"Hither the rainbow comes, the cloud,And mists that spread the flying shroud,And sunbeams, and the flying blast,That if it could, would hurry past,But that enormous barrier binds it fast."
"Hither the rainbow comes, the cloud,And mists that spread the flying shroud,And sunbeams, and the flying blast,That if it could, would hurry past,But that enormous barrier binds it fast."
No human eye ever saw the birds within a thousand feet of the lower earth; yet how often must they have stooped down on lamb and leveret, and struck the cushat in her very yew-tree in the centre of the wood! Perhaps they preyed at midnight, by the light of the waning moon—at mid-day, in the night of sun-hiding tempests—or afar off, in even more solitary wilds, carried thither on the whirlwind of their own wings, they swept off their prey from uninhabited isles,
"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"
"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"
or vast inland glens, where not a summer shieling smiles beneath the region of eternal snows. But eagles are subject to diseases in flesh, and bone, and blood, just like the veriest poultry that die of croup and consumption on the dunghill before the byre-door. Sickness blinds the eye that God framed to pierce the seas, and weakens the wing that dallies with the tempest. Then the eagle feels how vain is the doctrine of the divine right of kings. He is hawked at by the mousing owl, whose instinct instructs him that these talons have lost their grasp and these pinions their deathblow. The eagle lies for weeks famished in his eyry, and, hunger-driven over the ledge, leaves it to ascend no more. He is dethroned, and wasted to mere bones—a bunch of feathers—his flight is now slower than that of the buzzard—he floats himself along now with difficulty from knoll to knoll, pursued by the shrieking magpies, buffeted by the corby, and lying on his back, like a recreant, before the beak of the raven, who, a month ago, was terrified to hop round the carcass till the king of the air was satiated, and gave his permission to croaking Sooty to dig into the bowels he himself had scorned. Yet he is a noble aim to the fowler still; you break a wing and a leg, but fear to touch him with your hand; Fro feels the iron-clutch of his talons constricted in the death-pang; and holding him up, you wonder that such an anatomy—for his weight is notmore than three pounds—could drive his claws through that shaggy hide till blood sprung to the blow—inextricable but to yells of pain, and leaving gashes hard to heal, for virulent is the poison of rage in a dying bird of prey.
Sublime solitude of our boyhood! where each stone in the desert was sublime, unassociated though it was with dreams of memory, in its own simple native power over the human heart! Each sudden breath of wind passed by us like the voice of a spirit. There were strange meanings in the clouds—often so like human forms and faces threatening us off, or beckoning us on, with long black arms, back into the long-withdrawing wilderness of heaven. We wished then, with quaking bosoms, that we had not been all alone in the desert—that there had been another heart, whose beatings might have kept time with our own, that we might have gathered courage in the silent and sullen gloom from the light in a brother's eye—the smile on a brother's countenance. And often had we such a Friend in these our far-off wanderings over moors and mountains, by the edge of lochs, and through the umbrage of the old pine-woods. A Friend from whom "we had received his heart, and given him back our own,"—such a friendship as the most fortunate and the most happy—and at that time we were both—are sometimes permitted by Providence, with all the passionate devotion of young and untamed imagination, to enjoy, during a bright dreamy world of which that friendship is as the Polar star. Emilius Godfrey! for ever holy be the name! a boy when we were but a child—when we were but a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the shadow of his arm—happier, bolder, better in the light of his countenance. He was the protector—the guardian of our moral being. In our pastimes we bounded with wilder glee—at our studies we sat with intenser earnestness, by his side. He it was that taught us how to feel all those glorious sunsets, and imbued our young spirit with the love and worship of nature. He it was that taught us to feel that our evening prayer was no idle ceremony to be hastily gone through—that we might lay down our head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in sleep, but a command of God, which a response from nature summoned the humble heart to obey. He it was who for ever had at command wit for the sportive, wisdom for the serious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merrymusic of his lips—they lightened from the gay glancing of his eyes; and then, all at once, when the one changed its measures, and the other gathered, as it were, a mist or a cloud, an answering sympathy chained our own tongue, and darkened our own countenance, in intercommunion of spirit felt to be indeed divine! It seemed as if we knew but the words of language—that he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. The books we read together were, every page, and every sentence of every page, all covered over with light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim or dark, unintelligible or with imperfect meanings. Whether we perused with him a volume writ by a nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and the sky, or the volume revealed from heaven, next day we always knew and felt that something had been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer moral and religious air, with all our finer affections towards other human beings, all our kindred and our kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, or with a sweet benevolence that seemed to our ardent fancy to embrace the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. No secret of pleasure or pain—of joy or grief—of fear or hope—had our heart to withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within our bosom, with all its imperfections—may we venture to say, with all its virtues. A repented folly—a confessed fault—a sin for which we were truly contrite—a vice flung from us with loathing and with shame—in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and his solemn smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side in the social hour on a knoll in the open sunshine, and the whole school were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal land. In spite of that difference in our years—or oh! say rather because that very difference did touch the one heart with tenderness and the other with reverence, how often did we two wander, like elder and younger brother, in the sunlight and moonlight solitudes! Woods—into whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts—in whose lonesomethunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not by ourselves have faced the spray—in his presence, dinn'd with a merry music in the desert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, then easily overcome with awe, was the solitude of those remote inland lochs. But as we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm of both blue depths—how magnificent the white-crested waves tumbling beneath the black thunder-cloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed on it along with his, at the beginning or the ending of some sudden storm, the Apparition of the Rainbow! Grander in its wildness, that seemed to sweep at once all the swinging and stooping woods to our ear, because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves played at midnight, when not one star was in the sky. With him we first followed the Falcon in her flight—he showed us on the Echo-cliff the Eagle's eyry. To the thicket he led us where lay couched the lovely-spotted Doe, or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing on the glade with her two fawns at her side. But for him we should not then have seen the antlers of the red-deer, for the Forest was indeed a most savage place, and haunted—such was the superstition at which they who scorned it trembled—haunted by the ghost of a huntsman whom a jealous rival had murdered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little mountain well that ever since oozed out blood. What converse passed between us two in all those still shadowy solitudes! Into what depths of human nature did he teach our wondering eyes to look down! Oh! what was to become of us, we sometimes thought in sadness that all at once made our spirits sink—like a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by the fear of some unwonted shadow from above—what was to become of us when the mandate should arrive for him to leave the Manse for ever, and sail away in a ship to India never more to return! Ever as that dreaded day drew nearer, more frequent was the haze in our eyes; and in our blindness, we knew not that such tears ought to have been far more rueful still, for that he then lay under orders for a longer and more lamentable voyage—a voyage over a narrow strait to the Eternal shore. All—all at once he drooped; on one fatal morning the dread decay began; with no forewarning, thesprings on which his being had so lightly—so proudly—so grandly moved—gave way. Between one Sabbath and another his bright eyes darkened—and while all the people were assembled at the sacrament, the soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven. It was indeed a dreadful death, serene and sainted though it were; and not a hall—not a house—not a hut—not a shieling within all the circle of those wide mountains, that did not on that night mourn as if it had lost a son. All the vast parish attended his funeral—Lowlanders and Highlanders in their own garb of grief. And have time and tempest now blackened the white marble of that monument—is that inscription now hard to be read—the name of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration—nor haply one surviving who ever saw the light of the countenance of him there interred! Forgotten as if he had never been! for few were that glorious orphan's kindred—and they lived in a foreign land—forgotten but by one heart, faithful through all the chances and changes of this restless world! And therein enshrined among all its holiest remembrances, shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it too, like his, shall be but dust and ashes!
Oh! blame not boys for so soon forgetting one another—in absence or in death. Yet forgetting is not just the very word; call it rather a reconcilement to doom and destiny—in thus obeying a benign law of nature that soon streams sunshine over the shadows of the grave. Not otherwise could all the ongoings of this world be continued. The nascent spirit outgrows much in which it once found all delight; and thoughts delightful still, thoughts of the faces and the voices of the dead, perish not, lying sometimes in slumber—sometimes in sleep. It belongs not to the blessed season and genius of youth, to hug to its heart useless and unavailing griefs. Images of the well-beloved, when they themselves are in the mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, through the meditative hush of solitude. But our main business—our prime joys and our prime sorrows—ought to be, must be, with the living. Duty demands it; and Love, who would pine to death over the bones of the dead, soon fastens upon other objects with eyes and voices to smile and whisper an answer to all his vows. So was it with us. Ere the midsummer sun had withered the flowers that spring had sprinkledover our Godfrey's grave, youth vindicated its own right to happiness; and we felt that we did wrong to visit too often that corner in the kirkyard. No fears had we of any too oblivious tendencies; in our dreams we saw him—most often all alive as ever—sometimes a phantom away from that grave! If the morning light was frequently hard to be endured, bursting suddenly upon us along with the feeling that he was dead, it more frequently cheered and gladdened us with resignation, and sent us forth a fit playmate to the dawn that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we found ourselves angling down the river, or along the loch—once more following the flight of the Falcon along the woods—eying the Eagle on the Echo-cliff. Days passed by, without so much as one thought of Emilius Godfrey—pursuing our pastime with all our passion, reading our books intently—just as if he had never been! But often and often, too, we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight towards us—his very figure—we could not be deceived; but the love-raised ghost disappeared on a sudden—the grief-woven spectre melted into the mist. The strength, that formerly had come from his counsels, now began to grow up of itself within our own unassisted being. The world of nature became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and fancies; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God.
Then this was to be our last year in the parish—now dear to us as our birthplace; nay, itself our very birthplace—for in it from the darkness of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region of cloud and mountain, we felt that most probably never more should we return. For others, who thought they knew us better than we did ourselves, had chalked out a future life for young Christopher North—a life that was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a splendid name. Therefore we determined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of passion, to make the most—the best—of the few months that remained to us, of that our wild, free, and romantic existence, as yet untrammelled by those inexorable laws, which, once launched into the world, all alike—young and old—must obey. Our books were flungaside—nor did our old master and minister frown—for he grudged not to the boy he loved the remnant of the dream about to be rolled away like the dawn's rosy clouds. We demanded with our eye—not with our voice—one long holiday, throughout that our last autumn, on to the pale farewell blossoms of the Christmas rose. With our rod we went earlier to the loch or river; but we had not known thoroughly our own soul—for now we angled less passionately—less perseveringly than was our wont of yore—sitting in a pensive, a melancholy, a miserable dream, by the dashing waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our gun we plunged earlier in the morning into the forest, and we returned later at eve—but less earnest—less eager were we to hear the cushat's moan from his yew-tree—to see the hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft on the sky. A thousand dead thoughts came to life again in the gloom of the woods—and we sometimes did wring our hands in an agony of grief, to know that our eyes should not behold the birch-tree brightening there with another spring.
Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shieling was felt to be a farewell; there was something mournful in the smiles on the sweet faces of the ruddy rustics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was no evil guile; we regarded the solemn toil-and-care-worn countenances of the old with a profounder emotion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of our more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more affecting now that we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes. They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the insolences of our reckless boyhood, were all forgotten; whatever had been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; we had shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had been given to the widow who had lost her own; quarrelsome with the young we might sometimes have been, for boyhood is soon heated, and boils before a defying eye; but in onething at least we were Spartans, we revered the head of old age.
And many at last were the kind—some the sad farewells, ere long whispered by us at gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for ever silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, not heard—its blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! But to Thee—O palest Phantom—clothed in white raiment, not like unto a ghost risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from the skies to bless—unto Thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot choose but weep, with the self-same vision that often glided before us long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound of our voice would pause for a little while, and then pass by, like a white bird from the sea, floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its plumes on a knoll far up an inland glen! Death seems not to have touched that face, pale though it be—lifelike is the waving of those gentle hands—and the soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, steals not sure from lips hushed by the burial mould! Restored by the power of love, she stands before us as she stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her golden head was singed by the lightning that shivered the tree under which the child had run for shelter from the flashing sky. But in a moment the blue light in her dewy eyes was dimmed—and never again did she behold either flower or star. Yet all the images of all the things she had loved remained in her memory, clear and distinct as the things themselves before unextinguished eyes; and ere three summers had flown over her head—which, like the blossom of some fair perennial flower, in heaven's gracious dew and sunshine each season lifted its loveliness higher and higher in the light—she could trip her singing way through the wild wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor erred they in so believing, by an angel's hand! When the primroses peeped through the reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to give themselves into her fingers; and 'twas thought they hung longer unfaded round her neck or forehead than if they had been left to drink the dew on their native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though her garment touched the broom-stalk on which they sang. The cushat,as she thrid her way through the wood, continued to croon in her darksome tree—and the lark, although just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by her presence into a new passion of song, and mounted over her head, as if it were his first matin hymn. All the creatures of the earth and air manifestly loved the Wanderer of the Wilderness—and as for human beings, she was named, in their pity, their wonder, and their delight, the Blind Beauty of the Moor!
She was an only child, and her mother had died in giving her birth. And now her father, stricken by one of the many cruel diseases that shorten the lives of shepherds on the hills, was bed-ridden—and he was poor. Of all words ever syllabled by human lips, the most blessed is—Charity. No manna now in the wilderness is rained from heaven—for the mouths of the hungry need it not in this our Christian land. A few goats feeding among the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread for them in each neighbour's house—neighbour though miles afar—as the sacred duty came round—and the unrepining poor sent the grateful child away with their prayers.
One evening, returning to the hut with her usual song, she danced up to her father's face on his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If she shrieked—if she fainted—there was but one Ear that heard, one Eye that saw her in her swoon. Not now floating light like a small moving cloud unwilling to leave the flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven, but driven along like a shroud of flying mist before the tempest, she came upon us in the midst of that dreary moss; and at the sound of our voice, fell down with clasped hands at our feet—"My father's dead!" Had the hut put already on the strange, dim, desolate look of mortality? For people came walking fast down the braes, and in a little while there was a group round us, and we bore her back again to her dwelling in our arms. As for us, we had been on our way to bid the fair creature and her father farewell. How could she have lived—an utter orphan—in such a world! The holy power that is in Innocence would for ever have remained with her; but Innocence longs to be away, when her sister Joy has departed; and 'tis sorrowful to see the one on earth, when the other has gone to Heaven! This sorrow none of us had long to see; for though a flower, when withered at the root, and doomed ere eve to perish, may yet look to the careless eye thesame as when it blossomed in its pride—yet its leaves, still green, are not as once they were—its bloom, though fair, is faded—and at set of sun, the dews shall find it in decay, and fall unfelt on its petals. Ere Sabbath came, the orphan child was dead. Methinks we see now her little funeral. Her birth had been the humblest of the humble; and though all in life had loved her, it was thought best that none should be asked to the funeral of her and her father, but two or three friends; the old clergyman himself walked at the head of the father's coffin—we at the head of the daughter's—for this was granted unto our exceeding love;—and thus passed away for ever the Blind Beauty of the Moor!
Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion than had ever before driven us over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic. Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen—let us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-cliff, and with our rifle—'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey—let us stalk the red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick, as now they lie on the Atholl Braes; they were still a rare sight—and often and often had Godfrey and we gone up and down the Glen, without a single glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the heather. But as the true angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea—so we, a true hunter, neither grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as the heron by the stream, hardly in hope, but satisfied with the possibility, that a deer might pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and strongest is self-fed passion springing in spite of circumstance. When blows the warm showery south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow sides at every dropping of the fly on the curling water—and the angler is soon sated with the perpetual play. But once—twice—thrice—during a long blustering day—the sullen plunge of a salmon is sufficient for that day's joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands for ever on the hill, or rather as the shadow on a dial, that though it moves is never seen to move, day after day were we on our station in the Great Glen. A loud, wild, wrathful, and savage cry from some huge animal made our heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our forehead in sweat. We looked up—and a red-deer—a stag of ten—the king ofthe forest—stood with all his antlers, snuffing the wind, but yet blind to our figure overshadowed by a rock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart—and leaping up far higher than our head, he tumbled in terrific death, and lay stone-still before our starting eyes amid the rustling of the strong-bented heather! There we stood surveying him for a long triumphing hour. Ghastly were his glazed eyes—and ghastlier his long bloody tongue, bitten through at the very root in agony. The branches of his antlers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk seemed mightier in death even than when it was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing the north wind. In other two hours we were down at Moor-edge and up again, with an eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, coming and going a distance of a dozen long miles. A hay-waggon forced its way through the bogs and over the braes—and on our return into the inhabited country, we were met by shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, huzzaing over the Prey; for not for many years—never since the funeral of the old lord—had the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them trailing along the heather.
Fifty years and more—and oh! my weary soul! half a century took a long time to die away in gloom and in glory, in pain and pleasure, in storms through which were afraid to fly even the spirit's most eagle-winged raptures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like azure-plumed halcyons to rest—though now to look back upon it, what seems it all but a transitory dream of toil and trouble, of which the smiles, the sighs, the tears, the groans, were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams and the clouds! Fifty years and more are gone—and this is the Twelfth of August Eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; and all the Highland mountains have since dawn been astir, and thundering to the impetuous sportsmen's joys! Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our feet must brush the heather no more. Lo! how beautifully these fast-travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast! intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now all a-stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death! Higher up among the rocks, and cliffs, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition it is to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan now in their variegated summer-dress, seen even among the unmelted snows. The scene shiftsand high up on the heath above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Braemar, the Thane—God bless him—has stalked the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his unerring rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's Oak. Never shall Eld deaden our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men any more than with their highest raptures, their profoundest griefs. Blessings on the head of every true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell; nor shall we take it at all amiss should any one of them, in return for the pleasure he may have enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky cabin during a rainy day, to the peat-reek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-packet, or any other rapid conveyance, a basket of game, red, black, or brown, or peradventure a haunch of the red-deer.
Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel Gentle—or a female, fair as the Falcon—a male, stern as an old Stag—or a female, soft as a young Doe—we entreat thee to think kindly of Us and of our Article—and to look in love or in friendship on Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, now come to the close of his Three Fyttes, into which he had fallen—out of one into another—and from which he has now been revived by the application of a little salt to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think that, rambling as we have been, somewhat after the style of thinking common in sleep, there has been no method in our madness, nolucidus ordoin our dream. All the pages are instinct with one spirit—our thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, according to the most approved principles of association—and a fine proportion has been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some noble tree, which—although here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregularities in the umbrage—is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent object! equal to an old castle, on the cliff above the cataract. Woe and shame to the sacrilegious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find shelter or shade under the calm circumference of its green old age.
Margaret Burnside was an orphan. Her parents, who had been the poorest people in the parish, had died when she was a mere child; and as they had left no near relatives, there were few or none to care much about the desolate creature, who might be well said to have been left friendless in the world. True that the feeling of charity is seldom wholly wanting in any heart; but it is generally but a cold feeling among hard-working folk, towards objects out of the narrow circle of their own family affections, and selfishness has a ready and strong excuse in necessity. There seems, indeed, to be a sort of chance in the lot of the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the eye of Christian benevolence falls at the very first moment of their uttermost destitution—and their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, terminate with the tears shed over their parents' graves. They are taken by the hands, as soon as their hands have been stretched out for protection, and admitted as inmates into households, whose doors, had their fathers and mothers been alive, they would never have darkened. The light of comfort falls upon them during the gloom of grief, and attends them all their days. Others, again, are overlooked at the first fall of affliction, as if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretchedness with which all have become familiar, no one very tenderly pities; and thus the orphan, reconciling herself to the extreme hardships of her condition, lives on uncheered by those sympathies out of which grow both happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees to the constant pressure of her lot, becomes poor in spirit as in estate, and either vegetates like an almost worthless weed that is carelessly trodden on by every foot, or if by nature born a flower, in time loses her lustre, and all her days leads the life not so much of a servant as of a slave.
Such, till she was twelve years old, had been the fate of Margaret Burnside. Of a slender form and weak constitution, she had never been able for much work; and thus from one discontented and harsh master and mistress to another, she had been transferred from house to house—always the poorest—till she came to be looked on as an encumbrance rather than a help in any family, and thought hardly worth her bread. Sad and sickly she sat on the braes herding the kine. It was supposed that she was in a consumption—and as the shadow of death seemed to lie on the neglected creature's face, a feeling something like love was awakened towards her in the heart of pity, for which she showed her gratitude by still attending to all household tasks with an alacrity beyond her strength. Few doubted that she was dying—and it was plain that she thought so herself; for the Bible, which, in her friendlessness, she had always read more than other children, who were too happy to reflect often on the Word of that Being from whom their happiness flowed, was now, when leisure permitted, seldom or never out of her hands; and in lonely places, where there was no human ear to hearken, did the dying girl often support her heart, when quaking in natural fears of the grave, by singing to herself hymns and psalms. But her hour was not yet come—though by the inscrutable decrees of Providence doomed to be hideous with almost inexpiable guilt. As for herself—she was innocent as the linnet that sang beside her in the broom, and innocent was she to be up to the last throbbings of her religious heart. When the sunshine fell on the leaves of her Bible, the orphan seemed to see in the holy words, brightening through the radiance, assurances of forgiveness of all her sins—small sins indeed—yet to her humble and contrite heart exceeding great—and to be pardoned only by the intercession of Him who died for us on the tree. Often, when clouds were in the sky, and blackness covered the Book, hope died away from the discoloured page—and the lonely creature wept and sobbed over the doom denounced on all who sin, and repent not—whether in deed or in thought. And thus religion became within her an awful thing—till, in her resignation, she feared to die. But look on that flower by the hill-side path, withered, as it seems, beyond the power of sun and air and dew and rain to restore it to life. Next day, you happen to return tothe place, its leaves are of a dazzling green, its blossoms of a dazzling crimson. So was it with this Orphan. Nature, as if kindling towards her in sudden love, not only restored her in a few weeks to life—but to perfect health; and ere long she, whom few had looked at, and for whom still fewer cared, was acknowledged to be the fairest girl in all the parish—while she continued to sit, as she had always done from very childhood, on thepoor's formin the lobby of the kirk. Such a face, such a figure, and such a manner, in one so poorly attired and so meanly placed, attracted the eyes of the young Ladies in the Patron's Gallery. Margaret Burnside was taken under their especial protection—sent for two years to a superior school, where she was taught all things useful for persons in humble life—and while yet scarcely fifteen, returning to her native parish, was appointed teacher of a small school of her own, to which were sent all the girls who could be spared from home, from those of parents poor as her own had been, up to those of the farmers and small proprietors, who knew the blessings of a good education—and that without it, the minister may preach in vain. And thus Margaret Burnside grew and blossomed like the lily of the field—and every eye blessed her—and she drew her breath in gratitude, piety, and peace.
Thus a few happy and useful years passed by—and it was forgotten by all—but herself—that Margaret Burnside was an orphan. But to be without one near and dear blood-relative in all the world, must often, even to the happy heart of youthful innocence, be more than a pensive—a painful thought; and therefore, though Margaret Burnside was always cheerful among her little scholars, yet in the retirement of her own room (a pretty parlour, with a window looking into a flower-garden), and on her walks among the braes, her mien was somewhat melancholy, and her eyes wore that touching expression, which seems doubtfully to denote—neither joy nor sadness—but a habit of soul which, in its tranquillity, still partakes of the mournful, as if memory dwelt often on past sorrows, and hope scarcely ventured to indulge in dreams of future repose. That profound orphan-feeling imbued her whole character; and sometimes when the young Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber—and wept.
Among the friends at whose houses she visited were the family at Moorside, the highest hill-farm in the parish, and on which her father had been a hind. It consisted of the master, a man whose head was grey, his son and daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, whose parents were dead. Gilbert Adamson had long been a widower—indeed his wife had never been in the parish, but had died abroad. He had been a soldier in his youth and prime of manhood; and when he came to settle at Moorside, he had been looked at with no very friendly eyes; for evil rumours of his character had preceded his arrival there—and in that peaceful pastoral parish, far removed from the world's strife, suspicions, without any good reason perhaps, had attached themselves to the morality and religion of a man, who had seen much foreign service, and had passed the best years of his life in the wars. It was long before these suspicions faded away, and with some they still existed in an invincible feeling of dislike, or even aversion. But the natural fierceness and ferocity which, as these peaceful dwellers among the hills imagined, had at first, in spite of his efforts to control them, often dangerously exhibited themselves in fiery outbreaks, advancing age had gradually subdued; Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-working and industrious man; affected, if he followed it not in sincerity, even an austerely religious life; and as he possessed more than common sagacity and intelligence, he had acquired, at last, if not won, a certain ascendancy in the parish, even over many whose hearts never opened nor warmed towards him—so that he was now an elder of the kirk—and, as the most unwilling were obliged to acknowledge, a just steward to the poor. His grey hairs were not honoured, but it would not be too much to say that they were respected. Many who had doubted him before came to think they had done him injustice, and sought to wipe away their fault by regarding him with esteem, and showing themselves willing to interchange all neighbourly kindnesses and services with all the family at Moorside. His son, though somewhat wild and unsteady, and too much addicted to the fascinating pastimes of flood and field, often so ruinous to the sons of labour, and rarely long pursued against the law without vitiating the whole character, was a favourite with all the parish. Singularly handsome, and with manners above his birth, Ludovic was welcomewherever he went, both with young and old. No merry-making could deserve the name without him; and at all meetings for the display of feats of strength and agility, far and wide through more counties than one he was the champion. Nor had he received a mean education. All that the parish schoolmaster could teach he knew; and having been the darling companion of all the gentlemen's sons in the Manse, the faculties of his mind had kept pace with theirs, and from them he had caught unconsciously that demeanour so far superior to what could have been expected from one in his humble condition, but which, at the same time, seemed so congenial with his happy nature as to be readily acknowledged to be one of its original gifts. Of his sister, Alice, it is sufficient to say, that she was the bosom-friend of Margaret Burnside, and that all who saw their friendship felt that it was just. The small parentless granddaughter was also dear to Margaret—more than perhaps her heart knew, because that, like herself, she was an orphan. But the creature was also a merry and a madcap child, and her freakish pranks, and playful perversenesses, as she tossed her head in untamable glee, and went dancing and singing, like a bird on the boughs of a tree, all day long, by some strange sympathy entirely won the heart of her who, throughout all her own childhood, had been familiar with grief, and a lonely shedder of tears. And thus did Margaret love her, it might be said, even with a very mother's love. She generally passed her free Saturday afternoons at Moorside, and often slept there all night with little Ann in her bosom. At such times Ludovic was never from home, and many a Sabbath he walked with her to the kirk—all the family together—andonceby themselves for miles along the moor—a forenoon of perfect sunshine, which returned upon him in his agony on his dying day.
No one said, no one thought that Ludovic and Margaret were lovers—nor were they, though well worthy indeed of each other's love; for the orphan's whole heart was filled and satisfied with a sense of duty, and all its affections were centred in her school, where all eyes blessed her, and where she had been placed for the good of all those gladsome creatures, by them who had rescued her from the penury that kills the soul, and whose gracious bounty she remembered even in her sleep. In her prayers she beseeched God to blessthem rather than the wretch on her knees—their images, their names, were ever before her eyes and on her ear; and next to that peace of mind which passeth all understanding, and comes from the footstool of God into the humble, lowly, and contrite heart, was to that orphan, day and night, waking or sleeping, the bliss of her gratitude. And thus Ludovic to her was a brother, and no more; a name sacred as that of sister, by which she always called her Alice, and was so called in return. But to Ludovic, who had a soul of fire, Margaret was dearer far than ever sister was to the brother whom, at the sacrifice of her own life, she might have rescued from death. Go where he might, a phantom was at his side—a pale fair face for ever fixed its melancholy eyes on his, as if foreboding something dismal even when they faintly smiled; and once he awoke at midnight, when all the house were asleep, crying, with shrieks, "O God of mercy! Margaret is murdered!" Mysterious passion of Love! that darkens its own dreams of delight with unimaginable horrors! Shall we call such dire bewilderment the superstition of troubled fantasy, or the inspiration of the prophetic soul!
From what seemingly insignificant sources—and by means of what humble instruments—may this life's best happiness be diffused over the households of industrious men! Here was the orphan daughter of forgotten paupers, both dead ere she could speak; herself, during all her melancholy childhood, a pauper even more enslaved than ever they had been—one of the most neglected and unvalued of all God's creatures—who, had she then died, would have been buried in some nettled nook of the kirkyard, nor her grave been watered almost by one single tear—suddenly brought out from the cold and cruel shade in which she had been withering away, by the interposition of human but angelic hands, into the heaven's most gracious sunshine, where all at once her beauty blossomed like the rose. She, who for so many years had been even begrudgingly fed on the poorest and scantiest fare, by Penury ungrateful for all her weak but zealous efforts to please by doing her best, in sickness and sorrow, at all her tasks, in or out of doors, and in all weathers, however rough and severe—was now raised to the rank of a moral, intellectual, and religious being, and presided over, tended, and instructed many little ones, far far happier in their childhood than it hadbeen her lot to be, and all growing up beneath her now untroubled eyes, in innocence, love, and joy inspired into their hearts by her, their young and happy benefactress. Not a human dwelling in all the parish, that had not reason to be thankful to Margaret Burnside. She taught them to be pleasant in their manners, neat in their persons, rational in their minds, pure in their hearts, and industrious in all their habits. Rudeness, coarseness, sullenness, all angry fits, and all idle dispositions—the besetting vices and sins of the children of the poor, whose home-education is often so miserably, and almost necessarily neglected—did this sweet Teacher, by the divine influence of meekness never ruffled, and tenderness never troubled, in a few months subdue and overcome—till her school-room, every day in the week, was, in its cheerfulness, sacred as a Sabbath, and murmured from morn till eve with the hum of perpetual happiness. The effects were soon felt in every house. All floors were tidier, and order and regularity enlivened every hearth. It was the pride of her scholars to get their own little gardens behind their parents' huts to bloom like that of the Brae—and, in imitation of that flowery porch, to train up the pretty creepers on the wall. In the kirkyard, a smiling group every Sabbath forenoon waited for her at the gate—and walked, with her at their head, into the House of God—a beautiful procession to all their parents' eyes—one by one dropping away into their own seats, as the band moved along the little lobby, and the minister, sitting in the pulpit all the while, looked solemnly down upon the fair flock—the shepherd of their souls!
It was Sabbath, but Margaret Burnside was not in the kirk. The congregation had risen to join in prayer, when the great door was thrown open, and a woman, apparelled as for the house of worship, but wild and ghastly in her face and eyes as a maniac hunted by evil spirits, burst in upon the service, and, with uplifted hands, beseeched the man of God to forgive her irreverent entrance, for that the foulest and most unnatural murder had been done, and that her own eyes had seen the corpse of Margaret Burnside lying on the moor in a pool of blood! The congregation gave one groan, and then an outcry as if the roof of the kirk had been toppling over their heads. All cheeks waxed white, women fainted, and the firmest heart quaked with terror and pity, as once and againthe affrighted witness, in the same words, described the horrid spectacle, and then rushed out into the open air, followed by hundreds, who for some minutes had been palsy-stricken; and now the kirkyard was all in a tumult round the body of her who lay in a swoon. In the midst of that dreadful ferment, there were voices crying aloud that the poor woman was mad, and that such horror could not be beneath the sun; for such a perpetration on the Sabbath-day, and first heard of just as the prayers of His people were about to ascend to the Father of all mercies, shocked belief, and doubt struggled with despair as in the helpless shudderings of some dream of blood. The crowd were at last prevailed on by their pastor to disperse, and sit down on the tombstones, and water being sprinkled over the face of her who still lay in that mortal swoon, and the air suffered to circulate freely round her, she again opened her glassy eyes, and raising herself on her elbow, stared on the multitude, all gathered there so wan and silent, and shrieked out, "The Day of Judgment!—the Day of Judgment!"
The aged minister raised her on her feet, and led her to a grave, on which she sat down, and hid her face on his knees. "O that I should have lived to see the day—but dreadful are the decrees of the Most High—and she whom we all loved has been cruelly murdered! Carry me with you, people, and I will show you where lies her corpse."
"Where—where is Ludovic Adamson?" cried a hoarse voice which none there had ever heard before; and all eyes were turned in one direction; but none knew who had spoken, and all again was hush. Then all at once a hundred voices repeated the same words, "Where—where is Ludovic Adamson?" and there was no reply. Then, indeed, was the kirkyard in an angry and a wrathful ferment, and men looked far into each other's eyes for confirmation of their suspicions. And there was whispering about things, that, though in themselves light as air, seemed now charged with hideous import; and then arose sacred appeals to Heaven's eternal justice, horridly mingled with oaths and curses; and all the crowd, springing to their feet, pronounced, "that no other but he could be the murderer."
It was remembered now, that for months past Margaret Burnside had often looked melancholy—that her visits hadbeen less frequent to Moorside; and one person in the crowd said, that a few weeks ago she had come upon them suddenly in a retired place, when Margaret was weeping bitterly, and Ludovic tossing his arms, seemingly in wrath and distraction. All agreed that of late he had led a disturbed and reckless life—and that something dark and suspicious had hung about him, wherever he went, as if he were haunted by an evil conscience. But did not strange men sometimes pass through the Moor—squalid mendicants, robber-like, from the far-off city—one by one, yet seemingly belonging to the same gang—with bludgeons in their hands—half-naked, and often drunken in their hunger, as at the doors of lonesome houses they demanded alms; or more like footpads than beggars, with stern gestures, rising up from the ditches on the wayside, stopped the frightened women and children going upon errands, and thanklessly received pence from the poor? One of them must have been the murderer! But then, again, the whole tide of suspicion would set in upon Ludovic—her lover; for the darker and more dreadful the guilt, the more welcome is it to the fears of the imagination when its waking dreams are floating in blood.
A tall figure came forward from the porch, and all was silence when the congregation beheld the Father of the suspected criminal. He stood still as a tree in a calm day—trunk, limbs, moved not—and his grey head was uncovered. He then stretched out his arm, not in an imploring, but in a commanding attitude, and essayed to speak; but his white lips quivered, and his tongue refused its office. At last, almost fiercely, he uttered, "Who dares denounce my son?" and like the growling thunder the crowd cried, "All—all—he is the murderer!" Some said that the old man smiled; but it could have been but a convulsion of the features—outraged nature's wrung-out and writhing expression of disdain, to show how a father's love brooks the cruelty of foolish falsehood and injustice.
Men, women, and children—all whom grief and horror had not made helpless—moved away towards the Moor—the woman who had seen the sight leading the way; for now her whole strength had returned to her, and she was drawn and driven by an irresistible passion to look again at what had almost destroyed her judgment. Now they were miles fromthe kirk, and over some brushwood, at the edge of a morass some distance from the common footpath, crows were seen diving and careering in the air, and a raven, flapping suddenly out of the covert, sailed away with a savage croak along a range of cliffs. The whole multitude stood stock-still at that carrion-sound. The guide said shudderingly, in a low hurried voice, "See, see—that is her mantle"—and there indeed Margaret lay, all in a heap, maimed, mangled, murdered, with a hundred gashes. The corpse seemed as if it had been baked in frost, and was imbedded in coagulated blood. Shreds and patches of her dress, torn away from her bosom, bestrewed the bushes—for many yards round about, there had been the trampling of feet, and a long lock of hair that had been torn from her temples, with the dews yet unmelted on it, was lying upon a plant of broom, a little way from the corpse. The first to lift the body from the horrid bed was Gilbert Adamson. He had been long familiar with death in all its ghastliness, and all had now looked to him—forgetting for the moment that he was the father of the murderer—to perform the task from which they recoiled in horror. Resting on one knee, he placed the corpse on the other—and who could have believed, that even the most violent and cruel death could have wrought such a change on a face once so beautiful! All was distortion—and terrible it was to see the dim glazed eyes, fixedly open, and the orbs insensible to the strong sun that smote her face white as snow among the streaks as if left by bloody fingers! Her throat was all discoloured—and a silk handkerchief twisted into a cord, that had manifestly been used in the murder, was of a redder hue than when it had veiled her breast. No one knows what horror his eyes are able to look on, till they are tried. A circle of stupefied gazers was drawn by a horrid fascination closer and closer round the corpse—and women stood there holding children by the hands, and fainted not, but observed the sight, and shuddered without shrieking, and stood there all dumb as ghosts. But the body was now borne along by many hands—at first none knew in what direction, till many voices muttered, "To Moorside—to Moorside"—and in an hour it was laid on the bed in which Margaret Burnside had so often slept with her beloved little Ann in her bosom.
The hand of some one had thrown a cloth over the corpse.The room was filled with people—but all their power and capacity of horror had been exhausted—and the silence was now almost like that which attends a natural death, when all the neighbours are assembled for the funeral. Alice, with little Ann beside her, kneeled at the bed, nor feared to lay her head close to the covered corpse—sobbing out syllables that showed how passionately she prayed—and that she and her little niece—and, oh! for that unhappy father—were delivering themselves up into the hands of God. That father knelt not—neither did he sit down—nor move—nor groan—but stood at the foot of the bed, with arms folded almost sternly—and with his eyes fixed on the sheet, in which there seemed to be neither ruth nor dread—but only an austere composure, which, were it indeed but resignation to that dismal decree of Providence, had been most sublime—but who can see into the heart of a man either righteous or wicked, and know what may be passing there, breathed from the gates of heaven or of hell!
Soon as the body had been found, shepherds and herdsmen, fleet of foot as the deer, had set off to scour the country far and wide, hill and glen, mountain and morass, moor and wood, for the murderer. If he be on the face of the earth, and not self-plunged in despairing suicide into some quagmire, he will be found—for all the population of many districts are now afoot, and precipices are clomb till now brushed but by the falcons. A figure, like that of a man, is seen by some of the hunters from a hill-top, lying among the stones by the side of a solitary loch. They separate, and descend upon him, and then, gathering in, they behold the man whom they seek—Ludovic Adamson, the murderer.
His face is pale and haggard, yet flushed as if by a fever centred in his heart. That is no dress for the Sabbath-day—soiled and savage-looking, and giving to the eyes that search an assurance of guilt. He starts to his feet, as they think, like some wild beast surprised in his lair, and gathering itself up to fight or fly. But—strange enormity—a Bible is in his hand! And the shepherd who first seized him, taking the book out of his grasp, looks into the page, and reads, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." On a leaf is written, in her own well-known hand, "The gift of Margaret Burnside!" Not a word is said byhis captors—they offer no needless violence—no indignities—but answer all inquiries of surprise and astonishment (O! can one so young be so hardened in wickedness!) by a stern silence and upbraiding eyes, that like daggers must stab his heart. At last he walks doggedly and sullenly along, and refuses to speak; yet his tread is firm—there is no want of composure in his face, now that the first passion of fear or anger has left it; and now that they have the murderer in their clutch, some begin almost to pity him, and others to believe, or at least to hope, that he may be innocent. As yet they have said not a word of the crime of which they accuse him; but let him try to master the expression of his voice and his eyes as he may, guilt is in those stealthy glances—guilt is in those reckless tones. And why does he seek to hide his right hand in his bosom? And whatever he may affect to say—they ask him not—most certainly that stain on his shirt-collar is blood. But now they are at Moorside.
There is still a great crowd all round about the house—in the garden—and at the door—and a troubled cry announces that the criminal has been taken, and is close at hand. His father meets him at the gate; and, kneeling down, holds up his clasped hands, and says, "My son, if thou art guilty, confess, and die." The criminal angrily waves his father aside, and walks towards the door. "Fools! fools! what mean ye by this? What crime has been committed? And how dare ye to think me the criminal? Am I like a murderer?"—"We never spoke to him of the murder—we never spoke to him of the murder!" cried one of the men who now held him by the arm; and all assembled then exclaimed, "Guilty, guilty—that one word will hang him! O, pity, pity, for his father and poor sister—this will break their hearts!" Appalled, yet firm of foot, the prisoner forced his way into the house; and turning, in his confusion, into the chamber on the left, there he beheld the corpse of the murdered on the bed—for the sheet had been removed—as yet not laid out, and disfigured and deformed just as she had been found on the moor, in the same misshapen heap of death! One long insane glare—one shriek, as if all his heartstrings at once had burst—and then down fell the strong man on the floor like lead. One trial was past which no human hardihood could endure—another, and yet another, awaits him; but them he will bearas the guilty brave have often borne them, and the most searching eye shall not see him quail at the bar or on the scaffold.
They lifted the stricken wretch from the floor, placed him in a chair, and held him upright, till he should revive from the fit. And he soon did revive; for health flowed in all his veins, and he had the strength of a giant. But when his senses returned, there was none to pity him; for the shock had given an expression of guilty horror to all his looks, and, like a man walking in his sleep under the temptation of some dreadful dream, he moved with fixed eyes towards the bed, and looking at the corpse, gabbled in hideous laughter, and then wept and tore his hair like a distracted woman or a child. Then he stooped down as he would kiss the face, but staggered back, and, covering his eyes with his hands, uttered such a groan as is sometimes heard rending the sinner's breast when the avenging Furies are upon him in his dreams. All who heard it felt that he was guilty; and there was a fierce cry through the room of, "Make him touch the body, and if he be the murderer, it will bleed!"—"Fear not, Ludovic, to touch it, my boy," said his father; "bleed afresh it will not, for thou art innocent; and savage though now they be who once were proud to be thy friends, even they will believe thee guiltless when the corpse refuses to bear witness against thee, and not a drop leaves its quiet heart!" But his son spake not a word, nor did he seem to know that his father had spoken; but he suffered himself to be led passively towards the bed. One of the bystanders took his hand and placed it on the naked breast, when out of the corners of the teeth-clenched mouth, and out of the swollen nostrils, two or three blood-drops visibly oozed; and a sort of shrieking shout declared the sacred faith of all the crowd in the dreadful ordeal. "What body is this? 'tis all over blood!" said the prisoner, looking with an idiot vacancy on the faces that surrounded him. But now the sheriff of the county entered the room, along with some officers of justice, and he was spared any further shocks from that old saving superstition. His wrists soon after were manacled. These were all the words he had uttered since he recovered from the fit; and he seemed now in a state of stupor.
Ludovic Adamson, after examination of witnesses whocrowded against him from many unexpected quarters, was committed that very Sabbath night to prison on a charge of murder. On the Tuesday following, the remains of Margaret Burnside were interred. All the parish were at the funeral. In Scotland it is not customary for females to join in the last simple ceremonies of death. But in this case they did; and all her scholars, in the same white dresses in which they used to walk with her at their head into the kirk on Sabbaths, followed the bier. Alice and little Ann were there, nearest the coffin, and the father of him who had wrought all this woe was one of its supporters. The head of the murdered girl rested, it might be said, on his shoulder—but none can know the strength which God gives to his servants—and all present felt for him, as he walked steadily under that dismal burden, a pity, and even an affection, which they had been unable to yield to him ere he had been so sorely tried. The Ladies from the Castle were among the other mourners, and stood by the open grave. A sunnier day had never shone from heaven, and that very grave itself partook of the brightness, as the coffin—with the gilt letters, "Margaret Burnside, Aged 18"—was let down, and in the darkness below disappeared. No flowers were sprinkled there, nor afterwards planted on the turf—vain offerings, of unavailing sorrow! But in that nook—beside the bodies of her poor parents—she was left for the grass to grow over her, as over the other humble dead; and nothing but the very simplest headstone was placed there, with a sentence from Scripture below the name. There was less weeping, less sobbing, than at many other funerals; for as sure as Mercy ruled the skies, all believed that she was there—all knew it, just as if the gates of heaven had opened and showed her a white-robed spirit at the right hand of the throne. And why should any rueful lamentation have been wailed over the senseless dust? But on the way home over the hills, and in the hush of evening beside their hearths, and in the stillness of night on their beds—all—young and old—all did nothing but weep.
For weeks—such was the pity, grief, and awe inspired by this portentous crime and lamentable calamity, that all the domestic ongoings in all the houses far and wide, were melancholy and mournful, as if the country had been fearing a visitation of the plague. Sin, it was felt, had brought notonly sorrow on the parish, but shame that ages would not wipe away; and strangers, as they travelled through the moor, would point the place where the foulest murder had been committed in all the annals of crime. As for the family at Moorside, the daughter had their boundless compassion, though no eye had seen her since the funeral; but people, in speaking of the father, would still shake their heads, and put their fingers to their lips, and say to one another in whispers, that Gilbert Adamson had once been a bold, bad man—that his religion, in spite of all his repulsive austerity, wore not the aspect of truth—and that, had he held a stricter and a stronger hand on the errors of his misguided son, this foul deed had not been perpetrated, nor that wretched sinner's soul given to perdition. Yet others had gentler and humaner thoughts. They remembered him walking along God-supported beneath the bier—and at the mouth of the grave—and feared to look on that head—formerly grizzled, but now quite grey—when on the very first Sabbath after the murder he took his place in the elders' seat, and was able to stand up, along with the rest of the congregation, when the minister prayed for peace to his soul, and hoped for the deliverance out of jeopardy of him now lying in bonds. A low Amen went all round the kirk at these words; for the most hopeless called to mind that maxim of law, equity, and justice—that every man under accusation of crime should be held innocent till he is proved to be guilty. Nay, a human tribunal might condemn him, and yet might he stand acquitted before the tribunal of God.
There were various accounts of the behaviour of the prisoner. Some said that he was desperately hardened—others, sunk in sullen apathy and indifference—and one or two persons belonging to the parish who had seen him declared that he seemed to care not for himself, but to be plunged in profound melancholy for the fate of Margaret Burnside, whose name he involuntarily mentioned, and then bowed his head on his knees and wept. His guilt he neither admitted at that interview, nor denied; but he confessed that some circumstances bore hard against him, and that he was prepared for the event of his trial—condemnation and death. "But if you are not guilty, Ludovic,who can be the murderer? Not the slightest shade of suspicion has fallen on any otherperson—and did not, alas! the body bleed when"—The unhappy wretch sprang up from the bed, it was said, at these words, and hurried like a madman back and forward along the stone floor of his cell. "Yea—yea!" at last he cried, "the mouth and nostrils of my Margaret did indeed bleed when they pressed down my hand on her cold bosom. It is God's truth!" "God's truth?"—"Yes—God's truth, I saw first one drop, and then another, trickle towards me—and I prayed to our Saviour to wipe them off before other eyes might behold the dreadful witnesses against me; but at that hour Heaven was most unmerciful—for those two small drops—as all of you saw—soon became a very stream—and all her face, neck, and breast—you saw it as well as I miserable—were at last drenched in blood. Then I may have confessed that I was guilty—did I, or did I not, confess it? Tell me—for I remember nothing distinctly;—but if I did—the judgment of offended Heaven, then punishing me for my sins, had made me worse than mad—and so had all your abhorrent eyes; and men, if I did confess, it was the cruelty of God that drove me to it—and your cruelty—which was great; for no pity had any one for me that day, though Margaret Burnside lay before me a murdered corpse—and a hoarse whisper came to my ear urging me to confess—I well believe from no human lips, but from the Father of Lies, who, at that hour, was suffered to leave the pit to ensnare my soul." Such was said to have been the main sense of what he uttered in the presence of two or three who had formerly been among his most intimate friends, and who knew not, on leaving his cell and coming into the open air, whether to think him innocent or guilty. As long as they thought they saw his eyes regarding them, and that they heard his voice speaking, they believed him innocent; but when the expression of the tone of his voice, and of the look of his eyes—which they had felt belonged to innocence—died away from their memory—then arose against him the strong, strange, circumstantial evidence, which, wisely or unwisely, lawyers and judges have saidcannot lie—and then, in their hearts, one and all of them pronounced him guilty.
But had not his father often visited the prisoner's cell? Once—and once only; for in obedience to his son's passionate prayer, beseeching him—if there were any mercy left eitheron earth or in heaven—never more to enter that dungeon, the miserable parent had not again entered the prison; but he had been seen one morning at dawn, by one who knew his person, walking round and round the walls, staring up at the black building in distraction, especially at one small grated window in the north tower—and it is most probable that he had been pacing his rounds there during all the night. Nobody could conjecture, however dimly, what was the meaning of his banishment from his son's cell. Gilbert Adamson, so stern to others, even to his own only daughter, had been always but too indulgent to his Ludovic—and had that lost wretch's guilt, so exceeding great, changed his heart into stone, and made the sight of his old father's grey hairs hateful to his eyes? But then the jailor, who had heard him imploring—beseeching—commanding his father to remain, till after the trial, at Moorside, said, that all the while the prisoner sobbed and wept like a child; and that when he unlocked the door of the cell, to let the old man out, it was a hard thing to tear away the arms and hands of Ludovic from his knees, while the father sat like a stone image on the bed, and kept his tearless eyes fixed sternly upon the wall, as if not a soul had been present, and he himself had been a criminal condemned next day to die.
The father had obeyed,religiously, that miserable injunction, and from religion it seemed he had found comfort. For Sabbath after Sabbath he was at the kirk—he stood, as he had been wont to do for years, at the poor's plate, and returned grave salutations to those who dropt their mite into the small sacred treasury—his eyes calmly, and even critically, regarded the pastor during prayer and sermon—and his deep bass voice was heard, as usual, through all the house of God, in the Psalms. On week-days he was seen by passers-by to drive his flocks afield, and to overlook his sheep on the hill-pastures, or in the pen-fold; and as it was still spring, and seed-time had been late this season, he was observed holding the plough, as of yore; nor had his skill deserted him—for the furrows were as straight as if drawn by a rule on paper—and soon bright and beautiful was the braird on all the low lands of his farm. The Comforter was with him, and, sorely as he had been tried, his heart was not yet wholly broken; and it was believed that, for years, he might outlive the blow that at first had seemed more than a mortalman might bear and be! Yet that his woe, though hidden, was dismal, all ere long knew, from certain tokens that intrenched his face—cheeks shrunk and fallen; brow not so much furrowed as scarred; eyes quenched; hair thinner and thinner far, as if he himself had torn it away in handfuls during the solitude of midnight—and now absolutely as white as snow; and over the whole man an indescribable ancientness far beyond his years—though they were many, and most of them had been passed in torrid climes—all showed how grief has its agonies as destructive as those of guilt, and those the most wasting when they work in the heart and in the brain, unrelieved by the shedding of one single tear—when the very soul turns dry as dust, and life is imprisoned, rather than mingled, in the decaying—the mouldering body!
The Day of Trial came, and all labour was suspended in the parish, as if it had been a mourning fast. Hundreds of people from this remote district poured into the circuit-town, and besieged the court-house. Horsemen were in readiness, soon as the verdict should be returned, to carry the intelligence—of life or death—to all those glens. A few words will suffice to tell the trial, the nature of the evidence, and its issue. The prisoner, who stood at the bar in black, appeared—though miserably changed from a man of great muscular power and activity, a magnificent man, into a tall thin shadow—perfectly unappalled; but in a face so white, and wasted, and woe-begone, the most profound physiognomist could read not one faintest symptom either of hope or fear, trembling or trust, guilt or innocence. He hardly seemed to belong to this world, and stood fearfully and ghastlily conspicuous between the officers of justice, above all the crowd that devoured him with their eyes, all leaning towards the bar to catch the first sound of his voice, when to the indictment he should plead "Not Guilty." These words he did utter, in a hollow voice altogether passionless, and then was suffered to sit down, which he did in a manner destitute of all emotion. During all the many long hours of his trial, he never moved head, limbs, or body, except once, when he drank some water, which he had not asked for, but which was given to him by a friend. The evidence was entirely circumstantial, and consisted of a few damning facts, and of many of the very slightest sort, which, taken singly, seemedto mean nothing, but which, when considered all together, seemed to mean something against him—how much or how little, there were among the agitated audience many differing opinions. But slight as they were, either singly or together, they told fearfully against the prisoner, when connected with the fatal few which no ingenuity could ever explain away; and though ingenuity did all it could do, when wielded by eloquence of the highest order—and as the prisoner's counsel sat down, there went a rustle and a buzz through the court, and a communication of looks and whispers, that seemed to denote that there were hopes of his acquittal—yet, if such hopes there were, they were deadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, logical address to the jury by the counsel for the crown, and destroyed by the judge's charge, which amounted almost to a demonstration of guilt, and concluded with a confession due to his oath and conscience, that he saw not how the jury could do their duty to their Creator and their fellow-creatures, but by returningoneverdict. They retired to consider it; and, during a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on a deathlike Image.
It had appeared in evidence, that the murder had been committed, at least all the gashes inflicted—for there were also finger-marks of strangulation—with a bill-hook, such as foresters use in lopping trees; and several witnesses swore that the bill-hook which was shown them, stained with blood, and with hair sticking on the haft, belonged to Ludovic Adamson. It was also given in evidence—though some doubts rested on the nature of the precise words—that on that day, in the room with the corpse, he had given a wild and incoherent denial to the question then put to him in the din, "What he had done with the bill-hook?" Nobody had seen it in his possession since the spring before; but it had been found, after several weeks' search, in a hag in the moss, in the direction that he would have most probably taken—had he been the murderer—when flying from the spot to the loch where he was seized. The shoes which he had on when taken, fitted the footmarks on the ground, not far from the place of the murder, but not so perfectly as another pair which were found in the house. But that other pair, it was proved, belonged to the old man; and therefore the correspondence between the footmarks and the prisoner's shoes,though not perfect, was a circumstance of much suspicion. But a far stronger fact, in this part of the evidence, was sworn to against the prisoner. Though there was no blood on his shoes, when apprehended his legs were bare—though that circumstance, strange as it may seem, had never been noticed till he was on the way to prison! His stockings had been next day found lying on the sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly after having been washed, and laid out to dry in the sun. At mention of this circumstance a cold shudder ran through the court; but neither that, nor indeed any other circumstance in the evidence—not even the account of the appearance which the murdered body exhibited when found on the moor, or when afterwards laid on the bed—extorted from the prisoner one groan—one sigh—or touched the imperturbable deathliness of his countenance. It was proved, that when searched—in prison, and not before (for the agitation that reigned over all assembled in the room at Moorside that dreadful day, had confounded even those accustomed to deal with suspected criminals)—there were found in his pocket a small French gold watch, and also a gold brooch, which the Ladies of the Castle had given to Margaret Burnside. On these being taken from him, he had said nothing, but looked aghast. A piece of torn and bloody paper, which had been picked up near the body, was sworn to be in his handwriting; and though the meaning of the words—yet legible—was obscure, they seemed to express a request that Margaret would meet him on the moor on that Saturday afternoon she was murdered. The words "Saturday"—"meet me"—"last time"—were not indistinct, and the paper was of the same quality and colour with some found in a drawer in his bedroom at Moorside. It was proved that he had been drinking with some dissolute persons—poachers and the like—in a public-house in a neighbouring parish all Saturday, till well on in the afternoon, when he left them in a state of intoxication—and was then seen running along the hill-side in the direction of the moor. Where he passed the night between the Saturday and the Sabbath, he could give no account, except once when unasked, and as if speaking to himself, he was overheard by the jailor to mutter, "Oh! that fatal night—that fatal night!" And then, when suddenly interrogated, "Where were you?" he answered,"Asleep on the hill;" and immediately relapsed into a state of mental abstraction. These were the chief circumstances against him, which his counsel had striven to explain away. That most eloquent person dwelt with affecting earnestness on the wickedness of putting any evil construction on the distracted behaviour of the wretched man when brought without warning upon the sudden sight of the mangled corpse of the beautiful girl, whom all allowed he had most passionately and tenderly loved; and he strove to prove—as he did prove to the conviction of many—that such behaviour was incompatible with such guilt, and almost of itself established his innocence. All that was sworn toagainsthim, as having passed in that dreadful room, was in truthforhim—unless all our knowledge of the best and of the worst of human nature were not, as folly, to be given to the winds. He beseeched the jury, therefore, to look at all the other circumstances that did indeed seem to bear hard upon the prisoner, in the light of his innocence, and not of his guilt, and that they would all fade into nothing. What mattered his possession of the watch and other trinkets? Lovers as they were, might not the unhappy girl have given them to him for temporary keepsakes? Or might he not have taken them from her in some playful mood, or received them—(and the brooch was cracked, and the mainspring of the watch broken, though the glass was whole)—to get them repaired in the town, which he often visited, and she never? Could human credulity for one moment believe, that such a man as the prisoner at the bar had been sworn to be by a host of witnesses—and especially by that witness, who, with such overwhelming solemnity, had declared he loved him as his own son, and would have been proud if Heaven had given him such a son—he who had baptised him, and known him well ever since a child—that such a man couldrobthe body of her whom he had violated and murdered? If, under the instigation of the devil, he had violated and murdered her, and for a moment were made the hideous supposition, did vast hell hold that demon whose voice would have tempted the violator and murderer—suppose him both—yea, that man at the bar—sworn to by all the parish, if need were, as a man of tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded—in the lust of lucre, consequent on the satiating of another lust—to rob his victimof a few trinkets! Let loose the wildest imagination into the realms of wildest wickedness, and yet they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for a moment the union of such appalling and such paltry guilt,in that manwho now trembled not before them, but who seemed cut off from all the sensibilities of this life by the scythe of Misery that had shorn him down! But why try to recount, however feebly, the line of defence taken by the speaker, who on that day seemed all but inspired? The sea may overturn rocks, or fire consume them till they split in pieces; but a crisis there sometimes is in man's destiny, which all the powers ever lodged in the lips of man, were they touched with a coal from heaven, cannot avert, and when even he who strives to save, feels and knows that he is striving all in vain—ay, vain as a worm—to arrest the tread of Fate about to trample down its victim into the dust. All hoped—many almost believed—that the prisoner would be acquitted—that a verdict of "Not Proven," at least, if not of "Not Guilty," would be returned; buttheyhad not been sworn to do justice before man and before God—and, if need were, to seal up even the fountains of mercy in their hearts—flowing, and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle as that bar presented—a man already seeming to belong unto the dead!