beadsman and his companion were wandering, as they approached the scene
of their conversation, had now resigned its embrowned hue, for the not
less dreary and mystic tinge of the blue light of the young moon, as she
struggled with the falling darkness. The circumstances of the still
unseen chasm being tenanted by the only living mortal within the
circumference of the bleak waste, and he himself, calculated, by his
unusual formation of body, and imputed mystic powers and attributes, to
aid the pregnant associations connected with his lonely condition, was,
by those acquainted with the locality of Falconcleugh Muir, naturally
combined with the dismal celebrity of the place for these deeds of
violence so common at that period in Scotland. Whatever may have been
felt by his less imaginative companion, whose familiarity with the overt
proceedings of the occult powers of the waste and the ruin may have
blunted his perceptions of the supernatural, it is at least certain, and
assuredly no marvel either, that Henry Leslie surveyed the scene around
him with the feelings natural to the time and the country when and where
he lived. The dark figure of the house rose before him, claiming the
homage due to the genius of the place, where it was almost the only
object that arrested the eye. Replete in itself with the elements of
gloomy associations, connected with the fate of the once happy Melvilles
who resided there, it threw a wizard power over the surrounding
heath-waste, investing the bleak inanity of Nature's most negative
condition with an interest which could not have been possessed by her
multiform productions. The absence of material objects of thought lent
even a species of positive character of inspissated essence to the blue
haze of the atmosphere, which seemed to hang like a mighty sea in the
deepest stillness of nature's silence. For some time, neither of the
parties had uttered a word. The brush of their feet on the heath, and
the sound of their breath, were intensified by the silence into noises
that to the younger of the two seemed startling and painful.
"Hooly, hooly," muttered the beadsman, as his last step brought him to
the chasm; "loun and canny, young master--loun and lightly," he added,
as he sat down on what seemed to have been a step of a ruined porch,
close by the building, and by the brink of the shelving heugh. "Eh! but
this silence is gousty and elric. That corbie's grane was like the roar
of a lion. Didna ye think the drum o' yer ear would crack wi' the
sound?"
Henry seated himself by the bluegown on the stone, and they both turned
their eyes down on the deep hollow, where the waters seemed as dark as
the Stygian stream.
"I hear nae stir in the howe," said the beadsman, "and see naething but
that rickle o' a house standing on that eerie pinnacle, like a craw's
nest on the tap o' a tree in a glen. The creature's surely sleeping
after his day's wark; for he works like a dergar, and nae man kens what
at. He maks neither wicker corbins nor quhorls, like the rest o' his
Droich species."
"Hist! Carey; heard ye not a noise?" said the youth.
"A hungry stane hawk spooming down the quarry after some raven that has
been picking the banes o' the Melvilles," replied the other.
"Wear-awins! there's a sad change on Falconcleugh now," he continued, as
he turned his face to the walls. "The fire o' the ha' has been eighteen
years extinguished; and when it may be lighted again, it will be to warm
fremmet blude o' the spoiler o' the auld family. Heard ye that Gilbert
Blackburn o' Kingsbarns, the commendator o' Pittenweem, is shortly to
tak up his residence here, whar, methinks, he has as little right as the
puir beadsman."
"No," replied Henry, as, keeping his eye on the house of the strange
inhabitant, he lent his ear to the gaberlunzie man.
"It is even so," continued the old man. "It is now eighteen years, come
the time, since George Melville, the last o' his ancient race, was
burned for a heretic in Bordeaux. He was driven frae that mansion there,
and the braw lands o' Falconcleugh, by Gilbert Blackburn, the persecutor
o' the heretics, even he wha had a hand in raising the black stake at
the cross o' St Andrews the day. I saw his ee, red as the burning
faggots, fixed on the puir youth. I'm thinking I didna thank him for his
awmous."
"You seem friendly to the heretics, Carey, yet live by the kirk," said
the youth, withdrawing his eye from the chasm.
"The kirk's penny has as mony placks in't as a heretic's--the mair by
token, they hae baith three," replied Carey. "I hae my ain thoughts o'
the auld faith and the new doctrines; but it's better to live by the
altar than be burned on't."
"It might have been well for the earthly part of Patrick Hamilton, had
he observed your worldly wisdom," said Henry.
"Ay; but his soul wadna hae been in yon blue lift the night," replied
Carey, looking up to the sky. "Na, na, nor might that o' puir
Falconcleugh have been there afore him, if he had bowed his head at the
auld altar. Yet _he_ tried to save his body by fleeing to France--vain
flight, for his persecutor, Kingsbarns, wrote incontinent to the
authorities at Bordeaux, to watch him as an enemy to the holy kirk. Then
cam the sough, as pleasant to the ears o' Kingsbarns as the whistlin'
winds to the outlaying bluegowns, that his victim was burned. His bonny
wife, ane o' the Blebos, wha fled wi' him, died o' a broken heart; and
now, they say, the race is dune. Whist! whist! Gude and the rude! What's
the creature doing amang the trees o' the howe at this time o' nicht?"
A rustling noise arrested the ears of the speakers, and Henry's eye was
turned in the direction of the sound. The short stunted figure of a man
was dimly seen down among the pines, working his way along the face of
the precipice, by means of his arms alone, swinging from one stem to
another, and occasionally resting for a moment, by remaining suspended,
in an apparently dangerous and fearful, yet perfectly composed manner,
over the water in the deep basin of the crater. Continuing this
operation, in which there was clearly exercised an extraordinary
brachial power and energy, he approached, with marvellous rapidity, his
dwelling; and, by one or two more salient movements, in which there
could not be observed, any more than in his prior progress, the
slightest use made of his inferior extremities, he came to the wattled
trunks lying across the cleft. Seizing these with the same extraordinary
power of grasp, he hung for a few seconds in mid-air, suspended by the
hands; then, by two or three successive throws and jerks, which made the
pines bend and creak, he reached the insular height whereon his hovel
was erected, and drawing himself up, he sat down, apparently in a
resting attitude, upon the brink of the riven bank. In this position he
remained for a considerable time, with his head bent downwards, as if he
were wrapped in deep meditation. The rough croaking of some crows that
had been disturbed by the rustling movements he had made among the pines
ceased, and, in the hushed silence that again reigned over the bleak
waste, there might have been heard his deep inspirations, as he drew
breath after his exertions. Turning round, and applying himself again to
his hands, he began to move along on the narrow space between the walls
of his house and the edge of the height, making his arms the principal
instruments of his progress, and using his short inferior extremities as
subserving agents. The motion thus produced seemed to be a compromising
medium between the crawl and the spasmodic jump of a wounded quadruped;
yet he made rapid progress; went round the small dwelling, and was seen
again at the other side in an attitude which showed, that, however
ineffectual his lower limbs might be in the operation of ambulation,
they could yet support his broad, thick-set trunk. Standing erect, he
exhibited an elevation of about four feet and a-half, a stature
which--in an individual of corresponding dimensions in other
members--might not have been sufficient to entitle him to enter the pale
of the "Droichs;" but, when viewed in relation to the almost gigantic
breadth of his chest and shoulders, the troll-like size of his head, and
the extreme length of his arms, could not fail, when seen through the
medium of the moonlight, and in the locality of a blasted heath-waste,
to suggest a relationship to some of the stout "elfin" of Scandinavian
fable.
The two spectators felt all the charm of the feelings of the
supernatural in watching the motions of the eremite; and, probably--in
so far, at least, as regarded the younger of the two--the interest was
deepened by their total inability to understand his motions, as, having
looked steadfastly for a few minutes down into the chasm, he again
betook himself to his quadrupedal amble; entered his hut, and emerged
with something in the form of a large volume--the brass clasps of which
glittered in the moonlight--bound to his waist. The small space between
the door and the end of the wattled trunks he cleared by a series of
short, rapid, bounding strides, without the aid of his arms; and
throwing his body again on the ground, he remained in that position for
a few minutes, after which he again seized the end of the trunks, swung
himself along them, and entered among the trees. The dark figure of his
body was now indistinctly seen moving, by the same jerking, propulsive
throws, from tree to tree, by which he had cleared the space before;
and, getting beneath the shadow of the mansion, he disappeared from the
view of the spectators, at the same time that the cracking of a branch,
amid the sound of a splash in the water, came upon their ears. They
neither heard nor saw more of him. The deepest silence reigned
everywhere; and the dreary scene seemed as if in an instant deprived of
every trace of living sound or motion, save the deep-drawn breath and
palpitating throbs of the heart of the younger of the two observers.
Overcome with the pressure of awe, he sat bound to his stone-seat, and
turned his eye on the face of the beadsman, where he found an expression
very different from what he expected.
"Is the creature not down in that dreadful basin of pitchy waters?"
muttered he.
"And if he were," replied Carey, as he twinkled his grey eye, unmoved,
in the face of the youth, "what would ye do, young Master o'
Riddlestain? Seek him, as the baron did his brood-sow in the well, on
the top o' the towering Bech, and maybe find mair than ye want--a farrow
o' young water elfs? Na, na! let him alane--he'll no drown. He's maybe
even now kissing some water queen in the bottom o' the loch."
The youth looked inquiringly in the face of the bluegown; but the same
expression was still there. He was sorely puzzled: the feelings of
humanity were throbbing in his heart in audible pulses. The old beggar
was in one of his humours, and held him by the skirt of his coat as he
attempted to rise, while at the very moment, as he imagined, a human
being was perishing in the waters. He sat breathless, with his ear
chained to the abyss, and his eye searching in vain for some traces of
meaning in the face of his arch companion. The same hushed stillness
pervaded the scene of dreary desolation; neither the sound of a
death-struggle nor of living motion could be distinguished, and it was
as difficult to account for an individual endowed with life and the
desire of self-preservation drowning without a sigh or groan, as it was
for the sudden disappearance of every trace of a still living being in
the dismal abyss into which he had so mysteriously descended.
"It's a' owra now, at ony rate, Master Henry!" said the bluegown, adding
to the youth's perplexity by a hint so directly opposed to his prior
confidence, "the deil mair o' a sound comes frae earth, water, or air,
than that croak o' a raven that even now flew o'er the quarry loch.
We'll e'en be seeking hame, I think. I hae back to the road to
Pittenweem to gae, and ye've a mile a-gate between ye and Riddlestain.
Gude e'en to ye!"
And, without even troubling himself to look over the quarry brink, the
beadsman began his ordinary half-trotting pace; and in a short time
Henry saw him, in the distance, making rapid progress over the heath.
Meanwhile he was himself at a loss what to think or what to do. The
strange manner of the beadsman led him at one time to suppose that he
was satisfied that no misfortune had occurred to the inhabitant of the
quarry; and at another, his parting words, joined to the inexplicable
disappearance of the extraordinary individual, inclined him to an
opposite belief, and filled him with painful feelings of
self-crimination for not having rendered a timely assistance in behalf
of a fellow-creature. He could not yet move himself from the spot.
Placing himself on his breast, he looked over the brink of the chasm,
gazing through between the trees on the deep, sullen pool, which, like a
sleeping monster, satiated with prey, lay as still as death. His ears
were not less occupied: for a space, not less than half-an-hour, he lay
in this position, without seeing or hearing the slightest indication of
anything that might solve the mystery. He was enveloped in the gloom of
his own personal experiences of the day. The thoughts of the calcinated
corpse of Hamilton, and the speaking spirit of the wild place where he
lay, all combined with the painful feelings of the inquiry in which he
was engaged to render his mind susceptible of morbid influences, and
fecundative of supernatural creations of awe. He resolved frequently to
rise suddenly to escape from the depressing yet charmed influence of the
place, and the inexplicable circumstances connected with it, and
resolved, on the following moment, to endure still the creeping
sensations of fear that run over him, in the hope of getting the mystery
cleared up. His watch, however, still proved ineffectual. More time
passed, but the silence continued unbroken by any sound, save,
occasionally, the flap of a night-bird's wing, as it floated past, or
the dying scream of a victim, awakened to die in the talons of the hawk.
Rising, at length, he cast another look over the chasm, and bent his
steps to Riddlestain.
When he reached home, he found his parents waiting impatiently for him.
"It is all over," said he, as he sat down, and covered his face with his
hands. "The martyr has received his crown. God have mercy on us who are
of the new faith!"
"And we are in danger from the commendator Blackburn," replied old
Riddlestain. "He has taken the lands of Falconcleugh; and he will not be
contented till he get Riddlestain also. Where is the martyr's treatise
on the saving efficacy of faith? You took it with you to day to St.
Andrews."
"Here, here," replied Henry, as he searched his bosom for the brochure.
"No, no--it is gone!" he continued, as he rose and looked wildly around
him. "I was reading it by the wayside; and, overcome with fatigue and
suffering, I reclined, and slept--and now I find the book is gone. What
may come of this, when our enemies are ranging the land with the fiery
faggot?"
"Saw you no one by the way?" said the father.
"Only Carey, the wandering beadsman of Pittenweem," replied the son.
"Seek him--seek him, ere you sleep, Henry! Our lives depend on your
recovering that book, which they call heretical, because it shows us the
true way to that place where priests have no power. But the way it leads
is through earthly flames, and we are not yet so well prepared for that
ordeal as he who passed to-day."
The young man flew out of the house, and taking his way again past
Falconcleugh, without stopping to know more certainly the fate of the
inhabitant of the quarry, he was hurrying on in the direction which he
supposed had been taken by the bluegown, when he heard a noise, as if of
the opening of a door of the old mansion. The sound startled him, and he
returned and placed himself in the shade of the walls. In a few minutes,
he saw the old beadsman, who he thought had betaken himself to his
quarters at Pittenweem, come forth, in the company of a young woman
rolled up in a cloak. They hurried onwards as if afraid of discovery;
and Henry, following them, traced them to the small cottage of Mossfell,
about a half-a-mile distant from Falconcleugh. "My own Margaret again at
Falconcleugh at a late hour," muttered the youth to himself, as he saw
the young woman part with the bluegown, and betake herself to the
cottage, while Carey proceeded on his way to Pittenweem. The youth
allowed him to continue his course until he came to the spot where he
had been reading the book. He then made up to him.
"Thus far only on your way, Carey?" said he, as he overtook him.
"Nae farther, Master Henry," was the reply, accompanied by a
scrutinising twinkle of the beadsman's eye, as if to ascertain whether
the questioner had noticed his proceedings. "But what has brought you
again frae Riddlestain, at this late hour?"
"It is not to ask you what I know you will not tell me, Carey--the
secret of Mansie of the Quarryheugh, and whether he be now in the bottom
of the waters. I am myself in danger; and would know if you met any one
on the road to-night, ere you came up to me?"
As he spoke, he proceeded to search for the heretical tract.
"So it was you," said the beadsman, "from whom, when sleepin by the
roadside, was ta'en the written heresy that Blackburn's clerk, Geordie
Dempster, was busy reading to his fellow-traveller, John o' the Priory,
in Dame M'Gills, at the Haughfoot. The body o' young Riddlestain will be
a cinder ere the sun has gane twelve times owre the East Neuk. If the
commendator got Melville o' Falconcleugh burned in France, will he,
think ye, hae ony great difficulty in getting Henry Leslie burned in
Scotland?"
"Your words carry fire in them, Carey; but I have not said that the book
was mine."
"There's nae occasion for the admission," replied the bluegown,
"especially to ane wha lives by the auld kirk, and maybe ought, even
now, to turn his face to St. Andrews, to evidence against you. You may
be safe at Riddlestain for this night, but scarcely owre the morn. I
will gie ye warnin, if ye will trust me."
"I will," replied Henry.
And the bluegown, waving his wand, continued on his journey, while the
young man turned his steps, in fear, towards home. He again came to the
cottage of Mossfell, and stood before the door. Margaret Bethune resided
there, under the protection of old Dame Craigie. She was reputed an
orphan; and, as such, she had secured the interest of the family at
Riddlestain. By other claims she had secured the affection of the son;
and never, until this night, had he observed in her conduct aught that
excited any other feeling than love and respect, nor had what he had
witnessed in any material degree altered the opinion he had formed of
her. Yet, what object had she to serve by visiting the dark chambers of
Falconcleugh with a wandering bluegown, at so late an hour of the night.
He had heard from the servants at Riddlestain that she had been seen
stealing from the old mansion at late hours; but she had uniformly
avoided his inquiries for information. On this occasion, she might have
gone to inquire as to the fate of Mansie, who had, apparently, been
plunged into the waters. Yet why did the beadsman avoid the subject, and
not offer satisfaction on a matter of importance to any one possessed of
a spark of humanity? The danger of his own situation did not prevent him
from indulging in these thoughts; and, as he stood and listened, he
ascertained that the inmates had not gone to bed.
"I will see," he muttered, "whether Margaret and her old friend observe
the same silence."
And he rapped at the door. He got admittance; and, seating himself by
the fire--
"I am disturbed," he said. "As I returned this night from the scene of
the death of my friend, I stood, with old Carey the beadsman, over the
quarry of Falconcleugh, watching the motions of the old cripple who
lives in that strange place. We heard a plash in the waters, and saw no
more of him. Is it possible that he is drowned, and I, confused by
selfish fears for my own safety, neglected to rouse my father's servants
to make search for a fellow-creature."
He watched the countenance of Margaret as he spoke and finished. There
was no trace there of the effects of a sensibility which usually
responded to the minutest detail of suffering. He waited for her
explanation of the object of her own visit to the quarry, but none was
forthcoming.
"Ye needna fear for auld Mansie," said the dame. "If every plash o' a
loose stane o' the auld wa's--ay, or a heughbane o' the auld Melvilles,
or broken branch in the waters o' the quarry--were a sign o' his death,
twenty times has he dreed the doom."
"You spoke of your own danger, Henry," said Margaret, retreating from
the subject. "Is it from the persecutors of our secret, holy faith, who
have this day burned Hamilton at St. Andrew's?"
"It is--it is, Margaret," rejoined the youth, as he rose, dissatisfied
at what he supposed a trait of disingenuousness or secret mystery. "I
may be compelled to leave Scotland, if I would not follow my friend
through the flames. But old Carey the beadsman, or Mansie the cripple,
may console you in my absence." And, with these words, he hastened to
the door.
"What mean you, Henry?" said the girl, as she hastened after him, and
stopped him, by seizing tremblingly his hand.
"Lovers have no secrets, Margaret," replied he. "You might have told me
at once that you and the beadsman were at Falconcleugh. Why, if it was
nothing more but a compliance with the dictates of humanity, to see
whether or not, as we suspected, a fellow-creature had fallen into the
basin, where was the reason for secresy? I am now satisfied the Droich
is safe. He is nothing to me more than to others, who stand, and stare,
and wonder at so strange a being in so strange a place; but a straw in
the wind may tell us the direction of the argosy, and by this I may
convict you of a want of ingenuousness. To-morrow I may be in flight for
my life, in these tearful times, when the faggot surrounds the altar of
the true faith; and how could I trust one with my secret who denies me
satisfaction in a matter that concerns us scarcely more than it does the
ordinary people of the world."
"Who said that I was at Falconcleugh this night?" answered she. "Was it
the beadsman? Tell me Henry, am I betrayed by one of whom neither you
nor I can deserve better? for he eats the unholy fruits of the faith he
pretends to disown."
"No; Carey is as secret as yourself," rejoined he; "and, I hope, as true
to me, who am also in his power."
"Thank God!" ejaculated she, "and now, Henry, if you love me, no more of
Falconcleugh or its maimed inhabitant. Will you promise?"
"You put me to an unfair test, Margaret. I will reply to you in the same
spirit. Will you, if I am forced to fly my country, accompany me as my
wife?"
"I cannot," replied she. "There is one here who claims the sacrifice to
my first love."
"Man or woman?" inquired he.
"I cannot answer more," said she. "The time is not come. When it is
decreed that the fire shall no longer burn on the street of St. Andrews,
you shall know all. Meanwhile, fly, if flight will save you; and take
with you the pledge that I am yours, in heart and spirit, in all that
belongs to true affection."
"So be it," he replied, hurriedly, and with a look of dissatisfaction.
"Farewell! and it may be for ever."