Welcome, Hugo; tell me, did you ever see so terrible a
storm!--MATURIN: _Bertram_.
In a room communicating with the apartments of the Governor of
Throndhjem, three of his Excellency’s secretaries sat at a table loaded
with parchments, papers, inkstands, and seals, a fourth chair, left
vacant, showing that one of the scribes was late. They had been silently
writing and thinking for some time, when one of them exclaimed: “Did you
know, Wapherney, that the poor librarian, Foxtipp, is to be dismissed by
the bishop, owing to the letter which you wrote recommending Dr.
Anglyvius’s petition to his favorable notice?”
“What nonsense are you talking, Richard?” hastily inquired the secretary
to whom Richard had not spoken. “Wapherney could not have written in
favor of Anglyvius, for the fellow’s petition disgusted the general
when I read it to him.”
“So you told me,” answered Wapherney; “but I found the word
_tribuatur_[10] written on the petition in his Excellency’s own hand.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed the other.
“Yes, my dear fellow; and several other of his Excellency’s decisions of
which you told me, were also altered in marginal notes. For instance, on
the petition of the miners, the general wrote, _negetur_.”
“What! I can’t understand that; the general dreaded the turbulent spirit
of those miners.”
“Perhaps he wanted to frighten them into submission by his severity.
What makes me think so is that Chaplain Munder’s request for the pardon
of twelve condemned prisoners is also refused.”
The secretary whom Wapherney addressed, rose abruptly, saying, “Oh, come
now, I can’t believe that; the governor is too kind, and expressed too
much compassion for those prisoners to--”
“Very well, Arthur,” answered Wapherney; “read it for yourself.”
Arthur took the petition and saw the fatal words.
“Really,” said he, “I can scarcely credit my own eyes. I must present
this to the governor again. What day did his Excellency mark these
papers?”
“I believe it was some three days ago,” replied Wapherney.
“That was,” said Richard in a low voice, “the morning before Baron
Ordener’s brief appearance and mysteriously sudden disappearance.”
“Stay!” quickly exclaimed Wapherney, before Arthur had time to answer;
“if here is not another _tribuatur_ on Benignus Spiagudry’s ridiculous
petition!”
Richard burst out laughing.
“Didn’t that old keeper of corpses disappear in a strange way, too?”
“Yes,” replied Arthur; “a body was found in his charnel-house so
mutilated that the officers of the law are in pursuit of him on a charge
of sacrilege. But a little Lapp, who acted as his servant, and who was
left alone at the Spladgest, thinks, as do most people, that the Devil
carried him off for a sorcerer.”
“Here,” said Wapherney, laughing, “is a fellow who leaves a good
reputation behind him!”
He had hardly had his laugh out when the fourth secretary came in.
“Upon my honor, Gustavus, you are very late this morning. Did you happen
to get married yesterday?”
“Oh, no!” answered Wapherney; “he only took the longest way round, so
that he might pass under the fair Rosalie’s windows in his new cloak.”
“Wapherney,” said the new-comer, “I only wish that you were right. But
the cause of my delay is not half so agreeable; and I doubt if my new
cloak produced the slightest effect upon the persons whom I visited.”
“Where have you been, then?” asked Arthur.
“To the Spladgest.”
“Heaven is my witness,” cried Wapherney, dropping his pen, “that we
were just now speaking of that place! But though it may be talked of to
pass away the time, I cannot conceive how anybody can enter it.”
“And still less,” said Richard, “how anybody can linger there. But what
did you see, my dear Gustavus?”
“Yes,” said Gustavus, “you are curious to hear about it, if not to see
it; and it would serve you right if I refused to describe those horrors
which you would shudder to behold.”
The three secretaries crowded about Gustavus, who waited to be urged,
although his desire to tell what he had seen was secretly no less lively
than their curiosity to hear.
“Well, Wapherney, you can repeat my story to your little sister, who is
so fond of frightful tales. I was pushed into the Spladgest by the crowd
which thronged about it. The bodies of three soldiers and two bowmen
from the Munkholm regiment had just been brought in, having been found
yesterday some four miles away, in the ravine at the foot of
Cascadthymore cliff. Some of the spectators declared that the poor
fellows were the very ones sent out three days ago in the direction of
Skongen to catch the runaway keeper of the Spladgest. If this be true,
it is impossible to imagine how so many well-armed men could be
murdered. The mutilation of the bodies seems to prove that they were
flung from the top of the rocks. It made my hair stand on end to look at
them.”
“What, Gustavus! did you see them?” eagerly inquired Wapherney.
“They are still before my eyes.”
“And has any one an idea as to the authors of the crime?”
“Some think that it may have been a band of miners, and assert that they
heard the sound of the horn with which the soldiers call to one another,
only yesterday among the mountains.”
“Really!” said Arthur.
“Yes; but an old peasant demolished this supposition by remarking that
there were neither mines nor miners in the neighborhood of
Cascadthymore.”
“Then who could it have been?”
“No one knows. If the bodies were not intact, it might be supposed the
work of wild beasts, for their limbs are covered with long, deep
scratches. The same is the case with the corpse of a white-bearded old
man brought into the Spladgest day before yesterday, after that fearful
storm which prevented you, my dear Leander Wapherney, from visiting your
Hero across the fjord, on the Larsynn shore.”
“All right, Gustavus,” said Wapherney, laughing. “But who was this old
man?”
“From his height, his long white beard, and a rosary still clasped
tightly in his hands, although he had been stripped of everything else,
he was recognized as a hermit of the neighborhood; I believe they called
him the Monk of Lynrass. It is evident that this poor man was murdered
also; but for what purpose? People are not slaughtered now for their
religious opinions, and the old hermit possessed nothing in the world
but his serge gown and the good-will of all who knew him.”
“And you say,” observed Richard, “that his body was mangled, like those
of the soldiers, as if by the claws of some savage animal?”
“Yes, my dear boy; and a fisherman declares that he noticed the same
marks upon the body of an officer found murdered a few days since upon
Urchtal Sands.”
“That is strange,” said Arthur.
“It is frightful,” said Richard.
“Come,” said Wapherney, “silence, and to work, for I think the general
will be here soon. My dear Gustavus, I am curious to see those corpses.
If you like, we will stop a moment at the Spladgest when we leave here
this evening.”