At the end of the stone passage, Edgar found Martin Oldkirk waiting for him; and proceeding in silence, they issued forth from the old workhouse, but not by the front entrance, passing through a small door at the back, the key of which the countryman seemed to possess for his own private use, as he put it in his pocket after having turned it in the lock. As soon as they were a few steps from the building, Edgar turned towards his companion, saying, "I must find Lane, the blacksmith, to-night. I suppose, my shortest way is through Langley?"
"No, sir," answered Oldkirk, "I will show you a shorter way than that; and I had better go with you too, for if I don't, you'll not make much of Edward Lane. We must take the first turning through the fields: there's a stile a couple of hundred yards up."
Without reply Edgar proceeded along the road; and they had nearly reached the stile of which Oldkirk spoke, when four or five men and a little boy sprang out from the hedge upon them. Two of them seized Edgar by the collar; and though he made an effort to shake himself free, it is probable he would have offered no violent resistance if Oldkirk had not struck violently right and left, knocking down one of the assailants, and severely hurting another. The men struck again in their own defence, and a general scuffle took place, in the midst of which, without knowing from what hand it came, Edgar received a severe blow on the head from a stick. The fire flashed from his eyes, his brain seemed to reel, and everything passing from his sight, he fell senseless to the ground.
When Mr. Adelon recovered his recollection, he could not for some minutes conceive where he was, for all the objects around were new and strange to him. He was stretched upon a bed in a large but low-roofed room, with a woman and two men standing by him, and applying some cold lotions to his head. His brain seemed confused and dizzy, and a violent aching pain over his brows showed him that he had been very severely handled. The remembrance of all that had occurred came back to him almost immediately; and turning to one of the men, he demanded where he was, and why he had been so assaulted.
"You are at Farmer Grange's for the present, master," replied the man; "and no one would have hurt you, if you had not resisted. We came out to get hold of a party of those Chartists who are charged with being concerned in that business at Barhampton, and if you choose to go consorting with them, you must take the consequences."
"Have you a warrant?" demanded Edgar, raising himself on the bed.
"We've got warrants against five or six on 'em," answered the man; "Martin Oldkirk, Neddy Lane, Eaton, and others."
"Have you a warrant against me?" demanded Edgar; "though I need not ask the question, for I know very well you have not."
"As to that, I can't say," was the man's answer, "for I don't know who you are yet; but you were consorting with one of 'em, at all events."
"You know very well that I am Sir Arthur Adelon's son," replied the young gentleman; "and I demand that you show me your warrant against me. If you have one, I shall submit to the law, of course; but if you have not, I insist upon your suffering me to go home directly."
"That I shan't do, you may be sure," said the man. "I don't know who you are, or anything about you; and I shall wait till the constable of the hundred comes back, at all events. He's gone to Barhampton to find a surgeon for your head, that you would have broke, whether we liked it or no. He won't be long, I dare say, and you must stay quiet till he returns."
Resistance would be in vain Edgar well knew, and he was forced to submit, though most unwillingly; but gradually a stronger power mastered him. Violent and general headache came on, a sensation of feverish langour spread over his limbs, and by the time that the little clock which was ticking against the wall struck two, he felt that he was almost incapable of moving.
In about half an hour afterwards the head constable of the hundred came back from Barhampton, with the surgeon who was accustomed to attend Sir Arthur Adelon's family; and after examining his patient's head, and having felt his pulse, asking two or three questions at the same time as to what sensations he experienced, he drew forth his lancet, and proceeded, according to the old practice, to bleed his patient largely. Whether the custom of so doing be good or not, Edgar Adelon certainly felt great relief, though a degree of faint drowsiness spread over him at the same time. To his inquiry as to whether he could not be moved to Brandon, the surgeon shook his head, saying, "Impossible;" and Edgar then proceeded to complain of the manner in which he had been treated by the constable and those who accompanied him. In the midst of his statement, however, the overpowering sensation of weariness which he felt prevailed over even anger on his own account and anxiety for his friend, his eyelids dropped heavily once or twice, and he fell into a profound sleep.
When he woke on the following morning it was broad daylight, and he found Mr. Filmer sitting by his bedside. His head still ached, but he felt better than on the preceding night, and a long explanation ensued as to the occurrences which had brought him into the state in which Mr. Filmer found him. As it was clear no warrant was out against him, and the men who had apprehended him had retired from the farm-house, somewhat apprehensive of the consequences of what they had done, Edgar expressed his determination to rise immediately and pursue the object which he had in view when he was seized. He explained in general terms to his companion the nature of the business he was upon; and no arguments of the priest, bearing upon the state of his own health, and the danger of the step he proposed, would have had any effect, had not Mr. Filmer added the assurance that Mr. Dudley's trial would not come on for several days, as he had received intimation that very morning that it was far down on the list, and that all the Chartists who had been taken at Barhampton were to be proceeded against in the first instance.
"Besides, Edgar," he said, "the object you have in view can perhaps be more easily attained. If you will tell me the name of the man you are seeking I will go to him myself, and find means, one way or another, to bring him hither to speak with you."
The idea seemed to Edgar a good one, for in truth he felt little equal to the task, and after a few words more of explanation, Mr. Filmer set out upon his errand. As he went, Edgar turned his eyes towards the clock, and perceived to his surprise that it was nearly noon; but the priest did not return till the sky was beginning to grow gray, and then brought the unpleasant intelligence that Edward Lane was nowhere to be found.
"He has probably heard of there being a warrant out against him," Mr. Filmer said, "and has concealed himself till these assizes are over; knowing well, as we all know, that it is one of the bad customs of this country, whatever be the government, to let political offenders off easily if they avoid the first pursuit of justice, while those who are early apprehended have the law administered not only with strictness but with passion."
"I must find him, at all events," said Edgar, "and that speedily."
"I shall know where he is by to-morrow morning," replied Mr. Filmer, with a meaning smile. "I have directed several shrewd and trustworthy members of my own flock, who know him well, to obtain information, and communicate it to me at once. I will then let you know, my dear son. So make your mind easy, for not an hour shall elapse after I have received the intelligence before it is in your possession."
Again Edgar Adelon suffered himself to be tranquillized by assurances which would have had no effect, had he not been enfeebled by illness. The next morning when he woke his headache was gone, and his mind was fresh and clear, but he still felt very feeble, and willingly lay in bed till the good farmer's wife brought his breakfast, and the hour appointed for the surgeon's visit had nearly come. He wondered, indeed, that Mr. Filmer had not been with him, that Eda had neither come nor sent; and the doubts which she had raised regarding the sincerity of the priest began to recur unpleasantly to his mind. He became uneasy, restless; and when the medical man at length arrived, three quarters of an hour after his time, he shook his head, saying, "You are not quite so well today, Mr. Adelon, and must remain perfectly quiet."
"It is lying here idle," answered Edgar Adelon, "when I have many important things to do. I should be quite well were I up."
"You must rise on no account to-day," replied the surgeon; "and, indeed, I am very glad to find that you did not get up, which I almost anticipated you might do, as I am a little later than the hour I appointed. I know your impatient spirit of old, my young friend." And he smiled facetiously.
"I certainly thought you never would come," replied Edgar; and the surgeon, fearful that he might have given some offence to the son of a wealthy patient, hastened to explain. "The fact is," he said, "that I was anxious to hear the trial of some of these Chartists, and rode over to ---- early this morning. I was detained, however, longer than I expected by a poor woman who is suffering under ----"
"But what came of them?" exclaimed Edgar Adelon, eagerly, well knowing that when the worthy gentleman got upon an interesting case there was no end of it. "The Chartists, I mean. Were any of the trials over?"
"Oh, no!" answered the surgeon. "Their trials are put off till the next assizes. The case of your acquaintance, Mr. Dudley, was just coming on. I should have stayed to hear it if I had had time; but as I promised to be over here by eleven I hurried away, otherwise I would have brought you all the news."
He spoke in the most commonplace tone in the world; and Edgar at that moment hated him mortally; but he said not another word, and kept his eyes shut almost all the time that his surgeon remained, as if he were inclined to go to sleep again. As soon as the man of healing was gone, however, he sprang up in his bed, hurried on his clothes, and without even waiting to wash himself or brush his hair, surprised the good woman of the house by appearing in the kitchen of the farm.
"La, sir!" she exclaimed, "I am glad to see you up again. I hope you're better."
"Oh! yes, quite well now, thank you, Mrs. Grange," replied the young gentleman, with a swimming head and a feeling of faint weakness in all his limbs. "I am going out to take a ride, if your husband will lend me a horse."
"That he will, I am sure, sir," answered the farmer's wife; and running to the window of the kitchen, she screamed out into the yard, "Grange! Grange! here is Mr. Adelon quite well again, and wants you to lend him your nag to take a ride."
"Certainly, wife," answered the farmer, coming out of a barn on the opposite side of the court. "When will he like him?"
"Directly," answered Edgar Adelon, eagerly, and speaking over the good woman's shoulder; "it will refresh me and do me good."
"He shall be up in a minute, then, sir," answered the farmer. "I am glad to see you well again. I'll just take some of the hair off his heels, and comb out his mane a bit----"
But Edgar did not stay to hear more, and hurrying back into the room to which he had been first taken, sought for his hat, which he found sadly battered and soiled. Without waiting even to brush off the dirt, he proceeded at once to cut short the farmer's unnecessary preparations, and mounting the horse, as soon as he could obtain it, rode away at a quick trot towards the county town. He knew not what he sought; he had no definite object in going; but he felt that he had been deceived, that he had been kept in idleness, while the fate of his friend was in jeopardy, and his impatience increased every moment till the farmer's nag was pushed into an unwonted gallop. He slackened his pace a little, it is true, as he entered the town, but still rode very fast to an inn close by the courts, and ringing the bell furiously, gave his horse to the hostler.
In a few moments he was pushing his way through the crowd in the entrance, and the next instant he caught sight of Dudley, standing with his arms crossed upon his chest, and his eyes fixed upon the jury-box. His brow was calm, but very stern; there was no fear in his fine eyes, but they were grave, even to sadness. On the opposite side were the jury, with their foreman leaning a little forward; and at the same instant a voice, coming from just below the bench, demanded, in a loud tone, "How say you, gentlemen of the jury; Guilty, or not guilty?"
"Guilty of manslaughter, my lord," replied the foreman.
The eyes of Edgar Adelon turned dim, his brain reeled, and he fell back amongst the crowd without uttering a word.
Two years had passed.
Two years! What is it? who can say? Different to every being in the whole wide range of universal existence, Time is the true chameleon, and takes its colour entirely from the things through which it glides. Now gray and dull, now bright and shining, now purple with the mingled hues of exertion and success, rosy with love and hope, or azure with faith and confidence! Years, what are they? Nothing: for to many they have no existence; mere spots in the wide ocean of eternity, which realize the mathematician's utmost abstraction when he defines a point as that which hath no parts, or which hath no magnitude--neither length, breadth, nor thickness. Yet to others how important are years, how full of events, and feelings, and actions! How often is it that, in that short space of two years a life is crowded; so that when we look back at the end of mortal existence, there, gathered into those four and twenty months, stands out the whole of active being, and all the rest is idleness and emptiness, the broad selvages of the narrow strip of cloth.
Two years, too, viewed from different positions in the wide plain of life, how different do they appear! The prospective and the retrospective changes them entirely. It is the looking up and looking down a hill, for the perspective of time is very different from that of substantial objects. The vanishing point comes close to the eye when we gaze back; is far, far removed when we gaze forward. At every period of life, too, it changes, and with every feeling of the heart, with every passion of our nature. To the young man the two years just passed stretch far away, filled with incidents and sensations all bright in their novelty, and vivid to the eye of memory. To the old man they are but a space, and that space empty. He hardly believes that the time has flown which has brought him two strides nearer to the grave. Say to the eager and impetuous youth, two years must pass before you can possess her whom you love, and you spread out an eternity before him, full of dangers and disappointments. Tell the timid clinger to life's frail thread, you can but live two years longer, and the termination seems at the very door. Pain, pleasure, hope, fear, thought, study, care, anxiety, our moral habits, our corporeal sensations, our thirsty wishes, our replete indifference; all contract or expand the elastic sphere of time, and we find at last that it is but a phantasm, the sole existence of which is in change.
The sun, and the moon, and the stars, were given, we are told, to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years; and regularity was given to their motions, that order might be in variety; but variety is not less infinite because all is rendered harmonious, and regular recurrence only serves to work out spaces in the ever teeming progress of change. It is not alone that the vast whole does not present at any time two things exactly alike; but it is that all things in that whole, and the whole itself, are altering every instant, and every fraction of an instant, which gives us the infinity of variety. All is in movement, upon, throughout, and round the earth. All is undergoing change, but it is the vastness, the violence, the rapidity of that change, which marks time, or, in other words, marks the march of the shadow.
Two years had passed with their changes, and of those I shall speak hereafter. Suns had set and risen, day and night had been, months had succeeded weeks, hearts were cold that were then warm, eyes were dim that were then bright, the shade of gray had come upon the glossy hair, sickness and health had changed places in many a frame, states had seen revolutions, men had perished and been born, vice and virtue had triumphed or had failed, monarchs had died, and good and wise men passed away; shipwreck and flame, and war and pestilence, and accident and sorrow, had done their part; and bursting forth again from a thousand different sources, the teeming life of earth had sprung up and glittered in the sun, as if but the more abundant for that which had been abstracted from it. The world had grown older, but not less full; and those who had aided the work, and had undergone the change, were hardly conscious that it had taken place.
Two years had passed.
It was evening. The sky was of a deep purple, seldom seen in any part of the northern hemisphere. There was a line of light upon the western sky, not yellow, not red: I know not the name of the colour; it was dying-day colour; the last gleam of the eyes of expiring light. Everything was solemn and grand. There was a deep stillness in the air, a vastness in the wide expanse, a profundity in the hues of every object, a silence and a grandeur in the whole, that sank into the soul, and filled the mind with imaginings melancholy though grand. One might stand there, and fancy one-self the first or the last of created beings upon earth, with the first or the last sunset before him.
It was a mountain-top, high over the flat lands around, starting up from the scrub abrupt and precipitous, and wherever the eye turned there was neither road, nor living thing, nor human habitation. Not an insect was heard, there was no wind in the heavens, the trees rested motionless, not a lizard was seen upon the rocks. Dark waves of magnificent vegetation flowed away like a sea from the feet, and a distant glimpse of the Austral Ocean, with the light of the sinking sun skipping along over its vast, solitary bosom, was the only thing that relieved the magnificent monotony; and yet it was a sea without a sail, without an oar.
Ten steps farther, and the summit will be gained!
The ten steps were taken, and then all was changed. Another scene broke upon the view, infinite in its variety, magnificent in its colouring, and varied by life. But what life? Not that of man; not that of any creature which holds familiar intercourse with him. The savage beast and the wild bird of the wilderness were there; but neither flocks, nor herds, nor but, nor mansion, nor anything to show that the human foot had ever pressed before that beautiful and awful scene.
There, in centuries long passed, had flamed the wild volcano, lifting up its beacon-tower of flame over the untravelled seas of the far south. There had poured the torrent of the red lava; there had heaved and panted the earthquake ere the fire burst forth; there, perhaps, from the depth of the ocean, had been hurled up, in the last fierce struggle which burst the gates of the prison-house, and set free the raging spirit of the flame, the mighty masses of rock piled upon rock, precipice above precipice, coral and lava, limestone and basalt, the floorwork of the waters mingling in rifted masses with the barriers that hemmed it in, and all cemented together by a stream of manifold materials fused in the internal fire.
Towering up in wild, irregular walls, assuming strange shapes, but everywhere gigantic in size, the crags of lava surrounded a vast, profound basin, the crater of the extinct volcano. Precipice upon precipice, jagged rock rising beside jagged rock, formed the ramparts and the embrasures of the desert fortress; and the eye of the wanderer, as he looked down, caught suddenly a scene the most opposite, in the hollow space below, where soft green turf, of the richest verdure, carpeted the bosom of the cavity, till it reached the brink of the deep dark lake that filled up half the expanse.
Opposite, and surrounding about three-quarters of the lake, rose precipitous cliffs of pure white coral, some seventy or eighty feet in height, looking down into, and reflected from the waters; and, as if to make them harmonise with the solemn gloom of that still tarn, every here and there a large white bird skimmed over the waves, and carried a line of light along with it.
There was something which moved, too, under the nearest clump of tall trees, which were scattered wide apart over the carpet of verdure; but a mass of rock, which rolled down from the wanderer's foot, scared the creature which had caught his eye, and its wild and enormous bounds showed him in an instant that it was not, as he had fancied and feared, a human being like himself.
He had but little cause to fear. Never had the spot been visited by anything in the form of a man, unless it were the wildest and lowest of the race--the Australian savage--and that but rarely, if at all. Amidst the solitary peaks of Mount Gambier he stood alone; perhaps the first since the creation who ever set a footstep there.
As he gazed towards the west, the sun sank, and a greenish shade spread over the blue. He cast his eyes over the land through which he had lately passed: it was all one gray, indistinct mass. He looked down into the vast hollow of the hills; the colouring had suddenly faded, and darkness filled the chasm. But then, as if in compensation, the moment after came forth the stars, large and lustrous, bursting forth all at once, and spangling both the bosom of the heaven and the deep waters of the lake below.
"Here will I live or die," said the wanderer; "it matters not which." And placing his bundle under his head, he laid himself down beneath the edge of the rock, and gazed up towards the sky.
A heavy dew fell during the night, and when the wanderer, whom we have seen climb that steep hill on the preceding evening, woke on the following day, his clothes were full of moisture, and his limbs felt stiff and weary. If he had desponded on the night before, it was well nigh despair that he now felt. He rose slowly, and gazed over the scene around him--the vast, voiceless solitude--and there was no comfort in it. He felt the spirit of desolation spreading its icy influence more and more strongly every moment over his heart, and he knew that if he gave way to it, even in the least, it would overwhelm him entirely, would put out strength and effort, hope, action, life itself. And yet he scarcely knew why he should struggle; the voice of despair still asked him what he had to live for. Every earthly object of existence seemed gone; why should he struggle to preserve that which had become valueless? "Who would covet," he asked himself, "the possession of a desert, and what is life to me but one tract of arid barrenness!"
Strange, when the mood is nicely balanced, how small a grain of dust will turn the scale! A memory came upon him as the words passed his lips, a memory of early years, when, in the wanton spirit of youth, almost of boyhood, he had pictured to himself the free life of the children of Ishmael as an object of wild desire; and now he asked himself, "Who would covet the possession of a desert?" He recollected how he had dreamed of scouring the wide sands upon his fleet steed, climbing the red rocks, resting in his light tent, and living a life of free enjoyment and unrestrained exertion. The remembrance changed the current of his feelings, and gazing forth over the scene around, lit up and brightened with the rising sun, he asked himself another question: "Why should I not, in the midst of this vast and beautiful solitude, realise those visions of my early youth?"
Alas! long since then, experience and passion, and many a sweet and many a bitter lesson, had placed in his hands the keys of other enjoyments. He had tasted the food which makes early pleasures insipid; and when he thought again of those very simple dreams, he felt that there would be something wanting even in their fulfilment. Where were the friendly and the kind? Where were the bright and beloved? Where were the dear companionships? Where the elevating society? Where the food for the thoughts? Where the employment for the mind? Above all, where was the honoured name, the respect, the esteem which had once been his? And he felt too bitterly that what has been must still be had, even for peace: that it is deprivation, not denial of joys, that is unhappiness. Could he consent to live on in such circumstances? Was there anything within the scope of probability which could make life endurable? Could he debase himself to the sordid joys of those around him? Could he live a life of slavery and labour, with that barrier placed at the end of the course of exertion and obedience, which limited the utmost range of hope and expectation to free association with the low, the vile, and the base; to the accumulation, perhaps, of dross; to become a great man among the meanest of his race? That was not to be thought of; and what was the alternative? To live a roving life in the bush, companionless, if not with savages the most debased and barbarous of the human race; to fly the face of civilised man as a pestilence; to have neither acquaintances, nor friends: no social life, no love. Solitude, solitude! It is a lovely thing to abstract contemplation. The mind of man, not called upon to try the vast experiment, looks upon it, as upon every great endeavour, as bringing a reward with it equal to the difficulties and the impediments; but brought nearer, placed within the reach of effort, we cannot grapple with the mighty task. The feeble heart shrinks from it; the firm mind doubts and hesitates. We feel how sad and terrible it is to be alone; we learn that it is the antithesis of our nature.
It were better to die, he thought. There were hopes beyond the grave, which taught him that death was not solitude. That kindly voices would hail his coming. That, purified from all earthly imperfections, friendships high and holy--the friendships of the just made perfect--would console him for the loss of earthly esteem. But in life there was love, too--human, passionate love; and when he asked himself, what was to make up for that, the mind paused and pondered.
Let us not blame him, that he was still a being of clay; that he could not shake off the affections of this earth; that he could not altogether wish to die, while affections, deep and strong, bound him to the state of being in which God had placed him. That was the only tie to life yet left unsevered; but as the last, it was the strongest. He had often thought of these things before. He had often asked himself, "Will she, too, believe me guilty? Will she cast me from her heart, as society has cast me from its bosom? Will she forget me? Will she wed another?" And the deep love within his breast, imaging that of another, had ever answered, "No, no, no! It cannot be."
The same voice was still strong, but yet there was a langour, a depression spreading over his whole frame, which dulled his ear even to the voice of the syren, Hope. Though she might love him, said Despair, what chance did there exist of his ever seeing her again? Condemned for life, unable to return, marked out as a felon, sent as a convict to a distant land, without means, without object in return, what could he do? His heart sunk at the thought. He must wither out there--there, in the midst of that wild solitude, falling back daily, as the progress of man advanced, to avoid recognition and fresh anguish.
He thought not, it is true, of raising his hand against his own life; such a purpose never presented itself as a temptation. He had too much faith; but he felt disposed to give up all exertion, to yield without a struggle to his adverse fate, to lay himself down and die. Still, however, one voice said, "Live!" and the last spark of human hope was fanned into a flame, faint, but yet sufficient to light him to exertion.
With feeble hands and weary limbs he opened the knapsack which he had brought thither, took out the axe which was strapped upon the top, and then from the inside drew slowly forth some lines and fish-hooks, saying to himself, "The good old man thought he bestowed an invaluable present on me when he gave the means of supporting life, but yet I could hardly feel grateful for the gift. I will not hesitate, however, between two courses, and as I have determined to live, will make an effort to save life."
In truth, he knew not well how to set about his task. The first thing, indeed, was to build himself a cabin; and choosing out an indentation of the rock, through which no wet seemed to have percolated, he resolved to fix his residence there, at least for the first; by doing which he was likely to spare much labour, enclosing it only on one side. He chose young and slight trees from amongst the infinity which grew around, and sharpened some of them for palisades, after he had hewn them down with the axe; but ere he had half completed even the necessary preparations, he felt faint and weary; and though not hungry, he resolved to see if he could procure some food to renew his strength.
Choosing out a thin and pliant sapling, he descended towards the bank of the lake slowly and with great difficulty, for the precipices were tremendous, and the natural paths few. At length, however, he accomplished it. And then came the question, when he reached the brink of the clear and limpid waters, of what was to be his bait? The sorrow which approaches despair is often bitterly imaginative; and as he sat with his head resting on his hand, and pondered, he thought of all the baits with which man is angled for and caught by his great enemy in the world; and oftentimes a rueful smile came upon his fine but worn countenance, in which he himself, and passages in his past existence, shared the sarcasm with his fellow men.
The sun rose while he thus wasted time, and pouring into the crater, filled it with ardent light. He felt very thirsty, and kneeling down upon the brink, which was covered with soft turf, he drank of the clear wave. As he did so, a large fly, of a peculiar golden colour, skimming away, settled on the face of the windless waters at a short distance, and instantly a fish, springing half out of the lake, enclosed it within its voracious jaws. "We are all destroyers," thought the wanderer; and looking along the banks, he caught one of the same insects, fastened it to the hook upon his line, the line to the rod, and cast the baited snare upon the clear bosom of the water. The living objects of man's chase have doubtless their traditions; but the fish of that lake had never been taught human guile, and the instant the hook touched the water a large animal was upon it. To draw it to the shore cost the weak and weary man a considerable effort; but another and another, both considerably smaller, were soon after taken; and, satisfied with his spoil, he slowly ascended the steep paths again towards the place where he had commenced building his hut.
He had observed at that spot a tree, some of the branches of which had been shivered by the lightning, and with these he contrived to light a fire, and prepare his meal. After partaking of it frugally, he once more set to work again, to construct a dwelling which would give him a shelter from the not unfrequent storms of that land, and afford a defence against wild beasts, or wilder men, during the night.
It was, as may well be conceived, of the rudest and the simplest kind. The stakes he planted side by side, at a short distance from the rock, where a ledge of coral, projecting at the height of seven feet, overhung the turf about two yards, and formed a sort of roof. The door puzzled him greatly; for though he remembered well the expedients of the solitary mariner in Juan Fernandez, and often in thought drew a comparison between his own fate and that of Crusoe, yet he was destitute of many of the implements which the other had possessed. His axe and two gimlets had been given him in compassion by an old inhabitant of a very distant part of the colony, and these, with a large knife, formed all his store of tools. When the palisade was up, however, and the space, left open at first between the edge of the ledge and the top of the posts, had been covered over with twisted branches, the little strength which had been left was exhausted, and he lay down to rest beneath the shelter of a blackwood tree. Weariness and heat soon produced their usual effect, and he slept.
It was about three o'clock. His rod and fishing-line lay beside him, as well as the axe with which he had worked, and the chips and fragments of the small trees he had cut down were scattered all around. He had slept for a full hour; and during that time a change, to him of considerable importance had taken place in the scene. No human eye beheld it, but a large bird of prey, which was soaring aloft over the heights of Mount Gambier, saw a party ride rapidly through the plains below, and halt upon the first acclivity of the mountain. It consisted of six persons, only one of whom seemed of superior rank. There were, however, nine horses, three of which carried heavy burdens, consisting of sacks, bags, and cases. Each of the horsemen had a gun over his shoulder; and as soon as they had drawn the rein, they sprang to the ground, and commenced unloading the baggage, amongst which was found a small tent, requiring nothing for its erection but one of those poles that were easily to be procured in the neighbouring woods.
"We shall have plenty of time to go up and come down again before it is dark," said the chief person of the party, speaking to one who seemed to be a servant. "Give me the other gun, Maclean. We may get some specimens. I must have some more caps, too, for these will not fit it."
After a few more words and directions to the other men, the leader and two more commenced the ascent of the hill, which, from the spot they had already reached to the summit, did not occupy more than three-quarters of an hour, and then the stranger turned round and gazed, saying to himself, "How magnificent!"
"I think we had better get on, captain," said his servant, Maclean. "The sun's getting down, and we shan't have much time."
"Pooh, nonsense!" answered the other, looking at his chronometer; "it is only a few minutes past four. This is the twenty-first of December, Midsummer-day, and we shall have light till half-past nine or longer."
"We are a good bit farther north than we were at Hobart Town, five days ago, sir," replied the servant, seeing that his master still paused to gaze; "and you will not have so much light as you think for."
"Well, it does not much matter," answered the officer, a good-looking young man, with a very intelligent and benevolent expression of countenance. "We can find our way down, I dare say, even in the dusk, especially if they light a fire to cook the kangaroo." He paused for a moment, and then said, in a meditative tone, "I dare say we are the first human beings, certainly the first Europeans, who ever set their feet upon this hill."
"I don't think it, sir," replied Maclean, who had taken a step or two nearer to the high precipitous rocks which surrounded the vast crater.
"Indeed!" exclaimed his master. "What makes you think so, my good friend?"
"That, captain," answered the man, pointing with his finger to a spot on the ground, a little to the right of himself and his master, on which, when Captain M---- turned his eyes that way, he saw lying a scrap of paper with something written upon it. On taking it up, he found that it was part of the back of a letter, with the English post-mark distinct upon it. The writing consisted only of a few words, or rather fragments of words, being a portion of the original address, and it stood thus:--"----dley, Esq.--Brandon House,--onshire."
It signified very little to the eyes that saw it, for he knew not where Brandon House was, nor anything about it; but yet what strange feelings did the sight of that letter call up in his breast. Where was the writer? Where the receiver of that letter? Who could he be? What had become of him? What brought him there? were questions which the mind asked instantly, with a degree of interest which no one can conceive who has not stood many thousand miles from his own land, and suddenly had it and all its associations brought up by some trifling incident like this that I relate.
Putting his gun under his arm, and holding the paper still in his hand, Captain M---- walked slowly and thoughtfully on, passed through a break in the high wall of rocks, and gazed down into the basin of the mountain. The magnificence of the scene was gradually drawing his mind away from other thoughts, when his servant touched his arm, and said in a low voice, "We had better be a little upon our guard, sir, for there are more people about us than we know of, and I have heard that our friends who take to the bush are worse devils than the people of the country; and they are bad enough. Look down there, and you will see the axe has been at work--ay, and there's a man lying under that tree. He looks mighty like as if he were dead."
"I see, I see," answered Captain M----. "You stay here with Johnstone, while I go on. Put a ball in each of your guns, however, in case of the worst; though I don't think, if we do not injure them, they will try to do any harm to well-armed men."
"I wouldn't trust them," replied the servant; "but we'll keep a look-out, sir, and I think I could put a ball in an apple at that distance."
Captain M---- advanced quietly, not wishing to wake the man if he were sleeping, till he was close to him; and so profound was his slumber, that the young officer gazed on him nearly for a minute without his having heard the approach of any one. At length Captain M---- stooped down, and shook him gently by the arm. The other instantly started up, and laid his hand upon the axe by his side; but the officer at once addressed him in a kindly tone, saying, "Do not be alarmed; it is a friend."
"A friend," answered the stranger, rising to his full height, with the axe in his hand, and gazing at him from head to foot; "that is a word easily said; but here it cannot be a true one. I have no friends, sir."
"In that, perhaps, you may be mistaken," answered Captain M----. "As for myself, I trust I am a friend to the whole human race; but what I meant to say was, that I am not an enemy."
"That one understands," answered the other; "though it is somewhat difficult, too, in a land where nature seems to have planted fraud and enmity amongst the human race, and to which other countries send the offscourings of their population to propagate new crimes, and even degrade the barbarous wickedness they found."
The words and the appearance of his strange companion struck the young officer very much. His tone was high and proud, his look grave and thoughtful; and though there was a certain degree of bitterness in what he said, yet there was that gentlemanly dignity in the whole which could not be mistaken.
"It is strange to meet you, sir, in this place," said Captain M----, after a moment's thought. "I had imagined, till a moment ago, that I was the first European who had ever climbed this hill."
"You are the second, I believe," answered the stranger. "I was the first; at least I can find no trace of any one of that adventurous race, who, in pursuit of wealth, dominion, science, pleasure, or health, penetrate into almost every part of the known world, having been here before me."
"Then you are alone?" said his visitor.
"Quite," replied the other. "You have men with you, I see," and he turned his eyes towards the servant and his companion, who were standing at a little distance. "Whatever be your object, whether you come to take me, or are merely here from the curiosity which sets half our countrymen running over the world, you have but one man, and that a wearied and exhausted one, to deal with."
"Set your mind at rest," replied Captain M----, who saw that there was some lingering suspicion still in the stranger's bosom. "I have no commission, and certainly no wish, to disturb you in any way; neither did I come to these countries altogether from mere curiosity. A desire to benefit my fellow-creatures, and a strong interest in the fate of men whose crimes have shut them out from the general pale of society, but not, I trust, from the compassion of their brethren, or from the mercy of their God, first led me to a neighbouring island; and I am extending my wanderings through this uncultivated but beautiful country, with a hope of turning to account for others what I have myself observed. Perhaps you can give me some information; and I promise you, as a man of honour and a gentleman, never to say a word to any one which can do you the least detriment. I see you must be a man of superior education, and I should imagine of superior rank, to those who are usually met with in this country; and I am sure, after the candid expression of my views, and the pledge I have given you will not scruple to say anything that can further my objects."
"I have nothing to say," answered the other, seating himself where he had before been lying. "I know little, have seen little; but all I have seen has been iniquity, and villany, and vice, and folly, and ignorance, in high and low, master and servant, convict and tyrant. I am inclined to cry with the Psalmist, 'There is none that doeth good; no, not one.'"
Captain M---- smiled somewhat sadly. "I am afraid you are quite right," he answered; "and it has long been my conviction that the system of what is called convict discipline in these colonies not only does not tend in the slightest degree to reform an offender, but tends to degrade his moral character to the lowest possible point. It is my belief that even the system followed at a very rude period of our history, and when the person sentenced to transportation was actually sold as a slave to the planters of America, though corrupt and abominable in a high degree, was really less detrimental to the unhappy convict than that upon which we now act. I have always held that we have no right to condemn a man's soul as well as his body; and I feel that we are here instrumental in plunging those whom we expel from our own country into vice and crimes more horrible than they ever contemplated when they committed the act which brought them hither."
The stranger smiled brightly. "You seem to me," he said, "to be the first really benevolent and reasonable man who has visited a place of abominations. But even you, perhaps, have not considered all. What little I can tell you, I will tell. Call down your men from above, and seat yourself here by me, and in the face of nature, and of the God who willed it to be 'very good,' I will tell you truly, without even a shade of deceit, all that my own short experience has shown."
"I cannot do so now," replied Captain M----, "for I have got more companions below, and must go down to them before it is dark, otherwise they would probably come to seek me. But cannot you go down with us? You shall be kindly treated, I promise, and free to return whenever you please."
The stranger shook his Load. "No," he said, "I will never seek man again! I will lie in my own lair, like the beast of the field. Here I have beauty and excellence around me uncontaminated; but wherever man's foot treads, there is violence, and evil, and corruption."
"Well," replied the young officer, "I will not press you, if you do not like it; but if you will permit me, I will come up again to-morrow, and we will talk of all these subjects fully, before I go back to Tasmania. There is a surveying vessel off the coast, which will wait for me till I come down; but in the mean time I would fain know what you meant when you said, in speaking of the abominations and evils of the convict system, that I had not considered all. It is probable, indeed, that I have not, although I have given great attention to the subject; but I wish to know what it was to which you alluded."
The stranger laid his hand on Captain M----'s arm, and said, "In the fallibility of human judgment, in the difficulties of proof, and in the imperfection of law, it must often happen, and does often happen, that a man perfectly innocent is condemned with the guilty. Were it only that he had to suffer in person from the sad mistake, the event might be lamented, perhaps excused. But what have those lawgivers and those statesmen to reproach themselves with, who have framed a system which, in all cases of such error, must be fatal to the eternal happiness of the man unjustly condemned, which plunges him into an atmosphere pestilential to every good feeling of the heart, to every high principle, to every religious thought! Do they not know that vice is contagious? Have they not inoculated hundreds with the moral plague? Have they not even denied the sick the help of spiritual physicians in the pest-house to which they have confined them? I tell you, sir, it is from this that I have fled. Innocent of even the slightest offence towards my fellow-men, though doubtless culpable in much towards my God, I could have borne the labour, and the slavery, and the disgrace, if not without murmuring, yet with patience. But when I found that I was to remain, bound hand and foot, amidst beings corrupted beyond all cure, and daily to accustom my eyes and my mind to scenes and thoughts which could leave no high or holy feeling unblasted in my heart, I said, 'Man has no right to do this,' and I broke my chain."
Captain M---- seemed much moved, and he wrung the stranger's hand hard. "I am sorry for you, sir," he said; "I am sorry for you. I will come up to-morrow, and we will talk more. In the mean time, tell me what I must call you to myself; I know that many persons in your situation take an assumed name. It is that which I mean."
"I have taken none," answered the stranger, with a sad smile; and then, pointing to the fish lying on the grass, he added, "You must think of me, if we never meet again, as the Nameless Fisherman of the Nameless Lake."
"Nay, we shall meet to-morrow, if you are still here," answered Captain M----.
"I shall be here, if I am alive," replied the stranger, "to-morrow, and the next day, and for the years and months to come, till death relieves me. But perhaps even before to-morrow there may be an end of all. I have felt ill: the body has given way beneath the mind; the strong rider has well-nigh killed the weak horse; and this morning I felt as if I were incapable of any exertion. I did make it, however, and methinks I am better for my labours. But now, adieu! The sun has reached a point whence his descent will be rapid, and darkness will overtake you if you have far to go."
"Farewell!" answered Captain M----. "I scarcely like to go and leave you here alone, or to think of what you will have to endure in this solitude, if you persist in remaining here. How you are to procure food, or shelter, or clothing, I do not perceive."
"The skins of beasts," replied the stranger, "will give me clothing good enough for my state: the fish of the lake must give me food. Bread, indeed, I may never taste again, but there are fruits and roots which may supply its place. Then as to shelter, the clefts of the rock, the caverns by which it is pierced, will afford all that I need; and as for means and appliances to make these things available, nature must furnish and teach me. Surely I shall not be more helpless than one of the savages of this land. They live, and I shall live; longer, at least, than is desirable to myself. Farewell, farewell!" And once more bidding him adieu for the time, Captain M---- left him, and returned to his people.