an account of the dangerous situation in which he was placed. His father
saw the peril with perhaps a keener perception of the probable
consequences. The act of 1525 against heretics was in full force, and
the church authorities eked out its sanctions by wrested texts of
Scripture, with an ingenuity and thirst of blood that threatened
destruction to all heretics. It was resolved that Henry should be
regulated by the warnings of the beadsman, whose sources of information
would enable him to save the son of his old friend from ruin, if not
death. The night was passed by the inmates of Riddlestain with fearful
forebodings, and next morning, and during a part of the day, Henry
expected a secret visit from the beadsman. As the evening approached, he
ventured forth to look for the bearer of intelligence, but as yet he
was not visible. The moon had risen, and was again flinging her beams
over the muir of Falconcleugh, and the old mansion of the Melvilles
stood in solemn darkness in the midst of the scene. Again he was
occupied by the thoughts suggested by what he had seen on the previous
night, and what he had heard from Carey and Margaret, yet all his
attempts to unravel their conduct and converse was unavailing, and he
felt half inclined to seek again the cottage at Mossfell, to put the
maiden to another test, while he would ease her mind of the reflections
which the abrupt if not cruel terms of his departure would inevitably
suggest. In the midst of his reverie he was startled by a noise, and, on
looking round, he saw the dark figure of the inhabitant of the
Quarryheugh coming along by his peculiar springing movement. He had
never before seen him beyond the precincts of the hollow where he had
taken up his residence; and felt as he might have felt on the approach
of some being from another world. Every now and then the creature
stopped, and beckoned him forwards, but Henry retained his position as
if transfixed to the ground, and, in a short time, the hermit was by his
side, with his face--which was covered with long hair, and the features
almost obliterated by scars--turned up to him in the full light of the
moon.
"The fires of other lands," said he, "are as scorching as those of the
Scotch faggot. Thou wouldst yet fly to them, and leave the commendator
Blackburn to seize Riddlestain, while thy father suffers the fate thou
wouldst avoid."
"Let him remain," replied Henry, "who has faith and fortitude to pass
through the fiery ordeal. You did not, good Mansie, see Hamilton's
blackened body sink among the blazing faggots."
A half-suppressed groan rumbled in the throat of the Droich.
"What I have seen--what I have felt, thou may'st never know," said he.
"But see, there are the church emissaries already after thee."
Henry looked round, and saw some horsemen scouring along the muir, at a
considerable distance, in the direction of Riddlestain. Throwing himself
down on the heath to avoid being seen, he remained in that position for
a few minutes, and by the time he again lifted his head, his Mentor was
a considerable distance from him, working his progress forwards, on his
hands and knees, with great effort. The next moment a hand was on his
shoulder, and he shuddered with terror.
"I'm maybe owre late," said the beadsman. "Quick, quick?--Blackburn and
his hounds are awa' to Riddlestain wi' a warrant to apprehend you."
Henry followed the beadsman, who hurried on towards Falconcleugh.
"Now for your choice," said he. "Auld Mansie was giein ye counsel,
maybe, to stay and stand your doom. What say ye--flight or flaught, an
exile or an eizel?"
"I am unresolved," replied the youth.
"And by the faith o' the auld kirk, ye hae muckle time to ponder.
See!--see! the bloodhounds have changed their course; their scent lies
this way."
"I am lost!" ejaculated the young man.
"It maun be!--it maun be!" responded the beadsman, as he stood by the
dark walls of Falconcleugh mansion, and seemed to hesitate. "There's
naeither mean. Here, here," he continued, as he descended some steps,
and taking Henry by the arm, hurried him down, and then applied a key to
a low door of the mansion, which he opened.
"There, there," he muttered, as he pushed the youth into a dark chamber.
"I will turn their muzzles to the south."
The door was shut, and Henry immediately after heard the loud call of
some horsemen, inquiring of the beadsman whether he had not with him a
companion.
"Beggars hae short acquaintanceships," replied the bluegown. "The word
awmous severs good company. Wha are ye after wi' the loose rein and the
bloody spur?"
"Henry Leslie, younger, of Riddlestain," replied one of the men.
"Whither has he gone?"
"My een lack now their former licht," replied the beadsman, "but if ye,
wha are younger, look weel to the east, ye'll see something yonder
thicker, I ween, than a munebeam. Ye ken what I mean. Ane wha has got an
awmous frae his father canna speak plainer, even to the friends o' the
auld kirk."
"Well said, old Carey," cried the men, as they set forth with redoubled
speed in the direction pointed out by the beggar.
Now, left to himself in a dark chamber of the old mansion of the
Melvilles, Henry began to look round him for some place where, in the
event of a search being there made for him, he might, with greater
chance of success, elude their efforts. Mounting up a few steps, he
reached a recess in the wall, which had once been enclosed by a door,
the hinges of which still adhered to the stones, and there he crouched,
under the gloom of an anxiety that pictured in the future the images of
the various forms of persecution to which the heretics of the time were
exposed. There was scarcely any light in the chamber. The flapping of
the wings of bats, that had been adhering, in a state of torpor, to the
roof, was the only sound that met his ear. A noisome damp pervaded the
atmosphere; and a creeping sensation ran over his flesh, which,
co-operating with his fear and solitude, made him shiver. For two hours
he heard no indications of any one approaching the building; he began to
think of removing, while, now being dark he could escape to some greater
distance from his enemies; yet he deemed it a dubious measure, while the
absence of the beadsman augured danger from without. All was again
still: the bats had again betaken themselves to the walls and the roof,
and the sound of a cricket might have been heard throughout the extent
of the dreary chamber. At length the grating sound of the hinges of a
door startled him, and he stretched forth his head to watch the
movement. The door opened, and a young woman, rolled up in a cloak,
cautiously entered, taking from under her mantle a lantern, which she
waved round and round, as if to ascertain that there was no one within.
She then closed the door, and, proceeding to the side of the chamber
next the quarry, made some audible knocks upon the side of an opening,
somewhat of the form of a window, through which only a faint gleam of
light had been able to struggle. This done, she sat down on the floor,
and sighed heavily, muttering broken sentences in which the name of him
who witnessed her strange proceedings could be distinguished. After a
few minutes, the trees of the Quarryheugh, agitated by some living
impulse, gave forth a rustling sound which, in the prevailing silence of
the still night, reached the interior, and was observed by the listener.
The movement continued, until the figure of the stunted inhabitant of
the quarry appeared at the aperture, and, by two or three convulsive
efforts, he flung himself into the apartment. The light from the lamp
fell upon the couple. The girl still sat on the floor, and her companion
reclined by her side, throwing out his maimed limbs, and turning up his
face--which might have been fraught with terror to another--in the
countenance of her who seemed to regard him with demonstrations of
affection.
"Blackburn, the old enemy of our house, is forth again," said he; "and
young Riddlestain may fall. Are you prepared?"
"It is to be hoped he will fly, father, and be yet saved to me,"
answered she, sorrowfully, while she took some edibles from a small
corbin and placed them before him. Then drawing her hand over her
eyes--"When is this wo and watching to cease?--when may I own my
kindred, my love, and my faith?"
"Weep not--weep not," said the other; "or let it be up in the chamber of
thy mother, whither I nightly drag those maimed and scorched limbs, that
the heart which burns for vengeance on the enemies of the Melvilles may
be quenched with the tribute of a love that mourns the dead. She cured
these fragments of members when rescued from the stake, that I might
come back to my country, a wreck whom none may recognise and all may
scorn, but a daughter who must yet pity while she loves."
"Would that my love and my pity might be known," replied she. "How often
have I asked permission to proceed to the court, to plead on my bended
knees for relief to one who has already suffered what might expiate a
thousand heresies--ay, more than death."
"While the commendator lives, it is vain, Margaret. I have waited for
him long, to show him, in the mansion of my fathers, what his power has
achieved--ha! ha! I would do him homage as the holder of a pendicle of
the lands he has wrested from me--even the Quarryheugh. It is my duty.
These arms, which the fires spared, might yet let him feel the strength
of a vassal who has no power to follow him to the wars against the
faithful."
"You fear me, father!" ejaculated the girl, as she bent over him, while
he murmured, in growling accents, his threats. "The commendator is a man
of power, and may get finished what his agents so wofully left undone in
your exile."
"Power," groaned the other--"power, when alone in this dark chamber with
me, to whom yet is left these arms!"
"Heaven keep him long away!" replied Margaret; "for your strength is a
by-word to the creatures who gaze at you till they fly in fear from one
they deem supernatural. Hush--a door has opened above."
"Hie thee to Mossfell--quick--quick, child."
"Oh remember that you have a daughter!" ejaculated she, as she
retreated.
"And that I had a wife whom my wrongs killed--yea, that I had once the
face and form of a man!" he added, as he flung the fragments of victuals
out of the window, and then swung himself out by the immense strength of
his arms.
The sound from above, which had thus startled the father and daughter,
now chained the ear of Leslie whose curiosity had been roused and
gratified by the strange scene he had witnessed. Footsteps now sounded
overhead; and, by and by, the tread was heard on the inside stairs
leading to the lower apartment. At the same moment, the door from which
Margaret had issued opened quickly, and the head of another individual
was presented. It was too dark for Leslie to ascertain who it was; but
the words "Escape--fly," repeated hurriedly, satisfied him that it was
the beadsman who was thus making an effort to save him. It was too late;
the sound on the stairs indicated a near approach, and Leslie behoved to
run the risk of being captured where he was, rather than make an effort
to escape, which would be too clearly ineffectual. Several individuals
now entered from the stair; and, by their statements, Leslie could
perceive that they were in search of him.
"The bird, if ever here caged, has flown," cried one, as he approached
the door and found it open.
"Then he cannot be far off," said another. "After him, and I shall wait
here that you may report progress."
Several of the company immediately rushed to the door.
"Leave the light, Dempster," cried the voice of the last, and a man took
from his cloak and placed on the floor a lantern. They were in an
instant gone, and he who was left began to pace along the dark room. He
was closely muffled up to the chin; and, as he continued to walk
backwards and forwards, he occasionally seized the folds of his riding
cloak, and wrapped them round him, ejaculating broken statements, as his
thoughts and feelings rose on the suggestion of his situation and
pursuits.
"I shall get Riddlestain for my pains," said he; "ay, even as I have got
Falconcleugh. The Church is a kind mother to her children; yet, has not
this gift been as yet useless to me? Why? Down, down, rebellious answer
of a coward heart--I am not afraid to occupy the house of him who
expired in the flames by the condemnation which I accomplished. Now is
the test. The bones of the Melvilles lie white in the Quarryheugh. I am
alone in their old residence, and tremble not."
And, as he argued against his fears, he quickened his step, listening,
at intervals, for sounds from without. Not altogether satisfied that he
was alone, he took the lantern and held it up so that the light might
penetrate into the corners of the chamber.
"All is still, lonely, and dreary," said he again, as he approached the
north wall, and placed his head in the aperture. He started. There was a
face there such as man might not look on and be not afraid. The lantern
fell from his hands, and lay on the floor unextinguished. Receding
backwards, and still keeping his eye on the object, he sought the low
door on the west, and, finding it locked, betook himself to the stair,
up which he flew with a rapidity corresponding with his fears; but it
was only to descend again in greater difficulty, after he essayed an
exit in that direction in vain, against a door also locked.
"Oh! the Droich!" at length he exclaimed, as if suddenly recollecting
himself, and affecting a composure well enough suited, probably, to his
discovery, yet scarcely authorised by his finding himself a prisoner.
At the moment of his exclamation, the cripple bounded on the floor, and
stood before him on his knees with his arms folded, and his scorched
face reflecting the glimmer of the lantern that lay before him emitting
a weak light.
"Gilbert Blackburn!" sounded in deep accents through the chamber. The
commendator recoiled and recovered himself.
"Mansie--so do the people call you,"--said he, affecting conciliation,
"you are but an uncourteous vassal--taking up your habitation on
another's lands without leave, and startling your overlord by the humour
of your gesture, while you should be paying his ground-fees."
"Mayhap, your honour," replied the cripple, "may remit these on behalf
of my misfortunes. See you these limbs, and this countenance? I will
show you them by the light of this lamp. Come closer to me. They say I
am frightful to behold. Pshaw! Art thou afraid of a living man?--and yet
thou didst now vaunt of thy courage, till thou didst even say that the
spirits of the Melvilles would not terrify thee. Come closer to me,
Gilbert Blackburn, and see if thou canst recognise in these
features--horrid though they be--aught of the traces of one whom thou
didst once think so well of that thou didst envy his lands of
Falconcleugh."
"What! are you man or monster?" cried the commendator, as he receded
before the progressive movements of his enemy.
"Both species are here," rejoined Melville; "I am a man, though like the
other denomination. They called me George Melville, when I bore another
shape, and I was of Falconcleugh. By that name I once lived happy in
this mansion blessed with love and the reward of good offices. By that
name, too, I worshipped God by the light of reason; and by that name was
burned at the stake, till pity relieved me, and amputation saved the
wreck that was not worth saving. Art thou not satisfied? Search these
features. All is not gone. Enough of evidence there may be yet found to
justify my claim for the remission of my ground-dues of Quarryheugh."
As he spoke, his countenance exhibited, in the midst of its deformity,
the traces of a fury that was only for a few minutes kept in abeyance by
the offering of bitter satire. The commendator, overcome by fear, and
consciousness of a cruel and heartless purpose, kept receding; while
Melville sure of his prey, and eying him with remorseless hatred,
approached him by a series of leaps and contortions, more after the
manner of an enraged and maimed beast of prey than that of a human
being. The fame of his strength had gone forth with that of his other
singular attributes; and probably, even if Blackburn had been gifted
with ordinary courage, he would have quailed before the approach of the
extraordinary being. Fear, however, had taken possession of a mind
devoid of all courage, and he flew round the chamber, imploring that
mercy which he had never shown to others. Leslie, who witnessed the
extraordinary scene, meditated an interference, but he quelled the
thought from a sense of his own danger, and continued through the gloom
to mark the conduct of the parties. The pursuit was short. Blackburn,
finding himself pressed towards an angle, attempted feebly to use his
sword. It was seized and snapped asunder, and, next instant, he was down
in the iron grip of his ruthless foe--writhing in the agony of fear, as
he felt himself drawn towards the window that overlooked the chasm of
the quarry. Twice the energies of an ordinary man of courage might not
have resisted the cripple; and, though the struggles of despair
sometimes transcend all calculation of supposed strength, they were too
apparently, in this instance, unavailing. Two or three gigantic efforts,
and the commendator was on the brink of the descent--his back to the
chasm, his face to that of his intended destroyer. The light of the lamp
served to show Leslie the countenance of the victim, and a part of that
of Melville; and he shuddered at the fearful expression of agony on the
one part, and vengeance on the other. Not a word was spoken, but the
chamber was filled with deep-drawn respirations. A faint scream burst
from the commendator, and down, down he went into the chasm of dark
waters; Melville drew a deep breath, as if he once again enjoyed the
free use of his lungs, remained silent for a few minutes, and then
deliberately issued from the aperture, by the mode he had been in the
habit of following, and which, to him, was attended with no danger.
Leslie was terror-struck. His first thoughts concerned his own position.
Found there, he would be reputed the murderer of the commendator; and he
hastened down to betake himself to flight. The doors defied his efforts;
and he put his head out of the window, only to withdraw it with a
shudder of horror. In a few minutes, the door was opened by the
beadsman.
"Ye'll be as weel oot here, I'm thinkin, Master Henry," said he.
"Know you what has been done, Carey?" cried Henry.
"I ken that baith you and I are owre lang here," replied the beadsman,
as he hurried out.
In a few minutes the muir was clear. The two took different directions;
nor was Henry Leslie heard of again for a period of two years. During
this interval, an investigation was made into the circumstances
attending the murder of Blackburn. There was no evidence brought home to
Melville; and the opinion prevailed that the commendator had fallen
accidentally into the chasm. Melville, meanwhile, withdrew himself again
to the Continent, where he died. The property was again restored to
Margaret, in consideration of the injuries sustained by her parents. The
death of Hamilton produced, throughout Scotland, so great an effect,
that the prosecutions for heresy were for a time suspended, and Leslie
returned to his native country. From the circumstance of Falconcleugh
and Riddlestain being afterwards in the family of the Leslies, we may
augur something of a union between the two lovers of our story. We
merely, however, throw out this as a conjecture--our attention having
been chiefly directed to the more important parts of the strange legend
we have now given, which certainly does not exceed credibility.
THE LYKEWAKE.
I know no place where one may be brought acquainted with the more
credulous beliefs of our forefathers at a less expense of inquiry and
exertion, than in a country lykewake. The house of mourning is naturally
a place of sombre thoughts and ghostly associations. There is something,
too, in the very presence and appearance of death, that leads one to
think of the place and state of the dead. Cowper has finely said, that
the man and the beast who stand together, side by side, on the same
hill-top, are, notwithstanding their proximity, the denizens of very
different worlds. And I have felt the remark to apply still more
strongly when sitting beside the dead. The world of intellect and
feeling in which we ourselves are, and of which the lower propensities
of our nature form a province, may be regarded as including, in part at
least, that world of passion and instinct in which the brute lives; and
we have but to analyse and abstract a little, to form for ourselves
ideas of this latter world from even our own experience. But by what
process of thought can we bring experience to bear on the world of the
dead? It lies entirely beyond us--a _terra incognita_ of cloud and
darkness, and yet the thing at our side--the thing over which we can
stretch our hand--the thing dead to us but living to _it_--has entered
upon it, and, however uninformed or ignorant before, knows more of its
dark, and, to us, inscrutable mysteries, than all our philosophers and
all our divines. Is it wonder that we would fain _put it to the
question_--that we would fain catechise it, if we could, regarding its
newly-acquired experience--that we should fill up the gaps in the
dialogue which its silence leaves to us, by imparting to one another the
little we know regarding its _state_ and its _place_--or that we should
send our thoughts roaming in long excursions, to glean from the
experience of the past all that it tells us of the occasional visits of
the dead, and all that in their less taciturn and more social moments
they have communicated to the living. And hence, from feelings so
natural, and a train of associations so obvious, the character of a
country lykewake and the cast of its stories--I say a _country_
lykewake, for in at least all our larger towns, where a cold and barren
scepticism has chilled the feelings and imaginations of the people,
without, I fear, much improving their judgments, the conversation on
such occasions takes a lower and less interesting range.
I once spent a night with a friend from the south, a man of an inquiring
and highly philosophic cast of mind, at a lykewake in the upper part of
the parish of Cromarty. I had excited his curiosity by an incidental
remark or two of the kind I have just been dropping; and, on his
expressing a wish that I should introduce him, by way of illustration,
to some such scenes as I have been describing, we had set out together
to the wake of an elderly female who had died that morning. Her
cottage--a humble creation of stone and lime--was situated beside a
thick fir wood, on the edge of the solitary Mulebuy, one of the
dreariest and most extensive commons in Scotland. We had to pass, in our
journey, over several miles of desolate muir, sprinkled with cairns and
tumuli--the memorials of some forgotten conflict of the past; we had to
pass, too, through a thick, dark wood, with here and there an
intervening marsh, whitened over with moss and lichens, and which, from
this circumstance, are known to the people of the country as the _white
bogs_. Nor was the more distant landscape of a less gloomy character. On
the one hand, there opened an interminable expanse of muir, that went
stretching onwards, mile beyond mile, bleak, dreary, uninhabited, and
uninhabitable, till it merged into the far horizon. On the other, there
rose a range of blue, solitary hills, towering, as they receded, into
loftier peaks and bolder acclivities, till they terminated on the
snow-streaked Ben Weavis. The season, too, was in keeping with the
scene. It was drawing towards the close of autumn; and, as we passed
through the wood, the falling leaves were eddying round us with every
wind, or lay in rustling heaps at our feet.
"I do not wonder," said my companion, "that the superstitions of so wild
a district as this should bear in their character some marks of a
corresponding wildness. Night itself, in a populous and cultivated
country, is attended with less of the stern and the solemn than mid-day
amid solitudes like these. Is the custom of watching beside the dead of
remote antiquity in this part of the country?"