Chapter 3

Schlüssel shoved me into a large and very dreary hall, with benches
arranged in a semicircle. The appearance of this deserted hall, with
its two high grated windows, and its Christ carved in old brown oak
with His arms extended and His head sorrowfully inclined upon His
shoulder, inspired me with I do not know what kind of religious fear
that accorded with my actual situation.

All my ideas of false accusation disappeared, and my lips tremblingly
murmured a prayer.

I had not prayed for a long time; but misfortune always brings us to
thoughts of submission. Man is so little in himself!

Opposite me, on an elevated seat, two men were sitting, with their
backs to the light, and consequently their faces were in shadow.
However, I recognized Van Spreckdal by his acquiline profile,
illuminated by an oblique reflection from the window. The other
person was fat, he had round, chubby cheeks and short hands, and he
wore a robe, like Van Spreckdal.

Below was the clerk of the court, Conrad; he was writing at a low
table and was tickling the tip of his ear with the feather-end of his
pen. When I entered, he stopped to look at me curiously.

They made me sit down, and Van Spreckdal, raising his voice, said to
me:

"Christian Vénius, where did you get this sketch?"

He showed me the nocturnal sketch which was then in his possession.
It was handed to me. After having examined it, I replied:

"I am the author of it."

A long silence followed; the clerk of the court, Conrad, wrote down
my reply. I heard his pen scratch over the paper, and I thought:
"Why did they ask me that question? That has nothing to do with the
kick I gave Rap in the back."

"You are the author of it?" asked Van Spreckdal. "What is the
subject?"

"It is a subject of pure fancy."

"You have not copied the details from some spot?"

"No, sir; I imagined it all."

"Accused Christian," said the judge in a severe tone, "I ask you to
reflect. Do not lie."

"I have spoken the truth."

"Write that down, clerk," said Van Spreckdal.

The pen scratched again.

"And this woman," continued the judge--"this woman who is being
murdered at the side of the well--did you imagine her also?"

"Certainly."

"You have never seen her?"

"Never."

Van Spreckdal rose indignantly; then, sitting down again, he seemed
to consult his companion in a low voice.

These two dark profiles silhouetted against the brightness of the
window, and the three men standing behind me, the silence in the
hall--everything made me shiver.

"What do you want with me? What have I done?" I murmured.

Suddenly Van Spreckdal said to my guardians:

"You can take the prisoner back to the carriage; we will go to
Metzerstrasse."

Then, addressing me:

"Christian Vénius," he cried, "you are in a deplorable situation.
Collect your thoughts and remember that if the law of men is
inflexible, there still remains for you the mercy of God. This you
can merit by confessing your crime."

These words stunned me like a blow from a hammer. I fell back with
extended arms, crying:

"Ah! what a terrible dream!"

And I fainted.

When I regained consciousness, the carriage was rolling slowly down
the street; another one preceded us. The two officers were always
with me. One of them on the way offered a pinch of snuff to his
companion; mechanically I reached out my hand toward the snuff-box,
but he withdrew it quickly.

My cheeks reddened with shame, and I turned away my head to conceal
my emotion.

"If you look outside," said the man with the snuff-box, "we shall be
obliged to put handcuffs on you."

"May the devil strangle you, you infernal scoundrel!" I said to
myself. And as the carriage now stopped, one of them got out, while
the other held me by the collar; then, seeing that his comrade was
ready to receive me, he pushed me rudely to him.

These infinite precautions to hold possession of my person boded no
good; but I was far from predicting the seriousness of the accusation
that hung over my head until an alarming circumstance opened my eyes
and threw me into despair.

They pushed me along a low alley, the pavement of which was unequal
and broken; along the wall there ran a yellowish ooze, exhaling a
fetid odor. I walked down this dark place with the two men behind
me. A little further there appeared the chiaroscuro of an interior
courtyard.

I grew more and more terror-stricken as I advanced. It was no
natural feeling: it was a poignant anxiety, outside of nature--like
the nightmare. I recoiled instinctively at each step.

"Go on!" cried one of the policemen, laying his hand on my shoulder;
"go on!"

But what was my astonishment when, at the end of the passage, I saw
the courtyard that I had drawn the night before, with its walls
furnished with hooks, its rubbish-heap of old iron, its
chicken-coops, and its rabbit-hutch. Not a dormer window, high or
low, not a broken pane, not the slightest detail had been omitted.

I was thunderstruck by this strange revelation.

Near the well were the two judges, Van Spreckdal and Richter. At
their feet lay the old woman extended on her back, her long, thin,
gray hair, her blue face, her eyes wide open, and her tongue between
her teeth.

It was a horrible spectacle!

"Well," said Van Spreckdal, with solemn accents, "what have you to
say?"

I did not reply.

"Do you remember having thrown this woman, Theresa Becker, into this
well, after having strangled her to rob her of her money."

"No," I cried, "no! I do not know this woman; I never saw her
before. May God help me!"

"That will do," he replied in a dry voice. And without saying
another word he went out with his companion.

The officers now believed they had best put handcuffs on me. They
took me back to the Raspelhaus, in a state of profound stupidity. I
did not know what to think; my conscience itself troubled me; I even
asked myself if I really had murdered the old woman!

In the eyes of the officers I was condemned.

I will not tell you of my emotions that night in the Raspelhaus,
when, seated on my straw bed with the window opposite me and the
gallows in perspective, I heard the watchmen cry in the silence of
the night: "Sleep, people of Nuremberg; the Lord watches over you.
One o'clock! Two o'clock! Three o'clock!"

Every one may form his own idea of such a night. There is a fine
saying that it is better to be hanged innocent than guilty. For the
soul, yes; but for the body, it makes no difference; on the contrary,
it kicks, it curses its lot, it tries to escape, knowing well enough
that its rôle ends with the rope. Add to this, that it repents not
having sufficiently enjoyed life and at having listened to the soul
when it preached abstinence.

"Ah! if I had only known!" it cried, "you would not have led me about
by a string with your big words, your beautiful phrases, and your
magnificent sentences! You would not have allured me with your fine
promises. I should have had many happy moments that are now lost
forever. Everything is over! You said to me: 'Control your
passions.' Very well! I did control them. Here I am now! they are
going to hang me, and you--later they will speak of you as a sublime
soul, a stoical soul, a martyr to the errors of Justice. They will
never think about me!"

Such were the sad reflections of my poor body.

Day broke; at first, dull and undecided, it threw an uncertain light
on my bull's-eye window with its cross-bars; then it blazed against
the wall at the back. Outside the street became lively. This was a
market-day; it was Friday. I heard the vegetable wagons pass and
also the country people with their baskets. Some chickens cackled in
their coops in passing and some butter sellers chattered together.
The market opposite opened, and they began to arrange the stalls.

Finally, it was broad daylight and the vast murmur of the increasing
crowd, housekeepers who assembled with baskets on their arms, coming
and going, discussing and marketing, told me that it was eight
o'clock.

With the light, my heart gained a little courage. Some of my black
thoughts disappeared. I desired to see what was going on outside.

Other prisoners before me had managed to climb up to the bull's-eye;
they had dug some holes in the wall to mount more easily. I climbed
in my turn, and, when seated in the oval edge of the window, with my
legs bent and my head bowed, I could see the crowd, and all the life
and movement. Tears ran freely down my cheeks. I thought no longer
of suicide--I experienced a need to live and breathe, which was
really extraordinary.

"Ah!" I said, "to live what happiness! Let them harness me to a
wheelbarrow--let them put a ball and chain around my leg--nothing
matters if I may only live!"

The old market, with its roof shaped like an extinguisher, supported
on heavy pillars, made a superb picture: old women seated before
their panniers of vegetables, their cages of poultry and their
baskets of eggs; behind them the Jews, dealers in old clothes, their
faces the color of old boxwood; butchers with bare arms, cutting up
meat on their stalls; countrymen, with large hats on the backs of
their heads, calm and grave with their hands behind their backs and
resting on their sticks of hollywood, and tranquilly smoking their
pipes. Then the tumult and noise of the crowd--those screaming,
shrill, grave, high, and short words--those expressive
gestures--those sudden attitudes that show from a distance the
progress of a discussion and depict so well the character of the
individual--in short, all this captivated my mind, and
notwithstanding my sad condition, I felt happy to be still of the
world.

Now, while I looked about in this manner, a man--a butcher--passed,
inclining forward and carrying an enormous quarter of beef on his
shoulders; his arms were bare, his elbows were raised upward and his
head was bent under them. His long hair, like that of Salvator's
Sicambrian, hid his face from me; and yet, at the first glance, I
trembled.

"It is he!" I said.

All the blood in my body rushed to my heart. I got down from the
window trembling to the ends of my fingers, feeling my cheeks quiver,
and the pallor spread over my face, stammering in a choked voice:

"It is he! he is there--there--and I, I have to die to expiate his
crime. Oh, God! what shall I do? What shall I do?"

A sudden idea, an inspiration from Heaven, flashed across my mind. I
put my hand in the pocket of my coat--my box of crayons was there!

Then rushing to the wall, I began to trace the scene of the murder
with superhuman energy. No uncertainty, no hesitation! I knew the
man! I had seen him! He was there before me!

At ten o'clock the jailer came to my cell. His owl-like
impassibility gave place to admiration.

"Is it possible?" he cried, standing at the threshold.

"Go, bring me my judges," I said to him, pursuing my work with an
increasing exultation.

Schlüssel answered:

"They are waiting for you in the trial-room."

"I wish to make a revelation," I cried, as I put the finishing
touches to the mysterious personage.

He lived; he was frightful to see. His full-faced figure,
foreshortened upon the wall, stood out from the white background with
an astonishing vitality.

The jailer went away.

A few minutes afterward the two judges appeared. They were
stupefied. I, trembling, with extended hand, said to them:

"There is the murderer!"

After a few moments of silence, Van Spreckdal asked me:

"What is his name?"

"I don't know; but he is at this moment in the market; he is cutting
up meat in the third stall to the left as you enter from Trabaus
Street."

"What do you think?" said he, leaning toward his colleague.

"Send for the man," he replied in a grave tone.

Several officers retained in the corridor obeyed this order. The
judges stood, examining the sketch. As for me, I had dropped on my
bed of straw, my head between my knees, perfectly exhausted.

Soon steps were heard echoing under the archway. Those who have
never awaited the hour of deliverance and counted the minutes, which
seem like centuries--those who have never experienced the sharp
emotions of outrage, terror, hope, and doubt--can have no conception
of the inward chills that I experienced at that moment. I should
have distinguished the step of the murderer, walking between the
guards, among a thousand others. They approached. The judges
themselves seemed moved. I raised up my head, my heart feeling as if
an iron hand had clutched it, and I fixed my eyes upon the closed
door. It opened. The man entered. His cheeks were red and swollen,
the muscles in his large contracted jaws twitched as far as his ears,
and his little restless eyes, yellow like a wolf's, gleamed beneath
his heavy yellowish red eyebrows.

Van Spreckdal showed him the sketch in silence.

Then that murderous man, with the large shoulders, having looked,
grew pale--then, giving a roar which thrilled us all with terror, he
waved his enormous arms, and jumped backward to overthrow the guards.
There was a terrible struggle in the corridor; you could hear nothing
but the panting breathing of the butcher, his muttered imprecations,
and the short words and the shuffling feet of the guard, upon the
flagstones.

This lasted only about a minute.

Finally the assassin reentered, with his head hanging down, his eyes
bloodshot, and his hands fastened behind his back. He looked again
at the picture of the murder; he seemed to reflect, and then, in a
low voice, as if talking to himself:

"Who could have seen me," he said, "at midnight?"

I was saved!

. . . . . . . . . .

Many years have passed since that terrible adventure. Thank Heaven!
I make silhouettes no longer, nor portraits of burgomasters. Through
hard work and perseverance, I have conquered my place in the world,
and I earn my living honorably by painting works of art--the sole
end, in my opinion, to which a true artist should aspire. But the
memory of that nocturnal sketch has always remained in my mind.
Sometimes, in the midst of work, the thought of it recurs. Then I
lay down my palette and dream for hours.

How could a crime committed by a man that I did not know--at a place
that I had never seen--have been reproduced by my pencil, in all its
smallest details?

Was it chance? No! And moreover, what is chance but the effect of a
cause of which we are ignorant?

Was Schiller right when he said: "The immortal soul does not
participate in the weaknesses of matter; during the sleep of the
body, it spreads its radiant wings and travels, God knows where!
What it then does, no one can say, but inspiration sometimes betrays
the secret of its nocturnal wanderings."

Who knows? Nature is more audacious in her realities than man in his
most fantastic imaginings.

MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

_Here is a story, one of the "Twice-Told Tales," the subject of which
might well have been selected for treatment by Poe. In his hands,
how different the result would have been; how much more physical and
poignant, how much less spiritual and charming!_

_The real difference in the two writers is not so much a conflict of
artistic methods as it is a difference of moral make-up. Hawthorne,
the son of a Salem sea captain, was descended from the grimmest
Puritans; Poe was the son of an actor._

MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE

By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the Deacon of the Shaker
settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He
had a neat little cart, painted green, with a box of cigars depicted
on each side-panel, and an Indian chief, holding a pipe and a golden
tobacco-stalk, on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare,
and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but
none the worse liked by the Yankees; who, as I have heard them say,
would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one.
Especially was he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut,
whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smoking tobacco
in his stock; knowing well that the country lasses of New England are
generally great performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in
the course of my story, the pedler was inquisitive, and something of
a tattler, always itching to hear the news, and anxious to tell it
again.

After an early breakfast at Morristown, the tobacco-pedler, whose
name was Dominicus Pike, had traveled seven miles through a solitary
piece of woods, without speaking a word to anybody but himself and
his little gray mare. It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager
to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning
paper. An opportunity seemed at hand, when, after lighting a cigar
with a sun-glass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the
brow of the hill, at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his
green cart. Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that
he carried a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick, and
traveled with a weary, yet determined pace. He did not look as if he
had started in the freshness of the morning, but had footed it all
night, and meant to do the same all day.

"Good-morning, mister," said Dominicus, when within speaking
distance. "You go a pretty good jog. What's the latest news at
Parker's Falls?"

The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and
answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker's Falls,
which, as being the limit of his own day's journey, the pedler had
naturally mentioned in his inquiry.

"Well, then," rejoined Dominicus Pike, "let's have the latest news
where you did come from. I'm not particular about Parker's Falls.
Any place will answer."

Being thus importuned, the traveler--who was as ill-looking a fellow
as one would desire to meet, in a solitary piece of woods--appeared
to hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for
news or weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on
the step of the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he
might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.

"I do remember one little trifle of news," said he. "Old Mr.
Higginbotham, of Kimballton, was murdered in his orchard, at eight
o'clock last night, by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up
to the branch of a St. Michael's pear-tree, where nobody would find
him till the morning."

As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger
betook himself to his journey again, with more speed than ever, not
even turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish
cigar and relate all the particulars. The pedler whistled to his
mare and went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr.
Higginbotham, whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him
many a bunch of long nines, and a great deal of pigtail, lady's
twist, and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity
with which the news had spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles
distant in a straight line; the murder had been perpetrated only at
eight o'clock the preceding night; yet Dominicus had heard of it at
seven in the morning, when, in all probability, poor Mr.
Higginbotham'a own family had but just discovered his corpse, hanging
on the St. Michael's pear-tree. The stranger on foot must have worn
seven-league boots, to travel at such a rate.

"Ill news flies fast, they say," thought Dominicus Pike; "but this
beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the
President's Message."

The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a
mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend
did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and country
store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish wrappers
among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself
invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered
with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline, till
it became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of
corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader; and a former
clerk of his, to whom Dominicus related the facts, testified that the
old gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard,
about nightfall, with the money and valuable papers of the store in
his pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr.
Higginbotham's catastrophe, hinting, what the pedler had discovered
in his own dealings with him, that he was a crusty old fellow, as
close as a vise. His property would descend to a pretty niece who
was now keeping school in Kimballton.

What with telling the news for the public good, and driving bargains
for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose
to put up at a tavern, about five miles short of Parker's Falls.
After supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in
the barroom, and went through the story of the murder, which had
grown so fast that it took him a half hour to tell. There were as
many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all
for gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer, who had arrived
on horseback a short time before, and was now seated in a corner
smoking his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very
deliberately, brought his chair right in front of Dominicus, and
stared him full in the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco smoke the
pedler had ever smelled.

"Will you make affidavit," demanded he in the tone of a country
justice taking an examination, "that old Squire Higginbotham of
Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last, and
found hanging on his great pear-tree yesterday morning?"

"I tell the story as I heard it, mister," answered Dominicus,
dropping his half-burned cigar; "I don't say that I saw the thing
done. So I can't take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that
way."

"But I can take mine," said the farmer, "that if Squire Higginbotham
was murdered night before last, I drank a glass of bitters with his
ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his
store, as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a
little business for him on the road. He didn't seem to know any more
about his own murder than I did."

"Why, then, it can't be a fact!" exclaimed Dominicus Pike.

"I guess he'd have mentioned it, if it was," said the old farmer; and
he removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down
in the mouth.

Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had
no heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted
himself with a glass of gin and water, and went to bed, where, all
night long, he dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree. To
avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would
have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham's), Dominicus rose in
the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart, and
trotted swiftly away toward Parker's Falls. The fresh breeze, the
dewy road, and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and
might have encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been
anybody awake to hear it. But he met neither ox-team, light wagon,
chaise, horseman, nor foot-traveler, till, just as he crossed Salmon
River, a man came trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his
shoulder, on the end of a stick.

"Good morning, mister," said the pedler, reining in his mare. "If
you come from Kimballton or that neighborhood maybe you can tell me
the real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old
fellow actually murdered, two or three nights ago, by an Irishman and
a nigger?"

Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe, at first, that
the stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing
this sudden question, the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its
yellow hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering,
he thus replied:

"No! no! There was no colored man! It was an Irishman that hanged
him last night, at eight o'clock. I came away at seven! His folks
can't have looked for him in the orchard yet."

Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself, and,
though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace
which would have kept the pedler's mare on a smart trot. Dominicus
stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been
committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold
it, in all its circumstances, on Tuesday morning? If Mr.
Higginbotham's corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how
came the mulatto, at above thirty miles' distance, to know that he
was hanging in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton
before the unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous
circumstances, with the stranger's surprise and terror, made
Dominicus think of raising a hue and cry after him, as an accomplice
in the murder; since a murder, it seemed, had really been perpetrated.

"But let the poor devil go," thought the pedler. "I don't want his
black blood on my head; and hanging the nigger wouldn't unhang Mr.
Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman! It's a sin, I know; but I
should hate to have him come to life a second time, and give me the
lie!"

With these meditations, Dominicus Pike drove into the street of
Parker's Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village
as three cotton factories and a slitting mill can make it. The
machinery was not in motion, and but a few of the shop doors
unbarred, when he alighted in the stable-yard of the tavern, and made
it his first business to order the mare four quarts of oats. His
second duty, of course, was to impart Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe
to the hostler. He deemed it advisable, however, not to be too
positive as to the date of the direful fact, and also to be uncertain
whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto, or by the
son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to relate it on his own
authority, nor that of any one person; but mentioned it as a report
generally diffused.

The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and
became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it
had originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker's Falls
as any citizen of the place, being part owner of the slitting mill,
and a considerable stockholder in the cotton factories. The
inhabitants felt their own prosperity interested in his fate. Such
was the excitement that the "Parker's Falls Gazette" anticipated its
regular day of publication, and came out with half a form of blank
paper and a column of double pica emphasized with capitals, and
headed "HORRID MURDER OF MR. HIGGINBOTHAM!" Among other dreadful
details, the printed account described the mark of the cord round the
dead man's neck, and stated the number of thousand dollars of which
he had been robbed; there was much pathos also about the affliction
of his niece, who had gone from one fainting fit to another, ever
since her uncle was found hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree with
his pockets inside out. The village poet likewise commemorated the
young lady's grief in seventeen stanzas of a ballad. The selectmen
held a meeting, and, in consideration of Mr. Higginbotham's claims on
the town, determined to issue handbills, offering a reward of five
hundred dollars for the apprehension of his murderers, and the
recovery of the stolen property.

Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker's Falls, consisting of
shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding-houses, factory girls, mill men,
and schoolboys, rushed into the street, and kept up such a terrible
loquacity as more than compensated for the silence of the
cotton-machines which refrained from their usual din, out of respect
to the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown,
his untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult. Our friend
Dominicus, in his vanity of heart, forgot his intended precautions,
and, mounting on the town pump, announced himself as the bearer of
the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a sensation.
He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had just begun
a new edition of the narrative, with a voice like a field preacher,
when the mail stage drove into the village street. It had traveled
all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton at three in the
morning.

"Now we shall hear all the particulars," shouted the crowd.

The coach rumbled up to the piazza of the tavern, followed by a
thousand people; for if any man had been minding his own business
till then, he now left it at sixes and sevens, to hear the news. The
pedler, foremost in the race, discovered two passengers, both of whom
had been startled from a comfortable nap to find themselves in the
centre of a mob. Every man assailing them with separate questions,
all propounded at once, the couple were struck speechless, though one
was a lawyer and the other a young lady.

"Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham! Tell us the particulars about
old Mr. Higginbotham!" bawled the mob. "What is the coroner's
verdict? Are the murderers apprehended? Is Mr. Higginbotham's niece
come out of her fainting fits? Mr. Higginbotham! Mr. Higginbotham!!"

The coachman said not a word, except to swear awfully at the hostler
for not bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had
generally his wits about him, even when asleep; the first thing he
did, after learning the cause of the excitement, was to produce a
large red pocketbook. Meantime, Dominicus Pike, being an extremely
polite young man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would tell
the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the
coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide-awake and bright as a
button, and had such a sweet, pretty mouth that Dominicus would
almost as lief have heard a love tale from it as a tale of murder.

"Gentlemen and ladies," said the lawyer, to the shopkeepers, the mill
men, and the factory girls, "I can assure you that some unaccountable
mistake, or, more probably, a wilful falsehood, maliciously contrived
to injure Mr. Higginbotham's credit, has excited this singular
uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three o'clock this morning,
and most certainly should have been informed of the murder had any
been perpetrated. But I have proof, nearly as strong as Mr.
Higginbotham's own oral testimony, in the negative. Here is a note,
relating to a suit of his in the Connecticut courts, which was
delivered me from that gentleman himself. I find it dated at ten
o'clock last evening."

So saying, the lawyer exhibited the date and signature of the note,
which irrefragably proved, either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham
was alive when he wrote it, or--as some deemed the more probable case
of two doubtful ones--that he was so absorbed in worldly business as
to continue to transact it, even after his death. But unexpected
evidence was forthcoming. The young lady, after listening to the
pedler's explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown and
put her curls in order, and then appeared at the tavern-door, making
a modest signal to be heard.

"Good people," said she, "I am Mr. Higginbotham's niece."

A wondering murmur passed through the crowd, on beholding her so rosy
and bright; that same unhappy niece whom they had supposed, on the
authority of the "Parker's Falls Gazette," to be lying at death's
door in a fainting fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted, all
along, whether a young lady would be quite so desperate at the
hanging of a rich old uncle.

"You see," continued Miss Higginbotham, with a smile, "that this
strange story is quite unfounded, as to myself; and I believe I may
affirm it to be equally so in regard to my dear uncle Higginbotham.
He has the kindness to give me a home in his house, though I
contribute to my own support by teaching a school. I left Kimballton
this morning to spend the vacation of commencement week with a
friend, about five miles from Parker's Falls. My generous uncle,
when he heard me on the stairs, called me to his bedside, and gave me
two dollars and fifty cents, to pay my stage fare, and another dollar
for my extra expenses. He then laid his pocketbook under his pillow,
shook hands with me, and advised me to take some biscuit in my bag,
instead of breakfasting on the road. I feel confident, therefore,
that I left my beloved relative alive, and trust that I shall find
him so on my return."

The young lady courtesied at the close of her speech, which was so
sensible and well-worded, and delivered with such grace and
propriety, that everybody thought her fit to be Preceptress of the
best Academy in the State. But a stranger would have supposed that
Mr. Higginbotham was an object of abhorrence at Parker's Falls, and
that a thanksgiving had been proclaimed for his murder, so excessive
was the wrath of the inhabitants on learning their mistake. The mill
men resolved to bestow public honors on Dominicus Pike, only
hesitating whether to tar and feather him, ride him on a rail, or
refresh him with an ablution at the town-pump on the top of which he
had declared himself the bearer of the news. The selectmen, by
advice of the lawyer, spoke of prosecuting him for a misdemeanor, in
circulating unfounded reports, to the great disturbance of the peace
of the commonwealth. Nothing saved Dominicus, either from mob law or
a court of justice, but an eloquent appeal made by the young lady in
his behalf. Addressing a few words of heartfelt gratitude to his
benefactress, he mounted the green cart and rode out of town, under a
discharge of artillery from the schoolboys, who found plenty of
ammunition in the neighboring clay-pits and mud-holes. As he turned
his head, to exchange a farewell glance with Mr. Higginbotham's
niece, a ball, of the consistence of hasty-pudding, hit him slap in
the mouth, giving him a most grim aspect. His whole person was so
bespattered with the like filthy missiles, that he had almost a mind
to ride back and supplicate for the threatened ablution at the
town-pump; for, though not meant in kindness, it would now have been
a deed of charity.

However, the sun shone bright on poor Dominicus, and the mud, an
emblem of all stains of undeserved opprobrium, was easily brushed off
when dry. Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could
he refrain from a hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had
excited. The hand-bills of the selectmen would cause the commitment
of all the vagabonds in the State; the paragraph in the "Parker's
Falls Gazette" would be reprinted from Maine to Florida, and perhaps
form an item in the London newspapers; and many a miser would tremble
for his money-bags and life, on learning the catastrophe of Mr.
Higginbotham. The pedler meditated with much fervor on the charms of
the young schoolmistress, and swore that Daniel Webster never spoke
nor looked so like an angel as Miss Higginbotham, while defending him
from the wrathful populace at Parker's Falls.

Dominicus was now on the Kimballton Turnpike, having all along
determined to visit that place, though business had drawn him out of
the most direct road from Morristown. As he approached the scene of
the supposed murder, he continued to revolve the circumstances in his
mind, and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed.
Had nothing occurred to corroborate the story of the first traveler,
it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was
evidently acquainted either with the report or the fact; and there
was a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look on being abruptly
questioned. When, to this singular combination of incidents, it was
added that the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham's
character and habits of life; and that he had an orchard, and a St.
Michael's pear-tree, near which he always passed at nightfall; the
circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted
whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's
direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries
along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had
in his service an Irishman of doubtful character, whom he had hired
without a recommendation, on the score of economy.

"May I be hanged myself," exclaimed Dominicus Pike aloud, on reaching
the top of a lonely hill, "if I'll believe old Higginbotham is
unhanged till I see him with my own eyes and hear it from his own
mouth? And as he's a real shaver, I'll have the minister or some
other responsible man for an endorser."

It was growing dusk when he reached the toll-house on Kimballton
Turnpike, about a quarter of a mile from the village of this name.
His little mare was fast bringing him up with a man on horseback, who
trotted through the gate a few rods in advance of him, nodded to the
toll-gatherer, and kept on toward the village. Dominicus was
acquainted with the toll-man, and while making change the usual
remarks on the weather passed between them.

"I suppose," said the pedler, throwing back his whip-lash, to bring
it down like a feather on the mare's flank, "you have not seen
anything of old Mr. Higginbotham within a day or two?"

"Yes," answered the toll-gatherer. "He passed the gate just before
you drove up, and yonder he rides now, if you can see him through the
dusk. He's been to Woodfield this afternoon, attending a sheriff's
sale there. The old man generally shakes hands and has a little chat
with me; but to-night he nodded--as if to say, 'Charge my toll'--and
jogged on; for wherever he goes, he must always be home at eight
o'clock."

"So they tell me," said Dominicus.

"I never saw a man look so yellow and thin as the squire does,"
continued the toll-gatherer. "Says I to myself, to-night, 'He's more
like a ghost or an old mummy than good flesh and blood.'"

The pedler strained his eyes through the twilight, and could just
discern the horseman, now far ahead on the village road. He seemed
to recognize the rear of Mr. Higginbotham; but through the evening
shadows, and amid the dust from the horse's feet, the figure appeared
dim and unsubstantial; as if the shape of the mysterious old man were
faintly molded of darkness and gray light. Dominicus shivered.

"Mr. Higginbotham has come back from the other world, by way of the
Kimballton Turnpike," thought he.

He shook the reins and rode forward, keeping about the same distance
in the rear of the gray old shadow, till the latter was concealed by
a bend of the road. On reaching this point, the pedler no longer saw
the man on horseback, but found himself at the head of the village
street, not far from a number of stores and two taverns, clustered
round the meeting-house steeple. On his left was a stone wall and a
gate, the boundary of a wood-lot, beyond which lay an orchard,
further still a mowing field, and last of all a house. These were
the premises of Mr. Higginbotham, whose dwelling stood beside the old
highway, but had been left in the background by the Kimballton
Turnpike. Dominicus knew the place; and the little mare stopped
short by instinct; for he was not conscious of tightening the reins.

"For the soul of me, I can not get by this gate!" said he, trembling.
"I never shall be my own again, till I see whether Mr. Higginbotham
is hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree!"

He leaped from the cart, gave the rein a turn around the gate-post,
and ran along the green path of the wood-lot, as if Old Nick were
chasing behind. Just then the village clock tolled eight, and as
each deep stroke fell, Dominicus gave a fresh bound and flew faster
than before, till, dim in the solitary centre of the orchard, he saw
the fated pear-tree. One great branch stretched from the old
contorted trunk across the path, and threw the darkest shadow on that
one spot. But something seemed to struggle beneath the branch!

The pedler had never pretended to more courage than befits a man of
peaceable occupation, nor could he account for his valor on this
awful emergency. Certain it is, however, that he rushed forward,
prostrated a sturdy Irishman with the butt-end of his whip, and
found--not indeed hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree, but
trembling beneath it, with a halter round his neck--the old identical
Mr. Higginbotham!

"Mr. Higginbotham," said Dominicus, tremulously, "you're an honest
man, and I'll take your word for it. Have you been hanged or not?"

If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the
simple machinery by which this "coming event" was made to "cast its
shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr.
Higginbotham; two of them, successively, lost courage and fled, each
delaying the crime one night by their disappearance; the third was in
the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of
fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of
Dominicus Pike.

It only remains to say that Mr. Higginbotham took the pedler into
high favor, sanctioned his addresses to the pretty schoolmistress,
and settled his whole property on their children, allowing themselves
the interest. In due time, the old gentleman capped the climax of
his favors by dying a Christian death, in bed, since which melancholy
event Dominicus Pike has removed from Kimballton, and established a
large tobacco manufactory in my native village.

THE WHITE OLD MAID

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

_This is an admirable example of Hawthorne's point of view and style.
Starting with an aim to leave one strong impression on the mind of
the reader, instead of the remembrance of a number of related facts,
the author not only omits everything that would detract from the
unity and strength of this impression, but creates only such scenes
and situations as will intensify the effect._

THE WHITE OLD MAID

By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a
spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor;
the ghostly light through the other swept upon a bed, falling between
the heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man.
But how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how
like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a
corpse in its burial clothes.

Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion.
Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving
between the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber
opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in
the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of
triumph as she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed
her living lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from
that long kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting
with its anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse
had moved responsive to her own. Still an illusion. The silken
curtains had waved a second time between the dead face and the
moonlight as another fair young girl unclosed the door and glided
ghostlike to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both
beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead between them. But she
who had first entered was proud and stately, and the other a soft and
fragile thing.

"Away!" cried the lofty one. "Thou hadst him living; the dead is
mine."

"Thine!" returned the other, shuddering. "Well hast thou spoken; the
dead is thine."

The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look,
but a wild and mournful expression passed across the features of the
gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her
head pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with
his dark locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draft of
sorrow had bewildered her.

"Edith!" cried her rival.

Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and removing
her cheek from the dead youth's pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.

"Wilt thou betray me?" said the latter, calmly.

"Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent," answered Edith.
"Leave us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return
and tell me of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest
of sufferings more than death, we will both forgive thee."

"And what shall be the token?" asked the proud girl, as if her heart
acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.

"This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
curls that lay heavily on the dead man's brow.

The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and
appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next
meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at
the motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and
trembled ere she closed the door, almost believing that her dead
lover frowned upon her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form
fading into the moonlight? Scorning her own weakness, she went forth
and perceived that a negro slave was waiting in the passage with a
waxlight, which he held between her face and his own and regarded
her, as she thought, with an ugly expression of merriment. Lifting
his torch on high, the slave lighted her down the staircase and undid
the portal of the mansion. The young clergyman of the town had just
ascended the steps, and, bowing to the lady, passed in without a word.

Years--many years--rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much
older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped
their hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely
woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the
town as the "Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." A taint of insanity had
affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad, and gentle, so utterly
free from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless
fantasies unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures
she had naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the
daylight except to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne
along the street, in sunshine, rain, or snow, whether a pompous train
of the rich and proud thronged after it, or few and humble were the
mourners, behind them came the lonely woman in a long white garment
which the people called her shroud. She took no place among the
kindred or the friends, but stood at the door to hear the funeral
prayer, and walked in the rear of the procession as one whose earthly
charge it was to haunt the house of mourning and be the shadow of
affliction and see that the dead were duly buried. So long had this
been her custom that the inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of
every funeral, as much as the coffin-pall or the very corpse itself,
and augured ill of the sinner's destiny unless the Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet came gliding like a ghost behind. Once, it is said,
she affrighted a bridal-party with her pale presence, appearing
suddenly in the illuminated hall just as the priest was uniting a
false maid to a wealthy man before her lover had been dead a year.
Evil was the omen to that marriage. Sometimes she stole forth by
moonlight and visited the graves of venerable integrity and wedded
love and virgin innocence, and every spot where the ashes of a kind
and faithful heart were moldering. Over the hillocks of those
favored dead would she stretch out her arms with a gesture as if she
were scattering seeds, and many believed that she brought them from
the garden of Paradise, for the graves which she had visited were
green beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers from April to
November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the
tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful, and fantastic
life till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations
wondered how the dead had ever been buried or mourners had endured
their grief without the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. Still years
went on, and still she followed funerals and was not yet summoned to
her own festival of death.

One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with
business and bustle, though the sun now gilded only the upper half of
the church-spire, having left the house-tops and loftiest trees in
shadow. The scene was cheerful and animated in spite of the sombre
shade between the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants
in white wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed faces of sea-captains,
the foreign garb and air of Spanish Creoles, and the disdainful port
of natives of Old England, all contrasted with the rough aspect of
one or two back-settlers negotiating sales of timber from forests
where ax had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling
roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in
high-heeled shoes and courtesying with lofty grace to the punctilious
obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its
very centre not far from an old mansion that stood somewhat back from
the pavement, surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange air of
loneliness rather deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it.
Its site would have been suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange
or a brick block lettered all over with various signs, or the large
house itself might have made a noble tavern with the "King's Arms"
swinging before it and guests in every chamber, instead of the
present solitude. But, owing to some dispute about the right of
inheritance, the mansion had been long without a tenant, decaying
from year to year and throwing the stately gloom of its shadow over
the busiest part of the town.

Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that
have been described was observed at a distance down the street.

"I spy a strange sail yonder," remarked a Liverpool captain--"that
woman in the long white garment."

The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others
who at the same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had
attracted his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of
conversation gave place to speculations in an undertone on this
unwonted occurrence.

"Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?" inquired some.

They looked for the signs of death at every door--the sexton, the
hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the
woful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the
sun-gilded spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded
from its bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure
appeared in the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was
to be borne to its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a
funeral except the apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.

"What may this portend?" asked each man of his neighbor.

All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in
their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were
prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living of one
whose presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a
comet is to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she
moved on, while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and
the proud and the humble stood aside that her white garment might not
wave against them. It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity.
Its wearer appeared very old, pale, emaciated, and feeble, yet glided
onward without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her
course a little rosy boy burst forth from a door and ran with open
arms toward the ghostly woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her
bloodless lips. She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him
with an expression of no earthly sweetness, so that the child
shivered and stood awestruck rather than affrighted while the Old
Maid passed on. Perhaps her garment might have been polluted even by
an infant's touch; perhaps her kiss would have been death to the
sweet boy within the year.

"She is but a shadow," whispered the superstitious. "The child put
forth his arms and could not grasp her robe."

The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch
of the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the
iron knocker and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture
that some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had
impelled the poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth--all
gone from their home long since, and forever, unless their ghosts
still haunted it, fit company for the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.

An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his
gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.

"None, madam," said he, "have dwelt in this house these fifteen years
agone--no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral
you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed among
themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin."

The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand
and a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like
than ever in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the
hammer, and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a
footstep was now heard coming down the staircase of the old mansion
which all conceived to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly,
yet heavily, like the pace of an aged and infirm person, the step
approached, more distinct on every downward stair, till it reached
the portal. The bar fell on the inside; the door was opened. One
upward glance toward the church-spire, whence the sunshine had just
faded, was the last that the people saw of the Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet.

"Who undid the door?" asked many.

This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one
could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting
against an inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person
within was a negro, and bore a singular resemblance to Old Cæsar,
formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years
before.

"Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family," said one,
half seriously.

"Let us wait here," replied another; "more guests will knock at the
door anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open."

Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate
or the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another
was wending his way homeward, when a coach--no common spectacle in
those days--drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned
equipage, hanging close to the ground, with arms on the panels, a
footman behind, and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front,
the whole giving an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was
something awful in the heavy rumbling of the wheels.

The coach rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the
deserted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.

"Whose grand coach is this?" asked a very inquisitive body.

The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,
gave three taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach
door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that
day examined the shield of arms on the panel.

"Azure, a lion's head erased, between three flowers-de-luce," said
he, then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings
belonged. The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after
a long residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his
birth and wealth had given him no mean station. "He left no child,"
continued the herald, "and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken
that the coach appertains to his widow."

Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made had not the
speaker been suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady
who thrust forth her head from the coach preparing to descend. As
she emerged, the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her
figure dignified in spite of age and infirmity--a stately ruin, but
with a look at once of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid
features had an awe about them unlike that of the white Old Maid, but
as of something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a
gold-headed cane. The door swung open as she ascended, and the light
of a torch glittered on the embroidery of her dress and gleamed on
the pillars of the porch. After a momentary pause, a glance backward
and then a desperate effort, she went in.

The decipherer of the coat-of-arms had ventured up the lower step,
and, shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that
the torch was held by the very image of Old Cæsar.

"But such a hideous grin," added he, "was never seen on the face of
mortal man, black or white. It will haunt me till my dying day."

Meantime, the coach had wheeled round with a prodigious clatter on
the pavement and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight,
while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when
the people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the
ancient lady, the spectre of Old Cæsar and the Old Maid herself were
not all a strangely combined delusion with some dark purport in its
mystery. The whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing,
the crowd continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows
of the mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders,
glad to indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the
long-faded splendor of. the family, the entertainments they had
given and the guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and
noble ones from abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These
graphic reminiscences seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom
they referred. So strong was the impression on some of the more
imaginative hearers that two or three were seized with trembling fits
at one and the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard
three other raps of the iron knocker.

"Impossible!" exclaimed others. "See! The moon shines beneath the
porch, and shows every part of it except in the narrow shade of that
pillar. There is no one there."

"Did not the door open?" whispered one of these fanciful persons.

"Didst thou see it too?" said his companion, in a startled tone.

But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third
visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A
few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a
red gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front
window, as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This
too was pronounced a mere fantasy.

But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own
terror painted in the faces of all the rest.

"What an awful thing is this!" cried they.

A shriek, too fearfully distinct for doubt, had been heard within the
mansion, breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness,
as if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
whether to fly from the very sight of the house or to rush trembling
in and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and
affright they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their
clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught
them and their fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of
an ordinary lifetime. He was a reverend figure with long white hair
upon his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast, and a back so bent
over his staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as
if to choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time
before the good old man, being deaf and of impaired intellect, could
be made to comprehend such portions of the affair as were
comprehensible at all. But when possessed of the facts, his energies
assumed unexpected vigor.

"Verily," said the old gentleman, "it will b$ fitting that I enter
the mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke; lest any harm
should have befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the 'Old
Maid in the Winding-Sheet.'"

Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the
mansion with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who
had spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterward explained
the shield of arms and recognized the features of the negro. Like
their predecessors, they gave three raps with the iron hammer.

"Old Cæsar cometh not," observed the priest. "Well, I wot he no
longer doth service in this mansion."

"Assuredly, then, it was something worse in Old Cæsar's likeness,"
said the other adventurer.

"Be it as God wills," answered the clergyman. "See! my strength,
though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to, open this heavy door.
Let us enter and pass up the staircase."

Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a
very old man's mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs the
aged clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing
aside, and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus
practising all the gestures of one who makes his way through a
throng. Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked around with
sad and solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary
locks, and was evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.

"Reverend sir," said his attendant, who conceived this a very
suitable prelude to their further search, "would it not be well that
the people join with us in prayer?"

"Well-a-day!" cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.
"Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were
present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as
many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth,
I saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their
burials, one after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet
hath seen them to their graves."

Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his
staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from
each deserted chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They,
therefore, walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to
the great front window, through which was seen the crowd in the
shadow and partial moonlight of the street beneath. On the right
hand was the open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left.

The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.

"Within that chamber," observed he, "a whole lifetime since, did I
sit by the deathbed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last
gasp--" Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas
which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from
his companion's hand, and threw open the door with such sudden
violence that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light
than the moonbeams which fell through two windows into the spacious
chamber. It was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In
a high-backed oaken armchair, upright, with her hands clasped across
her breast and her head thrown back, sat the Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet. The stately dame had fallen on her knees with her
forehead on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor
and the other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a
lock of hair--once sable, now discolored with a greenish mold.

As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's
features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they
trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it
was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving between the dead
face and the moonlight.

"Both dead!" said the venerable man. "Then who shall divulge the
secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light
and shadow across the Old Maid's face. And now 'tis gone!"

WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE

BY SIR WAITER SCOTT

_Sir Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh in 1771 and died at "Abbotsford"
in 1832, published the first of his Waverley Novels ("Waverley") in
1814. "Redgauntlet," in which "Wandering Willie's Tale" occurs,
appeared in 1824. Wandering Willie, who tells the tale, is Willie
Steenson, a blind fiddler devoted to the Redgauntlet family. Many
critics consider this the finest story in the English language.
Andrew Lang, who calls it "immortal," describes ft as "that perfect
model of a 'conte' in whose narrow range humor, poetry, the
grotesque, the terrible are combined as in no other work of man."_

WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE

By SIR WALTER SCOTT

Ye maun have heard of Sir Robert Redgauntlet of that Ilk, who lived
in these parts before the dear years. The country will lang mind
him; and our fathers used to draw breath thick if ever they heard him
named. He was out wi' the Hielandmen in Montrose's time; and again
he was in the hills wi' Glencairn in the saxteen hundred and
fifty-twa; and sae when King Charles the Second came in, wha was in
sic favor as the Laird of Redgauntlet? He was knighted at Lonon
court, wi' the King's ain sword; and being a red-hot prelatist, he
came down here, rampauging like a lion, with commissions of
lieutenancy (and of lunacy, for what I ken), to put down a' the Whigs
and Covenanters in the country. Wild wark they made of it; for the
Whigs were as dour as the Cavaliers were fierce, and it was which
should first tire the other. Redgauntlet was aye for the strong
hand; and his name is kenn'd as wide in the country as Claverhouse's
or Tam Dalyell's. Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave could
hide the puir Hill-folk when Redgauntlet was out with bugle and
bloodhound after them, as if they had been sae mony deer. And troth
when they fand them, they didna mak muckle mair ceremony than a
Hielandman wi' a roebuck. It was just, "Will ye tak the test?" If
not, "Make ready--present--fire!" and there lay the recusant.

Far and wide was Sir Robert hated and feared. Men thought he had a
direct compact with Satan; that he was proof against steel, and that
bullets happed aff his buff-coat like hailstanes from a hearth; that
he had a mear that would turn a hare on the side of Carrifra
Gauns--and muckle to the same purpose, of whilk mair anon. The best
blessing they wared on him was, "Deil scowp wi' Redgauntlet!" He
wasna a bad maister to his ain folk though, and was weel aneugh liked
by his tenants; and as for the lackies and troopers that raid out wi'
him to the persecutions, as the Whigs ca'd those killing times, they
wad hae drunken themsells blind to his health at ony time.

Now you are to ken that my gudesire lived on Redgauntlet's grund;
they ca' the place Primrose Knowe. We had lived on the grund, and
under the Redgauntlets, since the riding days, and lang before. It
was a pleasant bit; and I think the air is callerer and fresher there
than onywhere else in the country. It's a' deserted now; and I sat
on the broken door-cheek three days since, and was glad I couldna see
the plight the place was in; but that's a' wide o' the mark. There
dwelt my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, a rambling, rattling chiel he
had been in his young days, and could play weel on the pipes; he was
famous at "Hoopers and Girders," a' Cumberland couldna touch him at
"Jockie Lattin," and he had the finest finger for the backlilt
between Berwick and Carlisle. The like o' Steenie wasna the sort
that they made Whigs o'. And so he became a Tory, as they ca' it,
which we now ca' Jacobites, just out of a kind of needcessity, that
he might belang to some side or other. He had nae ill-will to the
Whig bodies, and liked little to see the blude rin, though being
obliged to follow Sir Robert in hunting and hosting, watching and
warding, he saw muckle mischief, and maybe did some, that he couldna
avoid.

Now Steenie was a kind of favorite with his master, and kenn'd a' the
folks about the castle, and was often sent for to play the pipes when
they were at their merriment. Auld Dougal MacCallum, the butler,
that had followed Sir Robert through gude and ill, thick and thin,
pool and stream, was specially fond of the pipes, and aye gae my
gudesire his gude word wi' the laird; for Dougal could turn his
master round his finger.

Weel, round came the Revolution, and it had like to have broken the
hearts baith of Dougal and his master. But the change was not
a'thegither sae great as they feared, and other folk thought for.
The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld
enemies, and in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were
ower mony great folks dipped in the same doings to mak a spick span
new warld. So Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert,
bating that he was held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters,
remained just the man he was. His revel was as loud, and his hall as
weel lighted, as ever it had been, though maybe he lacked the fines
of the Nonconformists, that used to come to stock his larder and
cellar; for it is certain he began to be keener about the rents than
his tenants used to find him before, and they behoved to be prompt to
the rent-day, or else the laird wasna pleased. And he was sic an
awsome body that naebody cared to anger him; for the oaths he swore,
and the rage that he used to get into, and the looks that he put on,
made men sometimes think him a devil incarnate.

Weel, my gudesire was nae manager--no that he was a very great
misguider--but he hadna the saving gift, and he got twa terms' rent
in arrear. He got the first brash at Whitsunday put ower wi' fair
word and piping; but when Martinmas came, there was a summons from
the grund-officer to come wi' the rent on a day preceese, or else
Steenie behoved to flit. Sair wark he had to get the siller; but he
was weel-freended, and at last he got the haill scraped thegither--a
thousand merks; the maist of it was from a neighbor they ca'd Laurie
Lapraik--a sly tod. Laurie had walth o' gear--could hunt wi' the
hound and rin wi' the hare--and be Whig or Tory, saunt or sinner, as
the wind stood. He was a professor in this Revolution warld; but he
liked an orra sough of this warld, and a tune on the pipes weel
aneugh at a bytime; and abune a' he thought he had gude security for
the siller he lent my gudesire ower the stocking at Primrose Knowe.

Away trots my gudesire to Redgauntlet Castle, wi' a heavy purse and a
light heart, glad to be out of the laird's danger. Weel, the first
thing he learned at the castle was that Sir Robert had fretted
himsell into a fit of the gout, because he did not appear before
twelve o'clock. It wasna a'thegither for sake of the money, Dougal
thought; but because he didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the
grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and brought him into the
great oak parlor, and there sat the laird his leesome lane, excepting
that he had beside him a great ill-favored jackanape, that was a
special pet of his--a cankered beast it was, and mony an ill-natured
trick it played; ill to please it was, and easily angered--ran about
the haill castle, chattering and yowling, and pinching and biting
folk, especially before ill weather, or disturbances in the state.
Sir Robert ca'd it Major Weir, after the warlock that was burnt;* and
few folk liked either the name or the conditions of the
creature--they thought there was something in it by ordinar--and my
gudesire was not just easy in mind when the door shut on him, and he
saw himself in the room wi' naebody but the laird, Dougal MacCallum,
and the major, a thing that hadna chanced to him before.

* A celebrated wizard, executed (1670) at Edinburgh for sorcery and
other crimes.

Sir Robert sat, or, I should say, lay, in a great armed chair, wi'
his grand velvet gown, and his feet on a cradle; for he had baith
gout and gravel, and his face looked as gash and ghastly as Satan's.
Major Weir sat opposite to him, in a red laced coat, and the laird's
wig on his head; and aye as Sir Robert girned wi' pain, the jackanape
girned too, like a sheep's-head between a pair of tangs--an
ill-faured, fearsome couple they were. The laird's buff-coat was
hung on a pin behind him, and his broadsword and his pistols within
reach; for he keepit up the auld fashion of having the weapons ready,
and a horse saddled day and night, just as he used to do when he was
able to loup on horseback, and away after ony of the Hill-folk he
could get speerings of. Some said it was for fear of the Whigs
taking vengeance, but I judge it was just his auld custom--he wasna
gien to fear onything. The rental-book, wi' its black cover and
brass clasps, was lying beside him; and a book of sculduggery sangs
was put betwixt the leaves, to keep it open at the place where it
bore evidence against the goodman of Primrose Knowe, as behind the
hand with his mails and duties. Sir Robert gave my gudesire a look
as if he would have withered his heart in his bosom. Ye maun ken he
had a way of bending his brows that men saw the visible mark of a
horseshoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been stamped
there.

"Are ye come light-handed, ye son of a toom whistle?" said Sir
Robert. "Zounds! if you are--"

My gudesire, with as gude a countenance as he could put on, made a
leg, and placed the bag of money on the table wi' a dash, like a man
that does something clever. The laird drew it to him hastily. "Is
it all here, Steenie, man?"

"Your honor will find it right," said my gudesire.

"Here, Dougal," said the laird, "gie Steenie a tass of brandy
downstairs, till I count the siller and write the receipt."

But they werena weel out of the room when Sir Robert gied a yelloch
that garr'd the castle rock. Back ran Dougal--in flew the
livery-men--yell on yell gied the laird, ilk ane mair awfu' than the
ither. My gudesire knew not whether to stand or flee, but he
ventured back into the parlor, where a' was gaun
hirdie-girdie--naebody to say "come in" or "gae out." Terribly the
laird roared for cauld water to his feet, and wine to cool his
throat; and "Hell, hell, hell, and its flames," was aye the word in
his mouth. They brought him water, and when they plunged his swoln
feet into the tub, he cried out it was burning; and folk say that it
did bubble and sparkle like a seething caldron. He flung the cup at
Dougal's head, and said he had given him blood instead of burgundy;
and, sure aneugh, the lass washed clotted blood aff the carpet the
neist day. The jackanape they ca'd Major Weir, it jibbered and cried
as if it was mocking its master. My gudesire's head was like to
turn: he forgot baith siller and receipt, and downstairs he banged;
but as he ran, the shrieks came faint and fainter; there was a
deep-drawn shivering groan, and word gaed through the castle that the
laird was dead.

Weel, away came my gudesire wi' his finger in his mouth, and his best
hope was that Dougal had seen the moneybag, and heard the laird speak
of writing the receipt. The young laird, now Sir John, came from
Edinburgh to see things put to rights. Sir John and his father never
gree'd weel. Sir John had been bred an advocate, and afterward sat
in the last Scots Parliament and voted for the Union, having gotten,
it was thought, a rug of the compensations; if his father could have
come out of his grave he would have brained him for it on his awn
hearthstane. Some thought it was easier counting with the auld rough
knight than the fair-spoken young ane--but mair of that anon.

Dougal MacCallum, poor body, neither grat nor graned, but gaed about
the house looking like a corpse, but directing, as was his duty, a'
the order of the grand funeral. Now, Dougal looked aye waur and waur
when night was coming, and was aye the last to gang to his bed, whilk
was in a little round just opposite the chamber of dais, whilk his
master occupied while he was living, and where he now lay in state,
as they ca'd it, weel-a-day! The night before the funeral, Dougal
could keep his awn counsel nae langer: he came doun with his proud
spirit, and fairly asked auld Hutcheon to sit in his room with him
for an hour. When they were in the round, Dougal took ae tass of
brandy to himsell and gave another to Hutcheon, and wished him all
health and lang life, and said that, for himsell, he wasna lang for
this world; for that, every night since Sir Robert's death, his
silver call had sounded from the state chamber, just as it used to do
at nights in his lifetime, to call Dougal to help to turn him in his
bed. Dougal said that, being alone with the dead on that floor of
the tower (for naebody cared to wake Sir Robert Redgauntlet like
another corpse), he had never daured to answer the call, but that now
his conscience checked him for neglecting his duty; for, "though
death breaks service," said MacCallum, "it shall never break my
service to Sir Robert; and I will answer his next whistle, so be you
will stand by me, Hutcheon."

Hutcheon had nae will to work, but he had stood by Dougal in battle
and broil, and he wad not fail him at this pinch; so down the carles
sat ower a stoup of brandy, and Hutcheon, who was something of a
clerk, would have read a chapter of the Bible; but Dougal would hear
naething but a blaud of Davie Lindsay, whilk was the waur preparation.

When midnight came, and the house was quiet as the grave, sure aneugh
the silver whistle sounded as sharp and shrill as if Sir Robert was
blowing it, and up gat the twa auld serving-men and tottered into the
room where the dead man lay. Hutcheon saw aneugh at the first
glance; for there were torches in the room, which showed him the foul
fiend in his ain shape, sitting on the laird's coffin! Ower he
couped as if he had been dead. He could not tell how lang he lay in
a trance at the door, but when he gathered himsell he cried on his
neighbor, and getting nae answer, raised the house, when Dougal was
found lying dead within twa steps of the bed where his master's
coffin was placed. As for the whistle, it was gaen anes and aye; but
mony a time was it heard at the top of the house on the bartizan, and
amang the auld chimneys and turrets, where the howlets have their
nests. Sir John hushed the matter up, and the funeral passed over
without mair bogle-wark.

But when a' was ower, and the laird was beginning to settle his
affairs, every tenant was called up for his arrears, and my gudesire
for the full sum that stood him in the rental-book. Weel, away he
trots to the castle, to tell his story, and there he is introduced to
Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with
weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking rapier by his side,
instead of the auld broadsword that had a hundredweight of steel
about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard
their communing so often tauld ower, that I almost think I was there
mysell, though I couldna be born at the time. (In fact, Alan, my
companion mimicked, with a good deal of humor, the flattering,
conciliating tone of the tenant's address, and the hypocritical
melancholy of the laird's reply. His grandfather, he said, had,
while he spoke, his eye fixed on the rental-book, as if it were a
mastiff-dog that he was afraid would spring up and bite him.)

"I wuss ye joy, sir, of the head seat, and the white loaf, and the
braid lairdship. Your father was a kind man to friends and
followers; muckle grace to you, Sir John, to fill his shoon--his
boots, I suld say, for he seldom wore shoon, unless it were muils
when he had the gout."

"Ay, Steenie," quoth the laird, sighing deeply, and putting his
napkin to his een, "his was a sudden call, and he will be missed in
the country; no time to set his house in order: weel prepared
Godward, no doubt, which is the root of the matter, but left us
behind a tangled hesp to wind, Steenie. Hem! hem! We maun go to
business, Steenie; much to do, and little time to do it in."

Here he opened the fatal volume. I have heard of a thing they call
Doomsday Book--I am clear it has been a rental of back-ganging
tenants.

"Stephen," said Sir John, still in the same soft, sleekit tone of
voice--"Stephen Stevenson, or Steenson, ye are down here for a year's
rent behind the hand, due at last term."

Stephen. "Please your honor, Sir John, I paid it to your father."

Sir John. "Ye took a receipt then, doubtless, Stephen, and can
produce it?"

Stephen. "Indeed I hadna time, an it like your honor; for nae sooner
had I set doun the siller, and just as his honor Sir Robert, that's
gaen, drew it till him to count it, and write out the receipt, he was
ta'en wi' the pains that removed him."

"That was unlucky," said Sir John, after a pause. "But ye maybe paid
it in the presence of somebody. I want but a talis qualis evidence,
Stephen. I would go ower strictly to work with no poor man."

Stephen. "Troth, Sir John, there was naebody in the room but Dougal
MacCallum, the butler. But, as your honor kens, he has e'en followed
his auld master."

"Very unlucky again, Stephen," said Sir John, without altering his
voice a single note. "The man to whom ye paid the money is dead; and
the man who witnessed the payment is dead too; and the siller, which
should have been to the fore, is neither seen nor heard tell of in
the repositories. How am I to believe a' this?"

Stephen. "I dinna ken, your honor; but there is a bit memorandum
note of the very coins--for, God help me! I had to borrow out of
twenty purses--and I am sure that ilka man there set down will take
his grit oath for what purpose I borrowed the money."

Sir John. "I have little doubt ye borrowed the money, Steenie. It
is the payment to my father that I want to have some proof of."

Stephen. "The siller maun be about the house, Sir John. And since
your honor never got it, and his honor that was canna have ta'en it
wi' him, maybe some of the family may have seen it."

Sir John. "We will examine the servants, Stephen; that is but
reasonable."

But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all denied stoutly that they
had ever seen such a bag of money as my gudesire described. What was
waur, he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of them his
purpose of paying his rent. Ae quean had noticed something under his
arm, but she took it for the pipes.

Sir John Redgauntlet ordered the servants out of the room, and then
said to my gudesire: "Now, Steenie, ye see you have fair play; and,
as I have little doubt ye ken better where to find the siller than
any other body, I beg, in fair terms, and for your own sake, that you
will end this fasherie; for, Stephen, ye maun pay or flit."

"The Lord forgie your opinion," said Stephen, driven almost to his
wit's-end--"I am an honest man."

"So am I, Stephen," said his honor; "and so are all the folks in the
house, I hope. But if there be a knave among us, it must be he that
tells the story he can not prove." He paused, and then added, mair
sternly: "If I understand your trick, sir, you want to take advantage
of some malicious reports concerning things in this family, and
particularly respecting my father's sudden death, thereby to cheat me
out of the money, and perhaps take away my character, by insinuating
that I have received the rent I am demanding. Where do you suppose
this money to be? I insist upon knowing."

My gudesire saw everything look sae muckle against him that he grew
nearly desperate; however, he shifted from one foot to another,
looked to every corner of the room, and made no answer.

"Speak out, sirrah," said the laird, assuming a look of his
father's--a very particular ane, which he had when he was angry: it
seemed as if the wrinkles of his frown made that selfsame fearful
shape of a horse's shoe in the middle of his brow--"speak out, sir!
I will know your thoughts. Do you suppose that I have this money?"

"Far be it frae me to say so," said Stephen.

"Do you charge any of my people with having taken it?"

"I wad be laith to charge them that may be innocent," said my
gudesire; "and if there be any one that is guilty, I have nae proof."

"Somewhere the money must be, if there is a word of truth in your
story," said Sir John; "I ask where you think it is, and demand a
correct answer?"

"In hell, if you will have my thoughts of it," said my gudesire,
driven to extremity--"in hell! with your father, his jackanape, and
his silver whistle."

Down the stairs he ran, for the parlor was nae place for him after
such a word, and he heard the laird swearing blood and wounds behind
him, as fast as ever did Sir Robert, and roaring for the bailie and
the baron-officer.

Away rode my gudesire to his chief creditor, him they ca'd Laurie
Lapraik, to try if he could make onything out of him; but when he
tauld his story, he got but the warst word in his wame--thief,
beggar, and dyvour were the safest terms; and to the boot of these
hard terms, Laurie brought up the auld story of his dipping his hand
in the blood of God's saunts, just as if a tenant could have helped
riding with the laird, and that a laird like Sir Robert Redgauntlet.
My gudesire was by this time far beyond the bounds of patience, and
while he and Laurie were at deil speed the liars, he was wanchancie
aneugh to abuse Lapraik's doctrine as weel as the man, and said
things that garr'd folks' flesh grue that heard them; he wasna just
himsell, and he had lived wi' a wild set in his day.

At last they parted, and my gudesire was to ride hame through the
wood of Pitmurkie, that is a' fou of black firs, as they say. I ken
the wood, but the firs may be black or white for what I can tell. At
the entry of the wood there is a wild common, and on the edge of the
common a little lonely change-house, that was keepit then by a
hostler-wife--they suld hae ca'd her Tibbie Faw--and there puir
Steenie cried for a mutchkin of brandy, for he had had no refreshment
the haill day. Tibbie was earnest wi' him to take a bite o' meat,
but he couldna think o't, nor would he take his foot out of the
stirrup, and took off the brandy wholly at twa drafts, and named a
toast at each--the first was, the memory of Sir Robert Redgauntlet,
and might he never lie quiet in his grave till he had righted his
poor bond-tenant; and the second was, a health to Man's Enemy, if he
would but get him back the pock of siller, or tell him what came o't,
for he saw the haill world was like to regard him as a thief and a
cheat, and he took that waur than even the ruin of his house and
hauld.

On he rode, little caring where. It was a dark night turned, and the
trees made it yet darker, and he let the beast take its ain road
through the wood; when, all of a sudden, from tired and wearied that
it was before, the nag began to spring, and flee, and stend, that my
gudesire could hardly keep the saddle; upon the whilk, a horseman,
suddenly riding up beside him, said, "That's a mettle beast of yours,
freend; will you sell him?" So saying, he touched the horse's neck
with his riding-wand, and it fell into its auld heigh-ho of a
stumbling trot. "But his spunk's soon out of him, I think,"
continued the stranger, "and that is like mony a man's courage, that
thinks he wad do great things till he come to the proof."

My gudesire scarce listened to this, but spurred his horse, with
"Gude e'en to you, freend."

But it's like the stranger was ane that doesna lightly yield his
point; for, ride as Steenie liked, he was aye beside him at the
salfsame pace. At last my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, grew half
angry and, to say the truth, half feared.

"What is it that ye want with me, freend?" he said. "If ye be a
robber, I have nae money; if ye be a leal man, wanting company, I
have nae heart to mirth or speaking; and if ye want to ken the road,
I scarce ken it mysell."

"If you will tell me your grief," said the stranger, "I am one that,
though I have been sair misca'd in the world, am the only hand for
helping my freends."

So my gudesire, to ease his ain heart, mair than from any hope of
help, told him the story from beginning to end.

"It's a hard pinch," said the stranger; "but I think I can help you."

"If you could lend the money, sir, and take a lang day--I ken nae
other help on earth," said my gudesire.

"But there may be some under the earth," said the stranger. "Come,
I'll be frank wi' you; I could lend you the money on bond, but you
would maybe scruple my terms. Now, I can tell you that your auld
laird is disturbed in his grave by your curses, and the wailing of
your family, and if ye daur venture to go to see him, he will give
you the receipt."

My gudesire's hair stood on end at this proposal, but he thought his
companion might be some humorsome chield that was trying to frighten
him, and might end with lending him the money. Besides, he was bauld
wi' brandy, and desperate wi' distress; and he said he had courage to
go to the gate of hell, and a step farther, for that receipt.

The stranger laughed.

Weel, they rode on through the thickest of the wood, when, all of a
sudden, the horse stopped at the door of a great house; and, but that
he knew the place was ten miles off, my gudesire would have thought
he was at Redgauntlet Castle. They rode into the outer courtyard,
through the muckle faulding yetts, and aneath the auld portcullis;
and the whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes
and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in
Sir Robert's house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap
off, and my gudesire, as seemed to him, fastened his horse to the
very ring he had tied him to that morning, when he gaed to wait on
the young Sir John.

"God!" said my gudesire, "if Sir Robert's death be but a dream!"

He knocked at the ha' door just as he was wont, and his auld
acquaintance, Dougal MacCallum, just after his wont, too, came to
open the door, and said, "Piper Steenie, are ye there, lad? Sir
Robert has been crying for you."

My gudesire was like a man in a dream; he looked for the stranger,
but he was gane for the time. At last he just tried to say, "Ha!
Dougal Driveower, are ye living? I thought ye had been dead."

"Never fash yoursell wi' me," said Dougal, "but look to yoursell; and
see ye tak naething frae onybody here, neither meat, drink, or
siller, except just the receipt that is your ain."

So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that were
weel kenn'd to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlor; and there
was as much singing of profane sangs, and birling of red wine, and
speaking blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever been in Redgauntlet
Castle when it was at the blythest.

But, Lord take us in keeping! what a set of ghastly revelers they
were that sat round that table! My gudesire kenn'd mony that had
long before gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most
part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and
the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with
his bald head and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with
Cameron's blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr.
Cargill's limbs till the blude sprung; and Dumbarton Douglas, the
twice-turned traitor baith to country and king. There was the Bluidy
Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had been to
the rest as a god. And there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when
he lived, with his long dark, curled locks, streaming down over his
laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade,
to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from
them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance;
while the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed, that the room rang.
But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time; and
their laughter passed into such wild sounds as made my gudesire's
very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes.

They that waited at the table were just the wicked serving-men and
troopers that had done their work and cruel bidding on earth. There
was the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that helped to take Argyle; and
the bishop's summoner, that they called the Deil's Rattle-bag; and
the wicked guardsmen, in their laced coats; and the savage Highland
Amorites, that shed blood like water; and mony a proud serving-man,
haughty of heart and bloody of hand, cringing to the rich, and making
them wickeder than they would be; grinding the poor to powder, when
the rich had broken them to fragments. And mony, mony mair were
coming and ganging, a' as busy in their vocation as if they had been
alive.

Sir Robert Redgauntlet, in the midst of a' this fearful riot, cried,
wi' a voice like thunder, on Steenie Piper to come to the board-head
where he was sitting, his legs stretched out before him, and swathed
up with flannel, with his holster pistols aside him, while the great
broadsword rested against his chair, just as my gudesire had seen him
the last time upon earth--the very cushion for the jackanape was
close to him, but the creature itsell was not there; it wasna its
hour, it's likely; for he heard them say as he came forward, "Is not
the major come yet?" And another answered, "The jackanape will be
here betimes the morn." And when my gudesire came forward, Sir
Robert, or his ghaist, or the deevil in his likeness, said, "Weel,
piper, hae ye settled wi' my son for the year's rent?"

With much ado my father gat breath to say that Sir John would not
settle without his honor's receipt.

"Ye shall hae that for a tune of the pipes, Steenie," said the
appearance of Sir Robert. "Play us up, 'Weel noddled, Luckie.'"

Now this was a tune my gudesire learned frae a warlock, that heard it
when they were worshiping Satan at their meetings, and my gudesire
had sometimes played it at the ranting suppers in Redgauntlet Castle,
but never very willingly; and now he grew cauld at the very name of
it, and said, for excuse, he hadna his pipes wi' him.

"MacCallum, ye limb of Beelzebub," said the fearfu' Sir Robert,
"bring Steenie the pipes that I am keeping for him!"

MacCallum brought a pair of pipes might have served the piper of
Donald of the Isles. But he gave my gudesire a nudge as he offered
them; and looking secretly and closely, Steenie saw that the chanter
was of steel, and heated to a white heat; so he had fair warning not
to trust his fingers with it. So he excused himself again, and said
he was faint and frightened, and had not wind enough to fill the bag.

"Then ye maun eat and drink, Steenie," said the figure; "for we do
little else here; and it's ill speaking between a fou man and a
fasting."

Now these were the very words that the bloody Earl of Douglas said to
keep the king's messenger in hand, while he cut the head off
MacLellan of Bombie, at the Threave Castle, and that put Steenie mair
and mair on his guard. So he spoke up like a man, and said he came
neither to eat, or drink, or make minstrelsy, but simply for his
ain--to ken what was come o' the money he had paid, and to get a
discharge for it; and he was so stout-hearted by this time, that he
charged Sir Robert for conscience' sake (he had no power to say the
holy name), and as he hoped for peace and rest, to spread no snares
for him, but just to give him his ain.

The appearance gnashed its teeth and laughed, but it took from a
large pocket-book the receipt, and handed it to Steenie. "There is
your receipt, ye pitiful cur; and for the money, my dog-whelp of a
son may go look for it in the Cat's Cradle."

My gudesire uttered mony thanks, and was about to retire when Sir
Robert roared aloud: "Stop though, thou sack-doudling son of a whore!
I am not done with thee. _Here_ we do nothing for nothing; and you
must return on this very day twelvemonth to pay your master the
homage that you owe me for my protection."

My father's tongue was loosed of a suddenty, and he said aloud: "I
refer mysell to God's pleasure, and not to yours."

He had no sooner uttered the word than all was dark around him, and
he sunk on the earth with such a sudden shock that he lost both
breath and sense.

How lang Steenie lay there, he could not tell; but when he came to
himsell, he was lying in the auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine,
just at the door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the auld
knight, Sir Robert, hanging over his head. There was a deep morning
fog on grass and gravestane around him, and his horse was feeding
quietly beside the minister's twa cows. Steenie would have thought
the whole was a dream, but he had the receipt in his hand, fairly
written and signed by the auld laird; only the last letters of his
name were a little disorderly, written like one seized with sudden
pain.

Sorely troubled in his mind, he left that dreary place, rode through
the mist to Redgauntlet Castle, and with much ado he got speech of
the laird.

"Well, you dyvour bankrupt," was the first word, "have you brought me
my rent?"

"No," answered my gudesire, "I have not; but I have brought your
honor Sir Robert's receipt for it."

"How, sirrah? Sir Robert's receipt! You told me he had not given
you one."

"Will your honor please to see if that bit line is right?"

Sir John looked at every line, and at every letter, with much
attention, and at last at the date, which my gudesire had not
observed--"'From my appointed place,'" he read, "'this twenty-fifth
of November.' What! That is yesterday! Villain, thou must have
gone to Hell for this!"

"I got it from your honor's father; whether he be in Heaven or Hell,
I know not," said Steenie.

"I will delate you for a warlock to the privy council!" said Sir
John. "I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a
tar-barrel and a torch!"

"I intend to delate mysell to the presbytery," said Steenie, "and
tell them all I have seen last night, whilk are things fitter for
them to judge of than a borrel man like me."

Sir John paused, composed himsell, and desired to hear the full
history; and my gudesire told it him from point to point, as I have
told it you--word for word, neither more nor less.

Sir John was silent again for a long time, and at last he said, very
composedly: "Steenie, this story of yours concerns the honor of many
a noble family besides mine; and if it be a leasing-making, to keep
yourself out of my danger, the least you can expect is to have a
red-hot iron driven through your tongue, and that will be as bad as
scauding your fingers with a red-hot chanter. But yet it may be
true, Steenie; and if the money cast up, I shall not know what to
think of it. But where shall we find the Cat's Cradle? There are
cats enough about the old house, but I think they kitten without the
ceremony of bed or cradle."

"We were best ask Hutcheon," said my gudesire; "he kens a' the odd
corners about as weel as--another serving-man that is now gane, and
that I wad not like to name."

Aweel, Hutcheon, when he was asked, told them that a ruinous turret,
lang disused, next to the clock-house, only accessible by a ladder,
for the opening was on the outside, and far above the battlements,
was called of old the Cat's Cradle.

"There will I go immediately," said Sir John; and he took (with what
purpose, Heaven kens) one of his father's pistols from the
hall-table, where they had lain since the night he died, and hastened
to the battlements.

It was a dangerous place to climb, for the ladder was auld and frail,
and wanted ane or twa rounds. However, up got Sir John, and entered
at the turret door, where his body stopped the only little light that
was in the bit turret. Something flees at him wi' a vengeance, maist
dang him back ower; bang gaed the knight's pistol, and Hutcheon, that
held the ladder, and my gudesire that stood beside him, hears a loud
skelloch. A minute after, Sir John flings the body of the jackanape
down to them, and cries that the siller is fund, and that they should
come up and help him. And there was the bag of siller sure aneugh,
and mony orra things besides that had been missing for mony a day.
And Sir John, when he had riped the turret weel, led my gudesire into
the dining-parlor, and took him by the hand, and spoke kindly to him,
and said he was sorry he should have doubted his word, and that he
would hereafter be a good master to him, to make amends.

"And now, Steenie," said Sir John, "although this vision of yours
tends, on the whole, to my father's credit, as an honest man, that he
should, even after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor
man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-dispositioned men might
make bad constructions upon it, concerning his soul's health. So, I
think, we had better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie
creature, Major Weir, and say naething about your dream in the wood
of Pitmurkie, You had taken ower muckle brandy to be very certain
about onything; and, Steenie, this receipt (his hand shook while he
held it out), it's but a queer kind of document, and we will do best,
I think, to put it quietly in the fire."

"Od, but for as queer as it is, it's a' the voucher I have for my
rent," said my gudesire, who was afraid, it may be, of losing the
benefit of Sir Robert's discharge.

"I will bear the contents to your credit in the rental-book, and give
you a discharge under my own hand," said Sir John, "and that on the
spot. And, Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this matter,
you shall sit, from this term downward, at an easier rent."

"Mony thanks to your honor," said Steenie, who saw easily in what
corner the wind was; "doubtless I will be conformable to all your
honor's commands; only I would willingly speak wi' some powerful
minister on the subject, for I do not like the sort of summons of
appointment whilk your honor's father--"

"Do not call the phantom my father!" said Sir John, interrupting him.

"Weel, then, the thing that was so like him," said my gudesire; "he
spoke of my coming back to him this time twelvemonth, and it's a
weight on my conscience."

"Aweel, then," said Sir John, "if you be so much distressed in mind,
you speak to our minister of the parish; he is a douce man, regards
the honor of our family, and the mair that he may look for some
patronage from me."

Wi' that my gudesire readily agreed that the receipt should be
burned, and the laird threw it into the chimney with his ain hand.
Burn it would not for them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi'
a lang train of sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise like a squib.

My gudesire gaed down to the manse, and the minister, when he had
heard the story, said it was his real opinion that, though my
gudesire had gaen very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet,
as he had refused the devil's arles (for such was the offer of meat
and drink), and had refused to do homage by piping at his bidding, he
hoped, that if he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take
little advantage by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my
gudesire, of his ain accord, lang foreswore baith the pipes and the
brandy; it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day
passed, that he would so much as take the fiddle, or drink usquebaugh
or tippenny.

Sir John made up his story about the jackanape as he liked himsell;
and some believe till this day there was no more in the matter than
the filching nature of the brute. Indeed, ye'll no hinder some to
threap that it was nane o' the Auld Enemy that Dougal and Hutcheon
saw in the laird's room, but only that wanchancie creature, the
major, capering on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on the
laird's whistle that was heard after he was dead, the filthy brute
could do that as weel as the laird himsell, if no better. But Heaven
kens the truth, whilk first came out by the minister's wife, after
Sir John and her ain gudeman were baith in the molds. And then, my
gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, but not in his judgment or
memory--at least nothing to speak of--was obliged to tell the real
narrative to his freends for the credit of his good name. He might
else have been charged for a warlock.

The shades of evening were growing thicker around us as my conductor
finished his long narrative with this moral: "Ye see, birkie, it is
nae chancy thing to tak a stranger traveler for a guide when ye are
in an uncouth land."

"I should not have made that inference," said I. "Your grandfather's
adventure was fortunate for himself, whom it saved from ruin and
distress; and fortunate for his landlord also, whom it prevented from
committing a gross act of injustice."

"Ay, but they had baith to sup the sauce o't sooner or later," said
Wandering Willie. "What was fristed wasna forgiven. Sir John died
before he was much over threescore; and it was just like of a
moment's illness. And for my gudesire, though he departed in fulness
of years, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell
down betwixt the stilts of his pleugh, and raise never again, and
left nae bairn but me, a puir sightless, fatherless, motherless
creature, could neither work nor want. Things gaed weel aneugh at
first; for Sir Redwald Redgauntlet, the only son of Sir John, and the
oye of auld Sir Robert, and, wae's me! the last of the honorable
house, took the farm off our hands, and brought me into his household
to have care of me. He liked music, and I had the best teachers
baith England and Scotland could gie me. Mony a merry year was I wi'
him; but wae's me! he gaed out with other pretty men in the
Forty-five--I'll say nae mair about it. My head never settled weel
since I lost him; and if I say another word about it, deil a bar will
I have the heart to play the night. Look out, my gentle chap," he
resumed, in a different tone, "ye should see the lights in Brokenburn
Glen by this time."

END OF VOLUME TWO