agreed that, as greater safety would be the result, the child should
immediately be given to Harrington. A solemn pledge was required by
the unseen visitant that the trust should be surrendered whenever, and
by whomsoever, demanded; likewise a vow of inviolable secrecy was
exacted from the parties that were present. Harrington drew a signet
from his finger; whoever returned it was to receive back the child. He
saw not the mysterious being to whom it was sent; but the idea of the
Meer-woman, the lake, and the untold mysteries beneath its quiet
bosom, came vividly and painfully on his recollection.
Long after she had departed, the strange events of the evening kept
them awake. Inquiries were now answered without hesitation. Harrington
learned that the "Meer-woman's" first appearance was on a cold wintry
day, a few months before. She did not crave protection from the
dwellers in the hut, but seemed rather to command it. Leaving the
infant with them, and promising to return shortly, she seemed to
vanish upon the lake, or rather, she seemed to glide away on its
surface so swiftly that she soon disappeared. Since then she had
visited them thrice, supplying them with a little money and other
necessaries; but they durst not question her, she looked so strange
and forbidding.
In the morning they were conducted to Lydiate by the fisherman, who
also carried the babe. Here they told a pitiable story of their having
found the infant exposed, the evening before, by some unfeeling
mother; and, strange to say, the truth was never divulged until the
time arrived when Harrington should render up his trust.
Years passed on. Harrington saw the pretty foundling expand through
every successive stage from infancy to childhood--lovelier as each
year unfolded some hidden grace, and the bloom brightened as it grew.
He had married in the interval, but was yet childless. His lady was
passionately fond of her charge, and Grace Harrington was the pet and
darling of the family. No wonder their love to the little stranger was
growing deeper, and was gradually acquiring a stronger hold on their
affections. But Harrington remembered his vow: it haunted him like a
spectre. It seemed as though written with a sunbeam on his memory; but
the finger of death pointed to its accomplishment. It will not be
fulfilled without blood, was the foreboding that assailed him. His
lady knew not of his grief, ignorant happily of its existence, and of
its source.
Their mansion stood on a rising ground but a few miles distant from
the lake. He thus seemed to hover instinctively on its precincts;
though, in observance of his vow, he refrained from visiting that
lonely hut, or inquiring about its inhabitants. Its broad smooth bosom
was ever in his sight; and when the sun went down upon its wide brim
his emotion was difficult to conceal.
One soft, clear evening, he sat enjoying the calm atmosphere, with his
lady and their child. The sun was nigh setting, and the lake glowed
like molten fire at his approach.
"'Tis said a mermaid haunts yon water," said Mrs Harrington; "I have
heard many marvellous tales of her, a few years ago. Strange enough,
last night I dreamed she took away our little girl, and plunged with
her into the water. But she never returned."
"How I should like to see a mermaid!" said the playful girl. "Nurse
says they are beautiful ladies with long hair and green eyes.
But"--and she looked beseechingly towards them--"we are always
forbidden to ramble towards the Meer."
"Harrington, the night wind makes you shiver. You are ill!"
"No, my love. But--this cold air comes wondrous keen across my bosom,"
said he, looking wistfully on the child, who, scarcely knowing why,
threw her little arms about his neck, and wept.
"My dream, I fear, hath strange omens in it," said the lady
thoughtfully.
The same red star shot fiercely up from the dusky horizon; the same
bright beam was on the wave; and the mysterious incidents of the
fisherman's hut came like a track of fire across Harrington's memory.
"Yonder is that strange woman again that has troubled us about the
house these three days," said Mrs Harrington, looking out from the
balcony; "we forbade her yesterday. She comes hither with no good
intent."
Harrington looked over the balustrade. A female stood beside a pillar,
gazing intently towards him. Her eye caught his own; it was as if a
basilisk had smitten him. Trembling, yet fascinated, he could not turn
away his glance; a smile passed on her dark-red visage--a grin of joy
at the discovery.
"Surely," thought he, "'tis not the being who claims my child!" But
the woman drew something from her hand, which, at that distance,
Harrington recognised as his pledge. His lady saw not the signal;
without speaking, he obeyed. Hastening down-stairs, a private
audience confirmed her demand, which the miserable Harrington durst
not refuse.
Two days he was mostly in private. Business with the steward was the
ostensible motive. He had sent an urgent message to his friend
Molyneux, who, on the third day, arrived at H----, where they spent
many hours in close consultation. The following morning Grace came
running in after breakfast. She flung her arms about his neck.
"Let me not leave you to-day," she sobbed aloud.
"Why, my love?" said Harrington, strangely disturbed at the request.
"I do not know!" replied the child, pouting.
"To-day I ride out with Sir Ralph to the Meer, and as thou hast often
wished--because it was forbidden, I guess--thou shalt ride with us a
short distance; I will toss thee on before me, and away we'll
gallop--like the Prince of Trebizond on the fairy horse."
"And shall we see the mermaid?" said the little maiden quickly, as
though her mind had been running on the subject.
"I wish the old nurse would not put such foolery in the girl's head,"
said Mrs Harrington impatiently. "There be no mermaids now, my love."
"What! not the mermaid of Martin Meer?" inquired the child, seemingly
disappointed.
Harrington left the room, promising to return shortly.
The morning was dull, but the afternoon broke out calm and bright.
Grace was all impatience for the ride; and Rosalind, the favourite
mare, looked more beautiful than ever in her eyes. She bounded down
the terrace at the first sound of the horses' feet, leaving Mrs
Harrington to follow.
The cavaliers were already mounted, but the child suddenly drew back.
"Come, my love," said Harrington, stretching out his hand; "look how
your pretty Rosalind bends her neck to receive you."
Seeing her terror, Mrs Harrington soothed these apprehensions, and
fear was soon forgotten amid the pleasures she anticipated.
"You are back by sunset, Harrington?"
"Fear not, _I_ shall return," replied he; and away sprang the pawing
beasts down the avenue. The lady lingered until they were out of
sight. Some unaccountable oppression weighed down her spirits; she
sought her chamber, and a heavy sob threw open the channel which
hitherto had restrained her tears.
They took the nearest path towards the Meer, losing sight of it as
they advanced into the low flat sands, scarcely above its level. When
again it opened into view its wide waveless surface lay before them,
reposing in all the sublimity of loneliness and silence. The rapture
of the child was excessive. She surveyed with delight its broad
unruffled bosom, giving back the brightness and glory of that heaven
to which it looked; to her it seemed another sky and another world,
pure and spotless as the imagination that created it.
They entered the fisherman's hut; but it was deserted. Years had
probably elapsed since the last occupation. Half-burnt turf and
bog-wood lay on the hearth; but the walls were crumbling down with
damp and decay.
The two friends were evidently disappointed. At times they looked out
anxiously, but in vain, as it might seem; for they again sat down,
silent and depressed, upon a turf-heap by the window, while the child
ran playing and gambolling towards the beach.
Harrington sat with his back to the window, when suddenly the low
murmuring noise he had heard on his former visit was repeated. He
turned pale.
"Thou art not alone; and where is the child?" or words to this purport
were uttered in a whisper. He started aside; the sound, as he thought,
was close to his ear. Molyneux heard it too.
"Shall I depart?" said he, cautiously; "I will take care to keep
within call."
"Nay," said his friend, whispering in his ear, "thou must ride out of
sight and sound too, I am afraid, or we shall not accomplish our plans
for the child's safety. Depart with the attendants; I fear not the
woman. Say to my lady I will return anon."
With some reluctance Sir Ralph went his way homewards, and Harrington
was left to accomplish these designs without assistance.
Immediately he walked out towards the shore; but he saw nothing of the
child, and his heart misgave him. He called her; but the sound died
with its own echo upon the waters. The timid rabbit fled to its
burrow, and the sea-gull rose from her gorge, screaming away heavily
to her mate; but the voice of his child returned no more!
Almost driven to frenzy, he ran along the margin of the lake to a
considerable distance, returning after a fruitless search to the hut,
where he threw himself on the ground. In the agony of his spirit he
lay with his face to the earth, as if to hide his anguish as he wept.
How long he remained was a matter of uncertainty. On a sudden,
instantaneously with the rush that aroused him, he felt his arms
pinioned, and that by no timid or feeble hand. At the same moment a
bandage was thrown over his eyes, and he found himself borne away
swiftly into a boat. He listened for some time to the rapid stroke of
the oars. Not a word was spoken from which he could ascertain the
meaning of this outrage. To his questions no reply was vouchsafed, and
in the end he forbore inquiry--the mind wearied into apathy by
excitement and its consequent exhaustion.
The boat again touched the shore, and he was carried out. The roar of
the sea had for some time been rapidly growing louder as they neared
the land. He was now borne along over hillocks of loose sand to the
sea-beach, when he felt himself fairly launched upon the high seas. He
heard the whistling of the cordage, the wide sail flap to the wind,
with the groan of the blast as it rushed into the swelling canvas;
then he felt the billows prancing under him, and the foam and spray
from their huge necks as they swept by. It was not long ere he heard
the sails lowered; and presently they were brought up alongside a
vessel of no ordinary bulk. Harrington was conducted with little
ceremony into the cabin; the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he
found himself in the presence of a weather-beaten tar, who was sitting
by a table, on which lay a cutlass and a pair of richly-embossed
pistols.
"We have had a long tug to bring thee to," said the captain; "but we
always grapple with the enemy in the long run. If thou hast aught to
say why sentence of death should not pass on thee, ay, and be executed
straightway too--say on. What! not a shot in thy locker? Then may all
such land-sharks perish, say I, as thus I signify thy doom." He
examined his pistols with great nicety as he spoke. Harrington was
dumb with amazement, whilst his enemy surveyed him with a desperate
and determined glance. At length he stammered forth--
"I am ignorant of thy meaning; much less can I shape my defence. Who
art thou?"
The other replied, in a daring and reckless tone--
"I am the Free Rover, of whom thou hast doubtless heard. My good
vessel and her gallant crew ne'er slackened a sky-raker in the chase,
nor backed a mainsail astern of the enemy. But pirate as I am--hunted
and driven forth like the prowling wolf, without the common rights and
usages of my fellow men--I have yet their feelings. I _had_ a child!
Thy fell, unpitying purpose, remorseless monster, hath made me
childless! But thou hast robbed the lioness of her whelp, and thou art
in her gripe!"
"As my hope is to escape thy fangs, I am innocent of the crime."
"Maybe thou knowest not the mischief thou hast inflicted; but thy
guilt and my bereavement are not the less. My child was ailing; we
were off this coast, when we sent her ashore secretly until our
return. A fisherman and his wife, to whom our messenger entrusted the
babe, were driven forth by thee one bitter night without a shelter.
The child perished; and its mother chides my tardy revenge."
"'Tis a falsehood!" cried Harrington, "told to cover some mischievous
design. The child, if it be thine, was given to my care--by whom I
know not. I have nurtured her kindly; not three hours ago, as I take
it, she was in yonder hut; but she has been decoyed from me; and I am
here thy prisoner, and without the means of clearing myself from this
false and malicious charge."
The captain smiled incredulously.
"Thou art lord of yonder soil, I own; but thou shouldest have listened
to the cry of the helpless. I have here a witness who will prove thy
story false--the messenger herself. Call hither Oneida," said he,
speaking to the attendants. But this personage could not be found.
"She has gone ashore in her canoe," said the pirate; "and the men
never question her. She will return ere mid-watch. Prepare: thou
showedst no mercy, and I have sworn!"
Harrington was hurried to a little square apartment, which an iron
grating sufficiently indicated to be the state prison. The vessel lay
at anchor; the intricate soundings on that dangerous coast rendered
her perfectly safe from attack, even if she had been discovered. He
watched the stars rising out, calm and silently, from the deep: "Ere
yon glorious orb is on the zenith," thought he, "I may be--what?" He
shrank from the conclusion. "Surely the wretch will not dare to
execute his audacious threat?" He again caught that red and angry star
gleaming portentously on him. It seemed to be his evil genius; its
malignant eye appeared to follow out his track, to haunt him, and to
beset his path continually with suffering and danger. He stood by the
narrow grating, feverish and apprehensive; again he heard that low
murmuring voice which he too painfully recognised. The mysterious
being of the lake stood before him.
"White man"--she spoke in a strange and uncouth accent;--"the tree
bows to the wing of the tempest--the roots look upward--the wind sighs
past its withered trunk--the song of the warbler is heard no more from
its branches, and the place of its habitation is desolate. Thine
enemies have prevailed. I did it not to compass thine hurt: I knew not
till now thou wert in their power; and I cannot prevent the
sacrifice."
"Restore the child, and I am safe," said Harrington, trembling in his
soul's agony at every point; "or withdraw thy false, thine accursed
accusations."
"Thou knowest not my wrongs and my revenge! Thou seest the arrow, but
not the poison that is upon it. The maiden, whose race numbers a
thousand warriors, returns not to her father's tribe ere she wring out
the heart's life-blood from her destroyer. Death were happiness to the
torments I inflict on him and the woman who hath supplanted me. And
yet they think Oneida loves them--bends like the bulrush when the wind
blows upon her, and rises only when he departs. What! give back the
child? She hath but taken my husband and my bed; as soon might ye tear
the prey from the starved hunter. This night will I remove their child
from them--to depart, when a few moons are gone--it may be to dwell
again with my tribe in the wigwam and the forest."
"But I have not wronged thee!"
"Thou art of their detested race. Yet would I not kill thee."
"Help me to escape."
"Escape!" said this untamed savage, with a laugh which went with a
shudder to his heart. "As soon might the deer dart from the hunter's
rifle as thou from the cruel pirate who has pronounced thy death! I
could tell thee such deeds of him and these bloody men as would freeze
thy bosom, though it were wide and deep as the lakes of my country.
Yet I loved him once! He came a prisoner to my father's hut. I have
spilled my best blood for his escape. I have borne him where the white
man's feet never trod--through forests, where aught but the Indian or
the wild beast would have perished. I left my country and my kin--the
graves of my fathers--and how hath he requited me? He gave the ring of
peace to the red woman; but when he saw another and a fairer one of
thy race, she became his wife; and from that hour Oneida's love was
hate!--and I have waited and not complained, for my revenge was sure!
And shall I now bind the healing leaf upon the wound?--draw the arrow
from the flesh of mine enemies? Thou must die! for my revenge is
sweet."
"I will denounce thee to him, fiend! I will reveal"----
"He will not believe thee. His eye and ear are sealed. He would stake
his life on my fidelity. He knows not of the change."
"But he will discover it, monster, when thou art gone. He will track
thee to the verge of this green earth and the salt sea, and thou shall
not escape."
With a yell of unutterable scorn she cried--
"He may track the wild bee to its nest, and the eagle to his eyrie,
but he discerns not one footprint of Oneida's path!"
The pangs of death seemed to be upon him. He read his doom in the
kindling eye and almost demoniac looks of the being who addressed him.
She seemed like some attendant demon waiting to receive his spirit.
His brain grew dizzy. Death would have been welcome in comparison with
the horrors of its anticipation. He would have caught her; but she
glided from his grasp, and he was again left in that den of loneliness
and misery. How long he knew not; his first returning recollection was
the sound of bolts and the rude voices of his jailers.
In this extremity the remembrance of that Being in whom, and from
whom, are all power and mercy, flashed on his brain like a burst of
hope--like a sunbeam on the dark ocean of despair.
"God of my fathers, hear!" escaped from his lips in that appalling
moment. His soul was calmed by the appeal. Vain was the help of man,
but he felt as if supported and surrounded by the arm of Omnipotence,
while silently, and with a firm step, he followed his conductors.
One dim light only was burning above. Some half-dozen of the crew
stood armed on the quarter-deck behind their chief; their hard,
forbidding faces looked without emotion upon this scene of unpitying,
deliberate murder.
To some question from the pirate Harrington replied by accusing the
Indian woman of treachery.
"As soon yonder star, which at midnight marks our meridian, would
prove untrue in its course."
Harrington shuddered at this ominous reference.
"I cannot prove mine innocence," said he; "but I take yon orb to
witness that I never wronged you or yours. The child is in her
keeping."
"Call her hither, if she be returned," said the captain, "and see if
he dare repeat this in her presence. He thinks to haul in our canvas
until the enemy are under weigh, and then, Yoh ho, boys, for the
rescue. But we shall be dancing over the bright Solway ere the morning
watch, and thy carcase in the de'il's locker."
"If not for mine, for your own safety!"
"My safety! and what care I, though ten thousand teeth were grinning
at me, through as many port-holes. My will alone bounds my power. Who
shall question my sentence, which is death?"
He gnashed his teeth as he went on. "And your halls shall be too hot
to hold your well-fed drones. Thy hearth, proud man, shall be
desolate. I'll lay waste thy domain. Thy race, root and branch, will I
extinguish; for thou hast made me childless!"
The messenger returned with the intelligence that Oneida was not in
the ship.
"On shore again, the ----! If I were to bind her with the main-chains,
and an anchor at each leg, she would escape me to go ashore. No heed;
we will just settle the affair without her, and he shall drop quietly
into a grave ready made, and older than Adam. I would we had some more
of his kin; they should swing from the bowsprit, like sharks and
porpoises, who devour even when they have had enough, and waste what
they can't devour."
"Thou wilt not murder me thus, defenceless, and in cold blood."
"My child was more helpless, and had not injured _thee_! Ye give no
quarter to the prowling beast, and yet, like me, he only robs and
murders to preserve his life. How far is it from midnight?"
"Five minutes, and yon star comes to his southing," said the person he
addressed.
"Then prepare; that moment marks thy death!"
The men looked significantly towards their rifles.
"Nay," cried this bloodthirsty freebooter, "my arm alone shall avenge
my child."
He drew a pistol from his belt.
"Yonder is Oneida," sang out the man at the main-top; "she is within a
cable's length."
"Heed her not. When the bell strikes, I have sworn thou shalt die!"
A pause ensued--a few brief moments in the lapse of time, but an age
in the records of thought. Not a breath relieved the horror and
intensity of that silence. The plash of a light oar was heard;--a boat
touched the vessel. The bell struck.
"Once!" shouted the fierce mariner, and he raised his pistol with the
sharp click of preparation.
"Twice!"
The bell boomed again.
"Thrice!"
"Hold!" cried a female, rushing between the executioner and the
condemned: But the warning was too late;--the ball had sped, though
not to its mark. Oneida was the victim. She fell, with a faint scream,
bleeding on the deck. But Harrington was close locked in the arms of
his little Grace. She had flown to him for protection, sobbing with
joy.
The pirate seemed horror-struck at the deed. He raised Oneida,
unloosing his neckcloth to staunch the wound.
"The Great Spirit calls me:" she spoke with great exertion: "the green
woods, the streams, land of my forefathers. Oh! I come!" She raised
herself suddenly with great energy, looking towards Harrington, who
yet knelt, guarded and pinioned--the child still clinging to him.
"White man, I have wronged thee, and I am the sacrifice. Murderer,
behold thy child!" She raised her eyes suddenly towards the pirate,
who shook his head, supposing that her senses grew confused.
"It was for thy rescue!" again she addressed Harrington. "The Great
Spirit appeared to me: he bade me restore what I had taken away, and I
should be with the warriors and the chiefs who have died in battle.
They hunt in forests from which the red-deer flies not, and fish in
rivers that are never dry. But my bones shall not rest with my
fathers!--I come. Lake of the woods, farewell!"
She threw one look of reproach on her destroyer, and the spirit of
Oneida had departed.
The pirate stood speechless and bewildered. He looked on the child--a
ray of recollection seemed to pass over his visage. Its expression was
softened; and this man of outlawry and blood became gentle. The savage
grew tame. The common sympathies of his nature, so long dried up,
burst forth, and the wide deep flood of feeling and affection rolled
on with it like a torrent, gathering strength by its own accumulation.
Years after, in a secluded cottage by the mansion of the Harringtons,
dwelt an old man and his daughter. She soothed the declining hours of
his sojourn. His errors and his crimes--and they were many and
aggravated--were not unrepented of. She watched his last breath; and
the richest lady of that land was "THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER."
[Illustration: GEORGE FOX]
GEORGE FOX.
"O Thou who every thought pervades,
My darkened soul inform:
With equal hand Thy goodness guides
A planet or a worm."
On the eastern side of Swart Moor, about a mile from
Ulverstone, stands Swartmoor Hall. This bleak elevation took
its name from Colonel Martin Swart, or Swartz, an experienced
and valiant soldier, of a noble German family, to whom the
Duchess of Burgundy, in 1486, entrusted the command of the
troops which were sent to support Lambert Simnel in his claim
to the English crown. A more detailed account of this
transaction will be found in the first volume of our present
series, in the tradition relating to "The Pile of Fouldrey."
Suffice it to say that the rebel army was defeated here with
great slaughter; and Swartz, along with several of the English
nobility, was slain--an event which entailed the name of this
chieftain on the place of his overthrow.