lion’s Mane.As across a summer sea,Love passed o’er the quiet lea,Light as only love may be,Freighted with no care or pain.Such the night; but with the mornBrayed the distant bugle horn!Louder! louder! still ’twas borne!Then were anxious faces wornIn the halls of Linden Lane!With the trumpet’s nearer bray,Saw we arms and banners gayFlashing but a league away,Stretching far along the plain!Neighing answer to the callBurst our chargers from the stall;Mounted, here they leaped the wall,There the stream! While in the hallEyes were dashed with sudden rain!Belted for the fiercest fight,And with swimming plume of white,Passed the lover out of sightWith the hurrying host amain!Then the thunders of the gunOn the shuddering breezes run;And the clouds o’erswept the sunTill the heavens hung dark and dunO’er the halls of Linden Lane!
Yonder did they turn and go,Through the level lawn below,With a stately step and slow,And long shadows in their train:Weaving dreams no thoughts could marDown they wandered long and far,Gazing toward the horizon’s barOn their love’s appointed star,Rising in the Lion’s Mane.
Yonder did they turn and go,
Through the level lawn below,
With a stately step and slow,
And long shadows in their train:
Weaving dreams no thoughts could mar
Down they wandered long and far,
Gazing toward the horizon’s bar
On their love’s appointed star,
Rising in the Lion’s Mane.
As across a summer sea,Love passed o’er the quiet lea,Light as only love may be,Freighted with no care or pain.Such the night; but with the mornBrayed the distant bugle horn!Louder! louder! still ’twas borne!Then were anxious faces wornIn the halls of Linden Lane!
As across a summer sea,
Love passed o’er the quiet lea,
Light as only love may be,
Freighted with no care or pain.
Such the night; but with the morn
Brayed the distant bugle horn!
Louder! louder! still ’twas borne!
Then were anxious faces worn
In the halls of Linden Lane!
With the trumpet’s nearer bray,Saw we arms and banners gayFlashing but a league away,Stretching far along the plain!Neighing answer to the callBurst our chargers from the stall;Mounted, here they leaped the wall,There the stream! While in the hallEyes were dashed with sudden rain!
With the trumpet’s nearer bray,
Saw we arms and banners gay
Flashing but a league away,
Stretching far along the plain!
Neighing answer to the call
Burst our chargers from the stall;
Mounted, here they leaped the wall,
There the stream! While in the hall
Eyes were dashed with sudden rain!
Belted for the fiercest fight,And with swimming plume of white,Passed the lover out of sightWith the hurrying host amain!Then the thunders of the gunOn the shuddering breezes run;And the clouds o’erswept the sunTill the heavens hung dark and dunO’er the halls of Linden Lane!
Belted for the fiercest fight,
And with swimming plume of white,
Passed the lover out of sight
With the hurrying host amain!
Then the thunders of the gun
On the shuddering breezes run;
And the clouds o’erswept the sun
Till the heavens hung dark and dun
O’er the halls of Linden Lane!
Few that joined the fiery frayLived to tell how went the day;But that few could proudly sayHow the foe had fled the plain!Long the maiden’s eyes did yearnFor her cavalier’s return;But she watched alone to learnThat the valley deep and dernWas her desolate domain!Leave your books awhile apart;For they cannot teach the heart!Come, and I will show the chartWhich shall make the mystery plain!I can tell you hidden thingsWhich your knowledge never brings;For I know the secret springsWhere the spirit wells and singsTill it overflows the brain.Ah, yes, lightly sing and laugh,Half a child and woman half;For your laughter’s but the chaffFrom the melancholy grain!And, ere many years shall fly,Age will dim your laughing eye,And like me you’ll totter by;For, remember, love, that IWas the Maid of Linden Lane!
Few that joined the fiery frayLived to tell how went the day;But that few could proudly sayHow the foe had fled the plain!Long the maiden’s eyes did yearnFor her cavalier’s return;But she watched alone to learnThat the valley deep and dernWas her desolate domain!Leave your books awhile apart;For they cannot teach the heart!Come, and I will show the chartWhich shall make the mystery plain!I can tell you hidden thingsWhich your knowledge never brings;For I know the secret springsWhere the spirit wells and singsTill it overflows the brain.Ah, yes, lightly sing and laugh,Half a child and woman half;For your laughter’s but the chaffFrom the melancholy grain!And, ere many years shall fly,Age will dim your laughing eye,And like me you’ll totter by;For, remember, love, that IWas the Maid of Linden Lane!
Few that joined the fiery frayLived to tell how went the day;But that few could proudly sayHow the foe had fled the plain!Long the maiden’s eyes did yearnFor her cavalier’s return;But she watched alone to learnThat the valley deep and dernWas her desolate domain!
Few that joined the fiery fray
Lived to tell how went the day;
But that few could proudly say
How the foe had fled the plain!
Long the maiden’s eyes did yearn
For her cavalier’s return;
But she watched alone to learn
That the valley deep and dern
Was her desolate domain!
Leave your books awhile apart;For they cannot teach the heart!Come, and I will show the chartWhich shall make the mystery plain!I can tell you hidden thingsWhich your knowledge never brings;For I know the secret springsWhere the spirit wells and singsTill it overflows the brain.
Leave your books awhile apart;
For they cannot teach the heart!
Come, and I will show the chart
Which shall make the mystery plain!
I can tell you hidden things
Which your knowledge never brings;
For I know the secret springs
Where the spirit wells and sings
Till it overflows the brain.
Ah, yes, lightly sing and laugh,Half a child and woman half;For your laughter’s but the chaffFrom the melancholy grain!And, ere many years shall fly,Age will dim your laughing eye,And like me you’ll totter by;For, remember, love, that IWas the Maid of Linden Lane!
Ah, yes, lightly sing and laugh,
Half a child and woman half;
For your laughter’s but the chaff
From the melancholy grain!
And, ere many years shall fly,
Age will dim your laughing eye,
And like me you’ll totter by;
For, remember, love, that I
Was the Maid of Linden Lane!
ÆGEUS.
———
BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.
———
Theseus set sail for Athens in the same mournful ship in which he came to Crete, but forgot to change his sails, according to the instructions of his father; so that when his father beheld from a watch-tower the ship returning withblacksails, he imagined that his son was dead, and cast himself headlong into the sea, which was afterward called Ægean sea, from his name and destiny.—Andrew Tooke.
“A mast above the watersIs rising tall and fair,And hither bound, with glory crowned,Welcome my princely heir!”A king these glad words uttered,His white locks streaming free,Beneath a golden circlet,In his watch-tower by the sea.When nearer drew to AthensThe bark that bore his son,The monarch, with an altered look,This loud lament begun.“Those sails are sails of mourning,They flap above the dead;And winds, that fill them, murmurLow lies the laureled head!“Vain, vain the hope long cherished,That this old hand of mineTo Theseus, in dying hour,Would royal robe resign.
“A mast above the watersIs rising tall and fair,And hither bound, with glory crowned,Welcome my princely heir!”A king these glad words uttered,His white locks streaming free,Beneath a golden circlet,In his watch-tower by the sea.When nearer drew to AthensThe bark that bore his son,The monarch, with an altered look,This loud lament begun.“Those sails are sails of mourning,They flap above the dead;And winds, that fill them, murmurLow lies the laureled head!“Vain, vain the hope long cherished,That this old hand of mineTo Theseus, in dying hour,Would royal robe resign.
“A mast above the watersIs rising tall and fair,And hither bound, with glory crowned,Welcome my princely heir!”
“A mast above the waters
Is rising tall and fair,
And hither bound, with glory crowned,
Welcome my princely heir!”
A king these glad words uttered,His white locks streaming free,Beneath a golden circlet,In his watch-tower by the sea.
A king these glad words uttered,
His white locks streaming free,
Beneath a golden circlet,
In his watch-tower by the sea.
When nearer drew to AthensThe bark that bore his son,The monarch, with an altered look,This loud lament begun.
When nearer drew to Athens
The bark that bore his son,
The monarch, with an altered look,
This loud lament begun.
“Those sails are sails of mourning,They flap above the dead;And winds, that fill them, murmurLow lies the laureled head!
“Those sails are sails of mourning,
They flap above the dead;
And winds, that fill them, murmur
Low lies the laureled head!
“Vain, vain the hope long cherished,That this old hand of mineTo Theseus, in dying hour,Would royal robe resign.
“Vain, vain the hope long cherished,
That this old hand of mine
To Theseus, in dying hour,
Would royal robe resign.
“Though black the sails and riggingOf yon ill-omened bark,In my despairing bosomThere is a nightmoredark.”High, high the broken billowIts wreath of foam did fling,When, headlong from the dizzy towerPlunged, in his wo, the king.Thenceforth, august Athena!Thy sea, for beauty famed,The bards of classic story“Ægeum Mare” named.A waste of troubled watersIs, aye, the poet’s dower,And royal thought keeps vigilWithin a lonely tower.Rich fancies have been trustedTo Fortune’s varying gale,And eagerly the watcher marksYon home-returning sail.Perchance on board are riches,To cheer the minstrel’s lot,And glory’s crown of amaranth,Whose purple fadeth not.Winds drive the vessel nearer,And well their wrath she braves—“Ho, watchman! swells her canvasA white cloud o’er the waves?“Thy visions, bard, are perished,Thy golden hopes have fled—Those sails are sails of mourning,They flap above the dead.”
“Though black the sails and riggingOf yon ill-omened bark,In my despairing bosomThere is a nightmoredark.”High, high the broken billowIts wreath of foam did fling,When, headlong from the dizzy towerPlunged, in his wo, the king.Thenceforth, august Athena!Thy sea, for beauty famed,The bards of classic story“Ægeum Mare” named.A waste of troubled watersIs, aye, the poet’s dower,And royal thought keeps vigilWithin a lonely tower.Rich fancies have been trustedTo Fortune’s varying gale,And eagerly the watcher marksYon home-returning sail.Perchance on board are riches,To cheer the minstrel’s lot,And glory’s crown of amaranth,Whose purple fadeth not.Winds drive the vessel nearer,And well their wrath she braves—“Ho, watchman! swells her canvasA white cloud o’er the waves?“Thy visions, bard, are perished,Thy golden hopes have fled—Those sails are sails of mourning,They flap above the dead.”
“Though black the sails and riggingOf yon ill-omened bark,In my despairing bosomThere is a nightmoredark.”
“Though black the sails and rigging
Of yon ill-omened bark,
In my despairing bosom
There is a nightmoredark.”
High, high the broken billowIts wreath of foam did fling,When, headlong from the dizzy towerPlunged, in his wo, the king.
High, high the broken billow
Its wreath of foam did fling,
When, headlong from the dizzy tower
Plunged, in his wo, the king.
Thenceforth, august Athena!Thy sea, for beauty famed,The bards of classic story“Ægeum Mare” named.
Thenceforth, august Athena!
Thy sea, for beauty famed,
The bards of classic story
“Ægeum Mare” named.
A waste of troubled watersIs, aye, the poet’s dower,And royal thought keeps vigilWithin a lonely tower.
A waste of troubled waters
Is, aye, the poet’s dower,
And royal thought keeps vigil
Within a lonely tower.
Rich fancies have been trustedTo Fortune’s varying gale,And eagerly the watcher marksYon home-returning sail.
Rich fancies have been trusted
To Fortune’s varying gale,
And eagerly the watcher marks
Yon home-returning sail.
Perchance on board are riches,To cheer the minstrel’s lot,And glory’s crown of amaranth,Whose purple fadeth not.
Perchance on board are riches,
To cheer the minstrel’s lot,
And glory’s crown of amaranth,
Whose purple fadeth not.
Winds drive the vessel nearer,And well their wrath she braves—“Ho, watchman! swells her canvasA white cloud o’er the waves?
Winds drive the vessel nearer,
And well their wrath she braves—
“Ho, watchman! swells her canvas
A white cloud o’er the waves?
“Thy visions, bard, are perished,Thy golden hopes have fled—Those sails are sails of mourning,They flap above the dead.”
“Thy visions, bard, are perished,
Thy golden hopes have fled—
Those sails are sails of mourning,
They flap above the dead.”
THE EXECUTIONER.
———
BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.
———
Those who, day by day, glance carelessly over a newspaper, as they puff a cigar, or give relish to a lazy breakfast, by running the eye over the brief sketches of crime which appear in the morning journals, with so much regularity, and in such equal proportions, that we are almost led to conjecture that each day receives by lot its due share of such matter, seldom, if ever, think of the actual romance of the events which come to them in such a barren shape. How many broken hearts and peculiar agonies are involved in the intimate details of that arrest, the narrative of which appears among twenty others, and is so told, that, perhaps, the only impression which it makes upon the mind is one of wonder at the feats of the police. What a fearful stage in the history of some human spirit is following the publication of that hasty but remorseless paragraph, which may scarcely arrest the attention as we trace the columns down for more stimulating news, and yet, first, perhaps, publicly connects an honorable name with low vice, and removes the last motive to reform with the last hope of concealment. It is well for those of gentle sensibilities that fancy is not more discursive at such moments, and that, by a kind law of our natures, the door of sympathy seldom opens but to intrusive griefs.
In spite, however, of the callousness which the monotony of crime induces, and which ranges, increasingly, down from those who read of it with indifference to those who commit with composure, it is sometimes brought so near to us in all its bleak reality of depravity and affliction, that we cannot well avoid communion with its voices. There are those who consider emotional culture a duty of self-education, and who would have us, upon systematic principle, subject ourselves to frequent contact with guilt and its results. This doctrine may be carried to excess; and yet but few can say that experience has not proved that the impressions of an occasional intimacy with life’s deep tragedies around us are salutary and instructive.
I had stopped for the night, on a journey westward, at the little town of ——. I was to leave it again in half an hour, and in this short interval that remained before the coach would arrive which was to carry me on my way, I was comfortably seated by a table in my own private apartment, alternately sipping from a cup of coffee and searching for some item of interest in the columns of a dull weekly, still damp from the village press. My eye passed hastily over the stereotype remarks of the country editor, the absurd extravagance of its political articles, and the unmeaning gossip of the neighborhood, and rested, at last, with somewhat more interest, upon a paragraph which, under conspicuous capitals and innumerable marks of exclamation, had been thrust into the paper at the last moment. It contained the announcement of a robbery of the United States mail, from the confusion and empty verbiage of which I extracted these brief facts. The mail had been attacked, just before dawn, by two ill-looking men, who deliberately dragged the driver from his seat, tied him to a tree, and then, without further violence to his person, proceeded to rifle the bags. This done, they had fled, leaving the open letters scattered in the road, and the driver still bound. There was nothing, to be sure, very extraordinary in all this, except that it had occurred but a few hours before, and within two or three miles of where I sat. But when, soon after, the servant came in, and, eager to convey such unusual news, informed me that the men had been hotly pursued and taken, and were then in close custody in one of the rooms of that very house, on their way to the county prison, my curiosity, I confess, was fairly roused.
Intensity of character is always interesting, whatever may be its tendency. Profound intellectuality and abandonedvillainy are, perhaps, equally attractive, when viewed in the light of mere food for speculation. Our deepest feelings discover themselves in our intercourse with the eccentric traits of those of our own species. It is seldom the fear of the elements, or of wild beasts, with which wefrighten children and distress ourselves. It is the terror of strong men, of mad men, or of dead men, that is, at all times, most natural and most urgent. There is subject for deep reason and earnest philosophy in these leadings of a wayward nature.
Some, it is true, are so conversant with such scenes that they lose the fresh effect which this occurrence had upon me. It was a new thing to have crime at my very door. It was no ordinary event for me to mingle my breath with that of outlaw men; of my own shape, indeed, but of wild passions and strange excitements, who gambled with such desperate stakes. I dropped the paper, pushed myself back from the table, and bade the servant go for the landlord.
He soon appeared, and I requested that he would get me a sight of the prisoners. My curiosity was certainly not unusual, or unnatural, and I flattered myself that my appearance gave weight to the wish. He disappeared, but soon returned with a favorable answer. With some caution, adopted to satisfy my host, lest I should be observed by those whomight wish to indulge a similar desire, and might lead him to regret his effort in my behalf, I approached the room in which they were confined, and at a signal agreed upon was admitted.
It was a small apartment. The men were standing at separate windows, looking out upon that open world from whose highways and endless fields they had been taken so suddenly. They were heavily manacled at wrist and ankle. Deep suffering is not sensitive, or easily startled, or perhaps their apathy in this instance arose from sullenness, but neither of them turned or moved as I entered. I nodded to an officer watching at the door, thanked him in low words for his courtesy in indulging my curiosity, and then leaned back against the wall by his side, and silently scrutinized the prisoners.
They stood, as I have mentioned, unmoved as statues. Though their faces were concealed from my view as they looked out, and their backs only were presented, I could see that in age and general appearance they were very different. They were both dressed with tolerable decency, except that their clothes were soiled and torn in the hurry of their flight, and the struggle of their capture. One of them was evidently very young, probably not more than twenty, and the long, neglected hair which fell upon his coat was light and soft. His feet were small, his hands white and delicate, his person slender and somewhat emaciated. They showed gentle training.
His companion was older, and his figure shorter and more sturdy. He had an awkward stoop, and his whole appearance was slouching and ungainly. A profusion of coarse black hair fell straight over his shoulders, without curl or gloss, and a thick beard seemed to cover his face. He bore marks of great strength in his short, thick neck and heavy limbs. This was all that I could see, and I waited patiently for a change in their positions.
“They’re both of ’em,” whispered the officer, “strangers in the neighborhood. I guess it’s a new trade with ’em, for they’re not very keen. They got nothing for their risk and then didn’t know how to take themselves off. They’re bad looking chaps though, and I wouldn’t wonder if they’d seen the inside of a jail before to-day.”
“One of them is very young,” said I, “and looks like a gentleman’s son. Do you see his hands and feet?”
“You wouldn’t think that of him,” said he, “if you were to see his face once. It’s the worst face that I ever saw in a young man. They’re both game, too, and fought like the devil before we got the irons on ’em. That black, Spanish-looking rascal is as strong as a wild beast. He came mighty near getting off.”
“Where did you catch them?” said I, “you seem to have been prompt.”
“We found ’em by accident, in the end,” said the officer. “And it was their own foolishness, too, that brought it about. We had given ’em up, and were coming home, when we came across this letter. The fellows had dropped it two or three hundred yards from the house where we nabbed ’m. They thought they were safe, and were just trying to get something to eat. We wouldn’t have touched ’em, it’s likely, seeing ’em in a decent house, but they started, like fools, and looked scared, and all that, and we knew what to do.”
I took the letter from him as he spoke. The seal had been broken when it was found. The address immediately arrested my attention. It was really a very singular coincidence, and I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened it. The letter was from my most intimate college friend to his father. I had not seen him for full two years, but in that interval I had corresponded with him freely, and I knew his present situation and something of his family history. His father resided in the far west. The son was at the east. He had remained at college when we parted, where he was still preparing himself for the bar, and the post-mark showed that it had been written at that place.
My first impulse, on seeing the signature, was one of honorable delicacy, and I had half folded the letter to return it to the officer, when it occurred to me that it had, no doubt, been already read and re-read; that it would necessarily form part of the chain of the testimony against the accused; that it would be exposed to inspection by bench, bar, and jury, and might at length find its way even to the public papers.
These thoughts decided me, and I opened it and read it. It surprised me somewhat; and though it may be made a question whether I was right or wrong in my mode of settling the point of delicacy, there is nothing which should prevent me now from placing it before the reader as accurately as my memory will allow after so long a lapse of time. It will not interest him as it did me, but its contents bear upon other parts of my story.
It was as follows:
“My Dear Father,—I received your letter of the — instant in regular course of mail. I was sincerely glad to hear that you had so far recovered from an indisposition which at first threatened to be serious.“I am sorry that my reply will convey news which must distress you. George has returned from sea. I met him in the street a few days ago with an ill-looking companion. He came upon me suddenly. I am never very self-possessed, and I was extremely doubtful how to treat him. He saw me, however—knew me at once—seized me by the hand and drew me into a public room which opened upon the place where we stood. I could not break away from him without attracting attention. He affected a pleasure which I suppose was assumed, in order to overcome a repulsiveness of manner that he could not fail to notice, and which I could not help. He asked about you and Mary, and told me he was utterly destitute, and needed money for his necessary wants. I gavehim a small sum to keep him from starving, and tried to shake him off. This, however, I could not easily do. He went on to say that he had determined to see you again, and throw himself on your charity, and was then actually on his way to the west. I told him that your feelings had not changed, and that his appearance would only make trouble and give you pain. His resolution, notwithstanding what I said, seemed unaltered, and I am afraid his presence will soon annoy you.“His appearance shocked me excessively. He looks bloated and depraved beyond description, and I fear from the expression of his face, and the air of his companion, that he has gone far in vice since he left you.“I wish Mary could have seen him as I saw him. She has been so unreasonable already, however, that it might be well to send her from home in anticipation of the threatened visit. Unless she is kept in ignorance of it in this, or some other way, she may yet give us much trouble and anxiety. “Give my love to her, and believe me“Your affectionate son,“Henry Eagleton, Jr.”
“My Dear Father,—I received your letter of the — instant in regular course of mail. I was sincerely glad to hear that you had so far recovered from an indisposition which at first threatened to be serious.
“I am sorry that my reply will convey news which must distress you. George has returned from sea. I met him in the street a few days ago with an ill-looking companion. He came upon me suddenly. I am never very self-possessed, and I was extremely doubtful how to treat him. He saw me, however—knew me at once—seized me by the hand and drew me into a public room which opened upon the place where we stood. I could not break away from him without attracting attention. He affected a pleasure which I suppose was assumed, in order to overcome a repulsiveness of manner that he could not fail to notice, and which I could not help. He asked about you and Mary, and told me he was utterly destitute, and needed money for his necessary wants. I gavehim a small sum to keep him from starving, and tried to shake him off. This, however, I could not easily do. He went on to say that he had determined to see you again, and throw himself on your charity, and was then actually on his way to the west. I told him that your feelings had not changed, and that his appearance would only make trouble and give you pain. His resolution, notwithstanding what I said, seemed unaltered, and I am afraid his presence will soon annoy you.
“His appearance shocked me excessively. He looks bloated and depraved beyond description, and I fear from the expression of his face, and the air of his companion, that he has gone far in vice since he left you.
“I wish Mary could have seen him as I saw him. She has been so unreasonable already, however, that it might be well to send her from home in anticipation of the threatened visit. Unless she is kept in ignorance of it in this, or some other way, she may yet give us much trouble and anxiety. “Give my love to her, and believe me
“Your affectionate son,
“Henry Eagleton, Jr.”
I have said that I was somewhat surprised. My friend had occasionally mentioned the name of George Ellis, his father’s ward, and had more than once spoken of his own sister Mary. But though I had deemed our intimacy sufficient for almost any confidence, he had never touched upon circumstances bearing in the remotest degree upon those which had thusaccidentally met my eye. Indeed I recollected, or thought I recollected, that there had always been a certain reserve in his conversation about Ellis, which had at times excited a casual curiosity. Now the mystery was in a measure explained. From the letter in my hand I could gather at a glance the main features of this family trouble. I afterwards learned that its most important events had happened after I parted with my friend.
“What names have they given?” said I to the officer, handing back the letter.
“None at all,” he replied. “The short one can’t or won’t talk English, and the other is stubborn and says nothing. They’ve jabbered together a little in some foreign gibberish, but we can’t get any thing out of ’em, do our best. If they knew what they were about they’d just give in their names at once as John Smith, or John Jones, and have done with it. That’s the way the knowing ones do.”
At this instant some one tapped at the door, opened it slightly, and informed me that the coach was waiting for me. Attracted by the sound the younger of the prisoners turned fully round. I had been looking for such a movement, and whispering to the servant that I would be there presently, and that in the meantime he could take down my trunk, I stood for a moment longer by the side of the officer, and with as little that was offensive in my glance as possible, returned steadily the gaze of the culprit.
The officer was right. In so young a man I had never seen so bad a face. Marks of brutal passion and dissipation mingled with an expression of sullen fear upon a countenance which might once have been handsome, but was now far otherwise. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, and his skin red and bloated. But he could not bear my scrutiny, and cut it short by turning again to the window. I had already delayed longer than I should have done, and bidding the officer a hasty good-bye, I left the room.
In ten minutes more I was driving rapidly away. On my return, I again passed through the town, and found upon inquiry the result of the arrest. The elder of the prisoners had been convicted upon the testimony of the younger; the former was in prison, the latter at large.
In the pressure of business, however, and of life’s pursuits, the connected impressions of that scene soon went from me. Matters of deeper interest occupied my mind and enlisted my attention. My correspondence with Eagleton, in which of course I never hinted at my singular adventure, became less and less frequent, and at last ceased entirely; and before the time over which I now pass so hastily had gone by, I had well nigh forgotten my early friendship.
It was some five years after the occurrence of the scene which I have described, that on a visit to the city in whose college I had received a part of my education, I had occasion to employ counsel to advise me in the conduct of perplexed and unpleasant business. Seven years’ absence from the place had nearly obliterated my slight knowledge of its society, and I was obliged to make some inquiry in reference to the character and comparative ability of different members of the bar. Among other names mentioned to me with commendation was that of Henry Eagleton, my chum and classmate.
I sought no further, but determined without loss of time to see him, revive our acquaintance, and obtain his services. With the name, too, came back my recollection of the scene at ——, and I felt a deep desire to discover, if I could do so with delicacy, the sequel to the brief narrative of that stolen letter. I obtained his address, and soon stood at the door of his office. I knocked, and in obedience to a call from within, entered.
By a large table on which lay open books and scattered papers, in the confusion and disorder of hasty use, sat my friend writing. He rose as I entered, and though time had made some change in my appearance and much more in his, we knew each other at once.
He was thinner and paler than when I had last seen him, and all the buoyancy of his disposition had gone. Then he was the soul of fun and innocent mirth, now he was grave, reserved, and business-like, and his features wore a deep tinge of melancholy. He was chatty and companionable, however,to me; and as passing from one lively topic to another we talked of old times and college freaks, his reserve wore away, and his face lighted up with smiles which probably had not played upon it for years before, and which made him look much more like my old friend Harry Eagleton. Maturity and old age are marvelously indulgent to the faults and follies of their youth, and while we recalled one scene after another of high frolic or absurd amusement, we almost felt ready for their mischief again.
As we warmed in a conversation of such a character, old sympathies revived, and our remarks became closer and more personal. I freely went over the general course of my life since we had parted, and with apparently equal openness he spoke of his own career. He had partly prepared himself for the bar in the proper department of the institution in which he had been graduated, had completed his training in a private office in the same city, had determined to settle there permanently in his profession, had come to the bar under favorable auspices, and with a delay much less than he had feared, and was now in the full tide of successful practice, reaping the fruits of an honorable and a lucrative business.
I asked him, after some time, after his father and sister. In a moment all sprightliness passed from his countenance, and he answered me with the deepest gravity.
His father had been dead for several years; his sister was living with him, a confirmed and hopeless invalid.
I did not mention Ellis’s name, or push my inquiries further, but after a short and awkward silence touched abruptly on my own matters, and produced the papers which bore upon the business that had led me to his office. It was soon arranged. His clear comprehension of facts which I deemed complicated, and his better information as to their bearing and effect soon simplified a case of much importance, put it in a light more favorable to my own interest than I had anticipated, and directed my future course toward those concerned with me in the result.
This over, our social chat re-commenced; and though I feared to intrude upon his time, he pressed me to remain seated, with an urgency which I could not resist. We were soon wandering away again with the memories which had already proved so pleasant, and which seemed to freshen and increase as we went on. After a prudent hesitation as to the propriety of doing so, which perhaps yielded in the end rather to inclination than to judgment, I availed myself of some accidental turn in our conversation, and related the adventure of my journey to the west.
I began the story without hinting to him that his name was involved. As I went on step by step, his eye became fixed on mine with increasing interest. I mentioned the letter and its address, and was about to tell its contents, when Eagleton rose suddenly, took me by the hand and led me into an inner room. As I left the office I saw what I had not noticed until then. In the shadow of a large, high case, in a remote part of the apartment, with his hands folded listlessly before him, and his head drooping heavily over his lap, sat a young man apparently about twenty-five years of age. In all our lively and even noisy conversation, not a breath or motion had apprised me of his presence. Without seeming to observe him, however, I followed my friend. I felt satisfied that I was now about to be gratified by some disclosure connected with a history in regard to which all my former curiosity had returned.
He closed the door between the rooms, handed me a chair, drew another opposite to it, and as we sat down facing each other, he begged me to resume my narrative. He eyed me steadily as I proceeded, and at times expressions passed over his features whose meaning, with all my skill, I could not fathom—expressions of changing but controlled emotion.
I told the story to its end. With an accuracy of memory which surprised me, and seemed strangely supplied for the call of the occasion, I repeated this letter as I have given it already. When I mentioned the arrival of the servant to hurry me away, a shade of disappointment was evidently perceptible. When I spoke of the sudden movement of the younger of the prisoners, the hasty opportunity I had obtained, by his change of position, of examining his face, and then described his forbidding and depraved appearance, all his eager interest returned, and he bent forward as he sat, intent upon every word that passed my lips.
I paused at length, for my narrative was at an end; yet though I had ceased, so absorbed was he in that rapid description, that he still leaned toward me as though he hoped that I would give one touch more to the picture. Then he fell back in his chair absorbed in deep thought, which overlooks all apology for its silence, and peremptorily forbids interruption—sat thus for some minutes—rose and paced the room with rapid and unequal strides, and stood in the end abruptly before me.
“Did you pass through —— on your return?” said he with the tone and manner of one who rather thought the question aloud than uttered it.
I replied that I had, and mentioned in a few words what I had heard in reference to the prisoners, and the result of the proceedings against them.
Again Eagleton paced the room. I watched him with earnest curiosity, but did not by motion or remark interfere with his mood. It was one which must shortly explain itself. His step became gradually calmer and more steady, and at length he quietly sank into his chair. His countenance was grave, but without any manifest traces of agitation or excitement, and he looked steadily at me as he spoke.
“You saw, no doubt,” said he, “in the room wejust left, a young man seated by a case. I am about to call him in for a moment. Will you be kind enough to observe him narrowly, and tell me when he is gone whether you have ever seen him before?”
He rose once more, and with an appearance of composure, which was evidently assumed, opened the door through which we had just passed, called to the person who was sitting there, and then quietly resumed his seat. I heard a slow, shuffling step across the floor within, and presently the person called, whoever he was, appeared. I looked at him eagerly.
He was an idiot. I could see that clearly and at a glance. His vacant face gave undoubted evidence of the visitation of that peculiar judgment under whose influence the light within goes out; yet his features were not bad, and if one particle of intelligence had shown in his sunken eye, he might, perhaps, have passed without notice or remark in spite of his wan and unhealthy complexion, his unmeaning expression, and his listless gait and carriage. It was that dull, preternatural stare that made him so melancholy a spectacle.
I recollected well the face of the younger prisoner. It had made a fast and painful impression on my mind. Many a time it had been present with me; seldom as part of the scene in which it first appeared, but coming suddenly and unattended, looking at me as I mused. In my fancies my character had assumed it wholly or in fragments. If I slept I had fitted it to the creatures of my dream. A face alone—nothing else; but a face clearly chiseled, and with every point and line distinct.
If the man before me and he were the same, a fearful change had passed over him. But Eagleton had evidently connected the idiot with my story, and after the eagerness of his manner as I told the result of that last accidental scrutiny of the features of the man at ——, and his subsequent singular request, I should have been dull indeed if I had not seen the drift of his thoughts, though I was in utter ignorance of the precise course they had pursued, and of the remote reasons of his conduct. The robber had an eye full of meaning and evil purpose—the face before me wore no shade of depravity; and yet as I looked resemblances occurred, became gradually more striking and more convincing, fastened themselves upon me with a tenacity that I could not shake off, and at last blended the two faces into one. I became satisfied of their identity as fully as if the awkward figure before me, guarded and manacled, were gazing yet from the window at which years before it had met my eye. It was not mere fancy, or an opinion forced upon me by the circumstances.
And yet I feared that it was, and to dispel any cloud that might rest upon my mental vision, or any nervous delusion which interfered with the correctness of the result at which I aimed, I rose and looked out for a few moments upon some climbing vines and clustered roses that grew by an open door, and then resumed my seat.
My friend, rather to aid my observation than to give a reason for his call, had been speaking slowly to the object of my attention, until becoming satisfied from my manner that I was prepared to answer his question, he quietly dismissed him, and turned toward me again with the same affected composure in his movements, but with an eye full of eager inquiry.
“Eagleton,” said I, “if I am right, a greater change has passed over that face in five years than death itself could have produced. But you have made a request, and I comply with it. I believe, before God, that the person I have just seen is the same to whose description you have just been listening. That description does not now apply, and yet it is a true one. I have doubted my conclusion, and distrusted memory, but I cannot relieve myself of the conviction I have expressed.”
He was evidently prepared for the answer, and did not seem shocked or surprised, though the shade of gloom increased upon his countenance. He rose again, and paced the floor so long that I became impatient.
“I need not tell you,” said he, at last resuming his seat once more, “that what you have seen, and what you are about to hear, are in the deepest confidence. I do not ask your pledge to keep it, but I leave it to your honor till I am dead. You have not only become acquainted, by accident, with family troubles which I hoped until to-day would die with those connected with them, but by that same accident have been enabled to tell me that of which I did not know before, but which, now that I have heard it, solves many doubts, and explains facts before inexplicable. I am composed, but the answer to my question, for the candor of which I thank you, has pained me excessively; and yet, when you have listened to what I have to say, you will doubtless wonder at my sensibility upon such a subject as much as you now wonder at my indifference to your announcement.
“The young man you have just seen is George Ellis. My sister is his wife. Until your visit to-day, however much I may have suspected, no words brought to my ear had ever certainly fastened crime upon, or tainted his name with any thing but vice and dissipation, in which I know he has been deeply steeped. To-day you have added that stain to his character. But why should I fret over what cannot be recalled. I have one real consolation. My sister has never known this new degradation, and will die in ignorance of your disclosures. As to Ellis, he is past feeling. You have seen his situation. But I must proceed with my narrative.”
I do not tell the tale in Eagleton’s words. In spite of all his efforts to control his feelings, they occasionally broke out in exclamations of deep pathos and bitter invective, and led him wandering off from the direct thread of his story. Besides, Isubsequently learned many facts which neither of us knew at that time, but which were closely interwoven with the scenes through which I am about to carry the reader.
The father of George Ellis and the father of my friend were once partners in mercantile business, in a thriving town of the West. The firm was Ellis & Eagleton. It did a large business, was widely known and much respected. Mr. Ellis was a man of information and integrity, but a free liver and a man of the world. He never married. He had, however, this son, whom he seemed to love more warmly because there was a stigma upon his birth, or, perhaps, because its history was connected with associations that were painful. But whatever was the reason for his father’s blind attachment, George was humored and indulged, until, even while a child, he became the pest and terror of the neighborhood.
It is said that the offspring of illicit passion are generally marked by insanity of character. Be that as it may, it matters not here. There was enough to account for the worst traits of his disposition, in the unbridled license of his early training, and the foolish devotion of a worldly father. If ever there was an evil spirit in human shape, that spirit was George Ellis. From the very cradle the fiend showed itself. Boys of his own age fled from him as if he had been a wild beast. Eagleton, though older, was afraid of him. No one could govern him, least of all his own parent; and his reputation for mad freaks and reckless mischief soon spread far and wide, and rapidly increased as he became older. And yet with all this, with that dark, bad eye and bold air, he was as handsome a fellow as ever grew to be a man.
His father died when he was about eighteen. He died utterly bankrupt. With scrupulous honor, however, even in the excesses which had led to such a result, he had not involved his firm. On his deathbed he sent for Mr. Eagleton, told him that he died without a dollar to leave behind him, and with an earnestness which, perhaps, at such a moment, could not have been refused, committed his son to his partner’s care.
It was a terrible legacy from a ruined man. My friend’s father might have known that Mr. Ellis’s wish could not be complied with, and that it would be absolutely impossible for him to assume such a trust. It would have been happy for him if he could have felt so. It would have saved him much affliction, and have given to his life happy years that sorrow soon cut off. But the destiny was otherwise.
I never saw Mary Eagleton. I know, however, that, at the time of which I speak, she was the belle of her village, the pet and pride of her father and brother. At the date of my interview with Henry in a distant city, she was a mere shadow of what she had once been—a wreck in mind and body—oppressed with pain and increasing infirmities. These were all portions of that same fearful legacy.
Before the death of Mr. Ellis she had often seen his son. She was about his age, and had been attracted by his appearance. This was all. He was deemed a dangerous acquaintance, and a close and watchful care prevented intimacy. Now, by the last prayer of a dying parent, the profligate was brought to her very door, and sat at her very table and fireside. Her father might have prevented this, and yet have fulfilled his duty to the dead. He was blind.
They soon understood each other. But their conduct was cautious and baffled a watchfulness that was keenly awake. I need not clog my narrative with details. Her brother was away; her father could not be always near her. George was depraved and heartless, she was young and foolish. A private marriage terminated their intercourse, for the heart broken father cast the bridegroom off, at once, sternly, and forever. His wife never saw him again until, years after, in a distant city, he was brought to her bedside—an idiot. The bequest was not yet exhausted. But it might have been worse.
Ellis soon after went to sea in a merchant vessel bound for a foreign port. He was too abandoned even for such a society. On the first arrival of the ship at her destination he was set on shore. Without money, or character, yet with enough shrewdness to keep him from starving, he plunged desperately into all the temptations of a depraved city. Vice and poverty soon led to crime. It was not many months before he concealed himself, a fugitive from justice, on board of a vessel bound for his own country, and with a companion in his guilt, a Spaniard, arrived in the United States but a few days before the meeting mentioned in my friend’s letter.
A few hours after that meeting he and his companion were on their way westward. Ellis hoped to be received again. The Spaniard had nothing to lose, and some adventure in a new country might turn to his advantage. But hard want pressed them sorely. Begging was a slow and servile support. Labor was not so much as thought of. To such minds an answer to the fearful questionings of hunger was not doubtful, or long delayed. Their first adventure was the crime at ——. As Ellis turned over the letters which they had scattered in the road his eye was attracted by the address of one of them. He opened it, read it, and quietly put it in his pocket. It proved, as we have seen, the means of their arrest.
The Spaniard’s name was Antonio. I never heard any other. He was more mature than Ellis in years and in depravity. But the most striking trait of his character was one that will appear hereafter. From the moment of their arrest the prisoners preserved a dogged silence. Antonio could not speak a word of English. Ellis had his own reason for the course he pursued. The driver of the mail,whose person they had treated so unceremoniously, and who, upon their first capture, had been loud in his confidence of their identity with those who had bound him, a few days after declared that his first impressions were hasty, and declined backing his assertion by an oath. The mail which they had robbed had afforded them nothing worth having, and, at the time of their seizure, they had about them no evidence of guilt. The only grounds of suspicion against them were the fact that they were strangers; the letter found near them; their seeming alarm upon seeing the officers; their dogged and persevering silence, and their reckless and abandoned appearance.
The prisoners were confined in separate cells. The officers, who have always motives for industry appealing to them in such cases, saw, at a glance, which was the oldest and most hardened offender, and from which of them they were most likely to gain their object. Ellis was wary and knew their game, but he was without honor, and intensely selfish. His sullenness at last relaxed. He gave them, cautiously, to understand that he would convict Antonio to secure his own escape, and it was determined to use him as a witness against his accomplice.
I need not give the details of the trial. Ellis appeared in the box and gave evidence, coolly, against the accused. The Spaniard was too much a stranger to the form of the proceeding to understand the scheme at once. But light at last broke in upon him and revealed the treachery. From that moment one burning dream, overcoming all fear of punishment, and strangely composing the bitterness of solitude rested upon him. It was a delirious prayer for revenge, in a heart as malignant as was ever shut from human eye. The witness would have trembled if he could have looked within it.
The evidence was effectual. Antonio was convicted, and received the severest sentence that the law allowed—ten years imprisonment. He was taken to his cell. Ellis went at large.
A copy of Eagleton’s letter to his father had been re-mailed, several weeks after the arrest, by some person to whose hand it had come, more considerate than those who had first held it. At the foot a brief explanation was given of the circumstances which rendered it necessary to retain the original, and an apology for the delay in communicating its contents. When it reached its destination Mr. Eagleton was laboring under a second and more serious attack of the same illness which the letter mentioned. It had been brought about by mental suffering, and, so alarming were the symptoms, that his daughter had just despatched a letter to hasten her brother home.
It was at this juncture that the copy was received. As she had frequently done before since her father’s sickness, Mary opened the letter to read it aloud. It surprised her. It began as only her brother’s letters began, and yet the handwriting was not his. As she read she grew pale, her lips trembled, and at length bursting into tears, she left the room. The invalid took it from the bed, on which she had dropped it, sat up, and, much moved, read it through. The news was such as he did not wish to believe. The whole matter was singular, and with a flushed face and increased fever he dropped again upon his pillow. If it were really from his son, all reserve or secrecy toward his daughter was at an end, and all that could be done was to await her husband’s arrival.
The excitement was injurious, Mr. Eagleton became so much feebler from day to day that Mary’s greatest fear now was that her brother might not come until too late. It was as she had apprehended. Death came rapidly on, and she was alone at its crisis. In a few days she sat beside the dead body of her father, and in a few more, the only mourner, followed him to his grave.
And yet her brother did not come. Again and again she wrote to him, with an urgency which showed how lonely and unprotected she felt. There was a trial which she anticipated, and which she feared to meet without his aid. She felt assured that her first letter had not reached him, and the journey was one of many days.
A traveler arrived at last, but it was not Henry. In the hall of the mansion from which he had been thrust out with bitter curses, tattered and wretched and bleached with prison gloom, stood the outcast, the fugitive, the robber, the dishonored witness—George Ellis. His wife had pledged her word to her dying father that she would not see him again, and here he stood in her very house, her rightful husband. Her heart throbbed fearfully between returning love and religious duty. But she kept her word to the dead, refused to see him, and shutting herself in her own room, awaited the coming of her brother.
Mr. Eagleton had left a will, but it bore date before the marriage, and did not provide for the state of things which that event produced. Ellis was aware that as her husband he had legal rights, and that her father’s death had given them effect; but he was ignorant of their actual nature, and caution taught him to refrain from violence. He did not intrude upon his wife’s privacy, but, with all the coolness ofvillainy, he made himself at home in the house from which the dead had just been borne, and trusted to her woman’s weakness, and a love, the strength of which he knew too well, to cure her of her solitary mood.
But my friend appeared, and the face of affairs soon changed. He met Ellis on his arrival, and, surprised at his presence, soon gathered from the servants a history of what had occurred. His first impulse was to eject him forcibly, but better suggestions made him change his purpose. Without allowing them to inform his sister of his arrival, he hastened to the office of his father’s attorney and apprised himself of the precise nature of the intruder’srights. He knew his want of money, and with a paper carefully drawn, releasing all claim to the estate of Mr. Eagleton, he returned home. He soon had an interview with Ellis, and offered him a certain sum, to be paid upon the spot, if he would sign the instrument. He refused at first, peremptorily, then asked an advance in the offer, and, at last, finding that he could do no better, put his name to the paper, coolly pocketed the money and left the house.
The estate was soon settled. Their native place was connected with associations so painful that they were glad to leave it, and in a few weeks they were quietly domiciled in the city where I found them.
It was a year, at least, after the death of Mr. Eagleton, when early one morning on the high-road leading to the village in which he had lived, the dead body of a wealthy farmer was found by some one passing by. It bore marks of violence which none could doubt. A murder had been committed.
Excitement burned in the town and in the neighborhood. Within the memory of the oldest inhabitant no similar act of violence had been committed. Suspicion first ran riot, then settled, as if by common agreement, upon George Ellis. It was not strange that conjecture should have taken that course.
Ellis did not leave the town when he last turned from the door which had twice cast him off. He remained, for the simple reason that he knew not where else to go. He lurked about its vilest places and made low friends by his ill-gotten money. But he soon lost both, and yet he stayed. No one knew how he lived. He crossed the paths of citizens in strange places and unusual hours. He went in and came out like no one else. His worst companions had shaken him off. He was the very one upon whom any crime would have been first cast.
He felt the suspicion and tried to live it down. His efforts gave it a new stimulus. He braved public opinion, sought public places, became noisy and obtrusive. Many thought this sudden change of manner justified his arrest, and so strong became at last the feeling against him that the suggestion was followed. He was seized without oath, examined without effect, and committed in the end to await his trial upon evidence that would have convicted half of the community. Public opinion is hard law.
New facts came out. The prisoner had been seen abroad much later than usual on the night before the murder. He had mentioned it to some one early on the morning after it had been committed. His manner, it was said, had been more hurried and excited for a day or two before it occurred. What a silly thing suspicion is. How easy to feed it. And yet these and a dozen other like stories were passed about by grave men in eager gossip. The net was cast and brought in of every kind.
An indictment was found; who dare have said nay. The trial drew near—it came too slowly. Yet all this while nothing serious or substantial had come to light in any way connecting Ellis with the deed.
He protested his innocence firmly and without contradiction. His counsel encouraged him. Public opinion was not to try him. The flimsy rumors that had ruled the market-house and the tavern door would be winnowed and sifted. No conviction could be had upon such testimony.
The day came, and in a court-room thronged as it had never been before, a jury was sworn with much difficulty—for few had not formed or expressed an opinion. This done, the trial proceeded.
The testimony began after a short opening. First in order, in grave detail of examination and cross-examination, came that which bore upon the finding of the body—its appearance—the wounds it showed—the opinion of medical men that suchwounds caused the death, and the nature of the weapon used. It was in evidence that a small and peculiar pistol had been found not far off from the place where the murdered man lay. It had no doubt been fired close to his head, for the upper part of it was entirely blown away. The pockets had been rifled, and all that was valuable about his person had been removed.
Then followed the proof connecting the prisoner with the crime. It consisted entirely of such facts as those we have given, and even these presented with doubt and contradiction. The last witness had retired from the box, and the counsel for the state was about to close his case, when a bustle was heard in the crowd, and a pedlar with his pack upon his back, forced on by the crowd, made his way toward the bar. A bailiff stopped him, when a citizen well known in the town, and who had from the first been earnest in his voice against the accused, stepped forward and spoke to the officer. The pack was removed, and the pedlar was admitted within the enclosure in which the prosecuting attorney sat. An earnest conversation followed. Ellis and his counsel were anxious, but not more so than their professional opponent, who was a gentleman of high principle, and a humanity unusual in such a station. The latter now rose and asked permission to be absent for a short time, and taking the pistol from the table, he beckoned the new comer to follow him, and left the court-room. They were absent some twenty minutes, and when they returned the stranger was put at once into the witness box.
His story was simple, and no severity of cross-examination could baffle its force or procure a contradiction. He had sold that very pistol to the prisoner, whom he had met in the public road two days before the murder. Ellis he could not mistake—the weapon he could swear to on his deathbed. He was in the village now by accident, had come to the trial from curiosity, had made an unguarded explanation when he first saw the accused,and in spite of his unwillingness to give testimony in a case of life and death, he had been forced up by those around. This was simple, but direct and damning.
The witness had one of those heavy faces which are the most difficult to decipher. Ellis scrutinized him closely. He was confident he had never seen him before. Sick at heart, and bewildered by what he deemed a gratuitous and wanton effort to swear away his life, yet powerless in the grasp ofvillainy, he turned from him, and as he did so his eye fell on another face, whose glance drove the blood throbbing to his heart. It was the face of Antonio. With a fevered brow and a dry tongue he leaned toward his counsel, and hastily whispered his fears. It was too late now to ferret out a conspiracy, and when he turned again the Spaniard was gone, and that impenetrable witness stood coolly in the box awaiting his dismissal. God of compassion! he was taken in the snare.
An agony to be loose when no hand was on him; a frenzy to be free when no bars were round him. Was he going mad? Then a film came over his mind thicker—thicker. He buried his face in his hands, and the veins upon his forehead were swollen and knotted. Memories went over him like the rushing of a host.
The evidence on the part of the state now closed. None was offered on behalf of the prisoner. The counsel summed up the evidence;—the charge of the court followed;—the jury retired, soon returned, and their foreman gave in a verdict. Guilty!
Ellis had undermined his constitution by excesses. But from the instant when that word fell upon his ear a decay, far less gradual, began in mind and body. He did not faint or weep; he did not reason, resist, or complain. The withering blight of years came upon him in a few short days, but no eye saw the change.
It was some weeks after the trial that as Eagleton glanced over one of the morning papers, a paragraph met his eye which riveted his attention. It was an announcement of the execution of George Ellis, to take place in a month from that time.
He was deeply shocked. Feelings struggled in his breast that were never there before. He asked himself questions until then never suggested. Might not this result have been averted? Had his conscience no one weak point in all the history of his course toward one over whom a parent had thrown the sacred protection of a dying trust? Had they done the outcast a justice that could bear the light of humanity as well as of reason? Was there no shadow of selfishness in the motives that had twice cast him upon the world?
One duty, however, was clear. He could not let the wretched man die alone. He must see him if it were only to stand by him on the scaffold. That over, a dying parent’s prayer would no longer appeal to him, except perhaps to bury the dead out of sight.
He plead business to his sister, and started on his way. Night and day he traveled, those solemn questions still communing with his spirit. He was a deep-hearted man, and sorrow had made his sensibilities sore. Night and day—night and day. If he dreamed, George Ellis was there, straight and handsome, his dark eye softened into sympathy, and Mary on his arm—a lovely bride; and suddenly the scene changed, and a creature bloated and miserable stood upon a scaffold, with a sea of heads heaving before it, and its bloodshot gaze upon him, not in anger, but in mournful rebuke;—and again it was George Ellis.
He reached the town, and was admitted to his cell. The prisoner was pale and emaciated, and a sluggish apathy was in his air, which seemed indifference to life. He recognized Eagleton, but greeted him coldly, and declined all his proffered visits. And yet there was no resentment in his manner. The misery of life had burnt away the wished for rest and quiet sleep. Before Henry left him, however,—abruptly, and without question, but with an energy that appeared to wake up for the purpose, and a call upon God to attest his truth—he swore that he was innocent of the crime he was to expiate.
Eagleton left him in deep emotion. He busied himself at once in collecting information as to the murder, the trial, and the ground of conviction. He made diligent search for the strange witness, and strove for a pardon or reprieve. It was in vain. A sentence was a sterner thing then than now, and the verdict of twelve men more inviolable.
The day fixed for the execution arrived. It was near noon when a gloomy procession left the prison gate and wound through the opening crowd to the foot of the gallows. The scaffold bore at last the prisoner, the sheriff, a deputy, found at the last moment to relieve him from the hateful duty of taking life, a clergyman, and Eagleton. The first was still, stupid, and indifferent. No sound escaped him as his irons were removed, and his hands bound; no voice passed his lips as time was given him to bid those around farewell. The man of God knelt in prayer, then rose and fell back. The executioner approached.
My friend watched him with intense interest. He was masked. His manner was singular, and a deep excitement pervaded his movements. A strange and unaccountable suspicion of the man crept over Eagleton, he knew not why.
He raised the cap which was to shut out the world forever from the wretched being by his side. But before it rested on the head for which it was intended, he who held it seemed to have a purpose to fulfil. He leaned quickly forward, whispered in that passive ear, and for a single instant raised his mask. Eyes of fire glared from under it. It was Antonio once more. What he said no mortal knows; but if ages of burning malignity and pent passion can be distilled into one word, that word, no doubt, was in the prisoner’s ear. He started and looked up, anda shudder passed over his frame. Then, in one instant, all his apathy was gone, and he struggled like a madman to free his hands. The Spaniard saw his error, and strove to retrieve it. But the frantic exertions of the prisoner foiled him.
Eagleton himself could be passive no longer. He had seen it all, and felt that the sudden change that had passed upon Ellis was not the mere change of fear grown riotous at the last. He seized the stranger, tore off his mask, and called for aid. Quicker than thought the executioner drew a pistol from his breast and fired it. The prisoner fell upon the scaffold. He then quietly surrendered himself. As the sheriff, until now transfixed by the scene, approached and drew from the hand of his strange deputy the weapon just used, he started at its resemblance to the one which had been produced at the trial, the peculiar marks of which were strongly impressed upon his memory.
The intervention of those who could act with authority was procured. There was clearly a plot against the prisoner’s life, in which the strange witness was the first actor, and the executioner the second. Humanity rode down the sharp points of legal form. The scaffold was soon cleared. The multitude retired. The gallows fell beneath axe and hammer; and the only evidence of that stirring scene was the grass trampled by the eager crowd.
My friend next day visited Antonio in his cell. He asked after his victim, and being told that the wound was mortal, and that he was dying, made a full confession. He had escaped from his prison;—hehad been the murderer;—the witness was his tool;—he had gone upon the scaffold to finish his revenge, and to glut his passion with the agonies of a frightful death. It was singular, but for some reason best known to himself, he left Eagleton in ignorance of the cause of his malice, and of the crime at ——.
Ellis did not die. His wound was thought to be mortal—it was only severe. He recovered, but his mind was dead, and Eagleton took him to his own home, harmless and passive as a new-born child.
They are all gone now—the brother, the sister, and her idiot husband. The green sod has grown for years over their graves, and I tell their story in the full conviction that no heart will be wounded, and no delicacy hurt by a recital of facts which to me are full of interest.